Day	Amount	Place	Category
Wednesday	$43.00	nails	allowance
Friday	$10.50	grapes	allowance
Sunday	$33.00	trader joe’s	groceries
	$620.00	opera	allowance

We actually spent more than this this week, except that we got our annual cash back check from CostCo and that more than covered our CostCo run on Thursday, and we paid cash for our outing on Friday, which means it had already been counted in the budget.

You may notice that despite Thursday’s post, we bought tickets for the Ring Cycle this morning. There are a couple of reasons for that- four years is a long time to wait, but also, last year we switched homeowner’s insurance companies and ended up paying a premium on both policies. Our insurance broker found out about it earlier this week and will be getting us a refund on the policy we did not intend to have, which is just under $400. That  combined with the money my father and step-mother usually give us for Christmas covers pretty much the whole cost of our tickets. So we’re affording it without dipping into savings.

On the suck side, the driver’s side backdoor window on our wagon was smashed sometime late Friday night/early Saturday morning. It didn’t appear that they went through anything (not that we keep anything in that car worth stealing), so we’re guessing it was either random vandalism or an accident. But still, that means we have to deal with that expense. However, our broker is pretty certain our policy has a $0 deductible for glass work, so we’re covered there.

I felt like crud on Saturday (and not much better today) so decided against doing a round up and instead spent the day in bed watching movies curled up with my dogs. It was as good a day as it could have been.

 

I guess I should mention the Women’s Leadership Symposium was Friday, and it went fabulously. The speaker was wonderful, and the networking event I worked on went better than we’d hoped for. Very much a win, something I was proud to be part of, and worth the very long day. But it was a long day- work from 7am to 6pm, train from downtown got me home about 7:30pm. We had a quick dinner, changed into formal wear and headed right back out to see Skyfall at a 21 and over theater with friends. I wasn’t home and in bed until almost 1am. So really good day, but a long day where the puppies barely saw me.

 

We are almost done with 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: 2 rejections 1 acceptance, 1 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.

We still haven’t gotten the background check back from the state of NV. With the holiday season fast approaching. I now figure we’ll be lucky to have our license by the end of the year.

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)

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: 235,659

Going down slowly but surely

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $30.15 at the end of October, 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

This was not the best week for eating healthy. Most days I was under the minimum of 1400 calories and made it up by cookies, so I gained back a little.

However, when C and I got dressed up Friday night, we were both able to wear outfits that we hadn’t been able to wear in a while. In fact, I’d only worn my dress once before- in Feb 2005. It was very nice to be able to fit in it and look good.