Ugh, every time I think about what our new take-home pay amounts will be, it feels like NO time has passed since the last time I wondered. Basically it's on my mind a LOT, and time has slowed to a crawl. I will find out Tuesday what our pay looks like (possibly Monday, if we can access our paystubs a day early). And now that I'm finally beginning to recover from my cold/flu/whatever, it's making me very impatient.

I have a slow moment at work, so here are other random bits of financial news:

- Now that we need to come up with $675 more every month than we have in our regular budget to meet our big-picture goals, I'm casting around in my mind for ways to make that extra amount. AS has $1600 coming for two freelance projects, so that helps a lot. She also has the potential to take on more projects from that place, but she's contemplating not doing anymore because the last one was so stressful. I don't blame her if she can't do it anymore; she has by FAR the busiest, hardest and most stressful job of all three of us. I don't think I could do what she does, let alone do MORE work in the evenings on freelance projects.

- One thought is to do more credit card rewards. There aren't any big offers out there that I can see, but there are a few spend-$500-get-$100 ones. It's easy money as long as we continue to get accepted. Keeping track of paying and closing the cards is a pain, but doable. There's an NFL Visa that none of us have done, and a Chase Freedom MasterCard (we've only done the Visa for that one). I need to cancel a few cards that are hanging around from our last bout, and then I think I might start signing us up for new ones.

- I still have a vague hope of a small raise at work. It would at least make up some of the pay lost with the payroll tax cut expiring. I need to finish my self-evaluation by next Tuesday and hopefully our reviews will follow shortly.

- Another solution would be reduce expenses. As I mentioned in a past post, once our England trip is fully funded (end of May), we could start reducing the amount we put toward travel/vacations, and plan to have cheaper staycations instead of big trips sometimes.

- Another possible budget reduction will come soon. SL only has to have formula until she's one year old, which is March 29. So, only about 2 and a half months more of that. Whole milk will be much cheaper; I reckon she'll use a half gallon a week, which is about $4, versus a half box of formula, which is about $11. Savings of $7 per week equals almost $30 a month. It won't affect our budget directly, but it will make grocery budgeting a bit easier.

- Also, AA is finally starting to take an interest in her potty training, so we're starting to see a reduction in the use of pull-ups. If we can cut that in half, that would probably save us about $20 to $30 a month (again, not directly helping the budget but definitely easing the strain on our grocery/household expenses). When she's fully potty trained, we can reduce our diaper cleaning/composting service and could see another $15 drop in expenses monthly. (And THAT one will actually benefit our budget, because the cleaning/composting is a separate line item from groceries.)

- Other than that, we do have plenty of discretionary spending in our budget, but cutting it would warrant some serious discussion in our family: What's more important to us? Keeping these luxuries and pleasures that mean so much to us, or reaching our goals on time?

These are the discretionary items that could be cut, but none of us would want to lose:
Spending money $1040 (about $345 per person per month; encompasses clothing/shoes, all gifts except bday/Xmas for the nuclear family, babysitting, eating out/snacks/coffees/sodas, wine/alcohol, and any entertainment like movies/books/music)
Cable/Internet $75.80 (cutting the DVR would save about $20 per month. The rest is internet, which is our biggest source of entertainment, communication and information.)
Netflix $7.99
Xmas & bdays $133.34
Housecleaning ($121.21 per visit, 13x per year) $131.31
CSA farm share ($650 annually) $54.17
Charity $150.00
Travel/vacations $850.00
Car share $90.00

Of these, I would find it the least painful to cut back on travel/vacations and the car share. I used to think the spending money allotment was way more than enough, but now if we want a date night, the babysitting cost on top of everything really adds up fast.

Everything else, I would give up if I saw no other way of meeting our goals (or if some financial hardship befell us). Now my spouses, they might fight even more than me to keep them. They are all optional, to be sure, but they are very much appreciated in our lives!

So, we'll see what happens if we start lagging behind our big-picture goals. Right now I think we'll be OK at least for the first three months of 2013; after that it's up in the air.