April was a great month because I was able to see that my paychecks are going to be a lot bigger than I'd calculated for parental leave. That allowed me to put some big chunks of money toward debt that I'd been hoarding in the checking account to help cover the leaner weeks. So I paid down $4113 in debt, surpassing my $2190 goal by $1923.

My May goal is to pay off at least $900 in debt. Why such a small amount? First, some of my end-of-month payments may not hit in May since the last two days fall on Saturday and Sunday. And second, NT decided on some purchases he wanted to make for the home, so we may not do any extra debt repay this month. I'm hoping to at least surpass $1000 of debt repayment since we've never done less than that in a month, but I'm setting my sights low so I'm not disappointed if it doesn't work out.

As I stated in an earlier post, we're looking to have a $5500 surplus after I accomplish my goals this year, so I let AS and NT know that this can be used to fill any need/want gaps for the household. And that we can spend some of this money before I actually achieve my goals, since my deadline is the end of the year, and some of our wants are more urgent than that. I want next year to be devoted to several ambitious financial goals, so I'm hoping we can get set with everything we really want this year, and not need to make any big purchases next year.

Yesterday we went to IKEA and bought a couch, some lighting and storage for AA's nursery, shelving for the balcony closet, new dishes to replace some chipped and scratched dinnerware, potholders to replace some really grungy ones that weren't coming clean in the wash, and a duvet with two covers to replace a coverlet that had developed several holes in it.

The couch is being delivered on Wednesday. We'll try to freecycle our current, half-reupholstered couch on the same day, because you need to have padded curtains hung up in the elevators to move big pieces in and out (our elevators have mirrored walls). I hope that works out. I seem to remember there being some difficulty with getting the couch through the door when we originally got it, so I'll have to warn NT (he's better at spatial relations stuff, so he'll be able to figure it out when the time comes).

Next we'll probably focus on getting the balcony screened in. I'm really glad we didn't do it already though, because we just got notice that the balconies are being restored--railings painted and replaced where necessary, etc. People who have the screened-in feature will have to pay $350 to have it taken down and then put up again, whereas the restoration is free for the rest of us. Whew, dodged a bullet there! They've never done this type of work in the 6+ years we've lived here, so it probably won't need to be done again for a long time.