The Dryer Caught Fire 🔥 | March 2025 Beers & Budgeting

Okay, we're back. We're somewhat awake. Yeah. And we are going over March beers and budgeting. So, stick around. Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. I'm your host Justine and this is my husband Kyle. What's up? And you might be noticing we are wearing some fancy things. We decided I decided during maternity leave that it would be really fun to have some merch put together and I thought these hats were so fun to make. You are sporting the snapback. Yep. It's got green underneath. It's got the logo. I am wearing the vintage kind of denim look. So, if you are interested in repping the DFM community out in the wild, you can purchase these hats using my shop link below. And last time, I think we had also done a little promo for the notebook. So, you can also grab the notebook. It is blank on the inside so that you can fill it out however you want to, including writing down your daily expenses, your financial goals, whatever it may be. But today we are going over March and we are doing so with one of my favorite beers. Yeah. Which is we focus. Yeah. It is Black but Porter by Dashoots. We have been drinking this for years. It's a cold rainy day outside which is ideal for us for dark beers. We love this beer. If you haven't had it, it's so good. It is dark. It is look like a Guinness. Doesn't taste like a Guinness. Tastes in my opinion better. But Guinness is pretty good. It's more carbonated than a Guinness obviously. But yeah, it's very very good. Y and what I needed because I have just not been sleeping well with Lucy and I I'm hopeful it gets better. It gets better, right? Yeah. It always gets better or different. When you ask parents with older kids like does it get easier and they're like a little bit. It just gets different though. The problems get different. Yeah, the problems are different. But we had kind of talked about, you know, Lucy got a tongue tie release not even a week ago. So that's the biggest interruption to sleep right now. So hopefully I am hopeful it gets better cuz she is a really good sleeper in most cases. I'm going to pull up our March budget here. Let's take a look at the bottom line. We brought in $13,822 which left us with $4,185. How was that? March was a longer month. Uh, okay. I was just very confused. March was a longer month and we also had a tax refund come in for March. We had a massive t tax refund that came in in April, but we'll save that for April. So, this is state. Yeah. $979 tax refund from I believe that was from California. Okay, I will take it. Yeah. Yeah. So, we had a good chunk of change left over. I noted for the month of March. Our dryer broke. So, we had the wonderful joy of having norovirus go through our house. That's also Yep. That's why well to to get killed noral virus you have to get the temperature so hot for so long so to clean up the bed sheets with you know our oldest put them in the dryer on the sanitized mode and for somehow for some reason that caused the electronics board in the dryer to catch fire. Not just like spark and arc and like fail but actually catch fire. There's burn marks inside of the dryer inside where the electronics board is. To me, that seems a little questionable on like anyways, the previous owners had somehow shoved the dryer into the corner and then put a piece of wood on the side and it puts a piece of wood on the top and then screwed the whole thing to the wall. Like there it was so tight in there you couldn't even pull the thing out and you couldn't get access to the water lines to turn those off if there was an emergency water line break. I could go on and on and on on this but I'm not going to just to save everyone some time. But man, talk about blood pressure being high on just levels of stupidity. That one was pretty high up there. So, I had to also take the dryer out, get it downstairs, buy a new one, and then remodel the drying the washer and drying area so that way it didn't have that same problem. Mhm. And Yeah. So, that was a fun expense and like not quick like it, you know, you'd think it'd be like, "Oh, yeah. Hey, the dryer broke. Let's just go to the store and get a new one." No, no, no, no. You got to figure out all the deals, who has what, how to get rid of the old one. yada yada yada. And you know, they they want $50 to take away the old one. Well, we just posted it for free on Facebook saying, "If you want to fix it, it's free." It was the the repairman deemed it unrepable or that the cost was like you might as well just buy a new one as most electronics are today. Sorry. That is one hill that really I want to die on cuz that really irks me. Anyways, I'm ranting a lot today. It's great. You're reliving a lot. So the dryer drama. So we put it on Facebook Marketplace for free and then some guy showed up and was like, "Oh, I'm not going to fix it. I'm going to strip all the copper and metal and stuff out of it and get money for it that way." And so don't pay those people to to take, you know, don't pay them 50 bucks to take away your old thing. Just put it on Facebook Marketplace for free and some person who's, you know, I guess desperate for cash or has the time will come and take it for scrap. That was the cheapest way we got rid of it. So, we saved ourselves 50 bucks. Yeah. And it was going like within the hour of posting it, which was kind of crazy. That guy jumped right on that. But you and my dad had installed the new one and ran it. And then I ran it the first time you were not here. And there was actually condensation inside of the guest closet where the dryer vent hose leads outside. And so I was like, "Oh, that's not good." So we stopped it. And then Kyle went out on the roof to where the the vent actually Yeah. So when we had taken the old one down, I was like, "Might as well clean out the line." So I shoved my leaf blower in there and, you know, blew the line out and it blew everything to the end where the exit is. And so it blocked everything, which is why it wasn't. Anyways, what I assumed was that it there wouldn't be three pairs of socks and a woman's thong inside of the dryer line uh to the exhaust vent. And there was. So, I'm out on the roof and I'm just pulling out socks and nastiness and there's this like old used thong that comes out of it, too. Well, I mean, it was clean, right? It had gone through the dryer, right? So, I guess you could assume it was clean, but you know, it didn't didn't have the tag on it still, but it was it was from the previous owners that was caught. And so, we're like, did they just forget to put the actual uh trap lint trap back in? And so it just fell through the lint trap and then made its way through the line and then when Kyle used his leaf blower just pushed it all the way through. That is wild. And that is something renters will never have to experience because that stuff is taken care of for you. Yeah. Which is great. Now we had to pay $1,200 for a new dryer. And I don't know exactly where I put that if that was says the financial guru. I don't know where that money was. I don't know what how how we ended up doing that. So I need to get back into this. But let's let's can we move move? Yeah. Probably probably came out of the home renovation fund or the emergency fund or the oh fund or whatever. Right. That's or just basically took our tax money and was like there you go. Yeah. So, we have pots of money for stuff like this. So, it's not like this was a blindsided cost for us because we save for for things exactly like this. Our fixed expenses preschool was $1435. There was an extra week in March that we paid. So, we pay preschool every single week. And so, that's why you're going to see a difference. Uh everything else looks pretty much on par. all the things that we save for except groceries was over by $384. So, we'll take a look at the daily expense tracker and see why that was. We also paid our CPA for the month of March who did our taxes and we really love working with him because he sends us a very detailed recap video and he starts his video off with bottom line which is what Kyle likes and then he gets into the details which I like. So, it's very very nice and we've been This is our second year working with him. Let's go into or do you have any questions on the fixed stuff? No, just stuff that you brought up. The groceries is astounding. Even an $800 and and we live in Kansas now. Our grocery budget was the same in LA as it is here. And we're still paying the same amount. So whether you live in LA or you live in Kansas City, groceries are still the same amount. It's crazy. There might be some small variations like eggs are a dollar more in California. Whoopdedoo. Like that's not going to change the budget dramatically. Mhm. I don't know why I said dramatically like that. Dramatically. Yeah. So it it just it's really dependent on what you buy to be honest. The fun money looks really good. We did well on restaurants and shopping. I mean, Quinn and I were sick with the norovirus, so we really weren't going out and doing a whole bunch of stuff. But you uh you're saying we didn't have fun, is that why we didn't spend any fun money? Uh, we did spend fun money. $240 there. We did have Quinn's fourth birthday party, which we kind of discussed in the last episode. We went bowling and it was so fun. The kids had a great time. We had a great time. Minus picking up norirus at the birthday party. Yeah. kids and our kids wash their hands. Definitely. I've got all of this updated here. What was miscellaneous? It's a lot for miscellaneous. $130. I want to say that's probably health related stuff. Okay, but let's take a look down here. So, what I like to do for the daily expense tracker, this is the super budget template. So, if you guys want the same template that we're using, it is linked for sale below. So, what I like to do is take our transactions from our Chase credit card and then download that as a CSV file and then include it into our daily expense tracker. And then I filter it and then I can filter by categories. And then I can take a look at what I've spent for various things. Oh, yeah. Okay. I got a massage which was Oh, yeah. That was for Mother's Day, right? Mhm. And then I No, not Mother's Day. That was just a I got to do that for Christmas. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, I got that and then uh some of the stuff like Cafe Cafe and the Nelson Atkins Museum. My best friend came and spent the weekend with us and so we went out and did some fun activities while she was here. We bought some birthday presents for Quinn and then we were trying to figure out where miscellaneous. Oh, passport. That's right. Oh, I renewed my passport, which I still need to do. Yes. So, that's what happened. Everything else I think in here is like categorized correctly. Mhm. Oh, there's where the Home Depot. Okay. This is I didn't I didn't actually categorize this inside of our budget. So, I guess that's Where do we want to take it out of? Yeah. I mean, that's home repairs. Yeah, that's home repairs for me all day. What's our syncing fund on that? About the the cost of it. Okay. Is that what's left after you've taken the 1,200 bucks out or is that Let's see. Doesn't look like that minus this. Yep. So, it's just negative 130 bucks. Okay. But next month, we're going to put 500 bucks in there. So, we'll be back in the positive then. Yeah. All right. Yep. That's fine. So, that's how I did that. And then, man, that home repair budget is really hard to get ahead of. It's almost like you're tacking on $500 a month to your mortgage just for home repairs and small improvements. Mhm. It looks like some of these other ones, like I don't know what this $117 uh trip was to Home Depot, but I can put it in here, too. And then meat tippy. I have no idea what that is. Square. It's got to be like a restaurant, right? Is it Medy's? No. Is it uh Where did we go for our anniversary? Um we didn't I didn't think we went anywhere for our anniversary until 10 years. We've been together 10 years. It was very Oh, yeah. That happened in March. Yeah. Very eventful. This Old Navy one I know is a combination of like kids clothes, my clothes, your clothes. So I need to split that up still. So that it looks like that category was one that I needed to split up. Now that's accounted for which is going to change how much is left over. Yeah. So 32 33 Okay. is left over. What would you like to do? I mean retaining wall. Yeah, I know. We keep talking about this retaining wall and that's going to be a huge expense that I'm like, let's just save up for that. We're looking at the nanny starting, you know, and doing that whole thing and I feel like that's going to be a big expense. Yes, it is. So, I think that's where we got to throw the money right now. I mean, we could throw it in a high yield savings account while we're still waiting on it to show up or getting it to finalize or whatever, but I think that's So, that's what we had talked about doing in February. So, we'll do the same thing for March. Okay. And just do those two things. It'll be nice when that's done and we can I don't know, focus on nothing for once. I don't know. Easier said than done for you because you were the one that's like, I want to fix this. I want to fix that. I know. I'm always uh which is great. I do love that. Yeah, it's I like the projects that I can tackle. It's just the retaining wall. Like the comp like if it was a simple one in the dirt, I can I can dig. I can run a shovel. But this one is on bedrock and requires like jackhammers and there's like a $100,000 retaining wall behind it like and I'm not going to screw up that form of engineering. Yeah. So, so that's why you hire out. Yeah. And you get multiple quotes from different contractors. Yes. It does take much longer when you want to do multiple quotes, but it in the end it does save you money and saves you headache because you are literally interviewing these people to come and do work for you and you want to make sure that you have the same vision. They have the same vision as you and that you're going to work well together. Yeah. So, we're almost there with that. Hopefully. Fingers crossed. Yep. Okay. So, retaining wall and nanny fund it is for the leftovers from March. Um, it was a crazy month. It went by so fast. That was kind of wild between the birthday party and getting sick and then, you know, my best friend visited which was great and then we tried to celebrate our anniversary but it just didn't happen. We will. And that's not really been our thing. Like for us, the the you know the anniversaries, the Hallmark holidays, the even birthdays, like historically for us have been let's save our money and do an experience. Yeah. And we used to do that with travel back before COVID and kids and all that. Yeah. So, we're still trying to learn our new experiences are retaining walls and dryers. Yep. Those are experiences. Experiences. That is correct. Anyways, buy yourself a really cool hat cuz I like cool hats. I like cool hats, too. And you can represent your favorite YouTube channel uh using the link below or head to debtfreemillennials.com/merch to check out the hats, check out the notebook, grab something good, and we'll catch you in the next episode. See you. Yeah. Yeah. [Music]