I haven't been noting individual charitable contributions, but we've donated $910 total for the year, just passing the halfway mark on our 2011 goal! Having it as a regular budget item is great because it ensures we remember to donate. We have several recurring monthly donations set up as part of it; the rest is a random budget item that we can donate to causes that get our attention along the way. We each get $50 a month total to allocate as we please, whether it's through recurring monthly payments to a charity or one-time gifts.

***

Thought I'd give an update on my credit card situation:
- I haven't received the 50,000 points for spending $3000 on my Chase Sapphire card. I assume they update the points total monthly, since it hasn't increased in weeks. Hopefully by next week I'll have my points and can request my check, at which point I can instruct customer service to close my accounts. I'll explain why again; we'll see if they make any attempt to salvage our relationship.
- AS still has a couple hundred to spend before she hits $3000 on her Chase Sapphire and receives her second 50,000 points, so it may take longer to cancel her Chase account.
- AS and I got approved for a Citi MasterCard that will give us a $150 bonus for spending $500 in the first 90 days. Easy peasy. There's also a regular rewards program for purchases. We should receive the card within a week.
- Haven't heard whether NT and I were approved for an Amex card that will come with a $100 bonus yet. Should hear in a week or two.
- I decided to keep my Discover card open for now since it has the same rewards program as the Chase Freedom I'm going to cancel. I added NT to the account in case I end up keeping it. If I get the Amex I may cancel Discover, but we'll see.

***

We had our annual meeting with Prudential, my company's 401(k) provider. Mostly kiddie stuff in the presentation, but I did learn that 7% is considered a fairly safe assumption for how your retirement savings will grow over time. It used to be 10% but the Dept. of Labor made companies like Prudential revise it downward in recent years, after so much volatility in the markets.

I've only ever had 401(k)s during volatile times. I got my first real account shortly before the tech bubble burst, and a foolhardy co-worker had just convinced me to put 90% of my 401(k) into a brand-new, high-risk tech stock fund that had been going gangbusters. Needless to say my meager account was decimated. I've also seen my account buffeted by the recent real estate bubble burst and the Great Recession. So if a retirement calculator gives me the option to choose a growth percentage, I usually pick 4% or 5%, and the results are that we're seriously underfunding with our contributions. But estimate 7% and it's a whole different story.

I ran the calculator on Prudential's website after the meeting and was pleased to see it predict we would have a $220 surplus every month in retirement. Now granted that's if we all work until I'm 70 (I rolled all our stats into one profile) and contribute the same amount we do now the whole time. So we could do better, in case we want/need to stop working before then (or our salaries drop from where they are now). But it's good to know we're on basically the right track.