goodfountain

Late last year I participated in a personal finance carnival challenging us to declare a 2008 Financial Resolution. In a rare overachieving moment, I drummed up a whole slew of Financial Goals.

PaidTwice recently called out to me for a check-in on how I’m progressing against my 2008 Goals.

Not too bad, I’m happy to report.

For the goal of reducing how much I spend at my three favorite money drains - Costco, Kroger and Target -I am happy to say that I did great for January. Two changes helped this a lot. One, I shopped for two weeks of groceries and household items at one time, versus my usual weekly shopping, and I did most of my shopping at the Evil Empire itself - Wal-Mart. Actually, I don’t have a problem with Wal-Mart. The reason I tended to avoid shopping there in the past had more to do with the shopping experience itself than any moral/political/religious/whatever reasons. Target is just a more pleasant shopping experience.

My goal was to reduce my spending by 20% after a quick peak at last year’s number revealed my spending hovered around a shocking $1000 a month. A 20% reduction breaks out to about $200 a week. Both times that I have shopped for two weeks at a time, I have spent right around $300, or $150/week, $50 less than budgeted. Seems I did better than my goal!

A most excellent secondary benefit for this was that I was able to avoid meal planning and a trip to the grocery store(s) on that off weekend! Anything that can reduce the frequency with which I have to shop for household stuff is worth making the effort.

A couple of other goals met include that we found and are using a new accountant (he’s been doing our payroll which has made things simpler); and we found a financial planner who is helping with our retirement funds.

In addition we came in slightly under in the Eating Out budget of $150 - a big savings compared to previous months where it seemed like the spending was getting out of hand.

Still have a few more goals to meet, and of course, 11 more months to keep that spending in check, but I feel pretty good about kicking the year off to a good start!