It all adds up

When I left the lab, I started a spreadsheet to track my savings. I had this great plan: I would try to live off my old salary, and put away $1500/month. My savings account started with $3K and at first I struggled to put away the difference between my old and new salaries.

Somewhere along the way, saving became a habit and I felt like I was cheating on my budget if I took money out of the savings account for anything short of monumental purchases. We've spent a lot of money this year: earnest money for escrow, appliances, dining room furniture, the new backdoor, several days of handy-man time. But we've still been aggressive, if less religious, about saving.

I updated my spreadsheet today, and was actually surprised to look back at 2007 and see how far I've come. In 2006, it took me almost six months to save the $3K I used to open my account. Now we have money for a wedding and more than a year of mortgage payments tucked away, to help see us through leaner days while M's in school.

We decided to use our unusually generous Q4 bonuses to get the wedding rings we really like, rather than the ones that meet our overall wedding budget. There's one more bonus for 2008, based on the company's overall performance and payable in March, and you can bet that one's going straight into savings. Along with the tax refunds.

After the week I've had, it's been very helpful to look at the bigger trends and remember, again, that we're making progress. I'm still anxious about making ends meet while M's in school, but it's nice to have a bit of buffer between tight financial times and utter crisis.