January 2012 financial re-cap............

I decided to sit down on Monday afternoon to go over how we did financial wise during the month of January.

First my pots;  I have $200 in my birthday pot.  It would have been $220, but I took $20 out last week to buy 6 cards and 6 stamps for Britain.  5 of those cards are for birthday's in February, and I need three of those stamps to mail the cards.

In the "Other" box I have $350, but $300 of that is ear marked to put in the envelope for a wedding we are attending at the end of February.  The Christmas box is looking healthy as well with $140 in there.  Just checked my loonie ($1) and twoonie ($2) box and I have $57 in there.  Hoping to have $200 in there by the end of April, using that money for the garden.

Both dh and I have been putting any silver coins into my sealed pot, but it's a bit of a double edged sword situation.  As we trying not to spend any money, I never have any change.  I know I put over $1 worth of silver in there today though, so that's good.

Grocery Shopping: I went slightly over budget this week and spent $79.67 and used $18.49 in coupons.  So my monthly total came in at $293.73 which was under my $300 budget and used a total of $75.37 in coupons.  I also managed to increase my Shopper's Drug Mart points total by 39,740, which is worth $60 in free product on a regular day.

This week I stocked up on deodorant for dh,  more shampoo for me and new toothbrushes for us for the end of February.  Due to me going shopping on Monday morning, I discovered that most things were out of stock, so I had to adjust my grocery list accordingly.

I am hoping to have enough swagbucks to cash in again by January 31st, so that will be $25 worth of Amazon e-cards this month.  Not sure if I can keep this up though when the weather gets better.

We have started a glass jar with a label on it saying "WINE FUND."   Dh likes to make wine and it is a lot cheaper than buying it from the LCBO.  It costs around $120 to make around 30 bottles of wine at the store.  I told dh I would contribute $20 a week, as long as he contributed $10 a week from his "allowance."  So far there is $60 in the jar, so in a couple of weeks there should be enough in there to start a batch.    I think I will encourage dh to keep putting $10 a week in there to start a batch after that.

I put an extra $10 a week on our mortgage payment, and am toying with the idea of adding an extra $10 to that.  Every little bit helps to my mind.  It's been a quiet month for renovation expenses and I think this month we only spent around $250 at the hardware store. 

Money was put into the savings account each week, not a lot but better than nothing.  I earned some money this month, which helped out a lot as I had a big credit card bill (all paid off).

So my standard goals for February are to continue adding money to all my pots.  There are four Fridays in the month of February, so I will set my grocery shopping budget to $300, or $75 a week.  Try and keep my spending down and only eat out once during the month.

I will be posting the rest of my goals along with my Challenge goals tomorrow.