Goals and Extra Monthly Income Update

June was good for us. We accomplished a lot of goals and got a lot of stuff done around the house.

We changed our basement, living room and garage. My mom gave us most of her furniture and this allowed us to get rid of the things in our house that we hated. We moved our couch downstairs and put her couches upstairs (because hers wouldn’t fit down our basement stairs). Our basement now looks super nice. She also gave us her fridge (which she just recently bought for $3,000).

Over the weekend, the boy gutted the garage and took out all the shelving. We put our old fridge in there and he built new shelves that are nicer. Our whole house looks so much better now! Now, we just need some floor to ceiling pictures (we want these for the basement), and we need carpet in the living room.

June was also a 3 paycheck month for me, which made it even better of course! The third paycheck definitely helped out. I was able to pay for my my WHOLE summer tuition bill with the extra paycheck, a little savings and extra income. No student loans for this semester. I know this isn’t a huge thing for others, but I’ve taken out some form of student loans EVERY semester so far.

You can find my 2012 yearly goals update here (I updated this recently).

We are also thinking about planning a vacation to Turks and Caicos in November. Has anyone ever been? Is November a bad time (weather-wise)?

1. Reassess our budget and cut out $25.  PASS! Recently I told you all that I managed to get a lot of our bills cut, and we also cancelled our gym membership. It’s definitely the little things that count! I think we managed to cut out around $75 out of our monthly budget.
   
2. Workout at least 3 times a week and run with my dog.  PASS! I haven’t been doing extremely difficult work outs, but I have been doing something nearly everyday, which counts for me.
3. Make an extra $1,000 this month. PASS! Yes we are a tad below ($6 under), but this is still a pass in my book. Thanks to extra rent money, this was definitely possible. See below for a break out 🙂 Also, I didn’t factor in the fact that it was a 3 pay check month for us into the extra income. I worked at my normal job for this, so it’s not considered “extra” for me.
4. Gut my closet and re-do it. PASS! We didn’t gut it, but we put in extra shelves and cleaned the heck out of it. It was a disaster before. I still need around 100 hangers though (which is sad, I know).
5. Eat in at least 5 times. PASS! We have been doing great with this. I plan on doing an update to our food challenge post soon.
6. Study everyday for at least an hour for part 4 of my work certification test. FAIL! I haven’t been doing great with this. This is something that I definitely need to work on. I took a small test this past Saturday, but my main test is in August in D.C.
7. My last semester starts this month and I have my annual review, do great! PASS! I’ve definitely been ahead with my school work. My annual review went well also. I should probably make a post on that too.

1. Cut my food budget down to $400. In the past we have been extremely bad with this. I want it to be $400 for groceries and for going out. I know we can do this. Hopefully us switching to cash will help.
   
2. Workout at least 4 times a week and run with my dog.  I’ve been doing much better with this, but I know that I can do better. My gym membership is now cancelled, but I can still run with my dog. Hopefully the weather cools down!
3. Make an extra $1,000 this month. This will be a lot easier now that we’re getting around $600 from rent income.
4. Study everyday for at least 2 hours for part 4 of my work certification test. The test is coming up very quickly!
5. Read 2 books. I hardly ever read books. However, I just found my Kindle after it being lost in the house for over a year. So I’m going to start reading! WOOHOO

• Twitter followers:  Goal was for 350, I’m currently at 742. My goal for July is 850.
• Alexa rank: Goal was to be under 90,000. I’m right around 89K now. I seem to still be stuck at this amount even though my reader numbers keep going up. How do I decrease this more? I’m really not too worried about it though.
• RSS readers: Goal was for 650, I’m currently at 860. My goal for July is to have 950.
• Guest post at least 2 times this month. I’m horrible with this! Does anyone want a guest post? 🙂

• Advertising on my blog – $525
  
• Surveys -$3
• Mystery Shopping -$216
• Rent -$250