To climb step hills requires a slow pace at first. - Shakespeare

Here’s my first payday review!

first the budget stuff:
this is the last two weeks where I will be just examining how my money is spent. Starting with the next paycheck, I will be actually working on a budget. Hopefully that will mean a budget shortfall, and I can make more hits into the snowflake account. It will also mean I will have to start discipling myself to really stay in a budget for specific catagories. I’m really wondering how I’m going to successfully do that.

Snowflake sources:
1. Budget surplus - none this paycheck. This is the last paycheck where I’m just watch what I spend. Next paycheck, I’ll start living by the budget I set, and I will be able to find money for this category.
2. Found Money - none this paycheck. Although, I did get some money online from Google AdSense, chacha, and some surveys. I just haven’t collected anything yet, so it’s still sitting there getting more money.
3. Self-Taxes: my self-tax this period is $19.
a. bank fees from overdrafts - Did not do well on this front the past two weeks, and it’s going to cost me $7 on top of what the bank charged me.
b. gambling - almost made it! I didn’t do anything until last night. cost $1
c. fast food - I ate fast food eight times in the past two weeks, so that’s another $4
d. impulse buys - I had a couple of impulse buys, but everyone of them is going in the stupid box.
e. stupid money - More than a few stupid things this period. A good sign of my progress will be how much this goes down. Today, it’s going to cost me $7
4. Coins - $8.36 This is the first time I took my coins in for a payday review, so I’m guess the next time, it won’t be this much. Then again, it might be as I switch over to using mostly cash to pay for stuff.

Total snowflake amount for this paycheck - $27.36
I put this amount in my snowflake savings account, which brings that total up to $30.95

My rules are here, if you want to check them out.

Debt Reduction:
As I have mentioned before, my main goal right now is to get back to “even”. By that I mean I want to get to where I have only regular bills and payments and I can start to snowball. Right now, unfortunately, I still have a couple of things that I need to come up with “right away” and are not monthly bills. So, some of my money this paycheck is going towards that, but I made some headway last week as well. I’m getting much closer to being back to even.
Also this paycheck, I paid off one of my credit cards completely. YAY!!!! it was a small one, and I had a plan with the company to pay it off in six months, and this is number 6. I’m glad to have that little monkey off my back. Now, I can start focusing on another debt starting next paycheck.

Quick Note:
This is just my first Payday Review for this blog. I hope to come up with a better format soon.

Filed under: budget, debt, finance, goals, money, snowflake