Spending this month continues to stay under tight control, with nearly every dollar spent a planned expenditure. (The unplanned spending included floor cleaner and shampoo and conditioner that I got for a dollar per bottle.) Grocery spending is still at $57 for the month, although I need to go get milk for DD as well as for me and DH, so that's a good $12 right there. We could use some other things too, but it's been a good challenge to try and eat at home, cooking whatever we have on hand, trying to stretch out the time between trips to the grocery store. Aside from the surprise windfall and trip out to dinner, there hasn't been any other dining out, including snacks or stops for coffee. Every time I've been tempted, I think about it and decide that the fact is, I'd rather not go.

Home improvements: we need to buy tile for the walls around our tub/shower in our bathroom so that we can finish that project. I'm pretty sure we'll pick out the tile Saturday. Once the tile is in place, we can paint. We're going to turn the old shower stall into a storage cupboard, so that will be a job unto itself, but at least we'll have a fully functioning bathroom again soon and can stop cramming all three of us into our tiny guest bathroom. We'll cram ourselves into our slightly less tiny main bathroom.

We also need to buy exterior paint, prime all the spots where the insulation was blown into the walls and then patched and then paint. Paint is relatively cheap, thankfully. It's the time involved that I'm not looking forward to, having painted the house ourselves once before, 6 or so years ago.

In saving news, I increased the automatic transfer to DD's 529 plan today by $25. It isn't so much that it will feel like a big chunk out of the monthly budget, but it's an extra $300 a year that we might not have saved otherwise for college.