Sense to Save

June recap and July goals

When I created my goals for June, I wasn’t specific. I didn’t have a particular snowflake goal I wanted to reach. This was a big mistake.

Without a target, how am I supposed to hit the mark?

I need to establish a tangible savings goal if I actually want to reach it. I had a decent month for snowflaking, but who knows if I could have done better if I set the bar a little higher.

$6 Pinecone research

$20 ING Direct referral bonus

$17.17 ING account interest

$8.98 from Rite Aid rebates

$141.43 Blog ad revenue

$37 The electric bill this month was $43. I typically have been budgeting $80 for it, since it was around that amount during the winter. We put the difference in our savings.

Total: $230.58

Gift card: $10 Target gift card from Ebates referrals

I did have a set goal for our emergency savings account. I hoped we would increase our emergency savings to 85 percent completed (up from 70 percent at the beginning of the month).

We came within spitting distance of that goal, but didn’t quite reach it. Fell just about $73 short. It was a lofty goal when we set it, and I’m actually glad we got this close!

We have some additional expenses in July (ones I forgot to budget for) so we’ll need that extra money to cover our renters insurance premium, get an oil change, and pay the 1 percent quarterly wage tax for the area schools. Grr.

In the future, I hope to avoid being surprised by these regular expenses. I’ll treat our renters insurance just like I treat our car insurance: I’ll create a savings subaccount in ING and deposit 1/12 of the annual premium into my savings account each month. That way, I’ll have the money ready to go, it won’t affect our normal budget, and I’ll earn a tiny bit of interest on the amount.

I’ll do the same with the wage tax.

Think of it as the electronic version of an “envelope system.” Works for me!

Another goal I had was to spend some of my birthday money on myself. I haven’t yet, but I do plan to use some of it to buy maternity clothes. I’m at 14 weeks tomorrow, and still wearing my regular clothes just fine, so that shopping trip will have to wait.

Goals for July

Find at least $250 in snowflakes, or non-regular income money. Instead of spending it, we put it toward our savings account.

Increase our emergency savings to 95 percent complete. We’ll do this by keeping our expenses as low as we can stand, “snowflaking” extra found money into savings, continue my freelancing work, and looking for additional ways to set aside money for rainy days.

Best wishes reaching your goals this month!

ING Direct referral links page

If you’ve been thinking about opening a bank account with ING Direct but haven’t gotten around to e-mailing me for your referral link, I have good news! I’ve made the process of getting your referral link much easier.

You can now visit my handy dandy ING Direct referral link page, where I’ll keep links for the savings and checking accounts. Click here, or click on the tab at the top of my site.

You’ll want to open an account using a referral link (whether it’s from me or anyone else) because when you use a link and open an account with an initial deposit of $250 or more, you’ll get a $25 bonus! I’ll get $10. Without a referral link or if you make a smaller initial deposit, you won’t get a bonus.

Once you have an account with them, you’ll be able to refer people and get bonuses as well. 

Thanks and happy saving!

I’m in the Money Life Network! Check us out

I am happy to announce that I am now a member of the Money Life Network. This new network consists of a handful of fabulous personal finance bloggers.

We’ve banded together in the hopes that we’ll individually improve as bloggers, and collectively be able to bring you great new ideas on ways to save money, stretch your dollars, and just generally live a better life.

If you aren’t familiar with the other members, won’t you check out their sites and consider subscribing to their RSS feeds? Or, if you’d prefer, we have a group RSS feed.

Bible Money Matters [RSS] [StumbleUpon] [EntreCard]-
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Free From Broke [RSS] [StumbleUpon] [EntreCard] -
Exploring ways to keep us Free From Broke.

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Got Money? Milk the most from it…

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Because Personal Finance Should Be Personalized.

Prime Time Money [RSS] [StumbleUpon] [EntreCard] -
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Remodeling This Life [RSS]
Simple. Frugal. Fabulous.

Sense To Save [RSS] [Entrecard]
Not so common frugal sense.