Ceejay74's Personal Finance Blog

I did really well on 2011 goals; here's a quick rundown.

Completed goals:
Pay off AS's DL student loan
Save $3600 to Roths
Give $1800 to charities
Get AS to positive net worth (currently +$2,391)
Pay off at least $20,000 of debt ($27,242 paid)
Get down to 139 lbs. (starting weight: 156)
Go on at least 2 trips (paid for in cash)
Either get a raise or find new job (got raise and new title)
Complete estate-planning process (and pay for it in cash)
Make money with "side hustles" ($720 made)

Some progress, but not completed:
Increase EF by $7000 to $15,511.95 (progress: $5960.62; total EF: $14,472.57)
Either read a book or do a creative project each month (8 of 12 done)
Organize at least one dinner party or other small-group get-together per month (11 of 12 done)
Write a "Share Your Thoughts" blog post once a month (7 of 12 done)

So, there were no goals I completely neglected, and I finished a goodly number of them. Pretty proud! My list is going to be shorter and more financial focused this year. I'm sticking to the rough draft I outlined earlier, with one exception: we actually hit $250K of net worth this month, which was going to be my 2012 goal! So I'm going to really stretch and try for $300K by the end of 2012. Probably won't happen, but a nice exciting number to reach for.

So here are my goals:

Get EF over $20,000 (Starting point $14,472.57)
Get household net worth over $300,000 (Starting point $250,418)
Get student loan debt under $40,000 (Starting point $52,955)
Get total household debt under $300,000 (Starting point $324,378)
Get weight under 130 lbs. (Starting point 139)
Research at least 5 things I buy to learn as much as I can about who produces them, and where and how they're made

I also thought I should total up how much I've made in credit card rewards (cash, statement credits and Amazon gift cards). I've already subtracted any annual or other fees, so this is just net.

Bonus rewards received:
Amex $15
CapOne MC $100
Chase Sapphire $1000
Chase Sapphire $1000
Citi MC $150
Chase SW $531
Citi MC $200

Subtotal $2996

Regular rewards received:
Chase Freedom $283
Amex $125
CapOne MC $8
Chase Sapphire $30
Chase Sapphire $30

Subtotal $476

Bonus rewards expected:
CapOne MC $20 (separate bonus; spent enough to earn it but haven't received)
Chase SW $431 (made one purchase to earn; waiting for points to hit)
Chase SW $431 (made one purchase to earn; waiting for points to hit)
Citi ThankYou $500 (need to spend $2500 to earn)
Citi ThankYou $500 (need to spend $2500 to earn)

Subtotal $1882

So, we've actually received $3472, and we're expecting $1882 more (not counting whatever regular rewards we earn along the way). When all's said and done, we should have netted at least $5354!

Right now we have 7 cards open; I plan on closing 4 of them as soon as we get the points and receive the gift cards I plan to order.

I may continue this game in 2012; it'll probably take us the full 3 months to spend enough to get the Citi ThankYou points, but after that I'll start looking around again.

Assets:
NT's UK pensions:
#1: 13,753 pounds ($27,506)
#2: 16,005 pounds ($32,010)
#3: 3,709 pounds ($7,418)
NT's 401(k): $14,528
NT's Roth IRA: $3,597
AS's 401(k): $6,087
AS's trad. IRA: $1,682
AS's Roth IRA: $5,354
CJ's 401(k): $38,544
CJ's Roth IRA: $3,597
NT's flat: 130,000 pounds ($260,000)
CJ & AS's condo: $160,000
Baby/emergency fund (shared asset): $14,473
---
Total Assets: $574,796

Total Debt: $324,378

Current Estimated Net Worth: $250,418

October 2011 estimate: $237,942

Change in net worth (over 2 months): +$12,476

Summary: Wow, we hit the quarter-million mark! NT's bonus pushed us over the edge because we were able to pay extra debt down with it. I didn't calculate net worth in November, which is why the leap is so drastic. Oh yeah, and we were able to shift money from NT's UK checking account into savings this month.

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 fairly conservative. 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 $2 for every British pound, which was the exchange rate when I started keeping track. I maintain that ratio for the purpose of tracking progress, even though the exchange rate is now closer to $1.60 per British pound.

Lots of goals have come and gone in my head. But what I keep coming back to is that we'll be raising a newborn and a two-year-old next year. We just don't know what that looks like. There are lots of other variables as well -- we're going to offer to fly our relatives out to meet the new baby since we won't have enough vacation time to take any big trips.

Since we don't know who if anyone will take us up on that (and let us pay), I don't know what our travel budget will look like.

NT is taking a semester off, so his loans may come due temporarily. I don't think it'll affect us too much since we have so much extra money in the budget for education debt, but it's a bit of a wild card.

We do at least know what our pay will roughly look like; we figured out how much of our leave will be paid and unpaid, and I sketched out monthly projected budgets.

And we know what our daycare costs will be, since our lovely daycare provider has already agreed to take the baby on.

Anyway, there's enough predictability in our financial future that I feel pretty good saying we'll hit a few exciting financial milestones, so that's what I'm going to call my "goals" for the year:
Get EF over $20,000
Get household net worth over $250,000
Get student loan debt under $40,000
Get total household debt under $300,000

Another goal: I'm pretty pleased with the weight loss I've achieved this year, so I'm hoping I can maintain my under-140 status through the rest of the month and then create a new goal to get under 130 lbs.

I'm going to be easy on myself in terms of creativity and socializing in 2012. I'll do my best, but setting goals in the face of new motherhood is just apt to make me feel anxious or guilty.

One goal I think I'm going to set is to be more thoughtful about the products I consume. I'm trying to figure out how to frame this in a concrete way so I can know when I've reached it. I want to try and track the provenance of some of our most-used household products; find out what they're made of and how they're made, where the raw materials come from and where the production is done. How the workers who create the products live, and the environmental impact of the product, from harvesting of raw materials, to production, to use and disposal of the product.

There are so many things that are so easy to buy and use without knowing anything about them in the big picture. I want to feel like I have a better working knowledge of that.

If you have any suggestions of how I can make that into a concrete goal, I'd appreciate it!

Well, it looks like my payments to NT's student loans hit ... strange though. I paid $2325 over the past two months, but they show a payment of $2577. Maybe it's to adjust the interest accrual, though there's no way I accrued that much more by the payments not posting. So I'm kinda confused, but I'll record it.

I also sent $2711 to them just today. I have no idea when it will post, so I'm counting it now. Since interest appears to be paid up, I guess nearly all of it will go toward principal!

Most of the first two payments I already calculated into my October and November debt repayment, but more principal was paid down than I expected. Anyway, to make a confusing story short, I'm calculating that $2946 went to principal that I haven't already counted. Nice! This means I exceeded the December goal of $1960; we actually paid $3759 in December!

2011 is ending with a bang!

NT finally got the estimate on redecorating his UK flat! It's going to be about 770 pounds. So that means I was able to calculate how much money we need in UK checking to cover mortgage payments and redecorating, and transfer the surplus money that's been sitting there into savings! Which means I can count it toward our emergency fund.

All told I was able to put the equivalent of $2950.08 to the EF. Also, I need to record two regular US savings deposits of $25 each and $0.51 in interest. That means we put $3000.59 toward the EF this month! That takes our 2011 EF progress to $5960.62 and our total EF to $14,472.57. We'll have one more $25 deposit this year, so we'll be a bit over $1000 short of reaching our goal. Still, we doubled the amount that we'd saved up until this month, so it's a really nice ending burst of progress!

Oh, and our final Roth IRA deposits left our checking account today, so that means we hit our goal of saving $3600 to Roths!

NT and I decided what to do with his $3500 bonus. Well, the $2581.39 we netted after taxes. We'll put $500 into our daughter AA's mutual fund, set aside $200 to help start a CD or mutual fund for our next child when it's born, give ourselves (and AS) each $100 to use however we like, and send the rest ($1581.39) to one of NT's student loans. I added that amount to the extra debt payment I was already going to set up, so it should go out tomorrow! Since this is the crazy student loan where payments aren't showing up even though they receive them, I'll count it as soon as it leaves our checking account.

NT and I applied for and were approved for Citi ThankYou cards. We each need to spend $2500 to get $500 in Amazon gift cards. That'll be another $1000! Shouldn't be a problem spending $5000 in three months with our vacation coming up; I have $2500 set aside for vacation expenses.

NT brought home a letter today that said he's getting a $3500 bonus! I thought the hundred-dollar bill from the holiday party WAS his work bonus. Pretty sweet. We haven't really decided what we're going to do with it. We're all wiped out, half-sick, overworked, ready for vacation. We've got some wants, but they can probably be handled with my Amex gift cards or the Amazon gift cards we've already received.

I'm thinking about my 2012 goals and one thing I keep coming back to as a financial goal is to ramp up my education debt repayment. If we can put a large chunk of this bonus to that, it would be awesome. I'd also maybe like to add some money to lil' AA's mutual fund.

I totally forgot to blog about this beforehand, but hopefully it will be available on TLC's website and in reruns.

Anyway, my friend Tenessa was featured on What Not to Wear last night! You can see my spouses in it right at the end -- NT is the guy in the checked shirt cheering, and AS is the woman with glasses and dreads getting interviewed at the end. I was at the big reveal, but I don't really show up on camera (blink and you'll miss me -- I had to rewind to find myself).

I like the show, and my friend confirmed that the hosts and the whole crew are really nice and fun. Her episode has some interest to budget-minded people because she's one of the few guests to consistently talk about how she only shops at thrift stores and/or wears hand-me-downs from friends. She picks up a shirt that costs $250 and says, "For that amount, I could get 250 pairs of jeans on dollar day at the thrift store!"

At one point the hosts say something like, "You have to admit that these clothes are a huge step up from your dollar-day clothes." Tenessa says, "OK, I'll admit, these clothes are worth more than a dollar." LOL. She never really gives up her thrifty self; even at the end she says she still shops at thrift stores but is willing to spend a bit more to get nicer pieces that fit the fashion guidelines they gave her.

It's been a weird couple of weeks for me schedule-wise...I've been taking Mondays off because I realized I had some use-em-or-lose-em vacation days, and Monday is the easiest day to have other people cover me. It hasn't felt very leisurely, because the other four days are just more intense to make up for it, but it's nice on Sunday nights knowing my week doesn't have to start just yet. I've asked for Mondays off for parental leave when the baby comes, so I'll have a taste of this rhythm again next year.

Last week would've been manageable workwise, but two senior execs came to me and basically said we need to make a case to keep your main project from going to a competitor. So I spent about 4 hours total meeting with them, and writing up various requested documents. Now it's up to them to charm and wheedle our client to let us keep the project. If I hadn't gotten that recent promotion I honestly wouldn't be that bothered about it, but I'd hate to get demoted. Although my HR is so disorganized and my boss so supportive, there's a chance they wouldn't get around to that even if we did lose my main project. I'm pretty sure they'll always want at least one full-time proofreader/editor, and I'm the only non-contract one, so I'm pretty confident about job security either way.

So anyway, that made the rest of my workflow clog up and I nearly canceled tomorrow as a vacation day. But I moved enough stuff around that I can still do it.

On a good note about work, we had our holiday lunch on Friday, and in addition to delicious free food and wine, we got $250 in Amex gift cards. NT's holiday party happened recently and they each got a $100 bill. Small but definitely appreciated bonuses; in this economy we don't count on anything from our companies.

Because my work weeks have been so intense, it's made me a bit stressed out about Xmas. When we were planning what we were going to do, it didn't seem like a lot, but there was a point where I started to feel stressed that I wouldn't accomplish it all. Well, we've made some good progress and I feel calm again. NT and I got all of our presents for AS at he mall last week, and AS and I finished shopping online for NT this Friday. I can tell they're about 2/3 done with my Xmas because they tell me what charges to deduct from that line item. We finished getting AA's presents too; they're the only ones I can talk about because she's too little to read my blog.

We got her a little wooden kitchen and a soft doll with three extra outfits. Her UK relations got her some toy food and dishes to go with the kitchen. My parents will probably get her some stuffed animals, some chalk and maybe another doll. I also emailed them that they could get her toy cars, board puzzles and coloring books/crayons -- out of our many hand-me-down toys, those are some missing items.

I got my parents a DVD of Wagon Train season 1 -- an old TV western that I don't think they have. (It was kind of pricey so I don't think they'd buy it for themselves; I found a great deal on eBay but my dad is not that web-savvy.) I also got an 8x10 print of a photo from our recent photo shoot; my mom has framed photos of every kid and grandkid in her living room and she likes it to be a recent pic, at least through graduation.

NT is taking care of his family; I know he's gotten some pics developed for them but don't know what else he's planning. AS is going to order a cookie basket or something similar that her mom and siblings can all enjoy, and she also got an 8x10 of one of the photos from our shoot.

We got holiday cards made from another of the shots -- a picture of us all looking up, the three of us sitting in a circle on the floor and AA standing in the middle also looking up. It's pretty cute. I went for the best card quality on the FedEx Office website so I only ordered 20 -- mostly for family, but also for a couple of friends that have gone above and beyond helping us with childcare and making sure we hung out. We've handed out a couple and I've been hunting down addresses for the rest -- will mail out as many as I can tomorrow on my day off, along with AS's mom's photo, and my parents photo and DVD.

So now, I actually find that things are coming together in plenty of time! We still have to wrap the gifts we ordered online as soon as they come in, and we have a few more Xmas decorations we could hang (though we've got the tree up, so I don't really care about the rest).

Most of the holiday parties we've been invited to are already out of the way -- there's one more for AS's office that the rest of us may or may not go to. My college had an alumni celebration last night, but the directions were funky and we couldn't find the place. We already had our car share and a babysitter, so we just went to a nice Thai restaurant and relaxed instead. Honestly, it was maybe even more fun than the party may have been. We couldn't remember the last time all three of us went out to dinner together, without our daughter. Usually we take her out with us, or one of us stays home with her and the other two go out.

For Xmas we typically like to make some kind of special dinner. This year we decided that I'll make a wheat-gluten (seitan) roast with a stuffing inside; and AS will make these awesome dinner rolls she first tried out at Thanksgiving, plus some desserts; and NT will handle all the vegetable sides (right now he's thinking a potato dish and some parsnips). We love to cook, so that won't be stressful at all.

For gift-opening we're going to videotape AA opening her gifts so we can share it with family online. Technology is awesome.

We usually go out with our best friends or over to their place for Xmas Eve, but haven't heard anything about it this year. If not, we'll just take it easy at home. NT has to assemble the toy kitchen anyway.

We're not doing stockings or attempting to get AA to "give" gifts, or bothering with talking about Santa, beyond pointing him out in decorations. (She can point to him if you ask where Santa is, but she's mostly interested in his "hat" as that's one of her newer words.) Next year will be a bit more involved in that department, because she'll be able to anticipate and participate a lot more.

AS has been making holiday cookies when she feels up to it, but not the factory-like operation of non-pregnant years. I think that's fine. I'm trying to hold onto my weight loss anyway.

This is one of the first years we've really given gifts and money to service providers. Well, I suppose we gave $100 to our first daycare lady the first Xmas. Oh yeah, and we made her some stew that she loved. But this year, we felt a bit more able to be generous, so we gave/are giving:
- $75 and a bunch of cookies to our house cleaner
- $25 to the holiday fund for our building management's employees
- $40 for our diaper service provider
- $175 in cash and gift cards to our incredible daycare lady, plus maybe some handmade toys for the daycare
- Oh! That reminds me I should do a card for our lawyer

Kiplinger always has an article around this time of advice for tips you can consider giving at this time of year, and one thing that struck me in this year's article was that they said you should think about tipping people who made your life easier over the year through their personal efforts. All of the above providers have impacted our lives positively. (The article also had some good practical advice about not giving if people felt strapped this year, but far from it, we actually feel pretty flush.)

So I think that's it for Xmas! It is kind of a lot of little things that added up to make me feel overwhelmed for about a week there, but now that things are moving along and we have plenty of time, I think it will be a relaxing and festive Xmas and that we'll make several friends, family and service providers happy, which is a main goal of the holiday. (We did extra donating of money to charities in November, so we'll just do the regular amounts this month.)

I have absolutely no idea what we're doing for New Year's. Since we so far only use friends for babysitting, I assume we wouldn't be able to get one, so we'll probably just hang out at home. Last year a friend came over and we just played videogames and snacked and drank wine, and I definitely wouldn't mind ringing in another year like that.

I haven't formalized my resolutions (or goals, I prefer to think of them these days), but I have a general idea of what I want to shoot for next year. I'll probably do a post about that closer to the end of the month.

Then we have to think of our January vacation to Mexico. Pretty much there's nothing to do for that; tickets, hotel and shuttle from the airport are ordered; we used some Amazon gift cards to get AS some maternity summerwear; we have cancellation insurance in case anything comes up (or if AS just plain doesn't feel up to it). I'm determined to mostly relax, take good care of AS and make sure AA has fun. There's plenty of money in the budget for NT to do some more adventurous stuff if he wants, and I might accompany him if AS feels up to taking care of AA, but otherwise I'm quite happy to lounge around as much as possible.

I guess that's it! I may do a more financial post tomorrow unless I get too busy running errands. If not, then later in the week.

I've been a bit worried that my work would balk if I requested parental leave...after all, I'm a third parent so they might feel I was trying to take advantage of them.

But since I am going to be legally adopting the new baby, I figured it was worth a try. I decided to ask for one week off after the birth and then one day per week for the next three to four months after that. You can actually ask for 12 weeks if you're adopting at my company, but we're comfortable with keeping the baby at home for just four months before putting him/her into daycare. If NT and I each take some days off, AS can go back to work part-time like I did and we can stretch our parental leave to 4 months instead of the standard 12 weeks.

I broached the subject with my supervisor, and he was supportive. (One of his best friends is AS's boss, so he's well aware of my family situation.) So I emailed the HR lady and let her know I'd be submitting a request. She knows my situation too, so I was relieved when she simply wrote back congratulations and that she'd be in touch with our DC headquarters to see what I was entitled to as an adoptive parent.

When I took the request form to her, we chatted a bit and she said she didn't think it would be any trouble at all to get what I was requesting. Most of it will be paid PTO anyway; I probably won't have to start short-term disability after that.

She also said she'd look into getting me some assistance for the cost of adoption! She said our company has some program for that. I feel like I may have heard her wrong, but I thought she then said that one man at our company submitted adoption expenses of $5000 and was reimbursed by our company.

!!!

I was so stunned I just said well, I wasn't counting on anything like that, but of course anything to ease the financial strain of adoption would be welcome.

After I left, it sank in and I was like, did I really hear that??

My lawyer estimated it would cost $5000 to $6500 to complete adoptions for both kids. I already have the $6500 saved up. If I could get even a portion of that reimbursed by my company, that would help a ton with student loan debt repayment!

Now that I think more about it, I guess they would probably only reimburse the portion that pertained to the child I was adopting versus AS adopting AA. But still!

I looked through our HR site and could not find mention of this type of benefit. That's why I'm slightly doubting what I heard. Would be nice though.

My company after being so crappy and stingy is finally paying out again, it seems!

***

In other random news, I was able to order $600 of Amazon gift certificates with my Chase Southwest rewards points, and they came Friday! When I signed up for this offer I thought I'd be getting $500 worth, but there's a sale on right now.

AS's and NT's points probably won't appear in time for this sale, but from what MonkeyMama has said, these sales don't seem to be that uncommon. Perhaps they'll get another one going for Xmas!

But, even if there's no sale and we just get $500 each for NT's and AS's Southwest cards, that would take us to a net of $3858 in credit card bonuses (not counting regular cash back earnings) for 2011!

I wrote to my Chase Southwest and to a Citi MasterCard that AS and I got for a bonus, asking them to close those accounts.

As soon as I get some accounts closed, I'm going to try for this card:
citi.com/travel
Spend $2500 and get $500 worth of points; annual fee waived for 1st year; sounds like there are other benefits to the account as well.

If I can get this before our Mexico vacation in January, we could put our planned spending on this card and nearly meet the requirement right there!

Actually, I tried this at the State Fair and have been meaning to try and make it for a while now. I finally did tonight.

Kushari is an Egyptian street/comfort food, and it's also pretty frugal because you can make a passable version using really common ingredients! The most exotic thing I used was ground cumin. Basically it's lentils, rice and elbow macaroni topped with a tomato-vinegar-garlic sauce and browned flour-coated fried onions. It was soo good. I pretty much nailed it the first time I tried making it!

In terms of healthiness I'd say it's half-and-half, because the lentil-rice mixture and the tomato sauce are healthy, the macaroni and the fried onions not so much. But it's filling and comforting and tasty and has cheap ingredients.

EDIT to add recipe, in case you're wanting to try it.

Kushari Recipe

Kushari consists of four things, so the ingredients and instructions are listed separately:

Lentils + Rice
Macaroni
Garlic Vinegar Tomato Sauce
Fried Onion Topping

Serves about 8 people

Lentil Layer

1 cup of lentils
1 cup of rice
5 cups of water
1 tablespoon cumin
1 t salt and 1/2 t pepper

Put water in a large pot and add cumin. Boil the water and then add lentils. Close lid, reduce heat slightly and leave it boiling for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile, slice onions for onion layer and start frying in batches (see below). Also mince garlic and start sauce (see below).
Add rice, salt and pepper and stir. Reduce heat to very low and simmer with lid on until rice is cooked, about 20 minutes. Meanwhile start a medium pot of water boiling for macaroni (see below). Stir lentil-rice mixture a few times during cooking to try and reduce sticking. Turn off heat and leave on warm burner with lid on.

Fried Onion Topping

2 large onions (or equivalent), peeled and cut in half and then into strips.
3/4 t salt
1/3 cup flour
Plenty of vegetable oil for frying

Add salt and flour to cut onions. In a cast-iron frying pan add vegetable oil (3 T per batch?) and on medium-high, fry as many onion strips in pan as will fit in a single layer (you will probably fry 3 or 4 times total), turning fairly frequently, for 10-15 minutes until deep golden brown. (Try for crispiness, but don't let them burn too much.)

Garlic Vinegar Sauce

1 T vegetable oil
2-3 tablespoons minced garlic
2-3 tablespoons white vinegar
2 15-oz. cans of plain tomato sauce
1 t salt and 1/2 t pepper
3/4 t red pepper flakes

In a saucepan on medium-high, cook garlic in vegetable oil for a minute or 2. Add tomato sauce and then add vinegar and spices and stir. Stir on heat for a few minutes, until it boils. Reduce heat to very low until ready to serve.

Macaroni Layer

2 cups dry macaroni
Water

Throw macaroni into boiling water about 9 min. before last onion layer is done frying; cook until al dente and drain.

To serve, ladle layers of lentil-rice, then macaroni, then tomato sauce, then fried onions.

All our mortgage payments hit today:
US: $435 to principal
UK1: $264
UK2: $56
UK3: $58

All told, that's $813 down, $1147 to go on the December goal.

I know I sound like a broken record, but my payments from Oct. 10 and last week still haven't posted to NT's student loan account. I'm going to keep sending one payment per month and estimating the amount to principal. I mean, it's a huge student loan organization. It'll have to apply my payments someday, right? They keep coming out of my checking account OK.

I briefly considered putting extra money toward a different debt until this glitch is cleared up, but his loan has the highest interest by far, so I can't bring myself to divert funds elsewhere. Just hoping they make good on their promise to apply payments retroactively so the interest isn't really accumulating as fast as it appears to be.

Now that we've got our wills finalized, notarized and signed, we have to decide where to keep them. The lawyer said the two main choices were a fireproof safe or a bank safe-deposit box. Those of you who have wills, where do you opt to keep them? Are you happy with your choice?

Another of AS's student loans hit, $61 going to principal. That means we paid $2043 of debt this month, exceeding our $2000 goal!

That's the last debt payment that will hit this month, so I can go ahead and set my December debt goal. I'm going for a modest $1960 in December.

I forgot to mention in my last post that I made progress on my goal to organize get-togethers; we had a day-after-Thanksgiving gathering with a few friends. I won't hit this goal since I missed one month, but I'll come darn close!

Also, put $25 into savings recently and earned $0.47 in interest, which brings our 2011 EF progress to $2960.03 and our total EF to $11,471.98. Still vaguely hoping to hit the EF goal if NT's rental-management company ever tells us what the cost of redecorating is so we can put any excess into savings. It's doubtful that we'd get to $7000 even then, but at least we'd be closer than we are now, not even halfway to our goal!

Well, my Oct. 10 payment to NT's student loan has still not posted. They've repeatedly assured me that they received it and that in terms of interest, they will apply it as if it hit on Oct. 10. Eventually. So I went ahead and sent out another payment last week. It hasn't hit. Of course.

Still, I'm sure they got it, and someday it will post to NT's account. So as not to miss our November goal, I'm going to guesstimate that $1050 went to principal.

Also, one of AS's student loan payments hit, with $123 going to principal. Thank goodness we paid off her Direct Loan account before this new nonfunctioning website launched, or else I'd be tearing my hair out with two accounts not posting payments.

So, I'm saying $1173 went to principal, making it $1982 down, $18 to go on my November debt goal.

This student loan thing is so frustrating that I lost interest in calculating net worth this month. However, I just checked AS's individual net worth, and she's at a positive number: $28!! It's small, but it's a start. We'll really start building it up now. That's another 2011 goal reached!

Speaking of 2011 goals, we hit our $1800 to charities goal a month early! We decided to use some of this extra money coming in to donate.

The only goals I haven't reached are my EF, the Roth IRA (which we'll reach in December), and the creative/social goals where I was required to do something each month. I think next year if I set those types of goals, I won't have the one-per-month requirement, because you have one busy month and you've ruined the goal for the whole year.

Oh, I did finally finish reading the 1300-page "Count of Monte Cristo," so I've done 8 of 12 months in my creative/reading goal.

I'm super busy at work, but NT shared this article with me and I couldn't resist passing it on.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15752918

What do you think is your cheapest meal that you would actually consider eating?

NT had to buy minutes to keep his phone activated, since he accidentally only bought enough minutes to keep it active it for one month in October.

FY2011 spending so far:

NT's April Net10 fillup (300 minutes): $32.87
AS's May T-Mobile fillup (1000 minutes): $107.78
NT's June Net10 fillup (300 minutes): $33.38
NT's August Net10 fillup (300 minutes): $33.38
CJ's October T-Mobile fillup (1000 minutes): $107.78
NT's Oct Net10 fillup (200 min.=1 month svc): $22.26
NT's Nov Net10 fillup (300 minutes): $33.38

FY2011 total: $370.83

We're in the eighth month of our prepaid "fiscal year," so that means our average monthly cost is now $46.35. Still slightly below our ideal $50-per-month average, so that's good.

RECAP: I switched to prepaid in late March 2009, so our phone "fiscal year" begins each April. We have 2 phones on T-Mobile prepaid and 1 on Net10 prepaid. AS and I refill in 1000-minute increments and only need to refill when we run out or when it's been a year since our last fillup to stay active. NT needs to buy 300 more minutes every 60 days to keep his phone activated.

Our cellphone bill, for three phones on a family plan, used to range from $80-$95, depending on texts, calls to 411, etc. Usually it was close to $85. My ideal goal is to get my average cost to $50 per month, but any average number below $85 is a savings.

Cross another goal off our 2011 list! We saw our lawyer Friday and, after some discussion and editing, signed our wills, power-of-attorney statements and health care directives. Paid in full as well! We also discussed the adoption of our children, and the lawyer is very excited to get started on it. He's enjoying the intellectual challenge of using existing laws to cater to our unusual situation.

He said he didn't need a retainer yet for the adoptions, which is kind of nice. I've enjoyed having that big cushion in the checking account; makes me feel very secure! I'll be an adjustment next year when it's not there anymore.

We parceled out our extra money to see what we could afford in terms of gifts to our service providers, gifts for parents, etc. Everything looks very good for the rest of the year. I probably won't put any extra to debt except the standard $1000 per month, but I'll try to put a bit more than that in January and February. Then I have to figure out our budget for parental leave, which might involve lower debt repayment for a couple of months.

We've already made the necessary purchases for earning $1500 of gift cards on our new Southwest cards! I paid for some prescriptions, NT bought a restaurants.com gift certificate that we're going to pay in our spending money for, and AS put a meal out on her card (that one will also be paid for with our spending money). Then AS started spending on her Capital One card; we'll get $100 bonus once she spends $500. We went out Friday night to celebrate finishing our estate planning, and we'll pay that with some of our surplus money.

One of the other things we decided to do with our budget surplus was to donate an extra $50 each ($150 total) to charities of our choice. That means we'll hit our charitable goal in November instead of December!

Anyway, on to my super-easy recipe! I found this online because we had some snowpeas that needed using up. You need about (I didn't measure and mine turned out great):

1/2 lb. snowpeas
1 T butter or margarine
1 T lemon juice
Pinch of Italian seasoning
Pinch of garlic powder
Pinch of salt

Melt butter in small dish in microwave and add lemon juice, seasoning and salt. Microwave the snowpeas with a few tablespoons of water, 1 minute at a time until tender and hot but still crisp. Drain snowpeas and toss them with the butter mixture.

Soo good! I like having a number of simple, tasty veggie side dish options. I've noticed most of my favorites involve butter and/or lemon.

MonkeyMama turned me on to the Chase Southwest credit card, which has a deal where you make ONE purchase and get 2 free flights OR $500 in gift cards. There's a $69 annual fee, so you net $431.

We all have or recently had Chase cards, and NT and AS have even been turned down for smaller rewards. But I thought what the heck, this is too good not to try. I wasn't sure who should apply, so I had each of us apply separately.

I applied first and got an immediate note that I had been approved. AS and NT didn't get that note, so I figured they didn't get approved.

Then bam, last night, they got their cards in the mail! So we've got three cards, and after the fees, we'll get $1293 worth of cards for making three purchases!

Time to add up what I've gotten so far and what we will get soon:
Chase Sapphire $1000 Received
Chase Sapphire $1000 Received
Citi MasterCard $150 Received
American Express $15 Received ($100 minus $75 fee minus $10 late fee on 1st payment)
Citi MasterCard $200 Expected
Capital One $100 Expected
Chase Southwest Visa $431 Expected ($500 minus $69 fee)
Chase Southwest Visa $431 Expected ($500 minus $69 fee)
Chase Southwest Visa $431 Expected ($500 minus $69 fee)

Grand total this year, if we get those last 5 as expected? $3758! And that's not counting the 6% statement credits for grocery purchases we get on the Amex card. We easily spend $600 per month at eligible stores, so that means $432 in rewards. Minus $75 annual fee, we'll still get at least $357 per year.

We also get minor (1% to sometimes 5%) rewards on all other CC purchases, but I don't keep track.

Isn't that crazy? My raise was less than $5000 and the income was taxable, so I'm thinking I netted more on CC rewards, on purchases I would've made anyway, than I did from my raise!

***

More good news on the job front, though! We had our benefits presentation and there was lots of good news. For one thing, no premiums going up except for vision coverage, which I don't opt to get. We're getting a new dental provider with more in-network dentists and 100% free checkups and better rates on other dental care.

They announced an initiative to encourage preventative care. If we do 7 things from a list -- all of which are 100% covered -- we'll get $200 added to our flex spending accounts January 2013. It's basic stuff like annual exams, cancer screenings, flu shots, etc. At least 4 or 5 things I would've done anyway, so it's basically $200 for scheduling 2 or 3 extra doctor appointments over the course of a year.

And, most exciting for me, they didn't promise (but I don't think they would've brought it up if they weren't going to do it) but said if they were going to bring back 401(k) matching, they'd announce it in a few weeks. They haven't even mentioned 401(k) matching as a possibility since they took it away about 4 years ago, so I'm hugely encouraged by this! Could be getting one step closer to meeting our desired retirement contribution levels.

***

Other quickie news flashes:

- This Friday we're all taking off work and getting our first carshare to go see the lawyer and sign our wills. We found some mistakes and potentially big omissions, but I emailed them and the paralegal is going to try and get everything fixed before the meeting. We had our lawyer friend look over it (he gave us a great hourly rate, so we've really lucked out in this process) and he confirmed what we thought about what was good and what needed changing.

- I'm not tracking my eating or exercise anymore since I reached my weight goal, but I still have to weigh in once a week to make sure I don't gain it all back. Last Sunday I weighed in and had lost another pound! Down to 138. I wasn't even trying, but I think my renewed housecleaning efforts are paying off with more than just a tidier house.

- AS had her first real ultrasound, where they did all the measurements, and our baby is doing fantastic. All the important stuff checked out; no cleft palate, no sign of Downs, all fingers and toes there, all organs and bones looking good. AS's blood pressure is OK, so they think chance of pre-eclampsia is very remote. The baby is super active, and the tech had to keep chasing it to get the pictures he needed! It was very cute.

- NT's student loan payment is STILL not posting!! It left my bank account Oct. 17. The rep said when it does post, it'll be retroactive in terms of interest; so they'll fix our interest charges as if our payment had hit Oct. 17. It better! We've accrued $5-$8 more than we would have if the payment had hit on time. I want to send another payment next week, but I'm not going to until this one hits.

What else? Oh, I don't know. The holidays are barreling toward us and it feels like a ton of things need to be done, but I feel so busy with regular stuff every day that I'm just not getting to any of it. It's all fun good stuff, though, so I'm not worried. I rarely let the holidays stress me out too much. Besides, if we get these gift cards from Southwest in time, there's Xmas pretty much taken care of!

$25 went into U.S. savings for the EF, so that's $2934.56 of 2011 progress, and brings total EF to $11,446.51.

Also, AS's student loan account got fixed (accidental payment from someone else's check removed) and it turns out her regular payment put $1 more toward principal than I had estimated. It counts! So that's $809 down, $1191 to go on the November debt goal.

I'm so frustrated that NT's federal student loan payment hasn't posted yet. But I looked around online and it's not just me; the site was nowhere near ready to go live, it seems, and so there are people worse off than me. NT's loan isn't even in repayment yet, so it doesn't matter when his payment posts. There are people whose loans are in repayment and whose accounts are now showing up as delinquent because their payments haven't gone through. The Dept. of Education really screwed the pooch on this transition.

I'm also chomping at the bit to find out how much NT's flat redecoration is going to cost us. There's now nearly 2000 pounds in his UK checking account, but I can't put a cent of it to savings until I find out. With my $2-1pound ratio I use for personal accounting purposes, that would be $4000 of EF progress and would nearly get us to our 2011 goal! Of course it's not going to be nearly that much and that's why we're not likely to hit our EF goal. But even to be able to post some more progress soon would be psychologically gratifying.

The CEO of my bank apparently made some callous remarks about surviving this economy at a Chamber of Commerce meeting. I can't find a transcript so I can't tell exactly what it was or whether it's being spun (positively or negatively) by reporters.

But in trying to find more about this meeting, I did find out that he's nicknamed "the Golden Boy of Wall Street" and that my bank is more involved in predatory lending than I realized. (Since US Bank didn't appear in many stories about the mortgage debacle, I assumed they were a more temperate bank in their financial behavior.)

So, I dunno. I've had good experiences with the bank overall, and I'm very used to the online checking system. But I'm uncomfortable that banks think they can do business the way they do and think that no one will take their business elsewhere.

I'm online looking at credit unions, and I think I found one that's not too inconvenient to us geographically. (There are closer ones but we don't meet the membership eligibility -- having to work for a specific company or industry.)

Seems like their checking accounts, ATMS, checks, etc. are free, which would be important (I typically don't pay a dime to do my banking). And your money is protected up to $250,000 -- we only have about $20,000 in checking and savings.

Anyone have any thoughts on credit unions? I've been with my big bank for so many years -- are there any drawbacks or inconveniences you can think of?

All our mortgage payments hit:
US: $433 to principal
UK1: $262
UK2: $55
UK3: $58

All told, that's $808 down, $1192 to go on the November debt goal.

Approximately $182 will come from regular student loan payments, which means I need to come up with $1010 to NT's loan. Hopefully they fix the issue with his payment soon so I can figure out how much I need to send this month to cover accrued interest plus $1010 to principal!

***

Today at lunch I sent the last $1000 of the $2500 we agreed to give AS's mom. She has paid lip service to repaying us someday, but we are considering this a gift, not a loan.

If by chance she pays it back, we'll hold that money aside and be willing to loan her (in the future) as much as she pays us back. Sort of like having an escrow account for her (that she doesn't know about). If she pays none back, this is the last time we'll be giving her money.

***

We've signed up for the carshare service! Did I mention that we applied? Well, we were approved this week. We're using the car to go to our lawyer meeting next Friday. I think that'll be our first time using it. This first month will run over the $90 I'm allotting per month for this purpose, but we've got a healthy surplus in our budget so it's OK. It's running over mainly because of the application fees but also because we're taking the car for a whole day, so we can maybe have a dinner date after the lawyer meeting to celebrate getting this done!

I can't remember if I have any other news off the top of my head, and some urgent work came in, so I've got to run!

Oh my goodness. I spent the weekend at some friends' home, where we snacked and feasted constantly. So I was really worried about my weigh-in. I'd been pretty good the week before, but I thought for sure that Saturday and Sunday would do me in.

Luckily, I think all my housecleaning and general moving around during the week, plus one good hard Gilad workout on Tuesday, was enough! I weighed in tonight and had hit 139, my 2011 goal!!

(Actually, AS pointed out that my idea of snacking and pigging out now, after my months of dieting, is probably much more modest than it was before.)

So now, I just need to maintain, and lose any weight that I gain over the holidays. Next year I'll set a more ambitious goal, but I just feel satisfied that I made it under 140! Considering I started the year at 156, 139 is like a whole new world!

***

I was updating my sidebar info and realized that I surpassed my 2011 goal to pay off at least $20,000 of debt! We've now paid $21,440 off, and still have two more months to go. Might even pass $25,000 this year. We've done much more in past years, but since we've also been putting $300 per month to IRAs and setting all of NT's rental income aside in savings, and have more expenses such as childcare, I'm very happy with this result.

Well AS's regular student loan payment hit. Oddly, as with NT's payment, which still hasn't been applied to his principal even though I know they have it, I had to estimate how much of AS's payment went to principal, because that accidental payment of someone else's hasn't been removed from her account yet. But anyway, it's usually $60, so that's what I'm estimating.

So that makes (an estimated) $1907 of October debt repayment, taking us $7 over our goal. Not as satisfying since two of the accounts aren't showing accurate balances, but it counts.

Next month I'm going to shoot for at least $2000 of debt repayment.

So here are pics of me as Columbo and AA as a monkey. Coincidentally, in one of the shots I was trying to imitate a classic Columbo stance where he has his hand on his forehead, which obscures my identity pretty nicely. Good pic to share here.

OK, first the only normal financial thing: one of AS's student loans hit, with $124 going to principal. That makes $1847 down, $53 to go on the October debt goal.

I went to AS's other online student loan account to see if that payment had hit yet. As soon as I logged in I knew the balance was lower than I expected. I checked my debt spreadsheet and sure enough, it was about $200 lower. I noticed a payment had hit on Oct. 21 for way more than our $61.55 autopay that usually hits the last couple days of the month. (That one hadn't hit yet.)

For a second I was really excited, thinking maybe there was an ontime-payment bonus or something that I'd forgotten about. But then I thought, what if it was someone else's student loan payment and it got applied to AS's account accidentally?

I called the student loan place and explained, and they said it was a payment by check. (I haven't paid student loans by check in years.) They put me on hold while they pulled up a scan of the check. Sure enough, it was for someone else's student loan! The rep said the account number was blurry and they'd entered a wrong number.

Phew! Sad to lose $200 extra on our debt repayment, but happy to think that someone else maybe won't have to go through a hellish rigamarole just to get a late fee taken off their account and have their payment found. Especially with NT's student loan account STILL not showing our payment from Oct. 17, I know how maddening that would be for someone.

***

About the time I was checking into that, the guy who owns the cleaning service emailed me. Said he'd noticed from our cleaning guy's timesheets that he spends 2 and a half hours at our condo, when we only pay for 2 hours. He asked the guy who said it's a solid 2 and a half hour job, and he'd thought he was supposed to be doing that anyway. Said if we wanted 2 hours, we might have to agree to rotate certain aspects of cleaning since he didn't think he could get it all done in 2 hours.

The upshot is, we've been getting an extra half hour of cleaning every 4 weeks. However, if we want to keep this level of cleaning, we're going to have to start paying for that half hour, which would be $26.26 more per month. Or we can talk about taking certain items off his cleaning list, or rotating them. We just got this email, so still trying to decide what to do. Weird, huh?

***

NT and I were talking about whether we should start the car share service next month instead of after the new year. We have our lawyer appointment out in another city in November, and a big college-alumni party in December that's out in the suburbs. I was thinking I should apply today at work because my workload has finally lightened up, but our Chinook Book coupon book is at home, and there's a half-off application fee coupon we wanted to use. Then I remembered that someone had put a 2011 Chinook Book in the breakroom and that those coupons were good until Oct. 31. I checked and, sure enough, the car share coupon was in there! So if it stays slow at work for the next hour, I might go ahead and apply. Isn't that a weird coincidence though?

I just had to write because I thought those were a lot of odd things to happen in a day (in an hour, really).

I finally called NT's student loan providers since the $1125 payment I sent Monday before last wasn't showing up on the new website. Turns out they got the payment; the phone rep said the amount before I did so I know it's true. But when I asked him what the principal balance was, he rattled off the previous balance. When I told him the payment hadn't registered, he said they would do a review of the account and should hear something in -- where have I heard this before? -- 7 to 10 days.

Sigh. So I don't know how much the payment will end up being toward principal, since interest continues to accrue. But I'm hoping at least $925 will go to principal. I'm going to record that, since I know they have my money, and just hope I don't have to report less going to principal.

So, that's $1723 down, $177 to go on the October debt goal.

***

We're going to spend Halloween weekend at our friends' weekend house in Winona, MN. It'll just be us four plus four friends, but I requested we dress up in costumes Saturday night. Mostly because I'd decided earlier this year what I wanted to be: Lt. Columbo, in honor of Peter Falk who passed away a few months ago.

Halloween costumes can end up being surprisingly pricy if you're putting your own together and have very specific items that you need to get. So I felt like I got off pretty easy:
$15 for a tan raincoat
$8 for a white men's shirt
$10 for a tie
$3 for a small pad of paper and a cigar
I've got a pair of khaki pants and am borrowing a pair of NT's shoes, and that's the costume! $36 total.

The raincoat and shirt I got from the church thrift store, so I know the profits go to a good cause. I'll either donate the coat, shirt and tie back to them when I'm done, or if I like the costume enough, this might be one worth keeping. I do love Columbo more than almost anything! I'm watching one right now!

***

Now the random brain dump:

Lots of other little things happening. Today was very dramatic at work, as I suddenly realized that my two roles (proofreader and reviewer for corporate style compliance for our main client) could be very much in conflict. On the one hand I'm subordinate to many people and expected to sort of give in if I'm overridden, but when I wear my other hat I pretty much have more authority than anyone in my company. Anyway, there was a situation where I tried to fulfill both roles as faithfully and ethically as possible, but ended up ruffling some feathers and really making no one happy. I don't think anything bad will come of it, but I keep going over it in my head, wondering if there will be any lasting effects.

AS and I made a very cool dinner tonight, time-consuming but satisfying since it was so far outside our comfort zones. We had beets to use up so I did some research on borscht and found that in Ukraine, it's served with garlic fried bread (that was AS's contribution since she's the bread expert). I thought there should be another dish (not realizing how hearty that would be) so I found a recipe for veganized Ukrainian stuffed cabbage. It was all quite delicious; I don't think it'll freeze well and we're going out of town, so I'll take some for lunch and bring the rest in to see if anyone from work wants it.

We got our annual profit-share check from the natural foods co-op where we do some of our shopping. Typically it's $40 to $50. Well, I don't know if we've been spending a lot there or if they had a good year, but it was over $140! This co-op was $75 to join about 13 years ago, and between the discounts and these yearly checks, it's more than paid for itself, plus it's a good place to support.

I also was able to redeem $25 from our American Express card. I believe this is the second or third $25 we've earned and we've only had it a few months. Definitely worth the $75 annual fee.

I signed up for that Southwest Visa where you get 50,000 points after one purchase, and I asked NT and AS to sign up too, to see how many of us they would approve. I think I got immediate approval but NT didn't get any such message, so maybe he won't get it. I don't think AS has tried yet. We still have to spend about $240 on NT's new Citi card to get the $200 bonus, and AS just got a Capital One card where we spend $500 we'll get I think $150, so we need to do that. Shouldn't be hard at all.

On the estate planning front, I set a date to meet with the lawyer on Nov. 11. We'll need to rent a car or sign up for that car share a couple months early, since his office is kind of far away. Usually he comes and meets us at NT's office, but since we need witnesses or something, we have to go to his office for the signing.

AS has her next ultrasound scheduled for I think Nov. 5. It'll be at the hospital perinatal unit because of her high blood pressure, but we're still really excited. This might be the one where they'd be able to tell us the sex, but AS has been really back and forth on whether or not she wants to find out, so I'm not sure what will happen.

What else, what else, what else? I just realized the other holidays are coming up very fast. Really looking forward to it, but we have some planning and gift-buying to do. Probably get started in November, but we won't have budget surplus until December for any extra holiday spending outside the Xmas gift fund for the four of us.

If there's anything else, it can wait for another post. I should relax so I can get to bed soon.

NT bough some more minutes to extend his contract, but he accidentally bought 200 minutes which gets him 30 days of service, instead of 300 minutes for 60 days of service. He already has trouble using up his minutes, so this is kind of a bummer; he'll have to refill again next month to keep his service active no matter how many minutes he has. I wonder if we should look into whether T-Mobile will allow an exception to the two-prepaids-per-household rule; their one year of service for buying 1000 minutes is much more flexible (and less hassle).

FY2011 spending so far:

NT's April Net10 fillup (300 minutes): $32.87
AS's May T-Mobile fillup (1000 minutes): $107.78
NT's June Net10 fillup (300 minutes): $33.38
NT's August Net10 fillup (300 minutes): $33.38
CJ's October T-Mobile fillup (1000 minutes): $107.78
NT's Oct Net10 fillup (200 min.=1 month svc): $22.26

FY2011 total: $337.45

We're still in the seventh month of our prepaid "fiscal year," so that means our average monthly cost went up to $48.21. Still slightly below our ideal $50-per-month average, so that's good.

RECAP: I switched to prepaid in late March 2009, so our phone "fiscal year" begins each April. We have 2 phones on T-Mobile prepaid and 1 on Net10 prepaid. AS and I refill in 1000-minute increments and only need to refill when we run out or when it's been a year since our last fillup to stay active. NT needs to buy 300 more minutes every 60 days to keep his phone activated.

Our cellphone bill, for three phones on a family plan, used to range from $80-$95, depending on texts, calls to 411, etc. Usually it was close to $85. My ideal goal is to get my average cost to $50 per month, but any average number below $85 is a savings.

$25 was transferred into savings and we got 50 cents of interest, so that takes our 2011 EF progress to $2909.56 and our total EF to $11,421.51. STILL waiting to be invoiced for the UK flat redecorating so we can shift any leftover money into the EF fund.

I'm pretty much off my diet but still striving for moderation most of the time, and this week it paid off; I lost the pound and a half I'd gained over the previous two weeks. So now I'm back to 142 with just 3 lbs. to go on the 2011 goal. Which means I sort of wasted the past three weeks. But I've still got time to do it.

NT finally reviewed his will, and we asked a friend who's a lawyer to look it over. We'll get it back from him this weekend, hopefully see the lawyer sometime in November, and our estate planning will be done! I didn't expect it to take most of the year, but I guess that means it was done well?

Our retirement accounts had recovered when I checked our net worth today, and AS's net worth is now -$187, so close to positive! I can't wait to report that. Makes me want to put the whole $180 available from my raise toward her Roth IRA so she can build that positive net worth faster. Hmm, maybe I will.

It's a minor thing, but we had a small get-together at our house Saturday, so that's 9 months out of 10 that we've managed to do so this year!

Although I'm not technically involved in the declutter challenge, I've been doing really well on that front. We're reviewing all the baby stuff we got before AA's birth and getting rid of stuff we never used for her -- a baby backpack, some booties and other articles of clothing. We got rid of a falling-apart baby dresser (though we'd bought a new cheap Ikea one to replace it). I cleared a large bag of expired or unneeded medicines and toiletries from the bathroom. We dumped a duvet that was too thick onto the free table at our condo. We even "decluttered" 4 containers from the freezer -- 2 of crushed tomatoes, one of pinto beans, one of rice -- and some sorta stale tortillas from the fridge into an enchilada lunch this weekend.

And even though it doesn't count as getting rid of stuff, I went through all the bags and piles of AA's clothes and got them sorted by age and put away. I nearly groaned when NT told me his HR manager was sending a huge bag of size 2T clothes our way -- even though I know they'll be very stylish, expensive and gently used based on past donations from her. But I've already figured out where I'm going to put them, so they won't hinder my organizing progress!

What else has been going on? Oh, my sickness/malaise seems to have cleared up; not sure what that was. I expected to lie low this past weekend, but instead I was super productive, cooking and cleaning and organizing. I did tons of laundry and dishes, and cooked a lot of the meals as well as some extras like brownies and muffins.

Work is so much better since I got my promotion. A lot of my bitterness and anger has cleared up and I'm much more able to cope with the ups and downs of the position. I feel like people finally see that I'm doing much more than just proofreading.

I recently realized I have 5 days of vacation I need to use (or lose) by the end of the year! Since we figure our trips based on the least amount of days off someone has -- AS at the moment only gets 12 days a year -- I sometimes forget that I have other days I can use outside our family vacations. I still don't have a good replacement option for when I'm out of the office, so I may try to use most of it as Mondays off, which is typically the lightest work day for me. We shall see.

AS's pregnancy is going mostly well. She has high blood pressure, so that's causing some higher scrutiny, but no real problems so far. She got to hear the heartbeat today for the first time! Moneywise I feel pretty good; some of the extra stuff they need to do because of the hypertension may cost us, but we've got the EF if we can't figure out a way to cashflow it. So excited to meet our new baby next year; we've been throwing tons of names around and are nowhere near coming to an accord.

I'm seeing some pretty good deals popping up for a warm-weather trip; we want to go somewhere tropical in the new year, but I want AS to check with the doctor to see if there's any additional risk to traveling pregnant with the high blood pressure. Seems like there will be tons of deals, so I don't think I'll have any trouble finding one if we're able to do it. If we can't, we'll just staycation together in Minneapolis. That'd be fun too.

Is that it? Oh, I won't get started on my extra payment ($1125) to NT's student loan, lost out in limbo thanks to a website conversion. They said it would take 7 to 10 days. Today was the 7th day and no sign. I really hope it hits before the end of the month or I'm going to seriously miss my debt goal! If it's not there by Thursday morning I'm going to raise hell!

Whew, I'm going to have to update my sidebar later. It's late and I'm getting tired!

Assets:
NT's UK pensions:
#1: 13,753 pounds ($27,506)
#2: 16,005 pounds ($32,010)
#3: 3,709 pounds ($7,418)
NT's 401(k): $13,515
NT's Roth IRA: $3,461
AS's 401(k): $5,785
AS's trad. IRA: $1,682
AS's Roth IRA: $4,899
CJ's 401(k): $38,073
CJ's Roth IRA: $3,461
NT's flat: 130,000 pounds ($260,000)
CJ & AS's condo: $160,000
Baby/emergency fund (shared asset): $11,421
---
Total Assets: $569,231

Total Debt: $331,289

Current Estimated Net Worth: $237,942

August 2011 estimate: $230,981

Change in net worth: +$6,961

Summary: Nearly $7,000 gain! NT's federal loan site is still being dumb, and my payment from last Monday still hasn't posted. If it had, we'd have close to an $8,000 gain. Still, this brings us to our highest net worth yet, beating our last high of $235K in July! Most of this was our retirement accounts making up losses.

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 fairly conservative. 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 $2 for every British pound, which was the exchange rate when I started keeping track. I maintain that ratio for the purpose of tracking progress, even though the exchange rate is now closer to $1.60 per British pound.

I feel ugh. I've had so many good things happening, maybe this is just a natural chemical downturn in my body, so that's why I'm letting things get to me more than usual.

- Wholly derailed and unmotivated on my health goal. After gaining 1.5 lbs. over the past two weeks, and getting behind on the grocery budget, and the cold weather discouraging outdoor activity, and having to work later so I don't want to take the time to walk home -- I'm just not finding the extra strength to push through this rough patch. I'm not eating "on plan" this week and I feel just under-the-weather enough to not be able to push myself to work out. I'm trying to figure out what to do to get myself on track again. I wrote down some fitness goals for next week, so hopefully I'll follow through on those and that will help.

- As I just mentioned, our Costco stockup/grocery run for our cabin weekend wiped out our grocery frugality progress and we're once again dipping into the next fortnight's grocery money. This past weekend I even decided to ignore my diet plan to make a super-cheap grocery list. Somehow we ended up spending even more than we usually do. So I want to do a pantry challenge as much as possible for the next couple weeks, and stick to low-cost food, which is going to mean straying from my diet plan for awhile longer.

- I sent a big payment to NT's student loan on Monday. Well, they've decided to create a completely new site, and now my payment isn't showing up. It aggravates me because every day when I check in I can see that interest is accruing on the debt, and I can see in my bank account that the big payment is gone, so my $1125 is just sitting out there in the ether doing no good on either end. If it hasn't hit by tomorrow morning they're going to get an earful from me!

- NT's classes are crazily reading-intensive this year, which means he hasn't had a chance to review his portion of the estate documents. Until we all look over them, I can't ask my lawyer friend to review them. Until he reviews them, I don't want to schedule an appointment with the lawyer. Until we meet with the lawyer, I don't know what my parental rights are regarding AS's child. Until I know what my parental rights are, I don't know how to approach my HR or what to ask them for. Until I know that, we can't make plans for how we're all going to schedule our parental leave (not to mention plan the budget for our unpaid leave). It's a logjam of stuff-not-happening!

- As mentioned earlier (because all of these things are feeding off each other), I feel oogy. Can't tell if I'm sick, or just going through a slightly depressive period, or if my body is reacting negatively to being off my diet & exercise plan. But we're unusually busy at work so I don't feel like taking a health day unless I get actually, undeniably sick.

- Needless to say, feeling like I'm not going to try NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) this year. Since I usually (OK, always) get behind and give up halfway through the month, I don't think this would help my doldrums any.

OK, done whining. Let's try to remember the good things:

- My work gave me a lovely bouquet to celebrate my raise, and it's been brightening up my office all week.

- My 19-month-old daughter has shown a real aptitude for learning letters! She can usually recognize A, E, F, H, I, M, O, S and Y, and even points them out on random things when I'm not even trying to get her to say them.

- I've done some good decluttering at home (bathroom cupboards, toy shelves) and have been pitching in more with housework the past couple weeks (since NT is partly out of commission with homework and AS with pregnancy, I've been meaning to step up my game).

- Been looking online for Caribbean vacation deals for January, and it looks like we should be able to find something well within our budget. Just need to save up a bit more money, and also decide exactly what we want.

- It's time to leave work, and I'm all caught up for the day!

I saw my paycheck and confirmed that I got a 10% raise -- the lower end of what I asked for, but still a satisfying amount of money. It seems to net me about $280 more per month (I don't have my exact normal paycheck numbers yet because my bus pass payments have been stopped for a few paychecks to fix my being too far ahead on them).

For now, the $280 can just be extra money, along with NT's raise. We can use it to fix up the house, or put toward debt, or whatever we need it for most. It's really going to help cover the shortfall when AS and NT (and who knows, possibly even me) take unpaid parental leave next year.

Then, looking ahead to post-birth, post-parental leave, back to full-time work for all of us and full-time daycare for two kids, I've projected my budget as best I can. NT's raise, and our daycare lady's cheap rates, meant that we could basically go back to our current budget ($10 short; not bad) even with full-time daycare. So $10 of my raise will cover the shortfall, leaving $270. If we set aside $90 per month for car-share service, that will leave $180. I figure I can put this monthly surplus toward our Roth IRAs.

Ideally, we'd put $600 more toward retirement each month. But, to get to 10% of gross income going to retirement, we only need $300 more per month. So this $180 will get us very close, only $120 short of 10% and $420 short of our ideal.

Yay! Now for some bad news; I gained one pound last week and half a pound this week. Since I round up my weight, that takes me to 144 lbs. Got to lose 5 lbs. to meet my 2011 goal. And I better not gain again, because I'm riding the line between "normal" and "overweight" in terms of BMI! So the theme of this week must be moderation, and hopefully some exercise after several weeks off.