April Redux:
No-Spend Days: 16/27 (and 5 more "controlled spending" days)
No Eating Out Days: 24/26
Extra Income: $107.22 ($27.31 from InboxDollars, $25 gc from MyPoints, $50 cash back bonus from cc, $4.91 interest)
Money Into Savings: $1183.95
Retirement Savings: $612.40
Workout Days: 22!!
Books Finished: OMG, none – but I am reading a really long boring one, it just won’t end
Times Flossed: 5
Letters/Cards/Contacts: 3
Progress on 2009 Goals:
- continued to reduce my Bank of Mom debt (turtling for now to rebuild savings/EF)
have kept my amazon.com card paid off each month – AND I got another $50 cash back reward from them this month! - kept my credit union savings/checking account balances above $750 in each account to take advantage of the special rate – monthly goal MET!
- met all of the monthly requirements for my Checking ++ account – monthly goal MET!
- have not started working on my 2009 Roth yet, because I’ve got a few vacations/birthdays coming up immediately and I want to make sure to save for those first before they happen!
- continued contributing to my SIMPLE IRA (w/matching)
- kept my "Little EF" above $1,000
- continued contributing to my "Big EF"
- contributed more to my "vacation fund" so that I will not have to use a credit card to go on the trip! (Well, you know what I mean, I’ll still use the card for the awesome reward points, but be able to pay it off the same month.) I also figured out a way to account for ‘spent savings’ in my spreadsheets. It took awhile, but it’s all in there now.
- put a little money in the Wedding Fund – yay!
- continued to post on the No-/Controlled-Spend thread, but missed my no spending days AND no eating out days goals this month.. probably set them a little high, knowing there would be a weekend trip in there. Shucks!
- I worked out 22 times this month!! Goal very emphatically met!! I also had 20 days of eating healthy. I am down about 8 pounds from when I got my Wii Fit, and most of that happened in April.
- staying positive at work was a lot easier this month, because it got insanely busy all of a sudden! I don’t think it was the marketing I was doing, I think it’s just luck. But hey, I’ll take it. Woo hoo!
- I cleaned out the storage space! Airbear and I got that bookshelf bed, and so we were able to store a lot of stuff under there. The remaining junk is in the living room at the moment (ha ha, good thing I don’t have a "house cleaning goal" on my list), but today I got to pay only five dollars for one pro-rated day of storage (since I worked 12 hours the last few days of April, I couldn’t quite get it cleaned out until today, May 1). That’s instead of the $85 a month I was paying. And I was thinking this would be something I’d have to spend a bunch of Fridays over the summer doing… but it’s already done! Super excited that I will be getting to hang onto that $85 each month now. Goal met!
- caught up on all my surveys and am trying to check into that email account frequently so I can do them before they expire.
- did pretty well being patient this month!
- sent my Grandma an Easter card, which she gushed about, so that’s good!
- and, last but certainly not least, I did very well with some presents this month! Presents are always a weakness for me—it’s a big challenge to reign in my spending. But I set a budget for Airbear’s birthday gifts and stuck to it and set a budget for a birthday gift for my Mom and stuck to that too! I did blow it a little on Airbear’s birthday dinner, but that was bad planning on my part. Mom & Airbear are the hardest to not buy a jillion presents for, and their birthdays are right next to each other! But I think I did pretty well. Happy Birthday, you two!
