Looking back on 2009 ...

It has been a while since a post anything here due to work commitments. For this post, I want to look at three improvements I am proud of and three things I could do better financially for 2010. Yeah, kinda of like a review of my financial status for 2009 *grins*

5 things I am proud of ...

1. Started a travel budget and for 80% of the time, I was able to stick to the budget. The other 20% was because of unplanned travelling for work that took place at the last minute.
2. Reviewed budget several times throughout the year to ensure I had one that worked well for me.
3. Have a decent enough savings for now which is slightly more than my 6 months reserve.
4. Have started another form of fun savings with the Money Ox Bank where I feed it with any gold coins that I get from change back.
5. All my credit and charge cards get paid off at the end of each month. I do not roll over any debts to the next month. So each month, I am at zero debt.
   

3 things I could have done better ...

1. Still am not able to pay myself first and save 20% of my salary for what I like to term 'pure savings'. Currently, I have two funds - emergency funds and ordinary savings fund but these have been tapped on for expenses that were not budgeted. What I would like is to have a proper 'pure savings' find to add on to my reserve savings (which is where I put in the extra money I get through bonuses etc which is not on a regular basis).
2. I still get urges to shop uncontrollably and there have been times when it has been pretty bad and that's when I would have to tap on my ordinary savings fund which I am not too thrilled about.
   
3. There are still areas in my budget that I have not gotten under control - one is my food budget where I am still spending several hundreds on top of my monthly budgeted amount. The other area is what I term miscellaneous budget which is not good because it's basically unplanned spending. Towards the end of the year, I did try to list down expenses which are tied to different months - birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas - where I need to put aside more money for those months for such expenses. Am still trying to improve on this and will continue to do so in 2010.