February Goals
Our main goals for the month as a couple are to create a budget and to pay off as much debt as possible, but we also set some personal goals for the month.
Lindsey:
1. Read at least 5 books. Listening to audio books during my hour roundtrip counts as reading, so even though this month will be super busy with grading student essays, this should be doable.
2. Walk at least 100 miles. I wear a pedometer and track my walking everyday. I’ve averaged over 4 miles the past few days. If I keep this up, I can definitely meet this goal.
3. Lose at least 2 pounds.
4. Make extra food at least once a week to put an extra meal in the freezer. I met that for this week already when we made a huge batch of mini pizza meatloaves. It was our supper last night, Josh’s lunch today, and we have 5 servings left in the freezer.
5. Generate at least $100 of extra income (which can come from selling stuff or extra work). This is going to have to be actually $170 because I want $100 profit, and I’m budgeting this month for the breakfast I provide all 90 of my students the morning of our big state standardized test the first week of March. Last year I fed 93 kids on $100, and they were well fed. They were still full at lunch. This year I think I can do even better and spend even less. My budget is $70.
6. Write at least 10 ehow articles.
Josh:
1. Be all caught up on grading
2. Do 10 mystery shops (he’s already done 2 for the month and has some really good restaurant ones lined up–2 at Buffalo Wild Wings and 1 at Applebees. I’m excited!)
3. Listen to 2 audio books
4. Lose 9 pounds
5. Sell at least 10 things and earn a minimum of $70
6. Figure out what he’s doing this summer and fall
7. Not buy more than 3 fountain pops (his very favorite)
8. Have 1 day a week of not yelling at Mauer (one of our dogs; he’s the crazy neurotic one, but we I love him anyway)
9. Apply for at least 3 full-time jobs
January’s Successes
We’ve said many times that we need to get our acts together, start being more responsible, etc., but in January we finally made a real commitment to it. We still have a long way to go, but we’re off to a good start. Here’s what we accomplished:
1. We established our emergency savings account of $1000.
2. We paid a decent chunk toward our credit card bill. We plan on being credit card debt free by our first anniversary on July 3. It will hopefully be sooner, but that’s our deadline.
3. We started decluttering. We both have hoarding tendencies we need to keep in check, and we started getting rid of stuff (though we still have a lot more to get rid of). The stuff is either getting sold, being given away, or going in the garbage.
4. I got free stuff! I love free stuff. This month I got several samples of things, but, more exciting, I got several non-sample items: 1 free pair of Lee jeans, 1 free pair of Champion workout pants (now I just need to work out), Tide Swash (which I tried for the first time this morning and was amazed at the results), and a full bottle of Suave Rosemary Mint shampoo and conditioner (a much cheaper version of Aveda’s expensive stuff). I also won 2 free tickets to Valentine’s Day.
5. We made extra money selling stuff! We got $49.92 selling video games on Half.com and $150 selling stuff on Craigslist.
6. We got about $45 worth of free food. Most of it was from Arby’s (see my eHow article on how to get free food from Arby’s), but we also got free fresco tacos from Taco Bell, a free half gallon of chocolate milk thanks to a coupon I got from the Great Gallon Give, and we earned enough points at QDoba to get Josh’s chicken quesadilla free.
7. I made my nerdy spreadsheet to track my free stuff and extra income.
Great deal at Office Depot!
In years past, Josh has paid our taxes using the free edition of Turbo Tax, but this year we decided to purchase Turbo Tax Deluxe to try to help us find as many deductions as possible. We’ve been looking in the Sunday ads and had seen several offers for a gift card or money back with purchase, which looked tempting, but we just didn’t get around to going to the store to actually purchase it.
I’m glad we didn’t! Office Depot is having a great deal this week. Buy the Turbo Tax software for $50, get Quicken Starter Edition for free, a free dvd (he chose House Bunny because he knew my sister and brother-in-law like the movie (Happy Birthday!), and they also have up to $1100 worth of free software that you can get. Josh got Defender Pro, which is an anti-virus software we’ll use when our current subscription is over, and Digital TV for PC2 (we’re considering getting rid of satelite and streaming Netflix and other programs through Josh’s XBOX 360 in the living room and a roku in the bedroom and also watching on my desktop). The only catch to all of the free software is it’s all rebates, so if you’re not willing to fill out the paperwork, it’s really not a good deal for you. We’re willing though, so we’ll gladly take our free stuff! 
We spent $181.85. Of that, $11.90 was tax, the Turbo Tax program was $49.99, and the rest will be refunded with rebates. Josh also signed up for the Office Depot rewards card, which means we’ll be getting 10% in a rebate from them. So for a about $45, we got a lot of stuff! I just hope we’re able to save that much or more on taxes with the Deluxe Edition!
