The End of the Month Challenge

Today I finally felt like doing financial stuff. We're coming up on our 6 month Boston anniversary and I'm just now taking care of business.

Before we moved, I knew where every cent we earned went. I analyzed auto drafts, meter readings, gas costs and interest rates on our accounts.

Lately I haven't really felt like it. I haven't really felt like doing anything, but the lack of concern I had over our finances was disconcerting.

So today, after seeing the enormous amount* of money we just had sitting in our ING checking account, I realized how careless I had been. We weren't writing down transactions, and because we knew that we had this huge cushion I wasn't too bothered with curbing my impulsive buys. I know I may not seem like an impulsive type of person (lol), but I do sometimes just arbitrarily travel on the T for no reason (at like 1.70 a pop) or get a snack while I'm out.

Now I pretty much have to track it, kind of.

After putting everything where it needed to go**, here's the final tally:
39.00 in ING checking
29.00 in Citizen's checking
22.00 in cash money
23.62 on a Visa gift card
like 3 bucks in change. =116

Here is our schedule:
Dinner at a friend's tonight
Dinner out with friends tomorrow
Church
Grocery trip
Small group thing on Tuesday
Jordan's school travels. =37.60 in transit fare (bare minimum)

That leaves 78 dollars for our monetary commitments:
Snacks for said dinner: 12.00
Dinner out: 30.00
Groceries: 35.00
Ship birthday gifts: I've got 1 doll hair. That's probably going to have to wait.

I kind of like doing this, really. Is that odd? I hope so. I probably think it's fun because I can transfer money from savings at anytime, so we're not all close to the edge.

When we were first married I sold my beloved jeep to pay rent. We were very close to the edge then and we didn't really know it. We had pity parties about not being able to order pizzas or see movies, but we mostly just enjoyed being broke and finding fun, free things to do. We also had family nearby and we ate meals with them frequently. In fact, I don't think my parents knew how broke we were until way later.

We normally don't eat out (with the exception of mystery shopping) or get invited to other people's house to eat***, but this week was different.


*Specifically, more than 125$ and less than 30,000$.
**We use ING subaccounts as a way to prepare for, say, large bills and stuff.
***We may be a little uncouth.