It's been about a month since we received the gift of money from my in-laws. I thought I would make an attempt at an accounting of where the money has gone thus far. So far, we have spent/saved/paid down debt amounting to about $25,200 in the following broad categories:

Savings $9,200.00 36.4%
Home Improvement $8,322.05 32.9%
Debt Repayment $6,361.72 25.2%
Home School $745.60 3.0%
Vehicle Maintenance $636.00 2.5%
$25,265.37

A coupe of caveats:
1. Not all of the money has been spent/saved in each of those categories yet, although it is our intent to do so. All but $2,000 of the "Savings" category is sitting in checking yet, for example. Some more to debt payoff and some more to home improvement.

2. We would have spent that, or nearly all of that on Home School curricula with or without the gift. Maybe not in one payment.

3. Same goes for vehicle maintenance (tires) my tire would have blown with or without the gift. Maybe I would have bought the used tire, or only one new tire instead of all four. Who knows. The gift did make the decision to buy four new tires easier.

There is one big ticket item that we have not purchased, but I have included it above. That is a generator and hard wiring for generator. I'm estimating that at $1,200. I think I already blogged about that, or I intended to blog about it. It goes back to the whole living in a rural area, we have the electric service of a third world country, yada yada thing.

We haven't taken action on a Roth for DW. That is big on my to do list.

So, when Savings plus Debt Repayment lines are combined, we get a total of 61.6% of what has been spent/allocated/intended so far. Yes, about a third the total has been spent on "Home Improvement" and yes, most but not all of that is the porch project. It did balloon beyond our original intent a bit.

We still have a pinch less than $5,000 to allocate yet. You certainly can't say that we're blowing it all in one place!