No expense review this month and other thoughts

My monthly review of my expenses is really messed up this month.  First there was the several days I had to use cash - which of course I didn't write down anything and now I can't remember what exactly I spent the withdrawn cash on.  Then, just to be safe I changed my login and password for my online banking. I went to log into Mint.com and there weren't any updated transactions for 2 weeks and I realized it was because I had changed my log in.  When I tried to change it on Mint I did something wrong and ended up having to delete my whole bank and set it up again....well, that made me lose ALL my transaction history on Mint! Now I only have back until May.

At first I was all excited to see my grocery total for the month down so low and then I remembered one of the grocery trips was paid with that cash. I don't remember how much.  I guess I'll just forget about trying to analyze July and start over with it all. 

I did find another area where I can save just a bit each year: Emergency roadside assistance plan. I have had AAA for the past couple of years. The first year I got the basic plan for around $50. We were traveling quite a bit that summer for racing and it more than paid for itself in hotel discounts. I think we stayed in a hotel about 10 nights total.  I didn't renew it last summer but then we decided to take one racing trip out of state and were driving our (new to us) tow vehicle with 200,000 miles on it for our first long trip, so we decided we'd better have AAA and get the premium plan, with the 100 mile towing in case we were out in the middle of nowhere and broke down (we didn't, of course). That was $89.  I just discovered that there are other companies out there who cheaper offer roadside assistance plans and I also discovered that my car (a Chevy) should be covered by their roadside plan for the first 5 years or 100,000 miles. I will need to call and verify this as I am not the original owner of the car. It's a 2011 we bought it used with less than 5,000 miles on it.  I also discovered that our auto insurance with Progressive offers roadside assistance for about an extra $4 a month!  As soon as my AAA has expired (end of August) I will add this to my auto insurance for our other vehicles, saving about $40 a year.

I'll be able to switch Dh's cell phone plan over to a pay as you go plan in 1 month...not exactly sure how much I'll save each month. Sometimes he uses it more than other times. But I'm guessing it will be about a $30 per month savings. Yippeee!