190 Miles

That's what I drove today. The majority of it was for my day job, which gets reimbursed per mile. The rest was for mystery shopping and a last minute babysitting job. It was a full day, 12 hrs straight of working and driving. On the plus side I was able to get some home buying information, hang out with two really cool kids, and read 1.5 chapters of The Wealthy Barber (review to come). The info was from a mystery shop and the last two were at babysitting. After two hours of hard playing in the yard and the basement playroom the kids wanted to put on (a parent sanctioned) movie. While they watched I learned a little more about personal finance, while interjecting the occasional question and keeping the milk refills flowing.

In addition to getting the work do I gave my new electronic filing system a run. When working on my taxes this year* I realized that a more comprehensive system of keeping track of things would make the 2008 tax season way easier. I set up an excel spreadsheet with 2 tabs, babysitting and mystery shopping. On each I record miles driven, amount paid, if it's a reimbursement (ms), payment percentages (b), and dates. It sounds complicated but most of it uses repeating formula cells.

*my yet to be completed taxes. I'm like 99% there. Mainly I want to double check a few numbers and make adjustments based on my call to the IRS this week.