While I overspent on some areas I also underspent on other areas and then used the ‘saved’ money to pay for those purchases. So, for example, I did not use $69.75 of my utilities budget but I ended up using that money to make a snowflake payment towards debt. The categories were up and down and all over the place but as long as I stay within my total budget for the month then I am in good shape.

I spent $87.10 on gas for the month which was $27.10 over the budgeted amount. I washed the car three weekends at a total cost of $18 which is under the $25 budgeted for the month for car washes.

I spent $5 on coupons because I bought a double pack of newspapers when there were the extra inserts that week. I redeemed $15.04 in coupons at various stores, giving me a net gain of $10.04 on my coupon use for the month. I am also showing a net gain of $59.05 on coupon use for the year, so I will continue to buy my coupons weekly and redeem them as the months go by.

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• Monthly Financial Check Up: December 2011
• Monthly Financial Check Up: February 2011
• Monthly Financial Check Up: April 2011
• Monthly Financial Update: March 2010
• Monthly Financial Check Up: September 2011

I overspent on groceries by $143.02 and I really have no excuse for that. I do know that I lost my mind a little bit buying up different things to eat because I was bored with everything that was in the pantry.

I received $5.03 from Prosper and $13.96 from Lending Club from loans that were being repaid so that is a nice little return on my investments there.  If you would like a BONUS to begin investing with Lending Club just send me an email!!!!!

I did not buy a newspaper last month but redeemed $7 in coupons so that was a good haul for last month on the coupon base. I have already cut the coupons for this month out and cannot wait to see if I can make another profit on my coupon spree this time.

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• Monthly Financial Update June 2010
• Lending Club Performance Update: December 2011
• Monthly Financial Update: September 2010
• Lending Club Investment Updates: May 2010
• Lending Club Portfolio Update July 2009

We got paid yesterday and my Adsense also hit the account so despite going to the grocery store for some last minute spending at the end of the month I was able to stay in the positive figures.

I was able to do this because I got in some unexpected money from various sources and decided to apply it to debt repayment so that I could be free of credit card debt as soon as possible. Having credit card debt makes me feel dirty (like a frugal fraud) so I really want to get rid of it, even if it means that I only have $200 in savings.

I stayed well below the gas budget for the month and have $40 left to get gas but I am not even at a quarter tank as yet so I will not be buying gas this weekend.

I went over the electric budget for the month but I think that this horrible weather is to blame for that. We have had much more snow in the last few weeks than this place has seen in years!!!!

My No Spend Month did not go well at all since I did end up spending on non-essentials like a shirt for work. I think that the case with me is that when I talk about something like that I end up sabotaging myself. So for next month (March) I will ‘not’ be having a no spend month….I will just do it and see what happens.

I spent a total of $3 on coupons for the month but redeemed $21.47 so I had a profit of $18.47 for the month on coupons. This brings my spending and redemption of coupons to the following total for the year:

Total spent on coupons: $9.00

Total coupons redeemed: $30.47

Profit on coupons: $21.47

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• Monthly Financial Update: March 2010
• Month End Financial Check Up January 2010
• Monthly Financial Update August 2010
• Monthly Financial Update: December 2010
• Monthly Financial Update: September 2010

I got my adsense payment and it really helped to bolster the differences between spending and saving this month. I also got some tiny payments in from Lending Club and Prosper from loans that I have made there so that was also very good cash inflow for me.

I overspent in the area of Utilities because I had that ridiculous electric bill that I was not ready for. Of course I was able to pay the bill in full via my credit card and the card was paid in full by the end of the month but I needed to really watch my consumption of electricity over the next few cold months.

I spent a total of $6 on newspapers to get coupons and redeemed a total of $9 in coupons, for a net of $3 which is not too bad but could also be a lot better. In case you have not been following my CVS posts I also used coupons there but did not include them in the totals for the month. I will be including the coupons spent at CVS from February to get a more accurate image of what I spend and what I save by using coupons.

I went over my shopping (food, personal items, household stuff) by $1.69!!!!! This means that my No Spend January was not successful strictly in terms of actual numbers. I am going to try to have another No Spend month this February to see where I can really cut down on buying ‘things’.

How was your January financially?

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• Monthly Financial Update: February 2010
• Monthly Financial Check Up: December 2011
• Monthly Financial Update: September 2010
• Monthly Financial Update: December 2010
• Monthly Financial Check Up: February 2011

I spent $48.08 on gas this month, leaving me with $16.92 in the gas budget. I know this does not seem like a lot but I only made one trip out of town this month, when I usually make two. Also, I was at home for the last two weeks of the month since school is closed. My gas budget will remain as is because during the summer time I use more of the budget.

I overspent on food this month, even with getting the wisdom tooth taken out because I bought a lot of things that I do not usually buy and I was over the food budget by $10.01. I did manage to save $17.25 by using coupons this month and as I did not buy the newspaper this month, those were rollover coupons from previous months.

I got a total of $15.05 from Lending Club and $8.29 from Prosper from people who were repaying the loans I made to them on those sites. I plan on investing more in Lending Club in 2010 so that I can get more returns and hopefully get to the point where the money that is repaid is enough to fund a new loan.

January is ‘supposed’ to be a No Spend Month and I am going to see how that works. Apart from paying bills I am supposed to spend as little as possible during the month. This means eating out of my pantry and only spending when I generate money. I am taking the word generate rather loosely and will be including both the money generated from Adsense daily and the money I get from Prosper and Lending Club in the money available to spend. I will also use things like gift cards that I receive as money that is generated because I think I will lose my mind if I cannot ‘spend’ for the month. I did not stock up to prepare for January…as part of the rules of the No Spend Month were to use what you have and to NOT stock up.

I joined the Million Dollar Club back in October of this year and part of the challenge was for me to save a dollar a day. This means that every month I will be saving $31 (yes I know some months have less than 31 days but I am using ING and that just makes it easier to do it this way) and putting that in my Never Go Back To Fresno Account. I have already started this December but it will ‘officially’ start in January. So at the end of the year I will have $372 plus interest and it is all done automatically.

I have modified my Zero Based Budget, I tweaked my budget and automated my finances to the best of my ability and I look forward to 2010 to being more financially fit!!!!

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• No Spend January
• Monthly Financial Update: December 2010
• Monthly Financial Check Up: December 2011
• Month End Financial Check Up January 2010
• Monthly Financial Update June 2010

According to Net Worth IQ I now stand at ($9,937) for the month. This is a marginal improvement over last month but I am just thinking that slowly but surely I am whittling away at the debt. Now that I have a definite plan and I am putting my business all out there it has made me take this more seriously than I have since I started to accumulate the debt.

I just realized that I will have to do another post at the end of the month where I can give my total spending by category so maybe this idea of the mid month net worth update will have to be scrapped in favor of a month end net worth and income and expenditure mish mash of stuff.

I am still trying to think of another way that I can save money and get myself out of debt.

• Tracking my finances: March update
• Changes To The Budget For 2012
• Tracking my Finances in November: Day 4
• Monthly update: April 2007
• I Just Figured Out What I Was Doing Wrong In Mint

I am still training Money to recognize and classify some transactions but the figures for this month are more accurate than the ones for February were….so just bear with me for a little while longer while I get this all straightened out. I am finding out new things constantly that I need to work on.

In March my income was up a little bit because I received the refund from my income taxes but it still was not significant enough to impact much on my saving for the month because I decided to put the money towards my debt payments. My total actual income for the month was less than the total for the bills but I managed not to use any credit card debt because Honey helped with the utilities and the Lancer payment. (thank you!)

I spent a total of $86.49 on food purchases from the grocery store, including necessary items and snacks. This is more than twice what I spent last month…although this month I have more food left over to start the new month with. I guess this means I need to track and estimate my usage of things better than I am doing right now.

I just realized that I do not have the total figures for what I spent on my credit card payments because some of it got messed up when I started to use ING’s Electric Orange to pay the credit cards. I do know that I have less finance charges than I did in February because I got some rates lowered and I did manage to pay some larger monthly payments because of the income tax refund.

Oh boy! I will have to spend some time tomorrow tweaking Microsoft Money (again) because I need to have the most up to date figures for ALL categories when I post for the daily updates for April.

I am going to bed now to dream of another way that I can save money and get myself out of debt.

• Monthly Financial Update: February 2010
• Debt Update: January 2009
• Month End Financial Check Up January 2010
• Tracking my finances in July: day 22
• Tracking my Finances in 2009: 28 February

Yesterday I spent 75 cents on a pack of peanuts since I did not bring anything for lunch and I was STARVING in the office. I know that was bad because I could have gotten out of bed just 5 minutes earlier and made myself a sandwich.

I ended up spending just $36.39 on food this month which is really great. My spending on personal items and household items clocked in at $63.60 which was a little bit over what I had anticipated but it was still under the budget of $70.00.

I was able to stay under budget for all of the expenses that I paid for during the month and I was really amazed to see the places where I was able to make some cut backs.

Next month I hope to have an even better financial month because I will be working harder on getting that CashDuck, DealBarbie,TreasureTrooper and other sponsored posting money in from this blog. These avenues can be very profitable for the people who are daring but since I am so conservative with the GPT sites I only made a small amount in comparison to some folks.

Cash Duck was really the biggest earner for me and I can say here that I made just enough to make the minimum payments on three of my cards from using the site and that has been sent to my paypal account already. I do not want to give the exact figures here but my card payments have been low so you can figure that out. I am just getting ready to try out some more offers for next month.

I need to change some of the settings in Microsoft Money because it has some expenses showing as negative and some as positive. Grrr. This makes no sense and it is falsely reducing the amounts I actually spent on some expense categories.

• Monthly update: October 2007
• How I Manage My Credit Card Payments
• Monthly Financial Check Up: February 2011
• Buy me a coffee!
• How to make money by Linking Accounts

Nothing went seriously wrong….it was just something that happened that irked me. I don’t feel very good today so I am not sure how much I can handle. Let’s just pray.

• Headache
• Some stuff to look at for 2007
• Lazy Sunday
• Tracking my finances in June: day 2
• Lenten sacrifice

• Tax Time
• ING account
• Still Can’t File My Taxes
• Daily Links
• $14.95 Stupid Tax

I think that was really amazing because I would normally spend more than that since I would be going to WalMart every week. Since honey has the car I was not able to just jump in the car and go off to Wally world when my heart desired. That made me focus more on the stock levels I had of each item and really think about what I was using. I had to carefully monitor what I was using and try to plan things out so that I would not run out of a critical item before I could get a ride to go to the store.

I am pleased to say that I managed to make all my food stocks last until the end of the month so I did not need to go to Wally world……although we all know that I was DYING to go…..just for old times sake!

This little experiment made me realize that I do not need to go to the store as often as I have been going. There are certain things that I bought in larger quantities because I was afraid I would run out and I still have some left over at the end of the month. This means that maybe the quantities I bought were just too high and so I can scale down on those next time I go shopping.

My credit card spending went down by quite a lot because the only thing I had charged was a new set of contacts. My debt snowball meant that I was paying just the minimum payment on each credit card because I am targeting one of the loans as the balance to pay off first. This meant I had a lower total figure for credit card payments for the month of January.

My Net Worth did improve slightly over December 2006 and you can see my chart on debt repayment over at the No Credit Needed Network.

This will be a monthly posting done on or around the first of every new month on the previous month.

• Debt Reduction: my Next Step!
• Crazy Financial Advice: Just Put It On Your Credit Card
• Getting Out Of Debt Is About The Mind NOT The Money
• How I Deal With My Debt
• How Store-affiliated Credit Cards can Bring Cheer to Your Holidays(Guest Post)

I have managed to stick to my budgets and not fudged my numbers so I feel much better about my finances.

I have not kept up my end of the bargain when it came to exercising. As usual I always start off well and then slack off at the end of the week. I also ended up eating too much cake so of course I put on some weight.

I have managed to work on the negativity in my life and I do not spend as much time dwelling on what could have been as I used to.

I set up the automatic savings online so I have been saving more although it is not as much as I would like to. The good thing about this is that I have gotten myself into the habit of saving automatically so when I do get a better income and pay off more debt I can simply increase the amount that gets transferred from my checking account into the savings accounts.

I only used my credit card one time for the month. This was so that I could buy my contacts because I did not have the cash readily available to get the contacts at the time I needed them. This is a big improvement because usually I use my credit cards more than that during the month. One time was such a big achievement for me and I am really proud of myself.

I have used cash and my paypal card a lot more this month so that gave me some good rewards.

And the most important part of my resolutions was that I have been praying more. I have started to go back to church and I feel really good when service is done. I have been able to remain calmer and not fret about situations that I do not have any control over.

• 3 Best accounts to have
• Money, Credit Cards and Loans
• Get 1% Cash Back With Your ING Debit Card
• Follow up exam
• Every Dollar Should Have A Job

Last night I did get some ab work done on the ball while I was watching House. I was not going to do anything but honey suggested I should get on the ball so I did.

Then today I worked at the bookstore so I was able to count that as part of my exercise for the week because I was on my feet and constantly moving around and carrying boxes.

We are starting the moving process tomorrow so today I will be going up and down the stairs doing laundry so I will count that as part of the second day exercise for today.

• 5 things to do while housebound
• Moving day…and money spent
• Tracking my Finances in October: Day 13
• Tips for Solving the Store or Sell Dilemma (Guest Post)
• Need to exercise

I will work out for 20 minutes, 3 times a week. I know this may not sound like much but I NEVER exercise….EVER. Every so often I will start something and do it for two days then give up. I usually try to start out too big I think so then I lose my motivation easily. 20 minutes a day, three days a week is easy and I can always add to the routine.

I will put away the negativity in my life. Dwelling on what went wrong will not make it right.

I will save more. Hey even a dollar month can earn interest.

I will restrict the use of the credit cards.

I will try to use cash more. This will take the form of using my paypal card because it forces me to have the money in the account before I can buy anything but it rewards me like a credit card.

I will pray more. I think I have spent too much time asking God for things and not enough thanking him for what he has given to me.

I will love more. There are people who do so much for me in so many ways yet I tend to ignore them sometimes. I also tend to forget the good they have done whenever things go wrong between us.

I will read more…to educate myself, not to entertain myself.

I will worry less. God never gives us more than he knows we can handle. Any time it seems that your load is to heavy to bear, just know that he is right next to you, ready to help you if you need a spot. But like with weight training, he is only trying to toughen you up.

• Three Tools That EVERY Personal Finance Blogger Should Have
• In defense of Credit Cards
• Good bye Discover card
• 5 things to do while housebound
• How I Manage My Credit Card Payments