This post has a lot of colons, sorry. New! Links!

Also, this post is very long, and I'm sorry about that. You don't necessarily have to read the whole thing, I'm sure there's stuff in the middle you can totally skip (but I'd like it better if you didn't).

I've spent the better part of two hours trying distill my short term financial goals into some sort of organized plan. It's harder than I thought it was going to be. I can't help but feel I'm missing some integral tools. My kingdom for a desk calendar! Either that, or I really need to learn how to use Excel. (As a side note, does anybody know of a free tool/software that makes financial planning easier? I know a lot of things that help you monitor finances, but projections is something I haven't seen)

At any rate, I've been cross referencing a googledoc spreadsheet and my day-planner to formulate a 6 month plan. The way I see it, there are two parts to my financial management. One side is the consistent income and monthly expenses. I've revisited my budget and I know how much spending money I have weekly, after bills and savings. The other side is the intermittent income and savings accounts. Estimating my occasional income is difficult, especially once I try to guess past 4 months from now. But I did my best, and I've established some target dates for savings.

There are a handful of things that I'm planning around this Fall:

1) By Sept. 1st I will need to pay $300 to hold my place at grad. school.
2) I need to establish an account for 2009 taxes (I owed $240 this year).
3) Trip to Montreal in October, trip to Florida at Christmas
4) I want to buy a digital camera.
5) I want to open a Roth IRA as soon as I feel comfortable doing so.

When I opened up my ING Direct account, I really opened 4. They make it very simple to have multiple linked accounts with nicknames. I now have "General," "Taxes," "Travel," and "Camera." I have $25 automatically debited weekly to the "general" account.

I've prioritized my goals thus: school payment, $600 in travel, camera, taxes. According to my really crappy spreadsheet projections, this is how the next few months will go:

August - I will continue to automatically debit into my general savings account, but I will dip into it to pay for school.

September - I'll be paid enough for my incidental work to fully fund my travel expense account for the rest of the year ($600). This will pay for the Montreal trip in October and my plane ticket for Florida. I'll also be able to fully fund the camera account and buy it! I suppose then I will put a new goal in its place.

October - While the general savings account will keep growing little by little, the travel account will be empty again. I'll open my IRA and start funding it at $50 a month. I'll also be able to put $250 into the taxes account.

November - I'll put $250 more into the taxes account, maxing it out at $500. I'll promptly forget it's there until April next year. By the end of the month I'll have just shy of $300 in the general account, which will probably help me get started on the travel expenses of going to Florida, and holiday expenses in general.

December - Keep on trucking along, probably deplete some of my general saving, but stay on track with IRA contributions. Start building travel funds back up.

January - Concentrate on funding travel account, looking forward to a possible European vacation late in the Summer of 2010.

So there it is, my 6 month savings plan, barring anything emergency related (which is likely, because my tooth is aching today). And even if there is some emergency (tooth related or not), my emergency account is waiting there to handle it.

The bigger question in all of this is, how do I keep the other half of this equation on track? I've been using my occasional income to cover my ass way too much lately, and this plan doesn't give me any wiggle room on that. I'm thinking of trying a cash system for a few weeks and seeing how it works out. I know in the past I've said I suck at cash, and I think I do. But possibly it might work out a little better than trying to shuttle money between two checking accounts. Then again, I could just start not bringing my other card with me everywhere, not to mention the Discover. I'm just setting myself up for overspending. One thing I know I cannot do anymore is get reimbursed by friends for anything (like a zipcar, or dinner, or movie tickets). I just can't deal with it properly. I put it on my credit card and then spend the cash, too. Not good. I have to be disciplined and really stick to it. Sigh.

Any reactions?