Received $70 bank interest for the month of January.

Snowflakes to Investments:
--Redeemed $0 credit card rewards (cash back) from our grocery card (back to 6% with the new year, but it pays out a month behind, thus $0 for now)
--Redeemed $99 cash back on Citi card
--Redeemed $21 cash back on dining/gas card

Other snowflakes to Investments:
--Redeemed $12 cash back on Amazon Prime card
+ $ 5 Savings from Target Red Card (grocery purchases)

TOTAL: $137 snowflakes to investments

401k Contributions/Match:
+$415

Snowball to Savings:
+$415 Side Income

Savings (From my paycheck):
+$ 550 to cash (mid-term savings)
+ $100 extra to mortgage

Short-Term Savings (for non-monthly expenses within the year):
+$1,500 to cash (Bumped up for 2020)
-$ 837 Home Insurance
-$ 160 Dentist
-$ 120 Prepay school lunch

TOTAL: $2,070 Deposited to Cash and Investments

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Only one paycheck this month. Literally, because my prior check had been advanced 12/31. MH is also off work. Thus, lower 401k #s this month.

Cash/Interest will be on the higher side until we fund our IRAs. It never makes any sense to decide until the year is over. Will start transferring the $12k to our IRAs (for 2019) once we finalize our 2019 tax return. (Until then, I don't have final #s of what we can contribute to tax-deductible Traditional IRAs; the difference will go to ROTH IRAs.)

Of course, I am always a month behind because these numbers reflect January Income minus December spending (December spending charged and paid off January 1). So when I sit down and enter all my income/expenses for the next month, I already know how the next month will shake out. Because spending is already fairly locked in.

Ugh, February is ugly! Spent way too much money in January. I have side income coming in (if I get it billed), MH should have one small paycheck (for at least 2 days) and I have cash out my ears. I know MH picked up a few Christmas things his mom reimbursed him for. & we treated the whole fam out to dinner again (another student concert for DL) and someone slipped us cash. Got some cash gifts for Christmas ($20 here and there). Plus, I sold a treadmill for $250 cash. This was before I got sick, so might have been November. We were going to turn around and buy a newer (used) instrument for DL. But then I got sick and it fell off my radar. I may keep the $250 on hand for that, but I have so much cash piling up otherwise it's past time to make a deposit. I will cobble together the extra money and make February work (and will zero out deposits versus expenses).

I am just going to roll with it this month and hope for a better February (spending). I know the problem is probably that our budget is way too tight. But we rolled with it so much last year I just left it that way. I just added some significant breathing room with my raise, so figured if we were muddling along without the raise, will do fine without. This just works for our personalities, we rather err on the side of over-saving. Better to save $500 and then have to pull out $100 if we were too aggressive. I will give it a couple of more months to see how things shake out. It may be too too tight, and we will adjust if necessary.

Edited to add: MH has one more paycheck than I realized, in February. He is paid bi-weekly and I got confused on the weeks. He just received a paycheck for $12. 😂 But will be a bigger one in two weeks. I am going to go ahead and change my numbers, and do our deposit to investments for January. If nothing else, I have *cash* to cover that.