Day	Amount	Place	Category
Monday	$43.00	safeway	groceries
Tuesday	$38.00	dentist	medical
	$18.00	costuming	allowance
	$16.50	WoW	allowance
Wednesday	$15.00	domain reg	allowance
	$71.50	ART	eating out
Friday	$7.50	taco bell	eating out
	$94.00	CostCo	groceries
	$12.50	BevMo	groceries
	$22.00	safeway	groceries
	$4.00	battery	groceries
	$14.00	target	allowance
Saturday	$985.00	sears/fridge	house
Sunday	$52.00	gas	car
	$71.50	Monsoon	eating out

This looks worse than it is. We bought a new refrigerator on Saturday. Money for that will come out of our house fund. We were thrilled with the deal we got- last year’s model of a 4 door (French door fridge/ two drawer freezer), black refrigerator for under $1,000. This year’s models online were all around $2,400. There was a challenge getting it in the house, but luckily, we had people moving in across the street, and their movers came over and helped us get the fridge in the house.

That was the highlight of my week. Layoff notices went out at work on Thursday, and I had to give one. Also my boss was laid off, and with a second round to come, I give myself a 50/50 chance of still having a job come January. (I will hopefully know more tomorrow after meeting with our VP.)

It is also Seattle Restaurant Week, where high end restaurants offer a limited 3 course menu for $28/person. C and I went out on Wednesday and are going out again with friends tonight.

 

 

We are over half way through 2012. I revised some of my goals because life took some turns I wasn’t quite planning on when I came up with them.

1)      Be paid for publishing one piece of fiction

Submissions so far: 4

Responses: 1 rejection 1 acceptance, 2 pending

The anthology I had a piece accepted to is now available to buy on Amazon. It’s called Conquest Through Determination.

2)      Pay All Adoption Expenses in Cash & Still Pay for C’s College Out of Pocket

We’re doing good here. This was helped tremendously by getting 3x as much in life insurance from the MIL than expected. Our savings is still growing, and we’re in really good shape.

For those who have been looking for an update, we’re waiting to get some paperwork back from the state of Nevada, where we all used to live. I am hopeful that we will have all paperwork submitted and just be waiting on official confirmation of the foster license by the end of the month.

3)      Attend FinCon12. Pay for the trip with money from allowance/side projects saved/earned BEFORE the conference starts. Goal: $600

FinCon was awesome. Not all of the money came from allowance/side projects, but it was still easily affordable, so I’m calling this a win.

4)      Become a member of Yakezie (6 month anniversary is Jan 21)

Last week I linked to Paula’s post over on Afford Anything about goals. I am not certain this is still the right goal for me to be going after. I love what the Yakezie network stands for, but I don’t care that much about getting my Alexa under 200k. It’s pretty stable around the 275k mark. Maybe I can convince Sam to create a Friend of Yakezie badge/category, for those of us who don’t feel like being permanent challengers.

Anyway, it’s something I’m pondering.

Current ranking: 265,222

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $29.82 at the end of September, with $0.20 made so far this month. (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100.)

Amazon earnings: $0.00

One of the things that FinCon really brought home for me is that I’m not actually in this for the money. For now, I’m leaving the AdSense blocks up, but they’re getting moved further down the page. I’ll keep tracking, but making money isn’t why I blog.

6)      Be healthier

I did not walk on Tuesday at all because of dentist appointments. I walked only once on Thursday and Friday. I did ride the exercise bike three times. I went over calories on Wed, Sat, and will again today.