Making Over Our Money - January Round-Up

At the beginning of January, I wrote about the renewed committment my husband and I have to getting our finances under control.  I am all about accountability and I think one of the best ways I can be accountable to myself is to post monthly updates of our progress on my site.  If you are curious or think this might motivate you in some way, please feel free to read on!

In my January 6th post, Making Over Our Money, I listed our January goals.  Let's see how we did.

• By the end of the week, we will have our budget for January drawn up and have a draft for February completed.  We will also have a spreadsheet detailing exactly what we owe to every creditor.  We finished our January budget within the week and drew up a tentative February one as well.  We finalized the February one this past weekend.  We also created a spreadsheet with exact debt amounts.
• By the end of the month, we will have our emergency fund in a safe but accessible location.  OK, not completely finished with this one.  We have our emergency fund partially funded.
• By the end of the year, we will have all of our medical bills, credit cards, and a small loan paid off.  Whew...not the end of the year yet, still in progress.

I like the idea of re-evaluating our goals (and establishing new ones) on a monthly basis.  So for February:

Long Term Goal:  Be debt free, of course!

Short Term Goals for February:  We will have our emergency fund completely funded within the next 10 days.  We will be receiving a tax refund later this month, and will use it to pay off two bills and pay down a third.  My husband wants to use all of his referee income to pay off debt.  February should be a very good month for him on this front - unless there are weather-related cancellations or his knee decides to give out before the end of the season.  Therefore, we estimate that we will be paying off that third bill and paying down a fourth by the end of the month.  By the end of February, we will also create our March budget spreadsheet.

Check back the first week of March to see how we did!