Financial Shape in 2008

Over at Crystal's blog, she does a monthly checkup of her family's financial shape, and she encourages others to join in.

I haven't done so yet this year, but she specifically said in this post:

Whether or not you posted financial goals for 2008, please take a moment to post about your financial successes and failures in April and the areas you hope to improve in May.

So, that's what I'm doing!

Micah and I have a pretty set budget every month.

Some of these things go into individual envelopes, some of them don't. Some we keep track of on a weekly basis, some on a bi-monthly basis, and some monthly. It just depends on what has worked best for us in the past for each individual category.

We're never exactly sure what Micah's pay will be because of overtime, so our rule of thumb is to tithe on whatever he gets, subtract the budgeted total from the remainder, and then the rest goes in to savings to pay off our student loans.

The student loans are the goal we're working towards right now. I feel like it's going well (we're paying off about $1000 each month), and hopefully will go even faster if I get one of the jobs I applied for this week!

Hehe...I'm not sure if I've mentioned on here or not, that I have a paper chain for each 100 dollars of student debt we have! It's quite the long chain, but it's really fun to take off 10 links every month!

AND! As an added bonus, I bet we will be able to cut our gas budget way down now that I'm not driving to school and back 4 times a week!

That's all I have. No huge amount of progress, but it's coming along!