Even with the crazy Christmas spending and the unexpected bills I still managed to come out in the BLACK this December….by $27.63. Woo hoo!!!!

I spent $48.08 on gas this month, leaving me with $16.92 in the gas budget. I know this does not seem like a lot but I only made one trip out of town this month, when I usually make two. Also, I was at home for the last two weeks of the month since school is closed. My gas budget will remain as is because during the summer time I use more of the budget.

I overspent on food this month, even with getting the wisdom tooth taken out because I bought a lot of things that I do not usually buy and I was over the food budget by $10.01. I did manage to save $17.25 by using coupons this month and as I did not buy the newspaper this month, those were rollover coupons from previous months.

I got a total of $15.05 from Lending Club and $8.29 from Prosper from people who were repaying the loans I made to them on those sites. I plan on investing more in Lending Club in 2010 so that I can get more returns and hopefully get to the point where the money that is repaid is enough to fund a new loan.

January is ‘supposed’ to be a No Spend Month and I am going to see how that works. Apart from paying bills I am supposed to spend as little as possible during the month. This means eating out of my pantry and only spending when I generate money. I am taking the word generate rather loosely and will be including both the money generated from Adsense daily and the money I get from Prosper and Lending Club in the money available to spend. I will also use things like gift cards that I receive as money that is generated because I think I will lose my mind if I cannot ‘spend’ for the month. I did not stock up to prepare for January…as part of the rules of the No Spend Month were to use what you have and to NOT stock up.

I joined the Million Dollar Club back in October of this year and part of the challenge was for me to save a dollar a day. This means that every month I will be saving $31 (yes I know some months have less than 31 days but I am using ING and that just makes it easier to do it this way) and putting that in my Never Go Back To Fresno Account. I have already started this December but it will ‘officially’ start in January. So at the end of the year I will have $372 plus interest and it is all done automatically.

I have modified my Zero Based Budget, I tweaked my budget and automated my finances to the best of my ability and I look forward to 2010 to being more financially fit!!!!