Spending All the Money

This is how John and I roll: save money, save money, save money, SPEND ALL THE MONEY, save money, save money, save money....
Well, in one week we spent all the money. (Not all, just a lot of our bank account) Mostly it was on this new minivan. We had been looking for a while and we decided to go with one that was only a year old, a few more miles, and a lower trim model, all to make it at the right price point for us. We really like it. It is a big step up for a lot of reasons: space to carpool, space to through bikes in the back, automatic doors, and different air conditioning zones are among my favorites. Also, it was time to get rid of John's old car that we got right before Eliza was born. It was starting to require too many repairs. We got this car with about 38,000 miles on it for about $22,000, but out the door price was about $26,500, which seems like quite the difference.

That same week we got our kitchen lighting redone. I have to say, I wish we had done this sooner. It wasn't that much money ($400) and it makes a huge difference in the kitchen.

Then, we got new kitchen appliances on a Memorial day sale. They are the next step on our kitchen remodel project. I seriously love the new refrigerator. It seems so much bigger. It has the door within a door and all the extra condiment space makes things feel a lot more organized. I love it. The convention oven is kind of cool although the stove top seems little funky. The microwave seems fine. The dishwasher was the appliance that needed replacing the most. We researched and supposedly got one of the best dishwashers, which seems debatable to me after having it for a few weeks. First the good: no stinky smell while running, door closes and latches appropriately, seems to clean dishes fine. The cons are that it requires rinse aid to work. Seriously it is the first thing in the instruction manual and is repeated throughout the manual. Next, it has a silverware drawer instead of basket, and I don't think they get cleaned as well. Last (and most annoying), it is smaller and doesn't fit as many dishes in it. Not only that but the racks are weird and bumpy and I just can't figure out how to load the dishes efficiently. This is manageable right now, but my kids school lunch dishes are huge and I don't know how we are going to do just one load of dishes a day when school starts again. That being said, I do love the look of the black stainless appliances, and I am excited to modernize our kitchen. Also, we got a new light fixture for over the kitchen table.

After we spent all that money, we could at least sell our old stuff for a little bit of money. We sold both through Craigslist and had kind of opposite experiences. We posted the Elantra for $1250 because it is 15 years old, about 179,000 miles on it, cosmetically wasn't great, and mechanically was questionable. We immediately got a ton of responses on it. Maybe we got a couple dozen people interested, which was kind of a problem because we were immediately leaving to go see Aladdin with the kids, getting home late, and the next day was Sunday when we didn't want to do business. It was a mad house fending off all of the calls and texts. John just kept his phone on silent. We ended up selling it to the first guy that came by on Monday morning at 7 am, which was nice. It ended up being a little bit of a hassle because it was Memorial day and we had to get the bill of sale (or maybe title) notarized, which it is hard to do on a federal holiday. It all ended up working out though. 

Goodbye Elantra.

Next we wanted to sell thee appliances, which had a completely different result. We posted it, and could almost hear the crickets chirping with the lack or response. We took the price down a couple of times and that did the trick. It is kind of crazy thought that the people that we ended up selling them to live in Pennsylvania and are trucking them across the country(!). I guess things are cheaper here in AZ?? They needed to replace their basement kitchen appliances which are now from 1970. Perfect option for our appliances. I just never would have guessed that we would have sold them to someone in Pennsylvania. I just feel lucky we sold them as a set, so we got rid of them all at once.

Also, that same weekend we took on some more trip expenses by buying CityPASSes  for the whole family. It was about $800. All of these expenses were in the same week. Yeah, that was not great for our bank account. Thankfully though, John received news that he got a promotion and a fantastic raise with it. John's boss told him that he hasn't ever seen such a big raise before. We feel very blessed.