Hello readers... we have finally reached week #52... the final week of my crazy little experiment. I know not many people have read anything I've written and I don't know if any of you regular readers played along and save any money based on my ideas and suggestions or maybe you came up with some of your own ideas. Maybe you were just inspired to save a few dollars or you have a plan to start saving next year (next week!)... no matter what, if you're reading this than I thank you for paying attention and humoring me with my craziness!
So Christmas is over and I'm sitting on the couch at home watching Human Centipede while I write this. I had a good Christmas and got some cool gifts, but more importantly I spent some time with the friends and family that are most important to me. I actually didn't go as crazy as I usually do with Christmas spending this year and I have some of my budgeted Christmas shopping money leftover which is probably good since my wife's birthday is next week! I've got to figure out exactly what I'm going to get her and do it pretty quick!
So even though I'm on vacation I was able to get the paycheck that I would normally get today. It is the last paycheck of December and the last check of the calendar year, the way I budget. This weeks check is normally the one I would devote mostly towards saving and this week I'm going to use it to make sure I reach all of my 2013 savings goals. The paycheck was for $612.82 with $39.12 going into my 401k.
The deposit at the bank is going to be a little confusing even for me since we are dealing with one check and I'll be depositing it into five different accounts... it's a good thing they like me at the bank! So in order to reach a nice round number saved I will be depositing $222.59 into my money market savings, that will make the total saved in that account $2500 for the year! I had set certain goals based on the total balances for the next three accounts so I will be depositing $200.00 into my future car account, $50.00 into my quarterly loan payment account and rather than making a transfer I'm going to deposit $40.00 from this check into the vacation fund account. That leaves $100.23 which I'll be putting into my regular checking account to cover any odds and ends until I get my first check for January 2014. That means that the final weekly wrap up looks something like this...
Here is the week 52 wrap up:
$39.12 to my 401K
$222.59 to the money market savings
$200.00 to future car savings
$50.00 to the quarterly loan repayment
$40.00 to my vacation fund
Which makes the 2013 totals:
$1849.74 in my 401K
$1060.00 in the vacation fund
$109.90 in the piggy bank
$750.00 in the quarterly loan payment account
$288.87 in my vet bill savings
$2500.00 in my money market
$2077.40 in my car account
Now I have to remind you that most of the money that was saved this year is actually in the bank, but not all. I had to use some money for car repairs, my quarterly loan payment and for my vacation to Disney World, but the balances in all those accounts is at least the total that I saved this year. So without revealing how much money I started with you can at the very least assume that even though I made payments on a loan, did some car repairs and went on vacation I have at least what I started with in January, PLUS no money at all was taken out of the money market savings so that is at least $2500.00 up from the beginning of the year.
All in all I think it was a pretty good year especially considering that due to a lack of overtime I made over $7,000.00 less than I made last year and I still went on a very nice vacation. There was also the month of February where I made much less than usual because I was out of work after having my gallbladder removed and over the summer I spent some money on schooling for a teachers assistant certificate. That didn't work out the way I hoped, but maybe we'll go over that next week in the full year wrap up (final issue).
Just so you know that my craziness will not end just because the blog will, I present to you the completly filled 'yellow budget paper' and the one I made up for next year with all the dates of each payday just waiting to be filled in!
PS. I'll include the totals next week in the officla year end wrap up, but I wanted to let you all know that we did not split the prize in the fantasy football league and the team that my wife picked and managed won the Super Bowl! So instead of splitting and winning $277.50, we have won a total of $453.00! She will get the majority of that money since she had all the know how and did all the work, but I get something for putting up the $50.00 to play!
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