We got together as a family last night and decided where we were going to cut money to make up for my five days of furlough. It was nice to share the responsibility rather than just say "OK, now you can't have this or this for a while." We decided to cut $100 from the monthly grocery budget for five months, and to shave $100 off the Wisconsin vacation budget, and I'm just scraping the other $42 off future emergency fund savings.

I still wanted to make my savings goal symbolically, so I'm taking $100 of what I would be saving in June for the vacation and putting it in the EF, and reducing future EF contributions by an extra $100, so it comes out the same. Just a way of tweaking it in my mind so I don't miss my June savings goal.

We also counted the spare-change jar and found it had over $70 in it! We decided to throw that at the 8.99% personal loan, because once we get rid of that we'll free up over $600 per month. It might happen sooner than I thought, because it looks like NT got $2000 too much financial aid this school year, and if that's the case I'll put that money toward the personal loan rather than paying down his lower-interest student loan.

While I was on the subject of trying to get rid of that loan, I brought up that I want to put $200 less toward savings each month and put it toward extra principal payments on that loan instead, and they agreed. I don't know if we can knock this loan out before the end of the year, but if I put all extra windfalls toward it, it's a remote possibility!

It's very very hard, with planning for a child and all these attritions to our income, to decide whether to put extra money toward debt or savings. I'll probably waffle back and forth every few months as different priorities weigh on my mind in different ways.