The credit card debacle from February had one last victim (I hope!). I missed the fact that the compromised card was tied to our water bill (which is billed every other month). They sent a very inconspicuous email that looked exactly like our regular payment confirmation with one small line saying, “your card was declined.”

Confession. We didn’t actually budget for the holidays this past year 😬. Should we have? Maybe. But after nearly a decade of actively tracking our finances, we’ve developed pretty solid instincts about our spending. Having ample savings also plays a huge role in our lack of a holiday budget.

February was a month of logistical headaches. We dealt with fraudulent charges on our main credit card early in the month. Thankfully it was resolved quickly, but the replacement card got caught in the major winter storm that hit in late January/early February, so it arrived weeks late (with the second replacement card I had to order as a replacement for the replacement 🙃).

In my spreadsheet budgeting days, I always wanted to add our food spending up at the end of the year, but it required more effort than I wanted to put in (very doable, just never happened). Using Monarch has made this much easier, a couple clicks and I had exactly what I needed.