Thursday, March 5, 2015

Monthly Financial Goals and February Recap

 And so, it is time to do a financial goal checkup  from last month and also do my goals for this month.

Honestly?  Is "Survive" a goal or a mind set?  Ugh.  It has been so depressing financial speaking lately.  Last month we had a lot of small paychecks at the beginning of the month and despite working my collective butt off to save money wherever I could,we're making it but barely.

And then my husband, who just got the entire bottom of his mouth capped late last year (which had us, for the first time in years, adding new credit card debt to our bills, which was 10,000.00.  We only have 18 months to pay it off interest free, which isn't easy and then we have a second half we're going to have to deal with that will be 15,000.00.  I am really wishing I was a dentist lately)  has a dental emergency on the top of his mouth (the half he DIDN'T get done last year), so we have to find a thousand dollars somewhere to pay for that.  And then I have a yearly car insurance bill due soon, so I have to save up 300.00 for that.  And that is on top of just regular monthly bills I have to make and that is going to be hard because it is a short month and utilities for last month, that are due this week are high due to some major time in between reads on my meter.  Ugh. Just ugh.

Anyway, *deep breath*, goals this month are going to be a bit depressing as a result of all of this, so bear with me on that one.

But, first, let's see how we did in February...

February Goals:

1.  Recharge cell phone.
2.  When tax refund comes in remove at least 80% and put in savings (more on that one later).
3.  Budget for gift and dinner for holidays.   

4.  Save at least 20.00 somewhere!  

Well, I was able to meet all of the goals last month!  So that was good.

My daughter had a birthday that while not as fancy as she would have liked, it did get the job done and she enjoyed herself.  We ended up spending nothing on her birthday, other than about 15.00 in gifts that I spread the cost over two months to not hurt so badly.  I made her cakes with ingredients I already had, as well as cookies for her class.  We went out to dinner at a local restaurant, but we had gift cards a friend of my husband's had given him as a thank you for working on his house.  We had been sitting on those gift cards for quite a while, so I was glad we were able to give my daughter a special night out with them.

I got my cell phone recharged right before my tax refund came in, so that was nice that I didn't have to raid the refund for that.

Valentine's Day came and went without much fan fare.  The kids each got a container of Rolos that had been on sale B1G1 one week at the store (Rolo's are peanut free).  The kids enjoyed the treat and had plenty of Valentine's stuff to play with from their parties at school.  So, it worked out well enough.

I managed to save a lot of money on regular bills last month, with finally getting my son into local speech therapy and getting my phone bill finally dialed in right (for now).  I have also been trying to implement changes around here to save on fuel and electricity, although I won't know how well those work out until next month I think.

This month's financial goals are going to be very hard to accomplish.

March Financial Goals:
1.  Save 300.00 for car insurance payment.
2. Save as much toward 1000.00 for dental work as possible.
3.  Pay bills.
To accomplish some of this, once again, my husband and I are going to be going on a "if it ain't cheap we're not eating it" type of diet, which means not a lot of shopping, but living, once again, off the foods storage I just started rebuilding (man is that depressing even to write).  It's going to be a sad month to be sure unless I suddenly have an epiphany on ways to save money (which, I have faith that this can indeed happen).  But, such is life.

So, I am going to, for now, set my grocery budget at 50.00 per week around here (which covers the things the kids will eat) and we'll see where that gets me.  If nothing else, if I can make that work, it will save the necessary 300.00 for the car insurance payment.

Hope your financial outlook is a bit brighter than mine is this month.

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