Color Me Thrifty - Resolutions & Scary Saving

This morning while making my own lunch to take with me to work I was watching the Today Show and saw a segment on the Face Retirement app from Bank of America. Basically it is an aging software to show you what you will look like in retirement. It also projects the average cost of everyday items in the year you plan to retire (like $9 loaves of bread). 

The stat going around is that those of us new to the work scene will have to have over a million dollars saved in order to retire. 

Armed with this information and with the ceremonial New Years Resolutions quickly approaching I figured I'd share this one of mine with you.

In 2013 I will understand my finances, stick to my budget and save.

Seems basic yes, but at the end of each month it seems that I've somehow steered totally off track! I'm not adding any new debt (credit cards) but I'm not really improving my situation much either.

There is a grand master spreadsheet where every financial transaction will be tracked. Paychecks are listed out for each period throughout the year and each paycheck has an amount allocated for savings (401k and basic savings account), and expenses due at that time of the month. There are then weekly amounts for groceries, shopping, entertainment. Monthly amounts for bills, loans, insurance and gas. And finally a "MISC" column broken out by month where birthdays, trips and holidays are counted for. 

On another tab within the workbook is a place to literally dump my online bank statement each week so all purchases can be checked and counted in their bucket. 

The plan is to visit the spreadsheet once a week and plug in all the details. Any cash leftover and not used in that month goes directly into savings. 

If you would like to see the template of the spreadsheet just shoot me a line at colormestyled@gmail.com and I'll send it over. You'll have to make some adjustments to it to customize it for you but it is a great starting place.

I am also convinced that financial discipline and success is directly related to weight loss success and my second resolution is to loose 35 pounds. I am tracking my weight loss on Daily E every Thursday... starting (again) today.

The final resolution is to shamelessly promote my blogs and to make as many connections in the blogosphere as I can. Since starting Color Me Styled in July the site has grown past my initial expectations (thank you for your loyalty) but if I want to make Blog-world Domination my resolution for 2014 I've got a lot of ground work to do!

What are you resolving to do in 2013?