March almost done- April Goals!

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-20-2010
March almost done- April Goals!
17
Fri, 03-26-2010 - 8:51am

ok ladies and gents-

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iVillage Member
Registered: 07-22-2008
Fri, 03-26-2010 - 9:25am

I went back and looked at my March goals:

In March, I will:

Look into opening a ROTH IRA retirement fund. There are new laws I need to look into, I am considering converting my traditional IRA.

I did open a Roth, I am so happy this is done. It's one of those things I thought about for a long time!

We have a few home projects going on. I would love to continue to work on these, but do only what is possible to do with cash.

Yes, done with cash!

I also need to research a new laptop. Once I pick one out, I will save & pay cash for it.

ended up not needing a new laptop, we bought a part, and that was all it needed!

Flake a minimum of $150 to my car loan.

Will do this today, I have to call the bank directly to do this.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-01-2008
Fri, 03-26-2010 - 9:28am

Norma


"Patience is the best remedy for every trouble"- Plautus


iVillage Member
Registered: 01-20-2010
Fri, 03-26-2010 - 9:28am

these were my march goals:


1. do not go over our budgeted amount while on vacation. had ~200 leftover which was flaked to CC3!!


2. pay off at least 5,000 in debt. total snowflakes for March so far: $5062!!!


3. continue to track spending and stay within our budget. i didn't do as well at this as i would have liked.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-12-2010
Fri, 03-26-2010 - 11:01am

Well March was DEFINITELY better than February for me!

March follow-up:
March Goals

1$ Keep my food budget under $1,000 instead of 1,200
- DONE.
2$ Use the money saved on food to order supplies for DS's birthday party (April)
- 75% DONE.
3$ Start repaying my parents. Sad to say I have not done so yet. Not that they are asking.
- NOPE.
4$ Fund the baby e-fund. Sadly it was at $100 at the start of the month and now is at $70. No money put into it during February :(
$158.72 TOTAL IN E-FUND. sigh.
5$ Make DH deal with the one CC that has not been paid in months.
- NOPE.
6$ Live on cash. For some reason that didn't work last month.
DID GOOD FIRST 2 WEEKS.
7$ DH's bonus is hopefully coming on March 15th (cross your fingers!) Rumour is $2,700 after tax. YAY NEW DRYER!
- NOPE. NO NEW DRYER, STILL NO DRYER AT ALL, AND FUNDS WERE USED TO CATCH UP BILLS.

APRIL GOALS

1. "Do" easter & birthday party without killing my budget. I'm hoping because my parents will be here and my mom is a $ store freak, that they might help with Easter. They're like that.

2. Live on cash. We get paid on the 15th and EOM, and the Monday payday really screwed me up in March for cash (I only get out on weekends to take cash out).

3. Figure out what I'm going to do in May when one of my f/t kids goes down to p/t again.

4. Get e-fund up to $300

5. MAKE DH deal with cc that has now gone to collections for $32,000+ . Ouch. Before they take him to court.

I feel like we're not really getting ahead at all.
However, I do think we're starting to be in control of the money as opposed to it controlling us...now if we could just curb any & all spending....right with 5 kids all their birthdays in the next 10 weeks that should be easy!

Melissa
~ Mom to 5 ~
~ Melissa ~ ‎"We need to find the courage to say NO to the things and people that are not serving us, if we want to rediscover ourselves and live our lives with authenticity." - Barbara de Angelis
Avatar for sohappilyme
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 03-26-2010 - 11:13am

I'm not doing too bad, especially since DH has about $3,000 in sidework to finish by the end of the month and I only need about $1200 to cover the rest of the bills. Here are my March goals and updates:

GOAL: EF to $100 - It's at $100.03
GOAL: SF to $250 - It's at $75 but will bump it up April 7
GOAL: TAX to $500 - It's at $30 but will add to it April 7
(all three above are savings accounts)
GOAL: FLAKE to $1000 - at $669 with another $400 coming on the 31st
GOAL: Debt under 60k - at $60831. I should be very close to meeting that goal once my statements come in. I've paid bills but haven't updated the balances yet on a couple that I can't see online.

April brings Easter and a birthday plus a couple of other one-time bills, so I need to take that into consideration with my goals, LOL. But I'm not slacking too much.

GOAL: EF to $150
GOAL: SF to $300
GOAL: TAX to $1000
GOAL: FLAKE $750 in April
GOAL: Debt under 59k

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FLINGING DEBT:
Sarah
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-14-2008
Fri, 03-26-2010 - 12:40pm

Yes March was better than Feb, but....April might be worse than Feb!
Where am I in my debt reduction quest. I am in a holding pattern at the moment. BF's student loan gets a monthly dollup in the form of a forced flake at the beginning of every month. We may flake towards it at the end of the year or we might put money towards savings. That is to be determined.

**I am hoping my sales improve from Feb and Jan. It has been pretty slow. I don't know if that is a goal or a wish...I will do what I can to increase it. I must also watch my credit line closely as it has not come down yet and might get a touch worse before it gets better.

Sales did not improve much, credit line is high, and I'm hoping for better in April.

**track student loan payment on ticker. It will give me hope to put it at under 20 thousand dollars. Gosh that is a big number it seems today.

Yup did this. Can't wait for April 1st to have it go down more!

**Snow flake to the kid fund(ticker number two). This my main target at the moment and will receive all my snowflake fury and wrath. LOL!

The child education ticker has a healthy start.

**try to keep March lower for spending. Feb was brutal. I have one kid's birthday but it should not be too cost intensive.

March was not too bad for spending. I did open up a TFSA and an RRSP. I was pretty proud of that. I have monthly contributions for the RRSP set up. They are really, really small, but its all I can do right now with all my other goals ongoing.

April 2010 goals.

***April looks like it could be spendy with my curling and golf aspirations. I have to start looking into camps for kids as well.

***Keep on track with debt reduction and try not to beat myself up if the child education ticker does not move.

***I have scheduled myself to work a bit more so hopefully the store credit line does not need to be rescued. That would really suck!

That is all I can think of at the moment.







Community Leader
Registered: 07-26-1999
Fri, 03-26-2010 - 12:48pm

I am proud to say I accomplished all of my/our March goals though it seems like we spent a whole lot of money and didn't seem to accomplish much!

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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-24-2007
Fri, 03-26-2010 - 2:55pm

I, too, am proud to say that I've reached all of the goals I set for March ... because I didn't set any!!!

Kate


empty purse

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-10-2003
Fri, 03-26-2010 - 10:36pm

Not even bothering checking my March goals because frankly my life has taken a uturn in the last three weeks.


Soooo, April goals:


Survive the move, lol.


Seriously though my goals are to keeping spending to a minimum so I can sock away as much money as possible for my move. I have a budget of $17k for my floors, kitchen and paint which is all the equity from my old house. I want to save up as much as possible so that I can actually buy furniture!


Thats pretty much it. Not huge goals, but big enough!


Bex -


"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift -thats why its called the present."


Bex -

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-02-1999
Sat, 03-27-2010 - 9:08am
I did really well with my goals in March:



1. Fund my baby e-fund to $1,000.

DONE!



2. Pay back my mom the money she fronted us for the insulation project.

DONE!



3. Pay off debt #2 (!), which will give me a big $400 monthly flake starting in April.

DONE! And for good measure, I paid off debt #3 with my balanced billing gas credit!



4. Stick to our monthly dining/entertainment budget - and don't dip into the grocery budget to fund take-out if the dining budget is busted. Especially if it's just because I "don't feel like cooking tonight".

Okay, so this will be an ongoing struggle LOL. We were actually doing fine, right up until the Nor'easter and subsequent power loss.



Now for April...



1. Bring the debt below $20K (this is the short-term payoff debt, not the whole kit and kaboodle).

2. Get my cookie business fully official and operational (almost there already!).

3. Continue to work on sticking to the dining/entertainment budget. ;-)

4. Stay on track with the debt snowball (read: work like the dickens to make sure we can maintain the extra snowball payments to the debt, because if we fall short for the bills that will have to be the first thing on the chopping block). This will be a goal every month until the debt is paid off!














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