“Bub-bub Pants” my two-year old daughter says into the Apple TV voice remote. It’s Sunday morning and she’s made her way into our bed looking to watch a hot minute of SpongeBob Square Pants before quickly shifting her focus to heading downstairs for a morning snack.
I continue to sit there, now enthralled in the antics of Bikini Bottom. While SpongeBob is busy causing Krabby Patty chaos, Mr Krabs is tucked away in the bathroom. He is working on a crossword puzzle where all the answers he has given is “money.”
A five letter word for happiness?
MONEY!, he proclaims!
Ahhhh, good ol’ Mr Krabs — the cheapest of the cheap — the savviest of the savers! He’s been known to snap an arm off over a penny and refuses to let anything he could potentially make money with go to waste. Me? Well, I’m still learning.
Last we left off it was a fresh 2021. Now, in true SpongeBob style it is exactly ONE ETERNITY LATER. In January 2021, I had just started on my budgeting journey with the hopes of regularly documenting it on this page.
Did that happen? No.
Are we surprised? Also, no.
The good news is that I didn’t entirely bail on my goals. If you followed my Instagram stories, you would have caught my weekly savings challenge updates. I managed to complete a 52-week savings challenge. In it’s traditional form, this is where you save an amount of money each Friday that corresponds with the week of the year — $1 for week #1, $2 for week #2… all the way to $52 on week #52. This results in a grand total of $1,378 saved! While this may not seem like ton of cash, the primary goal is to build sustainable savings habits.
Each week I flashed cash and shared updates with my instafriends. By completing the 52-week challenge, along with other monthly challenges, I saved extra cash above and beyond my regularly scheduled savings (e.g., emergency fund, home projects, baby savings).
Here’s a quick rundown at what you missed in 2021:
Budgeting:
- Tracked budget spending January through May before falling off the bandwagon June through December
- Set aside money to cover regular car expenses — e.g., excise tax, inspection sticker, oil change, etc
- Spent entirely too much money on groceries and takeout
Savings:
- Completed 52-Week Savings Challenge ($1,378)
- Participated in monthly savings challenges totaling ($1,681)
- Sold items on Facebook Marketplace, eBay and Mercari ($7,055)
- Met vacation savings goal ($3,000)
- Met home project savings goal ($5,000)
- Opened investment account
- Depleted health savings account
Debt:
- Paid off my auto loan 11 months early
- Continued to enjoy pandemic-induced student loan payment deferral
- Maintained existing credit card debt
Life:
- Completed 30 Day Minimalism Challenge, by decluttering a total of 900 items
- Doubled our household expenses with newborn twin babies (yeah, PLOT TWIST!)
- Adjusted my payroll tax withholding in the hopes of reducing annual income tax bill
- Wasted a good portion of waking hours on TikTok – which pinpointed me with ADHD, high-functioning anxiety, corporate burnout, the compulsive need to clean and serious lack of passive income.
In a valiant effort to catch up on the latest BSC news, I plan to add a blog to elaborate on many of these points. Or maybe I’ll just see you in 2023.
Only time will tell.
BankSmartCarrie.com 