Areas where I remained under budget are:

-Shopping : I remained at $66.65 under my shopping budget. This budget includes household items, clothing and personal items.

- Home: As usual, I remained under my home budget for the month, based on the rent and water bills.

- Utilities: I stayed under my utilities budget to the tune of $42.26, even though the electric bill still needs to come down.

Areas where I went over budget are:

- Food: I overspent on my food budget by $17.82 which was not too bad.

- Auto: I had to draw on the Lexus Fund to pay for some repairs to the car, including replacing the drive belt.

- Health: I once again spent more than I had budgeted for because of paying for COBRA insurance.

I am still looking for new employment and I am trying to line something up but due to my particular circumstances I cannot go into detail about that yet.

I am also looking forward to having happy Valentine’s day even though I am not in the position I would like to be.

• Monthly Financial Check Up: November 2011
• Monthly Financial Check Up: July 2011
• Monthly Financial Check Up: May 2011
• Monthly Financial Check Up: December 2011
• Monthly Financial Check Up: October 2011

My W2 lists a really low figure compared to past months since I did not receive paychecks from September to December of last year. I ended up giving the same amount at church as I was giving before I lost my job but the tax software is saying I cannot claim it because I donated too much based on my income.

I received less in interest from my savings accounts because I was taking money out of them instead of putting money in, since I needed that money to live on a daily basis.

I am going to use two different tax programs and compare to see which one gives me a more pleasing result before I end up filing. I am looking for free tax preparation software this year because the program I used last year appears to be trying to charge me this year!

Have you started your taxes as yet? Do you expect to pay or will you get a refund?

• Tax Time
• Documents You Need To Do Your 2012 Taxes
• Almost done with taxes
• Received My Final Paycheck And Officially Unemployed
• Joining The Million dollar Club

All you have to do is go to retiremyway.com/50 and open your new account with $500 before 31 January 2012. Once your account is open and funded then you will receive the bonus by 16 February 2012. Of course this bonus will be reported as income for the year and will be listed on your tax documents but the benefit will far outweigh the cost in my opinion.

ING also notes that the bonus will be counted towards your contribution for the year so please make sure to keep track of what you contribute so that you do not trigger the contribution limits.

• Documents You Need To Do Your 2012 Taxes
• Get an Orange Account
• How to Store Important Documents
• Fixing Bad Credit Scores
• ING Referral Links

I do not get excited about my taxes because of a possible refund. In fact if I do get a refund it is really very small, meaning that the government did NOT get to hold on to my cash for a whole year.

In fact most of the time I end up having to pay a small amount and that is quite fine with me. I have been waiting on my documents to come in so that I can file as soon as possible and was just told by the HR department that they would be mailing out our W2 forms in the next couple of days.

img from hacer.org

When you get ready to do your taxes there are a few documents that you will need to get ready and some of the most important ones are:

-W2 forms
-1099
-Contribution statements

The W2 forms will come from your employer if you work for someone and should be a total of what you got paid for the year. It will also show your deductions for taxes and Social Security etc. for the year.

You may also receive a 1099 if you have received interest on savings or checking accounts and these amounts have already been reported, so there is no reason to think you can avoid filing them with your paperwork.

1099s are also issued if you have done any independent contract work and this will also be counted as your income when determining the amount that you will get back or what you will owe.

If you have made any charitable contributions during the year you should receive a statement from the places that you made the donations. These statements may not be on a particular named form but might simply be on the letterhead of the organization. My church sends a letter detailing how much I have contributed over the year because I make my Sunday donations via check. I use this letter as documentation when claiming my taxes, in case I should ever get an audit.

Of course there are many more documents that you will need if your taxes are more complicated but generally most of the people I know will only need these forms to get everything done.

I am waiting on my W2 right now so that I can begin the process online and I say happy tax prep to you all!

• I Am Really Ready To File My Taxes
• Taxes Are Completed And Filed
• Still Can’t File My Taxes
• Started Working On My Taxes
• How to Make the Best of a Taxing Situation (Guest Post)

This does not mean that I am adding to my debt, it just means that the money coming in is less than the money going out because bills are due starting on the first but I don’t get paid until the last day.

So again to clarify (since I get so many questions), this shows the cash FLOW for the month. On Day 2 of every month I will have a negative FLOW because I have paid rent etc so money has LEFT my checking account. I have not had any money come in on Day 2 of the current month since I got paid on day 27 or 30 or 31 of the previous month so that income is counted for LAST month.

Income for the month to date: $314.15

Expenses for the month to date: $1780.24

Net effect: -$1466.09

Since the last posting I received $11.23 from Lending Club and the electric bill came in at $136.12. I spent $40.88 on food, including some fast food when I had a long trip.

Things look really bad right now and I think I might stop these weekly financial updates for a little while….so this will be the last one until things shape up.

I will see you guys and gals later as I continue my journey to save money and remain debt free!!!!

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• Tracking My Finances In 2011: May Week 3
• Tracking My Finances In 2010: September Week 3
• Tracking My Finances In 2011: December Week 4
• Tracking My Finances In 2011: June Week 3
• Tracking My Finances In 2011: July Week 2

This does not mean that I am adding to my debt, it just means that the money coming in is less than the money going out because bills are due starting on the first but I don’t get paid until the last day.

So again to clarify (since I get so many questions), this shows the cash FLOW for the month. On Day 2 of every month I will have a negative FLOW because I have paid rent etc so money has LEFT my checking account. I have not had any money come in on Day 2 of the current month since I got paid on day 27 or 30 or 31 of the previous month so that income is counted for LAST month.

Income for the month to date: $302.92

Expenses for the month to date: $1505.26

Net effect: -$1202.34

Since the last posting I spent $53.41 on some personal items that will last me the next few months. The total actually came to $60.62 after tax but I purchased the items online through a program that earns cash back on every purchase.

I received $14.23 from my Lending Club investment this week which was really surprising as people generally tend not to have extra money to pay their loans right after Christmas.

I had $6.61 in cash back, which was then applied to my purchase automatically, reducing the payment. I earned $2.67 in cash back which I can redeem in April. I am not sure how they calculate when you can use the cash back since April seems a long time away but I guess I probably won’t be buying anything from that site until then anyway.

I will see you guys and gals later as I continue my journey to save money and remain debt free!!!!

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• Tracking My Finances In 2011: July Week 2
• Tracking My Finances In 2010: April Week 4
• Tracking My Finances In 2011: December Week 4
• Tracking My Finances In 2010: December Week 4
• Tracking My Finances In 2010: June Week 4

I hope it is not a case of more places deciding to have you log in to the system and print off your own statements because that is just annoying to me. I have no idea what my tax situation will be this year with the job loss but maybe with having a much lower income I will get a refund this year.

At the very least if I have to pay it should only be a really small amount since I did not have as much income as last year..but I won’t know until I get all those statements in my hands.

• Taxes Are Completed And Filed
• Documents You Need To Do Your 2012 Taxes
• Still Can’t File My Taxes
• $14.95 Stupid Tax
• Tax Time

Tomorrow is GREAT day to buy the Sunday newspaper because there will be a total of  SIX coupon booklets available. This is an excellent way to replenish your stock of coupons that have expired. It will also allow you to actually START your coupon stash if you have not done so already.

I know I will be getting the newspaper tomorrow because my coupon book is empty right now as I got rid of all expired coupons at the end of last year.

Good luck and I hope you get some great savings out of your coupons this year.

• Tracking My Finances In 2011: January Week 1
• Monthly Financial Check Up: February 2011
• Monthly Financial Update: May 2010
• 5 things to do while housebound
• Monthly Financial Check Up: December 2011

• Income to date: $232.16
• Expenses to date: 928.87
• Cash flow to date: -$696.71

I received $7.93 from my Lending Club investment this week and also got $220 in private advertising.

I paid $65 on the shared cell phone bill, even though I was told I did not have to pay anything since I have not been working. I still want to contribute to the bills while I can so I reduced the amount that I normally pay.

I spent $8.60 on household items which included the purchase of a large desk calendar for the current year. I keep it tacked on the wall because I do not have a desk that is wide enough for it and it is also easier to see from all around the room that way.

I spent $46.91 on food for the week. The (not so) funny thing was that I bought eggs and made sure to carefully check each one for cracks. I found two that were damaged and I replaced them so that I would have a perfect set of eggs. I had a few things in my hand and when I got into the house the bag with the eggs fell to the ground. When I opened carton I saw that TWO of my eggs were broken. I was a little upset by that but hey it is just two eggs right?

I am still working on a few things and hope to see my situation improve quite soon.

• Tracking My Finances In May: 19
• Checking My Eggs To Save Money
• Did I save money in April: day 17
• Tracking my finances in July: day 22
• Tracking My Finances in June: Day 11

I am always working on my budget and I give it a tweak or two every couple of months because I believe that a budget needs to change as your financial situation changes. This year I am using a combination of the rollover budget and the zero based budget to track my income and expenses over the whole year.

I will still use a monthly zero based budget where I have a certain amount set for each category and where total income will equal the total expenses for that month. I am also using a rollover budget, where any unused funds will roll over to the next month to form a base for the next month’s spending.

img from quizzle.com

In my case I am using a hybrid of the two because my zero based budget will be tracked via spreadsheet (and a bit through Mint) but I will also allow any unused funds in each spending category to roll over to the next month. Everything will continue rolling over until the end of 2012 so that I can have a total figure for the year, as well as an average for each month.

I am mainly doing this because I want to have an idea of how much I really spend and bring in during one full year. I have been allowing Mint to reset my spending to zero every month but this did not give me a clear picture of what I really spent on gas, for example. There were some months the bill was below $50 and other months where it was above $50 but since I never kept a running total I am not sure what my average really was.

This rolling budget for one year should give me a better idea of what I actually spend and that should help when it comes time to tweak the budget for 2013!!!!

I know that many people will say you cannot combine the two types of budgets because you should have a zero at the end of the month for the zero based budget and a rollover budget implies that you did not reach zero. In my case I will be doing the zero based budget in my spreadsheet where I track all my receipts and will be applying the rollover to Mint.

• Monthly Financial Update: December 2010
• How I Am Preparing For Higher Gas Prices
• I Just Figured Out What I Was Doing Wrong In Mint
• Monthly Financial Check Up: December 2011
• Slight Tweak To The December 2011 Budget

I pulled out a total of $34.55 this month from Lending Club and as a result I will be funding a new loan in January. I did not redeem any coupons this month but I also did not buy the newspaper so that was okay.

I redeemed a total of $49.53 in coupons for the year and spent $21.00 on newspapers, giving me a net gain over the year of $28.53 in coupons. I am not sure how my coupon usage for 2012 will work out as I do not know what my situation will be quite yet but I will keep everyone posted when I know.

Areas where I remained under budget are:

-Utilities : I came out $80 under budget total and the electric bill was also under the budgeted amount.

-Car : Even with more travelling for the Christmas holidays I managed to stay under budget total and did not even use all of my gas budget.

- Fees: I did not spend  the amount I budgeted for fees such as the Health Savings Fee and other miscellaneous fees.

Areas where I went over budget are:

-Food : I went over the food budget by $50.34 but some of that food was bought on 28 December and will last well into the new year.

-Health : As long as I am paying the COBRA insurance I will be over the amount I budgeted because my insurance used to come out of my salary before I received my paycheck.

-Shopping : I went over my personal shopping budget by $40.16 this month. I need to spend less in January because that has defeated the point of having a zero based budget. I actually should have taken some of this out of the entertainment budget (which I did not spend ANY of) because some of this money was used to buy books for my kindle…and should be classified as entertainment.

I am going to make a very small tweak to the budget for the new year and I will also be rolling every category over in Mint so that I can have a yearly running total. I know this sounds a little bit complicated and unnecessary to some of you but it just something I want to try. It is not going to take any ongoing effort on my part…once I set the categories to roll over they will continue to do so automatically in Mint.

• Monthly Financial Check Up: November 2011
• Monthly Financial Check Up: February 2011
• Monthly Financial Check Up: June 2011
• Monthly Financial Check Up: September 2011
• Tracking my Finances in 2008: December And Year End Update

After paying off my debt I decided to invest in Lending Club and even though I have had a few poorly performing loans I do not regret anything about my decision.

I am currently receiving a return of 5.14% on my investment which is more than what is available on savings accounts. I know I can get a higher rate of return by investing in the more risky loans but I have decided to stick to the low risk loans in order to preserve my investment.

Here is the breakdown of my loans at present:

-51 current and active

-20 fully paid

-0 late 16 to 30 days

-2 late 31 to 120 days

-4 charged off

I feel really blessed that out of all my loans I have only had 4 total that were charged off and those were all the minimum investment of $25 each.

I only invest $25 per loan to spread out my risk when possible, although I did invest more than that in TWO loans because they were people that I personally knew. One of those loans has been fully paid off and the other one is only four months old but I have confidence in it being repaid.

I am receiving slightly over $25 in repayments on average every month, so I will continue to fund a new loan for $25 every month. I withdraw the money from Lending Club on a weekly basis because the money does not earn interest while it is sitting in the account. I track my receipts on a spreadsheet and every month that I collect at least $25 I create a new loan the following month.

How is YOUR investment doing right now?

If you have not already invested in or borrowed from Lending Club you can use one of my referral links at the top of the blog to sign up. You will get a bonus for signing up and I will earn a referral bonus so we BOTH win!!!

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• Lending Club Portfolio Update July 2009
• Lending Club Investment Updates: May 2010
• Lending Club Performance: July 2011
• Lending Club is Up, Prosper is Down
• Easy Sign Up For Lending Club

This does not mean that I am adding to my debt, it just means that the money coming in is less than the money going out because bills are due starting on the first but I don’t get paid until the last day.

So again to clarify (since I get so many questions), this shows the cash FLOW for the month. On Day 2 of every month I will have a negative FLOW because I have paid rent etc so money has LEFT my checking account. I have not had any money come in on Day 2 of the current month since I got paid on day 27 or 30 or 31 of the previous month so that income is counted for LAST month.

Income for the month to date: $451.08

Expenses for the month to date: $1964.65

Net effect: -$1513.57

Since the last posting I received $9.23 from Lending Club this week which brings my total for the month so far to $31.30, meaning that I can fund a new loan next month.

I spent $60.63 on food this week including food for the cat!

There has not been much more activity in my finances this week since I already did all my Christmas shopping in advance.

I will see you guys and gals later as I continue my journey to save money and remain debt free!!!!

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• Tracking My Finances In 2011: June Week 4
• Tracking My Finances In 2010: November Week 1
• Tracking My Finances In 2012: January Week 3
• Tracking My Finances In 2011: January Week 4
• Tracking My Finances In 2011: February Week 3

-credit card

-debit card

-automatic check

or I can walk into the office with a money order.

All of the methods are free of charge so I opted to pay my rent via credit card so that I could earn points for the transaction. This was free but the complex is changing over to a new system and we will now be charged for using a credit card.

The fee for credit card payments will be $19.95 which I think is utterly ridiculous!!!!!

I guess I will now be paying via debit card, since I can use my ING debit card to make the payments. I am just upset about this because I will no longer be able to earn points for purchases so that is a loss of potential income for me, even though it was a very small amount.

I thought about using the automatic check function since that would be the same as the money coming directly out of my account but I feel a little bit safer using the debit card option.

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• Changes To PineCone Payments
• Fraud Protection: Debit vs. Credit (Guest Post)
• Can You Live Without Debt Or Credit?
• Get 1% Cash Back With Your ING Debit Card
• MyPoints Introduces Bonus $20 Gift Card For Online Shopping

This does not mean that I am adding to my debt, it just means that the money coming in is less than the money going out because bills are due starting on the first but I don’t get paid until the last day.

So again to clarify (since I get so many questions), this shows the cash FLOW for the month. On Day 2 of every month I will have a negative FLOW because I have paid rent etc so money has LEFT my checking account. I have not had any money come in on Day 2 of the current month since I got paid on day 27 or 30 or 31 of the previous month so that income is counted for LAST month.

Income for the month to date: $319.20

Expenses for the month to date: $1500.25

Net effect: -$1181.05

Since the last posting I spent $50.67 on food this week and redeemed 4060 in points for $40.60 deposited to my checking account.

I will see you guys and gals later as I continue my journey to save money and remain debt free!!!!

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• Tracking My Finances In 2011: December Week 4
• Tracking My Finances In 2010: September Week 3
• Tracking My Finances In 2011: June Week 4
• Tracking My Finances In 2011: June Week 3
• Tracking My Finances In 2010: November Week 2

This does not mean that I am adding to my debt, it just means that the money coming in is less than the money going out because bills are due starting on the first but I don’t get paid until the last day.

So again to clarify (since I get so many questions), this shows the cash FLOW for the month. On Day 2 of every month I will have a negative FLOW because I have paid rent etc so money has LEFT my checking account. I have not had any money come in on Day 2 of the current month since I got paid on day 27 or 30 or 31 of the previous month so that income is counted for LAST month.

Income for the month to date: $250.60

Expenses for the month to date: $958.44

Net effect: -$707.84

Since the last posting I received $7.51 from Lending Club and paid the internet bill. I bought some groceries at a cost of $41.76 and bought gas costing $29.73 because I was almost on empty after my trip during Thanksgiving.

So far I am on track for the month with regards to spending and hopefully I will not have another set of unexpected expenses that will eat into the savings like in the last couple of months.

My Christmas gifts were already taken care of earlier in the year and came out of the Splurge Fund, so I do not need to worry about that. I might decide to get myself something small since I did not get anything but I have not seen anything I really want….maybe some shower gel and socks!!!!

I am looking forward to a more positive future with regards to the job situation and by the grace of God I will have a better year in 2012.

I will see you guys and gals later as I continue my journey to save money and remain debt free!!!!

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• Tracking My Finances In 2011: March Week 2
• Tracking my Finances in 2010: September Week 1
• Tracking My Finances In 2010: November Week 3
• Tracking My Finances In 2010: January Week 4
• Tracking My Finances In 2010: December Week 5

I have found a few frugal tips out that have been great and there also a few that really freak me out!!!! I decided to start a little series of Frugal Tips That I will NOT try so you can get a better idea of some of the things I think are too extreme.

One of the tips that I will not follow is Taking Cold Showers Year Round. I grew up in a warm climate and I really hate to be cold. One of the ways that frugal people claim they save money is by taking cold showers all the time.

Yes, even in the middle of winter!!!!

It is now about 38 degrees where I live and I can tell you right off the bat that I will NOT be freezing in the shower, trying to save some money. I know it costs money to run the water heater to get my shower warm (in my case HOT) but it is worth it to me to be comfortable for the short time I am in there.

Yes I will turn the thermostat down a bit and wear a sweater inside but I simply refuse to attempt to shower in ice cold water.

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• Baz and The Incredible Head Power Shower Showerhead..or how to save water
• Cold again
• How I save Money on Electricity by having a pet Fish
• How To Lower Your 2010 Winter Heating Bills
• How I am NOT saving money on my electric bill

I received a total of $43.57 from Lending Club, which is almost double the amount that I required to invest in new loans. Every month that I receive $25 I use it to fund a new loan via a transfer from ING. I withdraw all the money that comes in every month and record the totals on the spreadsheet so that I know if I can fund a new loan or not. Hopefully I will get $50 next month so I can fund TWO new loans and then I should be able to get even more in returns from my investment.

Areas where I remained under budget are:

Home- : I spent the budgeted amounts for rent and insurance and put $30 into my house down payment fund as well.

- Utilities: Even with buying some international air time I was under the budgeted amount for utilities. The electric bill was slightly below the budgeted amount but I think that with the cold weather coming in now it might go back up.

-Entertainment : I normally budget $35 for miscellaneous entertainment expenses but this month I did not use any money out of that fund.

Areas where I went over budget are:

-Car : I had that unexpected expense of over $900, even after the discount and that money came out of the Lexus Fund. I guess I won’t be getting that new Lexus Rx350 any time soon.

- Health: I paid once again for COBRA insurance because I do not have a full time job that I can get insurance through. I value my health highly, especially after the health cares I have had in the past. I know that paying for the insurance myself is expensive but I would rather pay for the insurance than to not have it and have something happen where I land in the hospital again.

-Food : I went over my food budget by $15.02, which I could have taken out of another category that was below budget, but I am keeping my categories separate for accountability purposes.

I am looking forward to the new year and a new job so that I can stop seeing all of these negative figures and I can get back to saving once again.

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• Monthly Financial Check Up: December 2011
• Monthly Financial Check Up: January 2012
• Monthly Financial Check Up: October 2011
• Monthly Financial Check Up: July 2011
• Monthly Financial Check Up: September 2011

I paid off my car in full a few months ago but still keep a figure for a car ‘payment’ in the monthly budget. This money gets sent to my ING account so that I can save up for a new car….but I will not be making that ‘payment’ in December this year.

I also pay small amounts to other savings accounts under various names but suspended the December payments on those until January. I need to have that small tweak this month to allow my accounts to settle since income has been so variable since I lost my full time job.

I will go back to using the regular budget in January next year so that I can get a fresh start and will start off the year with brand new rollover figures in Mint as well.

I have a set budget for Christmas spending that was funded throughout the entire year so if I do need to get gifts they will come out of that fund. I already plan on having a very low key Christmas so I do not anticipate any problems there.

Are you making any changes to your budget this time of year?

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• Changes To The Budget For 2012
• Monthly Financial Check Up: December 2011
• Monthly Update: December 2009
• What I Am Doing To Reduce Debt And Expenses Before 2009 Ends
• How I Am Preparing For Higher Gas Prices

I prefer to give my coupon with the item because that way I can identify what coupon goes with what (for a program I am enrolled in that asks to track that kind of thing). It also makes it easy to identify when I have a coupon for a “buy 3 get 1 free” or “only valid on X size or larger” item. That way the cashier does not have to go digging through the bags at the end to find out if the coupon actually matches the item.

So I put the things on the belt in the order I want them scanned, tell the cashier I have a coupon and point to the item and proceed to get my cash back credit card out to pay.

The cashier decides to grab the item out of its place in line and scan it and scan all my other purchases before hitting the total key. I had already swiped my card at the beginning and he tried to go back to add the coupon in but the system would not let him since he had already hit total.

Sigh.

He then tells me I have to take the coupon to customer service to the coupon applied since he would have to void the entire transaction. I am upset at this because if he had just scanned my items in the order I placed them on the belt and scanned the coupon when I told him to I think this would not have happened.

Anyway I take the items to customer service and the guy there says they have to issue a cash refund.

Really?

I have always had the money returned to my card but hey I will play along because I don’t want to be ‘that crazy coupon lady‘ at the store. I get my cash refund and then he has to ring up the item again and take back some of the cash he just gave me.

So I finally got my coupon applied and got $3 off my item even though I had to waste some time to get it AND I now have cash which I detest touching.

Happy Cyber Monday to you all!!!!!

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• Revisting Bad CVS Customer Service…Part One
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