July recap and looking forward.
Overall we did pretty well in July and mostly stayed within budget. We ate out a few extra times, but nothing extravagant or anything. Whenever we run over budget in a discretionary category like that, I just take from the next month's budget. So basically we don't have a dining out budget for August, except for our anniversary dinner that we had last week. We spent a whooping $36 total. But it was very nice nonetheless. I was also able to stash away another $175 in July and $77 so far in August towards the DVC fund from Swagbucks, iBotta, mystery shopping and eBates so we are up to $3460 in that fund.
As for August, things are looking pretty good. We have finally finished paying back the DVC fund, which we had borrowed from early in the year to buy two sets of 7-day park hopper non-expiring WDW park tickets for our future vacations. This means that starting in September, we can finally start putting money back into the vacation fund! This will be very important so that we can cover our October 2018 cruise and WDW in March 2019.
I will be talking with my boss this morning regarding my salary. It is a little convoluted, but basically, I got the standard cost of living (CoL) raise in September 2015 and then got a promotion in February 2016. The promotion came with a significant pay increase and so my boss said that I wouldn't be eligible for a CoL increase in September 2016. But somehow the CoL increase got processed anyways. So basically, she said then I shouldn't get the CoL increase for next month (Sept. 2017), but I just got the merit letter in my email last Friday saying that I would be receiving a 2.6% pay increase starting next month. I feel really conflicted about all of this because with the baby almost here, we could really use the money. Plus, this would mean that I would go 24 months without any kind of increase, which would essentially mean that my salary would decrease relative to inflation.
DH hasn't gotten his merit increase letter yet, so we don't know what he might be getting, but unless it is unexpectedly large, it probably wouldn't be enough to cover the baby's insurance costs. So without my raise too, we would essentially have less income each month and would have to figure out where to cut from our current budget. DH doesn't want us to decrease any of our retirement savings or the extra mortgage principal payments. We would probably have to decrease our personal allowances, which would make things a bit tight but not impossible. But if we both got a raise, it would mean that we wouldn't have to cut out any current spending. We would be able to increase the baby expenses fund by $50 per month, increase the gift fund by $25 (for baby's birthday and holiday gifts) and start a college fund with $50 per month (to be increased over time).
Fingers crossed that she agrees to let me keep the raise.
