Day	Amount	Place	Category
Monday	$2.00	Starbucks	Allowance
	$36.00	Half Price Books	Allowance
Tuesday	$16.00	Qdoba	Eating Out
	$5.00	Parking	Car
Thursday	$10.00	Dentist	Medical
Friday	$23.00	Zoopa	Eating Out
	$32.00	Hockey Tickets	Allowance
	$5.50	Office Depot	Allowance
Saturday	$4.00	Parking	Car
	$52.00	Gas	Car
	$5.00	Fiction in 50	Allowance

 

Spending this week ran about $190, without us doing our grocery shopping.

I actually consider this week’s spending to be on the win side- we only ate out twice. You might think that’s a lot, but it was a really awful week, which often leads to us not having the energy to cook, and thus eating out.

The reason it was so awful? A big part was the yo-yo effect of what happened with my MIL. On Christmas Eve, she was walking 150ft, and a week away from being released from the care facility to go home. On New Year’s Eve, she was in the ICU on a breathing tube, and we weren’t certain if she was going to live. (And the doctors weren’t hopeful.) Amazingly, she pulled through, and as of tomorrow should be out of the hospital and back in a rehab facility. We need to have a serious talk with them about what we consider vital for him to go home (vs what they may think), because we need to have her out of there ASAP. It is not the fault of the facility, but if she has to stay in one much longer, it WILL kill her. And C just isn’t quite ready for that.

In addition to the yo-yo life, I had a difficult situation at work, that put me in a place I never wanted to be in as a manager. It left me drained pretty much all week, with little emotional energy to deal with anything. At the same time, I needed to be supportive of C, because if what was happening with his mom was hard on me, well…

 

So that’s where we are, and why I’m proud of the fact that we only grabbed two meals on the run. One on Tuesday on the way to the hospital, and then one on Friday night to just decompress.

 

As I wrote in last week’s post, I have six goals for 2012. As part of the Sunday evening posts, I am going to start tracking those goals, kind of like I do for spending, in order to hold myself accountable.

1)      Be paid for publishing one piece of fiction

Submissions so far: 1

Responses: expected by Feb 14

2)      Make money publishing my next art/fiction book

The artist I intend to work with starts a real day job tomorrow. The job has her working very close to my house, and gives her a regular schedule for the first time in years. Need to give her one week to adapt, but hope to meet with her next week.

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

Current Allowance balance: ($53.00)

Gift Cards: $115

Total: $62

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

Alexa ranking: 228,358

Does Sam know who I am: I think yes

Yakezie Member References: (I think 2, but I haven’t focused on this yet)

Yakezie Challenger References: (At least 1, but again, this isn’t where my focus has been)

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $17 (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100)

6)      Be healthier

C and I have a plan to start eating more veggies, and have at least one protein-less meal a week.

Starting tomorrow, I am going to track my calories (as best I can) for the week to see how much I’m actually eating. I don’t think my diet is that bad, but it’s like thinking you don’t have a spending problem when you haven’t been tracking your spending. You can’t know for sure if you don’t have the actual numbers. So numbers it is.

I walked Tuesday, Saturday, and today (dog park/walking the dogs).