Well, I managed to scrape up some money to put toward the deficit -- $200 from an AS freelance payment, $50-$90 here and there from various line items such as keeping grocery spending and carshare rental down and skipping haircuts for a month. We managed to hold onto about $400 of those gains and the deficit is now $3700.

AS has some more small freelance checks expected this month and a TON of work booked that should get paid in the next few months. But I also see some expenses coming up in September-October that will add to the shared spending deficit:

- Swim lessons. I just booked our last paid-for lesson for this Saturday, so I'll need to buy some more.

- Lyft rides. AS has started teaching her class Wednesday nights; she buses there and takes a Lyft home. The first couple Lyfts are covered by our transportation budget but the rest will come out of shared spending. At least she can claim on her taxes, I think!

- Theater tickets. I promised the kids I would take them to a play, and there's one coming up in October that they should like. AS is going to look for a Groupon for the theater company to try and offset that cost.

- My trip to Wisconsin. I'm feeling more comfortable with the thought of spending on this and have booked the time off work, but haven't spent any money on it yet. Ideas for keeping costs down: Having my friend drive her car and just paying for half of gas; getting an AirBNB or possibly a deal on a hotel room because of a friend who works for one; packing some food to avoid eating out every meal. The tickets themselves aren't too bad; $12 for one show and $20 for the other, and I'd have to get AS tickets too, so $64 total. I may also have a bit of personal spending money by then that I can put toward the trip expenses--I've almost made up my personal spending deficit (that's also been in the red for the past couple months).

- Wedding gift for my niece. I feel bad I can't go, so I want to get her something kind of nice. Thinking $200 or so. She gets married in October and of course I have a year to get her a gift after that, so I don't have to pull the trigger right away on this expense, but I would like to get it to her in October if possible. She and her mom drove 4 hours each way on the same day to come see me and the kids during our trip to Va. in August!

- AS's mom's November visit. She's coming for a week or so around Thanksgiving, so I'm sure food costs will go up. (She's a meat eater so won't want to eat our vegan/vegetarian meals all the time.) However, this is her visit to sort of get a sense what it would be like to live in Minneapolis, so I don't think we'll go out of our way to give her a costly touristy experience. More a taste of what our everyday mundane life is like. (Yes, she is considering moving here again, which some of you may remember from a panicky post years ago. More on this later, but at least we're in a much better place mentally and financially and I'm not feeling as panicky about the thought of her coming!)