Ceejay74's Personal Finance Blog

Our goal this week was to keep spending to $112. We spent $116.95. I think that's pretty darn good!

We spent a lot more on groceries and a lot less on nonfood items, but it balanced out. We pored over the store circular, printed out coupons that matched sale items we could use, and our main grocery store doubles most coupons on Saturday. We saved 40% on a bill that would have been $131 but instead was $79!

Here's how it broke out per meal. For many of the ingredients we took advantage of deals and bought more than we needed, so we'll be able to get more meals out of them. I'll try to note that, because otherwise some of our meals will seem rather expensive.

Pancakes & strawberries
Strawberries $1.99 (will have leftovers)
(already had pancake ingredients & maple syrup)

Mac & cheese w/ salad
5 lbs. macaroni $3.99 (will have leftovers)
3 pkgs shredded cheese $6.00 (will have leftovers)
Romaine lettuce $1.69
(already had sauce ingredients for vegan version; salad dressing)
Total: $11.68

Broccoli & mock duck stirfry with spring rolls
Broccoli $0.99
Mushrooms $1.89
Frozen edamame $2.49
Ginger root $0.56
Onions $2.29 (will have leftovers)
Rice $5.15 (will have leftovers)
(already have mock duck, spring rolls, spices)
Total: $13.37

Tofu "chik'n" & waffles & hoppin' John
2 pkgs tofu $2.98 (will have leftovers)
Black-eye peas $2.50
Diced tomatoes $0.59
(already have breading, waffle ingredients, rice)
Total: $6.07

Pasta w/ tomato spinach sauce
(already have all ingredients)

Lentil loaf, broccoli, chik'ny gravy and biscuits
Broccoli $0.99
(already have lentils, spices, flour, etc.)

Sweet & sour mock pork, szechuan green beans
Water chestnuts $1.09
1 green bell pepper $0.99
Pineapple $2.99
Green beans (fresh) $0.57
(already have mock pork, spices, will use rice from above)
Total: $5.64

Homemade veggie burgers & fries
Bread (C) $0.99
Black beans $2.53
(already have rest of burger ingredients, fries)
Total: $3.52

Other food/drink we'll use this week:
3 grapefruit $3.10
4 apples $2.94
4 pears $2.70
3 lbs. oranges $3.69
Can of tuna $1.99
6 eggs $1.92
Milk $2.29
4 Lean Cuisine meals (C) $5.96

Other food/drink staples we may not use immediately:
Garlic $0.45
4 boxes granola cereal (C) $8.00
Cornmeal $1.99
Yeast $0.59
2 pkgs fresh mozzarella $6.99
Fake sausage (C) $1.99
Vegan butter $3.29
Canola oil $3.49
Chili powder $3.84
Peppercorns $3.40
Tea $4.75
2 canisters Crystal Light (C) $2.50
5 frozen juices $5.00

Total of all food spending: $114.13

Nonfood/cat items:
Cat litter (reg. $8.59) FREE after rebate
Ziploc bags $2.09
Tax $0.16
Tax minus bags credit $0.57

Total nonfood spending: $2.82

Just a quick note before I head home. It's been a busy week and I can't WAIT to get some wine (didn't have enough spending money to get wine this week; I've been compensating with occasional mixed drinks via our liquor stash, but for some reason it doesn't feel quite as relaxing as a nice glass of wine). We get our spending money on payday, and NT already called to confirm I want him to stop by the liquor store on the way home.

$25 went to EF savings, and we also gained 86 cents in interest, so that makes $1876.71 saved so far this year, and $10,388.66 in the EF fund total.

I'm kind of excited for another week of tracking our grocery spending; it might get harder to keep costs down as we work through our small stockpile, but I think we can do it. NT saved the Rainbow Foods circular and AS will look for coupons online, so we'll see what we can do. We had one more purchase of child-safety cabinet locks come through, so our grocery money is $340.44 plus $3.32 on a Target giftcard. That means we want to try to stay under $112 this week, so this money can stretch over three weekends of spending.

Also looking forward to AA's first Easter as a mobile, alert person with good eyesight! (She was around last year but less than 2 months old, and we were so exhausted I don't even remember Easter.) I bought a basket for $2, a sippy cup with rabbit ears for $2, and the rest of her Easter treats are going to be homemade or from my mom's care package.

Happy Friday! I'll try to check in tomorrow with my grocery bill totals.

Just got back from the not-interview informal coffee thing, and though I felt fairly calm throughout, now the nerves (and possibly the caffeine) are kicking in. I think I did pretty well and managed to articulate a lot of the points that would make me a good match for the job, but of course there are things I would've said differently, things I left out, etc.

The worst blunder was that I printed out a resume right before the meeting, to have just in case. I've recently been paring it down ruthlessly and just got it on one page. I took off the big header with my name and contact info with the intention of replacing that with something smaller and simpler--but I hadn't actually added it back to the version I printed out. So I tried to make light of it while I wrote my contact info on it, saying I was just starting to job-search and was still in the process of working on my resume. We bonded a bit about how hard it was to get back into that mindset once you'd been at a job for a while.

I actually think it might be OK, because this was an informal meetup and I wasn't required to bring one. Plus, it really was out of the blue (though I had a week to prepare), since my friend who works there told me about it informally. I think it was better to have something even if it was missing a header. But of course that's one of those things I keep going back to and mentally smacking myself for.

I dunno. I've conducted a lot of interviews myself and been involved in hiring decisions, and I'm one of those people who will forgive a lot of slip-ups that experts tell you are the kiss of death, if I get a sense the candidate will be good. Including people forgetting to write thank-you notes after, being a little late to an interview, and once (OMG!) I hired someone even after they called an employee after the interview to ask if we drug-test. (And you know what? He turned out great and he's still at that company I used to work for.) So hopefully if he got a good sense overall, the resume-header thing won't be a big deal.

Fellow SA job-seekers, I forgot how weird it feels. It's like blind-dating or something!

I forgot to note that we contributed $300 to our Roths this week. With some of our goals on autopilot it's easy to forget to mention them! So that's $1200 toward our goal of $3600.

We had to buy diapers today, so that's $14.50 gone from the grocery/household budget. We've now got $334.63 left in the May 1-15 line item, or $111.50 per weekend for the next three shopping trips, if we want to get caught up. I still have high hopes we can catch up or come darn close.

We've already run out of bread and have grilled cheese sandwiches planned for Wednesday. AS said she'll try to bake a loaf from scratch, using ingredients we have on hand. I also realized we need another meal this week since an event I'd written on the menu isn't until next week. We already have ingredients to make bean burritos (in fact the rice and beans are already cooked from Sunday's Mexican casserole), so that's the plan.

It's cold and windy today. I may wuss out on walking home. I hate to lose my momentum. But, I skipped walking Friday, and still managed to get motivated Saturday and Monday, so I think it'll be OK.

I felt like there were a few other things to mention, but my brain is mush. Hard day at work, and already getting a bit nervous about my coffee chat with the prospective employer tomorrow.

Just calculated our net worth, and AS's is down to negative $3,927! Over $1,200 better than last month. It just needs to improve by $491 per month to get to positive by the end of the year. Seeing as how she contributes $325 per month to retirement and pays down $385 of debt per month minimum, I feel pretty good about our odds of meeting this goal!

Oh, and I weighed myself last night and showed an insignificant loss of .2 lbs. Basically I went from 152.8 to 152.6, so I'm still 153 if I round off. Ah well, at least I didn't gain! I walked at least 30 minutes 5 days last week, but didn't really pay attention to my eating. I still feel good about the week overall. NT lost over 4 lbs., so he must be getting close to his goal! I saw the loss, but didn't look at the weight number. I'll have to remember to ask him.

As for the other goals, I haven't made much progress. I do have an informal job-related chat scheduled for Wednesday (got recommended by a friend/ex-coworker). I'm excited to have my first interview-ish thing since I started looking for a job, and it sounds like a way more interesting job than the one I have, but the pay would be less--at least $9000 per year less (gross, not net, but significant anyway). I still want to hear more about it and practice my interviewing skills, though. (Plus, I would LOVE to work with this old friend; I don't really have any friends at my current job and that can tend to make one feel like a high-school outcast. Do I love it enough to sacrifice $750 per month? Hmmm...)

Assets:
NT's UK pensions:
#1: 12,663 pounds ($25,326)
#2: 16,005 pounds ($32,010)
#3: 3,709 pounds ($7,418)
NT's 401(k): $12,751
NT's Roth IRA: $3,433
AS's 401(k): $5,600
AS's trad. IRA: $1,682
AS's Roth IRA: $4,042
CJ's 401(k): $41,481
CJ's Roth IRA: $3,433
NT's flat: 130,000 pounds ($260,000)
CJ & AS's condo: $160,000
Baby/emergency fund (shared asset): $10,363
---
Total Assets: $567,539

Total Debt: $342,634

Current Estimated Net Worth: $224,905

February 2011 estimate: $219,720

Change in net worth: +$5,185

Summary: Everything went up this month, so even though we didn't pay off much debt, we had a nice upturn in net worth!

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.

NT needed to buy some more minutes to keep his phone active. Since late March was the end of a 12-month period of prepaid costs, this is the first expense of the "fiscal year." (I divide it up into 12-month chunks to give me a way to come up with average monthly costs.)

NT's mid-April Net10 purchase (300 minutes): $32.87

We're in our first month, so that means our average monthly cost so far is ... $32.87! that was easy.


RECAP: I switched to prepaid in late March 2009. 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.

We needed to get Clorox wipes, a new water-filter sink mount, a printer cartridge and cat food, so total spending was a bit more than I hoped for. But I think on food we did a good job; we based meals on things we already had, and a lot of things were on sale. And we used coupons for many of our nonfood items and a couple food items.

We spent about $130 and used up most of our April grocery money (because we were already behind). Now we have $360 to stretch over the next three weekends of grocery shopping, and then we'd be caught up. I think we can do it if we keep paying attention and only buying what we need.

I counted up what we spent for each meal on the menu, so I'll list that first:

Fresh pasta & pesto w/ mushrooms
8oz. mushrooms $1.89
(already had pasta fixin's and pesto)

Mexican casserole
Green bell pepper $1.29
(already had rice, beans, olive oil, onion, corn, canned tomatoes, salsa, garlic, cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, soymilk, oil)

Pasta & spinach-tomato sauce
Frozen spinach $1.07
(already had pasta, tomato sauce, herbs & spices)

Thai red curry
Carrots $0.99
(already had tofu, peas, peanuts, rice, curry paste, coconut milk)

Grilled cheese sandwiches & oven-roasted cauliflower
Whole wheat bread $1.97
Cheddar $3.98
Cauliflower $2.49
(already had vegan cheddar for me)
Total: $8.44 (but we'll be able to use the cheese and bread for other stuff, too)

Crispy golden tofu, blackened sprouts, potatoes
Brussels sprouts $3.59
Red potatoes $2.75
(already had tofu, breading ingredients, oil)
Total: $6.34

Other food spending for things we'll use this week (breakfasts, snacks, beverages):
3x grapefruit $4.68
10x bananas $2.21
4x plum tomatoes $3.01
8x apples $3.64
1.5 lbs. red grapes $2.05
Garlic $0.39
2x soymilk $5.00
64 oz. milk $2.29
4 eggs $1.28

Pantry staples we needed but won't necessarily use this week:
.66 lbs. flour $1.18
1.42 lbs. arborio rice $3.82
2 lbs. sugar $3.58
Grated parmesan $2.23
Celery seed $0.31
Egg replacer $5.99
2x Newman's own spaghetti sauce (C) $3.00

Total food spending: $64.68

Nonfood/cat food spending:
Printer cartridge + tax $15.62
Bottle brush $2.19
2-pk Clorox wipes (C) $6.99
2-pk deoderant (C) $3.19
Toms toothpaste (C) $3.19
Brita water filter mount (C) $24.49
Cat food (C) $3.79
Gum + tax $1.18
Tax on nonfood + cat food - bags discount $3.38
Paper towels (C) $1.59

Total nonfood/cat food spending: $65.61

EDIT: Here is the Mexican casserole recipe!
Vegan Mexican Casserole
Makes 8 servings (I would say 6 but I have a big appetite LOL)

1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, thinly sliced in half moons
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 cup frozen corn kernels
1 cup cooked brown rice
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes, undrained
4 cups cooked black beans
1 cup mild salsa
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup flour
4 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup soymilk
1/3 cup canola oil

Preheat oven to 450. Heat olive oil in a skillet with a lid over medium heat. Saute onion for 7 minutes, covered, stirring halfway through. Set aside. Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl, combine green pepper, corn, rice, tomatoes, beans, salsa and garlic. Stir together well. Coat a 13x9 baking dish with cooking spray and spread bean mixture evenly over bottom of baking dish. To make the cornbread topping, stir together cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a medium mixing bowl. Mix together oil and milk and gradually stir into dry mixture. Spread cornbread mixture evenly over bean mixture in baking dish and top with caramelized onions. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until knife inserted in center of cornbread comes out clean.

This morning for some reason I woke up with awareness that, if we gave up a lot of things, we could basically be debt free AND probably have a good chunk of AA's college education funded in less than 10 years. (Well, it's not like new information, but just a new way of thinking about it.)

But almost as quickly, I knew that just isn't how I want our lives to be right now. We have a really good income, and we work very hard for it. We're making progress on our debt, progress on our retirement and progress on AA's savings. As a general marker, I like the 50/30/20 goal (50% of total income toward needs, 30% toward wants, 20% toward savings). Our allocations of regular income are 55.84% to needs, 21.52% to wants, 22.64% toward either long-term savings or extra debt repay. That's pretty good.

It's true that anything could happen and we can't count on our lives or incomes staying the same, but as long as we're being fairly reasonable and not throwing all our money away, I usually feel comfortable the way we are. We've definitely expanded the luxuries side of our lifestyle as our income has grown and debt has shrunk; when I started here I think we put closer to 30%-35% to savings/extra debt repay. And I think that's OK. But it's good to be conscious and know that these are choices we're making. There's more than one way to live one's life, and we have the power to change if we decide we want to. (Not just with shrinking "wants" in order to tackle debt harder, but also if we someday want one of us to stop working and stay home for a while.)

Anyway, I'm going to take off soon. I had a hard couple days of work but they weren't irritating, with project managers of ill-timed projects jockeying for my time. So I feel much less drained than I usually do by Friday!

When we first contemplated having a baby, one thing we repeated often was that, since there were 3 of us, it would be easier for 2 at a time to go out on dates while the other played babysitter. That doesn't happen as often as it should; we're often tired or busy outside of work, and sometimes it may be a matter of feeling slightly guilty at leaving someone home with the baby.

But one of NT's favorite annual events is coming up in May, and one of AS's favorites is happening tonight, so that's spurred us to make date nights happen! AS and I are going to her event tonight, a fashion show/concert at a local nightclub. And NT and I are going to his fave, an all-day outdoor hip-hop music festival, at the end of May. Now AS and NT just have to figure out what they're going to do for their date!

So now I've got to go home and see if I have any clothes that I think are cutting-edge fashionable. I haven't been to this fashion event in years, and though I try to get nice clothes, I definitely don't take as many style chances now that I don't go out as much as I did in my 20s! And of course my postbaby body is heavier than it was during my nightlife days. But hopefully I'll be able to scrape something together.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

A regulary quarterly payment to one of NT's student loans, which are not in repayment yet but do accrue interest, hit today. Since I'd made some extra payments to it, some of this payment went to principal: $215, to be exact. That makes it $999 down, $1 to go on my April debt-repayment goal. LOL. I don't think that's ever happened before.

AS has one, maybe two, student loan payments that will hit before the end of the month, so I'll make this goal easily.

We had our estate-planning conference call today. We made a lot of progress: answered some questions, clarified some things and got some homework. Basically we need to make sure all our retirement accounts have the right beneficiaries, because those operate outside the probate system. We also need to find the deed to our U.S. condo, and the lawyer is going to help us get three-way joint ownership. Also, he's going to talk to some UK colleagues to find out the best way to handle NT's UK condo: set up joint ownership, or just have NT specifically mention in his will that he's leaving it 50% to me and to AS.

We also need tax ID and legal-entity names for two nonprofits that are getting a portion of our will if all three die and AA or another child isn't surviving: AS's employer (a nonprofit publishing house) and my alma mater (a small liberal-arts college). (Yes, you have to think of all outcomes in these matters!)

So after a long time, some real progress! This will give us some peace of mind that if something tragic or unexpected happens, we are all taken care of.

We already got AS's state tax refund (28 whole dollars!) so I put that aside for our various tax bills. I will mail out all our payments either Friday or Monday, to give as much time as possible to receive the CJ/NT federal refund and AS freelance check that will help pay for them. (If those don't arrive, I have tons of float money because I won't need the lawyer fund for a long time.)

Thanks to MonkeyMama's helpful advice on the forums, I decided I will save up gradually to pay our back taxes for 2008 and 2009, and will let the IRS and MN's revenue service figure out interest and penalties. I'm going to wait until after this tax season so as not to confuse matters. I'll pay the 2009 ones first because the bill is bigger, thus fees will be bigger.

***

I don't want to jinx it, but I think we're going to take a step in our estate planning tomorrow. We have a conference call at 10 a.m. to discuss the packet we sent in months ago. Our lawyer has rescheduled on us about three times. I believe it's because they're mainly on surrogacy cases, so they must rush to court as soon as a baby is born.

We've been talking more and more about AS trying to get pregnant. So hopefully I'll have news in a few months!

***

I've been thinking about AA's first real Easter (last year she was just a dour little lump on the day; I barely remember last April/May). My family always celebrated in a secular fashion; our big traditions were A) the Easter Bunny would leave a basket for each kid that had little candy and toys and a big chocolate bunny and largish stuffed animal and B) an Easter egg hunt (outdoors if it was nice; indoors if raining). I loved both those traditions. One thing we didn't do that I always envied other kids for was dressing up in fancy clothes and a hat.

AA is too young for the egg hunt, so I'm going to skip that. For her basket, we might give her a bit of candy, but she's too young to have much, so we bought AS a mini-muffin pan that she's going to use to make blueberry muffins. As for the toys and such, my mom usually sends a package with plastic eggs and other cheap little toys, so I'm going to see if we receive that in time. (If not, I'll buy a couple things the Saturday before Easter.) And if she doesn't send stuffed animals, AA has tons of stuffed animals in her room that have never even been brought out, so I'll just repurpose one of those and it'll be just as new to her as a new animal. The only thing we'll likely need to buy is a basket, and those are really cheap at Target (I could probably get one even cheaper at the thrift store).

AA has tons of cute dresses in the next size up, so I'll break out the 12-24-mos. bag soon and pick something out. And someone gave us a little white straw hat, so that will be her Easter bonnet!

I'm kind of excited. I think she's old enough that she'll notice a basket full of neat stuff sitting out when she gets up in the morning. She's been developing so fast lately--she just got a lot better at walking, and I think she's started saying words (they might be her own language, but she's definitely assigning sounds to things, so that counts!).

***

We had a constructive conversation about our grocery budget the other night. I guess I had not really conveyed my frustration that we kept going over into the next two weeks' -- or next month's -- line item. So we sat down and came up with some ideas to better control our spending.

Basically, we have $700 per month for all grocery/household spending, which includes baby expenses such as diapers and wipes, cat stuff like litter and food, and household items such as toilet paper and cleaning supplies. We also set aside $54 per month, which goes toward an annual $640 payment for a CSA share of vegetables and fruits which they deliver June through October. So our grocery/household budget is $754 per month, though we can only use $700.

First of all, there are certain expenses we discussed and decided we didn't want to cut back on just yet; we'll see if we can control our budget in other ways first. NT is very attached to getting eco-friendly toilet paper, paper towels, foil, cellophane and ziploc bags. As a vegan, I don't want us to skimp when it comes to humanely obtained animal products, especially now that AA is drinking cow's milk daily. However, we were all willing to limit use of fake-meat products, which we love, to about once a week, and only buying them when they're on special.

Second, we're going to look for coupons before shopping, and if there are any good ones, we'll structure meals around those ingredients. I don't expect this will help much because of our specialized diets, but it may do a little bit of good.

Third, we're going to keep our receipts for a week or two and make a spreadsheet to try and figure out where our funds get allocated. NT thinks about half our money goes to fresh fruit and vegetables; if this is the case, it should be pretty easy to catch up in the summer, when our CSA box starts coming every week. But I'd like to get the budget caught up before then.

Lastly, we're going to pay attention to how much money each meal costs that we put on the menu. Then we can start a list of cheap meals that we can throw into rotation whenever we need to scale back, and have a list of splurgy meals that we should only have when there's wiggle room in the grocery budget.

I think with all three of us working with a common understanding of what we're trying to accomplish, we'll be able to get back on track. It'll even be kind of fun, I think. (Except the no-fake-meats part.)

***

I think that's it! No progress on goals in the past couple days, but I do hope to report some progress very soon.

$25 went to savings and was allocated to the EF. That makes our progress $1850.85 for the year, with the total EF at $10,362.80.

Although I didn't work out Monday, as I said I was going to try to do in an earlier entry, I did walk all or part of the way home Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. On Saturday AS and I weight-trained. On the other hand, I had snack binges on Tuesday and Saturday nights. So I wasn't sure what to predict for my weigh-in last night.

Well, pretty good news. I lost a bit of weight. I was a touch over 153 and now I'm just under 153. So no appreciable progress on the sidebar, but good to know the exercising was able to counteract those two nights of serious snacking.

Ow, my brain hurts. It's been a busy day at work, but I seem to be caught up for the day (fingers crossed). I tried to balance the budget just now but I saw a couple of charges I wasn't sure where to categorize and my brain just shut down. I'll do it tonight with some help from the family. Can't wait to go home, partake of a relaxing beverage and cook a nice meal.

Last night, AS got a call from the IRS regarding her response to their claim that she owed $1800 on her 2009 taxes. She gave them some additional info that wasn't in her letter, and the lady said OK, I'll take care of it. Clerical error on their part, and I have to say that it was pretty painless to get it fixed.

Today, I sent my confirmation back to the tax guy, along with a $325 check to cover their invoice. So they'll e-file my taxes and I just have to send a check to the MN government for what I owe them. I'll do that on April 15, along with sending a check for what AS owes the IRS, and an estimated 4th-quarter payment for her 2011 taxes.

Since she hasn't gotten her latest freelance check, and we don't expect to get our tax refunds for a while, we may have to use the lawyer fund to cover part of the above, but it's just temporary; I'll have it fully funded again as soon as those payments come in.

I promised myself we'd get a spending-money bonus when we got all this settled, so whatever is left over of AS's freelance check will get divvied up. I'm expecting about $320, so I'll probably give each adult $100 and put $20 into savings for little AA.

AS is also getting a $150 speaker's fee soon for a job-related function, and she's going to use that to get her dreadlock maintenance (once or twice a year they need to be separated and tied at the base so they continue to grow in individual locks).

Now that this year's taxes are settled, I'm back to planning our train trip for the late summer/early fall. Should be fun, but there's going to be a bit of wrangling to get the seating arrangement and car rental conditions we want. (Train bedrooms have a max occupancy of 2 adults and 2 kids, so we may have to purchase a separate seat for one of us, then just hang out in the bedroom car together anyway. And I want to rent the car in St. Louis but drop it off in Minneapolis, which is easy to do airport-to-airport but not as automatic for nonairport locations, for some reason.)

Thanks to MonkeyMama's helpful advice on the SA forum, I'm not feeling so intimidated about amending my past years' taxes. I've decided to put aside money little by little, then submit a revised form whenever I have enough money to cover one of the bills. I'll just figure out what tax I owe and let them send me a bill for interest and penalties, which MM says will be about 10%-12% per year for federal. (Probably about the same for MN tax, but I will owe them less so the fee will be negligable.) It'll feel good to have everything settled and feel more confident going forward that I'm preparing our taxes correctly.

OK, nothing else came in to work on, so I'm ditching this place a few minutes early! I got a notice that a package came, and I'm hoping it's some cute spring clothes that I ordered online. Usually I find it hard to think of something to spend my allowance on, but lately I've been blowing through it!

I got my tax packet already! I just need to look it over and send back my signature so they can file. So far they look good to me, although there are some forms I'm not familiar with that I might try to read up on tomorrow before I drop my consent in the mail.

I wasn't sure how much I was going to owe, but I assumed it would be at least $600 for the prep fee, plus a few hundred each for federal and state.

Instead, the tax bill was $325, state tax payment due is $481, and NT and I are actually getting a $315 federal refund!

Also, I saw that we'd gotten a $800 Making Work Pay credit. I'd completely forgotten that was valid in 2010 as well, so that means I need to revise AS's federal before I send them out. $400 less, so her federal tax bill is down to $1217. Luckily it doesn't affect her state return, because I already sent that off.

So here's the breakdown:
We have $1600 saved to pay for this.
AS is getting $28 from the state.
NT and I are getting $315 from the IRS.
total: $1943

AS owes $1217 to the IRS.
NT and I owe the state $481.
We also owe the tax guy $325.
total: $2023

So we're short $80.

We're also getting about $800 from a freelance job AS did, so we're up $720.

Then, I want to send a $400 estimated payment for AS's 2011 taxes. So we're down to $320.

The question I now have though is what to do about previous years. The tax guy did report our UK income, straight up, no deductions or tax breaks. So I now know I should have been including that in '08 and '09.

I made a rough guess what the extra income would be and looked at old tax tables. I think we'd owe about $180 for 2008 and $620 for 2009.

$800 isn't too bad. But then I think about all the interest and penalties and get unsure whether we should pursue this, or wait and only deal with it if we get audited down the road.

I'm putting that thought aside for now; but I may return to it if it's bothering me, and pay that tax and try to figure out what the penalties are.

Thought I would share this since we have some pretty impressive couponers on this site. I can't say whether they're going to be admirably thrifty or just crazy and compulsive; since it's on the same network that airs "Hoarders," "Intervention" and "My Strange Addiction," my guess is they're going to focus on unhealthy couponers, or at least try to make them look unbalanced whether they are or not.

Still, might be an interesting show.

http://www.app.com/article/20110406/NJENT/110405037/Next-cable-s-oddball-agenda-extreme-coupon-cutters-debuts-tonight?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CFrontpage%7Cp

This is a question I've been afraid to ask myself ever since I've been old enough to contemplate it. Even though we've made great strides toward conquering the debt that we go ourselves into, and have learned to spend less than we make, retirement was the elephant in the room for me. When AS or NT would express their confidence in my financial management skills, part of me would feel a twinge of guilt because I knew I hadn't dealt with one of the most important financial issues of all.

So I plugged our info into a retirement calculator I found on CNN.com. I've used calculators before, and I always come up way short of even my most modest goals. So I was nervous to see what this one said.

I plugged in $80,000 (in 2011 dollars) as our desired retirement income. I would have put less, but keeping in mind MonkeyMama's recent comments about how retirees are often hard-hit by taxes, I went with a sum that would probably cover our current lifestyle minus mortgage and other debt payments, and minus childcare and other baby expenses, but that allowed a fair bit for taxes and/or healthcare.

To my surprise, CCN's calculator said we would need an 8% return on our money and have a 90% chance of getting there with our current retirement funds and rate of contributions.

I posted these results on the SavingAdvice forums because I know the regulars there will always give their unvarnished views about any situation. One said they thought the calculator was right on. The other responder said he thought we needed to be contributing a bit more to get where we wanted to be, but that we could up our contributions gradually and probably get there just fine.

(One reason my results were so different this time: I think maybe I'd done my calculations in the midst of the recession before, and had only calculated a 4% return on investments. But 6% is more likely, and 8% is possible if a bit optimistic.)

This was all mind-blowing to me. I assumed we were so far off target that we'd never be able to retire. Which, based on our families, wouldn't be that bad if our health cooperated. (My dad is more-than-half-time at his computer programming job, and just turned 80. This is his choice, not because of financial need; he just gave each of his 5 kids $13,000 because he wasn't getting very good interest on his savings.) But counting on being able to work in one's 70s and 80s isn't a very good plan, since anything can happen, and your odds of staying fit for work decrease with age.

So I think we do have a ways to go, but it looks like we're heading in the right direction. One of our biggest saving graces is that NT always paid into pensions and retirement funds even when he was young. If AS and I had begun earlier, we'd be even more set. But now that we have a good income and even more earning potential, we'll be able to catch up the rest of the way.

Of course you can never be 100% sure when you still have about 30 years of contributing to do before retirement. But the fact that we're even on the right path is extremely encouraging to me. I feel unbelievably more relaxed; I didn't even know how much of a burden it was until the worry was mostly gone.

So what about you? Have you taken a good hard look at your retirement prospects yet? Do you think you need to make any changes to get where you want to be? Add a comment here or post on your own blog if you've got an interesting answer to share.

I sent him everything Feb. 15. Since then, nothing unless I initiate contact. Every time I contact him, he's almost done and just about to send me everything.

I don't want to stiff him for the work he's already done, but at this point I feel like maybe I should just take care of it myself this year; ignore NT's UK income until next year, and find someone else to do it. But I don't know if or how to get out of this.

Only one other year did I leave my taxes until April. Even if I don't send them in right away, I like to know what I owe or get back.

I emailed him this morning to see when I could hear from him, or even if he could give me a rough estimate of what I owe him and the government. So far, nothing.

I guess I'll call him tomorrow first thing, and ask if I can terminate our relationship if he doesn't have them to me by close of business day. Is that too harsh?

Well, I'd gained 2 lbs. at my weigh-in last night. No surprise; I was very physically lazy last week. I'm losing all the ground I'd won this year, so that was a wake-up call that I need to fit in some exercise. Yesterday even before the weigh-in, I had two 30-minute walks, one brisk and the other more leisurely. Now that it's nice out, I should get more exercise naturally on weekends, but I need to make sure I do something during the week as well.

So now I'm 153; 14 lbs. away from my goal of 139.

Tonight will be busy, but I'm going to try and do a 10-minute workout video after AA goes to bed. (Or before, if she'll let us put her in the playpen; she's not a fan now that she can almost walk.)

Just to let everyone know that I'm not participating in the April fool-a-thon. It's against my religion: sucker.

NT was actually a legendary practical joker among his friends back in England, and after he'd regaled us with several tales of his best pranks, I made him promise (repeatedly) that he would leave that part of his life behind him when he moved in! My poor heart can't take it!

Today I finally heard from my tax guy. He had a few questions that made me think "oh crap, I didn't even know I needed to provide that information." NT's UK bank account numbers. The price he bought the flat for originally. The amount in his UK savings account. What we owed on MN taxes last year. I'm just hoping most of this stuff is information you need to file that won't actually affect my past two tax years. I can only imagine the domino effect of revising all the numbers, because everything is so intertwined. I feel pretty exhausted just from getting that info and worrying. He should finish up pretty soon and said he'd be able to get me the documents in plenty of time to turn them around to the IRS.

I just want to know whether we owe, but every time we talk there's so much other info to pass back and forth, I just don't feel like muddying the waters. Not when nothing's final yet anyway.

Actually he just called back to find out when NT started renting the flat, and I asked him then whether he thought we were going to have to go back and provide the IRS with all this info for past years. He said he didn't think it would be an issue but that he wanted to get everything finalized before he said before. Some relief, but still uncertainty. Yeesh. And I still don't even know how much we're going to be charged for this whole preparation process.

To take my mind off all this, I've been tooling around the web making tentative plans for a THIRD trip this year--hopefully in late August/early September! I'm not going to book anything yet, because who knows how bad this tax bill is going to be--NT mentioned yesterday that we could do a "staycation" instead of the trip we're thinking about, if we need to put our vacation money toward taxes. It's a good option, and we can always do this trip another year. It's nothing too dazzling, just a train trip to a couple of U.S. cities with some nice hotels and a rental car thrown in. I'm looking forward to it, but it can wait if we need to economize, and plus I won't feel deprived since we'll have already had two trips this year, which is our usual number for the past couple years. Staycations are really fun too, and way cheaper.

OK, my nerves are calming down. However bad it is, once I know more, I can take steps to make sure no other tax years are this stressful or expensive.

I checked our mortgage accounts and all four payments had hit:
US: $412 to principal
UK1: $260
UK2: $54
UK3: $58

$784 down, $216 to go on the April debt repayment goal.

We made some more charitable donations recently, so our total is now $435 for the year.

I was able to transfer $639.38 of UK rental income into EF savings, so we've now saved $1825.85 this year (total EF is $10,337.80!).

Yay!

For April, I hope to pay off at least $1000 of debt. Our minimum debt payments now average about $975 to principal each month, so to get to $1000 I typically have to make at least a little extra payment. This month our interest payment is due on one of NT's student loans, and I sent some extra money to it in February and March, so even if we just make our regular payment that usually only pays interest, a bit of it will go to principal. So I don't think I'll have to do anything extra this month to hit $1000.

We finally heard back from our lawyer and have a meeting set up in April to discuss our estate planning wishes, so we'll make some progress on that this month.

AS sent me an interesting job opening that's in the same area of Minneapolis I currently work in. It's my favorite downtown location to work, so I'm excited to apply. I may work on that "pros and cons" list this month, too, to clarify what I like about this job. It'll help me see what's important so I don't end up accepting a new job that doesn't have some of the key ingredients to make me happy.

I don't have any ideas for my creative project/book to read, small-group get-together, or share-your-thoughts blog post for April yet. But warmer weather is clearing the cobwebs from my brain, so I'll think about it today and this weekend.

I'll probably post again soon today, once I have a chance to check and see if our mortgage payments went through.

AS's other student loan payment hit, and $60 went to principal. That's $1125 down, meaning we surpassed our $1039 goal by $86!

$7,987 down, $12,013 to go in my goal to pay off $20,000 this year.

I'll post a wrap-up of the month and new goals for April later in the week.

Still haven't heard from my paid tax preparer! Hmph. Yes, I will probably whine about this in every entry until I do. I've decided to give him until April 1 and then will bug him again.

Still haven't heard from the estate-planning lawyer. I didn't think it would take this long! Kind of annoying, but I hope it's because he's taking his time and doing it right, not just blowing us off. At least we didn't have to give him a retainer for this portion, like we will for the adoption process eventually.

Thanks for the thought-provoking comments on the last entry. I've got a lot to think about, both in terms of whether it's financially better to work or stay home, and whether private health insurance makes more sense than what's provided through work.

NT, AS and I haven't discussed all of the issues yet--it's a bit hypothetical until we see whether we're having another child anyway--but we did talk about the plan of NT going down to one class. On further reflection, he's inclined to think like Thriftorama on that topic, and cram as many classes in as he thinks he can handle until we have another baby.

I told him we have to decide in April which way he'll go, but it sounds like he's leaning toward taking a summer class (which we'll need to finance as they're not eligible for federal aid) and then a half courseload in the fall (which will keep the student loans from coming due). Then look at dropping back to one class for the spring 2012 semester (especially if AS is pregnant and due before that semester is up; 2 classes nearly killed him when AA was born midsemester in spring 2010).

That buys us some time before we have to start paying his student loans AND part-time tuition. We might even be able to pay for his half-time fall 2011 tuition without taking out more loans, which would be supercool because that would mean when they DO come due, the payments won't be higher than what I figured for the recent budget considerations.

So much to think about! Sometimes I just stare at my debt spreadsheet, willing that student loan number to start going lower again. I'm really glad we paid off one of AS's loans in a fell swoop earlier this year, but now we have to make up the money we spent from the lawyer fund and haven't been able to progress on debt for a while. It's making me very impatient! But the lawyer fund and tax bill are smart priorities, I think.

Blabbety blabbety blab. Sometimes I just go in circles mentally. But I think it helps me work things out, slowly and tediously.

I know, I'm chatty today!


This month's Kiplinger's is the "save $50 per day" issue where they give you all sorts of tips. Unfortunately none so far have applied to me. Lots of stuff about getting the most out of your car (don't have one), reducing bank fees (don't have any), and all these other ways to save money on stuff I don't spend money on anyway. They have advice on stuff I do spend money on, such as tips for getting $40 wine for $20 (never spend more than $15 on a bottle, and even that's rare).

Oh well. I haven't read last month's main story, "how to save a million dollars." Maybe that'll be more applicable.

I'm trying to plan ahead today, because I know we have some big changes coming to our budget. NT wants to cut back to just one class per semester; busy, stressful job plus being a dad are too much for taking 2 classes as well. This means his student loans will come due once he isn't enrolled at least half-time. Right now we're only paying interest on them.

Classes are $375 per credit at his college; since tuition increases every semester, I'm assuming they'll be at least $400 per credit in fall 2011. His class will be either 3 or 4 credits, so $1200 or $1600. Then there are other fees, which look to be about $1100 per semester. I guess if he takes one class each of two semesters, and each class was 4 credits, that would be $2700 per semester, or $5400 for the year. We'd have to come up with the first $2700 by the beginning of October, so that gives us 6 months. I suppose I can divide the $5400 by 12 months and it's $450 per month. (We could probably get private loans even if the reduced credit load doesn't qualify for federal, but I thought I should see if we can afford it without.)

Also, when NT's student loans come due, it looks like they'll total $435 per month. That makes $885 per month we'll have to come up with.

Sounds daunting but it's not really that bad. Once our tax bill/lawyer fund stuff is figured out, we have $845 in the budget for education/extra debt repayment. Plus, we already pay $139 per month on his student loans, to cover interest so it doesn't build up. That means we have $984 in the budget, more than enough to cover tuition and student loans.

Since we'll be eliminating a bit of the "estimated future debt" of NT every time we don't take out a loan for a class, our total debt number will be reduced. Plus we'll be paying some principal on his actual existing student loan debt.

Of course, my mind can't help straying even farther into the future, and the possibility that we'll have another child someday. Probably the earliest would be March 2011. Medical costs should be OK, but we have to think about unpaid parental leave. (Which we have plenty of time to save up some money to cover.) And eventually (June or July 2011) additional daycare for a new baby. (And/or reduced work for one of us to stay home with kids, or to take turns, etc.)

Whatever the arrangements are, it'll either be more expenses or less income. The lowest we could probably get away with would be $650 more per month (what we pay our current daycare lady for AA). Maybe she would give a little discount for a second kid, who knows? If one of us stayed home, it would definitely cost us more than $650 a month in lost income (or even $1300 per month, if you figure AA's daycare cost would go away), especially if you figure in extra healthcare costs.

So minimum, we're going to have to come up with $650 per month starting (at the earliest) in June 2011, either by cutting things out of the budget or by increasing income. Plenty of time to think about it, but it wouldn't hurt to brainstorm a bit now.

We have $99 per month more than we need in the above estimated education budget, but then again, with tuition costs increasing every semester, we can't exactly count on that as future wiggle room.

I currently put $50 per month into EF savings, but we should get the EF to a comfortable level this year, so we won't really have to add to it any more unless we use the EF for something. With most of NT's flat income going into savings anyway, we won't really have to worry about that. So that $50 per month will probably free up next year.

One of AS's student loans will finish up next year, freeing up $62.

I have $130 for misc. expenses that aren't quite emergencies but can't be covered by the grocery/household budget. It's nice to have, but not necessary.

So that's $242 right there, without even making any real cuts to our lifestyle. Not too shabby. If even one of us gets a raise or a regular freelance gig, we could fill some more of that gap pretty easily.

Of course, if one of us changes jobs and it reduces our overall income, or if we ever decide we need to get a car, that will change all of our calculations. But it's good to get an idea of what we would do on our current incomes and budget.

I had a weird dream last night that I was hosting some kind of fundraiser and, for reasons I couldn't really comprehend even in the dream, casually wrote a $10,000 check to the charity!

In the dream I was inwardly groaning, thinking about how I was going to have to get a bunch of extra work to replenish the checking account. But I wasn't panicking, which was interesting. I think it's because I now know how to handle even huge setbacks, so my dreams can't really use that to stress me out anymore.

I finished AS's taxes yesterday. I was pleasantly surprised. First of all, I had it in my head that she owed about $1800 on federal. I think I got mixed up because recently we got a letter from the IRS claiming she owed about that much on her 2009 taxes (she's already faxed them records to prove that they incorrectly added a zero to one of her 1099s). Anyway, according to my second runthrough, which matched my first one (love when it matches up and I don't have to do a third, tiebreaker round), she owed $1617. Sounds like a lot, but less than I was thinking, AND, no penalty for underpayment! So we got an interest-free loan from the federal government, and we have until April 18 to pay them back. Woo hoo!

Then I did her state taxes. Usually, for some reason, people end up owing or getting a much smaller refund on their MN taxes compared with their federal, so I was really expecting to owe big-time. Turns out AS is due a $28 refund! That one I'll send off right away, so we can apply the $28 to our federal bill.

I've decided to send the IRS $400 as an estimated quarterly payment on 2011 taxes for AS. If it looks like she's getting as much or more freelance work this year, I'll up the amounts in subsequent quarters. I did pay off a student loan so her interest deduction will be lower next year.

Still haven't heard from my paid tax preparer, even though two weeks ago he said he hoped to get it to me in a couple days. I don't like having this taken out of my hands AT ALL. I'm so used to being the one in control on my taxes. If I get my copy from him and it looks easy to replicate what he does, I'm going back to doing it myself.

If we don't have to declare NT's UK income, I have high hopes that we'll about break even. We might owe a bit; I think I was pretty accurate in changing my withholdings after AA's birth, except I forgot our mortgage's interest rate dropped and thus our itemized deductions are much less this year.

I did see some mention about a "foreign income exclusion" with a minimum of $92,000 or something. We make about $15,000 on NT's flat, so if that's the case maybe we don't have to report, and won't have to revise our returns from previous years, paying penalties etc.

Although, one of the things on the questionnaire from the tax guy was about PMI. Is that deductible if you itemize?? I never have. So if he adds that to our itemized deductions, might be worth looking into whether it was deductible in past years. Can I revise to increase deductions, and if so, how far back? I'm not going to bother looking into it until I see whether he includes it on Schedule A.

(International friends, sorry for all the blabbing about U.S. tax law. I know it makes no sense.)

One of AS's student loans hit, with $124 going to principal. So we paid $1065 off so far in March, exceeding the $1039 goal. One more student loan payment may hit later today or tomorrow.

Weighed in last night and unfortunately gained 1 lb., so I'm back up to 151. Unfortunate but not at all surprising, since we ate out a lot last week and didn't get much exercise. Will try to do better this week!

EDIT: Almost forgot: I donated $20 and NT $25 to charity this weekend, bringing charitable donations up to $350 for the year!

NT and I made a little mural on AA's nursery wall of removable decals we bought at Target. Not hugely creative, but a bit. And it looks so cute! AA likes to point at the stickers when she's in her crib and babble...I think she's finally figuring out that making sounds is related to other things, not just for the fun of being noisy!

Speaking of AA, we're planning on leaving her with our best friends when we go on our next trip (to New York in early June for my 15-year college reunion). This will be the first time we're all three away from her for more than 8 hours! It will be almost 4 days. I'm excited and nervous at the same time.

We've got just over two months, so I'm hoping she gets past her stranger fear by then. She's been getting better, and she's much less fearful and clingy around these friends than anyone else. Even if she's not, I'm hoping this will be a good experience for her. We know several people who traveled without their babies when they were much younger, so I realize it's not a big deal. Just FEELS like a big deal.

I feel like I have more to say, but I should go do some work. Maybe I'll post again today!

$25 went to the EF, bringing us to $1186.47 saved for the year (our goal is $7000), and our total EF up to $9698.42!

I applied for two more jobs today, so hopefully that will bring me closer to my goal of getting either a raise or a new job.

I used an online graphics company to design some customized stationery for my mom (see my "best gift" entry from a few days ago), which NT pointed out counts as a creative project. It was mostly automated, but I did come up with the concept, and choose and crop the photo, and choose the layout and font colors!

I officially made some money with my side hustle! NT's job paid me the $720 for proofreading a book for them. (That also means the lawyer fund is fully funded, if we can manage to come up with other money to pay the tax bills.)

I wrote my "Share Your Thoughts" blog post for the month. Check it out and respond or write your own entry on the topic if you're interested!

I had to refill my phone. Since I last filled it in September, I guess I've been averaging about 167 minutes per month.

I started the "year" in late March 2010, so this marks the end of 12 months of prepaid. Rundown of expenses:

CJ 1000 minutes late-March T-Mobile fillup: $107.78
NT 300 minutes late-March Net10 fillup: $32.82
NT 300 minutes late-May Net10 fillup: $32.82
NT 500 minutes + new phone late June: $21.56
AS 1000 minutes late-August fillup: $107.78
CJ 1000 minutes late-September fillup: $107.78
AS new phone + $25 phone card (200 min): $32.32
NT 300 minutes early-October fillup: $32.87
NT 200 minutes late-December fillup: $32.87
AS late-January phone replacement: $29.88
CJ 1000 minutes late-March fillup: $107.78

Total cost for the year: $646.26

Divided by the 12 months, our average monthly cost for this year is $53.86. A very good average, much better than the first 12 months of prepaid or any month when all three of us were on a family plan. Compared with $85, which was the cheapest contract for 3 people I could find, we saved about $31 per month, or about $372, in the past year!

RECAP: I switched to prepaid in late March 2009. 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.

While it was cooking the scent of cinnamon was really strong, so I was afraid it would overwhelm the other flavors. Totally didn't--this was a dead-easy and delicious sauce! I stuffed the tortillas with seasoned black beans, vegetarian "chik'n," corn and cheese (vegan for mine). I also made a tofu, black bean and cheese one for lil' AA, which she'll have today at daycare.

Here's a link for anyone who missed the original recipe post:
http://lookingforward.savingadvice.com/2011/03/01/fire-and-fabulous-enchiladas-on-a-chilly_66537/
I made almost no changes except I used yellow onion, and added a dash of cayenne since I only had 4 oz. of green chiles.

Thanks Looking Forward!

(or gave, or heard of someone getting or giving)

I was pretty excited about the birthday gifts to my dad and mom this year.

My dad, who has coached girls' softball as well as helped run leagues for decades, decided to sponsor a team this past year. He didn't think they'd put his name on the shirts the way they do a business, so he was kind of embarrassed when he found out they did. But he was wearing the shirt this summer when we visited: "The BD Comets" it said, splashed across his chest. [Not his real name, but you get the idea.] It was comical but also endearing, because I love his commitment to girls' sports, even after all his daughters and even granddaughters grew out of playing softball. I asked him to send me one of the shirts, and when he did, he also sent ones for NT, AS and little AA.

So for his birthday, when we got our friend to do a photo shoot, we brought along the shirts and all posed together in them. I ordered a print of that shot and framed it to send to my dad. Total surprise. He loved it and wrote that he thought AA looked pretty tough and would probably be a great softball player.

My mom loves to write "snail mail" letters, so I wanted to do a stationery for her this year. I finally found a site that would let you design photo stationery (it was kind of hard to find, and not cheap, but once I had my heart set on it I would pay just about anything). I put her name and address at the top, and under her name, "#1 Grandma." At the bottom of the paper, I put a little picture of AA's face cropped from a picture my friend took at the same photo shoot, and under that I put "#12 Grandkid." Then on impulse I ordered envelopes, with her name and address in the return address spot, and the full picture of AA on the other side in a little box in the corner. She should get it by early next week, and I'm hoping to get a thank-you letter on the stationery so I can see it in person! This is something that ended up costing me a lot for the convenience, but with a bit of work and some computer skills, you could probably make a similar gift for pretty cheap.

All the memorable gifts I can think of have a personalized touch. Of course there are the huge gifts, such the early inheritance my dad gave us last year, or electronics, vacations, jewelry, etc. But the ones that make me smile with remembrance are the ones where someone put more thought and effort than money into them.

One of the best gifts I got as a kid was from my best friend at the time. I was really into writing fiction, so she gave me a basket with a bunch of little jars. Each jar had a herb or spice in it and a label, like "rose hips to help you write love scenes." I can't remember exactly what they were, but each spice corresponded with a type of scene or genre. There was also a candle in a jar so that I could "write scary stories in the dark" or something. I kept that gift on prominent display for years and years in my room. It was so thoughtful and playful that I just loved to look at it and think that someone had taken the time to make it for me.

NT, AS and I usually try to do gifts like this, though the past year has been so busy with work, school and baby that we've slacked off a bit on that and just bought one another things. But NT once had a friend make a short film starring him for our Valentine's gift; AS made me a beautiful framed heart out of egg cartons that I still have in my cubicle; and AS and I made an activity book of games like crosswords, word searches and connect-the-dots for NT that we wrote or made, all having to do with him, us or our relationship. Those are just a few examples of many personalized gifts over the years.

The very best gift I've ever heard of was from my sister to my mom. My mom sends birthday cards to just about everyone she's ever met. She keeps all their addresses in this book organized by date, and every couple of days she goes through and makes out cards to the people whose birthdays are coming up. One year my sister MA snuck the book out and made a copy of it and then returned it before my mom noticed. MA wrote a letter and sent it to every single address in the book; it said something like "If you're getting this, you've probably received a birthday card from my mom GL every year. She loves sending cards and doesn't expect anything in return. But I thought it would be a fun surprise if she got a huge number this year. So if you've ever been touched to receive a card from GL, please take a moment and send her one for her birthday this year."

About a week before her birthday, my mom started getting a trickle of cards, many from people who didn't usually send her one. She was pleasantly surprised, then, as her birthday came closer and the trickle turned into a flood, overwhelmed with delight. At some point my sister told her what she'd done, so it wouldn't be some big mystery why it was happening all of a sudden. My mom kept all the cards hanging up, lining the walls of the living room, for months. She was so pleased both by my sister's thoughtfulness and the kindness of so many acquaintances.

OK, I could ramble on for ages, but I would love to exchange ideas here, so we all have some inspiration for when we want to do something extra special for a loved one. And, it's a vaguely finance-related topic, because sometimes the best gifts don't cost much at all. (OK, my recent ones to my parents weren't cheap, but they CAN be, depending on what the gift is and how you go about it.)

So, what's the best or most memorable gift you ever gave, received or heard about?

I finally weighed in last night after 49 days (according to my naggy Wii Fit). To my surprise, I'd lost just over 3 lbs.! I'm now a shade under 150, but I'm calling it 150 lbs. That meants I'm just 11 lbs. away from my 2011 goal. The only reason I can think of is that I barely ate anything a couple of days when I was sick, and we actually got a ton of exercise in San Fran so it balanced out the decadent eating. I realize I can't expect weight loss like this if I continue to not exercise, but at least I didn't lose a ton of ground over the past couple months.

As for charitable giving, NT bought $10 worth of groceries for an AIDS charity that was collecting outside the store. I also realized that the amount I have left in my charity line items on the budget indicates that we've given more than I've kept track of. Occasionally one of us will donate spontaneously, so it's not surprising I forgot to log something here. I am confident that the line items in my budget are accurate, because I only touch those when a charitable donation goes through the checking account. So I'm updating charitable giving progress to match that, meaning we've donated $305 this year.

AS's negative net worth decreased by a bit this month despite a dip in investment values. She's at negative $5,135 now.

In the getting-job-or-raise category, I found a handful of jobs last night that I'm going to try and apply for this week. One of them is 87 miles away, meaning I would have over an hour's commute AND would need to buy a car, but the minimum salary is $12,000 more than I make. Will I seriously consider this one even if I hear from them? Not sure, but I'm trying not to limit my thinking too much during the applying process.

Now some other news that's not about my 2011 goals:

My lawyer-money line item is fully funded: $9000! Now, this includes $720 that I haven't actually received, for a freelance project I did for NT's company. But since I trust they won't welch on this, and I've already sent them the invoice, I'm considering the fund complete.

However, I know AS is going to have a large tax bill, and NT and I may as well. I sent ours off to a tax expert and should hear back pretty soon. AS's I just need to finish; if my estimate on her federal is correct, she owes over $1800, and I haven't calculated her state yet, but if she owes federal she will owe state (though hopefully not as much). I'm hoping NT and I only owe a few hundred, but there's also the possibility I may need to revise our '08 and '09 taxes if the tax pro confirms that I made mistakes by not including NT's UK flat income on past returns. Then we may owe a bit, plus I have no idea how much interest and penalties are, since I've never revised taxes past the due date before.

On the upside, I have $800 set aside. Most of it will go to pay the tax preparer, but I'm hoping that will only come to about $600, leaving $200 to pay the actual tax bill. Also, AS has just accepted another freelance assignment that pays about $800. NT will likely start raking in overtime again now that we're back from vacation, usually to the tune of $200 per month. And I have $845 in the April budget that was going to go in the lawyer fund, so instead it can go to paying the tax bill.

If all that guesstimating is accurate, that means we'll have $2045 for paying taxes, so we may not have to take too much out of the lawyer fund. And I planned to save $845 in May and $845 in June for the lawyer fund, so it should get replenished pretty quickly.

I'm cautiously optimistic! Once the lawyer fund is securely at $9000 and the taxes are all paid, that $845 per month can start going to debt repayment again. And our extra income can as well, although I want to send part of it to the IRS and MN in preparation for 2011 tax season so we won't owe as much. Oh, and I've promised myself that once all these financial obligations are met, a bit of our side-hustle income is going to line our pockets, for some extra fun money. We've all been working super hard, and who knows if our incomes will stay this good if I (and possibly NT, who is growing dissatisfied with his job too) switch jobs to something we love but is lower-paying? So I want to make sure everyone gets a bit of extra personal money as a reward once the considerable obligations above are fulfilled.