Financial Wins and Spending | Week 3

Continuing to review my spending each week is an important step to reaching my goal of saving $12,000 within the next 7 months for travel. Keeping that goal in mind as I track my spending and share it with you guys is going to keep me on track and steer me in the right direction.

Spending during the past week was low again. Next week’s report will have a lot more spending on it, since J and I finally broke the three week seal and went out for dinner, but it was worth it. We had fun and and it was a nice date night.

Groceries

I only spent $75 on groceries because we had a coupon at Safeway for $10 off $75. J and I split up our haul so that we could both use our coupons to save $20. J spent another $75 and while we are married so our finances are combined, the travel goal is mine alone so I am only focusing on my spending.

Gas

I am just getting used to how much gas is required to commute to and from my new job and it looks like it will be about $100/month at the current prices. I have to fill up every second week. This isn’t much more than my previous commute, and my new job is in a city which has fairly cheap gas so I’m saving about $0.10/litre by filling up there instead of near home.

Eating Out

There’s this little ice cream shop that opened up the street from our house. I’m a sucker for ice cream, so J and I have been walking up there once a week or so and grabbing a cone.

I also forgot my lunch once this week.

Financial Wins

We’ve been able to maintain our lucky streak for the past few weeks. Last week we had some great financial wins, and the week before we did as well. That momentum is still going, because yet another week of good money luck has passed.

Reaching 40% of My Goal 4 Days After Posting About It

As I mentioned above, I shared my goal to save $12,000 for travel on Monday. On Friday, I logged into my bank account to transfer the $675 biweekly savings I described in the goal post, and found a pleasant surprise: 2 sizeable payments that I had almost forgotten about showed up in my account that day.

I was able to transfer $5,000 into my travel savings account just four days after posting about my goal.

I’m going to try to save $12,000 above and beyond that $5,000, as using that amount toward my goal feels sort of like cheating.

Another Cheque from the Government

This one I am more than happy to cash. I bought what I thought would be the perfect dress for our engagement photos from Modcloth back in March, and it turned out that the dress was not very well made at all.

I sent it back to Modcloth and then sent the government a request for a refund on the duty that I’d paid.

It took forever to come through, but we got the $40 refund this week.

Free Movie Night

A few days ago, I posted this Tweet:

J’s favourite cereal has come with a Cineplex movie voucher for the past few weeks (and has also been on sale), so we are going to the movies for free this weekend.

Movies around here cost $12.25, so we get $24.50 worth of free entertainment.

Cleaning Out the Spare Room

One of our spare rooms has been quite cluttered lately and I got on a kick of de-cluttering it the other day. I found an old printer that we didn’t need anymore and listed it on Craigslist. It sold within a day for $25 and we also sold some more of that wedding stuff that we have been trying to get rid of to the tune of another $25. We have well over $420 from selling stuff that we are using for our honeymoon.

Overall we had another great week and I think we’ll be able to keep up the momentum for awhile!