Monthly Recap: March is for Money

This month was full of fun, stress and lots of activities. The first two weeks were filled with back-to-back activities with my grandma, my grandparents, Casey’s brother and my friend Claire. We played lots of golf, Kubb, and ate lots of good food. The third week was lots of packing and moving our stuff and selves across the country. We drove over 2,900 miles throughout five days to go from Palm Springs to Richmond, VA. But we made it! Then the last two weeks, we were getting stuff for the apartment and trying to get as settled as we can.

With everything that was going on, we didn’t get too much done in the realm of our monthly challenge. We kept up with our meditation and nightly recaps, but the budgeting was put on the back burner. Not a bad thing, just couldn’t keep up with the craziness of our schedules.

As a reminder, each week we each put $5 to the Fancy Fund and for every challenge we fall short on, we will have to add a dollar and add $2 for each repeat offense. So at the end of January, our Fancy Fund total is at $216.

Let me break down the rules for this month:

The book we read (or tried to read) this month was The Bogelheads’ Guide to Investing by Mel Lindauer, Michael LeBoeuf, and Taylor Larimore. So suffice to say that we didn’t have much time to read, but even as I sat down to read this book, I could quickly tell that it wasn’t going to align with my financial goals at this moment. I am still trying to figure out my job situation and need to save money and don’t really have the means to start investing right now. We ordered another book related to money that will hopefully pair better with our financial goals right now: I Will Teach You to Be Rich, Second Edition: No Guilt. No Excuses. No BS. Just a 6-Week Program That Works by Sethi, Ramit.

Daily Challenges:

Complete a daily meditation and engage in nightly recaps with one another.

— Like I said above, we did a great job with keeping up with the daily challenges. We really enjoyed getting to recap our days and talk about what was our favorite part and our biggest struggles and how we could solve them. Daily meditation was a great way to calm the mind and focus on what’s ahead.

Weekly Challenges:

Outline different aspects of our budget each week: overall budget, investing strategy, overall net worth and saving strategies.

— So we loosely created a budget. We at least created an outline where we can fill in the gaps once we have a better grasp on the monthly bills and income. We kind of faced the fact that this was going to be one of our biggest struggles just because we had no idea what our spending was going to look like this month, and we didn’t know what all of our new bills and paychecks would look like either.

Monthly Challenges:

Create a budget

— Again, we kind of did this. And we are going to revisit this in a few months once we have a better grasp on what everything will look like.

Save money

— Weirdly enough, with checks and tips rolling in, Casey actually made money. Though once his credit card bill goes through, he’ll lose $300, but considering that we moved, that’s amazing. I did lose quite a bit of money, but granted, I haven’t really been working, so I’m really hitting the ground running on the job front next month.

Get my official LLC set up with bank account for freelancing

— I did do this, so progress is being made!

Well we weren’t swimming in money this month, but we didn’t drop into a debt hole either, so I’d consider this month a wash. Nothing great, but nothing terrible either. April, here we come!