Sunday, February 03, 2008
Beginning of the Month Budget
| By Lynn Forgy I love starting a new month - a fresh, clean spreadsheet, with no "in the red" numbers. I am a nerd, I know, but I love budgeting! I like to make my dollars scream and my pennies squeal.  If you're a frequent reader, you probably already know that my favorite way to save money is in the grocery. This week, I spent a total of $33. This is for 7 dinner meals, and my daughter's lunch for 5 days. To be honest, I already had most of the items for her lunch, but did purchase Quaker snacks, crackers, and chips. To further toot my own horn, I had 3 mystery shops at local grocery stores. So because I get paid $10 per shop ($30) and reimbursed up to $3 per shop ($9), I actually made $6 plus got my groceries for the week. Admittedly I was out a little gas, but not much. I was a little tired after yesterday's excursion to the grocery stores, because I had 4 other mystery shops that I had to do. But every little dollar gets me closer to my goal of $15,000 by the end of May. So back to the budget - I will have to tweak it this month because I have only a certain amount budgeted for miscellaneous, and most of the mystery shops that require me to purchase something will not reimburse me until the month after the shop has been completed. The money that I am spending on expenses for the mystery shops (food, etc.) will have to come out of the miscellaneous category until the shop reimburses me and I can put the funds back into my miscellaneous category. |
posted by Krista at 7:26 PM
