This year we haven't needed to make a withdrawal from the EF until today. B was on his way out and mentioned that his car was really slow to start and may need a new battery, so he was going to see how the car went today and decide on whether or not to replace the battery.

Well he made it out of the driveway and halfway across the road and then it promptly died! We pushed the car out to a safer spot and called roadside assistance. After all, this is what we pay for .

They came out to our house with a new battery for which we paid $319. Because this month has been crazy with spending and this is technically an emergency, we withdrew it from the EF. Glad that we have the funds available to cover true emergencies like this. I think we have about $2200 cash now so will look at boosting this back up again next year.

B went away over the weekend to a dirtbike race he participated in, so while he was away I had a family do for my sister's birthday in the daytime and dinner and drinks with friends in the nighttime.

My sister wanted a bottle of liqueur and some shower gel from a shop called Lush from me and my brother. We got her a bottle of Bailey's for $25 plus spent $35 at Lush on shower gel and shower scrub; so $60 there plus $5 for a card and $5 spent on biscuits and snacks for lunch. Normally I make something but was a bit time and energy poor so I simply bought some small things instead. Total spend $70 and then my brother gave me $40 for his share.

I had to fill up on fuel (spent $45) before driving me and my brother to their house, which is an hour away.

They made us a lovely lunch of bbq chicken (bought) with roast potatoes and roast carrots, with a coconut cake afterwards. My nephew is now 2 1/2 and is sooo cute! My sister loved the presents also; we had a great day.

Then last night I went out for dinner and drinks with friends. I paid $11.93 for the Uber to get us there; and then only paid $28 for a round of drinks. We had light dinners and a round of drinks with dinner, but for some reason my friends paid the bill and by the time I went to put some money in the bill was already covered. My share there would have been $30, but I think as I paid for the Uber and one other round it all evened out so didn't feel too bad in the end.

We weren't out very long, only 3 hours and only had 3 or 4 drinks so it was a very inexpensive night while being loads of fun .

B is on his way home now so should be due in a couple of hours, so will be great to see him after a couple of days!

This purchase is not a need but definitely a want. Last month we tried to fix our spa (I believe you call them hot tubs in the US) jets and found out that because our spa is so old (it's around 20 years old) that we cannot get the jets anymore and in order for it to run again we would need to put a new jet system in and re-plumb it, which is more work than my DH would be able to do (and I certainly could not do it).

We loved using our spa so decided to bite the bullet and buy a new spa. We shopped around for a few weeks and did research into the best spa we could get with our budget that also had the lowest running costs and two weeks ago put a deposit down. The company we bought the spa off have given us a trade-in of our old one for $500, which is good, especially as we now do not have to worry about trying to sell it on Ebay (it may have sat in the yard a while).

The spa cost is definitely expensive but we will call this our big purchase for the year. The price is.... $9790. We considered getting a loan for this, but ended up deciding to pay half cash half credit.

The actual end result is we paid $5950 on my credit card (but we have already repaid $750 and will be repaying $1000 tomorrow) and $3840 cash.

Last month we had a quiet month so were able to save $1150 towards it and this month $850, so have cash-flowed $2000; will have $4200 on my credit card to repay and the end result will be $3590 withdrawn from savings.

My credit card rate is 14% however we want to have it repaid fairly quickly - I would definitely like us to repay $1000 next month to bring the balance down to $3200.

EF savings have now dropped a bit - cash is now $2506.96, while shares are actually around $6500 roughly. We will rebuild it a bit more next year.

I feel like this has been the best possible way to fund a large purchase, and am very happy that we won't have the burden of loan repayments for a set period of time and didn't have the burden of applying for finance. We hope to have this repaid by the end of the year.

I will need to adjust our goals on the sidebar because they have now changed dramatically!

We are so looking forward to the new spa though, and are very excited about it - it is a lovely silver pearl colour with dark wood on the outside .

So it's been around 3 weeks since my last blog post.

There are a few things of note but due to time constraints I'll limit it to one of our biggest things and will write about the other things later.

We took our dog Jessie to the vet three weeks ago as she had a claw that was grown over and needed her nails clipped. We hadn't gotten her vaccinations done yet so also organised to have those done. Unfortunately while they were doing her medical checkup they found that she is blind in one eye and going blind in the other, which is really upsetting. The vet said that once a week they have an opthmalogist come out to the clinic who could check her eyes properly and ensure that the vet had prescribed the correct eye drops.

As my work is quiet I took an annual leave day the week after and took her to see the opthmalogist. The opthmalogist found that she actually has the same amount of sight in both eyes however it is only 10% or less - he said to consider her blind as all she would be able to see is light or dark and possibly some shapes but that is all, and eventually this will all fade out.

The blindness is caused by cataracts and the surgery to fix it will cost $5500. As she is 15 there are no guarantees that she will make it through the surgery or how long she will live for so we have decided to make life as comfortable as possible for her. She moves around well and we simply need to make sure that we keep the pathways around the house clear (she knows them well). She will need to be given voltaren eye drops daily to ensure that the cataracts don't cause inflammation, which is what they say happens.

Financially the vet visit, the opthmalogist visit and the eye drops came to $475, but when things like this happen you do the best you can. Emotionally it's been very sad and upsetting to watch her deteriorate, it's been so hard. The literature I've read and the opthmalogist have said that she will already have adjusted to having only minimal sight which is a silver lining I guess... our poor baby .