Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend. Definitely a packed weekend that went by too quickly.
Our good friends got married over the weekend and we spent a lot of time with good friends. It was a pretty cheap weekend also which is always nice!
We looked at more houses online but didn’t really see anything that we like still. Luckily we’re not 100% ready to buy right now so I’m glad we don’t like anything!
I don’t know if any of you have even noticed, but I deactivated my blog’s Pinterest profile a couple of days ago. Lets just say that I had a mini freakout. The other day I noticed that I was replying to my friends pins on Pinterest under my blog profile (and not my personal). Some of my friends know I blog, but none know the name Making Sense of Cents. However, this friend is someone who I am very close to and I haven’t told her that I blog at all. So of course I naturally freaked out because my blog link is in my blog’s Pinterest profile. I plan on reactivating it this week, but I’m just hoping she doesn’t find it (I did delete all the comments that I left her). What a close call! As you can tell, I’m still not fully ready to have my friends read my blog. It’s still all very personal! Sometimes I do wish I wasn’t such an anonymous blogger.
Spending
We did do some spending this weekend but not a whole lot. I spent $70 at the store and bought some clothes, but I plan on returning some of it as I didn’t like it anymore after I tried them them on when I got home.
We also did buy a curl bar and weights for it, which cost $86. We had $30 in rewards thankfully or our total would have been more than $100. Still a lot, I can’t believe how expensive fitness equipment are.
Extra Income (does not include salary from our jobs)
I received approximately $1,121 in payments in the past week. I do think this last week of the month will go out with a bang as I usually get paid in the last week for several assignments.
Affiliate income is going really great and I’m glad I started working on this. I do have bigger plans for this and hope to see this area of my extra income to continually increase. A couple of days ago some of you had your Page Rank decreased, and this only gives me more motivation. How have you been doing with your affiliate income? Are you trying to grow this?
My friend came in town and we talked about our future business plan. We are doing some major research first and luckily with the job I currently have, I research companies and industries all day long and can get this done pretty quickly since I know where to look for reliable resources (and have access to all of these resources). She did mention a website that I’ve never heard of called Kickstarter. Have any of you ever used it? Apparently from what I remember is that you can fundraise money for your future business. Nevermind, I thought it was a something similar to peer to peer lending for entrepreneurs.
Food
We have a meal plan this week! I found some really tasty looking recipes and am excited for our meals for this week. I bought enough groceries for the next two weeks and I’m pretty excited about this. Our fridge and pantry are SO packed and I hope we actually eat nearly all of this instead of letting things go to waste like usually.
We have been doing really good with eating in. We went out to eat this past weekend (but not during the week) and ate and drank pretty cheaply. How are you doing with your food budget?! If you have any tasty looking recipes from last week, please share your blog post in the comments so that I can add it to my meal plan for future weeks 🙂
Wedding
I haven’t made any new wedding plans recently. There are just so many other things going on that I’m just not worried about the wedding. I’d rather save the planning for when I have time to have fun with it and am actually awake! Also, a lot of people have asked (yes, I actually get e-mails about this) why we are waiting so long to get married. Honestly, as I’ve said before, getting married wouldn’t change anything for us (except the legal aspect), as we are already completely open about everything and committed. However, I AM excited to plan a fun party where I get to have fun with all of the people that I love. I have been considered a part of W’s family since day 1 and love being able to be a part of such a wonderful family.
Some of you have asked that we share our engagement photos, and trust me I will. So sometime in May look out for those pictures because those will be good 🙂
Being healthy
This is probably the best category in my weekly blog posts. I’ve been doing pretty good with this. Having the treadmill in our basement is nice and I try to squeeze a mile in whenever I have some time to spare (such as between writing blog posts, making dinner, etc), along with designating time after work every now and then.
We also bought a lot of fruits and vegetables last night and I don’t think we bought any snacks. We are really wanting to be more healthy. I have a goal to lose 5 pounds but also to get more toned all over. I really need to start a workout plan and a more clean food plan.
Have you been doing well with your extra income, spending and being healthy?
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Yup, he's a cutie!
Nice work on the income. Sometimes I wish I could go bakc to anonymous, but I do enjoy knowing that family and friends are getting some help from my blog. Last week's scare has also motivated me to setup a killer affiliate page and direct people toward the products and services that have served me well financially. It's a win-win, because I get to talk about how i manage my money more, and they get to use something that'll help make budgetin easier and more fun 🙂
Yeah I'm still back and forth. I just know that once I go public, I can't go back!
My recent post $1,121 in Extra Income and Life Updates
It is such a horrible feeling when you get your anon and real accounts mixed up… I remember liking things and tweeting things from the wrong browser before… gut wrenching! Luckily i deleted in time 🙂 Congrats on the extra income!
My recent post Making the Most of Your Savings
Thanks!
My recent post $1,121 in Extra Income and Life Updates
Nice job on extra income! I'm not a very anonymous blogger but I prefer to keep the names of my family members and the location private! Your menu looks great too! I tried this pasta pesto dish before, it's pretty good.
Thanks! And good to know that it's good, I can't wait to try it.
My recent post $1,121 in Extra Income and Life Updates
Great job on your extra income. You're doing fabulous! I am not an anonymous blogger since I chose to put my real name on book. 🙂 So I don't worry too hard about separating personal from blogger, but I can imagine the distress of mixing them up. Your dinner menus sound great – and weekly meal planning is such a lifesaver, isn't it?
My recent post Children and Money: Don’t Turn It into a Taboo Topic, Part II
Thanks! And yes meal planning is wonderful.
My recent post $1,121 in Extra Income and Life Updates
We tend to do a lot of simple recipes also, it's easier that way 🙂
My recent post $1,121 in Extra Income and Life Updates
Haha never heard of kickstarter… nice! Glad you're still making an extra thousand a week. That's like 52k a year! 🙂
Thanks Lance!
My recent post $1,121 in Extra Income and Life Updates
Yes I am definitely interested! 🙂
My recent post $1,121 in Extra Income and Life Updates
Healthy, ha what's that? I've been doing pretty terrible with my eating lately. All that clearanced Valentine's candy is not doing me any favors. I've been so tired between work and my class my will power not to eat the whole bag in one sitting while reading boring text books has been basically nil. Congrats on your income update. As always I'm super impressed and inspired.
My recent post Sex & The City on a Budget
I'm glad I've inspired you to work on your extra income! I was inspired by Crystal over at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff and it worked well for me 🙂
My recent post $1,121 in Extra Income and Life Updates
Killing it again with extra income. Good luck with all of your other projects and goals.
Great job, I love reading your updates! I've been working a lot on the "being healthy" side of things recently and I'm going to be blogging about it soon! Keep up the good work, it is very inspiring.
I do not really pushing affiliate income as such. It does grow slowly over the period of time and I am quite happy with it.
Perhaps this due to fact that it doubled last year 😉
All extra income I am treating like a lottery win and not counting on it. However our expenses are tracked and haven't really changed because of it.
Albeit we moved to an expensive area almost two years ago and a lot of our expenses shot up by 50%.
Good for you sounds like your plans are falling in to place with the eating healthy, wedding and blog. We are always trying to eat healthy and live a busy lifestyle that includes keeping fit. One of my fans asked me how we can live on such a small grocery budget and believe me many others have done better. The key is we stick to the basics, home cooked meals, fruits, veg, dairy etc and meal plan like you do. As for anything to do with monetizing the blog, since I don't do it, I have no comment. Cheers and keep up the great work.
My recent post The Grocery Game Challenge #9 Feb 25-Mar 3,2013-No-Shop Week, No Means No!