Have a $500 checking floor

Well, today, I’ve declared the bottom $500 in my checking account to be off-limits, barring emergencies. What a great feeling to meet a financial goal! It could be a challenge to maintain this new checking floor, but there is one major thing that’s helping me. Instead of thinking of my financial worth as one lump sum equal to my checking balance, I think of my money value now in terms of the different accounts which affect my finances, and that has helped me see my bank balance and automatically break it into components. So, when I see my bank balance, I don’t think of having all of that to spend today.

I’m calling this complete!

I splurged at the grocery store so now I have a $400 checking floor (said another way, I put my foot through the floor and it will cost me $50 to fix it). I thought this might happen, but I had to try for the big goal and see how it went. I’m opting for a happy tummy over meeting this goal early. This time next month, I want this checking floor to be solid.

I stubbornly put a recent windfall to my checking floor, so I am $50 shy of my goal. Getting there will be okay – I’m in the home stretch – but keeping the floor in place will take some doing (or not doing, as it were).

I’m to $300! I think I can have this settled by this time next month. Here’s hoping (and planning, and working, and being disciplined)!

I was just reminded, through reading a person’s post, about making goals SMART – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound – and that last criterion was the only one I hadn’t synched in my mind yet, so here it is: I hope to have achieved this goal by the end of February, or March at the latest.

I’ve earmarked $100 to start my checking floor. From this day forward, I hope never to go below this amount, barring emergencies.

I have lots of things I want to save up to buy or to do, but this has to come first. Life always brings the unexpected, and I want to get in the habit of having money in the bank, in checking, that I don’t feel compelled to spend. I’m going to try to save this up fairly quickly; January’s such a great hibernation month, anyway, that this seems like a good time to do it.