How did your $1000 Challenge go? Mine went phenomenally, but more on that after I address my other August goals.
- Read King Lear: Success! I actually read 2 other books as well, some investing book and The Well Trained Mind.
- $500 extra towards mortgage: Success! I hope to be able to add an extra $1000 consistently by the beginning of 2013 so for the rest of the year I will be trying to up my payments.
- Cardio class 4x’s per week: Success! This is getting more difficult as my pregnancy progresses but I was able to do it this month. I’m hoping to continue it throughout the entire pregnancy but only time will tell. 17 more weeks to go.
- Lower internet bill: Success! All I did was call them up and ask them what they could do for me in terms of making the payments a little more manageable. They lowered the price $20 per month for the next 12 months. I highly recommend that everyone contact their internet, phone, and cable providers at least once a year to negotiate rates. This has saved me hundreds every year.
- Finish bedroom remodel: Fail. This got put off because of a death in my husband’s family. It is set to be finished the second week of September.
- Stay in budget: Success! After not tracking our budget for 2 months, I’m extremely happy how this month went. It was surprising to me that I didn’t have to pay close attention to this in order to succeed.
- Purchase life insurance policy: Fail. This too was a fail because of a death in the family. Since my husband’s aunt is the agent we deal with this was put off for a couple weeks. We have gotten our quotes and just need to pick which works best for us.
- $1000 challenge: Success, success, success! I rocked this challenge. Halfway through August I was already at $1000 but decided to just keep pushing it to earn more. The final amount I earned this month was $1,485!! This was a really fun challenge that pushed me to find ways to earn more. I will certainly be doing this challenge again in the near future. Here’s the breakdown of how I earned the extra money.
- $1000 came from pet sitting.
- $485 came from things like freelance writing, cleaning, selling some items, credit card rewards, and completing surveys online.
September is going to be a more relaxed month in terms of trying to earn money because I have some house projects I’d like to get started. Here are my goals for this month.
- Finish bedroom remodel
- Purchase life insurance policy
- $500 extra to mortgage
- Find a place to buy cabinet doors for the kitchen
- Take a 2 day trip somewhere (I’m thinking Ocean City, MD)
- Teach Rosalyn the alphabet. She’s got a good amount of them down, upper and lower case, and has been very interesting in them so I think this should be fun and easy.
- Lower our car insurance premium
Readers: How did your August goals turn out? If you joined me in the challenge how did it go? Any fun goals for September?
Side note: Evan Posted his September Net Worth Update Yesterday
Looks like you did good with your goals!
I did indeed! Its not always easy but this month was because I found extra motivation somehow.
Wow you did rock the $1,000 challenge. How much pet sitting do you have to do to make that much?
It varies depending on what type of jobs i get. I make more per hour walking dogs than I do caring for animals while owners on vacation. This month is was a good mix of both types of jobs and roughly came out to 11 hrs of work a week including driving.
Wow you had a successful month! I honestly did not set many goals for August. I did start tracking my Alexa rank and I’m down under 500k. Would love to break top 400k this month (overall goal of getting under 200k by mid-February).
I’ll have to think of some more ambitious September goals.
200k by mid-February is very doable considering how much you are putting into your blog. Good luck with it!
I hope you’ll share your thoughts on King Lear.
I enjoyed King Lear while reading it mainly because I hoped that Lear’s irrational actions would be set right somehow come the end but of course I ultimately knew better. It is Shakespeare, so to expect anything less than basically everyone dying is silly. Yes, he did realize his mistake in disowning Cordelia but not much amounts to it because the damage he’s done to his country is done and he’s not left around to fix it. I enjoy Shakespeare most of the time but sometimes get sick of how every story end the same way, with everyone dying.
I was just amazed to see anyone bringing up Shakespeare, especially on a personal finance site. Good for you! (I’ve read the play a dozen times, have seen it at least 5-6 times, have taught it during my earlier teaching career).
But you are mistaken when you say all of Shakespeare’s works end with everyone dying. That’s true of the tragedies, but not the histories, comedies, or romances. Try reading or seeing As You Like It, Twelfth Night, the two Henry IV plays, or the The Tempest for an entirely different Shakespeare.
Oh I know not everyone dies but I have certainly read more of the tragedies than the others. Twelfth Night is actually on my list to read next!