Day	Amount	Place	Category
Monday	$4.00	safeway	groceries
Tuesday	$8.00	lunch	allowance
	$140.25	christmas shopping	allowance
Wednesday	$19.37	CostCo	groceries
	$6.50	parking	car
	$19.50	tax & tip	eating out
Thursday	$55.00	christmas gifts	allowance
Friday	$77.00	saffron	eating out
Saturday	$39.25	christmas gifts	allowance
	$16.25	trading post	groceries
	$8.00	trader joes	groceries
	$23.75	CostCo	groceries
Sunday	$39.50	safeway	groceries

It was a busy week. Besides shopping for Christmas at home, I had the Christmas party at work to shop for. And then there was my birthday dinner on Friday. Overall, it was a very good week, and I’m perfectly happy with the amount of money spent.

The Pentatonix concert on Wednesday was wonderful. I’m not really sure what more you need to know.

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 (will know Christmas week)

I have one more that I’m planning on getting submitted this month, I just need someone to give it a final read through first.

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.

The background check was sent back by the state of Nevada at the beginning of November, but no one connected it to our application. It wasn’t until I did some digging two weeks ago that Washington realized they had it. And now they’re saying they need some more paperwork. I wish they could have told us that from the beginning since it’s not like we didn’t tell them exactly what the background check would find. I now figure we’ll be lucky to have our license by the end of the year January.

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: 249,447

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $30.56 at the end of November, with $0.33 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 week has not been good on the eating or exercising front. And I’m okay with that. There are just going to be some times that I want to enjoy myself and not worry about calories. I’m pretty certain I’m still eating less than I otherwise would, so I’m calling it a win.