July Snowflakes

3 ING referral bonuses @ $10.00 each = $30.00

Put into my Emergency Fund to help rebuild it.

Snowflaking Through Sobriety

One of the biggest money drains for me is in the area of what I call casual booze. You know, buying a six-pack of good beer to drink while watching the ballgame or a $10 bottle of wine to have with dinner on a random weekday evening. While I definitely enjoy this and still do it, I have cut back quite a bit from my spending in months past. However, it's still difficult to fight that urge sometimes. Yesterday after work all I wanted to do was kick back and watch some TV with a few beers, but I decided to forgo stopping at the local grocery store and save my money instead (a decent six-pack is about $9.30). So what did I do when I got home?

To reward myself I put the $10 I would have spent right into my IRA. A tiny contribution to be sure, but everything counts. More importantly, it made me feel a lot better psychologically about making the right decision. I plan on trying to use more tricks like this in the future.

Anyone out there have any similar tricks to save money by "rewarding" yourself with savings?

April Snowflakes

Wow I cannot believe it is May 8th already. April absolutely flew by! It's been a month since I last posted on here. Been fairly busy; reading a ton on personal finance but haven't been writing on it much. Still in the digesting stage for the most part. April was relatively low for snowflakes:

• $16.00 - cash on hand carried over from March
• $0.70 - checking account balance carried over
• $44.91 - work expense check
• $25.00 - work expense check

Total = $86.61

I stuck all this in my Travel Fund for my trip in June.

Snowflaking: March Update

This month was great for snowflakes:

• $4.01 (February budget surplus)
• $2.00 (money owed by a coworker)
• $10.00 (ING referral bonus)
• $245.00 (work I did on the side for a friend's startup business)
• $4.00 (grocery money from roommate)
• $130 (2007 MA tax refund)
• $11 (2006 MA tax refund)
• $30 (gift from Nana)
• $10 (roll of quarters)
• $15.64 (expense check)
• $10.00 (Revolution Money Exchange referral bonus)
• $59.36 (my own Keep the Change program)
  

Total = $531.01

The good thing is that that's a big chunk of extra cash for the month! The bad thing is that I went over budget in several areas this month, so I wasn't able to properly use all that money for snowflaking. I also didn't snowflake immediately upon receiving this money, which was a mistake - and this is something that I know moving forward. Snowflakes must be applied immediately or else they melt into bar tabs, chinese takeout, etc. Because this was all done in lump fashion, i.e. I just had the extra cash sit in my checking account until the end of the month to get allocated, I'm not sure exactly how much of this was saved and how much wasted. About less than half I think, looking at my budget deficit areas for the month.

So a mixed bag. Important lesson learned in how to snowflake effectively. Use those flakes right away! Don't let them sit around and disappear.

February Snowflaking

February was a great month for me in terms of snowflaking. Here's a breakdown of my snowflakes for the month:

• Two ING Direct referrals earned me $20 (email me at Impecunious.Investor@gmail.com for a referral)
  
• My Keep the Change program resulted in a whopping $51.60
• I earned $25 from opening an account up at Revolution Money Exchange (email me at Impecunious.Investor@gmail.com for a referral)
• Because of good budgeting I had an extra $220 at the end of the month, of which $100 went to my IRA and the remaining $120 to fully funding my Emergency Fund and general cash savings

I was also fortunate enough to join the new Snowflake Revolution along with other personal finance bloggers and snowflakers! Please check out the other members via that link or the list on the sidebar. This will be a great opportunity to share stories and techniques for snowflaking, which is a great strategy for reducing debt or contributing to saving/investing goals.