I added a new page to my blog, showing my household's net worth broken down by individual. Since we have a lot of younger members on SavingAdvice now, this should be instructive: We all three have lots of debt and haven't handled our money the best, but one of us bought a house young and started retirement contributions as soon as he entered the workforce. Now we're in our late twenties/mid-thirties, and guess who has positive net worth?

I received word of my 3% raise, effective in September. Hooray! It's the first raise in a year and a half so I'm happy. The other good news is if the company doesn't do too terribly for the next six months, we might get another raise in April, since that's the month we usually get raises.

Sold a few more books on half.com, and going to send in some old cellphones and iPods to various online places to get a few bucks. I hope to net $6 for three phones and $20 for two iPods (one of which works). Considering their battered condition I think that's fair enough. The only thing I don't like about the iPod place is that I have to pay shipping upfront. The cellphone site takes care of it and sent me a postage-paid envelope. But I'll pick the cheapest shipping possible for the iPods and cross my fingers.

AS saved us at least $40 (probably much more than that if you figure full price) on NT's textbooks by extensively hunting around for the best deals online. I'm confident we'll be able to sell back whatever books he doesn't keep on half.com. I love that site; you can get really nice prices on textbooks! We've sold 16 of the 31 books we posted their in early August, and made about $150 total.

NT got invited to join Pinecone and cashed his first $3 check yesterday. I really hope they have need of a 34YO woman soon! I'm registered and just waiting to hear from them.

Looking ahead to our vacation, it looks like it will be completely funded by Oct. 1. We leave Oct. 3, so once again we'll have paid for a vacation before we even leave. Make that about the second one in my adult life!