I love it when the first payday of the pay cycle gets here and I still have money left in the account. That isn't always easy because that final paycheck of the cycle stretches across three weeks instead of the normal one. I had $100 left so I transferred that to ING to be added to the Emergency Fund. That makes $6,231.35 in the EF at ING. I also transferred some money to be held there that isn't part of the EF. It's part of what I call my holding tank.

The holding tank is for short term savings. I just started it. It will have things in there that are paid bimonthly or every six months. I transferred $100 in there for property tax. I'm not sure what my property tax for the year on the old house is, because they still haven't sent out the paper work, but last year it was just over $1000, so I decided to go with $1200 and put $100 a month aside. I didn't do it in January, but I'm not worried about it. We'll catch it up one way or the other. Maybe from the safety net if we have to. That's what it is there for. But more likely we'll just pay less on the VISA in April.

Also in the holding tank is $6.30 for garbage (I budget $50 a month and the bill is bimonthly and was less than that, but I pay garbage pick up for the old house (that will end soon) as well as garbage pickup here. So I'll save the extra and add it to when the bill for here comes due. Any extra will carry over and just build a cushion for garbage when we have to make dump runs from the old house.

I also put $80 in the holding tank for water/sewer at the old house. It's paid bimonthly and I think it's only $72 per month, but I can't remember, it might be $76 so I built in some cushion. And I put in $17 to go towards the HOA dues that will be due in July. So altogether the ING holding tank has $203.30 in it and the total amount of money in ING is $6,434.65.

As for the safety net, it has $1,068.65 in it. We used $1000 of it to pay some medical bills off.

Other than all that out of today's paycheck I paid:

$1500.00 to the BoA VISA (will pay more next week)

$400.00 to put back in the safety net that I used yesterday to pay on the Master Card

$51.91 for phone out at the old house (still hating on Comcast for that amount)

$65.55 for cable internet

$43.70 for garbage

$490.75 for the car payment

$60 for DD six week allowance ($10 a week)

$36 for DS six week allowance ($6 a week)

$100 for groceries

I will pay out $90 for physical therapy Monday and that will leave me with $116.56 in the checking account until next payday.

Other than that I added $2 to the laptop fund and $1.06 to the coin jar.

$430.94 beginning laptop fund balance
+002.00 amount added
--------------
$432.94 ending laptop fund balance

I finished reading America's Cheapest Family by Annette and Steve Economides. It was interesing enough, but the book is pretty dated at this point and a lot of the ideas won't work for our particular situation. A few of them will, so I walked away with something. I think for the beginner, new to trying to be frugal it would be a good book to read. (Not as fun or entertaining as Amy Dacyzn's Tightwad Gazette, though). I also started and finished reading Live Well for Less than You Think by Fred Brock. It was okay. Again, for anyone living the frugal lifestyle for a while it didn't really have all that much to offer, but it was a bit more current than the other book. And the newly frugal would learn a lot for it.

I'm about a third of the way through Jean Chaztky's From Debt to Wealth on $10 a Day: Pay it Down. This one is a bit more relevant to me, but even so, it's got several things I've heard before. Still, I really like the writing style and the way she presents things, so I think I'll definitley get something out of this book by the time I am finished.