I just updated the sidebars to reflect paying all of my annual bonus to our debt! Well, all but $742. I used that to pay one of the hospital bills for the birth of my son in January. Once I get that money reimbursed from my Flexible Spending Account the $742 will be heading off as well.

April is going to have about half the debt snowball we aim for - we want to send at least $700 extra to debt each month. As the "geek," I put together our initial written budget each month and April has a couple of additional line items - summer clothes for the family (limited amount & shopping on sales), $110 for one last hospital bill for my oldest son from December 2008 (just now due), and minor planned expenses for a weekend away for my husband for an organization that he volunteers for (a convention).

We still haven't found a newer vehicle to replace my husband's 1990 Jeep Cherokee. We have been passively looking since we don't *have* to replace his car. We are now starting to consider buying a newer Cherokee (1999-2001) and only spending part of what we have saved up in our car fund. That will be that much more money to go toward debt this year. I would love to have our car & my smaller student loan paid off THIS YEAR!

I updated my debt tracking in the side bar area...everything is on track though my goal for the year on the car loan seems far away. I did receive my bonus last week so I made a big additional payment to the car loan and will pay the rest of my bonus (down to the penny!) to that debt next week. I'll be so excited to update again by the end of the month.

We've been doing pretty good with snowflaking this month as well, mostly finding money consistently in the gas budget. I haven't done as well on squeezing money out of the grocery budget as we've been feeding 2 extra people (brother & sister) a couple times a week.

I also just put together the budget for April. I budgeted very frugally for spring/summer clothes & shoes for the family during that month. I find a lot of good stuff for my son at thrift/consignment shops, but between Garanimals at Target and $4 sales at Target & Kohl's, I can sometimes do just as well buying new.

I've been addicted to walmart.com lately - I purchased a jersey dress with birthday money and found a pair of black dress pants for $5. The site to store feature is nice. I go back to work next Thursday, and my body has a way to go, so I've been pulling together work clothes. I borrowed a couple of dresses from my sister as well. It's so great that she lives here now - we even have the same shoe size! I also used the walmart.com photo service to order birth announcements for under $10 - I thought that was pretty good for 30 custom photo announcements with envelopes.

--Chrissy

No real update to post Every Friday I update our weekly spending and hubby & I do our weekly budget committee meeting. Lately we've been doing really well and snowflaking in a few categories.

This past Friday we didn't have any snowflakes. We put on a New Year's Day party for about 10 friends and used grocery money to fun sodas & appetizers. We used our gas money that was underspent to order several pizzas (with a deal) from Dominos. It was a lot of fun.

We should have a good week this week - I'm adding some extra snacks to the grocery list for next week, plus extra soda. I'll be putting together a welcome basket for my sister & BIL. They are moving here to Atlanta a week from Tuesday, so I want to bring them some goodies since they'll have moved 800 miles and won't have a chance to immediately get to the store.

And unless the new baby comes sooner I have these next 2 weeks in the office before maternity leave starts. We should be able to scrap up even more money over my leave since I won't have my full commute to work everyday - more gas money to pay on debt!