I've managed to reduce the deficit today by applying part ($125) of a small AS freelance payment and some other bits of money:
CapOne CC reward $13.05
Amex CC reward $25.00
9/23 grocery surplus $55.23
9/30 grocery surplus $33.01
Oct utilities budget surplus $36.80

AS had to get a Lyft Wednesday night and I ordered 2 more sets of swim lessons for the kids, so about $100 of progress was lost. Still, the deficit went from $3441 to $3138.

AS should receive a larger payment tomorrow from one of her teaching gigs, and I expect to put $688 toward the deficit, so we should be under the $3K mark soon!

I do have my WI trip coming up, with car rental, hotel and food adding to the shared spending deficit. But I'm really hoping I don't take us over $3K again.

I felt confident enough to make AS's third-quarter IRA contribution of about $1300. I usually do the third quarter on 8/31 but had kept the money in checking to make sure there was a big enough cushion to float the shared-spending deficit. Now I feel a bit better about it. I'm still holding off on depositing about $700 of reno savings; I'll keep that in checking until the deficit comes down even more.

When AS's teaching payment does come, I'll also be able to put enough away in reno savings to get our total savings (EF and reno) over the $20K mark! That'll be awesome, even though the reno savings are of course temporary.

We only managed to stay $33 under budget on groceries this week because we had to stock up on some pricier items: big bottle of olive oil, big bag of cat food, big thing of laundry detergent. Those items alone were over $30. Other grocery spending came to about $100, which is still really good and really low for us.

My work's pedometer challenge is starting Sunday, and I think I'm in really good shape to be competitive this year! Every October they have a four-week challenge to get as many steps as possible. The high stepper in each division of the company gets a gift card every week. No one person can win two weeks, so this means the biggest competitors win first and leave an opportunity for slightly less athletic people. But I've never won a weekly prize. You do also get a gift card at the end for at least getting 6K steps per day the first week, 8K the second and 10K the final two weeks, so I've always gotten that at least. But I really want one of the weekly gift cards this year!

I've been walking about 3 miles from home to work and usually try to walk a bit after work as well. I'll amp up my efforts even more starting Oct. 1. Fingers crossed! I think it's just a $50 gift card, but still, would help offset the price of a date night, which we haven't had for a very long time.

AS finished up a bunch of projects this month and invoiced, so I'm hoping October is a good money month that really gets the deficit down. We have some Halloween and other expenses coming up, but I think overall the balance is going to get a lot better over the next month, barring unforeseen expenses of course.