Wednesday, July 2, 2008

All About Vacation

As promised, I'm back to detail my spending during my recent vacation. I'm proud to say that I did pretty well. In fact, I came in under budget. These are the particulars:

Budgeted spending cash: $300
Budgeted credit card: $200
Budgeted boarding for the family pet: $100

Actual spending money spent: $268.83
Actual boarding for the family pet: $132.50

The change in the amount for the kennel is attributed to the provision of Daisy's eye drops and for the grooming we had them do before we picked her up. But for five days, $132.50 isn't bad at all. And she was fat and happy when we saw her -- even said goodbye to one of the ladies at the vet -- so I know they took good care of her.

But what was especially helpful is that my father surprised me and my mom by giving us each some cash to spend during the trip. My take was $150 (hers was more, of course). I was thrilled! So of course this cushioned the budget.

Still, all but $80 I spent during vacation was with one of the credit cards. But never fear: I've already set up an extra payment to pay half of the amount and plan to pay the other half either at the end of this month or the beginning of next month.

Also on the horizon is my freelance check, which should be arriving in the next week or so. It's for $500. This will come in handy for my extravagant haircut that's coming up.

Finally, this month we get three paychecks. As I mentioned at the beginning of the year, typically we get two checks during the month. I use one for bills and general items; the other for rent. But two months out of the year, because of the way payday falls, we get the much-appreciated "extra" check. My goal is to deposit $1,000 at the end of the month into savings. Yeah, yeah, I know I could (or should) pay off the Little Beast with that extra check, but that's already on track to be paid off in a few short weeks.

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