Savings Goal Accomplished!

Friday, May 16, 2008

So, more than 2 months ahead of shedule, I have accomplished yet another savings goal. It's very exciting! This time it's the $5,000 London 'Fun Fund'!. Yesterday my final payment went through, and the account is now happily sitting at $5,157.91, $157.91 over my goal. This translates to £2652.82. Yay!

So, for all of you visual people, here's the chart ING Direct provides me with:
So, as you can see, this is way ahead of shedule, which is totally cool. I'd rather have extra time to accomplish something than not enough time.

So, now what I think I'll do, is I'll start contributing towards my pre-trip cash. I don't know if I will open yet another savings account, which I'm hesitant to do. Maybe for now, I'll just keep it as a cash fund for now.

Actually, hold that. I think I'll add it to my 'Plane Fund' account. I'll be buying a place ticket soon enough, and it suits the whole concept of the fund, anyways.

Either way, YAY!!!

*exhasperated exhale*

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Oh. Em. Gee. What a week. I still haven't made a budget, and I just spend the last half an hour figuring out what exactly I'm doing with my money. Yikes.

Okay, let's recap. It's been a while since I last posted. Okay, so, I picked up my VISA (yay!), everything is correct (yay!), and it's really pretty looking (double yay!). In fact, I will upload the scan I took of it yesterday to show you just how pretty it is. It's like British money - it's so colorful and antique-looking.

See? This is what it looks like: Not too bad, hey? It's a pretty good picture, too. Hah. Too funny. But seriously, it is very pretty. And it's just in there, as a sticker in my passport. Good times.

In other news, I packed many of my worldly goods into my newly-purchased luggage and carted it around the living room for a while. It's damn heavy (around 44 lbs), but it all fits. I would prefer to have a little more wiggle room in the luggage, but again, I don't think i'll be packing as much as I put in there. Plus I had added my tripod, which takes up a lot of space. Unfortunately my umbrella doesn't fit in the suitcase, although it was close! I am thinking about leaving it behind, now. I did give some thought to bringing it in a seperate box or something, but I think it's just becomming more of a pain than it's worth. So I think I'll leave it here and just suck it up and buy another one there.

The new girl started here at the office on Monday, too. She's not here right now, since she had a doctor's appointment today. She's working out good. I enjoy her company, which is nice. I can come off as bitchy when people first meet me, and that's really because I don't want to make a fool of myself, so I tend to shut down. Either way, she's very sweet, and very eager to learn. The only problem I'm having is that given that she's so eager to learn, every 15 minutes I hear "Okay, what can I do now??", which is both nice and annoying. Sometimes, there's really nothing to do here. Sometimes all I want to say is "Okay, now you can sit down and be quiet while I relax for 30 minutes". But again, I'd rather have someone too eager to learn than someone who didn't care. Hopefully in the next 3 weeks I can get her all trained up.

Speaking of that, I'm thinking that I will give my notice here at office job for July 15th, 2008. This will give me all of June to earn more money, as well as July. But then I will have accomplished my $10,000 savings goal. That will also give me 6 weeks or so to get ready and relax before I leave in September. I also have my aunt, uncle, their 2 kids, and my grandparents comming out from Ontario to visit, so it will be a very full household. Either way it'll be fun to take day trips and be a tourist with them. Working through the beginning of July will also give me a break from Stampede. It gets pretty crazy here during Stampede, so it's better to be in an office rather than navigating the streets.

After that I'll continue to work at Subway, but probably only 2 shifts a week or so. That'll give me about $600 a month for wiggle room, as well as the chance to keep midly busy and keep in touch with people there.

So, when my boss comes in this morning I'm going to chat with her about it and see how she feels about it. I'm pretty sure the new girl should be able to handle the office by herself with 2 months of working. We'll see.

I'm busy moving some money around right now, so when that gets settled I will update some figures!!