| Category | Budget |
| food | $200.00 |
| housing | $450.00 |
| entertainment | $150.00 |
| transport | $100.00 |
| clothing | $15.00 |
| travel | $0.00 |
| health | $20.00 |
| beauty | $0.00 |
| education | $0.00 |
| misc | $65.00 |
| total | $1,000.00 |
With my May 31st pay check, I accomplished my goal of accumulating $10,000 to be transferred into a one year CD. Unfortunately, I was traveling and didn’t really have time to deal with it at that moment. When I got back the next week and called the bank to close the account, I was informed that it would take 3-5 business days to receive the check. Yesterday I got the check and placed it in my checking account for the short term so that I can open my CD with one nice $10,000 check and start looking for a new savings or money market account. As soon as the check clears, I’m going to find the highest yield 1-year CD I can find.
In the meantime, with my short term goal completed, I need to start thinking about another short term goal. I have some major travel scheduled for the end of this month and need to take another (expensive) class, probably in August, meaning my rate of saving is going to take a hit for a little while. Perhaps a good financial goal would be saving $750 a month from now through December, but I’ll have to think about that.
In an effort to control how much money I make, I do have a couple of career goals for the short term. Over the next month I plan to determine where my next assignment will be. The current front runners are Manchester, NH and Tepotzotlán, Mexico. I think I could be happy either place, so for now, I’m just trying to manage the process and see whether Mexico even is a viable option. In addition to managing my next assignment, I also have the goal to update my résumé, compile a list of dream companies and send an e-mail to career services at my future school to see if I might use them to obtain an internship next summer. Hopefully I’ll get this done this week, but I definitely need to get it done before my mini-vacation.
I don’t earn a lot of money, but considering the cost of living where I am, I can certainly save. My short-term goal is to open a one-year CD in August with a minimum deposit of $10,000. This is a fairly attainable goal, given that I already have $4,000 in savings and another $3,000 in my checking waiting to be transferred to savings. If I’m really optimistic, I might be able to open it by June 1st, but I would rather play it safe with my first goal. My longer term goal is to have at least $20,000 by the end of May 2008, when I plan on quitting my current job.
In addition to the monetary goals, I'm also working on keeping track of my spending and setting a budget. I've managed to do this pretty well for the last few months, so I just need to keep it up and pare back the categories, like food, where most of the spending happens. I should raise my credit score, but it will have to wait until I've had my current credit card for a few more months. Lastly, I'm going to educate myself on debt, savings and finance. I'm going to have to go into debt, but I can at least be smart about it.
