This is going to be a long couple of weeks for me. Not only is there nothing much going on financially, but I'll just be twiddling my thumbs waiting for October so I can hit a massive milestone: getting our debt under a quarter of a million!
It may be only temporary; depending on what we decide we can afford for our next home, I could see us taking out a bigger mortgage than our current combined debt. But it'll still be really exciting!
There are tons of other exciting things going on to help distract me, though. For one, the feeling of a new season. Except for winter, I love the feeling of change that comes with each season. (Winter has its moments too, but it's so long and cold here that it's hard not to just dread it.) But fall, spring and summer always make me feel re-energized.
Last night I hastily went through clothes, discarding the ones our younger daughter (SL) has outgrown, moving our older daughter's (AA) outgrown clothes into a bag in the closet to await SL growing into them. Then I pulled out bigger clothes for both of them and put them in their dresser. Thanks to enthusiastically accepting hand-me-downs whenever they're offered, we hardly ever have to buy clothes for our girls.
We're going through the outgrown baby ones; our favorites we're giving to a friend who's having a baby soon, and that's going to be our shower gift. All our friends know our commitment to being green and our frugal ways, so I think she'll like the gift. The less favored ones will either go to the church charity van or on Freecycle.
Once again our social calendar has started to fill up a month in advance. I feel so lucky that we haven't grown isolated since we had kids, but sometimes the number of engagements seems overwhelming. But when I look at them, they're all things I really want to do. And at least now it's only the weekends filling up; during the summer there were even lots of midweek things, which I think is what made it a bit tiring. Now it's just one or two things per weekend.
Looking at it makes me realize I need to be careful with my allotted spending money, because I'm going to need a lot of it for what we've got planned (mostly to cover babysitting).
Another possible distraction: One of my friends who attends my "League of Ordinary Savers" meetings occasionally was joking/not joking that she'd like me to manage her spending for her. I'm considering asking if she'd want to try a monthlong experiment where I help her form a budget and track her spending. It would give me something financial to do while my finances are more or less on autopilot, and I'm curious to see if I could actually help someone take control by taking the wheel for a while. She's a pretty good friend, but I have to think about it a bit longer before I bring it up and see if she was serious.
Anticipation
September 16th, 2013 at 08:22 pm
September 16th, 2013 at 08:48 pm 1379364487
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September 17th, 2013 at 01:25 am 1379381159
I love the idea!