My Goals
- Paying down my student loan balance – I haven't been paying a ton to this, only around $200 a month.
- Paying off my car loan – I'm still paying my normal payment of $400 a month.
- Having $15,000 in my emergency fund – I have around $6,500 in this. I should be working on this more.
- Increasing my mortgage payments – Haven't really done this either.
- Invest more – I have been doing this, thankfully. I invested around $1,100 more the other day because my work contributes to a SEP retirement plan.
Christmas shopping has been going ok, I still only have those two items bought that I talked about here. I feel that Christmas this year will be relatively cheap compared to other years, THANKFULLY!
Extra Income
Swagbucks so far: $45 for Amazon – I'm hoping to have around $80 by Christmas time
Secret Shopping: $327 in checks – Haven't done this too much lately. But I only started secret shopping in around the end of July, so I think this is great. I wish I had more time though.
Surveys: $47 in checks – I don't make too much from this, but it's still easy money!
Mr. Rebates: $27.13 in checks – I haven't really bought anything online in FOREVER, besides books, so this hasn't increased at all in awhile.
Yahoo Contributor: $8.85 PayPal – I haven't written anything too new on this, besides just copying stuff from my blog on there, so this hasn't increased, but it's still something!
I made dinner last night too. I made steak teriyaki and it was delicious, but I forgot to take a picture! The BF has been very on board with us eating in everyday, I'm so happy with that! It's starting to get hard to make a new meal every night though, as I'm trying to mix it up and try something new every night. Tonight I'm going to make burgers with pasta salad and fries and for desert some kind of apple pie or something.
Any tips to stay motivated? How is everyone else doing?
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It looks like you are on the right track! You have clearly defined goals. When I have everything planned out, I feel better and my life is better. Have a great weekend!
Not bad at all. I think you have made some wonderful steps like the eating in. One step at a time to success.I'll be doing an update either today or tomorrow depending on how I am feeling but I am in quite a collected state and happy about one or two things.Great going and I expect to see even more improvements next month.
I just love your blog layout (if that's even the right terminology). It's really cool.
Thanks everyone! Listing my goals and progress on my blog is really helpful because then I can just look up the post and compare.And thanks! I just updated the layout around a week ago.
One of the most effective ways for me to stick to goals is to track all income, expenses and savings on a spreadsheet. Each workbook is a year, and there's a tab for each month, plus a year-end totals tab that also contains monthly budget goals. If I get to the end of the month and there's a big fat zero in savings, it shames me into being more diligent. 😉
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