I'm coasting on 4 hours of sleep today, which I'm not very good at. I dozed off on the couch at 10:30 and got woken to come to bed at 1:30 am. Not unusual at all; I find a nap on the couch before bed helps combat my occasional insomnia. But not last night; I stayed awake once I got in bed, and finally got out at 3:30 to mess around on the computer since I wasn't getting the least bit sleepy lying there. I finally dozed off on the couch again at about 6 and got woken up a bit after 7 to get ready for work. TGIF!

Had some good frugal and other happenings lately:

- A friend signed up for the carshare we use and gave us as having referred her, so we got a $25 statement credit! I'm using that in my medical snowflake fund.

- Started spending on the two USBank cards we got recently; once we spend $500 on each we'll get $200 and $100 bonuses. Those will go to medical as well.

- AS recently got some kind of mail-order offer for 6 bottles of wine free with $11 shipping (so less than $2 each). The same company gave us a $100 credit to use, so we ended up getting 13 more bottles of wine for $70, or a bit more than $5 per bottle. About par with what we pay for our usual boxed wine, but much more variety and better quality too! AS does need to cancel an automatic membership before it kicks in; but NT might sign up as being referred by her and see what other deals we can get from them.

- Not for us, but we got free lodging for my sister and niece who are coming to visit in September. My niece is coming a day earlier and she'll stay with us that night, but more than one person for one night would be a real strain in our tiny home. We have friends who own a condo slightly bigger than ours, and they don't have kids. They said my family could stay with them the 3 nights they need to. No charge, and their condo is closer to ours than any hotels! And really fancy and upscale as well.

- Freecycled a bunch of baby stuff recently, and last night while AS and NT took the girls for a walk, I dumped two big bags of toys on the free table of our building. One thing gave us a bit of a pang, a train set that they play with occasionally and seem to like, but it's just too big and bulky, and the girls keep accumulating toys, so something had to go. I don't think they'll notice; they have so many other toys. I got rid of a lot of baby toys that the youngest one has outgrown, but luckily I'm not super-sentimental. Everything will find a good home, and our condo is a bit neater.

Last night while I was dealing with the insomnia, thoughts of retirement kept coming up due to an email exchange I had with a friend/co-worker who is a bit of a financial mess. So when I gave up on sleep and got on the computer, I played with a few things:

- I looked for a good financial calculator, and found one offered by the AARP. I really trust them because of their good advocacy for seniors, so I tried it out. It had a fair amount of customization options and I was left feeling pretty good about where we are. We'll need to up our retirement contributions once the house stuff is settled and the student loan debt paid off, but I think we're heading in the right direction.

- I realized I never know how much we actually have in retirement funds since I just add up all assets once a month (including the EF and our home values), so I did a quick calculation of that, as well as how much we add to our accounts each month, as well as how much we'd have if we kept adding the same amount every month (and didn't have any growth). The number was smallish, but of course we aren't planning to stay at that level of contribution, and we are planning to experience growth in our accounts, so for what it was, I found the number to be just fine.

- While using the AARP calculator, I found a link to the Social Security website, and realized I could create online logins for all of us so we could check our statements anytime we wanted. So I did that and looked at what we could expect to receive in Social Security benefits upon retirement. (That's if we stay in the U.S., but even if we move, I'm sure we'll receive a smaller amount based on what we contributed while we were here.)

I think that's all! I feel good that I'm at least on top of the financial side of things, since my diet, exercise and other blog have fallen by the wayside while I recover from my tooth extraction. Ah well, I'll get back on track in due time.