Day	Amount	Place	Category
Monday	$38.00	FinCon	Allowance
	$2,233.00	Car Service	Car
	$45.50	CostCo	Groceries
	$4.75	Safeway	Groceries
Tuesday	$100.00	Charity	Misc
Wednesday	$25.00	FinCon	Allowance
Thursday	$33.45	Outback	Eating Out
	$6.50	Half Price Books	Allowance
Saturday	$71.00	CostCo	Groceries

Well, if you ignore the ridiculous amount we spent on the 80k miles service on our car, spending this week wasn’t bad at all. And we do plan for the car costs. We knew what this would be going in because it wasn’t just a service but also replacing the timing belt and a transmission service, as well. And considering our car only gets its oil changed every 10k miles, which right now takes us about a year to drive, this isn’t a huge cost. When we had our Saturn and commuted 100 miles every week day- then we spent a ton of money on the car service.

Tuesday I donated $50 at Watsi.org, and C and I both donated to a couple political causes we believe in.

FinCon is almost here! I spent money reserving my round trip travel to and from the airport and also ordering myself new business cards. I should have them Tuesday, and I’m pretty darn excited- except that I forgot to put my twitter handle on them. Oh well, I can hand write that on.

We’ve been putting so much stuff on the credit card (and paying it off before any interest is charged) that we currently have enough points for a $100 Amazon card, but we’re not getting one just yet. The points aren’t expiring anytime soon or anything, so we’ll hold on to them in case I need to travel again.

 

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: 2

Responses: 1 rejection 1 acceptance

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

Make money publishing my next art/fiction book

This is on hold for now. However, I did have a chance to talk with the artist I want to work with on Friday, and her life has settled down, so there’s a good chance we can start work on this sometime in June. (When my life settles down a

bit.)

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

THIS IS LESS THAN A WEEK AWAY!! I am so excited.

Conference attendance paid for. Tickets paid for. The only things left are food and hotel. I need to bring cash for the hotel part to hand over to the most awesome roommate ever- Jana from Daily Money Shot. We’ve been online friends for two years now and I cannot wait to meet her in person. I probably won’t have enough in allowance to cover all of it, but it won’t be far off, and the biggest expenses are already taken care of.

 

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

I did not make Epsilon class. My Alexa ranking had gone too high. I think there will be one more class this year, so we’ll see if I can get my numbers back down to under 200k. I need to join the teams again, as that helps tremendously. And now that we’re done with all the house stuff for the adoption, I should have more time to participate.

Current ranking: 282,002

It’s started going back down!

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $28.83 at the end of August, with $0.00 made so far this month. (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100.)

6)      Be healthier

Got in my two walks a day every day this week. And the only day I went over my calorie limit was Thursday, when C and I went out for our anniversary dinner. Cheese fries from the Outback are tasty, but just ½ of a ½ order takes up about 1/3 of my daily limit.

Still, on Wednesday, I attended a retirement pot luck and did very well not having some of everything. Instead, I took a little of the things I wanted most and then ate my salad.

Twice this week, I’ve been able to eat my salad with cherry tomatoes picked from my plant. They are SOOOO yummy.

This Sunday marks 1full month since I started the diet. The new jeans I bought not so long ago? I got two different styles, and one style, I can pull off without unbuttoning them. I haven’t lost a ton of weight, but I am starting to notice what I have lost in the way these jeans and my work pants are fitting. That’s pretty nice.

I’m also planning on trying a NIA class in two weeks with my friend who wants to be a NIA instructor.

Plus, in taking the 3.5 year old we were babysitting to the park this weekend, we realized that there are free tennis courts only a few minutes from our house. C and I might look into getting ourselves some rackets and playing a little bit of tennis. We’ll have to see.