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As I write this sentence (on July 3rd), I am sitting in a hospital room. My new daughter is sleeping as my wife recovers from delivering a baby. It has been exciting, but also a draining first day in the hospital. We left at 4:30 am on the second. Our second child was born approximately 3 hours later.

Nothing I just wrote about has anything to do with June, but I just had to mention it, because we are extremely excited to welcome our second child to the family. Now onto our June update. In June we didn't do much of anything. I worked summer school (17 extra days of work) and we prepared for the arrival of baby #2.

We moved our oldest daughter into a new room with a new crib that converts to a toddler bed. We found some furniture that matched the crib and decorated my daughter's new room. She was excited to move to her big girl room.

Most of June was preparing for baby arrival, with multiple visits to Toys R Us and Babies R Us. With this being the last month that Toys R Us was open, we took advantage of the sale price to clear off the shelves. We may have went a little overboard.

Despite our crazy consumerism in June, we still spent less than both April and May! Take a look at our spending report below:

June Spending Report:

Auto: $491
- Gas
- Tolls
- Registration
Cash: $0
Clothing: $212
- Clothing for my daughter
- Clothing for Baby #2
Dining: $263
Daycare: $980
Donations: $700
Entertainment: $168
- Manicure and Pedicure for my Wife
- Other miscellaneous expenses
Gifts: $370
- Birthday Gifts for Nieces and Nephews until the end of the year
- Birthday Gift for our Daughter
- Gift from our Daughter to Our Newborn
- Gifts for our Daughter when she comes to visit the hospital (explain more later)
Groceries: $701
Health & Fitness: $0
Household: $1,143
- Lawn Mowing
- Furniture
- Fertilizer/Crabgrass remover
- Wooden Letters
- Other Miscellaneous Items
Insurance: $107
- Homeowners Insurance
Medical: $71
- Parking Fees at Med Center (all but $25)
- Copay for my Daughter's Appointment ($25)
Mortgage: $966
- Interest
- Taxes
My Kids: $162
- Diapers
- Miscellaneous Items to Prepare for Newborn
My Pets: $600
- Annual Shots for both Dogs
- Purchased a year supply of Heartworm Preventive Medicine
Utilities: $537
- Streaming TV Service
- Internet
- Water
- Natural Gas
- Cell Phones
Vacation/Travel: $303
- Purchased Flights to Nebraska for Thanksgiving
Work Expenses: $47
- Fee for a Class my wife attended

GRAND TOTAL: $7,821

Once again, it's not as bad as last month, but we still spent a lot. This was caused by a few of the following major expenses:

We found 2 Dressers for our daughter's new room. The two dressers matched her new crib/toddler bed that was a gift from a relative. We found the dressers at Babies R Us for 50% off retail costing approximately $700 for the pair.
June is one of our four months during the year that we are allowed to buy new stuff. Therefore, we took this opportunity to purchase birthday gifts for all of our nieces and nephews for the rest of the year.
June is our yearly immunizations for our two dogs. The immunizations and exam cost around $100 for each dog. During this one time stop to the vet, I always purchase a year supply of heart worm preventive medication. This cost is approximately $200 per dog (came with a $50 rebate). This cost us a total of $600.
Pre-purchased flights to Nebraska for 3 in November. We were able to use points for one flight, but had to pay cash for the other two. This added $300 to our expenses in June.
We purchased gifts for our oldest daughter from the baby and from other people. We were reading that to help our oldest child not become jealous of the attention that the new baby receives, give her attention by giving a gift or greeting her first. We took this information and bought 3-4 gifts for our eldest to help her transition to having a sibling.
We stocked up on coloring books, colors and other items from Toys R Us.

Despite the items listed above, we still found a way to decrease some spending. We cut down our grocery spending by $65. We decreased our donations by $400. We normally shoot for $700 to $800 in donations each month. We are back to our normal amount of donations.

Below is a look at our spending over the course of the entire year:

The last three months (Apr-June) have been the highest of the year. However, we have seen a decline from April to June. Over the course of the year, we average spending $7,512.50 per month. We have seen a lot of variance, but we tend to stay around the $7,000 dollar range.

June Savings Rate:

2018 Savings Rate Goal: 30%

January Savings Rate: 21%
February Savings Rate: 16%
March Savings Rate: 32%
April Savings Rate: 26%
May Savings Rate: 20%
June Savings Rate: 30%
Year-to-Date Savings Rate: 24% (increase of 1 percentage point from May)

As you can tell from our savings rate number, we put a lot of money towards investments and savings. June was a good month on the income side. My wife received 3 paychecks in the month and I received two stipends. One for working summer school and one for coaching.

Needless to say, we brought in a lot of money in June. This allowed us to put a lot of money in savings and has set us up nicely for any expenses that may come up with the delivery of our child.

DID WE STAY AWAY FROM BUYING ANYTHING NEW IN JUNE?

May was the last month of our buy nothing new challenge. This means that we had free rain in June to buy whatever we wanted. Despite having this free rain, our spending did not change that much.

Even though June is not a buy nothing new month, I still want to track our purchases of new items for the entire year. Below is a list of the new items, that are excluded because they are considered either reusable or household

Diapers (Household Consumable)
Fertilizer/Crabgrass remover
Batteries

With this being a no restriction month, what did we buy that was new (it was a lot)?

Clothing (20 items)
Gifts (15 items)
- Gifts for nieces and nephews June-Dec.
- Gifts for our daughter for her birthday (November).
- Gifts for our daughter for the delivery of her sister.
- Gift from my daughter to the newborn baby.
Baby Items (5 items)
- Pacifiers (2)
- Nipples for the bottle (2)
- Clip for the Pacifier
Dressers (2)
Baby Towels (3)
Coloring Books (5)
Boxes of Crayons (6)
Pack of Sidewalk Chalk (1)

In June, we bought a total of 57 new items. That is a lot, but we had planned and prepared for a month like this. We expected to purchase a lot of new items and we did. We may have gone a little crazy at Toys R Us and Babies R Us with them closing.

January: 34 (No Restrictions)
February: 2
March: 7
April: 1
May: 8
June: 57 (No Restrictions)
Total: 109

At the end of May, we had purchased a total of 52 new items. In June alone, we more than doubled that number. With July being another no restriction month, I expect more new stuff purchased, but not as much as June.

MORTGAGE PAYOFF UPDATE:

We began the year by setting a goal of paying off $20,000 of principal on our mortgage. We took a big step towards hitting that goal in June! We have some stipends that give me extra income and my wife enjoyed an extra paycheck.

My wife gets paid bi-weekly, meaning that that there are two months during the year that she gets paid 3 times. June just happened to be one of those months. We did not use all of our extra income on the mortgage, but we did use $1,000! Some of the other income went towards adding more money to our emergency savings and some dressers for our daughter.

2018 Principal Payments (includes scheduled payments plus any extra principal payments):

January: $1,942.65
February: $1,147.58
March: $1,250.44
April: $1,152.81
May: $956.43
June: $1,958.82
Year-to-date: $8,409.48

The extra $1,000 paid in June has increased our extra principal payments to $2,700 over the course of 2018. This has decreased the amount still needed to meet our goal to $5,772.22. With six months left, that's an average of $954 per month that needs to go towards the mortgage to meet our goal!