Monday, January 23, 2006

Forgotten good news

In my rush to write that long boring entry below, I seem to have forgotten to give you peoples really good news for my finances. My mom says she'll buy my ticket over to Sweden as a graduation present. She pointed out that a plane ticket to Europe is a normal present in our family. My brother and I both got one for our highschool graduations. This is an even bigger event. This takes 1500 off of my required expenses! I can get a ticket for less than that, but I had given myself that much just to be on the careful side. I'm going to go play with my excel spreadsheet and see how much I need at various exchange rates... BRB! :)

If you people remember way back when I used to actually remember to write about my trip (you know, what this blog was created for!) I decided that about 5000 SEK a month is a good amount. I've also calculated how much I need for 4800 and for 5200 per month. I've done that at various exchange rates.

Rate - SEK - 1 month - 12 months
7.66 - 5000 - 653 USD - 7833 USD ** Current Rate
7.00 - 5000 - 714 USD - 8571 USD
7.50 - 5000 - 667 USD - 8099 USD
8.00 - 5000 - 625 USD - 7500 USD
8.50 - 5000 - 588 USD - 7136 USD

Since I have 6,238 dollars saved up and will be getting 1500 in semester money as soon as the check arrives and my mom deposits it... I am doing so well! I started out with a goal I thought was impossible and I'm almost there! I've almost saved up enough money for 12 months of living expenses!

Today is also the first day of school. I have 9 hours that I'm either in class or at work today. That doesn't include the hour lunch break or the hour dinner break I gave myself. I have a 9 hour day, three 6 hour days, and one 8 hour day each week this semester. I'll be working 15 hours and going to class for 19 hours.

Oh, and my mom told me that I 'should be a tad more mercenary.' She thinks I should take all the money I can get from her this semester because I don't know how much I will be getting in the future. So I think that excuses me from helping my mom out with finances! I can keep almost all of the money I earn this semester now! Weee! Although since I don't have to buy my own plane ticket... I only need about 100 USD (yes, just a hundred) to have enough to survive for 12 months at the current exchange rate. Now I can work on surviving for a longer period of time and saving up some startup money. Be great if I could get like 500- 1000 USD of start up cash for things like buying a new bike.

Now off to slowly lag my way into the school's website to figure out when/where/what my classes are for this week.

2 comments:

Fahle said...

Wow, det är ju helt underbart!
Tror du att din bror mäste börja hjälpa din mor nu, eller ska han fortsätta köpa sprit till sina kompisar?

Jaenelle said...

jag tror han ska fortsätta köta sprit till sina kompisar... I think my mom might be using the fact that she has to give so much money to her kids to try and get my dad to get at least a part time job.