More interesting money articles on Yahoo! today. They're on a roll ...

This one is about rather outrageous kid allowances. We haven't started giving AA an allowance yet and haven't decided when to start or how to handle it. I do want to use it as an opportunity to start her financial education a lot earlier than mine started. I only got an allowance starting in 10th grade, and it wasn't combined with any lessons.

This is a rather depressing story about our shrinking middle... I've actually done great in terms of income and net worth over the past decade, but partly that's because of how badly we were screwing up before I came to this site. Most of us here are doing great with what we have, but just think how much better we'd be doing if more and more of the wealth didn't keep getting funneled to and hoarded by the top 1%!

And speaking of the top 1% hoarding wealth ...

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We get our spending money out today, and I've already got it spent in my head!

I get $80, and I owe in $5, so I have $75 to spend essentially. $20 is going in an envelope for the play I want to see next year, $20 will go for my portion of babysitter wages for Saturday, about $15 will pay for wine for the week (we take turns and it's mine). That leaves $20. On Wednesday I'm treating my old boss and my family to Thai delivery; I hope to keep that to $50 with tax & tip.

That will leave me $30 in the hole for next Friday, so I'll only take out $50 then. $20 will go to the theater envelope, leaving me $30. Essentially I have $30 out of the next two weeks unallocated. Much tighter than usual! That's OK, I'll try to view it as a fun challenge to spend as little as possible for the next couple weeks. I really want to start saving up for a couple wardrobe updates!

We have a birthday party tonight and another one Saturday. Lots of my friends are turning or about to turn 40, so I expect a wave of parties. People are more likely to throw parties on the big 3-0, 4-0, etc. I told AS & NT that I didn't really want to chip in for gifts, so we're using a Barnes & Noble gift card to get them some cute novelty items, plus AS picked up a $2 "I'm the birthday boy" button at a thrift store for one of them. Glad to have one less expense to worry about! Also, tonight's party is kid-friendly (starts early & everything), so we only have to get a sitter for Saturday's.

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Fitness tracking for the past few days:

Aug. 20
10-min. workout: No. 4/20
Calorie counting: Yes, estimated 1,480. 20/20
No night snacks: Success. 17/20

Aug. 21
10-min. workout: No vigorous exercise, though I did walk home from work (30 min.). 4/21
Calorie counting: Yes, estimated 1,636. 21/21
No night snacks: Fail (had wine at trivia). 17/21

Aug. 22
10-min. workout: Yes! 5/22
Calorie counting: Yes, estimated 1,440. 22/22
No night snacks: Success. 18/22

Aug. 23
10-min. workout: No. 5/23
Calorie counting: Yes, estimated 1,527. 23/23
No night snacks: Fail, though I kept it to a very small snack. 18/23

Clearly my 10-min. workout idea has run out of steam, at least for now. I need a new "trick" to get myself more active. These are the ideas I'm pondering for next month:
- My job is doing a yoga tutorial and pedometer challenge, so I think I'll sign up for those and try to really get into it.
- Bike riding on weekends, at least to do groceries but hopefully for pleasure too.
- Baby dance party at least one weeknight per week, where I play dance videos and dance around with AA and SL.
- Mild weight training regimen; at least two nights per week of upper body free weights, two nights per week of lower-body and ab exercises.

I have this weekend to ponder how to structure it and will post new fitness goals for September along with my debt-repayment goal.