starting fresh

It's May. How did that happen? April practically flashed right on by me and I'm not really sure where the month went at all.

Lately I love the start of a new month. At work with the way our sales cycles run, I always find the last few days of the month rather stressful. It's either worrying about keeping my numbers up and being terrified of having a bad day that will throw my numbers under the bus or its about busting ass to try to pull my number back to a something that resembles respectable. It feels like a lot of money is on the line; considering the percent of my monthly income that I can make in bonuses in a month it is a lot of money on the line for me.

Luckily I started April off strong so I had a lot of the work already done coming into the last week or so. I managed to pull through strong and even though I'll spend the next few days waiting for the official numbers and for management to release the month's bonus tally I know from my own math approximately how much I can be expecting, and I feel good about even the low end of the spectrum. It's nice to feel good about my performance, and I really like the hard feedback from numbers and the financial reward. Still, the last few days I'm stressed about having a bad day and throwing my month down the drain.

The first of the month feels all fresh and shiny and new at work. There's a chance to start over again. Working on setting myself up for success is more exciting than just trying to hold on to numbers that I've been working on, and even when my numbers are rock solid near the end of the month I stress out, hardcore, about the whole thing.

It's also a good time for me to reassess my financial situation on a more personal level. I haven't run all the numbers yet, but I'm cautiously optimistic. My paycheque deposit last night pulled my bank account number up above a big deal savings goal of mine that I've been working hard on developing, although once my loan payments come out it might slip just back under target.

It puts us at a good place with saving for a down payment (technically, we have a down payment at this point, we could just never afford the mortgage we'd be carrying with only this much down). We also need to figure out what we're really doing with my bonuses. We always figure them out a fair bit before they're paid out (we budget them) but it's all over the place. Probably when we're closer to buying a house we'll save them for things like laundry machines and those bits of furniture you forget you need and all the other things that go with moving but that's still ages away. We could definitely be more intentional about this.