Day	Amount	Place	Category
Tuesday	$19.81	safeway	Groceries
Wednesday	$52.00	safeway	Groceries
Friday	$39.50	costco	Groceries

So I have to say, I was happily surprised when putting together this week’s spending report. I felt like we were spending more because I was at the grocery store last Sunday, and again on Tuesday and Wednesday, but aside from grocery shopping, we didn’t actually spend any money this week. The trip Wednesday was also not because we forgot anything, but because C decided he wanted to make a beef barley stew this weekend and we needed barley, beef, and some veggies for his homemade stock. Friday we went to CostCo for our weekly shopping. We were surprised then that it came out to less than $40, but we won’t complain.

Based on our budget review and just the way life has been lately, we’ve decided to try and do our grocery shopping on weekdays to help keep our weekends free-er. In addition, we’re going to try to get back to every other week CostCo shopping.

That’s pretty much all that’s exciting

 

 

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.

There submission count should be up next week. There are a couple places I plan to submit to this week.

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)

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: 280,250

Still going up.

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $29.82 at the end of September, with $0.07 made so far this month. (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100.)

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.

However, one of the reasons I do blog is to get my name out there as an author and editor, to share the work of my friends, and also to let people know about books, games, etc. that I love. In that vein, you’ll notice that I now have an Amazon affiliate store. If you want to know which authors I read or which games I pay, that’s a good place to start. There’s nothing in there that I haven’t (or wouldn’t) spend my money on.

6)      Be healthier

I walked twice every day but Friday, though on Thursday, I missed a walk at work. So I came home and took Larry for a walk.

So far this year, C has made 4 soups- roasted red pepper, chicken corn chowder, sausage & tortellini, and now beef barley. The soups are yummy, filling, and really low calories.

C has decided to start tracking his calories, too, and is looking to lose about 30lbs by our anniversary next year. He’s been super supportive already, but this will also help, as we both have goals to meet.