Remember last week's attempt to track my spending? Today, I am posting the results. I hope you're sitting down. Sure glad that I was! Last week I spent a total of $121.08 on items that were not necessary to anyone's survival and were not included in my budget. That's $484.32 a month or $5811 a year. That's insanity!

I'm a pretty, middle of the road, realistic person. So, I'm not going to say that it will be possible for me to cut out all of this spending completely. I think it is a reasonable goal to say I will reduce it by 50%. I will now be adding $60 a week to my family's budget to cover these miscellaneous items.

So what to do with the other 50%? I'm not sure. Because I have a feeling that I have been robbing Peter to pay Paul and that this money doesn't really exist. Ideally, I would put the other $60 a week into a savings account.

Let's imagine that it's a perfect world and that I am a perfectly disciplined individual. Today, I would used $60 to open a savings account through HSBC direct. According to BankRate.com they offer an account that is currently paying an interest rate of 3.45%. If I continued to deposit $60 into this account weekly and the interest rate didn't change I would have a savings account balance of $2987 in one year's time. That's not bad at all considering I typically have a savings account balance of $0. By the way I used the savings calculator at MSN Money to figure this out.

I'm not sure exactly what my next course of action will be. I have found it best when trying to make lifestyle changes to take baby steps. So, my first baby step is to reduce my weekly miscellaneous spending to $60 or less. I won't bore you with another week of reading about my spending habits.

This week I will be investigating various online money-making programs. I have already told you about Opinion Outpost, WorkFromHomeHQ and RevResponse. This week, I plan to investigate a few others and post my experience and the specifics of how various programs work.

Have a great week everyone!