Gaining Momentum

The momentum I built up yesterday with taking a definitive step towards getting my own boat carried on today. I found out this morning that I could set up automatic transfers from my checking to my savings easily on the computer. This was a bit of a relief because in order for me to do it through my work it would require me to really have to watch my money like a hawk. Luckily that's something I'm trying to get in the habit of anyways, but I didn't want the hassle of perhaps only having $100 for two weeks on periods where my rent was due.

With my rent and the 200 bucks that I want to deposit each check would leave me with a pitiful amount of money for half the month unless I saved up from the previous check. I was planning to save as much as possible for my checking account as well. It will be quite useful to always have enough for rent and utilities in my checking account and still be able to drop the $200 in the savings every other week. I've decided that for the first two months I will try and get my spendable money in checking up to least $400. This is going to take quite a bit of scraping but should make my life easier down the road. Also I plan to put any money over $500 I have left after bills (probably right before a paycheck) into the savings account as well and bring the total back down to $400 in checking. I don't expect this to happen very often but every little bit helps and before long I'll probably be counting the change that's sitting in a jar on my desk.

As another source for of income I sometimes do side jobs on boats for people. Detailing, rigging, electronics installs, wind instruments, consulting, splicing, knot work, and rig tuning. A lot of this I do with a friend of mine that has several years rigging experience, and some of it I do on my own through work. I lined up a job for the two of us showing a gentleman how to put up his deck stepped mast on his newly restored O'Day 22'. I figure $150-200 is in order and I can split that with my friend and still make a decent profit. Heck even $50 each is worth it for me, that's $50 closer to a new boat than I was before. Besides, he gets to learn something that will help him enjoy his boat.