In The Black

Went out for dinner tonight with a couple of friends. It was really nice to get together and chat after the holidays. We got to talking about finances and saving money etc. and it made me want to try to get a handle on my money situation.

I have always been able to save. I was borderline unemployed for a while in my early twenties and still managed to keep on saving. I cannot deny that I benefitted from generous family members who let me live with them at little to no cost, as well as no debt from college due to the magnanimity of this blog's namesake. So I had a clean slate. That being said, I was never a big spender anyway. My mother might argue that I am a bit tight-fisted with my money (and she wouldn't be far off the mark)

Partly because I love making a good spreadsheet, and mostly because I think this is something I really need to be better about, I have made a belated New Year's resolution: Get my $h!t together, financially speaking. This is how I plan to do that:

Step 1: Create a totally awesome spreadsheet showing monthly expenses for 2011

CHECK

Step 2: Add information to the spreadsheet for December 2010 to get things started and see where I am right now

CHECK

Step 3: Give yourself a budget for non-essentials

Work in progress

Step 4: Save more money each month until you are regularly saving at least $500/month of your income.

Pretty far off

So far so good. My spreadsheet is totally awesome, I have December's numbers in (that was really easy because I could actually just copy and paste my credit and debit card transactions directly into the spreadsheet). There was some good news, too. At the end of December, I was just over $300 in the black (I think that's the right expression) for the month. Granted, I was home in Erie for a good week of that so most of my extra expenses were paid, but that should be offset by Christmas shopping, right?