Ceejay74's Personal Finance Blog

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.

I sent off an extra $100 payment to NT's student loan to make sure we hit our August goal. As I was setting it up, I realized there hadn't been any interest added this past month. I did some sleuthing and realized that, since I've paid off all his unsubsidized portions of the loan, the remaining, subsidized portion won't accumulate any interest while he's in school! I was just hitting the higher-interest portions first, not realizing this difference.

The balance is only $3200 now, but it's nice to think that we won't pay any interest on it as long as we pay it off before NT graduates next year. (Plus I think there's a certain grace period after he graduates.) So, long story short, I'm going to stop targeting this loan and work on the next-highest-interest student loan, his private loan. When I pay that off (probably sometime next year), I'll work on AS's student loan. Then, we'll see if I can pay off this loan before it has a chance to accumulate any interest.

Anyway, all $100 of the payment went toward principal, so that takes August debt repayment to $1643 down, $107 to go. Big-picture progress is now at $25,573.06.

***

I had a follow-up with my dental surgeon today and had the sutures removed. He said it looked good and will check it again in 2 weeks. No copay because apparently these checkups are included in their original price quote. Sweet!

I asked him if he thought I'd need that extra bone graft (the one I'd have to pay $2200 out of pocket for). He said he wasn't sure, that it would be decided next year at the time of the implant.

So I won't know for a while, but at least it gives me time to plan. I've tentatively decided that I'll save up the $1200 that I know I'll need to pay for the implant, but I think I can cashflow the other $2200 when the time comes, if need be. (It'll just mean a lot less goal progress that month.) I'll make a note in my budget and make sure I set aside $2200 for January, and then if I don't need it I can put it toward student loans or something.

(Hmm, or maybe I should set aside an extra $100 per month in flex spending next year. I can use it right away to pay the dental bill, and my paycheck will be less than $50 per month less. I'll still be able to cashflow the $2200 fairly easily in that case. And that would mean I can put this year's snowflakes toward other things!)

I'm still trying to figure out how much my ultrasound/mammogram appointment will cost me. From what I can tell from the inscrutable claim forms, the mammogram is 100% covered but the draining of the cysts they did during the ultrasound may cost me a couple hundred bucks. Not too bad, I suppose. I just don't like not knowing!

***

I feel like I'm in another period of waiting. Waiting for my teeth to stop bothering me. Waiting for AS's raise to kick in. Waiting for our debt to get under $250K (should happen this year!). But having a busy calendar this summer has helped me stay distracted. We had "grownup weekend" last Friday night through Sunday afternoon -- our good friends, also the girls' godfathers, took them to their house for the weekend -- and that was amazing. We did go to that super-classy restaurant next door to us. It was like being in a dream made of food -- 11 tiny courses of transcendent flavors and textures, plus the most skilled, attentive service we've ever gotten at a restaurant. You don't want to know how much it cost! But we had the money set aside so it's OK.

I've also been trying to get involved a bit in a local cause -- a case of police brutality that ended in a killing just blocks from our home. It's really made clear to me that there's a bigger problem with our police force, and it's a cause I'm getting more passionate about the more I learn. So we've been going to rallies and meetings and spreading the word among friends. I don't know if it will really change anything, but it feels good to try to do something about it.

I have a 6-day weekend around Labor Day because daycare is closed, and we've already got lots of plans, including trips to the State Fair and the Renaissance Festival. The following weekend my sister and niece are coming for a few days, and we've got tickets to the science museum we'll probably use. In the weeks after that there's a drag show AS and I are going to, NT and lil AA going "camping" in friends' backyard, a visit to a winery -- and then suddenly it's nearly October! We know at least one Oct. weekend will be spent at our friends' mansion and another celebrating a friend's b-day. Thank goodness the girls are much less tiring these days, or there's no way we could keep up this pace! I don't know how it keeps happening, really; for a while there it didn't seem like we saw our friends at all, and now fun things just keep coming up. With all of the above, most of the tickets have already been purchased, so the only upcoming expenses will be food and carshare and (for one or two of them) babysitting.

Work's had its ups and downs but overall seems to be going pretty well. AS and NT are way overworked in their jobs and trying to find ways to offload some of the extra work on other people, but it's a struggle for both of them in different ways.

AA finished up her first swim class and did really well, so we're enrolling her in a "preschool" level one where she goes in the water without a parent. That starts in September too. I still want to enroll her in a dance class sometime soon, but I'll wait until there's a break in swim; not ready to be one of those parents carting the kid all over for various classes yet!

I guess that's enough rambling for now. I'm starting to get pretty tired and will probably doze off soon.

Assets:
NT's UK pensions:
#1: 13,884 pounds ($22,214)
#2: 17,268 pounds ($27,629)
#3: 4,452 pounds ($7,123)
NT's 401(k): $24,200
NT's Roth IRA: $5,800
AS's 401(k): $10,210
AS's trad. IRA: $1,682
AS's Roth IRA: $13,580
CJ's 401(k): $57,767
CJ's Roth IRA: $5,800
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: $564,560

Total Debt: $253,862

Current Estimated Net Worth: $310,698

April 2013 estimate: $308,089

Change in net worth: +$2,609

Summary: A relatively static month of retirement returns and savings, and modest debt paydown.

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 checked NT's student account this weekend and the balance for his fall semester was in there. It won't be due until next month, but I'd planned to pay part this month and part next, and I was itching to send this month's portion.

Technically I shouldn't have until our paychecks hit on the 15th, but we have so much float money in the bank from my "escrow" line items that there really is plenty in the bank. And no doubt that I'm getting paid Thursday. So I paid $2500 today! There's about $1200 left to pay, which I'll do next month.

When the payment hits our checking, we'll still have about $1300 of float. And when the CapOne 360 money comes back into our account (I closed the account that I opened only for a bonus once the 30 days were up) in the next day or two, that'll take our balance back up to $1800 or so. So I won't even be cutting it close, but I checked my budget a half dozen times to make sure I wasn't forgetting any big expenses expected to hit before payday.

Anyway, I had only $790 left of "estimated future debt" in my household debt total, so this wipes that confusing category out for good. I'll be cashflowing the rest of NT's education and it will count toward big-picture progress but not debt reduction. After I finish paying for fall, I only have three semesters to pay for next year: spring, summer and fall. Then he'll have graduated. Woo hoo!

So our August debt repayment is $1543 down, $207 to go, and our big-picture progress is at $25,473.06!

Other frugal/money-saving happenings:
- Our switch to weekly vs. semimonthly grocery budgeting seems to be working well so far; we're cutting it close this week but should be able to stay within budget.
- Took a survey that will get us a free tub of the delicious (but expensive) vegan margarine we love.
- On our diaper guy's advice, decided to go off cloth diapers and onto compostables. Since we have to use those for daycare and nightttime anyway, overall our fee will be smaller than it is now. I'll use the savings to snowflake toward medical debt until that's paid off, then add it into the general budget surplus.
- I get to take my one supervisee out to lunch this Thursday on the company dime, so free lunch for me too!

I'm coasting on 4 hours of sleep today, which I'm not very good at. I dozed off on the couch at 10:30 and got woken to come to bed at 1:30 am. Not unusual at all; I find a nap on the couch before bed helps combat my occasional insomnia. But not last night; I stayed awake once I got in bed, and finally got out at 3:30 to mess around on the computer since I wasn't getting the least bit sleepy lying there. I finally dozed off on the couch again at about 6 and got woken up a bit after 7 to get ready for work. TGIF!

Had some good frugal and other happenings lately:

- A friend signed up for the carshare we use and gave us as having referred her, so we got a $25 statement credit! I'm using that in my medical snowflake fund.

- Started spending on the two USBank cards we got recently; once we spend $500 on each we'll get $200 and $100 bonuses. Those will go to medical as well.

- AS recently got some kind of mail-order offer for 6 bottles of wine free with $11 shipping (so less than $2 each). The same company gave us a $100 credit to use, so we ended up getting 13 more bottles of wine for $70, or a bit more than $5 per bottle. About par with what we pay for our usual boxed wine, but much more variety and better quality too! AS does need to cancel an automatic membership before it kicks in; but NT might sign up as being referred by her and see what other deals we can get from them.

- Not for us, but we got free lodging for my sister and niece who are coming to visit in September. My niece is coming a day earlier and she'll stay with us that night, but more than one person for one night would be a real strain in our tiny home. We have friends who own a condo slightly bigger than ours, and they don't have kids. They said my family could stay with them the 3 nights they need to. No charge, and their condo is closer to ours than any hotels! And really fancy and upscale as well.

- Freecycled a bunch of baby stuff recently, and last night while AS and NT took the girls for a walk, I dumped two big bags of toys on the free table of our building. One thing gave us a bit of a pang, a train set that they play with occasionally and seem to like, but it's just too big and bulky, and the girls keep accumulating toys, so something had to go. I don't think they'll notice; they have so many other toys. I got rid of a lot of baby toys that the youngest one has outgrown, but luckily I'm not super-sentimental. Everything will find a good home, and our condo is a bit neater.

Last night while I was dealing with the insomnia, thoughts of retirement kept coming up due to an email exchange I had with a friend/co-worker who is a bit of a financial mess. So when I gave up on sleep and got on the computer, I played with a few things:

- I looked for a good financial calculator, and found one offered by the AARP. I really trust them because of their good advocacy for seniors, so I tried it out. It had a fair amount of customization options and I was left feeling pretty good about where we are. We'll need to up our retirement contributions once the house stuff is settled and the student loan debt paid off, but I think we're heading in the right direction.

- I realized I never know how much we actually have in retirement funds since I just add up all assets once a month (including the EF and our home values), so I did a quick calculation of that, as well as how much we add to our accounts each month, as well as how much we'd have if we kept adding the same amount every month (and didn't have any growth). The number was smallish, but of course we aren't planning to stay at that level of contribution, and we are planning to experience growth in our accounts, so for what it was, I found the number to be just fine.

- While using the AARP calculator, I found a link to the Social Security website, and realized I could create online logins for all of us so we could check our statements anytime we wanted. So I did that and looked at what we could expect to receive in Social Security benefits upon retirement. (That's if we stay in the U.S., but even if we move, I'm sure we'll receive a smaller amount based on what we contributed while we were here.)

I think that's all! I feel good that I'm at least on top of the financial side of things, since my diet, exercise and other blog have fallen by the wayside while I recover from my tooth extraction. Ah well, I'll get back on track in due time.

A year or two ago I downgraded my estimated value of our US condo to $145K. It had been a long time coming; I knew my estimate of $160K was too high. Even $145K seemed like the high end of sale prices for comparable units in our complex, but I figured if we upgraded the kitchen and bath, spruced up the flooring and made a few other small changes, we could possibly sell it for that much.

Well, I don't have any new actual sold homes of our size to confirm this yet, but there's a place listed for $169,900 that's comparable to ours -- it looks reasonably upgraded, but not crazy high-end. The Zillow estimate of its value is $144,577, and they have tended to value condos in our complex for less than they sell for. And I found a site called Homes.com that estimates our condo's value at $155,700.

I'll be keeping an eye on that new listing to see if it sells and if so, what the sale price is. We currently owe $157K on our home, so it would be very exciting if we could consider ourselves not underwater anymore, practically for the first time since we bought it (since we paid too much, and took out a home equity loan for what little we'd paid on it, and the real estate bubble burst not too long after we bought).

I'm still feeling out of it after my tooth extraction, though thank goodness very little pain or swelling has occurred. Today I feel kind of strange, but it may just be the constant distraction of having stitches and a new hole in my mouth! Amazing how much that can affect concentration. Anyway, I'm just doing the bare minimum this week and hoping I'll feel normal soon.

I realized I forgot to record interest on the house/moving savings account last month, so I have a whopping $6.81 to record! Even though savings interest is admittedly abysmal, I still get kind of excited because up until a few years ago, I never had the discipline or money (so I thought) to even have a savings account, so the idea of making money on money without doing anything is kind of cool.

Anyway, that takes house/moving/renovation progress to $5950.69, and big picture progress to $22,973.06. Almost a quarter of the way to our goal!

I'll have to think about this more when I have a clearer head, but I've been pondering the possibility of taking another route besides our current one. Currently we plan to sell both places, hopefully making a profit on the UK place and breaking even on the US one, in order to help fund the new home purchase. But I've also idly thought what it would be like to keep renting out the UK flat and try to save up more money for a down payment on a new home vs. trying to fund it from the sale of the old one.

The UK flat rents for £725 per month now (US$1160), and we clear about £360 ($580) in a good month with no extra fees or repairs. It'll be worth 160,000 when renovations are done in a year or two, and we think we'll clear about £100,000 ($160,000) after paying off the mortgages and giving the management company their share of the profit. So it would take 23 years to make in rent what we could make in a sale; but, at the end of the 23 years, we'd still have a (possibly even more valuable) property (with the mortgage paid off).

I'm still leaning toward selling it. The rental income would be nice, but so would a smaller mortgage on our next house. But we'll see where we are in a year or two. Anything could happen in terms of raises, jobs, windfalls, expenses, etc. If I actually start thinking about it seriously, I'll be asking your perspectives for sure, but right now it's completely idle speculation.

Well, today I got my tooth taken out. The dentist said it was really infected under there so it was the right decision to take it out. He also did the bone graft to build up bone in preparation for the implant.

So far the pain is not bad. I'm slurring like crazy to avoid messing with that part of my mouth and possibly irritating the surgery site. I've also been doing ice packs, ibuprofen and Vicodin. And antibiotics. And I need to remember to use a special mouthwash tonight. Lot to remember! But the dentist said it went well.

Today I paid a $54 co-pay and $166 estimated that I'll owe after insurance. This part of the process was $1100 and covered 80% by insurance.

Aside from some follow-up appointments, the next part (surgical implant) can't happen for at least 4 months. I asked him if it could wait 5 months, until my next year of dental coverage starts, and he said that would be fine. Good, because that means I'll have another $1500 of coverage.

I don't want to get too excited, and I'll ask the surgeon about it at my 2-week checkup. But he hasn't said anything about the "sinus augmentation" additional bone graft that he said might be necessary depending on certain circumstances. That portion was estimated at $2500.

If I don't need that part of the procedure, the remaining step is surgical implant, which is $2400. If my insurance covers it, it would be $1200 for them and $1200 for me.

If I do need the sinus thingie, that would be an additional $2500 of which insurance would only cover $300, since I'd have maxed out the $1500 at that point, so I'd be on the hook for $2200.

So without the sinus thing my cost would be $220 + $1200 = $1420.
With sinus thing, $220 + $1200 + $2200 = $3620.

Huge difference, so I'm really hoping it's off the table and not just that he assumed I already knew he was going to do it!

All our mortgage payments hit:

US: $446 to principal
UK1: $216
UK2: $45
UK3: $46

That makes $753 down, $997 to go on the August debt goal.

I noticed on our governor's Facebook page something about property taxes going down for the first time in over a decade! That will hopefully reduce the escrow portion of our mortgage payment next year. Probably only by a few bucks if anything, but it'd be nice.

I noticed that we'd accumulated $47.63 worth of rewards on our regular credit card, the Chase Freedom. So I took it as a statement credit and put the extra money toward my medical-bills snowflake fund. That takes it to $515.85. I'll continue to look for ways to scrape up money outside our regular budget.

I'm thinking about calling the dentist and asking if he thinks we could just go ahead with extraction vs. doing exploratory surgery to see how far up the crack in my tooth goes. A) My tooth is still bothering me, albeit much less since getting antibiotics, and I just don't think it'll ever be up to par again. B) It would likely cut down on the number of surgical interventions, since he's pretty sure it will need to be extracted. C) It will likely reduce the number of bills, and since Monday's surgery isn't even factored into the $6000 (min. $3000 after insurance) estimate, I really could use any reduction in bills.

Basically the only point of Monday's operation would be to see if the tooth is salvageable, but even if it's able to be temporarily saved, it'll continue to bother me and will likely cause problems in the future. So I'm comfortable assuming the tooth is cracked all the way up and just going forward with pulling it if my dental surgeon agrees.

Anyway, on to my new grocery plan. I still want to find a way to make our grocery budget work without further dissecting it into food/house/toiletry categories, since we buy a combination of all of those at the various stores we frequent.

So instead, I want to set a weekly budget vs. semi-monthly; I think that'll make it easier to keep an eye on spending.

I figured out that our grocery budget is $9000 per year (it sounds like so much!) without calculating the CSA, which we pay for separately. Figuring the non-CSA weeks need $30 more, I multiplied $30 by the number of non-CSA weeks (31) and got $930, which I subtracted temporarily from the annual total, leaving $8070. Dividing that by 52 weeks I got $155.

That means that CSA weeks we have $155, and when the CSA ends we'll have $185 per week (adding back in the $30 that I took out of calculations). Just to be safe I added all that up and it comes to $8990, so I think I'm on the right track.

I'll divvy the grocery money up on my spreadsheet by week and keep my family updated on what we have left for the week. This should help us make smarter choices about midweek one-off purchases and whether we can afford them.

Quick edit to July results; just to post some kind of progress on the medical EF, I checked my savings account and counted the 26 cents interest earned there. Whew!

Well, our August debt-repayment goal is going to be a relatively modest $1750, because while part of NT's tuition payment will wipe out "estimated future debt," that category will then be gone. There's only about $800 left in it, so the rest of the $2500 payment will go toward big-picture progress but won't reduce our debt total. Any tuition we pay after that last $800 is what NT's college will be costing above and beyond the $40K I estimated when he started the journey.

Anyway, once that's gone, our debt total will be our true and actual debt total. And hopefully it'll never go up unless we buy a house that costs more than our current mortgages!

The big-picture benchmark for August is $17,896; we're already at $22,966.25, so well past where we need to be. And the tuition payment should push us past the $25K mark this month!

Now on to groceries ... we actually had money left over at the end of the first July period (1st to 15th), so we had over $375 to get us through the second half of July, plus full boxes of CSA veggies every week. Yet somehow we piddled it all away and now have $12 left. I mean, at least we didn't go over our limit, but these months of summer CSA bounty are meant to be the ones where we spend less and get ahead a little so that winter months (where we have to buy produce out of pocket, out of season) are easier. We're using fewer diapers, we don't buy formula -- I'm not really sure where it went! The only reason we didn't go over is I made a menu for this week that mainly relies on CSA veg and pantry staples, so we only spent about $60. That means the week and a half before, we must have spent over $300! I could go through our credit card statements and figure out where it went, but the main thing is, it's gone, and we need to do better in August.

We do pretty well on the weekend shop, but I think one-off purchases to fill gaps during the week, and purchases of sporadic household maintenance/grooming needs, really kill us. I'm thinking about calculating how much we have for each week and divvying it up that way, so we know what our "absolute" limit is each week. Except, I'd need to figure out how much MORE we'll need in non-CSA months, and that gets kind of confusing. If I divide our annual fee by the number of weeks we actually receive boxes, it's about $31 per week. So maybe I should figure out how to allocate $30 more per week in non-CSA times than during CSA times. This is going to take some calculating!