Week #13 - The First Quarter Wrap-Up!

Welcome to week #13 which is exactly one quarter of the way through my year of saving. I have to admit that I'm no where near where I would have liked to be at this point, but only getting 1/2 my pay for a month while I was out for gallbladder surgery and then getting medical bills on top of the time out didn't help. That being said, I still have a decent amount to be proud of in terms of my savings achievements so far this year.

So this is week I got my 5th paycheck of March which will go towards making my mortgage payment (which I already scheduled online). The check was for a total of $645.33 and I'm going to take $50 off the top to put into my loan repayment account and the remaining $595.33 is going into the mortgage account. Now with next week being the 1st paycheck of April it usually goes into my regular checking account for bills, but I actually took off today (April 29th) from work because its 'Good Friday' and we are allowed to miss 'Good Friday' without it counting as an unexcused absence. I figure if you have to work it might be 'Good Friday' but if I can stay home then its 'Awesome Friday'! So because next weeks check will be missing 1 days pay I'm going to alter the budget a little, but we will go more into that next week.

So this week I made my standard $20 weekly transfer into my vacation account and I also made a trip to the supermarket with some deposit cans/bottles from the soda my wife drinks. Its been awhile since I went because I still haven't been drinking any soda, but no matter how little it is, its still free money and this week I got $6.85 in free money! Not bad for stuffing cans into a crushing machine for 5 minutes. Ok, so lets get on to the fine points....

Here is the week 13 wrap up:
$41.13 to my 401K
$20.00 to my vacation fund
$6.85 into the piggy bank
$50 to the quarterly loan payment account

which makes the 2013 totals:
$375.34  in my 401K
$260.00 in the vacation fund
$26.90 in the piggy bank
$100.00 in the quarterly loan payment account
$50.00 in my vet bill savings
$259.95 in my money market
$259.94 in my car account

Now for the the end of the first quarter I can say that I have saved a total of $956.79. A lot of that money is kind of set a side to be spent at a later date, like the money in my vacation account, loan payment account and the vet bill account, but what is important to remember is that now when I want to take a vacation or some kind of emergency comes up I have money specifically set aside for it. I also have added $259.95 to the savings that I generally never touch and $375.34 to my 401K which will sit till I retire, but I could always get a loan from if really need be. All and all I don't think the totals are to bad. How did you do saving so far this year?


*added bonus:
So as much as people make fun of me for actually going to the bank sometimes it works to my benefit. I have had the same money market account for awhile now and it was literally getting .05% for an interest rate. My bank recently had a promotion for customers with a certain amount of 'new money' to open a money market at 1% interest. Because I have a good relationship with the bank and I do all my banking there they considered my federal tax return to be enough 'new money' even though it was automatically deposited to my checking account and it didn't meet the minimum amount of  'new money' required to open the 1% account. So they took my tax return plus all the money in my current money market and combined it into one of the new 1% money market accounts. Its not going to make me millions, but the interest % difference is substantial and will definitely be noticeable by the of the year. So no matter where you do your banking, just keep an eye out and see what they are offering. Even if you have direct deposit maybe just head to the bank once every few months ask if there is anyway to get more interest or anything they can do for you. It never hurts to check!