Frugal Challenge

This has been a fun month.... I am taking my frugal challenge to the next level.

Because I am crazy.
But a good crazy.
A nice crazy. Lentil burgers for dinner. Robert is SO lucky.

I'm sticking with my $300/month food budget and ended up at $299.21 for October. Got some great deals on cheese and chicken so my freezer is getting stocked up. I also had my inlaws here all month and fed the missionaries a few times. Andrew isn't living at home... but still raids the pantry. So I feel it's working out well and hope to keep to my budget even with all the Holiday baking/cooking.

So now to my NEW frugal challenge. I want to pay my house off. Yes.... we can blame it on Tammy, but really I have done so much reading about the market and being financially independent that this just makes sense. The difficulty is that I want to do it in 60 months and we still have to:

Live
Eat
Save for missions, college, weddings
Vacation (that is VERY important to me!)

Our current income/expenses don't fit into this goal, but I firmly believe in the power of goal setting and working hard to achieve something difficult.... it wouldn't be a challenge otherwise!

So... each month I will put the percentage I have paid down our mortgage and how much is left to reach our goal. I need to average 1.67% each month. A very lofty goal as I already know there will be some months I can't meet this. Luckily I have a flexible income. I just need to flex it to become higher :)

October house goal: paid off 1.40%. 98.60% left.