Well, I’m a little late in posting my goals for May. We’ve only got three weeks left in May! So, I’d better hop to doing a recap of our April goals, and outlining a few for the next few weeks.
Put at least $250 of found “snowflake” money into emergency fund. Thanks to bonuses from Revolution Money Exchange, I met this goal! (By the way, if you haven’t yet signed up, please consider it! I’d love it if you used my referral button in my left sidebar. You’ll get $25, I’ll get $10).
Put at least $1,000 into emergency fund. Woo hoo! We put $1,500 into it in April. Whoa.
Don’t use credit cards for anything. Uh. Dang. For the sake of transparancy, I should tell you that we did use a credit card once. Awhile back, I told you that Shane’s laptop wasn’t working properly. He fixed it temporarily, but it eventually stopped working beyond all hope. To repair it would cost more than getting a new one. So after some research, we settled on a model found at Best Buy.
The new one is working great–but we did pay for it with a credit card, since our debit card wouldn’t cover the purchase. I needed to move some money around from different accounts, and wasn’t sure if the money would indeed be there when the card was swiped. Didn’t want to accidentally overdraw. Anyway, with a little better preparation, we could have avoided the credit card. But, we paid it off shortly after making the purchase.
Some goals for the remaining weeks of May:
Use only cash when we go to Florida next week. When going out to eat with a group, it’s much easier to have cash to pay your share, rather than having everyone pay with a debit card. Waiters tend to not like splitting the bill for large groups. Plus, having cash-only will ensure that we don’t overspend (assuming I don’t lose it!). When we’re home, I check our bank accounts daily to keep tabs on our purchases. I don’t plan on using the internet much, if at all, while we’re gone, so I won’t be able to see a running total. (Yes, I know that’s why you physically balance a checkbook. I don’t do that, though).
So, I’m thinking we’ll take about $250. We’ll want $100 to cover to-and-from airport cab fare in Florida, in case someone can’t pick us up. (By the way, how much are we supposed to tip cabbies?) The remaining $150 will cover our food and entertainment expenses. I expect to have some left over. If we have about $40 left over when we get back, we’ll use that to pay our airport parking bill, and if not, we’ll put that on our debit card.
Put at least $2,500 in emergency fund this month. This month is the month of the $1,200 economic stimulus check (which is already deposited into our emergency fund). I’m also expecting a $500 check from Ebates, so there’s $1,700 right there. The remaining $800 will hopefully come from the remnants of Shane’s April paycheck, my freelance earnings, and assorted snowflakes we can scrounge up.
So that’s about it! Head over to
Crystal’s blog to see other people’s goals and updates.
