Well, I've managed to keep up with my bills and my budget spreadsheets, but forget having the time to write anything! I already had to take a 10-minute break in this first paragraph to walk around with little Miss AA. We'll see how long she stays asleep now. 
OK, financial stuff:
AA had the good grace to be born at the beginning of a slow period in my finances; not much happens between the 2nd of the month and the 15th, so it was easy to keep up on things.
One of AS's student loan payments went through, with $87 going to principal. That makes $901 down, $229 to go on the March debt goal.
I put $25 into the travel fund last week, as well as $1 in interest into the EF. We now have $1265 saved for the Va. trip and $3584 for the UK one. I'm waiting to make sure my doctor will authorize me to go back to work when I planned (hoping the C-section doesn't change that), and once that's confirmed I'll start to look for good deals on tickets.
I've had this small financial problem so boring I haven't even bothered to write about it, but it continues to annoy us. In a nutshell: NT and I opened another account at US Bank to take advantage of a deal where if you put $1000 into savings you got a $50 Visa card, and if you kept at least $1000 in savings for a year you get another one. We transferred the $1000 over right away, and received the first Visa card--for $36 instead of $50.
After weeks of inquiries we finally learned that NT was supposed to have given them a new tax form, which he'll have to do every couple years since he's a noncitizen permanent resident. Since he hadn't, federal withholding was going to be taken out of any interest income (which is what this Visa card counts as). We'd gotten the notice about the form ages ago, but when we went into the bank, whoever helped us thought it was sufficient to enter some data into the computer, and they never had us fill out that form.
Anyway, we filled out the form and got the $14 that had been withheld deposited into our account. Then the monthly interest hit our savings account that we've had for years--only this time, federal withholding was deducted from it. Sigh. Somehow this deal we signed up for has triggered a bigger problem having to do with NT's missing (but now provided) tax form. So now we're going to try filling out the form but with both of us signing it, and see if that fixes the problem. At least we've got an excellent banker working on the problem who's as annoyed with it as we are, so he's good at following up and keeping us informed.
My first paycheck at 60% disability pay hit my account, and it was about twice as much as I expected. I checked my paystub and realized they aren't withholding taxes. I thought about correcting that, but I'm only going to have one more paycheck of disability pay, and I think I've been cautious with my withholding on my regular paychecks, so I'm just going to leave it. Anyway, we could use the money now, and we'll be better able to pay any tax shortfall next year, when we're back on full pay.
I'm amazed AA let me write for this long! I should go ahead and post it rather than pushing my luck.
Some financial updates
March 16th, 2010 at 04:59 pm
March 17th, 2010 at 01:58 am 1268791098
Great to see you back at the helm of things ! :-)
March 17th, 2010 at 02:47 am 1268794057
March 17th, 2010 at 03:38 am 1268797093
March 17th, 2010 at 04:00 am 1268798410
March 17th, 2010 at 03:11 pm 1268838661
I can't wait for her to start laughing! She seems to be practicing smiling but it isn't related to anything I do--making funny faces and noises doesn't get much of a reaction yet.
March 20th, 2010 at 01:18 am 1269047913
Jerry