12/04/07 - Daily?? Progress Report

Okay. My Progress Reports have been anything but "daily" lately!

We haven't exactly been off plan, but with life so busy lately, we have been just sort of cruising along. The biggest problem with this is that I haven't been to the bank to withdraw our monthly cash (we pay cash for all monthly expenses except bills and things like that) - so, the debit card has been in use. Yes, it's a lot better than the credit card, but it is so hard to keep track of what we are spending with the debit card. Seems I have really come to like the cash system.

We were supposed to withdraw $560 at the beginning of the month to cover groceries ($360), spending ($200), pizza ($80), and school lunch ($27). My task for tonight will be to figure out how much of this "cash" we spent via debit already so I can determine the right amount of cash to withdraw from the bank tomorrow. Once I have the cash I think we'll be in pretty good shape for this month.

As for the very low commission my husband got this month, he says that next month will make up for it with a very high one. (We should be able to save several thousand from next month's commission to save for future possible low commission months.) So, I'm feeling much better about that.

I do still need to check on the Christmas spending and see how in line we are to the budget. That will be quite a project.

I did manage to complete a full budget for next year for all twelve months. With my husband's raise and the big commission expected for next month, next year's budget looks really good. I have the debt snowball payments set at $1,100 still, but we may be able to up that quite a bit ($2,100?) and get out of debt that much sooner. (Can't wait for that!)

So, lots to do. And I hope to get back into regular daily posting. It definitely helps to keep me on track.

Thanks for the kind comments and encouragement from everyone!