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Busy Weekend & 52WMSC Update

May 19th, 2014 at 04:32 pm

I actually got some stuff done this weekend -- between tax season and then planning for (and being on) my vacation, it's been a long time since that's happened! I had to renew my notary commission, which means driving out to the county clerk's office which is also the courthouse, so I figured a 1-2 hour wait. I got there at the right time, apparently, because it was only about 10 minutes, so I had time to get my nails done for our anniversary celebration (it's today, actually, but we celebrated on Saturday night).

They finally put the free compost out for city residents -- it's supposed to be available in April, but I'd imagine the weather delayed things. Which works out fine, since the community garden just opened anyway. So I filled several lawn bags to use when we start planting, probably this coming weekend. (Well, I say "filled". Really they're only about 1/3 of the way full, because compost is heavy! So I'm driving around with bags of compost in the back of my car all week, because I don't want to take them out and have to load them back in again.) I have several seeds started, which we got for the cost of postage, and then we went on Mother's day to buy some other veggies for the garden. We had a rather dismal year last year (our first), but everyone said it was a bad year, so we're hoping for more success this time around.

I also filled up my car's gas tank. That probably doesn't seem like an accomplishment, but I'm notorious for just putting in $25 at a time.

[LOL - just re-reading and it doesn't really sound like a busy weekend at all. Smile That was all just on Friday, actually. Saturday was 'anniversary day' so we had lunch, went to an exhibit at the museum, then dinner and a play at the community theater. Yesterday I got caught up on all the laundry from my trip, made a couple of quick small gifts, and then we went to dinner again because the place we were going to go on Saturday had a too-long wait time.]

In the Savings Challenge, I'd forgotten a few things in previous weeks so I'm throwing them in here. I took some of my CVS savings from Lent (the half I hadn't used here previously) and bought some lottery tickets -- well, I think they called it a "raffle", really. It was special thing the state did, they called it a $40K tax-free raffle but really the prize was about $59K and you net $40K after taxes. For every x amount of tickets sold they added another jackpot, plus lots of smaller prizes. At any rate, the big push was "one in six wins", so I figured I'd test the theory. Tickets were $10 and we bought six, all from different places. (Not sure if that increased or decreased the odds of winning.) We did win, twice in fact, but only $15 each time. I was hoping to at least break even. So technically I'm out $30, but since the CVS money was an 'uncounted' snowflake itself I'm counting the raffle winnings as a snowflake here.

As I mentioned, I have my notary commission because at work sometimes a client needs something notarized, and the woman who was the notary retired. So my boss pays for my notary commission and once or twice a year I notarize something for a client. My sister's boss, however, has had a slew of documents she needed notarized, so I did those for her and as a thank you she got a me a $25 Visa gift card.

Finally, my "keep the change" total for the month of April (rounding my checking account transactions) was $12.82.



52-Week Mega Savings Challenge
Week 20 [started late, now on my week 12]

Snowflakes
Lottery/Raffle: $30
Gift Card: $25
Rounding: $12.82
Total Snowflakes: $67.82
Rounding (from reserve): $2.18

Beginning Balance: $755
Deposit: $70
Ending Balance: $825

Reserve: $3.10 - $2.18 = $0.92

That brings me through week 13, or 25% of the year. My progress so far (since I started late, I'm aiming to complete the mega challenge but tracking the regular and double, too):

52-Week Challenge: 60% complete
52-Week Double Challenge: 30% complete
52-Week Mega Challenge: 12% complete

I still have $625 coming from a side gig, someday, and more work to do for that client once they get me the information I need. The $625 by itself will complete the regular challenge, get me past the half-way mark on the double challenge, and to just over 20% of the mega challenge. Slowly but surely I'm getting there!

3 Responses to “Busy Weekend & 52WMSC Update”

  1. creditcardfree Says:
    1400522103

    You are doing great on your challenge! Keep up the great work.

  2. snafu Says:
    1400604208

    I notice a couple of ads posted by a Notary run regularly on our local CraigsList. Many people who use on-line type documents like Wills, Advanced Care Directive, Personal Directives, Cohabit Agreements, POA, Separation Agreement, Applications, etc. They charge anything from $ 19.99 - $ 49. but $ 15. each for 2nd 3rd etc. document same appointment as example.

  3. doingitallwrong Says:
    1400946510

    Thanks! I hadn't thought about doing the Notary thing as a side gig but that's a great idea. I think my State limits what we can charge, I want to say $15 per document but that's still a decent snowflake. Smile

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