Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

I don’t have little pictures of Excel to show you all the details of my balance sheet. I’m lazy and I hate doctoring up photos to post. [puts on old granny voice] I remember when the internet was just black and white text in gopher on 2400 baud dial up! (Modern translation, 2.4Kbps)

Anyhow, the point is I should have saved more money then and let the interest compound. No, that wasn’t the point, but yes, I do regret not saving more money 14 years ago when I had that Macintosh SE hand-me down computer. The point really is that I am proud to announce that my net worth has gone up by $3,409.00 in the past month. I didn’t think it would be so much.

I attribute most of that to solid 401k contributions and a crazy amount of cash that I am holding in my emergency fund. See the Save O’Meter to the left. I decided rather than paying off my credit cards faster, I should make sure I commit money to my savings goals. The No Credit Needed Network’s graphs have me motivated I guess.

This month is going to probably stay about the same or get worse. I’m not sure. I got my refund, and that’s supposed to go to the Save O’Meter. But all the wedding invitations and ’save-the-date’ cards are coming out of the woodwork right now. During July, I’m going to a semi-elopment in Puerto Rico to be the maid of honor two weeks after a wedding in California. The weekend in between? A local wedding. That’s right. Three weekends of weddings in a row.

The next five weddings will be in September or October. One in Seattle for one of my closest friends, one in Cape Cod for a couple that met through me. The last three, I’m actually not invited to the wedding, but there will be big local parties, so that’s a relief! They might actually be relaxing weekend camping trips.

Eight. Eight weddings. Four of them out of town and I *must* attend them. I’ve been trying to talk myself out of them due to expense or reasonableness, but I can’t. They are four couples that mean a lot to me in places I really love, or have never seen before. Since the weather is warming up, I’m in the mood to cook again. Hopefully I won’t be tightening my belt eating only 15-cent ramen noodles and getting scurvy. (Someone told me a tale of this on Tuesday night.) The ramen noodles I like are more like a dollar each.

I also will be putting more stuff up on EBay to sell. I brought home some of my old books to put up since my first sale was marginally successful. I have 3 dollars more than I have before. I am also considering giving up one of my favorite cute purses to some unwitting goth girl. It’s by Emily Strange and I can’t even find a photo of it to guess what price it should be. There’s nothing similar to it out there. I might even de-stash. ‘De-stashing’ is when a knitter culls their cache of yarns. I thought I would go wild and buy some new things at the big MD Sheep & Wool Festival in May, but that looks out. Mother’s/Father’s Day looks like those will be on a budget too. Fortunately there are no requisite birthdays I have to celebrate. If there are, a nice bottle of wine from my collection will have to do.