Ceejay74's Personal Finance Blog

Darnit! We just received our 2014 benefits guide at work, and I learned that there's a $2500 flex spending maximum for healthcare costs. My for-sure dental costs are $1200 and $1646, so the possible extra $2200 will have to be paid for after taxes.

I would cancel my scan this month to determine whether I need the extra procedure since I don't need to know before the open enrollment period ends now, but A) I'm still curious so I can finalize my 2014 budget some more, and B) I've got a weird hard lump in my gums that's probably a tooth fragment, but I wouldn't mind seeing what the dentist thinks about it.

All our mortgage payments hit today.
US: $470 to principal
UK1: $214
UK2: $45
UK3: $48

All told, that's a lucky $777 down, $123 to go on the November debt goal.

No other financial news that I can think of. This is Nov. 1 so I'm going to start trying to write my NaNoWriMo novel. I have some general idea but am missing a main plotline, so I'll need to do some scheming! Luckily I'm leaving work early and taking sick time, so that will give me time to think. (I'm not very sick, just run down and have a squirrely stomach.)

A fourth medical claim just popped in from NT's ER visit. This one is for $1396, but our responsibility is only $142.39. The big $4K+ bill is still being processed, so not sure what our responsibility there will be.

At this point I'm not really worried about more bills because I'm resigned to paying up to the out-of-pocket max; if we come in under that when all's said and done, great, but I'm not counting on it. I'm SO glad that OOP max is in place so I don't have to worry as much! My only concern is whether there are a bunch of fine-print exceptions of expenses that don't count toward the max, but as far as I can tell it would be just co-pays that might take us over the max.

Anyway, on the plus side, NT got an annual statement that one of his retirement accounts gained over 2000 pounds this past year. I'm not good at investment math but I believe that's over a 10% increase, since it was 17,000 and some change and is now 19,000 and some. Nice gain!

Also, we've been getting a bunch of credit card offers in the mail. Most of them are worthless to us; balance transfers! low introductory APR! (Yawn.) But last night I got one for Chase Sapphire Preferred. I'd been contemplating double (triple?) dipping their spend-$3000, get-$400 offer, but I'm glad I dragged my feet: The mail offer was spend $2000 get $400! I signed up online and was approved right away. That'll be a nice big snowflake for debt in a couple of months (and of course it'll be more like $420 since you also earn on the spending that gets you to the bonus offer).

So now we've got three applied-for cards and two instant approvals. If the third one is approved as well, we'll need to spend $3500 and we'll get $970 back. That's like getting a 27% discount on what we buy!

The goal for November is to pay off $900 of debt, taking total debt to $247,762. That's about how much we pay off by making our minimum payments. I'm not planning on sending anything extra to debt because ...

Yesterday a new claim had popped into NT's insurance account for $4,273.60. That's more what I was expecting/dreading. It's still pending, so I'm not sure what portion we're responsible for. But if I understand correctly, total out-of-pocket for in-network care is $3250. We'll already be paying $821.20 for the first two bills, so we should only be responsible for $2428.80 at the very most. There does seem to be some exception made for co-pays, though, so I don't know if that gets billed separately on top of everything. (We weren't asked for a co-pay at the ER, but sometimes places bill you later for it.) I'm not sure what the ER co-pay would be.

We still had $1776 left in what used to be the money set aside to pay off one of NT's student loans. Then, with the two Barclay cards we've already spent up and the third one on its way that will be easy to spend up to $1000 on, we'll have $1200 in travel spending, so I took $1200 out of future travel line items and put it in the medical line item. That takes us to $2976, so I'm fairly confident we can pay for NT's medical costs with no other consequence than a slight slowdown in paying off student loans.

There's a small chance we won't have to pay that much of the $4K+ bill, since we'll be meeting the deductible by paying about $150, and after that the insurance may cover more. However, there's a good chance we haven't seen the last of the bills from the visit, so I'm not counting on anything there.

There's a decent chance NT will get a $5000 Xmas bonus (maybe $3000 after taxes?), and if he does, I may still be able to pay off that one student loan this year. If not, it can wait for next year.

There's also some chance (no idea the odds) that I won't need the extra $2200 bone graft for my tooth implant next year. That money could also be used to pay off the student loan.

I do need to come up with about $1500 more for NT's spring tuition, but I think I can float that until the February budget comes up and take it out of there.

We shall see. Even if it's worst-case scenario for all of the above, I know we'll be fine.

AS's student loan payment hit, with $131 going to principal. That means we hit our October debt goal, surpassing the $3000 goal with $3008 paid.

Monthly interest to the house/moving fund: $3.36, taking house savings progress to $4,561.71.

Monthly interest to the medical EF: $0.25, taking that fund to $1,514.26.

We got the first bill from the ER -- $337.63 -- and paid immediately, splitting it between my and NT's new Barclay cards. It took both up over the $1000 spending threshold, so we'll be getting $800 in travel rewards soon!

I've been checking NT's insurance account almost every day, and one other claim has appeared so far. Looks like we'll be on the hook for $483.57 for that one, taking total OOP cost to $821.20. I would be truly amazed and overjoyed if these were the only two bills, but I'm prepared for a lot more.

I've already applied for two more rewards cards -- a Barclays for AS and a USBank for NT. AS has already been approved, so we can use her card to pay the next medical bill and she'll be halfway toward earning another $400 in travel rewards. NT hasn't been approved yet, but if he does, we just need to spend $500 to get $150 cash. Should be fairly easy to spend up even if we don't get any more medical bills, what with Xmas and our anniversary coming up in December, and the planned spending for those days.

I have a few things I want to accomplish in November, so I'm going to try and be disciplined. I want to get back to my goal weight (I'm 6 lbs. over it right now), get going on my other finance blog (haven't blogged there in over a month), and participate in NaNoWriMo. But, these are all optional things, so if I start to feel overwhelmed, I'll just take it down a notch. We'll see how it goes. It's been crazy busy at work so I've been exhausted when I get home, but I don't think it can stay at this pace much longer.

I've decided to drastically simplify my sidebar and not focus so much on how much progress I made/make each month, just the total numbers. I'll be working on that tonight.

I'm home early as a partial make-up for working Columbus Day. Tomorrow will be extra busy at work, but it's worth it to have some time now. I cut my right index finger pretty bad while washing dishes yesterday, and it's pretty hard to type or navigate the computer while it's healing. Already much better though, so tomorrow should be easier. I've just been leisurely cooking lunches for the next few days, as well as doing prep work for tonight's and tomorrow's dinners.

Other than that, our simpler life is coming along pretty well. We've all been a lot easier on each other and ourselves. On the financial front, not much has changed on the surface; we still have our budget and spending limits and try to stick to them. The difference is if we go over, I quietly note it and move on, taking the money from our budget surplus. I've overspent personally by about $150 and am trying to make that up gradually from my spending money, but I know if I start to stress out about it I can just cover it with the surplus. I'm not planning to spend much this weekend so should be able to take that deficit down to about $90. Unless I have to buy a new Halloween costume for AA, which would be about $30. She wants to be the same thing as last year, so first I'll see if her old costume fits. Either way I'm hoping to make up my overspending out of my own spending by mid-November.

Work is the one stressor none of us can really control right now. I'm just trying to compartmentalize mine a bit and leave the stress there when I come home. Sometimes I succeed. AS's keeps getting busier, but at least she's making strides in creating an international reputation that may serve to get us to England someday, so that's been pretty exhilarating for her. NT told his job about his ER visit and that at least a partial cause was stress and exhaustion, so they've made yet another promise to get him some help. Hopefully this time with his health on the line they'll follow through. They've made several empty promises in the past.

I logged into NT's health insurance account to see if there were any claims yet from his ER visit. So far there's only one; I think it's the doctors' portion. Looks like he'll owe $338 for that. I can't imagine that will be the only bill; there's the ambulance ride, the EKG, the ER bed, the overnight stay in observation ... But, I did note some things about his coverage. His deductible is $1000, which I think means after that they start covering more of the cost. And his out-of-pocket maximum is $3250 for in-network services. (This first claim shows up as in-network, so I imagine it will all be.) Considering I estimated between $1000 and $10,000 as possible expenses, a cap of $3250 sounds pretty good to me! I already have about $2000 allocated in November that was gojng to go toward student loan debt. Not going to have any wiggle room in December/January budget because of NT's tuition coming up, but will have nearly $2000 in February that could be used toward medical.

Oh, and I moved my dental scan up to November, just before my flex spending must be declared. If it turns out I need the extra $2200 procedure for my implant, I'll up my flex by that amount. Either way, my take-home is going to be smaller because of the upcoming dental, but our taxable income will be less, so that takes away some of the sting.

Guess that's it for now! Apologies if my nine-fingered typing caused more typos than usual; I did try to fix them all but may have missed a few.

Assets:
NT's UK pensions:
#1: 15,544 pounds ($24,870)
#2: 17,268 pounds ($27,629)
#3: 4,452 pounds ($7,123)
NT's 401(k): $25,942
NT's Roth IRA: $6,174
AS's 401(k): $10,939
AS's trad. IRA: $1,682
AS's Roth IRA: $14,934
CJ's 401(k): $61,483
CJ's Roth IRA: $6,174
NT's flat: 140,000 pounds ($224,000)
CJ & AS's condo: $145,000
Emergency fund (shared asset): $15,000
House down payment/moving fund (shared): $4,558
---
Total Assets: $575,508

Total Debt: $248,793

Current Estimated Net Worth: $326,715

September 2013 estimate: $318,858

Change in net worth: +$7,857

Summary: Big gain again this month! Retirement accounts were up and we paid off a lot of debt.

I will update my "Individual Net Worth" page shortly so you can see how it breaks out per person.

Notes on the numbers above: House value estimates are approximate. I don't have a way to check NT's UK pensions or flat value, so their values stay static for the purpose of this update (unless I happen to get some info by chance). UK asset values and debt amounts are calculated figuring $1.60 for every British pound.

I have always been curious about why some of you are cryptic when something big happens, but now I understand. Something big happened in my family and I don't feel like reliving it; I just want to focus on how it has changed me.

Basically NT had a health crisis that put him in the ER on Saturday and then on observation overnight. He's fine; everyone from the paramedics to the doctor who discharged us agreed it was just a fluky confluence of conditions that brought him to a bad state but one that, for a few minutes, looked very close to death.

NT is 40 and (as he puts it) ridiculously healthy. So it was especially unexpected and really made me evaluate how I live my present life. I had never contemplated losing him anytime soon; I always thought we would race each other to our 90s and he'd probably outlive me. And I still think that, but it made me re-evaluate anyway.

Plus, at least one of the factors in the crisis was likely exhaustion and stress. We all have moderately high-stress jobs that are a bit more than full time, and in addition NT is in college half-time, and of course we've got the girls, who are 1.5 and 3.5 right now. We cook nearly every weeknight and weekend meal at home, we're very strict about our budgeting, and we have an active social life on top of everything.

So Sunday night, the first time we adults had to really sit down together and think things through, we started talking about anything we could take off NT's plate -- and our own -- to make our busy lives a bit less all-consuming.

We realized that some things that are extra work right now are going to be temporary. For instance, we love our CSA, but in order to not waste any of the food, we have to be really really strict about menu planning. And in order to afford it, we have to be really mindful of our regular grocery shopping. Plus, the day it's delivered is extra busy. NT works early, gets out early, picks up the CSA, drops it at home, goes and gets the girls, waits with them at home until I get there a few minutes later, and then heads out for his late-night class of the week.

One easy fix we decided on is that once he no longer has to go get the CSA in a couple weeks, I'll start picking up the girls from daycare on Thursdays. That way he can stay at work or go to campus a little early; either way he won't be racing around in the hour or two he has between work and school.

We identified a couple other things, like NT leaving pots and pans to me and AS for washing and being more direct about asking for help when he was tired or feeling overworked. AS promised to not take any extra freelance work for the foreseeable future and to ask for more help at her job so hopefully she wouldn't bring as much work home with her.

For my part, I admitted that some of my money management added a bit of stress to all our lives. I was ready to say this because as I sat with NT in the ER, he mumbled something about hoping that it didn't cost too much and wreck our finances. This from a man whose blood pressure was like 70 over nothing. I leaned over and told him, "You know, I don't say this very much, but we're kind of rich. We can afford it."

And later, when he was asleep and I was waiting next to him with nothing to do but wait for his test results, I realized that this ER visit probably meant I wouldn't be paying off the next student loan in November like I planned. And realized that I didn't really care.

A few extra months of debt repayment is nothing compared with the lifetime I would have had to live without NT if he'd died because I didn't call 911. Talk about perspective.

So for my part, I made a couple of financial commitments to my family:
- We have about a $2000 monthly surplus in our budget, and I used to jealously guard it so we could put it all to our big-picture goals. But we're already ahead of our goal by about 4 months, and even if it took longer than the arbitrary deadline, so what? So I'm going to be more willing to pull some of the surplus out of my coffers and apply it judiciously to help alleviate some stress.
1. I'm not going to gripe about the grocery budget going over by a few bucks every once in a while. We'll try to stick to the spending limits, but if we go over, we go over.
2. AS takes yoga nearly every week, and it takes a quarter of her spending money, which makes things very tight for her compared with us. The yoga is good for her. So now when she takes yoga, I'm going to reimburse her from the surplus.
3. If there are little things someone in the family wants that takes money and we don't have a specific category for it, I'll pull from the surplus to pay for it. Examples include the occasional cab ride when AS has to attend a night work event with a long bus ride waiting at the end, things around the house that would replace something that doesn't function as well as it could, clothing that needs replacing when the person doesn't have enough spending money to replace it themselves, dinner delivery when everyone is feeling extra exhausted, etc.
4. I'm going to rejigger my big-picture goals to be less strict about how much per month I need to come up with, exactly when I need to hit them, etc. I'm still working out how I'm going to keep track of them, since some are about saving money and some are about accumulating money to spend. I am still going to track debt repayment, and keep all my spreadsheets going; that would stress me out more to stop than to keep going. And I still want to achieve everything that's currently on my sidebar. I just want a more flexible way to express and track them.
5. I'm not going to get upset about whatever hospital bills are coming our way for Saturday. Whether it's $1000 or $10,000, we'll find a way to pay for it without making ourselves crazy.

It's kind of funny-ironic that while I've been contemplating this downshift over the past few days, at least three other SA bloggers have expressed a wish to be MORE frugal and MORE strict about tracking, even calling me out as an example in one case! But I really think I'm in a good mindset to do this in a careful and safe way while still working toward our ambitious goals.

Well, I feel stupid but relieved! Today I went in to submit a medical claim and get the rest of my flex spending money for the year, a little over a $100 for my medical FSA (I thought).

When I got to the home page, I noticed for the first time in a long time that I have a separate flex spending account that has $200 in it!

Then I remembered! Last year we had an opportunity to get $200 bonus flex spending money if we completed a certain number of checkups and well visits (eye exam, dental exam, GYN, BMI, etc.). I'd forgotten that when we got the bonus money at the beginning of this year, it went into a separate FSA.

So I immediately uploaded some more medical receipts. I've got plenty to cover the extra $200. What a nice surprise! I just feel stupid and can't believe that I almost missed the fact that I had this money coming to me!

I'll hold onto that money when it gets deposited into my checking account, in case I have any more medical expenses this year. If I don't spend it in 2013, I'll throw it into my medical EF. Either way, I'm happy!

EDIT: Shortly after I posted this, I remembered that our cat is due for his annual checkup and some shots, and may have a UTI. So this money will definitely come in handy for medical expenses (just not human ones!).

I know I have to get to bed, but I checked NT's student loan account and my big payment had hit! $2116 went to principal. That takes October progress to $2877 ($123 to go), and ...

... our total household debt to $248,793!!!

Phew! It's still a lot, but it seems so much more manageable somehow.

Another milestone: our big-picture progress (student loans, medical EF and house savings) is above $30K: $30,091.10.

I'm excited but extremely sleepy, so I'll have to cut my celebrating short and go to sleep.

The mortgage payments hit:
US: $449 to principal
UK1: $218
UK2: $46
UK3: $48

All told, that's $761 down, $2239 to go on the October debt goal.

Also, I checked what my next US mortgage payment will be when the interest decreases in November. $469 will go to principal, $20 more despite a lower overall payment! AND, it will be the first payment ever where more goes to principal than interest!

It's both a happy and sad moment. Sad because that means every month for 10 years, we've been paying more to have the debt than to get rid of the debt.

And for the past 6 years, I've known that's not right. But I had to focus my efforts (and our income) on paying off the credit cards and student loans, and building our EF and retirement funds. If we hadn't been so woefully behind on all of that, I'd have been able to put extra toward the mortgage every month so that we always paid more to principal.

Well, that will be my goal when we get a new mortgage. It will almost certainly be bigger than all of our current mortgages combined, but we'll be out of all other debt and I'm going to try with all my might to pay it down at an accelerated pace and never pay more in interest than I do in principal.

So our condo has a "free table" where residents can dump their unwanted belongings for others to take, first come first serve. We've put tons of things down there over the years, and taken a lot as well. Most memorably, we took a double stroller (same brand as the one that cost us about $800) and sold it for around $450.

This weekend, there was a bag full of a Wii system, several remotes and several videogames, as well as a home theater system complete with speakers. NT reckons we could clear $200 or $300 on Craigslist. Typically we try to make a little money off our unwanted items, so what we put on the free table is stuff that someone might appreciate, but has little to no resale value. Others just want to get rid of their stuff ASAP ... and we reap the benefits!

We'll list these on Craigslist today and hopefully get rid of them soon; we don't really have any extra storage space. Could be great snowflakes toward our goals!

I redeemed some regular credit card rewards, $30 from Chase and $25 from Amex, but I used those to help pay recent medical bills. Barring anything unforeseen, I shouldn't need to use any more snowflakes for medical costs this year.

Debt goal:
Pay at least $3000 of debt.
Goal balance: $248,670

October is going to be the month we bring our debt under the quarter-million mark, and I think I've got enough float in the checking account to do it as soon as all our paychecks hit!

Our big-picture benchmark for October is $22,370, but we're already at $27,975.10, so we're past it. Looks like we'll pass $30K this month!

Checked our two savings accounts just so I could record some tiny bit of progress on our medical EF and the house/moving fund:

$.30 of interest goes to the medical EF
$3.47 to the house/moving fund

Together, that takes our big-picture progress to $27,975.10.

Now I can post my October goals!

Someone posted a calculator on Facebook where you could check how much your healthcare could cost next year. We all have employer healthcare, but I thought it would be a good idea to check. Part of my emergency budget is the monthly cost of healthcare should we no longer be covered, which I've always put at $400 per adult and $200 per kid, so $1600 total.

So I filled out the calculator with our current incomes but saying we had no employer healthcare. I was pleasantly surprised by the results!

NT and I are legally married, so I put us and the kids down as a household. Our cost would be $6260 per year, or $522 a month. I put AS down as her own household with just her salary, and her cost would be $1759 a year, or $147 per month.

That means if we had no healthcare coverage and our current incomes in place, we'd pay $669 per month! And it would get cheaper if we were unemployed or on reduced income -- but that seems like a good benchmark for our emergency budget.

That takes our emergency budget down to about $3100! Which would mean we've got nearly 5 months' worth in our emergency fund vs. a little under 4 months.

Here's the

AS's student loan hit, with $132 going to principal. That takes our debt repayment to $1960 for September!

It also takes our big-picture progress to $27,971.33.

Next month is going to be much more exciting! I'll post my goals soon, probably, since I know I'm not making any more progress this month.

I have a few more bits of upcoming money news, even though my current finances are just dragging along at the usual pace.

One is, I've pretty much decided that if I do have to get the extra bone graft for my tooth implant next year, I'm going to up my flex spending account to cover it. It will mean that even though I'm the highest earner in my family, I'll have the lowest paycheck! How so? Well, my health insurance is more expensive than either of my partners', plus I'm the only one to get a bus pass paid for directly from my paycheck, plus I take the max daycare withholding ($5K per year). Even now my take-home isn't the highest, but if I withhold an extra $2200 next year it will be the lowest by far. Nothing to worry about, just funny.

I have a scan scheduled for late this year to determine whether I'll need that graft. If it turns out I need to decide my 2014 healthcare allocations before that date, I'll try to move my scan up to just before the deadline. If the dentist says that'll be too early to tell about the graft, then of course I won't withhold the extra $2200 and will just be prepared to pay that out-of-pocket if needed in 2014. But if I do have to take that hit, I'd rather get a lower tax bill as a result. And of course either way, I'll try to pay with a bonus-earning credit card to soften the blow even further!

My other, happier, realization is that if I stretch just a little bit, I can pay off one of NT's student loans in full by Nov. 15! That will leave just over $12K in student loan debt, which means I can just pay $1000 per month next year and have our non-mortgage debt completely wiped out. And that's not factoring in any potential year-end work bonuses or 2013 tax refunds (and I do think we'll get a good-sized one even though I adjusted withholdings, because I was pretty cautious and conservative in my adjustment).

The big temptation will be to put any bonuses or tax refunds toward paying off that student loan debt even faster. But I may try to put it into savings instead, because we want to start renovating our bathroom next year (in preparation for selling, but a couple years early so we can also enjoy it for a bit ourselves!).

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!

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.

Assets:
NT's UK pensions:
#1: 15,544 pounds ($24,870)
#2: 17,268 pounds ($27,629)
#3: 4,452 pounds ($7,123)
NT's 401(k): $24,586
NT's Roth IRA: $5,967
AS's 401(k): $10,539
AS's trad. IRA: $1,682
AS's Roth IRA: $14,212
CJ's 401(k): $59,530
CJ's Roth IRA: $5,967
NT's flat: 140,000 pounds ($224,000)
CJ & AS's condo: $145,000
Emergency fund (shared asset): $15,000
House down payment/moving fund (shared): $4,555
---
Total Assets: $570,660

Total Debt: $251,802

Current Estimated Net Worth: $318,858

August 2013 estimate: $310,698

Change in net worth: +$8,160

Summary: Big gain this month! My 401(k) and AS's Roth both showed good progress, plus one of NT's UK pensions sent their annual statement with some decent growth.

I will update my "Individual Net Worth" page shortly so you can see how it breaks out per person.

Notes on the numbers above: House value estimates are approximate. I don't have a way to check NT's UK pensions or flat value, so their values stay static for the purpose of this update (unless I happen to get some info by chance). UK asset values and debt amounts are calculated figuring $1.60 for every British pound.

I wrote this post yesterday on my

I've been out of sorts since last night; I think it's just a mild reaction to my flu shot I got yesterday. But today on the way to work, I comforted myself with the thought that I'd be able to see AS's raise in our checking account and find out what the net take-home will be.

Alas, 'twas not to be. Her payroll company screwed up and didn't apply her raise, so her paycheck was the same as before. Her boss is going to have them apply it retroactively on the next paycheck, but that means it'll be a full month before I find out what her exact take-home pay will be. What a bummer after waiting for months for this day!

Luckily we weren't counting on her raise to get by; even though I had a rough estimate factored into our budget, we have a big enough cushion in checking that it's no big deal to wait and get that $100+ next payday instead.

So I was still able to pay the rest of NT's fall tuition. $1061 of big-picture progress! That takes us to $27,839.33 in total progress. Phew! We might be on track to get a third of the way to our goal in just one year, which indicates a potential to reach all our goals in three years instead of three and a half! Of course a lot could happen between now and then, as my tooth drama shows.

It's been a busy summer, full of more spending than we typically do (mostly because we decided to use our "travel" budget item to have home-based fun this summer). In addition, we're using more than one credit card to maximize rewards (both for bonuses and everyday points).

So it's not altogether shocking that my math hasn't been coming out right every time. Typically what I do is keep a budget line item for paying off each credit card twice a month. When we make a purchase, I add the amount to the line item and subtract it from whatever bucket it's coming out of. Then, twice a month, I double-check the account online to make sure my amount matches, and send off a payment for the balance in full.

Only these past few months, there have been several incidents where the amounts have been different. Not wildly so; I'll be $20 short on my budget than what I owe. And sometimes it's the other way around, and I've got a bigger number in my budget than the actual account balance.

It's never that I see unfamiliar purchases in there; everything looks in order. I just can't seem to get my totals to jibe on a regular basis.

It might even out in the end, but it's frustrating, because I don't always know where to take the extra money from, or allocate the unneeded money to. I might cover a deficit out of my (admittedly large) budget surplus that's usually used for debt or savings. I may decide that I probably double-calculated a carshare rental, and add the money back there. But it bothers me to haphazardly do this, even though it doesn't really affect me significantly. It just makes me feel like I don't actually have a handle on our spending.

Yesterday, between two cards, I was about $60 short. I had $50 coming to me for spending money, so I wiped that out and took the other $10 from our budget surplus. I figure it's my fault the numbers aren't adding up, so I should pay for it this time.

That was a great motivator, even though it's annoying to suddenly have no spending money until Friday. So I started a new practice: On each line item that will eventually become a payment to a credit card, I'm going to list all the purchases that comprise that amount, and keep adding to the description until it's time to pay the bill.

Another thing I'm going to do is not add "pending authorizations" to my line item until they actually come through. With the carshare, the amount they actually take out sometimes adjusts up or down from the pending authorization depending on whether we drove more or fewer miles than the standard estimate. With restaurants, what if I scribble the wrong "with tip" amount on my copy and there's a discrepancy when it comes through? There might be other potentially variable purchases too.

To remind myself that I still need to add pending purchases once they become final, I'll put those with a question mark on the line item. So this is what a typical line item used to look like:

Chase Freedom (need to set up) (75.20)

This is what it looks like now:

Chase Freedom (need to set up) (Hrcr 26.21, SebJoe 12.61, DGD 31.99, Hrcr 4.39, Hrcr? + Copperpot?) (75.20)

That way, I can always know whether I've accounted for a purchase, so I won't double-bill (or not bill) for something, and then be confused later and unable to backtrack.

It's only a bit more work and visual clutter on my budget, and hopefully it'll help me get control of our credit-card spending again.

I idly checked NT's student loan account, the one I just sent a payment to this morning. Even though the money hasn't officially left our checking account, it's already registered on the loan. $1073 went to principal.

That takes September debt progress to $1828, just over the $1820 goal. Wow, I did not expect to reach our goal three days into the month! The unexpectedly smaller tuition bill helped push us over the edge so soon.

This also takes big-picture progress to $26,778.33!

... and the U.S. mortgage payment hit the account today, with $448 going to principal. That takes us to $755 down, $1065 to go on the debt goal.

I went to see what I need to still pay on NT's tuition, expecting about $1200. I was pleasantly surprised to see we only owe $964! I compared this fall with last fall's charges to see the difference, and the tuition is a couple hundred less this year. Either tuition went down or NT is taking fewer credits (I'm guessing the latter). The point is, $250 more than I expected can go toward student loan debt!

I can afford to do either the student loan payment or the tuition payment now, and the other will have to wait until we get paid on the 15th. Since the student loan charges interest and the tuition payment isn't due yet, I'll do the debt payment first. That will hopefully post in a couple days. I haven't paid extra to this particular loan in a long time, so I can't remember how fast the payments post.

Today is my last day off; daycare was closed from last Wednesday to today. [EDIT: Daycare called; they're open! So I dropped the kids off a bit late and now have an unexpectedly free day.] We had a very fun, full long weekend with a kid-friendly activity every day. Wednesday we went to the wading pool and playground in the nearby park; Thursday the State Fair; Friday AA went to the library with NT while AS and I took SL to the sculpture garden; Saturday was the Renaissance Festival; Sunday we went to another park; and yesterday we went for ice cream and a walk around a lake. Today I'm home alone with the kids, so just taking it as easy as possible. I have a doctor's appointment downtown, so I'll drop the kids off for a visit to NT's office, then maybe take them to visit my office if they're still in a good mood.

The weather is suddenly crisp and cool today; it feels appropriate for back to school season. It is supposed to warm up in a couple days, but it's the first fall-feeling day so far. The summer went so fast! Luckily we have lots to look forward to.

Moneywise, I'm looking forward to AS's raise, which should take effect in her next paycheck, and our lower mortgage payment (which should also come with a higher portion going to principal) that starts on Nov. 1.

Tons of fun social events in September and October, and then we barrel into the winter holidays. Then we'll have a vacation (trip to Boston) sometime in the spring. Also in the spring, if I've saved up enough money, we'll redecorate and update our bathroom. Also, next year should be NT's last year of school, if he manages to keep up the pace!

And, this is looking ahead quite a bit, so things could change, but the following year (2015) should be all about getting close to finishing our big-picture goals, including updating the kitchen near the end of the year or beginning of the next. We discussed this weekend that AS should start seriously looking for UK employment at the beginning of 2016. Hopefully we'll then have a clearer picture of our future: Will we stay in Minnesota or move permanently to England?

I know winter will be so hard (it always is in Minnesota), but there's still something about the fall that's exciting and energizing.

Our U.S. mortgage payment is delayed because of the holiday, but it's a regular business day in England, so our UK mortgages hit:
UK#1: $214 to principal
UK#2: $45
UK#3: $48

All told, $307 down, $1513 to go on the September debt goal.

This is just a quick entry since it's late and I've got to work on getting to sleep. I'll write a longer one soon; I spent quite a bit of time this week working through a strategy to pay for my tooth procedures next year, but I don't have the energy to write about it right now!

Our debt payment goal for September is $1820. Should be able to put about $900 extra to one of the student loans.

The big-picture benchmark for September is $20,133. We're already beyond that at $25,705.33, and we'll get close to $28,000 in September! I like being a few months ahead because it gives us breathing room in case there are setbacks, and of course I'd love to reach our goals early so I can supercharge our savings for greater flexibility in our selling/buying/moving process.

Just got our annual letter about our adjustable mortgage rate. Beginning Nov. 1, it's going down from 3.5% to 3.125%. Our payment will go from $1,070.59 to $1,040.77!

This is good timing, because I've been thinking how to handle my upcoming dental costs, and I was thinking rather than save up snowflakes this year, I'd just put all possible snowflakes to debt and savings, and next year change my flex spending to have enough to pay for it. That'll mean a lower paycheck, but also a lower tax bill for 2014, so I think it's the way to go.

So $30 less for our mortgage per month will help us not feel the sting of the lower paycheck next year. A few other recent lower bills that I haven't worked into the regular budget yet: the diaper service going from $82 to $22 per month, and cable/internet from $76 to $65. So with the mortgage change that's $100 lower monthly bills. I reckon the increased flex spending will take a $200-per-month bite out of my take-home pay next year. So our budget surplus will only decrease by $100. I can deal with that, especially with AS's raise kicking in next month.

Or at least I'll be spending like I am!

I'd forgotten and/or blocked out that once the dental surgeon is done with the implant next year, my regular dentist have their own role to play: a crown and "abutment." At my regular checkup today, I got the estimate for that.

$1,646, none of it covered by my insurance apparently.

So the upcoming expenses are now:
$1200 (after insurance) implant
$2200 (after insurance) possible extra bone graft
$1646 (no insurance) crown and abutment

So it seems I have to plan for a minimum of $2846 and a maximum of $5046 next year. ($5000+ on one tooth! Can you believe it?)

This is going to take some thought ...

AS's student loan payment hit, with $132 going to principal. That takes August debt repayment to $1775, just over the $1750 goal.

Oh, and we earned a whopping 27 cents of interest on our savings account; that goes to the medical EF, taking it to $1,513.71. Can you tell it's my least favorite goal? But I will definitely fund it up to $5K at some point in the next three years.

Big-picture progress is now at $25,705.33.

A point of interest: total household debt is now at $253,630. I'm thinking as soon as October, we could be under the quarter-million mark! I think at that point, I'll celebrate by revising my sidebar and finally deleting the "massive debt" wording, because $250K doesn't seem that bad when most of it is mortgage debt on two homes.

I actually wrote this entry last night and lost it; not the usual way, just me being sleepy and stupid and clicking a link that took me off the page and lost what I'd written. Ah well, I was just grumbling about the heat wave and a summer cold that has come over all of us, to varying degrees. And how my family has had illness on nearly every major holiday since last Christmas! So I figure it's that jinx, come back in time for Labor Day. Hopefully it doesn't last long and we can still enjoy the weekend. Daycare is closed Wednesday through Tuesday, so I have a seven-day break from work.

I'll probably check in a few times over the vacation, at least to post my September goals and any progress I make.