January wrap up

Whew! I find it hard to believe that it is already February... I just don't know where January went. I wanted to sit down and evaluate how my first month of 2009 went... I have big plans to save $5K in our cash fund so I need to keep myself accountable each month.

While January went better than any month over the last year, we have a long way to go to get to our savings goal! I've decided to look at it as a good first step for 2009 :)

We stayed well within our food and gas (auto) budget. Due to our deposit for the new couch (for the basement), our household expense line was a bit over budget. That being said, I will not have to move any money out of savings to cover the deposit on the couch. We did decide to do a year of no payment-free financing and we'll pay it off next February. We have the money in savings and could have paid cash, but there was no incentive from the store to do that. So, we'll hold onto our cash, let it earn interest and pay it off in a year.

So, what does this mean for my savings goal? Well, nothing went into our savings for the month of January because I'm paying off some spending that went on in December. Good news is that I will not need to pull from savings to cover it. I did put $125 into our Christmas account, made the girls' college account payments and our 401K contributions stand at 15%. Like I said, good first step.

So, for February my biggest goal is to put $500 in our long-term savings. My smaller goals include putting $100 into Christmas savings and to save $60 of my allowance to offset summer camp costs for the girls (I saved $60 in January).