I am very happy.  I checked our retirement accounts today and we are up $5,942.39 since the last time I updated my sidebar, which was the end of March.  I only looked once during crazy times and then decided to just ignore the accounts until things were up again and now they are.  The 401K has recovered beautifully and $4500 of the gain is from there.  The rest of the gain came from the IRA.  The IRA still needs to earn back $700 to get to where it was, though.  We really need to stop procrastinating and get the thing rolled over to where our IRA is and get it similary invested.  The 401K did not drop as much as one might have thought, but that might have been the particular arrangement of assets we are invested in, which I don't even remember.

Anyway:

$217,060.60 New Retirement Amount

-211,118.21 Old Retirement Amount

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$__5,942.39 Amount of Change

And for Net Worth:

$312,118.21 Old Net Worth Amount

+__5,942.39 Change in Net Worth

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$318,060.60 New Net Worth Amount

The garbage bill has gone up.  It already went up a few months ago and now it has gone up again.  We are paying $175.27 for two months or $87.63 and a half cents each month.  So I changed the amount I save towards it each month from $75 to $90.  It's a little extra, but that just stays in my savings account.  It's because of the forced green bin for food and yard waste.  We don't have a choice to opt out, even if we have our own compost pile.

I could use that $15 each month elsewhere, like the beef fund which is up to $475, but needs to be up to $3000 by the end of October when the grass freezes and the cows start eathing hay and he stops selling for the year.  I am not sure if I am going to accomplish this or not, but we are finally almost out of ground beef and there is not a lot of other meat out there.  We might just have to wait until next year for a steer if we want to get a whole one.  And we need to start eating the pork chops and steaks.  We have finished almost all the sausage and bacon, but we still have ribs and a few other things left.  And we still have fish that we should really get to work on eating since prawning season is almost here and we will need the room.

I also need to come up with the money for combo (salt and fresh water fishing) with shellfish/seaweed gathering fishing licenses.  I am $2.35 shy of having saved enough for one license, but I need to have enough for 3 by June 6th, because this year I am strong enough to go.  My son may not want to go this year and in that case we will only need to buy 2.  So I will try to squeeze that into the budget in 2 weeks.  Plus we will need to come up with money to split gas costs for the boat, too.

Of course registration on both cars are due, plus we are changing the title on the van.  I guess it isn't done automatically when you pay off a car loan so even though we paid it off in the twenty teens it still has the bank listed as the car owner.  So we need to take in our paperwork and get it retitled.  That one I am not sure how much it will cost.  They said $40 last year, but everything has gone up, so I budgeted $100 for that.  We will be doing it all at once on Monday since we both have to be present.  DH will have to leave work early since the courthouse closes at 4.  Which is ridiculous, because they should stay open past regular business hours for the people that need to do business after they get off work at 5.  But no.  They take off early instead.  Every day.

The garden is coming along nicely.  I've got my onions, peas, and 9 tomatoes planted.  I still need to get my peppers in the ground and we will be building some new beds this weekend if it doesn't rain.  If it does rain we will take a load of stuff to the dump. No one wants to try to shovel wet dirt.  It makes it twice as heavy.  And while I can shovel this year, my back can handle it, I still can't lift a ton of weight because of my shoulder and both wrists.  and I can only shovel in one direction.  If I try to switch sides it hurts.  So one sided shoveling for me, but it works.

I want to buy another spinny plant tower.  They are having a mother's day sale and this year they have it in lilac. I have been waiting for a purple one.  With the sale, plus the discount code I have from the people who's blog I watch every week, I can get a good deal on it.  But I already have 3, a pink, a blue, and a deep berry color.  But I have wanted a purple one forever.  I have a week to decide.  I could transplant strawberries into it. There is a bed that is on the garage pad I want to take down because it is falling apart and it doesn't have many berries in it anymore.  I have a bug netting cover to keep the deer off.  We can build a cage for them if we do that.

But if I do that, I'll have spent almost all of the money I have saved for the past year and a half. I only have $350 left after spending money on the garden bed kits.  So I have enough to buy it, but I also want to buy some tall t-posts and fencing because we want to work on fencing off the main garden.  And we would have to rent a gas powered t-post pounder, because doing it manually is too hard on everyone, considering how many posts we will be driving in.  I've seen how they work and it just goes so much faster.  We do have some fencing on hand.  The big thing would be to fence off the side with our neighbor whose yard is a haven for deer.  I know I am adding $50 a payday to my envelope, but things could go fast and buying a new spinny tower garden will take up a huge chunk of change.  Decisions, decisions.

Food costs are atrocious.  My mom has been going to the city food bank weekly and the Salvation Army food pantry give out every two weeks.  I've told her we'll take care of her food, but she is stubborn as a mule and would rather get what she can for free than depend any further on me and my family than necessary.  But that is an offer I wonder if we can actually afford to make anymore, anyway.

She gets to pick out some of the items herself and she also picks up for my eldest sister (by eleven years) who is semi-retired.  They allow that as long as they have a name and address and the person comes in for the first time.  She works just enough to not have her social security and medicare taken away.  So at the city food bank she picks out 2 boxes of stuff each for herself and my sister and then they give her a couple of big boxes that everybody gets, so a total of four boxes, 2 for my sister.  One is full of root vegetables and one is full of pasta, rice, beans, some canned goods, and then on top of that any shorter term produce like broccoi, cauliflower, spinach, lettuce, etc.

Well, my mom and my sister have been getting some stuff they don't like or eat in those boxes and since you can't donate back any food that has been given back, they are left with food they can't or won't use or won't be able to eat it all before it goes bad.  So Mom offered it to me.  I told her I didn't want to take it, it was hers, I felt bad because it was from the food bank, etc.  She said she had offered it to the neighbors, but no one wanted food bank food because they all felt bad about taking it.

So Mom finally said if I could use it, take it.  Otherwise she was going to throw it in the recycling bin.  Well, that was not going to happen.  And with the cost of food getting so high, I finally agreed to take it, even if it made me feel guilty.  Throwing it out just goes against everything I believe in.  I ended up with 15 onions, 5 crowns of broccoli, 2 cauliflower, 1/2 a bag of mandarin oranges, 3 gigantic sweet potatoes, 25 yellow baby potatoes, 4 huge carrots, a container of spinach, an iceberg lettuce, and a bunch of celery.  So I guess this is basically my grocery shopping for the most part for this next week on produce.  I might get some berries and corn since they are on sale and pick up some gluten free pasta, but otherwise, I think I'm good.

I broke down the broccoli and cauliflower into pieces to take up less room.  I ended up with 2 freezer bags of broccoli and 2 smaller bags of cauliflower.  I froze one of each and we will have the rest this week for dinner.  I cut up all the onions.  I did three gallon bags of sliced onions and 1 gallon bag of large diced onions.  I froze all the slivers because I have some slivered onions in the fridge already, but I put the large diced onions in the fridge because I will be making black pepper chicken for dinner and then making a second batch to make into tv dinners.  I already had celery in the fridge, but with a second bunch of celery and all these onions, I can make more.

Our variety of homemade tv dinners is getting low since we are out of my lasagna and the last batch of black pepper chicken and the last batch of fajita chicken and peppers and onions.  All we have left is 4 meatloaf meals, 2 beef stew meals, 3 chorizo chili meals, 3 beef noodle with vegetable soups, 2 ham and potato soups, and 1 American Goulash.  I like to have my stash up around 30 tv dinners, maybe even 40 and a little more choice on what to eat.

I might do an extra large ravioli bake this week and then divide up the leftovers.  Same with making fajitas.  I can use up a lot of the stuff in the freezer in making the food and have the space for the meals.  I could do chicken papperdale alfredo and maybe smothered pork chops with potatoes and mixed vegetables.  Having a lot of onions is certainly going to help with all this.  And not having to pay $1.79 a pound for onions is nice.

I'll just have to get over any residual guilt.  As it is our budget is being stretched pretty thin.