Catching Up

Since I've been off the radar for a while, I'll give you a little recap of what's been going on.

As you can see from the sidebar, I blew my December Alternative Income goal out of the water. After being determined to make $600, I ended the month at $1,111.17. Needless to say, I was ecstatic. I put a chunk of it in my plane ticket fund, beefed up my emergency fund, paid off the last remnant of my unconsolidated student loan, and even had a little left to pay extra on my credit card.

After being pretty intense in December, I took a little break in January. I did fine, just not fabulous, so the credit card went down slightly.

Then came February. I thought December was good, until February showed up and kicked December's butt. February was an extra check month at my job, so I had an extra $1280 to put on the snowball. I also got my tax refund in February, which was over $3400! With those two things, I knocked out the credit card and the money I owed to my friends and still had $788 to send to my parents. My mom liked February a lot.

I feel really good about things now that my parents are in first position in the snowball. It feels good to be making great strides of progress.

Another thing that happened in February is that I opened my own business. I've never wanted to be a freelancer because I was so terrible with money, but now that I have a handle on that part, freelancing doesn't seem nearly as scary. So far I've gotten two jobs: one for $400 and one for $1500. And that's without doing any marketing. I plan on ramping up my efforts after I take care of my job search.

That's right: I'm on the hunt for a new job. I'm not happy where I am for lots of reasons, so even though I've only been here for seven months, I feel like I need to move on. I recently read 48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller (thanks to winning a copy from ChristianPF.com), and the book had tons of great job hunting advice. Using the book's method, I mailed 15 introduction letters to my target companies yesterday, and I have CVs, resumes, and introduction letters ready to go for 15 more companies. I'm really looking forward to seeing the results pay off, especially in terms of the quality of my job.