$20K Savings Challenge.....DECEMBER Update & YEAR END TOTAL

Here is my DECEMBER Savings Challenge Update post for 2012.

This post is NOT about bragging or showing off.  It's just what we are able to save given our income and being able to hang tough against "unconscious" spending.

Just to update, My Savings Goal for the Year in 2012 was $20,000. 
Our background info--We are a family of 5(kids are 21-16)with one living away from home.  We have 2 dogs. We own 4 cars at present and live in/own free & clear a 4 bedroom house in a small town.

On to the December report.....

I have posted my DECEMBER 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 December in the black!
The extra cash amount we ended the month of December with?.......$2,555.70

Income
We had $2,378.54 left over from our income after our monthly expenses were deducted. 

Add in 2 year-end dividend checks from investments and a small refund on our car insurance.  When combined, these totaled $177.16.   This brought our gain to $2,555.70 for December.

Outgo

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

HERE are the GOOD THINGS

* The cash withdrawals were $200 lower.

HERE are the BAD THINGS

*  The water bill went up $3+.

*  The medical/dr. bills were $47 higher than last month. 

*  The credit card bill went up $778.

*  The electric bill went up by $83.

*  The car needed new tires to the tune of $439.29.

*  There was extra money spent in Dec. due to Christmas.

The Food Budget costs for DECEMBER are in another post, which is located HERE.

We managed to almost stay within our $400 food budget in December.

The 2012 GRAND TOTAL.....
With 12 months behind us, our Savings Grand Total for 2012 ended with  $28,907.08 in the fund!

We were able to hit our $20,000 goal plus almost another $9,000.

I am happy with how much we saved in 2012.
Some months it was easy and some months we had a hard time scraping together $1000 to put aside and not spend.
Heck, we were even NEGATIVE money in September!

So how was your December financially?
Did you spend less than you made?
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

$30K Savings Challenge....December 2010 Total and END of YEAR TOTALS

I have posted my DECEMBER End of Month $30K $AVING$ CHALLENGE Totals.
Check out the side bar to your right for the specific numbers.

I have to report that we finished up December in the black yet again!
The extra cash amount we ended the month of December with was.......$3,787.26.

Income
We had $3,595.01 left over of DH's salary after expenses were deducted. Add in $175.25 of Rebates applied to the food expenses, along with $17.00 in rolled Coins and you have a deposit of $3,787.26 toward the Savings Challenge!

Our monthly target is an average of $2,500.00 to reach our Year End Goal. We passed the $30K yearly target mark in November.

Outgo
As for the expenses in December.....there were a few large bills.  The credit card bill(which is paid off each month)was over $1100(had to replace my computer's hard drive among other things) and 2 car repairs cost us over $1500 as well. There were also some smaller non-regular or quarterly bills, like paying for the replacement retainer for Daughter's ortho and the sewage bill.  Then both the water bill and the electric bill came in VERY high this month...ouch.
It's a good thing there was an extra paycheck this month because otherwise we would have barely had anything to throw into the Savings Challenge pot after paying the bills.

The good news with December is that nothing I bought for the Holidays was put on a credit card.   Hubs did put his gift to me on the card and we have some Dining Out on it(Daughter's Bday, Steakhouse with #1 Son home from school and Christmas Eve eating out tradition at the local Chinese Restaurant). Add in the usual gasoline purchases and such and we still will have a substantial CC bill but nothing swollen beyond being able to pay it all in January.
No interest, no payments being dragged out until June or worse.....yay!

The Food Budget costs for December are in another post, which is located HERE.  The actual Food/Toiletries spending in December was kept low due to the large rebate amount received that month.


YEAR-END GRAND TOTAL.....
With December's addition we ended the $30K Savings Challenge with a Total of $34,019.88 saved for the Year!
I am so happy with how much we've been able to save in 2010.  This is $10,000+ more than we saved in 2009!

It was a great year!  I think the key to staying on course and having a good result was to keep track month-by-month and doing it publically.  If I had no one holding me accountable how easy would it have been to have just stopped putting the money away when things got too hard?  Yep, it would have been very easy to let it go and go on spending sprees for junk we didn't need. 

So how was your December financially?  Leave a comment and share with us what you did with your money, both the good and not-so good.   Do you have any tricks or tips that help you to end your month before the money runs out?    Let us know!
If you posted your financial progress on your own blog, leave a link in the comments so we can go check you out too!


Sluggy