Saturday, February 9, 2013

$20K Savings Challenge....JANUARY Update

In our family we save money.
It is important to us to put money aside for "rainy days".  You know.....those unexpected days when things happen in your life that you can't plan on, but that DO happen and they cost you money you didn't know you'd need to pay out.

Our income is mainly the salary my Hubs draws from his job.  We have money taken off each paycheck from the top to put into savings, before we even get our hands on it.  This money that's taken goes into various pots....life insurance, investments and retirement savings.  It's automatic so we are never tempted to NOT put it into savings.
Once the automatic savings, plus taxes and medical/dental/vision payments are taken out, it leaves what we get to "live on".  From this amount we budget for bills, both monthly and irregular bills(semi-annual, etc.) and our variable bills(like food, eating out, etc.)  Anything left over once our monthly expenses are paid, I put aside into a Savings Challenge. 

For 2013 I am continuing my Yearly Savings Challenge.  I am going to keep the Goal amount at $20,000 again this year.

On to the January report.....

I have posted my JANUARY End of Month $20K $AVING$ CHALLENGE Totals.
Check out the side bar to your right for the specific numbers.

I have 2 goals each month.....
The 1st is to actually finish each month in the black and not the red.
The 2nd is to hit the targeted savings amount of $1,666.67.

I have to report that we finished up January in the black!
The extra cash amount we ended the month of January with?.......$2,761.06

Income
We had $2,579.14 left over from our income after our monthly expenses were deducted. 
Add in a per diem check for mileage for some business traveling and some bank interest and we get another $181.92.  This brought our gain to $2,761.06 for January.

Outgo
As for the expenses this January, most of them were on the bad side, rather than the good side....

HERE are the GOOD THINGS
*  The medical bills were $192 lower.
*  The credit card bill was $98 lower.
*  There were no Xmas spending or car repairs/maintenance bills.

HERE are the BAD THINGS
*  The cable bill  monthly price went up in 2013 by $4 a mo.
*  The cash withdrawals were $100 higher.
*  The water bill went up $4+.
*  The electric bill went up by $43.
*  The quarterly garbage bill is due in January.
 
The Food Budget costs for JANUARY are in another post, which is located HERE
We managed to stay well within our $400 food budget in January.

The 2013 TOTAL so far.....
With 1 month behind us, our Savings Grand Total for 2013 stands at $2,761.06.
We surpassed our monthly goal by $1,000 in January!  This extra will be a very good thing later in the year, during some of our more financially challenging months, when we can't hit our target goal.

Looking ahead for February......
February is always a challenging money month for us, because our semi-annual car insurance premium is due, as well as our county taxes for the year.  I also have an unexpected dental bill to pay in February.
In addition, the electric/heating bill will be the highest one of the year this month.
I am hoping to keep the variable bills(food, credit card, Hubs cash withdrawals)wrangled in February to compensate.  And I will hope that none of the cars needs anything other than gas until March.


So how was your January financially?
Did you put the Holiday spending on credit, and do you have Christmas debt to pay now?
Did you spend less than the income you made in January?
Did you stay within your budget or not?

If you posted your financial progress on your own blog, leave a link in the comments so we can go check you out your progress too and celebrate with you!

Sluggy

6 comments:

  1. Nice job on your savings!! It's more than Hubby and I made combined :) You did great!!

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  2. My goal is to save like you once we are done with this debt. But one thing DH did do when he received his raise on the 1st of the year was to add the exact amount to the amount we have go into the untouchable savings account(we have made it difficult to get to; no debit card, must be signed by both of us; evertything). I was really proud of him because he would have never thought of this before and neither would I. I am going to put my raise right into the roth IRAs along with what is going into it. I am not putting this with debt repayment because we based our repayment on what we had already and this way we don't see it and don't miss it

    Without knowing you I would have never thought of doing this

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  3. A great start to your year of savings!! I haven't posted anything about $$ yet this year but will do so soon. I get paid twice monthly and put $1250 per pay into savings for a total of $2500 monthly. I did meet that target in January and I have NO credit card debt. Christmas is all paid for, my new glasses are paid for, my new juicer and bread machine are paid for. Though my chequing account balance is extremely low right now our fridge is well stocked and I should be able to make to the next payday (Friday) with no problems. Keeping your eye on the prize is what makes it all possible!

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  4. Great job, Sluggy. We are okay for January. Will be great in February when we get the refund due us from the hospital for Hubby's stay.

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  5. That's awesome!! We had a pretty amazing January due to my low spend month and some unexpected $, along with some custom orders! I saved more in the last month than I did in the last half of 2012! it's a blessing to start our year like this as our income is dropping soon & it's nice to have $$ set aside for a rainy day! ;)

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  6. Great work on your savings challenge! Love to see the way you guys manage your finances. :-)

    We did pretty well in January (especially given that I had our income wrong & we've received most of the refinance money back as a refund - shown in February). http://thehawaiiplan.blogspot.com/2013/02/january-financial-round-up.html

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