[peanut]

I saved up $200 last month, supposedly to help the girls fly home for Christmas. Well their grammy died so we decided to pull from savings and flew them to Alberta last weekend instead, and joined them via car.

My sister-in-law was wrapped up in funeral arrangements and grieving, so I was handed the kitchen. The $200 saved went towards food to feed 15 - 20 people for two nights at her place...the family gathering hole. She is always paying for big family gatherings, so I decided to spend the money on that. As we were also staying there, I decided it would be a good idea to help out anyway. Long story short...it cost us $175 CAD to feed all those people. Not bad considering it was Sobey's BBQ chicken one night and pizza the next. I did a lot of my own food prep and cooking. That helped keep costs down.

I decided, in light of the unusual circumstances, not to count this under groceries. This is really entertainment. Plus it did not come from the grocery budget per se, but from leftovers in the budget category jars we use for other areas of the budget.

What do you do in situations like this? When you are unexpectedly having to supply food for a lot of people?

 

[Spirit Deer]

Feeding a grieving family gathered for the funeral of a lost loved one is not entertainment, IMO. If I kept money in specific piles, I would pull it from the emergency fund. But the bottom line is, no matter where you take it from, it's all the same thing in the end because it's money you had to spend that comes out of your total budget.

Good for you for stepping up to help the SIL when she has her hands full with more important and stressful things. I'm sure she appreciates not having to cope with the food on top of everything else. My condolences to your family.

 

[my4littlebuffaloes]

I think you did the best you could. I'm sorry for your loss.

 

[peanut]

Thanks you guys. I hadn't even thought of pulling from the ER SD. We consider the ER our funeral expenses fund...or last resort fund. Truth is, most of DH's siblings have the money to help out. It shouldn't fall on this one sister all the time. I was thankful this time I had the money saved up.

Thankfully my own sister-in-law (brother's wife), who was at DH's sister's, saw the situation firsthand Saturday night when I handed the $70 to my DH's brother-in-law to buy pizza and pop. She asked and I told her we had paid for both Friday and Saturday nights. She invited us to dinner in a different city Sunday night. We had a family gathering at a restaurant with very good food. It was very expensive. They paid for everything. I was relieved, because I was quite sure I did not have enough money to pay for my family! DH and I had decided ahead of time to just debit our share of it. But DBro insisted on paying the bill. His daughter picked the restaurant and he knew she had expensive tastes. It was $225 for 9 of us, which really isn't bad when you think it was Indian food and we had leftovers to take home.