Zero Money to Hero Money

Well my trip down south with my girlfriend ended up costing an extra $200 more than I had planned, not that bad, but unexpected, I guess I should have assumed I would spend that much.  I just didn’t expect to be spending so much at an all inclusive resort, then again my new found taste for cigars didn’t help.

On top of that when I got back I made the decision to lease some new camera equipment, I figured with my extra income being close to $10,000 a year, if not more I could justify this.  So for the next 3 years I’ll be leasing a new body, another lens and some other extras for $135 a month.  I created a seperate chequings account for my “business” where my extra income will go in, so that I can build up a nice little nest egg to pay incase I don’t make any money for that month.  After the 3 years I can purchase the equipment for $10 and own it, so it’s not that bad.

Speaking of extra income, this month / next month are going to be hot.  I think I’ve made about $1000 so far this month, and have over $2000 worth of jobs lined up for this week, and the following month.  The house savings are going well as well.

Car maintenance, EFF! I can’t wait till my office moves down the street from my house, I’m really contemplating selling my car and just not owning one for a year to see how it goes.  I have to bring my car in to get brakes changed.. $400 nuts.

Looking forward to caclulating my networth next week, I think June was a pretty good month despite the set backs.  I got a bonus at work for close to $600, but that’s paying for my car repair and my extra money spent down south.

Well I got back from my golf trip, and it was a little bit more than the $350 that I had budgetted.  I used about $80 of my spending money for the week and took $270 from some recent side income that I had made to pay for the rest.  The total ended up being closer to $450 (it was actually $440) so I took $90 out of my budget for this upcoming week, and will try to make do with about $30 until next Friday, in case I get desperate, I had another cheque for $100 from a webhosting referral but I would rather put that money into my house savings.  The trip cost extra because when we arrived, we decided we wanted to play a round of golf that day, the 2nd day instead of playing just 2 rounds, we ended up playing 3, which cost an additional $20 (unlimited golf but we had to pay for carts).  I think overall I did pretty good, spoiled myself a little too much, but that’s alright.

A week from Saturday I leave for Cuba which should be awesome, I have a lot of contract work to finish up before then.  On a plus note I was accepted to 2 photography/art shows, one in Toronto called Enlightened which will run from July 1st-July 30th, and a one night only show called The Cheaper Show in Vancouver.  Neither of them will cost me any money to show, for the Toronto one they are printing for us (on lightboxes) and handling the sales of prints, for Vancouver I am sending them 2 prints I already had done, at no cost as they are paying the shipping via FedEx.  It would be great to sell some prints at both, I could really use the extra income towards my goal of $10,000 for the year.

Wow what a relief, a bit of a tight one, but I made it through the long weekend, with enough money left over for a movie tomorrow night, and probably $10 to just put in savings by Friday.  I planned it fairly well, 2 rounds of golf meant taking $28 out of my budget, plus the golf balls, another $20.  I ended up having a 2nd round and playing 36 holes today, but we somehow managed to convince the course to let us play again for free, and only charge us half price for the Cart, so our greens fees went from the regular $48 with a cart, to $15 each.  Not too shabby.. it was snowing when we arrived for our first 18 so I guess they felt kind of bad.

I ended up spending my extra money where I thought I would, and where I didn’t want to.  Coffees for all the guys in the morning before golf, breakfast at golf when we got there and it was snowing (in may??) and decided to wait it out, and a couple of beers at a concert that I went to on Saturday night with my girlfriend.  All in all, I think I made my $140 budget of fun money play out pretty well for a long weekend.   2 BBQ’s, 3 rounds of golf and a concert.

On top of my extra $600 from last week coming in this week in the form of cheque, I have that event on Sunday for roughly $400, as well as another short 3-4 hour web development contract which means an additional $260 to the bank.  Woohoo!

I’ve got my yearly golf trip that I haven’t saved for on June 2-3, and a trip to Cuba that’s already been paid for on June 14th for a week with my girlfriend.  So I plan on taking $275 from the cheque this week for the golf trip, and putting the rest into the LOC and then taking $200 from the $400 for the trip to Cuba, and banking the other $200 + $260 back into the LOC.   That means an extra $750+ into the LOC, that should really help out my May goals, not to mention my 2008 10k+ additional income goal is appearing even more attainable than ever.