Throwing a 40th birthday party on the inexpensive...

Can it really be done?! I've just finished balancing the checkbook, entering in our spending for February so far and overall I'm pleased with where we are (in spite of the yearly vet visit, baths for dogs and other dog related expenses... it is the month of dogs here!!). February will be a slightly larger step than January and since we are improving I'm going with it :)

Regardless, dh turns 40 in a few weeks and we've decided that is the perfect opportunity to host our first party in the newly finished basement. I'm excited and now I have to set a realistic budget. This is the tricky part! Here is what I know we'll need:

• alcohol (mostly beer and wine - maybe a flavored vodka too - we have plenty of other liquor)
• heavy appetizers
• paper products
• decorations
• cake

I will bake the cake so that will help with the expense. I need to see what kind of 40th cake designs I can find on the web. Paper products will probably just be large paper plates and plasticware. I have plenty of leftover napkins (from our wedding almost 13 years ago!), appetizer size plates and plastic cups. Decorations may just be some black, gray and silver balloons and I should be able to find a coupon for Party City before we need them.

This brings me to heavy appetizers. Here is what I'm thinking so far:

• Baked brie covered in pepper jelly and wrapped in dough - serve with crackers.
• Meatballs (isn't this a standard app?!)
• Mini quiche - I have a recipe from Southern Living for this.
• Vege tray
• Queso dip with tortilla chips
• 7 layer dip with chips
• Hummus with bagel chips

This seems light to me (we have 12 people so far with about 10 more we're waiting to hear from). I was thinking of serving a spiral sliced ham or sliced turkey breast with sandwich fixin's too.

So, after reading all of this, what do you think my budget should be? How inexpensive could you do it? Please share your party-planning wisdom with me! Hosting a kids' birthday is easy and can be inexpensive... hosting a grown-up birthday party is a new adventure for me :)

January wrap up

Whew! I find it hard to believe that it is already February... I just don't know where January went. I wanted to sit down and evaluate how my first month of 2009 went... I have big plans to save $5K in our cash fund so I need to keep myself accountable each month.

While January went better than any month over the last year, we have a long way to go to get to our savings goal! I've decided to look at it as a good first step for 2009 :)

We stayed well within our food and gas (auto) budget. Due to our deposit for the new couch (for the basement), our household expense line was a bit over budget. That being said, I will not have to move any money out of savings to cover the deposit on the couch. We did decide to do a year of no payment-free financing and we'll pay it off next February. We have the money in savings and could have paid cash, but there was no incentive from the store to do that. So, we'll hold onto our cash, let it earn interest and pay it off in a year.

So, what does this mean for my savings goal? Well, nothing went into our savings for the month of January because I'm paying off some spending that went on in December. Good news is that I will not need to pull from savings to cover it. I did put $125 into our Christmas account, made the girls' college account payments and our 401K contributions stand at 15%. Like I said, good first step.

So, for February my biggest goal is to put $500 in our long-term savings. My smaller goals include putting $100 into Christmas savings and to save $60 of my allowance to offset summer camp costs for the girls (I saved $60 in January).