Tonight I sent off the tuition payment for NT's summer semester. It wouldn't even technically be due until we got back from vacation, but I figure why wait if we've got the money? The payment won't hit until tomorrow or Thursday, but unlike debt payments I don't have to wait to see how much actually goes to principal.
The payment was for $2039, which I can take out of "estimated future debt" and thus reduce our debt total. That confusing line item is nearly gone, so I won't have to talk about it much longer. College is going to cost about $11K more than the $40K I designated as "future debt," but luckily we're paying as we go now, so I know I won't have to add to student loans anymore.
Anyway, that takes our debt progress to $3820 for May, surpassing the $3075 goal!
It also takes big-picture progress to $17,970.02! At this point we're nearly four months ahead. That's good, because our goals were all estimates, so I wouldn't mind reaching the goal sooner in case we move sooner and/or saving more in case the move costs more than we estimate.
It's also good because I've been thinking about loosening the purse strings, just a tiny bit. We've all felt very run down and overworked for the past year or so, and while money can't fix every aspect of that, I'm going to try and be more willing to spend unscheduled money if certain purchases can ease our fatigue enough to be worth it.
Of course, me being me, I want at least a ballpark number. So, since we have about a $150 monthly budget surplus, that's what I'm going to aim for, about. But I'm going to try and not be too anal about that amount.
What do I think could ease our burdens? I think it could vary from month to month. Maybe we order food a bit more often vs. cooking. Schedule an extra housecleaning midmonth. Hire babysitters more often. Take a meditation class together. I'm just brainstorming. Obviously we can't do all of them, every month, but we could change it up and see what works.
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In other news, we all have a springtime cold. I caught it last (almost thought I was getting off scott-free for a while), so I'm the sickest while everyone else is recovering pretty well. We leave for England Thursday night, so I REALLY hope I'm mostly better by then.
I stayed home sick (well, worked from home) today, but didn't get any preparation for the trip done. Mostly did work and monitored my work email, then took a nap in the late afternoon.
I've got to go in the next two days, to make sure everything's in good shape for me to leave. This will be the first time leaving my newish co-worker in charge of my main task, and it's for two full weeks! I've been training her since October, so I feel pretty good, but it's such a complex task and our client is so unpredictable yet picky, I can't help but be nervous.
We still have a few things to do. We have a housesitter coming (so our cat has company), so we're trying to get everything as clean as possible. I even threw some orange and lemon peels down the garbage disposal. 
Tomorrow I want to air out our mattress on the balcony, and vacuum it and Febreze it, and air out the condo in general. Luckily temperatures shot up (98 today!) so it won't be a problem to have the windows open a lot.
I'm nervous about having a stranger housesit, but I feel lucky we were able to find someone relatively local. We've met him twice and feel very good about him. He lives about an hour away from the Twin Cities and joined the housesitting site in hopes of trying out city living because he's contemplating a move here. He sings in a chorus here that actually rehearses at the church across the street sometimes, so he's already got ties to our neighborhood. (I just thought to Google him and found a video of him too!) So it's really the next best thing to having an actual friend housesit. And, we don't have to pay anyone to watch the cat.
We'll have a lot of prep work to do tomorrow, because we pretty much need to grab our bags and leave for the airport as soon as we get home from work Thursday. It's an international flight, and we want time to eat before we board, so we're going to try and get there about three hours before departure.
I wanted to have blog posts written for my League of Ordinary Savers website that I could time to post automatically while I'm gone, but I don't know if I'll have the time--or enough inspiration to come up with as many as I wanted to! We'll see. Dang cold is kind of sapping my ambition.
May debt goal reached, big-picture goal progress, etc.
May 15th, 2013 at 02:44 am
May 15th, 2013 at 03:18 am 1368587937
Kudos on financial progress and being able to cash flow tuition and books. Housesitter sounds like a good fit. Have a wonderful vacation, take a ton of pictures so we can learn about life in England
May 15th, 2013 at 11:33 am 1368617633
May 15th, 2013 at 12:48 pm 1368622137
Have a great trip!!
May 15th, 2013 at 02:29 pm 1368628154
Good to think these things through!
May 18th, 2013 at 04:14 pm 1368893654