Lots of big future expensive purchases are coming to my mind this week, making it seem like I need to save huge mountains of money all at once. But one thing at a time...

1. Halloween party. This should be covered, with $300 in the bank, a little bit of spending money still floating around in our wallets, and a $25 American Express gift card. We just need booze, a few more food items and possibly a couple last-minute costume enhancements. Really hoping we come in under budget so we can use some of the money for something else!

2. CSA. Our community-supported farm is offering subscriptions for next year at this year's price if we sign up early. $500 instead of $600 is an amazing deal, except I wasn't really prepared to pay for it until next year! Well, I've got an upcoming budget surplus of $450 that I was going to put into general short-term savings, so that plus any leftovers from Halloween, plus a couple more eBay sales, and we should be able to do that in a couple weeks. My first online-survey paycheck ($10) should be coming, so I'll put that toward the CSA if I need to. If not, it'll go toward my next big thing...

3. Xmas! We three buy each other presents from a communal supply of money, plus we'll probably buy gifts at least for our long-distance friends in England, maybe for a couple friends here. Luckily my and AS's families don't expect presents, so we're off the hook there. We've only got $37 in the gift fund right now, so any extra we get should go in there. As soon as it's spent for Xmas, we'll have to start building it up again for...

4. Birthdays! All three of us have birthdays in early to mid March, so that gives us two scant months to save up for those festivities. Meanwhile I want to somehow save enough money for some home improvements, including...

5. A new dishwasher! This is one thing I'm hoping lasts awhile longer, but at the same time am dying to replace. It's never done a very good job; we have to rinse pretty thoroughly beforehand or else silt from the cleaning collects on the glasses and hardens there, requiring a rinse after. Plus there's something wrong with the door, so if we don't latch it, it falls down (giving me a pretty nasty bruise the first time when I wasn't expecting it). We cook almost every meal at home, so we'd love a dishwasher that required less rinsing; seems like we spend half our free time doing dishes.

So if we get all that sorted out, we still have to think about...

6. England! We're planning on going in May, for NT's sister's wedding as well as to see as much of the friends he left behind as we possibly can. When I started my debt tracking, I automatically added an imaginary $5000 to our debt balance, because I figured that would cover whatever we had to charge to get to England. Well, turns out that total will only work if we're really, really tightfisted there. Airfare alone is going to run us about $2700, hotels about $1300, and a rental car plus insurance plus gas, about $600. Leaving about $400 to cover food and drinks for 3 adults for 9 days. Wishful thinking! So it's either crowd into someone's house for some nights or save up more money. We'll have to see.

There are some bits of money we're not going to count on because they're not definite amounts. NT should get some kind of Xmas bonus. We should all get IRS refunds but there are too many variables this year to predict how much. NT and I should be able to shift around our benefits at open enrollment to maybe add a hundred or two a month in income. Beyond that, it may just be a matter of stashing some of our spending money/exercise reward money each month, being stingy on the day-to-day stuff so we can make all these big purchases as painless as possible. One thing we won't do: go on the credit cards any more than the $5K I've already planned.