So, update...budget totally busted.
We got DH a new car. Long story short, he was driving the most uncomfortable car ever (a 2008 Honda Fit) with 125,000 miles on it. His commute is about to get longer in a couple weeks (going from 40 to 50 miles each way). He has been griping and moaning about his car for about a year. He wanted a more comfy car, better A/C (his car has always had super weak A/C and we live in sunny CA and his car windows had NO tint). The kicker was we were just quoted $1500 for car service that essentially is a full tune up. The car's trade in value was only estimated between $2500-3500. We had been planning to buy him a new car next summer, but over Memorial Day weekend, Honda was having a massive sale. We used USAA car buying service and got a PHENOMENAL price on a 2017 Civic Hatchback Sport Touring model. Seriously, the price was almost $1000 UNDER invoice. I don't know how they could let it go for so low. The dealer even gave us $3000 for the trade in, which shocked me honestly. We took it and ran. And now we have car payment again for the first time in six years. We got 1.9% interest financing so it's not a big deal, and my car only has 75000 miles on it and is going strong (it's a CR-V). I don't hardly drive at all...maybe 5k mikes a year, so I won't need a new car anytime soon.
However, we put down $3500 on the car, and that was basically all the money I made doing my part time scoring job.
So, that kinda sucks. Plus the job ended earlier than anticipated so I didn't make nearly as much as I projected (I netted about $4k but hoped for closer to $6k).
Good news is that when I added the new car to our insurance, our premiums went WAY down. Like, what? I had to call and make sure there wasn't a glitch. Nope...newer cars have better safety features, I was told, so they are less likely to be involved in collisions (the new car has Honda Sense, which is a suite of accident avoidance features). I took that opportunity to bump up our insurance coverage limits, because most of our neighbors drive $100k cars and our previous limit for personal property damage was only at $50k per accident (YIKES!!!...not enough) I bumped it up to $500k per accident which makes me sleep better at night. I also increased all our other coverages and the end result was our premiums are the same as they were before the new car, but with a LOT more peace of mind.
So, back to sticking with cutting monthly expenses and staying on track to pay off the credit card by January. DH should get promoted by September (fingers crossed).
I briefly contemplated taking a quick trip to WDW with my kids this summer, but the car purchase squashed that, which in retrospect is good. NO extra travel this year unless it can be done for free (I may take a solo trip to WDW this fall which will 100% be financed through my Chase Sapphire Reserve rewards points, but I am waiting on confirmation from my husband's new boss that he can take some days off in October). If not, we will use those points for our family vacation Summer 2018.
And now to buckle down for the rest of the summer...