Operation 2013 Roth Ira... End of January Report.

So how did we do after buying a vacuum and paying over $400 to register for the Disney Half marathon...? I'll tell you.

We made our January benchmark goal of sending $1,275.00 to the Roth IRA fund.

I have no idea how we did it... we over spent on groceries and I knew we spent more then just that one extra paycheck we knew we were getting from SCB since we had to register for the 1/2 marathon (and not the Dumbo Dash because it sold out).

So how did we get to $1,275?

I knew we had budgeted $275 from one of my paychecks to go to his 2013 Roth, because we normally have that money go to mine. As soon as that paycheck hit my account, I transferred the money over and deducted it like a bill so I wouldn't forget... We also had a few dollars of interest sitting in the savings account that we normally use to hold the money before transferring it over to Vanguard. With that we were at $278.27... which meant $996.73 to go.

Since SCB's last paycheck wouldn't hit out account until Friday the 31st, on the 29th I cut off our monthly spending and added up the damage because I knew nothing else would be spent until Feb (our next date night was scheduled for Feb 1st).

After all of our spending and budgeted itemized saving was taken care (transferring money to insurance, Christmas, birthdays, vacations etc), we had, to my surprise $481.82 left in the checking account.

That's almost all of SCB's second paycheck (well minus the tithing check).

I went back to look at our budget numbers and despite overspending on groceries, we had a low gas month, didn't go crazy on eating out, & only had one cell phone bill to pay, so the lower other expenditures created a little cushion in our budget to help absorb the marathon costs...

Mix that in with the fact that we were able to swap out the vacuum from Costco for the cheaper identical one at Kohls made it all work out, especially since the 1/2 marathon was cheaper then the Dumbo Double Dare.

So if we send that $481.82 to his Roth IRA, we need $514.91 to meet out goal... and his last check will give us around $520 of disposable income after tithing...

Woot! It's like magic!

We are still on track for our goals for 2014!