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Still waiting ...

September 24th, 2013 at 03:38 am

My last entry was about how the two weeks before the beginning of October were going to drag, financially. Boy howdy, they are dragging!

Really nothing much has actually happened financially, but I'll scrape the bottom of the barrel for financial news:
- We realized we have two sets of visitors from England promised next year! This means we'll have to conserve our vacation/trip budget as well as our PTO carefully after our spring Boston trip, because we'll want to show them a really good time in Minneapolis. One visit is in May and the other more like August. It'll be lots of fun planning what to do! So that means we won't have another out-of-town trip next year (except maybe renting a cabin or something).
- NT mentioned that his company seems to be doing well and that there's a strong possibility of a bonus! Naturally I'm going to be quietly obsessing over that until it happens or the end of the year comes, I guess. We already roughly know how we'd use it: some to tip our various service providers over the holidays, maybe a bit to assist with family gift giving, the rest toward debt or savings.
- The management company that runs our UK flat answered our query about the plan for the rest of the renovations, saying they'd need 10K to 12K pounds to do everything. Well, they initially said 10K and have already spent 880 pounds, so I'd really like them to stick to their initial plan and finish up for 9K more, not 10 to 12. We'll see.
- Speaking of, I've been idly thinking more and more that if we end up staying in Minneapolis and buying here, there's some chance that we could swing a down payment without selling the UK flat, and keep pulling in rental income and eventually have a paid-off property in addition to our main home. We'd have to save a LOT more than I've planned, but we are ahead of schedule, so I suppose it could happen. Depends on whether we have especially good money luck these next couple years or especially bad luck. If we move to UK, I'm pretty sure we'd have to sell the flat in order to afford a down payment since we'll be paying so much more for so much less, so it's only one possible outcome anyway.
- The grocery budget is still a bit of a struggle, but now that I've worked out how much we can spend weekly, it's much less abstract. As a result, we'll take more drastic steps to stay within the budget. So we're still on track, holding steady so far, even though we're down to the wire each week. The most we've gone into the next week's budget is $5 once.
- My work's been doing a pedometer challenge; we're halfway through a 4-week program. If I complete the number of steps required, I get a $50 gift card. If I'm the top stepper in my department any week, I get an extra $25. So far people have beat me out, but it's a small department so I'm hoping I get the next $25 reward (the other people can't win a second weekly one). In any case, I get to keep the fancy digital pedometer, so that's a pretty good deal! I could keep it or maybe sell on eBay or Craigslist.
- I just got my Barclays travel MasterCard. Spend $1000, get $400 in travel spending. I'll apply NT or AS for another one soon. I'm staggering them a bit to make sure we don't have to stretch to spend the required amounts in the allotted time.

Seriously, I think that's about it. Our finances are running smoothly, boringly along. Nothing exciting is probably going to happen for at least another week. There are good things coming, and challenging things, but right now I'm just playing the waiting game. It's a good thing I have other projects and responsibilities to take my mind off it from time to time!

1 Responses to “Still waiting ...”

  1. SicilyYoder Says:
    1379993643

    I am struggling badly with my grocery budget. I keep running out of money by the 15th. It's hard to balance.

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