Right, overall YTD summary:
Actually lost a hundred bucks this year. Well, that's not counting tax refund (since I base all my calculations on pre-tax values, and just treat taxes as any other expense... so refunds there just go towards paying off my self-debt) but thats still a bad precedent :( OTOH, It's a whole lot better than my projected budget which was was $750 loss.
Actual income was $200 less than projected, at 21800. Actual expenses were nearly $900 less than projected, though, at 21900.
Also added Cell phone expense category.

Some more numbers:

* Started the year at $450 checking, $3200 in savings, and still owing myself $1700.
* That spiked to $4300 self-debt after getting a new car in the summer...
* But I managed to end the year with $582 in checking (which is high and I need to move some of that to savings), $2100 in savings, and only $3400 self-debt.
* Thats $400 more expenses and $200 more income than last year.

On to category analysis:

Good news is I stayed underbudget on the car and taxes. Gas and food were overbudget, which is kinda bad; tithe and savings went underbudget again, so getting that corrected. Cell is spot-on, which is nice. Glad to see I can keep up with my bills properly ;) Rent is within margin of tolerance.

* Looks like gas % dropped this year, which is good; hopefully it'll drop again since I'm so close to work now. (although my MPG has dropped and gas prices are up a bit... but I'm still purchasing gas less frequently.)
* Oo, my food % actually dropped a smidge as well, which is good to see. I like not spending money on food >_>
* Savings went up a good chunk; too bad I spent most of that, but that's also kinda the point, right?
* Misc % went down, mostly because I didn't scale that to go up with my pay raise. I'm really not at a point where I need to spend more money on entertainments.
* Taxes went up. That's annoying, but payroll taxes went up at the beginning of the year so it wasn't unexpected—and I did overestimate them, which is good.

Takeaway: Finances are still stable, and I'm making decent headway on paying down my self-debt, but this is still a dead-end job. (More on that later, kinda.)

Other futurecasting:

* Shouldn't need to buy a new computer or car in the near future, so I'm saving up for shoes and glasses—should be able to get both of those by summer though! (Any idea how much Transitions lenses are? Or eye exam? Frames are $150-200, apparently, but Lenscrafters doesn't want to even give price ranges on their website. AAA should give a decent discount but still... $100 exam, $200 frames, $200 lenses? So thats $500 to aim towards)
* Car insurance should drop here as well since I finally sold off the Grandam; and moving closer to work may possibly drop my premiums also—but we'll see. Have to call on Tues to deal with all that.
* Current strategy is to save up to $6000 cash/savings, then split my savings between cash and investments until I hit $12k savings, which should be the desired 6-month cash reserve. (And that number can always increase if needed, later).
* And towards that, I've corrected my automated savings withdrawals to be on my paydays (instead of the more random 'every other Friday') and increased those from 50 to 60. So it may be a touch more difficult to pay myself back, but my savings goal is up by $20/month.

Misc other financial details: I'm putting all of my bonuses from work into a 'don't touch this' savings column just in case it doesn't get taxed properly somehow (which doesn't appear to be an issue)... It counts as savings in the spreadsheet, but I track it separately until the end of the year (when it goes towards my self-debt). And this year, I'm gonna try throwing it at smartypig.com which unfortunately is an online bank, essentially, but it's got the best interest rate I can find anywhere. (It's still drek but it's SO much better than my *actual* “savings” account.) Can't believe I haven't done anything with that interest rate all of last year... wow. That's failtastic.