April Numbers And May Goals

Get ready for them… here come an impressive set of numbers! We did really well in April, even with going over budget on our vacation spending.

Our expected income was €2941.01. Instead our income was €3731.19. Of that, €2941.01 came from salaries and benefits, and €730 came from savings that we had specifically designated for our vacation fund. The rest came from health care reimbursements.

We had budgeted to spend €3649.29, including €1000 on our vacation. Instead, we spent €3548.81. That’s right, we spent less money than we expected! More importantly, we also spent less money than we took in- €182.38 less!

I’ll pause while you all pick your chins up off the floor.

And here’s the really impressive part. Not only are we finishing up the month with positive bank balances (about €30), we have €450 that will get put into the emergency fund.

Never one to be completely satisfied (he is French, after all) my husband said “Great! Let’s see how well we can do next month! Now we’ll really see what we can do with our full paychecks.”

So, as of tomorrow the emergency fund will have €1000 in it. I will keep putting money into it, but consider anything above €1000 to be the car repayment fund. Remember, I’m not able to pay more than my automated payments on the car loan, but can only pay it off early in one lump sum. I’m expecting to be able to do that by August. I also aim to earn €150 of additional income in May: through Etsy, Ebay and snowflaking.

I have three My Small Cents goals. The first is to hit 200 subscribers by the end of the month. I’m currently hovering around 140, but I have a lot of great posts planned to keep people interested. The second goal is to increase my average daily page views to 150; I’m currently around 100. The third is the biggest and the best; I’ll be relooking the site (as the French say) and it will be encore plus beau (even nicer looking)! So stay tuned, or better yet, subscribed!