I finally added AS's first-quarter contribution to her SEP IRA. I'd been holding back because of the tax bill and upcoming dental bill, but even though we still have a shortage on paper, the income that's going to cover it is a sure thing, and thanks to the 0% credit cards, we can easily float some of our expenses until those freelance checks come in. So I finally fought back my worries and contributed. It's just $568.67 anyway; AS had a light first quarter in terms of actual checks received, even though she's been booking work at a very steady pace.

First quarter of 2015, she pulled in $19K, vs. less than $6K this first quarter. It was because of work she did in late 2014 that she didn't get paid for until January 2015. So considering that, we're not sure she'll make as much this year even though she's working at about the same pace as last year. She might, though; she just hit on what may be a lucrative steady stream of work from a former co-worker of mine.

Still, I'm happy to be adding to our retirement. Since I've put off maxing our Roth IRAs until later in the year, it hasn't been a very exciting year for retirement fund growth (especially since the market has been so stagnant). Starting July 1, it'll get better as we start working to max our our Roths before the end of the year.

We've had a lot of expenses, including grocery expenses for a couple of recent parties, so this week we wanted to plan as cheap a meal as possible. Our groceries came in under $100! That's really good for us.

Here's our meal plan:
Saturday lunch: leftovers from last night's party
Saturday dinner: spaghetti & tomato sauce (total cost about $3)
Sunday lunch: spinach salad with strawberries, tofu & pumpkin seeds (already had pumpkin seeds; cost for other ingredients about $5)
Sunday dinner: mock pulled pork sandwiches, broccoli & potato salad (only needed a Vidalia onion and some garlic for the sandwiches since we have buns in the freezer and I made some extra fake meat last week; total cost of new ingredients about $5)
Monday: cereal & toast (things we had on hand; bought some more bread at $2.50 a loaf in case we need more bread for breakfasts etc.)
Tuesday: parsley breadcrumb pasta (already had heels of bread + parsley; spaghetti was $1)
Wednesday: General Tso tofu, peapods & rice (cost of new ingredients about $3)
Thursday: pizza (bought flour for the crust, vegan cheese, plus bell pepper and mushrooms; $9 total)
Friday: French toast, fake bacon & hashbrown patties (only needed the veggie bacon; about $4)

So weekend meal and dinner ingredients only came to about $31; the rest was spent on things like milk, kindergarten snacks, toilet paper, lunch items for the adults, fruit and cat food. Which all came to about twice the actual cost of our meals! Amazing how it all adds up.

We budget $200 per week, but we'd gone over the previous week, bought wine for last night's party, and bought supplies for a lemonade stand for the kids, so we about broke even this week. That's all I wanted, so I'm happy.

I started using an allowance tracking tool for the kids called threejars.com that I think I'm going to love, but I'll write about it another day when I've had more experience with it!

This weekend and next week look pretty cheap, so hopefully we'll stick to that. (Except AS's dental bill if it comes in, of course.) I'm trying to be very conscious of spending until June, when we have a bunch of travel that will rack up expenses.