<$Tuesday, August 21, 2007$>
Payday Report: 8-21-07
| Finances are squared away. Bills are paid. The stupid Paypal Buyer Credit account that we're no longer allowed to use is paid off. The last medical bill from Husband's Horrible Cancer Aftermath is paid off. The vet bill is paid (Fizzgigg is doing well, btw). Husband's textbook tab is paid. Our savings is back down to under $1,000. If only you could see my face right now. Then you would know what my sad face is like. So, basically, we're back to square one. Well, not really. At square one we had three credit cards and no savings. Now we have two credit cards and some savings. At square one I thought $800 in the bank was HUGE. Now anything under a thousand makes me nervous. So I guess we're just back to square two. At any rate, I'm basically starting over. I zeroed out every outstanding balance I could, and tried a new approach. Instead of my Post-Its I used NCN's Simple Budget Template--which is the first budget template simple enough for my ADD brain to comprehend well enough to make use of--to allocate my funds, and I created a Pocket Mod finance register booklet to track my food budget and my discretionary allowance. Food budget and allowance are both a bit tight. Husband and I really need to get on the same page as far as making food budget last until next payday, because once again, the PayPal Credit account is OFF LIMITS. I'm thinking about setting Tuesday and Friday as regular grocery days, so that we only need to buy for a few days at a time instead of trying to stock up. I tend to think this will help us spend less. I guess we'll just have to try it and see. Oh, and I also updated all of my accounts on Wesabe, which I hadn't done in two months. See what I mean about lazy and complacent? Once I got everything tagged it showed me that we've spent over $350 on food this month, which, considering our total food budget is usually about $450/month (a "month" being two pay periods) and we've still got 16 days to go... yeah. So other than Husband's birthday, we won't be eating out (or eating take-out) any more this month. Hopefully that'll get it all out of our system and then this will no longer be such a challenge for us. *** Speaking of saving money, here's a nifty hack I found for keeping your house cool without air-conditioning. Thankfully, our A/C is included with the rent (one of the few perks of renting from Mom), but I've got this bookmarked for future reference. Labels: money management, personal |
