a. Who you are - Aileen, wife to hubby, part time stepmom to 11 year old girl and 16 year old boy.
b. Where you are going (your financial goals) - long term: be debt free by this time next year (medical bills, one cc and one car payment), continue building up savings/retirement cushion. short term: work on reducing grocery budget and unnecessary spends.
c. How you plan to get there - get an online budget tracker such as Quicken because what I'm doing now is NOT doing the trick.
Legend:
Necessary spend
: Unnecessary spend
No spend
August
1.: um, got off on the wrong foot, bought a starbucks frappacino. gas, grocery store (getting better at trying to eliminate frivolous spending here), petsmart (fish to replace some we lost).
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6. took a day off work to go to water park with daughter and grandbabies but my power went out and i didn't want to leave kitty alone in the 100 degree heat! a/c came back on before it got too unbearable but timing wasn't right anymore so i just went to dd's house and visited with her there. didn't spend any money!
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8. necessary spends - grocery store, gas, walgreen's (bought some chocolate. isn't this a necessary spend, though? 
) goodwill (crossword puzzles for dh i consider necessary cuz at least he'll do them while watching tv; also a couple of little juice glasses which are hard to find anymore), wine store (we buy the boxes which are cheaper), best buy (wireless printer for the laptop).
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11.: i KNEW i shouldn't have gone out to lunch with my coworker. she went to bath & body works (i knew this before hand) and of course i HAD to buy something there. grrr. and then bought lunch at chickfila when i had brought a perfectly good lunch of leftovers. 
12.: okay, both necessary and unnecessary cuz i guess i could look at it both ways. tomorrow is a coworker's baby shower for her preemie who is still in the hospital. i gave $20 toward a gift for the baby and volunteered to bring the drinks for the shower which i spent about $8 on for two canisters of kroger brand powdered sweet tea.
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b. Where you are going (your financial goals) - long term: be debt free by this time next year (medical bills, one cc and one car payment), continue building up savings/retirement cushion. short term: work on reducing grocery budget and unnecessary spends.
c. How you plan to get there - get an online budget tracker such as Quicken because what I'm doing now is NOT doing the trick.
Legend:
Necessary spend: Unnecessary spend No spendAugust
1.
: um, got off on the wrong foot, bought a starbucks frappacino. gas, grocery store (getting better at trying to eliminate frivolous spending here), petsmart (fish to replace some we lost).2.
3.
4.
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6.
took a day off work to go to water park with daughter and grandbabies but my power went out and i didn't want to leave kitty alone in the 100 degree heat! a/c came back on before it got too unbearable but timing wasn't right anymore so i just went to dd's house and visited with her there. didn't spend any money!7.
8.
necessary spends - grocery store, gas, walgreen's (bought some chocolate. isn't this a necessary spend, though? ) goodwill (crossword puzzles for dh i consider necessary cuz at least he'll do them while watching tv; also a couple of little juice glasses which are hard to find anymore), wine store (we buy the boxes which are cheaper), best buy (wireless printer for the laptop).9.
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11.
: i KNEW i shouldn't have gone out to lunch with my coworker. she went to bath & body works (i knew this before hand) and of course i HAD to buy something there. grrr. and then bought lunch at chickfila when i had brought a perfectly good lunch of leftovers. 12.
: okay, both necessary and unnecessary cuz i guess i could look at it both ways. tomorrow is a coworker's baby shower for her preemie who is still in the hospital. i gave $20 toward a gift for the baby and volunteered to bring the drinks for the shower which i spent about $8 on for two canisters of kroger brand powdered sweet tea.13.
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to your coworker and 
: that her baby gets out of the hospital soon.
:
$5 cake.
An embarassing side effect of having a diaper-buying addiction.
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