June Redux

June:
No-Spend Days: 20 (didn’t set a goal, just tried to get as many as possible)
No Eating Out Days: 28 (!)
Extra Income: $158.77 ($101 bonus from Sterling Savings Bank, $20 amazon from surveys, $37.77 interest)
Money Into Savings: $ Oh, I transferred it back and forth so many times I have no idea now. So I’m just going to start listing my percentage for my total savings goals: 51.79%!
Retirement Savings: $195.60
Workout Days: 7 (not terrible!)
Books Finished: 3
Times Flossed: 8
Letters/Cards/Contacts: 0 – fail! Need to improve :(
Progress on 2009 Goals:

• paid extra on my Bank of Mom debt – 2 additional payments!
• 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!
• I received my $101 bonus from the Sterling Savings Bank promotion. Yay! (I then immediately transferred the money to a different bank that pays more interest, and no I do not feel bad one bit!) Goal MET!
• Did one month of auto-deposits into the new US Bank account – need to do this for 60 days before I get my bonus from them, too. Halfway there!
• continued contributing to my SIMPLE IRA (w/matching)
• kept my “Little EF” above $1,000
• continued contributing to my “Big EF” (if only a little this month, as I needed to get some into the Wedding Fund so we could pay the Wedding Planner.. exciting!)
• continued to post on the No-/Controlled-Spend thread, but this time I didn’t set a goal, just wanted to see how many I would accrue. I still did very well, and I think I like this way better – that way all of the no-spend days feel like victories instead of just stressing about the ones I “missed.”
• I worked out only 7 times … but more of those were dancing, so I’m going to try to continue that, since it’s a work out regimen I might actually stick with!
• staying positive at work was a little harder, as it’s slowing down for the summer. Stressful!
• stayed 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!
• utter failure on the “staying in contact” goal… definitely need to turn this one around in July!

Also...

Why is my font bigger? I clicked "small" just like always.

Well I'm too tired to figure it out, so I guess you dear readers will just get a break for your eyes this month. Plus, two posts in one month, amazing!

On time, two months in a row!

May:

No-Spend Days: 18/21

No Eating Out Days: 26/24

Extra Income: $7.98 (interest - not too shabby for one month!)

Money Into Savings: $1452.52

Retirement Savings: $243.32

Workout Days: 8

Books Finished: 1 (and some more of that mammoth boring book & some Portuguese studying)

Times Flossed: OMG, only 2!

Letters/Cards/Contacts: 4

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 – 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!
• New Goal – I got an offer to start a US Bank Checking account with a $100 bonus. I have to have direct deposit into it for 2 months, but then I get my prize (no debit card transactions or bill pay or anything else, just the direct deposit). Already filled out the paperwork to set it up through work, too, so I should get that bonus mid-July! (I should also be getting my $101 bonus from that Sterling Savings account I set up in about 2 weeks. Yay!) Goal MET!
• 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 the trip will have been fully saved for ahead of time (but used my rewards cc to get the cashback bonus). Will pay off the final vacation bill mid June with the set-aside money. That feels great! Goal MET!
• put a little more money in the Wedding Fund – yay!
• continued to post on the No-/Controlled-Spend thread, but missed my no spending days (although I got the eating out goal, when you don’t count Vegas … and I didn’t, since I saved ahead and paid in cash!). I did feel like I was spending a lot toward the end of the month, though, or at least spending frequently, even if it wasn’t necessarily a lot of money.
• I worked out only 8 times … definitely fell off the wagon, compared to April’s numbers! It was hard to get back to it after Vegas, now that I didn’t have the “bikini motivation.” But compared to my prior months, really, 8 isn’t bad. Just need to do better!
• staying positive at work was pretty easy this month, between the vacation and the busy-ness. Parents are being whack-o, though, so I’ll be glad when finals are over and they can calm down!
• stayed 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 birthday cards, Mother’s Day cards (including one to my grandma, which I hope she got!) and a birthday card to my friend in Japan.

I've got a new goal for June/July but I'm going to keep it a "secret" until I accomplish it. So stay tuned for some exciting developments this summer... and wish me luck for a better June. I'm gonna need it!

Oh, and don't worry, Heather (my dental hygienist) - I already am 1/1 for flossing for June!

And it isn't even late yet!

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!

March Redux... finally!

So I took a couple categories off the posting format, because they kind of overlapped and weren't that useful. But here's the good stuff:

March:
No-Spend Days: 20/20
No Eating Out Days: 25/25
Extra Income: $222.09 ($30.21 rebate from Walgreens, $60 gc for rx transfer, $100 cash back bonus from cc, $31.88 interest)
Money Into Savings: $1605.87
Retirement Savings: $1100
Workout Days: 8
Books Finished: 3
Times Flossed: 6 (still going up!)
Letters/Cards/Contacts: 4
Progress on 2009 Goals:

• continuing 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 a $100 cash back reward from them this month for points I’ve accrued so far…without ever having paid them a cent in interest. TAKE THAT, CREDIT CARD COMPANIES!!
• 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 (although the reward rate was lower this month, 4.52% APY, boo! Still better than I can find most anywhere else, though! – monthly goal MET!
• The 2008 Roth: I wanted to max this out as much as possible by April 15 (with the ultimate max being $5k), but that upper limit was starting to make me consider doing crazy things, like emptying my EF in order to reach a goal just because I wanted to reach it, and not because it would be the financially wisest thing to do. So I decided I would try for $2500 – half of the maximum allowed, and really a pretty awesome amount to have contributed since January of this year. And I did it! Goal met! (and that makes me feel really positive about my ability to get to a point where I can max out 2009’s, too!). Very excited about this one.
• continued contributing to my SIMPLE IRA (w/matching)
• kept my "Little EF" above $1,000
• continued contributing to my "Big EF"
• decided to go to Vegas with Mom & Dad, Airbear, and some other friends, so I have been putting more into 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.)
• Renamed "Special Occasion Fund" as "Wedding Fund," because now it’s official… we got engaged on March 20! Now I’ll just have to start working on filling it… but the vacations are coming up in a month so I have to tend to those first.
• continuing to post on the No-/Controlled-Spend thread, and got 20/20 no spending days and 25/25 no eating out days – goal (just barely) met!
• I worked out 8 times this month, but they were very spaced out. I’m going to use the upcoming Vegas trip (swimsuit needed!) to motivate myself to do a lot better in April, including eating healthy. [FWIW I’m off to a great start on this already – 3/5 days worked out so far and 5/5 eating healthy!]
• Worked hard to stay positive at work this month, and it was a challenge, I’ll say! Some distressing issues, and it’s wearing me down. I’m trying to do a lot of marketing, so I really do hope I will see some results from that in April. Crossing my fingers!
• Checked my credit report, had a couple of address inaccuracies (really just typos, but you can’t be too careful) fixed, and got my credit score for the first time in my life. It was above 800!! I was so floored, and proud! I am certain it would not have been nearly that good a year ago, and it’s getting even better (since I had just applied for the amazon card not too long ago and had a couple cards closed at my request, which dings the score a bit). Exciting! Goal met!
• Took a few more surveys.. definitely kept current on the MyPoints ones.. but I’ve been slacking off a bit with the others and missed several because I let them sit too long in my junk email inbox. Of course I might not have qualified for them anyway but I still should be trying. Every little bit helps!
• Was better about being patient this month. I think :)
• Sent my Grandma a St. Patrick’s Day card, and called her (and a dear but recently out-of-touch friend) to celebrate the engagement! Also emailed a friend in Japan I haven’t talked to in awhile. The "keeping in contact" goal was one I’ve had on my list of New Year’s Resolutions several times now and I definitely think I’m doing better at it this year. Accountability helps!

This is the best thing ever

Okay, I know it's Easter, but get ready for one of the deadly sins - envy - because you are really gonna feel it. Look what got delivered on Friday:

Yes, it's really tall. Look just how tall:

We're going to be ordering one of those rolling library ladders for the side of it to help short little me get into it. The kitties don't have a problem with it, although now they can't divebomb us as hard from the kitty tree - unintended bonus.

But wait, there's more! (No, we didn't order 2 for the price of 1). In addition to getting eight more new glorious bookshelves, check out this part:

There's storage! There's even a bookshelf inside the bookshelf bed!! There just are not words to express how awesome this bed is. We get more bookshelves (and really, in a condo this small, there were really not a lot of options for this, and I'm not going to stop getting books), we get bonus storage (in fact we'll get to cancel the storage space after this month if we can figure out what to do with just a few last items!), and we have the most awesome, most unique room ever. It was custom built according to Airbear's "schematic" below [1]:

[1] Gotta love schematics!

You never see it coming...

I don't know if you're a fan of (the new, but now finished) Battlestar Galactica series, but the main points of the show that are important for understanding this particular story are that 1) the show is awesome, and so a ton of our friends would get together on Friday nights and watch it, and 2) there are robots called Cylons. Some of the Cylons evolved and look like humans now (sneaky!), but the old-style ones have this red light that goes back and forth where the eyes would be on their helmet, bwaaah, bwaaah, bwaah, etc. Kind of like KITT, in Knight Rider, remember? Here's a video.

So we have this friend, UnBob. UnBob got engaged last summer, and as seems to be prevalent amongst married or soon-to-be-married folks, started bugging all his friends in relationships to get married too. Which consisted of just me and Airbear. When properly motivated (e.g., drunk), unBob kept bringing up this idea. A few weeks before this past season of Battlestar resumed--a big deal, since it was going to be the last season of the series--he said, "Oh, he's totally going to propose to you at the Battlestar premier!" and, a few drinks later, "He's going to propose with a Cylon helmet instead of a ring!" Ha. That UnBob sure is funny.

A couple weeks later, premier approaching, UnBob was once again 'in his cups' as they say[1], and absolutely positive (and irritatingly insistent) that his scenario was going to play out. Telling him to stuff it didn't work this time, and he was so convinced that he was willing to bet drinks on it. 1 drink for episode 1, 2 drinks if it did/didn't happen by the second episode, and so on. Note that he didn't have any kind of inside information from Airbear (far from it, in fact Airbear wasn't allowed to know about the bet), he was just drunk and foolhardy. I took the bet, 99% sure that I was going to win anyway (and thus sure of a bunch of free drinks), and 1% concluding that even if the 'worst' were to happen, bet-wise, I'd have to buy UnBob 10 drinks on the last day of the season if Airbear proposed. And shoot, if something like THAT happened, I'd probably be buying everyone ten drinks!

Fast forward to five weeks into the series. As usually happens when drunks make bets, UnBob was losing. In fact, he was losing so badly that he was owing me drinks faster than I (and my friend!!) could drink them. He started getting that weepy puppy dog look they put on the Hallmark "sympathy" cards every Friday night when we'd hit the pub after watching the show. And while I knew Eagle would have said to stick it to him, make him pay, teach him a lesson for making stupid bets - it's the Leo way, after all - I am a nice kid at heart and I was starting to feel guilty about bankrupting poor UnBob. After all, I know Airbear a lot better than he does so I really had inside information, in a way. And I had already gotten five weeks' worth of free drinking on Fridays. But ya know if you gotta listen to someone remind you about the fact that you didn't get proposed to, I guess there should be some kind of payment for that.

I enjoyed the rest of the run of the show. Some fans had some complaints with it - I'm sure that's always the case - and of course the guys wanted to see more spaceship battles and less talking, but I thought it kicked ass. (I'm hoping that when the series comes out on DVD it's in a metal box shaped like a robot head with a red light eye that flashes back and forth.) I also have to say that no series finale is ever going to come close to that one. One big spaceship flew into another big spaceship, lots of flying and shooting, some nukes, they finally killed off the president (OMG I was waiting for that the whole show - hated her!), and they found a nice planet to live on. But the best part happened after the credits.

I had actually gotten up and gone to the kitchen to get this bag of little ceramic ramekins and random ingredients I'd left at Eagle's the time before, and most of our buddies were getting up to go to the pub. But then Airbear said loudly, "I have an announcement to make!" and everybody stopped breathing and didn't move, because Airbear never talks, and especially not loudly. I turned around and stepped back into the living room to see WTF could possibly be going on and he got down on one knee and opened up a black velvet ring box.

And I saw this.

I have to be honest: my immediate thought was that he was just frackin' with UnBob about the bet (because we'd canceled it already and now he wouldn't win).

My second thought was oh, shit, shit, talk Nitza talk you're supposed to say something!

I dropped everything on the floor and made quite a racket (between the keys and the ceramic dishware, which I'm surprised didn't shatter all over the floor) and just sort of dove at Airbear to hug him/bury my face in his shoulder and said of course. Everybody was yelling and clapping and I was crying, obviously, and shaking and just a big huge mess.

And no, UnBob didn't know about it either - it was a total surprise. I did buy that kid a drink, though, and he enthusiastically takes credit for instigating the whole thing. He also says he's going to be a Cylon usher in our wedding. We'll see about that part ;)

[1] He really doesn't drink all the time - just when I see him.