More early fall, more money tracking

When I went to write a title, I realized the things on my mind today are basically a continuation of my last post: Fall is here, back to school part 2, money tracking, etc.

I don’t really have much to add about school, but I have more fall and more money tracking! 🙂

Fall Decor…. easing in

Yesterday I had a few hours home alone, during which I cleaned the main part of the house. It was rather cool outside and I had the windows open and college football games on the TV. When I finished cleaning (ahhhh is there anything better than a perfectly clean, neat house on a Saturday?!), I suddenly decided that it IS officially “fall season” and it would be okay to put up some fall decor!

I usually wait until a little later in September- around the ~15-20th or so- but that’s because we often have much hotter weather until the end of September, which makes it still feel like summer and strange to be putting up pumpkins.

I never put up “Halloween” decor until around October 1st, but the “autumn” decor is fair game to put up in September (neutral pumpkins (i.e. not jack o’latern designs), leaf garland, harvest themed things, etc. No ghosts or witches until later.).

This year, I’ll be gone for 5 nights in October and then again mid- November, so I figured I should just go ahead and get some fall decor up. I want to have plenty of time to enjoy it!

Can I just pause for a moment and say what a DREAM it was to walk into my pristinely organized storage room and easily pull my Fall Decor boxes off the shelf? Ohhhhh yesssssss. This was a highlight of my day. lol.

I still have more to put up later, but I’m happy with the early fall touches that now adorn my house! Here are a few:

And the orange leaves are back in my glass cabinet doors:

Also, I wore what I’d consider a “fall outfit” for the first time on Thursday:

I just bought that black cardigan a few weeks ago and hadn’t had an opportunity to wear it yet. It’s this one from Quince.

Last winter I kept wishing that I had a black cropped cardigan so when I saw an ad for this one, I jumped on it. Check! ✅ Pretty sure it will be a very useful staple. (p.s. This is my first Quince purchase! I have tried some of their pants and ended up returning, but this is the first item I now own. I am actually tempted to get the cardigan in another color- there are so many great options!! Trying to resist.)

Monarch Update

Speaking of resisting expenses…. lol…. let’s switch topics, to how Monarch Money is going!

Now that I’ve been using it for over a week, I think I’m SOLD!! I am really loving it. I know I already said that in my last post, but I just want to confirm. *I also spent an hour or so yesterday morning skimming through our transactions for ALL of 2025 so far and re-categorizing any that were auto-assigned incorrectly, so now I have “complete” data for January to Present in 2025. This is awesome.*

My favorite parts:

1- It’s just such slick software!! The graphs and charts are beautiful and so easy to use… so much great data is available.

2- The app is very user friendly too, I think, and aesthetically pleasing.

3- Being able to see ALL of our accounts, including all of our credit cards, savings, kids’ accounts, etc, in one place! This is game changer!

4- We have a few things with our finances that I find slightly complex to manage, and Monarch will make it easier.

🔷 For one, the boys are authorized users on our American Express card. (They each have a separate debit card, too.) Their separate credit card expenses are itemized on the credit card statement, but they are all mixed together with the “total due” – which is a combination of our charges (though we don’t use this particular card that often, but sometimes), Ethan’s or Asher’s.

Ethan charges all of his gas on this card, and we pay for at least half of that. But their personal Chipotle-with-friends or Dairy Queen blizzard are on them to pay. Ethan is very good about going in monthly to tally up his charges and makes a separate mobile payment to AmEx (so then when the auto pay goes out, his portion is already gone.) Asher however has been historically less good about doing this directly (though he tends to use his debit card more and doesn’t charge on the AmEx that often anyway), so sometimes we end up paying his balance (when the full total payment goes out) and then Asher sends us a Zelle transfer to cover his charges.

What I’m saying here is, before Monarch, it got a little muddy to keep track of! Now, I just created a category called Boys Am Ex Charges and I funnel their charges in there… then, when they pay it or pay us back, I can also put those credits in there and it all washes out. We are ALSO going to be stricter about making sure to enforce a set “due date” that they have to pay their charges by. Even though, yeah, we’re ultimately covering it, the point of them being on the credit card at all is to build credit AND learn how to use credit.

🔷We also tend to get a lot of reimbursements from people. Examples: We might go out to dinner with a big group of Ivan’s family, we pay the whole bill on our card, and several people will give us cash. Ivan’s brother does not have Amazon Prime and will often ask him to buy something for him…. and then sends us money for it. We get travel reimbursements often from my parents (e.g. I buy all 6 Harry Potter Studios tickets on my card, my dad later sends me the money for their 2.) ALSO, we actually still have a few of Ivan’s family members (including my now ex-brother-in-law… 😬) on our big family mobile plan… so we pay this huge monthly bill and then people give us money every month…but sometimes they don’t pay exactly on time…. anyway. 😵‍💫

IT’S COMPLICATED. Monarch makes making sense of all of this SO. MUCH. EASIER. I am just thrilled!

5- Having all the accounts in one place makes it so easy to just check in daily. I suspect it will take me <1 min to check the categories/ make any adjustments desired if I just pop in every day. Not having a big, long process to sort through at the end of the month is going to be amazing! And knowing that everything is up to date and I can know our exact “financial status” at all times feels great, too.

I definitely feel like it was worth the time I spent learning and getting this new system all set up. I’m seeing many benefits already.

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Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful for this picture Ivan took the other day of me and Charlie. We were settling in to watch a show, and as soon as I laid down, Charlie immediately assumed his usual spot- curled up RIGHT next to me. 🥰 I told Ivan to take a picture, because some day, I’ll want to remember this….🥹 My little snuggle bug. One of my favorite moments of every day is getting into bed at night and having him curl up next to me.

P.S. Excited for the Green Bay Packers’ 1st official game this afternoon! First though… EMAIL CLEAN OUT + groceries + gym + some other misc…..