Two in a row - zing!

Of course it's only because I'm catching up on stuff that is old, but whatever ;) It's a growing trend!

Reduxen:

February:
No-Spend Days: 16 (not bad for including 5 vacation days, all spends)
No Eating Out Days: 23 (also includes 5 vacation days, all eating out)
Extra Income: $60.79 ($42 from surveys - just couldn't fit the time in for more - and $18.79 interest)
Progress Toward Savings Goal: (skip - as planned, writing 2011 goals after wedding) %
Retirement Savings: $223.86
Working Out Days: 10
Books Finished: 0 (Yikes!)

January:
No-Spend Days: 26
No Eating Out Days: 29
Extra Income: $200.81 ($143.38 from surveys, including a little food processor thingie and a 16-pc Ginsu knife set, $50 cash back from my chase card, and $7.43 interest)
Progress Toward Savings Goal: (skip - as planned, writing 2011goals after wedding) %
Retirement Savings: $203.98
Working Out Days: 19
Books Finished: 2

Payoff

SO it has been a very busy 2.5 months so far! Since the beginning of the year I have been eating healthy, working out, learning Portuguese, doing a special education internship, saving all the dollarz I could get my hands on, doing homework, finishing up wedding and travel plans, and working long hours at school. Actually, being that busy really helped in the saving dollarz department - the real motivation exercise was refraining from eating out every day and so that I could use the saved time to sleep. But I did pretty well. I haven't been posting on the money message boards (partly because they moved off of MSN to a new format I didn't have time to learn, but also because I didn't really have time to read or write, either), but I have been continuing to track my no-spend and no-eating-out days. Of course the busy schedule did not do much for my posting frequency over here, as you've noticed (which was funny to me when this blog was actually mentioned by our officiant in the wedding speech), but I figured the keeping-on-track was paramount to the talking about it, at least for the immediate present.

It did get a little tiring, that first quarter of the year, and with so much on my figurative plate the Shoulder Angel of Self-Indulgence (TM) really did start to whine loudly in my ear. And honestly, if I hadn't had a really big, short-term financial goal to push me (the wedding/trip), maybe I'd have listened. I mean, really, sometimes something has to give. And if your schedule is going to go insane and your time is going to get devoured, even *I* am not against making choices to balance things out a bit and save some of your sanity. But I DID have a really big, short-term financial goal, and it was motivating enough to help me ride out a short period of probably having a little too much on said proverbial plate.

And because I DID work really hard to ride it out, I get to say this:

The fancy-pants wedding? With the two fabulous venues, and transportation, and bodyguards [1], and samba dancers, and gourmet food and drinks? And the trip to Brazil? And the Carnaval costumes, and the parade, and the hang-gliding, and the 13 days of dancing and celebrating and eating out and shopping and doing what-the-hell-ever we wanted?

That was paid for in cash. Credit card balance: $0.

[1] Yes, really! They were hysterical!!