Finances: Overview, update and current goals

The overall goal of Balancing Our Blessings: Finance is to be debt free, living within my means and building a healthy savings for retirement.  This means paying off my debts, having a functioning spending plan, building an emergency savings account and then moving on to saving for my later years.

Not too long ago (like just a month or so), I had everything paid off but my crazy house, had a decent emergency savings account and was on my way to saving for finishing up remodeling this house.  Then life happened.  Due to an unexpected medical expense, the emergency fund was wiped out - but it sure did serve its purpose well!  A few other unexpecteds led to small balances on the credit cards and a few extra medical bills to pay off.  So, I'm back to balancing a few things in this area.

I had a few goals already set prior to the emergency savings account being tested.

1.  Gifts on the Sly - funding 2012 birthday gifts with "found" money
2.  Reducing my monthly expenses to 75% of my then current income
3.  Funding 50% of the current estimates for finishing this house

Of course, I now have a bit more work to do as I need to pay the credit cards back off, rebuild the emergency fund AND meet the above goals!