Financial Wins and Spending | Week 5

I was in denial that summer was coming to an end, but it’s actually getting cool outside. It’s still August so I’m still in denial, but it makes no difference to us anyway, because two weeks from the moment I’m writing this, we’ll be landing in Guangzhou, China for a short layover before arriving in Kathmandu, where we will start our nearly month-long honeymoon.

Since I am on a temporary contract, and the company J works for pays his vacation time out on each paycheque, we technically won’t be getting paid for the period of time we are away from work.

I did get a vacation pay out from my previous employer which will go toward paying the bills while we are away, and of course we have savings aplenty just in case, but we won’t have the regular paycheques that are deposited into our account as if I were a regular employee.

Even though it won’t impact us that much, we are still trying to save money where we can so we don’t have to worry on our trip. If you’ve been reading along with my previous reports, you’ll note below that we’ve spent far more this past week than we have in the weeks prior, but not for lack of trying.

Eating Out

I was so close to having a week-long streak of not eating out, but my team at work decided to do an end of summer dinner so I joined them for some Southern food. It was good to get out and get to know them away from work.

Gas

I mentioned last week that J and I went to hang out with my mom and stepdad in our hometown last weekend, so our as spending was higher than normal. This is just the portion that I put on my credit card.

Groceries

J bought the groceries last week. I bought tortillas because we forgot to buy them at the grocery store when we went. I think he spent around $120, but because I am not sure and it didn’t end up on the credit card under my name, it doesn’t end up on the spending report either.

Pet

A few months ago, one of our dogs had a small cyst on her leg. We took her in to the vet to check it out and were told it was benign. She was bleeding recently, so we took her into the vet. That cost us a cool $82.80, and we’ll have to take her in for a minor surgery next week which will be $550.  It sucks that veterinary care is so expensive, but our pets are worth it and I hate to see either of them not feel up to snuff so we are excited to get it dealt with.

Donations

I don’t donate enough money to the causes that I love, and I’ve been trying to step that up recently. There was a dog in my community who the SPCA was trying to raise money for to afford him a walking device so I put money toward that. I need to work donations into my monthly budget, or, at the very least, start volunteering more often.

Financial Wins

We’ve had a few more small wins over the past few weeks, which have added up to big returns.

A Literal Win

Lucky girl that I am, I won a Visa gift card ($100). I got it in the mail at the end of the week and I plan to put the money aside for my travel fund. I’ll use the gift card on regular expenses, such as gas and groceries, and then transfer the $100 into my savings.

Reaching Half of My Goal

Just a couple of weeks ago I announced my goal of saving $12,000 for travel in 2015. I had wanted to save it in 7 months, but on Friday I woke up to payday and transferred another portion of my pay into my travel fund, which pushed my savings up to half of my goal since I set it two weeks ago.

I still have more than six months to reach the goal of saving $12,000 and of course I’ll surpass that. I’m excited to see how much I am able to save.

More Free Movies

J eats a lot of cereal, so when we went to go replenish his supply at the grocery store this week, we were happy to see that the free movie promotion was still on. We’re going to go to a movie this evening.