Clean Your {Financial} House: Mid-January Update

Last Friday, I posted some short-term goals for myself to help get our financial house in order.

Since we're halfway through January already (can you believe it?), I thought I'd keep myself on track by updating what I've done (and haven't done) so far.

Here goes!

~ Downloading my friend Andrea's spreadsheet for tracking grocery spending and coupon savings from Google Docs.

Done. This Google Doc spreadsheet is available for anyone to download; Andrea's just nice like that. Click here to download the file for your own use.

~ Creating my customized household budget spreadsheet in Google Docs by Friday of this week.

Done...mostly. I have the shell finished and the columns and the formulas entered for the month of January. As I've set this spreadsheet up to cover the full calendar year of 2009 (so you can easily track trends in your spending month over month), I need to finish adding the formulas to the rest of the months. I plan on making this document available for download on Monday, January 19, as part three of my series Back to Basics: Budgeting.

~ Slaying the paper dragon on my desk and in my file cabinets by pulling last years documents and storing them and shredding the non-essential financial documents and old bills.

NOT Done. The paper dragon still lives, but I have high hopes that I can attack my desk and old files this weekend; my kids and hubs are off on Monday giving me a little extra time off of our normal schedule. I'm hopeful!

~ Creating a portable coupon file folder for my van.

NOT Done. Again, this is a time-consuming task, but one that's well worth it. This idea isn't originally mine; I'm borrowing it from Carrie at Money Saving Methods. Go visit her and say hi from me, m'kay?

~ Forecasting our variable expenses and documenting them in another spreadsheet, things like gift purchases, our kids activity fees, vehicle registrations, our two dogs' vet visits, home owner's warranty fees, home owner's association fees, etc.

Done...mostly. This goes hand in hand with fully finishing my budgeting spreadsheet I mentioned above. I have most of the variable items entered for each month but I still need to go through our checkbook and statements from last year and be sure I didn't miss anything.

That's where I stand on my January Financial Goals; now that we're halfway through the month, how are you doing on the goals you set for cleaning up your financial house?