($10,112.01)
That’s a large number. A much larger number than I thought it would be. That number right there is how much we have paid on our primary Visa credit card this year. I should explain something. We don’t carry credit card balances on a month to month basis. When I get a credit card bill I do everything I can to pay it off. So far I have been successful. Right now my success is just about to run out of steam. In order to pay off this card we have to use a sizable chunk of our “short-term” savings. Granted the bill this time around is not so bad. Only about $1,700 dollars. It’s all basically my Mexico trip right there. Studying abroad does not come cheaply and it especially does not come free. It was all worth it though.
The point to this whole post is that the wife and I are worried about draining our savings account. We are hoping to buy a house in about a year and that savings account is going to be our down payment. Naturally we’d like to keep a sizeable chunk of money in there due to this being the case. With that being said we have decided to put ourselves on a strict no-spend diet. In order to keep ourselves sane this will not apply to the small amount of mad money we get on a monthly basis, but other than that cash we will not be spending any money on any unnecessary items.
Enter the Wealth Tracking Tools
I’d like to make sure that I’m actually building wealth over time. As I already mentioned we’re looking to purchase a home in about a year and we’d like to be prepared for such. With that being said I’ve decided that after months of procrastination it’s about time that I start using some tools to track our progress (or lack thereof) with our financial goals. Starting later this week I’ll be posting on a regular (monthly) basis updates to our net worth and other relevant financial tracking numbers. Of course I’ll be using Excel to create these spreadsheet tools. Hopefully with our increased vigilance of following our budget we will be able to accelerate the wealth building process. One can only hope.