Layout:
Home > Catching up on news and goals

Catching up on news and goals

March 4th, 2018 at 11:37 pm

It's been nearly a month since my last post (besides my strictly numbers-focused ones)! I did try to write one a week or two ago, but I lost it and didn't have the energy to rewrite it.

The basic story of the last couple months has been spending like drunken sailors, with not much freelance income coming in to balance it out. AS has booked quite a lot of work for this first quarter but they've been bigger, longer-term jobs, so actual checks received in January and February were pretty average.

Between AS's $1800 fee to join her co-working space (this covers her for a year), $1600 to book spaces in summer programs for AA, a couple of expensive dates, my new guitar, birthday party spending, and other random unbudgeted expenses, our shared spending deficit is back -- up over $5500! And we're not done yet -- AS's birthday dinner tonight is food delivery, same with AA's tomorrow night, I've put deposits on AA's and SL's party space rentals but we still have to pay the remainder, and NT is having a night out for his upcoming birthday that's going to run us a few hundred as well.

Also, I've decided to continue my guitar lessons, which is $30 per week. I'll pay half with my spending money but the other half will come out of shared spending too.

NT has been running a deficit on his personal spending money too, and he wanted to float an additional $1100 for a booth he's sharing with other vendors at a big concert coming up. Since we're floating such a big deficit already, I had to borrow from savings, which I wasn't thrilled about. It'll get paid back from NT's money, but not a habit I want to get into.

I have no idea what our taxes will look like this year, so I can't tell if we'll end up owing, getting a refund or breaking even. I have our initial meeting with the tax guy scheduled for tomorrow, so we should know in a week or two.

The bright spots in our money outlook: AS has a lot of money already worked, and we expect much of it to come in this month. April is a three-paycheck month for NT. We continue to put a third of AS's net pay and any budget surpluses/windfalls to reno spending and a third to pay for upcoming vacations, so we do have over $20K in US savings even after borrowing $1100 for NT's booth rental. And some of the prepaid summer expenses were budgeted for in the months they will happen, so we'll have more of a budget surplus in those months when we don't have to pay for summer programs.

And of course, birthday month will come to an end, so this level of spending won't continue indefinitely! If I wasn't confident in the future money coming in, I'd be reining things in more, but I think it'll balance out in the long run. It's just a bit tight right now, but as long as we can pay credit cards off in full and float this deficit, we'll be OK. Not that I won't be very very happy to get things more in balance, hopefully in the next month or two!

4 Responses to “Catching up on news and goals”

  1. Carol Says:
    1520211090

    Happy Birthday to all of you!!🎉🎂🎉

  2. PatientSaver Says:
    1520253548

    Guitar lessons sounds great. Any particular style?

  3. ceejay74 Says:
    1520259331

    Thank you Carol!

    PS, it's acoustic guitar. I let the teacher know I'm into old country and old rock 'n' roll, so hopefully eventually I'll get to learn songs in those genres. I also like folk a bit, where it intersects with those two styles.

    Right now, I'm just trying to learn my first two chords, and how to pick, and basic stuff like how to hold it and tune it and such. There are so many things going on -- where to put your left fingers, how much pressure you need to apply to keep the strings from sounding funny, which strings to strum on the chords, how to position your hands and hold the pick. The tips of my left hand fingers callused up so fast, they practically feel numb! But it's good brain exercise for me, because it's way outside the stuff I usually do.

  4. rob62521 Says:
    1520279145

    Hope the guitar lessons are a blast. it's always good to learn something new.

Leave a Reply

(Note: If you were logged in, we could automatically fill in these fields for you.)
*
Will not be published.
   

* Please spell out the number 4.  [ Why? ]

vB Code: You can use these tags: [b] [i] [u] [url] [email]