Wedding Shoes!

Just imagine the red of a red, red rose :)

March Redux (Finally...)

Oh my gosh, seriously it's almost April! *Embarrassed*

Here we go!

March:

No-Spend Days: 25
No Eating Out Days: 26
Extra Income: $205.47 ($107.30 from surveys, $50 from my chase card, and $48.17 interest)
Progress Toward Savings Goal: 25.43%
Retirement Savings: $207.74
“Healthy” Days (eating well or working out): 17.5 (WAY better!)
Books Finished: 0 (Although I did read all but 2 chapters of a couple of school books; I just don’t want to finish them because they were terrible, so I can’t count them!)
Times Flossed: 6
Letters/Cards/Contacts: 6

Progress on 2009 Goals:

• Still paying off that rewards card every 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!
• Filled the tuition fund for my nieces and nephews, and contributed more to the gift fund in advance of Gift Month (i.e., late April/early May) – goal MET!
• continued contributing to my SIMPLE IRA (w/matching) – monthly goal MET!
• kept my “Little EF” above $1,000 – monthly goal MET!
• continued contributing to my “Big EF”
• continued contributing to the Wedding Fund
• used my (previously-filled) eye-care fund, and it was even less than I expected. Bonus! Also decided I don’t need the professional development fund, since I figure the special ed classes are enough professional development for one year ;)
• continued posting on the No-/Controlled-Spend thread
• kicked butt on the working out goal! Even made up for a little of the slacking off the past two months :)
• my performance evaluation at work was excellent ;)
• checked my credit report – no inaccuracies, and looking great! Annual goal MET!
• did very well staying positive and energized (and busy!) at work. It was still a little slower, so hopefully it will pick up. But we were in the black, so hooray for that!
• ended up getting a 4.0 in my first special ed class – yay!
• continued doing a ton of surveys and earned enough in amazon cards to get a new workout program :)
• I again followed through on my “send at least one card to each of my grandmothers” goal, and in fact I sent April’s cards at the end of March too, to get there before Easter. Monthly goal MET!

February Redux

The funniest thing about this is that the reason it took me a week to post the month-end update is because I had to get my planner from work to see how many times I flossed my teeth. Ha ha ha. What an annoying goal to track. But it does actually make me do it, I guess. Anyway, on to the good stuff!

February:

No-Spend Days: 18

No Eating Out Days: 24

Extra Income: $138.08 ($122.70 from surveys (yes, really! Included the price of 2 movie tickets), $3 from a rebate, and $12.38 interest)

Progress Toward Savings Goal: 18.40%

Retirement Savings: $713.00

“Healthy” Days (eating well or working out): 4

Books Finished: 4

Times Flossed: 6

Letters/Cards/Contacts: 6

Progress on 2009 Goals:

• Still paying off that rewards card every 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!
• put my entire tax return into savings (my 2009 Roth, actually) – annual goal MET!
• added an extra lump sum along with the tax return to put $500 into the 2009 Roth. A good start to this year’s portion of my 2009 contributions, but still a long ways to go before April 15!
• started my gifts fund and the tuition fund for my nieces and nephews
• continued contributing to my SIMPLE IRA (w/matching) – monthly goal MET!
• kept my “Little EF” above $1,000 – monthly goal MET!
• continued contributing to my “Big EF”
• continued contributing to the Wedding Fund
• continued posting on the No-/Controlled-Spend thread
• FAIL on the “try to fit in at least two workouts per week” goal again – only once per week (yikes), but so far I’m off to a much better start at this in March – just wait and see!
• did very well staying positive and energized (and busy!) at work. It was a little slower, so hopefully it will pick up.
• still doing well in my first special ed class (100% on all assignments so far), but we’ll see how I make it through this (*coughstupidcough*) group project to finish out the semester
• used all three of my “backup” credit cards for something small, since I forgot to take care of this goal in January. Paid off two of them immediately, but had to wait to get bank info set up on the third (annoying!). Anyway, should be taken care of shortly, so I’ll count this as a goal met!continued doing a ton of surveys and, as you can see, got to cash out quite a few this month. That definitely helps with the motivation!
• I again followed through on my “send at least one card to each of my grandmothers” goal, with a few more to boot. Monthly goal MET!

January Redux

Ha ha, I totally forgot that January had ended. Duh! Anyway, here goes with the first month-end recap of 2010!

January:
No-Spend Days: 25 (!)
No Eating Out Days: 27
Extra Income: $99.62 ($91.84 from surveys and $7.78 interest**)
Progress Toward Savings Goal: 9.67%*
Retirement Savings: $183.56
“Healthy” Days (eating well or working out): 3 (lol)
Books Finished: 2 (and started four others)
Times Flossed: 5
Letters/Cards/Contacts: 10

*This is a little misleading – I am only updating my savings tracking after the 15^th of each month, since that’s when I pay my rewards cc and have my monthly expenses all taken care of. So this number is only indicative of what I saved from Jan. 1 – Jan. 15. Still not bad, though!

**Damn, my interest rate is down to 3.77%. That has got to start coming back up!

Progress on 2009 Goals:

• Still paying off that rewards card every 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!

• continued contributing to my SIMPLE IRA (w/matching) – monthly goal MET!
• kept my “Little EF” above $1,000 – monthly goal MET!

• continued contributing to my “Big EF”
• continued contributing to the Wedding Fund
• funded eye care and car maintenance accounts before going to the eye doctor and car repair shop. I even had to have one unexpected car repair done, and the money was already sitting in the account, so I didn’t even have to stress about it. Amazing! Me, not stress!
• continued posting on the No-/Controlled-Spend thread, and was really hardcore about it this month. In fact, I made it until the last weekend of January with only three spend days (but then had some unavoidable travel expenses come up at the last minute). Still, I barely spent much of anything and I know that’s going to help the saving in February when I don’t have much to pay off on the rewards card.
• FAIL on the “try to fit in at least two workouts per week” goal. Oops!
• did very well staying positive and energized (and busy!) at work. January was a great month at the school, so hopefully that will continue!
• took (and passed, yay!) the middle school math endorsement test – annual goal MET! (First one, too!) Now I just need to wait until I’m actually teaching a middle school math class and set up the observation part to get my endorsement.
• began taking classes toward my special ed endorsement, without taking on any school loan debt!
• I haven’t finished any classes yet, so technically I don’t have a GPA per se, but both of my papers so far have been 4.0s and my teacher called me a “gifted writer,” so I’m going to go ahead and count that as a monthly goal MET!
• completed my tax return and sent it off, and when it comes I am going to SAVE IT so I can meet this annual goal!
• Oops, forgot to use my “backup” credit cards for something small this month. I’ll try to remember to do it in February, so they don’t get closed for inactivity.
• did a metric butt-load of surveys this month, and am indeed finding (as a friend told me) that the longer I belong to the different survey places, the higher-paying surveys they send me. It’s nice to see the payouts come faster! I know when you divide it up it’s still not an hourly wage that’s comparable to doing freelance work or taking on a second job, but it’s easy to do when DF and I are sitting on the couch with our laptops, and let’s face it, at the end of a day at school I do not have enough brain left in my head to do a second job ;)
• It was a rough month for me, personally, but I’m doing better now and I tried not to be a heinous bitch in the meantime. Luckily I have a very understanding support group :) And we’re working on the ‘save the dates’!
• I am proud to say that I did follow through on my “send at least one card to each of my grandmothers” goal. In fact, I sent two, but I figured the Christmas thank you cards shouldn’t count as the monthly card ;) I did count all of the thank you cards toward my total contacts for the month, though, because… well, obviously, it makes the total look more awesome! :) Monthly goal MET!

Percentages

I finally got my W2, and besides being able to do my taxes (yay!) and see how little I made last year (boo!), I was able to go through and figure out what percent of my annual income went to my different goals. I think this will be exciting:

Contributions to retirement: 19.15% (Woah!!)

Wedding fund savings: 14.38%

Emergency fund: 9.83%

Debt repayment: 12.86% (Paying off the Bank of Mom and student loan payments)

Payments to credit card companies: 0.00% (Take that!)

All in all, I saved 52.68% of my income last year, and lived on less than 35% of it.

Nice!

I'm stunned!

It took awhile to add all this up, but once I did I was pretty surprised. I've felt pretty positive about the things I've been working on in 2009, and it's cool to see the numbers behind that feeling. Ready?

2009 Year in Review:

No-Spend Days: 222 (!!!)
No Eating Out Days: 290 (!!!)
Extra Income: $1,123.99 ($244.51 from surveys, $250 cash back from Chase, $210 from bank offers, $30.21 in rebates, $50 from being right, $160 from transferring prescriptions, and $179.27 interest)
Progress Toward Savings Goal: 94.31%
Retirement Savings: $7507.54 (really!)
“Healthy” Days (eating well or working out): 86.5 (ha ha)
Books Finished: 28
Times Flossed: at least 48 (somehow I missed October?)
Letters/Cards/Contacts: at least 43 (October again – what was up with me that month?)

Progress on 2009 Goals:

• All in all, I met 27 of my 35 goals. Wowza!
• 8 goals did not get fully met during this calendar year:
• “Save $250 and start an ING account to get the referral bonus” – I kept finding other bank offers that were paying more than this one, and so I never got around to it! I will put it on the list for 2010 and see if the offer is still available. There’s another one from Wells Fargo on the coffee table as I type this.. so we’ll see! Banks just can’t get enough of me ;)
• “Max out my 2009 Roth by April 15, 2010” – and actually, I’ve got 4 more months to keep working on this one. But technically it didn’t get done in 2009 so I wanted to be honest!
• “Big Emergency Fund to $5000” – it got pretty high but then I spent it on wedding deposits. This will be an ongoing goal, and it won’t break my heart if it doesn’t happen within a year. It’s just what I’d like to see the EF at.
• “Laser Eye Surgery Fund – get $2000 into the fund before the surgery, and then do the 18-month interest free financing while the money’s in a high yield savings account” – haven’t even started this yet, lol. May have to wait til after the wedding!
• "Start laptop/car replacement funds and a dream house fund, when possible (goal amounts $5000, $10000)" – same here!
• “Get to a positive net worth – including student loan debt” – not there yet, but getting closer!
• “Take the middle school math praxis” – scheduled for January 9, 2010
• “Take care of other requirements to add middle school math to teaching certificate” – for obvious reasons, will have to wait until after January 9, 2010 ;)

Now I am going to go do THE DANCE OF JOY!

Join me, won't you? ;)

December Redux

Wrapping up the month (and year) here. This one's pretty cool, but the next one's even better! Check it out:

December:
No-Spend Days: 18
No Eating Out Days: 24
Extra Income: $120.35 ($30.30 from surveys, $50 cash back from Chase, and $40.05 from interest)
Progress Toward Savings Goal: 94.31%
Retirement Savings: $202.18
“Healthy” Days (eating well or working out): Gave myself the month off ;)
Books Finished: 2
Times Flossed: 3
Letters/Cards/Contacts: 5

Progress on 2009 Goals:

• have kept my amazon.com card paid off each month – monthly goal MET!
• 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!
• continued contributing to my SIMPLE IRA (w/matching) – monthly goal MET! In fact, I contributed a little over $2,500 over the course of this year. Nice!
• I did not max out my 2009 Roth, but I got halfway there, and added the second half to my goals for 2010. All in all I did contribute $5k to my Roth account this year, though, so that proves that I can do it within one year!
• have continued to contribute little amounts to my vacations/gifts funds, and have not spent money on those two things without saving it first – monthly goal MET!
• kept my “Little EF” above $1,000 (although just barely – December was a stretch!) – goal MET!
• began the process of rebuilding my “big EF” ;)
• continued to post on the No-/Controlled-Spend thread – annual goal MET!
• not quite there yet on the positive net worth (including school loan debt) goal, since I wiped out savings with the wedding deposits. But still pretty close, considering the size of that school loan debt! Will have to keep working on this in 2010.
• spent December being fat and lazy. Will worry about getting off my butt in January ;) All in all I think I was in better shape for most of 2009, and that was the point of this goal, so I’m feeling good about it. Feeling fat, at the moment, but good. ;) So I’m going to go ahead and say annual goal MET!
• definitely stayed positive at work this month – between the two roles, things have been busy and exciting, and I am looking forward to January! Annual goal MET!
• Am scheduled to take the middle school math endorsement assessment in just one week. Obviously won’t be able to finish the other requirements to fully get the endorsement, because the test got pushed back so far, but I’m halfway there, and will also be starting classes for my special ed endorsement on Monday, too. Bigger achievements than expected!
• continued doing lots of surveys while I can (I am predicting that I will not have as much time for these once class starts… but I do want to try to keep doing them and making some extra money). Overall, I made $244.51 from surveys this year. Not bad! Annual goal MET!
• tried to be patient and encouraging throughout the holiday madness :)
• kept in better touch with my grandmothers (both of them) and have already filled out all of my Christmas thank you cards. (My mom is proud of me, I know!). I think I did well with this goal this year, and plan to continue. Annual goal MET!