South County Girl: Mid Month Update!

Us outside of Peter Pan...
(yup, all my friends are tall... what gives?)

Life Updates:
I've been working really hard to get everything set up for SCB's wood turning business in the digital world these past few weeks. We now have a blog with hopefully weekly updates on what he's making and what we have in the works... and a pinterest board so people can like and re-pin his work to hopefully get the word out (We already got one sale through Pinterest so in my mind it was worth the effort)!

But besides all the work work work I've been doing, I've been making it a priority to have fun and enjoy life a bit and make me a priority. I got to go see Peter Pan up in LA with my friend because she ended up having an extra ticket! I felt bad abandoning SCB on a Friday night with very short notice, but sometimes you need to get away and have a girls night out-- especially a free one!

I also got to see one of my best friends who, because of work schedules and distance, I only get to see a few times a year. She came over and we grilled up some yummy burgers and gabbed. It did wonders for my sanity.

Me finding where SCB hid the
chocolate!-- No clue he was
watching me climb the counter to
find it though... sneaky man!

I've also been 1/2 marathon training for Childshare again and raising funds to boot! Instead of doing the full marathon like I have for the past 3 years, I've decided that being married, working, helping out at church, and planning Relay For Life are taking a lot of my time and energies, and if I attempted the full marathon, i'd drop like a fly. So my friend Jenny and I are doing the charity half marathon. She'll do the first leg, i'll do the second and together we will take a step for every child in the foster system in orange county... all 50,000 of them. If you don't know why Child Share is so near and dear to my heart, then you should check out the "about me tab" at the top and read my story and why I run so every child out there can have a good wonderful loving home. Consider donating and supporting us here! Our goal is to raise $2,500 and find a child a home.

Money Updates
We have been working really hard to be careful with our spending and I'm proud to report we have made some really great progress on replacing the money from our checking account that we needed to use to fix our car in December. We ended January with $239.03 left to put back.

We transferred the monthly interest from all of our now Capital One 360 accounts to our checking account. It was only a few dollars, but hey-- it gets us closer! Interest: $2.15
We also get our Car Registration bills in the beginning of the year and we lucked out. Both our bills decreased slightly so that extra money we would have needed to pay from our annual bills savings account got transferred to our checking. ($1 for SCB's car & $10 for mine): $11.00
We transferred the monthly interest from our emergency fund account at Sallie Mae: $12.78
I worked presidents day in January, so I had some holiday pay on the first paycheck we got this month. After paying our tax prep fees and a small $30 clothing trip to Walmart, we had $111.12 left so we immediately put this towards "the hole."

Leaving us left to find $101.98! Now that's some progress!

I was going to leave this update at that, but our tax return already hit our bank account and with that money, we are officially outta the hole... and working through some of our financial goals for the year!

Monthly Spending Thus Far:

Giving: $168.00
Gasoline: $97.15

Groceries: $188.03
SCB Health Insurance Premiums: $178.00

Tax Preparation Fees: $56.98
Mortgage: $857.20
Valentines Day: $8.50
Clothes: (SCG- $21.00, SCB- $9.07)
Electricity: $40.37
Date Nights/Eating Out: $35.00
Computer Parts: $297.32

We did a larger portion of our grocery spending for the month a bit earlier than normal. We did our once a month Walmart run to pick up on some pantry essentials, a Costco run for Dairy, & a trip to Fresh & Easy for our regular groceries. Since February is a shorter month, we should be okay since we only really have 4 weeks of shopping to do instead of 5 so i'm confident everything will balance out by months end if were more careful... plus Fresh & Easy just mailed out a bunch of $5 of $25 coupons, so we won't need to drop $40 in the store now and might get by with a lighter run for produce.

We also used some of our tax return money to order the computer parts SCB has been really wanting and some needing. Since he helped with our annual goal planning this year, including helping me prioritize some of our goals, this one was next on our list.

Financial Annual Goal Progress

(were working on the ones in bold now):

Make one extra Mortgage payment this year: ($54.22 / $650.64) 8.33%
Put at least 15% of our income into retirement: 9.00% thus far (This will go up dramatically when I get my 2 "extra paychecks" ---I'm paid bi-weekly--- that we'll dump into my Roth IRA)

Pension: $208.66
Deferred Comp: $15.00
Roth IRA: $ 233.34 / $5,000.00

Replace the money we borrowed from savings for the 2012 Car Repairs: $571.83 Done
Put money aside to cover the annual bills we just paid or shortly will: Done

~~$81 SCB's Car Registration: $0 / $81~~
~~$108 SCG's Car Registration: $0 / $108~~
~~$60 Car SMOG Check : $0 / $60~~

~~Save $300 to upgrade our computer that's been having issues lately.~~
Save $100 to fix a few things on Wanda "our 22 year old clunker"
Save $500 to go camping with the family in southern Utah this summer
Save $1,500.00 for dental work for SCB
Save $1,000.00 for future car repairs and the start of a car replacement fund.
Save $300 for a winter trip out to Utah to visit family.
After that, throw everything we have at our mortgage to try and get it under $93,600.00 so we can refinance and loose the MIP payments we currently pay.

Fun Annual Goals Updates

Find something new to crochet-- sweater, pattern, anything.
Sew something from scratch or re purpose something I was going to toss out into something I'd wear.
Cook or try to cook 6 new things or recipes
Read / Enjoy 6 new books