As I mentioned in a recent post, we seem to have many things competing for our money this year. So a few weeks ago, NT, AS and I sat down and made a list of rough estimates of everything, as well as rough estimates of our budget surplus. Not surprisingly, our wants/needs list was several thousand more than we expect to come in this year.

So we made some compromises and downgraded some ideas, and got it to work out. For retirement, I gave up trying to max out the 2015 Roths and getting NT to 10% on his 401(k), but I kept my commitment to max out the 2016 Roths, and upped my 401(k) percentage to 9.5% (as close to 10% as I could get without going over).

We found out that NT's medical bills are nearly $3700, so we thought maybe AS could get her tooth replaced next year, or start the process this year and finish up next year, to split the cost over two years.

We got an estimate for AC and because we don't have any ducts, we'll need a ductless system. It was much more than we anticipated--over $14K if we do the whole home. We'd been thinking we'd redo one of the bathrooms and had estimated $15K for that, so we decided to just do some smaller improvements to that and focus on the AC. NT and AS already repainted the discolored old clawfoot tub in the main floor bathroom, and that makes a huge difference. There are a few other cheaper things we can do to make that bathroom more pleasant until we can afford to redo it completely.

I hadn't really thought about credit card bonus offers because NT and I had been turned down for a couple back when we were in the aftermath of home buying and refinancing. But AS showed me two offers in the mail (one for me and one for her) for a Capital One "spend $500, get $100 cash back" offer. It made me think we should really see if we can start getting approved for CCs again and do the churn thing to help offset some of these bigger expenses.

So I applied for those two cards and was instantly approved. I went to creditcards.com and saw Chase Sapphire was still a top offer, so I applied for one for NT and was instantly approved. It's a "spend $4K and have an authorized user make one purchase, get 55,000 points" offer. We can charge NT's medical bills plus a couple more things and easily make this one. We'll either get $550 cash or even more in travel rewards--AS suggested we could use it to purchase the airfare for my college reunion in June.

Then I saw that Chase Freedom had a "spend $500 and have an authorized user make one purchase, get $175" offer. I went ahead and applied AS for that since I don't know if she's done a Chase Freedom before. I only got a "we need more time to review" message on that one, so not sure if she'll be approved for it. If not, I can try NT or myself on it, or move on to other offers.

The main problem I'm seeing with our list of things we want/need to do with our surplus this year is that most of the expenses are coming up in the first half of the year. So we'll have enough money to pay for them by the end of the year, but will need to make the purchases before that. I'm hoping we'll have more money coming in than anticipated, but if not, I may have to find ways to "float" the purchases until we have the cash flow for them. Since we usually have several thousand in checking thanks to being ahead on bills and saving up for AS's quarterly estimated tax payments, it maybe be doable, but I'll need to plan it carefully.

Expenses coming up in the first half of the year:
NT's medical bills $3673
NYC airfare $750? plus lodging (could stay on campus for cheaper if necessary), reunion fee and donation to college
Barcelona airfare $600 or so
AC $14,500 if we decide to do the whole home

Most of the other stuff on the list can wait until later in the year, but these are most of the bigger-ticket items, so it's going to be tough!