Budgeting for our Tax Refund

With me currently being our only source of income and John staying home taking care of the boys it's safe to assume that we will be getting another tax refund next year.  We have learned a somewhat painful and hard lesson about what NOT to do when you suddenly have extra money.  And yes I am trying to budget already, I don't intend to make the same mistakes that we did this year.  I have been keeping a running list of ideas that I think will save us money.

We spent most of this year's refund on a couple of big ticket items that I let John talk me into (which let me tell you, was really not hard at all) and two trips.  We did renew our Sam's club membership and made a few Sam's runs that did save us quite a bit, plus we've been saving on gas all year.  We bought me a new laptop (my old one was on it's last legs) and a new camera (which I had been asking for since we found out I was pregnant).    My old camera is a basic Kodak point and shoot, which took decent enough pictures, but I knew once we had the boys I wanted something that would take both awesome pictures and videos.  I need HD memories here!  As far as the trips went, we spent a night up in Omaha at a fancy hotel for our anniversary and we took an amazing 3 week road trip to visit my family in NY.  So I can't really regret spending money on what we did, I just wish we had budgeted better and not blown a lot of it on stuff we didn't need (like getting take out way too often).

I am determined now to make next year's refund work for us.  Here are some of my ideas:

1-Immediately take what it will cost to register both of our cars next year and stick it into savings for this purpose ONLY.  We are terrible at trying to save to do this.  You think by now we would have learned. 

2-Our car insurance renews again for another 6 months in February.  Our insurance company gives us a nice discount for paying it in full.  I plan on doing this, that way we save money and we won't have to worry about paying car insurance again until August!

3- Renew Sam's membership and do a lot of shopping there.  This year we bought a GIANT box of trash bags and we still are using them.  We also purchased a big box of dishwasher detergent, we are currently only on our second box of the year.  We purchase our most often used spices there too.  I also want to buy some baking supplies.  Lately I've been searching online for homemade versions of some of our favorite recipes and I find myself going through a lot more flour and sugar.  I found an awesome recipe for homemade pizza dough (Here) which has been saving us quite a bit (yay me!)

4-I AM buying a fast reading digital thermometer for the boys.  It is such a pain to try and take their temperature under their arms with our current one, it seems to take forever.  And they just get mad and squirmy, it's always a fight.

5-Put a chunk into savings after paying all our bills.  We want to have some extra emergency cash on hand so we don't end up in such a financial bind again next year.

I'm also thinking that John and I need to treat ourselves a little bit.  I don't think it will break our budget to have a nice date night out, and we seriously need it for sanity's sake. So here are a few wants.

6- Date Night! I think this is self-explanatory here.

7-A membership to our local zoo.  Well the one in Omaha.  It's consistently ranked as one of the top zoos in the country, they let you bring in your own food and even have a picnic area with a playground, and it's only about an hour away.  If we do it right we'd only be paying for gas each time we went; I like affordable fun family outings!

8-I want toddler sized chairs for the boys.  They love to sit with us in the living room, but they are always trying to climb all over the couch.  I'm hoping with special chairs of their own that maybe they will be less inclined to climb onto the couch.  The problem with the couch is we keep stuff that we use frequently but that they shouldn't play with on the window sill behind the couch and they are always trying to climb up to reach it (and they don't usually have the patience to sit quietly on our laps).  Owynn has also fallen off the couch more times than I can count.  The boy has no fear, and as much as we try, we can't catch him every time.  I've taken to calling Owynn my little monkey because he loves to climb over and onto everything. 

9-I want to at least be able to take one nice weekend trip to Kansas City.  My husband loves going there, and I know it would mean a lot to him.  We try and go every year over Labor Day, but the past few years between my pregnancy and then our financial problems, we just haven't been able to make it.  But this is a definite want and at the bottom of our monetary to do list.

10- For myself I want to go to a nice salon and get my hair done.  The last time I had it cut was over a year ago, not long after the boys were born. You know though that Mommy usually puts everyone else ahead of her, so we'll see.  But this is my one special want purely for me =)