It's been over a month since I've blogged on here! Our first 2 months of this year have been good, financially speaking. We've kept to our budget each month and socked away extra money to our mortgage. And two months straight of contributing to our kids' college funds, and 15% to DH's 401k.

The biggest change is that I started doing freelance writing part-time and discovered there is a lot of work out there. I'm not doing anything glamorous, just writing for websites. But I made over $1000 in January and over $600 in February! Of course I have to pay self-employment taxes on those earnings, which are higher than normal...but I'm still thrilled with the extra cash!

Woohoo, it's 2013!

Our emergency fund is in place. We paid all of our house taxes/HOA fees in December. We have paid off our February 2013 vacation. We have a small slush fund, car fund, and a vacation savings for the summer.

Our big goal this year is to pay extra principle on our mortgage. We are trying to pay off our mortgage early so that we can free up some cash to help our kids through college. Our plan is to pay off our mortgage in 8 years. It seems overwhelming and like it will take a long time. We have a goal of paying an extra $8244 in principle this year.

We already paid an extra $1000 from a bonus received in December. We will take $1000 from our tax return later this Spring and put it towards the mortgage. We already pay an extra $150/month with our bi-weekly automatic withdrawals. I will add another $300/month on top of that. Starting in September, I will have another $200/month on top of that because we will go a year without any preschool tuition payments. I'm cancelling our lawn service and I'll be doing it myself. Hopefully those changes will enable us to reach our goal.

Today, DH adjusted his 401k contributions back to 15% (we had lowered it to 7% in the back half of 2012 so that we could get our emergency fund in place).

We are also going to begin contributing to our kids' college funds, $100 each per month.

In December, I started a part-time job doing freelance writing online. I earned $400 in December (before taxes). I hope to earn $500 a month with that this year. Not much, but it's something!

Here's hoping for a great year! Good luck everyone on achieving your financial goals!