Goals...

Last Week:

1. To continue the practice of using cash. Any checks that need to be written can be done so on Monday nights when I do money. The debit card can only come with on trips when absolutely necessary (like the gas station, so I can pay at the pump and get a reciept to use for the Illinois Green Fleets E-85 Fuel Rebate at the end of the year). Does part time count? No... I didn't think so, but it was worth a try. I actually kept my checkbook and bank card home most of the week. They came out on Good Friday and have been busy ever since! They are going back in their drawer! Tomorrow, I am going to Office Max, buying a coupon organizer (for my envelope/ cash system... it's so much easier than carrying around a bunch of envelopes that fall apart after a week of use) and getting cash out of the bank!

2. Assign the "leftovers" in our budget. I've got a pretty good handle on our monthly fixed expenses, but I haven't delved into the scary world of variable expenses yet and that is where the leaks are... where our money disappears because I don't have a good spending plan developed for this part of our budget. So, it's time to study our variable spending, attack and conquer! Last Tuesday night, I took sometime and looked at our budget. I adjusted a few categories of our regular spending to compensate for the reality of the past few months. What I found was not promising in terms of our monthly expenses and my prospects for possibly changing jobs at the end of this school year- especially factoring in that my current job includes medical insurance for my whole family. The cost of prescriptions for DH and Miss B, alone, would be astronomical! I took a quick trip into Variable-Expenses-Land... looking at groceries and what a realistic budget might be for our family to meet our various needs (low-sodium for DH, low-fat for DH and me, healthy for all, edible to the kids (willingly), and easy-to-prepare/ not time-consuming for our sanity (since DH and I both work full-time). I looked at this, but there was nothing concrete done (in writing). I definitely need to do some more work in this area. As I stated last week, I'm going to try to take some time to look at frugal, healthy meal planning this week and I think I will also add looking into a "price book" for grocery and household goods. I've started these a few times in the past, but I've never found a way of doing a price book that makes sense for tracking prices, stores, and dates (pricing cycles) in a way that has made sense and made it easy for me to get the information that I want out of a price book. In other words, I've never stuck with it because it was a huge investment of time (and typing) and it never paid off in a way that made it worth it to me. Still, there are people that swear by their price books, so there must be a way to make it work. I'm going to try to find something that will work this week. So, if any of you do anything like this and it works for you, please share!

3. Clean off and start using the exercise bike and continue walking in the mornings. I kept up the walking on the days when we had school. Sometimes morning schedules and circumstances caused me to shorten my usual morning route so that I would have more time to get things/ kids ready at home. The exercise bike, although in the house, is still sadly neglected (IE- yet to be used). The good news is that it hasn't become a receptacle for anything yet. There are no clothes hanging over the handle bars... no books or mail piled on the seat, so I hold out hope that since it has not found another function to serve in our home that it will remain a piece of exercise equipment and not become another dumping ground for "stuff".

4. Show a real loss on the scale this week! Okay, I kept this goal for the week "because meeting this goal makes me smile". I didn't have a loss this week, but hey... I still weigh less than what it says on my driver's license... that's gotta count for something!

This week (recap):
1. Put the checkbook and debit card away (again!).
2. Buy the materials for doing the envelope (cash only) system.
3. Get cash out of the bank and actually do the envelopes!
4. Look up menu planning and plan a menu.
5. Look up ways of doing Price Books. Pick one and try it!
6. Clean off, adjust, and use the exercise bike at least one time! (Gotta start somewhere)
7. Lose some weight, or as Pianomomof3 says, "Remove some weight" (Since anything we "lose", we might hope to find again and I for one surely do not want to "find" any of this excess weight ever again!!)
I know that is more than my usual number of goals, and some of you that love me may warn against setting so many goals for the week, but actually, I just broke them down into smaller steps, which makes it easier for me to accomplish more. Besides, it's Spring Break and I always like to plan lots of things to do over Spring Break. It's kinda like the tax return... spent several times over in several different ways before it even gets here!