Today is the last day of daycare for our oldest. She starts kinder on Monday, which will save us $750 a month. We do have to drop $120 each month into afterschool care since both my wife and I work until 5:00, but that's still $530 saved each month. We increased our monthly automatic draft into savings by $600 beginning with the next paycheck.
WE WILL NOT TOUCH THIS MONEY.
In one more year our youngest will start pre-k (we've opted to send her to tuition-based pre-K instead of keeping her in daycare, partly because of saving $$$ but also because our oldest was so bored her final year that we think a more academically-focused day will better suit her natural curiosity), saving us another $530.
We have a few months of rainy day funds saved, but we want to have a full year. Once we hit that mark we'll start really dumping surplus into long-term investments.
We're grateful to have been able to send the girls to a Methodist daycare center, non-profit, that was TRULY affordable for us (most for-profit kiddie farms cost more than $1,000 a month around here), but man, having that money back is no joke.
So, we're pledging to not go nuts, not make unnecessary purchases big or small, and to not live beyond the modest lifestyle we've trained ourselves to enjoy, but to save this money. Every cent.