We managed to to keep things simple again and not spend any money.  Something about having very structured days makes not spending money very easy.  It seems that when we just take a day out on the town with no real direction we used to spend a lot of unplanned money.  I’m really seeing a big difference here in only doing what’s really needed from day to day.  With the visitors gone, I’m on my own with the kids for a few days.  Hopefully we can just stick to the normal daily schedule and avoid pulling out the debit card for anything.

I really need to get going on the bills.  It’s totally time to clear the desk and get caught up with everything again.  I’ll be updating the resource pages tonight after I get through all this.  I’m sure the budget will need some tweaks to factor in expenses for the wife’s trip and the reimbursement funds I haven’t got back yet.

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $0
• Spent - $0
• Debt Reduced -$0

Another good day goes by without spending any money.  Hopefully our planned meals and time around the house with visitors will keep us from being tempted to spend anything more for a few days as well.

I feel like I’m getting behind on my bills.  It’s probably not anything we can’t recover from, but I have huge piles of stuff on my desk and without the big boost of money for the medical bills, they simply aren’t going to get paid until next payday.  I’m really hoping to avoid any kind of collections here, but we’ve been customers for years so I doubt it will get to that.  I sure hate having so much pile up on my desk with visitors around though.  I’ll just have to force myself into doing it late at night or something.

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $0
• Spent - $0
• Debt Reduced -$0

Finally, a day where we simply didn’t spend any money.  Between all the recent gas fill-ups and grocery runs, we had everything we needed to get by today.

On a side note, I turned in a change to my W4 that I think will help alleviate some of our paycheck to paycheck pain.  I’ve been claiming so few dependents that I end up with a monster tax return every year.  Sure this seems great, but we’re losing out on that money for over a year while paying interest on credit cards and loans we still owe.  I figured I can get more out of my money if we get more of it up front.  I’ll talk more about this in detail with an upcoming post instead of fill the daily post on it.

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $0
• Spent - $0
• Debt Reduced -$0

Ok, good and bad to tell.  It’s payday!  Yay!, time to pay some stuff.  Also, I didn’t get the reimbursement check I was expecting for over $700 worth of medical expenses.  This is very bad.  I guess I submitted everything too late to get it processed in time, and now I’m going to have to wait until next payday for it to come.

SOOOooooo…I can’t pay all my bills because I simply don’t have the money on my current plan.  Bad bad bad.

• Emergency option #1: use up emergency fund that’s left.  (only like $150 at this point)
• Emergency option #2: take the money from my business account where I’ve always deposited all my online earnings from the last couple years.  (~$300 in there, and another $200 in paypal that I can transfer in a few days time)

Verdict?  Well, I have to pay my bills regardless of how nice and clean I’d like to keep my money separated right now.  I’m going to have to just suck it up and pay myself out of my business account right now and consider it an early deduction from my normally oversized tax return.  Also, I’m going to go ahead and chew through my emergency fund and just put as much back on it when I get my reimbursements next payday.  *sigh*

I remember what it was like to simply have a couple thousand in the bank for a nice buffer between months.  I can’t believe how bad I’ve let this get over the years.  This is ridiculous and downright embarrassing.  Talk about MOTIVATING!  ^!#$%!#%!

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $2331.20 (my check & her check together)
• Spent - $208 (gas & groceries)
• Debt Reduced -$0

Today I had to fill up with $40 in gas, which puts us way over our gas budget.  Having to drive the wife to the airport and back is going to really hurt our gas budget by almost doubling it for the month.  Not something I’m too happy about.

On another note, I got a statement today at work for my cafeteria plan reimbursements (flex spending account) and find out that I’m only eligible to submit another $700+ before my account runs out for the year.  This is very bad news for me.  I didn’t realize we’d already been reimbursed for so much.  I’ve got plenty of medical bills yet to be paid, and that means all the $100 in prescriptions I just bought are not going to be reimbursable.  *sigh*  Not to mention anything that’ll be needed through the end of the year.  This also means that all the dental work my wife and I were planning on will have to wait until next year as well.  Such is life.

Today’s Progress:

• Earned - $0
• Spent - $40 (gas)
• Debt Reduced -$0

I’ve been a semi-regular reader of problogger.net for some time.  Not that I intend on becoming a problogger myself, but Darren has a lot of good stuff on running a good blog so I pay attention.

Recently, he announced a birthday giveaway where he’s got over $50K in prizes.  Today’s prizes (free monitors) inspired me because of my recent monitor troubles, so I figured why not?  I could really use a couple of nice monitors seeing how I’m pretty much using leftovers from family these days.

So check out Darren’s giveaways for anything you might like.  And certainly use him as a good starting point for how to make a good blog or improve on one.