I'm cautiously optimistic that we have some concrete progress on reducing the shared spending deficit. Good money news this week:

- NT brought back 800 pounds in gift money from his family. He exchanged it for $927 and I put half toward the deficit and half into kitchen reno savings.

- AS got paid for 2 weeks of remote teaching ($200 net) and I applied that plus October budget surplus of $314 to the deficit (minus a third which I sent to kitchen reno savings).

- I had smaller budget surpluses that I applied to the deficit (grocery $70, cellphone $6, electric bill $9) plus $15 in CC rewards.

We did have some expenses hit the deficit: a business subscription for AS $39, our monthly ACLU donation $30, a field trip for SL $20, bus pass $30, NT's taxi home from his UK trip $43, and some Lyft rides for AS to and from her night class $20.

And of course we have some known upcoming expenses not accounted for.

But overall our deficit has been reduced from $3993 to $3258 this week. Not bad!

And I haven't applied eBay sales yet. You may recall I found a bag of videogames and DVDs on the curb; I've managed to sell 5 of them so far, with prices ranging from $5 to $28, and there are still 3 games and 3 DVDs listed for a couple bucks each. For some reason that reminded me we have two no-longer-used iPods hanging around, so I listed those plus a novelty hat NT had. One iPod has already sold for $25 and the other has three watchers. In total, we look to clear over $80 so far, maybe more if the rest of these items sell. I'm waiting to deposit the money because I was unable to test the games (different system than we have), so I want to make sure no one needs to return one.

Oh, and NT got a $922 profit sharing bonus at work; it went straight to the 401(k) so it doesn't help us with our spending deficit, but it will give us a nice little net worth bump!

AS has booked even more work; she had a bit of a slump earlier in the year due to giving up my company for their slow payment, but the last quarter is going to be huge. There's a good chance she'll top $50K in earnings again this year, which was looking doubtful before.

In terms of actual payments September has been a low month, but the next three months should be much bigger in terms of checks coming in. Plus, there's still over a week left in September and I think three more payments have a good chance of coming in, making September a moderate vs. low income month.