Monday, April 16, 2012

Damage Control

What's Important to Me

1. Finishing school in December
2. Feeling financially secure – a.k.a emergency fund
3. Lose weight
4. Eat a healthy organic diet
5. Improve my credit

I’ve been doing a little soul searching in the past few days. Considering I’ve had this blog for just about 3 weeks and have not managed to stick to any real plan has been a hard blow to the ego. I was reading some articles about what to do when you blow your budget and most of them had one thing in common – they said to ask yourself if you really want it. That’s a hard question. Do I really want to live according to a budget and not spend my money on whatever I want? Uh no…am I crazy or do most people want to be able to do that? I guess the real question then is – do I really want to be financially secure? The answer to that is yes. In fact make that one hundred percent, without question, yes.
So how am I going to do this? How am I going to get back on track? Here’s how I plan to tackle the above list:
1. School - I’m currently enrolled in 2 classes and I plan to start taking some more online as of May 4th. I’m also going to look into taking CLEP tests, for about $100 I can test out of basic classes like math. This goal is directly linked to my financial well-being. I will be qualified for better positions at work that will earn me more money.
2. Emergency Fund – I’m afraid I won’t have saved much from this check. I’ve been dipping into my savings in the last few days to cover expenses. I’m also concerned that I won’t be able to do what I had planned with my check on Friday. I’m not certain that after bills and necessities I’ll have $250 to put into savings. So my plan is this….I will do what I need to do until May 4th and then assess my savings. Had I stayed on track I would have had $500 in savings by that date. Prior to adding in my May 4th contribution I will subtract what is in my savings from what should have been there ($500) and divide the difference by 10. Then over the next 10 pay periods I will add that amount to the $250 and put the total into savings from each check. This will keep me on track for saving $5000 by the end of the year.
3. Losing Weight – I’m going to join a gym and start exercising. There is just no way around it. There is gym near me that offers a no contract membership for $10/month. I plan to join on Friday – NO MORE EXCUSES.
4. Eat a healthy organic diet – I struggle with this because I want to save as much money as possible on food and often organics are much more expensive. I’m going to buy the best and healthiest ingredients I can find and try to be innovative in other ways. Starting next week I’ll be having a segment each week called “Make it Yourself Monday”. I’ll be experimenting with making things from scratch and I’ll compare the cost to that of store bought items.
5. Improve my credit – this one is tough, often all you can do is wait it out. Right now I don’t have a credit card and I feel I need one in order to improve my score. I’ll be shopping for the best one with the best rate.
How are you doing with your 2012 goals? Is it time to re-evaluate and make sure you’re on track? How do you keep yourself from blowing your budget?

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