April was a rough month. I had some bad news about our goats, coupled with Mr. A's business driving me bonkers with anxiety and worry over bounced checks, and people not getting back to us so I thought they were mad and ignoring us, I just about had a nervous breakdown for a few days. I really must find a way to smother the insecure child that lives within me. Or at least get her to grow up a tad!

We overspent on gasoline, but I know that is because some of the gasoline charges were supposed to go on Mr. A's business card.

Car maintenance was through the ceiling, and I actually used a credit card to make the payment but that will be paid off very soon.

We are using our babysitter half time, so that dropped.

I spent a lot less on Beauty and Sundries this month. That is probably because Mr. A has been doing most of the grocery shopping.

We gave more to charity than normal.

We invested in more layers, baby girl chicks, and went a little over on chicken food.

We totally blew the budget with clothing, but Mr. A and our sons needed a few articles of clothing for summer.

I paid much less on the credit cards than I normally do, but I have decided to drop the payment down to $150 on each card anyway, until we see what happens with Mr. A's business. I would rather just be in hoard mode, well, I guess a better term would be to call it save mode, while we are figuring out how this all is going to work.

We did excellent on dining out this month.

Went overboard on gifts, but it was our eldest son's 21st birthday. I guess I need to get some kind of savings plan set up for birthdays.

It might look like we went over on buying hay, but it really wasn't, because I pulled the money over from savings.

We were under our grocery budget by $219. I'm reluctant to cut that any lower, because that will be the month it bites me back.

We spent $54 less on household items than budgeted for.

Actually that insurance amount is inaccurate, as I just put our two sons on my insurance at work, to the horrendous tune of $460 per month. So that means our budget is that much more out of whack. I'm depending heavily on Mr. A to bring in the bacon to make up for it.

Interest on the credit card is low as it should be for a 1% interest card.

We didn't have as many taxes as budgeted for, and came in $31.85 under.

Pet expenses were cheaper. This is basically Mr. A's allowance. He doesn't buy anything for himself on a regular basis, but he does prefer to feed our dogs a raw food diet as much as possible. One really amazing side effect: NO TICKS. I hate using those poison collars as it seems like a really bad idea to me. I have only found one tick on the dogs this year.

Everything else was pretty much on target.

I'm contemplating going to a cash only system for buying groceries, but not sure how it will work out, and hesitant to try it. I need to think about it some more.