We are a couple of weeks into the year now and I have to tell you that I HATE New Years Resolutions. To me, it is a set up for failure. I do like to set goals for myself and I have set only one this year. This goal is to simply put away as much money as I possibly can into savings. Now this goal will cause me to evaluate all of my spending. Here's the deal I made for myself and I even told the bank teller that I always deal with about it. Why? Makes me a little more accountable right? Whenever I see her she will know that either I'm living up to my goal or I am not.

The plan is this, on each pay day, whatever is left in my checking account will get transferred into the savings account. Now I can either call my bank teller and have her do the transfer for me free of charge or I can go on line and do it myself. Could be $10.00 or could be $67.43. Whatever the amount has to get transferred.

This leads me into being more frugal. The more money I have left in my checking account by the next pay day, the more money I have to transfer over right? So that means being frugal with every penny I have. Do I really need it? Can I buy it somewhere else cheaper? Can I do a little research and find a coupon or deal out there for the item?, etc. etc.


You already know that I have $50.00 automatically deposited into my account each pay period so I ended 2010 with a balance of $1,300.00 Can't honestly tell you where that other $100 came from but it's there so I'm taking it, right? Anyway, I have a part time job that I do at home and I received the pay that day which was for $343.00. I decided to deposit $200.00 of that into savings and keep the other $143.00 for myself because my husband and I were going to the gambling boat for New Years Eve. You have to have a little fun with your money or your plans to save, save, save will go by the wayside. So now I am up to $1,500.00 Yea.

That night my husband and I went to the boat. I had taken out $57.00 from my checking account to make my $143.00 playing money $200.00 even. My husband had also taken some money out of his account. We ended up with a nice evening and getting all of our money back plus $400.00 which we split. So I put the $200.00 back into my checking account and put the $200 from the winnings into my savings account. So now I am at $1,700.00.

Bank statement came in January 2, 2011 so I had to add $3.34 interest to the balance so now we are at $1,703.34.

Now it has rolled around to pay day. After paying my bills I had $392.00. By the pay period of 1/15/2011 I had $243.50 of it left. I promptly picked up the phone and called my favorite bank teller and said guess why I am calling. She said "You're really going to do this?" and I said yes. I know she was probably thinking o.k. she's going to transfer $10, $20 or $50. Somewhere along there. She was quite pleased when I said to please transfer $243.50 into savings. So now I had $1,946.84. Not bad for a couple of weeks. But wait......I forgot to add in the $50.00 from my normal paycheck deposit. So my total now is $1,996.84. Yeah!!!! I went from $1,300.00 to $1,996.84 in just two weeks. Now this isn't going to happen every month because $200.00 of that 696.84 was from the boat, but my point is that every pay period I have to transfer what ever is left in my account into savings. It should be pretty fun to see what is there by the end of the year. Seeing how I can make the money increase so quickly by watching every penny is really making me want to be as diligent and frugal as possible.

Now it's the 15th of January and I started with $299.22 in my account after I paid my mortgage out of my paycheck. I have to admit that the ladies and I go to lunch on payday so that was $15.25 at Montoyas and my husband wanted take out Chinese for dinner which cost $19.80 so now I am already in one day down to $264.47. My husband doesn't know about my plans and after I had paid for the food said that he wanted to pay for it and gave me the money back that I had spent. It's sitting in my wallet. Now my intent is to be very disciplined and drive to the bank on Tuesday and put the money back in my account. We'll have to see how I do.

And because I am now trying to be as frugal as possible, I remembered that I had an Easy Rebate from Staples for two reems of paper that I purchase two weeks ago. I got online today and entered that information so I will have a check coming for $7.99. I have already decided that when I get that back in the mail I will deposit it into my savings.

So now, by telling you all about this, I'm being accountable to you as well.

What is your financial goal for the year. Tell someone and make yourself accountable. It drives you to meet the goal and makes you try that much harder. To see that in a couple of weeks I went from $1,300 to just shy of $2,000 when I have never had that much in a savings before, has me stoked. What financial goal can you make this year. Share and let's see what we can accomplish for 2011.

Hugs,

De


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