My personal finanace goal for 2007 is to live entirely off my stipend, including paying $150 / month into my IRA. All other earnings, namely odd jobs, are to go into my high yield savings account.

After taxes, my stipend is $1338 / month.

The January expenses looked something like this:

$800 joint expenses *
$126.89 Quarterly school loan interest
$27.50 Charity
$11.33 Clothing
$40 Dining out
$10 Entertainment
$ 8 Groceries **
$46.19 Household **
$18 Medical
$9.95 Personal Care
$150 IRA contribution
--------------------------
January Expenses $1247.86

* Mr. Bean and I make the same amount of $$, so we transfer equal amounts into our joint checking account to pay joint expenses. Joint expenses include rent, groceries, car payment and car insurance, cable, meals out together, etc. He tracks the specifics of these expenses in Quicken.

** Typically these are joint expenses, but for various reasons I made some purchases with my own cash or credit card.


This leaves a + $90.14 surplus. Phew! It won’t be easy, but I think I can do this!

Aside from this surplus, I was able to put $842.49 in savings from my Personal Chef gig, babysitting, and eBay / Half sales.

I need to continue to think ahead and plan for large expenses that might “creep” up, like a weekend getaway we’re taking in March. I want to make sure that my surplus money can cover such expenses and that I don’t use the “odd job” money I’ve put in savings.

February already has been a little spendy. I’ve contemplated doing a budget, but I think I’m just going to wing it for a few more months and see how things go. I tried a budget back in December. I can see how they can be very helpful to people like myself who don’t have a large window of error in their spending, but I had trouble getting the categories right. Maybe after a few more months of this I’ll have it down better.

Anyway, I’m feeling positive.