End of the Month Update--April

Here's my progress to date on my 2008 goals and other more recent objectives:

2008 Goals:

1. Increase earnings to $67,000.
2. Decrease debt to $21,000.
3. Increase e-fund to $3200.
4. Add $2500 to retirement fund.

Well, I'm glad I'm sitting down as I write this. In April I only invoiced $400.00, bringing my earnings for 2008 so far to $16,919.25 ($50,080.75 away from my goal for the year). I do have a full load of work on the calendar for May and I'm hoping it stays that way for a while.

I brought my debt total down to $29,164.67 (a reduction of $389.95 from last month and $8,164.67 away from my goal for the year). I'm still just paying the minimums for now.

I increased my e-fund to $1,082.05. Because I've decided to increase my e-fund target to $3800 (one month's expenses), I'm now $2,717.95 from that goal. I'm getting frustrated that I'm can't get this amount up faster, so I'm thinking about transferring money from my home improvement and vacation fund to the e-fund. This is more a psychological move than a practical one, but I'd really like to reach my e-fund goal so I can get back to snowballing my debt.

I didn't plan to add any more to my retirement fund but I ended up depositing $15.98 to my IRA from an unexpected fund disbursement. That leaves me $2459.02 away from my goal for the year.

I'm still fine-tuning the budget for May and it's a little depressing that for every category that I can find a way to save some money, that savings gets eaten up by rising costs in other categories like gas, and well, everything else. I've set a goal of $125 for my grocery budget, which feels a bit like adventures in Extreme Grocery Shopping, but I really hope I can pull it off. In addition, there seem to be lots of birthdays and, of course, Mother's Day to shop for this month. Yikes. I'm in trouble.

Overall, it feels like I'm making only the tiniest of baby steps towards my goals, but I guess I should be glad that at least I'm still going in the right direction.