Friday Financial Update #4: A Day Late, hopefully not a Dollar Short

Every week in 2012, I hope to have a financial recap of the week so that I can try to keep our variable spending under control and try to get as much money toward savings and debt repayment as possible. Today is the Friday Financial Update #4.

First of all this is a day late (thus the title)...I have been really bad this week about NOT keeping close tabs on financial stuff, partly because I have been tired from being pregnant, trying to adjust to doing some work from home and just being lazy I think. I just hope that I am not a dollar short, but I think that I already know that I am more than that on our variable spending due to my low paycheck.

These are the figures for the week:

1/20--+ 95.61 Pay from school
       -- -40.54 Walmart
1/21-- NO SPEND
1/22-- -29.52 Aldi
           - 41.16 Kroger
1/23-- NO SPEND
1/24-- NO SPEND
1/25-- + 16.00 payment from Trendsource
           - .75 Wendys
           - 6.85 Wendys
1/26-- - 4.48 McDonalds
           - 1.13 Taco Bell
------------------------
Ending balance for variable spending: $3.45 (to last until next payday which is the 5th of Feb) YIKES!!!!

So there you have it. The positive is that there were 3 NO SPEND days in there. The negatives are 1: that we spent ate fast food too many times. Need to go back to only eating out once a week or less. The sad part is that there were leftovers in the fridge that we could have eaten. :(  And negative #2 is that we are at only $3.45 left in variable spending until I get paid in Feb. I knew that was going to happen because my last pay was VERY low due to Christmas break. I will have to borrow from the fixed expenses (Bill's paycheck) to buy groceries for next week. But that is okay, it just means less will go to snowflake toward debt. That happens sometimes. Better than putting food on the credit card!

Speaking of food and groceries, I am going to begin an experiment this coming week. I usually shop at 3 stores: Aldi, Kroger and Walmart. Well I just figured out that our Walmart price matches everyone so I think that I am going to try to just do my shopping there and see if I can get our grocery spending even down further. Plus that will help me not be so tired after doing our grocery shopping.

So for this week my totals are:

No Spend Days this week : 3 days
No Spend Days this year (goal is 186 days in 2012): 11
Ending balance as of 1/19 for variable spending: $3.45

How are you doing on your financial goals this week? Let me know!