June check in: I've slacked on True Expense funding this month in favor of throwing extra at debt, which isn't ideal, but is hard to resist while I'm still knocking down some penalty-rate high-interest balances.

I'm prepping myself to try to chill out on the debt attack in July in favor of actually building up some of these True Expense reserves, especially since I effectively "unbuffered" myself by choosing to send my entire 3rd June paycheck to debt paydown rather than rolling it into my monthly buffer like I'd originally planned, so my checking account balance is alarmingly thin, and those True Expense funds would really help give it back some safety cushion. :)

The only savings goal I contributed to in June was Vacation/Trips, but it was because I had expenses in that category. I'm realizing that most of the "saving" I've been doing in this challenge really has been budgeting money in the month a particular expense is actually happening (indicated by the purple fields above). The only times I've really successfully managed to save anything *ahead* of time (and then let it sit!) have been to fund my mini e-fund, and then partly while saving up moving expenses.

I can see why the e-fund and moving expenses were more motivating savings goals than the others - they were particularly large amounts I wanted to save, and the e-fund in particular was my current "snowball" target before really hitting my debt paydown snowball, which I was *really* excited to do. :)

I'm not sure if there are ways I can use that knowledge to my advantage to help me with these other savings goals, hmm. I've been starting the month fully *intending* to add to these funds, but I inevitably end up stealing that money throughout the month to use towards other things instead. I need to start treating these funds as important enough to not touch.

For July, I'm contemplating trying out actually *hiding* these categories once they're funded (I'll probably hide my entire "Rainy Day Funds" and "Commitments" category groups) so that they're not as visually tempting when I view my budget throughout the month. I'd tried collapsing those groups, but it's way too easy to expand them with a single click without really thinking about it, whereas actually hiding them might give me enough pause that I'm not just staring at those numbers completely absent-mindedly.

This feels a little like a crutch, but hey, what I'm doing now isn't totally working, so I gotta let myself try something new. :)

At the same time... I do also have to step back and realize that despite all the disappointment I've expressed above, I also have actually already funded 63% of my savings goals for the year, and we're only 50% through the year, so maaaaybe I should lay off myself just a tad and realize that I'm actually completely (more than!) on track, even if things maybe haven't been going as exactly perfectly as I'd ideally hope? ;)

1st Half of the Year Check-in + Strategy Shift for 2nd Half! :)

In reflecting on my last post, in which I realized I've been doing so much better at saving towards my goals (and letting the money sit!) when I've been doing it in focused chunks, rather than saving a consistent amount to each goal each month (as I'd been aiming to do but not at all succeeding at in practice), I've decided that maybe it's worth trying to work *with* this tendency rather than against it.

So for the 2nd half of 2018, I'm going to try "snowballing" my remaining savings challenge goals. Each of my four remaining goals have differing timeframes for when I'm likely to need the money available, which naturally suggests an order for tackling them, so I'm going to run with it!

1. Vacation & Trips (these are currently underway so I need to be funding this immediately)
2. Gifts & Xmas (shouldn't need this for another month or two, so this is ideal to focus on 2nd)
3. Vet Expenses (no anticipated expenses until January, but they've generally had at least one "unexpected" vet trip per year)
4. Car Repair (again no anticipated expenses, but I want to try to anticipate some of the unanticipated!) ;)

My plan is to send a dedicated $700/mo towards my savings goals (regardless of my debt snowball and other expenses!), working in the order above, until each has reached my original total for this challenge. At the $700/mo rate, I should max them all out in November, so this gives me some wiggle room as well as the potential to exceed some of the goals (as I'm realizing some might benefit from more cushion that I'd originally planned on).

I'm hoping that this consistent $700/mo goal will help motivate me to see this overall pool of savings as important enough to remain untouched (except for planned spending from those categories), and am already feeling optimistic about the shift in mindset this is causing! :)

In addition, I finally took the now-obvious-seeming step of pulling these four categories into their own Category Group (named "🏆SAVINGS CHALLENGE!!"), which I've placed prominently at the top of my category list, right under my "💰 Financial Freedom!" group, which houses my Debt Snowball and Mini eFund categories). I previously had them mixed into my Rainy Day Fund and Commitments groups, along with other categories, but I'm hoping this will help me focus on preserving at least these categories, for the time being.

With my paycheck this morning, I've budgeted out the first half of July, including reserving $500 in my vacation category, which feels like I'm off to a good start! Just $200 more from my next check, and then I'm free to send however much I can squeeze out of the rest to debt, as long as I leave this untouched ;)

June Check in! I forgot to check in for May, because I was on my super amazing trip to Europe (London, Belgium and Paris), which was a big thing I was saving money for. Feels SO good to go on a trip and know all the money is there.

So for this month:

Big Trip Fund 141.37 (started saving for next years trip! Don't know where to yet, but it will be smaller/cheaper than europe. Probably an all inclusive Carribean island)

Wee Trip fund 658.67 (all my little trips, and I have 3 in august!, just got back from camping)

xmas: 100

For a total of 900.04 this month, 90.46% of my original goal and 4781.57 for the year! I added a few little trips so it is good I will be going over 100% of my real goal.

Starting out July with a super small paycheck, but everything we need to pay now is budgeted, so that's good. Also found out that June was our last orthodontia payment ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Won't feel that extra $200 until August after I get paid for summer teaching, but every little bit helps. Feeling weird that I'm starting to take money out of savings instead of putting money IN, but that's what summer is like for an academic, so I'm just working through it. Enjoying my writing retreat; last full day today. 

Glad to be back in this challenge.  We are officially debt free and focusing through this challenge on building up our large emergency fund.  While starting this we had to dip into our baby emergency fund for a new garage door.  Someone tried to steal my truck and in the process backed it into our garage door.  😔 But at least we had it there and didn't have to use any credit or debt to take care of the problem.  Now its time to start stashing away.  

July check in!

So, last month I made grand plans to start "snowballing" my remaining savings goals for the year, starting with Vacation, since the related anticipated spending looked like it would come in a neat orderly one-at-a-time fashion.

I'd also decided to commit to sending a dedicated $700/mo towards my savings challenge goals, so I started the month with $700 budgeted to Vacation, as planned.

But then, I had a couple gift expenses come up that I realistically should have seen coming, and also my pre-camping-roadtrip oil change turned into a much larger Car Repair expense, so I shuffled money around from Vacation to those categories.

So good news: Since I'd already set aside $700 towards my savings goals, it was easy to reallocate that money between the goals as needed! Also good(?) news: I ended up setting aside more than $700 towards these goals in the end - but it's because I ended up needing to SPEND more than $700 from these categories, so yet again I ended up funding these savings goals only to have to spend it all immediately. So less-than-good news, I still am not successfully actually saving *ahead* and rolling over money in these categories. Sigh. But the expenses ARE getting covered, and that's a huge win :)

The best/most successful outcome of my planning was actually gathering these goal categories into a distinct category group, and labeling it with my $700/month goal - this REALLY helped throughout the month in making these funds feel untouchable, whereas it's been SO easy to steal from these categories to fund other things in previous months, when I had the categories all spread out.

In fact, I think that dedicating the $700/mo to the savings goals as a whole is really the key - I can allow myself to shift the specific goal allocation around each month if needed, but only BETWEEN goals, not out of the goal categories to other frivolous things :)

So for August I'm actually going to try skipping the snowball idea and budgeting the $700 across my remaining four goal categories, and see how that goes!

July & August check in: July got away from me, with so much going on. But I was able to put over $2500 into savings in July all thanks to a 3rd paycheck end of June. All hail the 3 paycheck months!

And so far for August I've budgeted over $1300 toward savings, and am over 94% of the way to my goal for the year. But I may need to move some of what I budgeted toward savings this month to other categories to cover expenses from a vacation stay at a cabin the end of the month. I actually put extra in my savings this month with the expectation I'll need to move some of it to other categories, so I'm perfectly okay with doing that if needed. I love debt-free vacationing. I never knew what that was before YNAB. 

August check in: Funded college savings, holidays fund, additional sinking funds for $1350. At the end of the month, will add to some savings/sinking categories, but this is good for now.