April 1:

$28.86: pants for hubby for business trip
$58.99: Walmart

April 2:

$10.52: Hubby's meal in Wisconsin. Will be reimbursed through work

April 3:

$28.24 groceries
$23.60 gas (not a full tank)
$70.74 cc payment
$10 sunpass (prepaid tolls)

April 4:

$25 dr co-pay

One of the survey sites I do surveys through is JD Power, and they give you 10 cents if you start a survey but don't qualify for it. While I'm appreciate of the ten cents (I know they don't have to give me anything), it does get a little frustrating after awhile when you only earn ten cents here and ten cents there. So far I've earned $19.45: $5 of it was just for joining. I've qualified for 6 surveys (out of 50) so not a great average. I need to make it to $25 before I can redeem. I am wanting to earn enough Amazon gc to buy a Kindle but obviously its not all going to happen on this site.

My goal is to get the Kindle completely free. My credit isn't good enough to qualify for the rewards credit cards that Chase offers so I need to do it through survey sites. I don't want to spend money on it, because I don't know how often I'd use it. I am more of a book person, as in holding the actual book and turning the pages. But I can see the advantages of the Kindle. We'll see how long this takes!

I have good intentions of blogging but then I never seem to do it. I love reading other posts, because they really do inspire me, but it never seems to go much farther than that. I have the "spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" type of thing going on.

So I will start by confessing that I do not have a written budget, I do not have an EF, and I am probably one step away from disaster. But still life goes on.

My goal for this year is to pay off my credit card bills and set up an EF. But yeah, I have no game plan as to how to reach this goal. So I figure the best place to start is by blogging here.

I dropped my son off at school, and then I went grocery shopping this morning for the week, and discovered I really like doing it at this time. I'm out anyways, the store is not busy, and I'm home before 10 and still have the rest of the day ahead of me. It didn't seem so much like a chore as it usually does.

My new goal is to only eat out once every two weeks. Lately we have been doing it way too much, and my checkbook and my scale has not been too kind to me lately.

This ties in with my next goal, which is to have $10,000 in our moving account by the time we move. This is a very achievable goal if we don't waste our money before then. I'd also like to pay down the credit cards, which have an approximate balance of $850. We'll see. Right now it's more important to have the cash available than it is to have the cc paid off. Ideally they will both happen, but the emphasis will be on bulking up the deposit account.

We did sell our car, and paid off our car loan, so we are officially car-loan free! What a great feeling, first time since 2006. We do intend to replace our car in a year or two, but want to have a nice downpayment (if not all) to do it with.

Easter shopping is all done, so the rest of this week should be no spending.

We're definitely making progress with our boxes, and hope to pack up quite a few this week. The master bedroom is done, so now I'm going to concentrate on the kitchen and sunroom. I think we've donated enough to Goodwill to open up our own store! :-) Basically, if we don't love it, we get rid of it. It doesn't matter how much we paid for it, it doesn't matter if we used it in the past, or might use it in the future, it has to be something that has meaning to us or that we use on a regular basis to make the cut. And that doesn't cost too much to move. One thing this move has done for us is really to prioritize what's important for us. And what's important is not our stuff.

One of my goals here this year was to be more active in my blogging. Well, I've failed that goal miserably, but it's for a good reason: we are pushing up our move to Florida from 2013 to this summer, July 2011! We are very excited, and have been in serious declutter mode. We have really evaluated what our belongings mean to us, and only those items we really love will be making the move with us.

We are using professional movers for the first time, which has been a learning experience in itself, and a costly one, I might add. We have done U-Haul moves for all of our previous moves (4 total), but felt the magnitude of this move required a different approach.

Financial goals basically include socking away as much money as possible, and paying off our credit cards before the move. (approximate balance: $700) This is very do-able. We are moving very little furniture and will need to re-purchase it once we are there, so we definitely need to pad the account as much as possible. In case you're wondering, the furniture is old and not worth moving long-distance. Our oldest son is not moving to Florida with us but keeping an apartment here, so he will get most of our furniture. What he doesn't want we are giving away on Freecycle or selling on Craigslist.