Sunday, January 5, 2014

Yearly Wrap Up

Pay off student loan - 30.3%  (Up .9%)
Roth 2013 - 72.3% (-)
Windows - 9.6% (-)

Sadly, my only progress is on the student loan.  Which brings me to my goal for the new year.

My goal is to use what I have.  Coincidentally I had recently started doing this so hopefully it will be easy to keep going.  There are two main areas with which I'm concerned at the moment, my yarn collection and my food collection.  I tend to stockpile when I find either a good deal or a hard to find item.  I'm pretty sure my yarn collection could keep me knitting for a year.  My food collection is not that big, plus I will need more produce on a regular basis.  But I have a nice supply of things like dry beans, rice, nut butters, breakfast bars, that will last me quite awhile.  I have also been working on the food in my freezer.

So maybe in the process I will spend less and be able to make progress on my stagnant goals.

In less good news, financially speaking anyway, I signed up for my next class assuming I'd be reimbursed for my previous class and so far it hasn't happened.  I did a very poor job of reading the documentation requirements :) and need to wait until my transcript updates before I can get reimbursement.  I hope that will be soon because I just paid the latest bill with my credit card so I have about a month to pay for it.  If I don't get reimbursed in the next few weeks I will have to rob my savings again.  Should be temporary of course but I hate to do it.  Plus I should be getting my twice yearly car insurance bill anytime now.

The good news is I have no foster kittens this winter.  Good on many levels, even though I miss having the little critters around.  First it means hopefully our community is making a dent in the kitty overpopulation issue (I believe we are, in fact).  But on another level it means I'm not feeding extra mouths, and even bigger, I'm not heating my house to a higher temperature.  One might be surprised how big of an impact that can have.  Just due to the especially cold weather alone this winter my heating bill has jumped.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Dividends

That time of year again, I recently received my yearly dividend payout and the last of my quarterlies for 2013.  Good growth this year, up 42% over last year.