AS is finding humor in the fact that, now that my big writing job at work is winding down, I'm desperately looking for ways to keep the momentum going on our renovation/moving goals. It's true! In my defense, she's got her future employment to think about and NT has two more semesters of college until graduation. Right now all I've got to focus on is the home stuff.

So, here's what's going on in that area:

- 2 possible snowflakes could be coming that I can add to savings! A new co-worker referred me to his old company for a potential one-off freelance proofreading project. And, more exciting though much less money, a new acquaintance of mine has asked if I'll consult with her and her partner (boyfriend? husband? not sure) about their finances. And she wants to pay me for my time! So we'll see if either one comes to pass.

- Painted some splotches on the walls last night to get a sense of what paints we want to use. (Don't worry; I took "before" photos last week!) Our realtor really wants us to use gray throughout, but I feel like a bit of color at least in a bedroom or the bathroom would make the place feel more alive. Probably gray for the main living area and a darker gray for the kitchen; they're always flooded with sunlight during the day, so the gray won't look gloomy at all. Especially with bright white on the woodwork! But I know the realtor has strong opinions and much experience, so we'll see.

- Made an appointment with our realtor to go see some places this Saturday. It'll just be a quick jaunt, but should give us a more realistic view of whether the duplex option would really work.

- Added NT and I to AS's USB Visa. This is a first step in simplifying our credit card situation and hopefully helping our credit report.

- Left a message with a mortgage broker to get preapproved for a loan. Even if we're not able to make an offer in the next 90 days, I'd like to get a sense of what we really can borrow. And if the WV money comes sooner than anticipated, we'll be ready to go immediately if we see the right place.

We took it pretty easy this weekend, loving not having much to do. The summer weekends fill up quickly, so it was a treat that the first really nice (partly sunny and 60s-70s) weekend we've had this year was also nearly free of obligations.

I pulled out a few more things for the garage sale, which is in 2 weeks. I know we can still come up with more. We're going to try and have a rummage through the kids' toys while they're not around and pull out small stuff that we know they haven't played with for a while. I was trying to make the older one part of the process, but she's having a real problem letting go of anything. (Well, she did a good job the first time through, but we still need to get rid of much more. They have gifts pouring in from all sides and it's kind of out of control how many toys they have for their tiny bedroom.)

We met with our realtor and gave her all the info on what we're wanting to do, right down to the variables (with or without land deal money; multi-family or single-family).

She also gave us some advice on renovating and staging. Most of it was in line with the stager's and contractor's advice and what we were thinking anyway; as with anything, she differed on some points. We're taking some of her advice and ignoring some, we think.

It's been good though to talk to three people from three different sides of the process and hear that their advice has much in common, and matches much of our instincts. And I feel good about the things they've steered us away from, since most of the advice will actually save us money. (For instance, our realtor checked out our oven and said it didn't need replacing if we gave it a good clean.)

She did strongly suggest that we paint all the oak in the condo (cabinets, baseboards, built-in). It will take time but not much more money, so I think we're going to follow her advice on that. All of the places we've seen so far have them painted, so I think it's what's going in our area right now. That's something we can chip away at a little at a time, so we'll probably go for it.

I was going to paint samples on the walls this weekend, but AA (the 4-year-old) wants to help, so I think I'll wait and try to do it with her, little by little. It might drive the younger one nuts to not get to help, but I'll just try to get someone to take her for a walk or something to distract her.

The realtor did confirm that we should fix the window that's started collecting condensation between the two layers. It should only be a couple hundred dollars and, from what I remember of hiring someone to replace a living room window, is a pretty fast job.

So those are the things we'll be working on this week: putting up paint samples on the walls, decluttering and adding to the garage sale pile, and setting up an appointment to have the window replaced. If we feel ambitious, we could start looking for new light fixtures and lamps. We'll see if we get around to that. If the contractor gets back to us with a quote, we might put the kitchen renovation in motion, though who knows when it will be scheduled to start.

Things are moving ... slowly but surely!

I've pretty much gone on a spending diet for the past month and a half, after the spending spree that was March (aka birthday) month, and upon the prospect of the land deal kicking our new-home dreams into high gear. Ever since the prospect of that money was dangled in front of me, I've felt more determined to be able to achieve what I would with the money, whether or not I get it.

So not only has my family cut travel and charity out of our budget, but once I'd made up for my overspending of my personal money in March, I continued to minimize my discretionary purchases. I put in for wine every third week for the family, and I've accepted the occasional lunch or dinner invitation out. But other things I want, such as new clothes, more makeup, date nights, have just been put indefinitely on hold. I figure if I'm very good with my money for the next few months, I may be able to fund our hosting of NT's mom and sister in August without having to dip into funds that would otherwise go toward home savings.

Maybe it's the spending diet I'm on, or maybe it's just speculating about what will be next for our family once we're settled in our long-term home. But I've realized over the past month or so -- I'm still a spender deep down.

Not spending for spending's sake; but there are many things I think about and want to purchase, and would do so if I didn't feel like there were more pressing financial matters.

So at present, my view of the future (at least my ideal, though I know there are lots of variables not under my control) would be to buy the home and have enough in the budget to:
- increase retirement contributions (still need to figure out what we should be contributing but it's more than we do now)
- steadily rebuild the EF and medical fund
- pay off the remaining student loan debt at least a bit faster than the minimum
- pay the new mortgage at a pace so it would at least be paid off by the time I'm 65 (which would be 24 years from right now), whether that means a 15-year mortgage or just making extra payments every month

Those are my main priorities, and I would want to address all of them first. But if we had enough income where all of those were being addressed to a level I felt comfortable with, I know what I'd want to do with the remaining money: Spend it.

I've got such a long list, and I know AS and NT have held back on many of their own wants for a long time (there's only so much you can do with $80 apiece per week, even though it sounds like a lot). My wants that have not been fully satisfied for a while, in no particular order:
- Home decor/home improvement
- Wardrobe (clothes, shoes, accessories) and makeup
- Travel
- Eating out
- Good quality wine
- Gourmet cooking ingredients
- Larger-scale philanthropy
- Going to shows (movies, standup, plays)
- Vacation home (pie in the sky and not very high priority)

Things that are not on my wants list (or very low on it):
- Vehicles (car, scooter, motorcycle, RV, etc.)
- Tech stuff (as long as I have something functional and nice in each category; TV, computer, phone, etc.)

It's hard to think of things I DON'T want, I guess because I don't dwell on them! Let's see, guns, country club memberships, horses/riding, plastic surgery ... I'm sure there are other luxuries that are so far off my radar that I couldn't even come up with them after sitting here for 10 minutes staring off into space!

So I guess what I'm saying is, I haven't really changed the core of me that likes certain things that cost money, and I've even added things to the wants list that weren't there before I started our debt journey. But I never again want to be the kind of spender that leaves my future self in the lurch. I've experienced picking up the pieces after myself for the past 7 years, and it's a lesson learned that I'll never ever forget.

The other $186 (which I did as a separate transfer to safeguard against the chance of overdrawing before our paychecks hit) showed up in the savings account.

I'm still not updating my sidebar until I'm sure my entire sidebar won't disappear, but that takes us to $39,879.15.

$13,411 is earmarked for US renovations, $20,014 for UK renovations. That means we've saved up about $6454 for downpayment/closing/moving costs. Not much, but it's a start!

We've spent $89 so far on US renovations (on the trade show where we met our contractor, and on paint samples and brushes).

We need $28,796 more to get a $29,750 down payment (7% on $425K home) plus closing costs of $4,500 and moving costs of $1,000. (All speculative amounts, of course, just to give us something to work toward.)

Looking ahead the next couple weeks, not too much is scheduled to happen in our renovate/save/move world. Our friend is eager to start scoping out duplexes; not that we're ready to make an offer, but to see if it's even feasible. So we moved our realtor meeting to this Sunday and are going to ask if she can schedule some showings for the following weekend.

Our contractor-prospect hasn't gotten back to us with quotes yet; I imagine if he doesn't get in touch by this Wednesday, we'll nudge him to see when we can expect them.

No word on the WV land deal; it's now 16 days into the "30 to 90 days" the gas guy said might be needed for attorney to certify the title. That's assuming the last person on the right-of-way path has signed and is getting his title certified as well; haven't heard anything more about that guy, so it could potentially be longer if he hasn't signed yet. (And of course it could all fall through if he decides not to sign, but the gas guy seemed to think it would be signed soon.)

AS has hemmed the curtains and they look great, so that's the first thing off our renovation/staging list! Small step but feels good to have something done.

Well, I think I'll wait to update my sidebar info until this weird problem gets solved!

The transfer to savings I did yesterday showed up in the account. I needn't have worried about overdrawing my checking; it hasn't even been taken out of checking yet and it's already in savings! That's $2500 straight to the renovate & move fund.

Also, when we bought a number of paint samples and brushes on Tuesday ($55.93), I was able to cashflow with some money I realized didn't need to be sitting in checking, so that goes toward the $13,500 budgeted for renovations without being actually taken out of the money we've saved so far.

This takes our savings to almost $40,000 and reduces what we still need to save (in the event the land deal doesn't go through) to less than $30,000.

Messaged with my friend we're considering sharing a duplex with last night, and we agreed that we need to just start looking at some to see if that's even feasible. (The main reason my family wants to move is because we want a lot more space -- at least three more rooms' worth -- so if we can't get that in a duplex, that option is going to have to come off the table.)

So I moved the meeting with our realtor up to this Sunday, and I'm going to talk to her about getting a showing of three duplexes that are clustered together in a nearby neighborhood. They have varying amounts of space and levels of disrepair (and the prices vary by more than $100K), so we feel like this would give us a good idea of whether it's likely that we could find a duplex where one of the units could satisfy my family.

We're just $70 away from earning the Discover reward and about $1400 from earning the Southwest Visa one. I said it out loud last night and I'm writing it down here in an attempt to follow through: After these two rewards are earned, I'm going to stop doing the credit card churn until after we're settled in a new home. I don't want our credit report to look any crazier than it already does. Our scores are all in the very high 700s, so hopefully it won't harm our attempt to qualify for a mortgage, but I don't want to push our luck any more than we have!

So once these two cards are spent up and rewards received, we cancel them. The cards we keep, I'm going to add all of us to, so we can all use them for the intended purposes. These are the cards we intend to keep:
Chase Freedom (Just until we get our mortgage, since this is the longest-open card)
American Express (for 6% grocery rewards)
Target RedCard (for 5% Target rewards)
Amazon.com card (for 5% Amazon rewards)
USBank Visa (for 2-5% rewards in various other categories)

After we close on a house, I'll cancel the Chase Freedom and we'll just have 4 permanent cards with all 3 of us on every account.

I have been trying to organize my thoughts for a post on my other blog, ordinarysavers.com, but I feel like my own finances (at least the way I think about them) have been in such flux for the past few months, I'm not really sure how to write about money right now. But I think I'm starting to conceptualize a post about how to let go of priorities temporarily but try to do it responsibly.

I've been so excited for tomorrow's paychecks, because I'll be able to transfer $2686 to savings. It's probably the biggest single transfer projected for the next few months, so I was really looking forward to seeing the savings balance go up so much!

We nearly had enough in checking to do the transfer *before* payday; we were only a few hundred short. Then yesterday, NT and I got our federal refund, and we were only about $180 short. This morning, we got a state refund for a political contribution that MN reimburses for, so we were only about $80 short.

I know that if I set up a deposit today, it won't hit until tomorrow, when paychecks should have hit. But some part of me was paranoid that the savings withdraw would hit before any of the paychecks and I'd incur a fee. That would make me crazy. So I compromised: I set up a $2500 transfer into savings. That way if it hits slightly before paychecks, I won't overdraw. Then I can set up a $186 transfer tomorrow morning to make up the rest.

In other news, we went and got several paint samples to start trying out on our walls, and priced out items we need at Home Depot. Still waiting for the quotes from the contractor before we decide what we're going to buy vs. letting him provide, but it was nice to get an idea of what things would cost us.

We also finalized a meeting with our real estate agent near the end of the month. She's going to come over and get us so she can also take a look at our place and hear what we're planning to do to stage it for sale.

We got a postcard from her that she just sold 2 units that were listed for less than a week! I couldn't find one of them on Zillow so it must have JUST closed, but the other one went for about $155K. We owe $153K on our place and were thinking it would sell for $145K if we were lucky. Looks like our condos are finally catching up to the market, and our equity finally catching up to what we owe! We pay down about $500 per month, so I feel like there's a good chance we could break even, even if we sell this year. Very exciting! I had not dared to dream it.

Our home goals for this week/weekend: Take "before" shots of the whole house. Put paint samples up on all the walls. Hem/cut curtains to see if they'll be OK to keep for staging if they're fixed. Go through our stuff and add as much to the garage sale pile as humanly possible.

Although we haven't made any concrete progress, we've progressed in the planning stages.

We met with a contractor last week. He walked through the bathroom and kitchen and talked over our plans, gave his opinion of what fixes would be most important. He understands that saving money is one of our biggest priorities. He'll send us some quotes in a week or two and we'll see if he's affordable. (He's also open to us sourcing some of the items/doing some of the work, so we could always end up using him for just part of the job.)

He made some suggestions about our plan that we agreed with, so we've made the following changes to it:
- We probably won't renovate the bathroom until we move out. He said he can do it in a little over 2 weeks if we're out of the house. We also don't want to be living here without a functioning bathroom if we don't have to.
- We won't get a microwave to mount over the stove. He said the trend is moving back toward countertop, so we just won't include a microwave in our staged final product. He also said our current oven hood will be fine with just a cleaning.
- We'll get a new undermount sink for the kitchen. He said these are big selling points because not as much dirt gets trapped (it's true, so much gunk gets trapped around the lip of our sink).
- We may not get new stainless steel appliances for the kitchen. A lot of his example photos didn't have them. In that case I think we'd only need to replace the stove and maybe get the dishwasher cleaned/serviced. The fridge will be fine with a cleaning that we can do ourselves. The fridge was the most expensive appliance by far on our price list, so that would be a big savings.
- We may replace the bathroom floor instead of trying to save it. He says it would be an inexpensive upgrade since the square footage of our bathroom's floor is so small.
- We won't replace the vinyl on the living room built-in. He said it was in great shape and probably no one would be bothered by it (we think it's ugly because it's black and nothing else is except the window frames, but to tell the truth I didn't really notice it when we bought the place).

Everything else we discussed he was right on board with. I look forward to getting his quotes. We've also asked a friend with an Angie's List membership to search for reviews of his work, because he has little to no web presence. But it's the second time we've met him, and we get a REALLY good feeling about him. Not flashy or aggressive, not a hard-sell guy, but definitely has opinions and experience.

So our May calendar no longer has bathroom renovation on it, though we may still get started on the kitchen once we hear back from the contractor. It would be easier to deal with an out-of-commission kitchen than a bathroom.

Also still on the May calendar is to try and fix the balcony and living room curtains (AS's job) and to start painting. AS and I found a palette of paint colors we think would be good, so we'll probably get some samples soon and start trying them out. Painting may run into June too. The other big May thing is to put as many of our belongings as possible in our friend's garage sale at the end of the month.

We're still trying to nail down a date to meet with our realtor. My friend is still saying we might not need a buying realtor, but we're leaning toward it. We'll definitely use our realtor to sell, and maybe to buy. We'll probably meet with her near the end of May.

No updates on the WV land deal, so we're still saving like mad and assuming we won't be able to buy until early next year. We shall see, though. A couple of promising homes cheaper than our estimate have popped up. Also some more expensive than our estimate. It will depend on a lot of factors.

Right now we only have enough money saved for the US reno and UK reno plus an additional $3600, which isn't enough for a down payment on ANY house, no matter how cheap. By the end of July we should have about $10K, but that's still not enough to put a down payment on anything. We might have more like $15K-$20K by October, which is getting closer to at least a small down payment, depending on home prices.

I keep forgetting to blog about this, maybe because it's so nebulous -- but at the same time it's huge!

My early records of my family's debt journey are a bit spotty, as I was still figuring things out. As a result, I have an "official" starting point, but also some older records of some debts where if I extrapolate other bits of more current information, I can kind of come up with a snapshot of the how much debt we paid since earlier than that. (Note that it's not quite accurate because I folded in "estimated future debt" of a trip to NT's sister's wedding and his college education, and in some cases we paid for those things before we took out actual debt for them.)

So as you can see, it's not exactly the most concrete record. But stil! For the purpose of tracking something, I add to those numbers every month after I've wrapped up my monthly debt goal.

So once I added in April's debt repayment, I estimate our total debt paid since July 2007 to be:
$198,989

BUT: Based on other, older notes I found, I think the total payoff since May 2007 has been:
$200,659

Over two hundred grand! Crazy!

Finally, I made a list of everything we'd need to buy/rent/find/borrow in order to implement all of our plans. I organized those by month too so we'd know when we needed what:

May
paint for whole condo
kitchen flooring
oven
dishwasher
fridge
new tubes to fix sink?
overmount microwave
handles for kitchen cabinets
tools/products to fix drawers & cabinet doors
vinyl for cabinet shelves & drawers
light fixture for kitchen
countertops for kitchen
grout for bathroom floor
tile for shower
toilet
vanity/sink
shower/bath fixtures
light fixture
bathroom mirror?
towel racks
new rods/curtains for balcony & living room?

June
light fixture for kids' room
light fixture for dining room
light fixture for bedroom
boxes for packing up books etc.
entryway door handles


July
bedroom closet doors
balcony closet door
laminate for living room built-in

When we start to move
Dummy linens/products for linen closet & bathroom
Bedroom dresser
Bedroom night table
Bed for bedroom
Art for bedroom, bathroom, living room, hallway?
Floor lamp for bedroom
Countertop lamp for living room
Plants for bedroom, bathroom, living room (big); flowers for dining room table
Curtain for kids' room
Rug for kids' room?, circle rug for living-room butterfly chair
New mirror for hallway?
Dummy dishes for kitchen & dining-room place settings
Runner for dining room table
Paint for balcony floor?
Bigger TV for mounting?
Couch for living room (or white sofa cover=$50)
Something to go under TV/art in living room?
Coffee table or side table for living room

Once we finished the walk-through, we decided what we could start working on in the next three months, and what would wait until we had a firm idea of when we'd move out:

Action Plan

May
Buy paint & start painting (take down bedroom shelves)
Start renovating bathroom & kitchen (see walk-through notes) -- look for new flooring at Henn. store
Hem/separate curtains
Declutter; put stuff in closet for garage sale

June
Finish renovating bathroom & kitchen
Declutter more
Start boxing things (books, etc.) and storing under bed/in hall closet
Put in new light fixtures: kids' room, bedroom, dining room
Get matching door handles for entryway

July
Install new bedroom closet doors
Install new balcony door
Replace laminate countertop for living room built-in
Fix bedroom cable connection
Replace window? (ask Kristen if will pass inspection)
Clean inside entryway light fixtures

Things to do when we start to move
Fix hardwood flooring everywhere
Ditch entryway chair, rug, stuff on/in cabinet, reduce DVD collection; new carpet/vinyl for closets
Keep entryway bookcase, cabinet, closets
Get dummy linens, products
Clean but keep bedroom window blinds, inside closet shelves, mirror
Ditch bedroom chairs, dressers, desk, bookcase, lights, art
Get dresser, night table, bed?, art, floor lamp, plant?
Get dummy bathroom linens/art/plant?
Ditch everything in kids' room(including light fixture)
New kids' room curtains, rug?
Move desk & chair, file cabinet?, bookcase or magicker or record cabinet to kids' room
Ditch record cabinets & mirror in hallway
Get new hallway mirror? or art? or keep plain?
Get dummy kitchen dishes; see what we can save:
Bowls, plates, cake stand, KitchenAid, fruit bowl
Ditch dining room magicker (could use elsewhere), sewing cabinet
Keep dining room mirror, table (turn 90 degrees), chairs (refinish?)
Get dummy dining room table runner, place settings, flowers
Wash balcony floor, maybe repaint
Ditch herb garden box, Xmas lights
Put out balcony table & chairs
Empty balcony closet; clean and save shelves
Get new mounted TV? or no TV for living room?
Keep living room white lamp & butterfly chair, maybe bike pic, fox pic; ditch everything else
Get new/rent for living room: countertop lamp, couch, something under TV?, circle rug for chair
Get new plant in corner of living room to hide cables; small coffee table or side table?

OK, so here's the first document. This was the result of our walk-through; it's all the ideas we have about what needs to be done.

Whole Condo:
Fix hardwood flooring
Repaint

Entryway:
Ditch chair, rug, stuff on/in cabinet, reduce DVD collection
Keep bookcase, cabinet, closets; get new carpet/vinyl for closets
Make door handles match
Get dummy linens, products
Clean inside light fixtures

Bedroom:
Clean but keep window blinds, inside closet shelves, mirror
Replace light fixture
Take down wall shelves
Ditch closet blinds and get doors
Ditch chairs, dressers, desk, bookcase, lights, art
Get dresser, night table, bed?, art, floor lamp, plant?
Fix cable connection

Bathroom:
Save floor? replace grout etc.
Ditch wall tile, toilet, vanity/sink, art, lights, shower fixtures, towel racks
New tile (tub only?), vanity/sink, lights, toilet, shower fixtures, towel racks
See if can refinish and save bathtub
Get dummy linens/products/art/plant?
Replace mirror or keep?

Girls' room:
Replace window? (ask realtor if will pass inspection)
Ditch everything (including light fixture); make into "office"
New light fixture
New curtains, rug?
Move desk & chair, file cabinet?, bookcase or magicker or record cabinet into room

Hallway:
Ditch record cabinets & mirror
Get new mirror? or art? or keep plain?

Kitchen:
Ditch lighting fixture, countertops (incl island), floor
See if can save/repair all cabinets, fix squeaky drawers, add handles to doors
New lighting fixtures, countertops, floors
Replace appliance w/higher-end/stainless steel?
Ditch oven hood, get mounted microwave?
Get dummy dishes; see what we can save:
Bowls, plates, cake stand, KitchenAid, fruit bowl

Dining room:
Ditch magicker (could use elsewhere), sewing cabinet
Keep mirror, table (turn 90 degrees), chairs (refinish?)
Replace light fixture (3-prong oblong to fix centering)
Get dummy runner, place settings, flowers

Balcony door/balcony:
Even up curtain hems, make into two? If not replace rod & curtains to fix bowing
Wash balcony floor, maybe repaint
Get new balcony closet door
Ditch herb garden box, Xmas lights
Put out table & chairs
Empty closet; clean and save shelves

Living room:
Get new mounted TV? or no TV
Keep white lamp & butterfly chair, maybe bike pic, fox pic; ditch everything else
Get new/rent: countertop lamp, couch, something under TV?, circle rug for chair
Get new plant in corner to hide cables; small coffee table or side table?
Replace laminate top on built-in
Hem curtains (or replace if replacing balcony rod/curtains)

Eventful weekend! Saturday was wall-to-wall chores and events for various members of the family; swim lessons for both girls, an alumni event for me, a bday party for one of the girls' daycare friends, and grocery shopping. NT actually had two events for a group he volunteers with, but he bowed out of both of those because it was starting to look physically impossible; he also needed to get a couple hours of work done on his final paper!

The alumni event was interesting: The speaker had moved to MN from NYC about a year ago, and she'd been a home stager for people looking to sell. She'd fallen into the profession by accident; her real estate agent told her the reason her place had sold so quickly was how she staged it, and would she mind if he gave her number to some other clients? It just sort of snowballed from there. Very cool story about taking advantage of random circumstances and a skill she didn't even know was marketable!

She shared many of her tips with us, and encouraged everyone in the room to make a plan for what they were going to get done in the month of May. AS and I came home totally inspired. So this morning, I immediately put her tips into action. I got a notepad and pen and dragged everyone out the door so we could step in and see what the first impression was and how we could improve it. Then we walked into and through each room, noting the first impression, and pointing out all the things that would need to be fixed, removed or replaced in order to stage the home.

After that, we made an "action plan" for the month. I did one better and made action plans for June and July as well! I also made a list of the things we'd do once we were sure we're moving. (We've pretty much decided we need to move before we can fully make the home sellable; we have too much stuff that we don't want to get rid of but the current home has nowhere to put it out of sight, and plus we have the cat and two small kids constantly dirtying the place up.)

From there I even made a "shopping list" divided by month, based on what we hoped to achieve each month and what we'd need in order to achieve that. AS went on Home Depot's and IKEA's websites and we started roughing out estimates of how much everything would cost.

One thing we learned from the stager was that we may need to bring in different furniture if ours isn't ideal (it isn't, see above about kids and cat!), and that it was even a good idea to put in new towels, linens and dishes, so that was an added expense we hadn't factored in. But after pricing things out a bit, we have hopes we can spruce up the kitchen for $1000-$1500 less than we were planning to spend, so hopefully we can still renovate and stage for the same amount of money as we have budgeted.

I'll share my lists, in case anyone is interested. But I'm going to paste them into separate entries so this one doesn't get excruciatingly long!

Darn, the interest was applied slightly later than our payment on our UK mortgages, so for a bit I thought we weren't getting charged interest. Ah well. Anyway, all our mortgages hit:

US: $477 to principal
UK1: $284
UK2: $60
UK3: $63

So all told, $790 down, $110 to go on the May repayment goal.

More promising emails about the possible land deal make me think the windfall might come in the next four months! Just in case, we're going to try and accelerate our US renovation plans. We have enough in savings to complete it, so we might as well!

The declutter challenge from last month kind of fizzled halfway through (much like my March workout challenge; whoops!). However, we're in on a family garage sale at the end of May, so that will mean a big declutterfest and a half-empty front hall closet. Yay!

Paychecks hit today, so I was able to send $247.81 to savings. We're at $36,815 with $31,135 still needed.

For May, same ol' boring goal: at least $900 to debt. Even though we won't be sending any extra to debt for a while, I'm still going to track it in terms of monthly goals, just for continuity. I've been doing it since this blog started and couldn't imagine not doing so!

It's been such a mentally draining couple of weeks that I didn't remember to check AS's student loan until I realized the payment had posted! $133 went to principal, taking April debt repayment to $921. That surpasses the $900 goal.

It also takes our student loan debt (when we round off the cents) to $11,000 even!

Now that we've decided to put a laser focus on saving for a home, I've had to put my extra debt repayment on hold. So $133 per month is all we're going to see the student loans go down for a while. My spreadsheet says it would take 6.89 years to pay it off at that rate, so let's hope I'm able to start putting extra money to it again before that!

On that front, I decided to close a checking account and savings account that were earning little to no interest. Their only purpose was to keep EF funds separate from house savings, but I can do that on a spreadsheet and have everything in one account at least earning .9%. Plus, if we have to temporarily deplete the EF and medical fund, I'm willing to do that to get to our goal faster. So for the time being, I'm thinking of all our cash savings as one lump sum. Kind of exciting to see it all together: $21,022.75! And that's not counting our UK savings (which will definitely be temporarily depleted to pay for renovations over there).

We also agreed to halt travel and charitable spending for the next 10 months or so in order to save up enough for a down payment. We think that, supposing the windfall doesn't come, we'll have enough for renovations plus down payment by March of next year. That's assuming (as always) no unexpected windfalls OR curveballs. So could be sooner or later than that.

The declutter challenge has gone pffft! As sometimes happens with these things, I plan a challenge and then get hit by some unexpected things that take my attention away from it. That's OK; challenges are good for motivating me when there's nothing going on, but if something more urgent or important comes along, I'll focus on that instead. The things that have come up:
- Lots of extra work that sometimes leads to OT at home
- Our decision to stay in the US
- Seeming movement on the land deal (which still hasn't led to anything, but did cause a flurry of house-hunting when it looked like it was going through)
- A round of spring colds that have kept our household energy at half-mast

Anyway, time to revamp the sidebar goals once again!

Wow. Work has just been insane lately. If this writing project goes well, it could mean big things for me. Right now, all it means is trying to cram another nearly full-time job into my already nearly full-time job. Needless to say, not much time for blogging! But I'm planning on working a bit some night or this weekend in return for taking this mental break, because my brain is overtired and not working at its peak capacity. Will be better if I take a break from work thinking.

We've barely had any concentrated grownup time in my house this week, at least when all of us were present, with no kids around, not doing other stuff. But we had about a 10-minute hurried discussion yesterday about the house-buying plan, and came to a fairly straightforward conclusion: If we don't get the land deal money, we'll probably start looking for a new house in about a year. Meanwhile, we'll work on renovating both the US condo and UK flat with the money we've got now. We just decided we can't put all our money into a down payment right now, because then we'd be carrying two mortgages, we'd have no cushion to speak of, and we wouldn't be able to complete the US reno anytime soon because much of our surplus budget would be just going to carry the two mortgages, and if we couldn't do the reno, odds are we wouldn't be able to sell (at least not at the price we need to break even on our mortgage).

If we do get that big windfall, should pretty much be able to start all three things simultaneously: flat reno, condo reno and house-hunting.

So that makes it pretty easy. I do need to look at the annual budget to see if we'll have to make any cuts to get to the savings we need within a year without the land deal, but other than that it's pretty cut-and-dried. We have a contractor coming tonight to check out our bathroom and we'll see if we can get any help within our tight budget ($5K for everything). Doesn't hurt to ask someone!

I still can't tell if the land deal will go through. My dad emailed us (first time he's weighed in, I think he's trying to stay out of it but some parts of it only he can handle since he owns the land) to say he'd sent back some notarized docs to the gas company and would mail each of us kids a copy. I couldn't resist and emailed back to see if he knew whether it was a done deal or just an option that the gas co. might or might not follow through on, but I haven't heard back from him.

Meanwhile, I've been chatting and texting and Facebooking with one of my two friends who would consider moving in with us if we got a multifamily. They're perfectly serious about it as long as the second space meets some basic needs and is in a neighborhood they like. He also said they're fine in their current rental and willing to wait a year to see if anything pans out. He's going to keep an eye on multifamilies for sale to see how quickly they go and what they actually sell for.

Meanwhile, I'm going to bone up on mortgage brokers, credit unions, real estate agents, online mortgage lenders, and all the other great ideas and tips you guys gave me on my last post. Thank you!!

I think it would be great, kind of like having extended family nearby. Also wouldn't hurt to have help with the mortgage! But I'll only do it if we can find a multifamily where our part of it satisfies our needs and makes us excited to move in.

Not too much other news. In the declutter arena, I've gotten the oldest kid to set aside a few more toys for donate/garage sale. I also cleared out a hundred or so emails from my work inbox but still don't have it down where I want it to be.

I was able to view the claims for SL's ER visit and talked to the insurance company for help interpreting it. I was excited to learn we'll owe less than $300 for the whole shebang! There have been 4 claims so I think that should be all.

NT's job is actually looking good right now! His co-worker leaving seems to have woken them up, and they hired not only someone to replace him, but also someone for a new position that's been needed for years. So it looks like NT might be happier there and be able to stay longer and look for other jobs at his leisure.

AS's job will be winding down over the next several months or so. We brainstormed possible new professions for her a bit this morning, but it's still really preliminary. Her job needs her really badly until they fill other positions and train people up.

That's about all the news I can think of right now!

Jeez, with serious talk of buying suddenly afoot, I'm realizing how little I know about the process.

- What's the best way to shop for a mortgage, and how do you tell which is best for you?
- Do you get preapproved only after you choose a lender? Is there any obligation to preapproval?
- How hard is it to shop around and make offers without a real estate agent?
- My credit score is high, but are all the opened/closed credit cards going to raise red flags and/or eyebrows when lenders check my credit history?

I'm remembering the first and only time I shopped for a home. Went into it blind, with money borrowed from my dad and my real estate agent basically just telling me what to do. A few times, unexpected expenses cropped up, like earnest money and closing costs. Also didn't know about property tax escrow beforehand. I didn't choose my lender; my real estate agent just shuttled me to someone who got me my mortgage and my home equity loan (which I took out immediately upon buying, with the intention of paying my dad off, even though I didn't finish paying him off until years later).

I did an online prequalify with my main bank today, just to see what that said. But it was instantaneous so I doubt it took into account my credit history. And it didn't ask how much cash I have for a down payment, which I assume would affect how much I could borrow.

At least this time I know a few things, and I know of the existence of things even if I don't know much about them. But it's clear I need to educate myself a lot more, fast!

Sorry for the scattered entry; basically just thinking aloud. Now you know how scattered and messy it is inside my brain.

This weekend I didn't get much decluttering done. Tried without success to get the old carseat picked up by a Freecycler (hopefully my backup person will come today, but she sounds like a bit of a flake too). Got rid of an old box and some other recycling. That's about it. Most of the time I forgot about the challenge entirely, with everything else I've got going on!

First off, we ran our 5k on Saturday! I didn't exactly set the world on fire with my time, but I'm just proud of myself because I didn't take a walking break the whole way! (NT and AS did MUCH better on time.) We all had a good time and agreed we'd like to do more of them in the future.

Sunday of course was Easter, so we hid eggs and put out baskets of treats for the girls to find. What with grandparents and daycare, we had so much stuff that the only things I bought were two $1.99 baskets at CVS. They had a great time, and we had our friends (the girls' godfathers) over in the afternoon just to hang out and catch up.

The past week or so, we've been getting more and more amped to start shopping for a new home. At first we were thinking we'd definitely fix up the condo and sell it before we moved, but now we're starting to seriously consider buying and moving before we sell. So everything is up in the air right now. Many things to consider:

- Deciding if it's a good idea to move before we sell. I spoke to a friend Friday who did it, and he said he and his wife just couldn't contemplate trying to stage the home and keep it neat (they have 3 young kids ranging from newborn to kindergartner). He said it wasn't that hard to do, and that you don't need that much of a down payment (they did about 7%) despite rumors that you need 20%-30% these days. He said the biggest consideration was you have to prove you have enough money in the bank to cover both mortgages.

- Making sure we have enough money in the budget to pay two mortgages for a while. We would, if we cut back on a few things, but it would mean our salaries need to stay stable for a while. That would mean NT can't take a lower-paying job unless AS gets a higher-paying job. (Oh! That's the other thing I haven't talked about. AS gave a preliminary sort of notice to her job; she's not leaving anytime soon, but she told them she needs to start transitioning out of her current role over the next few months or so.)

- Do we pull the trigger sooner even if we don't get the land-deal windfall? At first we thought no, but it is actually possible. I don't think of us having any money in savings, really, because all our money is earmarked and bucketed out for various uses. But when I added up everything we have in US checking and savings, we actually have over $21,000! It's all earmarked (EF, vacation fund, medical fund, extra student loan payments, etc.) but none of it is specifically needed at this time. And more is coming in May. So that's kind of interesting.

- We've mostly been thinking we want a single-family home, though I've had this vague dream for a while that if we got a duplex, one of our friends might move into the other unit and help us out with the mortgage. She's a really good friend and has a small apartment; would love something bigger but wants to keep her costs down and not commit to a mortgage.

She has a small dog and we have a cat and two kids; the potential for helping each other out with pet and child care, plus keeping each other's living expenses down, is really enticing! So when our other friends (a married [soon-to-be-legally] male couple), were over Sunday, I told them of this dream of mine. They immediately jumped on it, saying THEY would actually be open to an arrangement like that! They also have a dog, and as I mentioned are the kids' godfathers, and don't want to have a mortgage again (walked away from their home during the housing crisis), so the same arrangement could work with them!

We're really excited at the prospect. I'm even going to an open house tomorrow with one of them to check out a tempting prospect in our neighborhood; it is single-family but really big, so I want to see if it has potential to turn multi-family.

This concept of putting all my other money goals on hold in order to pursue house-ownership early feels very daring and strange to me. I'm still thinking about it. I wouldn't do it unless I felt confident we could pull it off financially without sacrificing too many of our other short-term (and NONE of our long-term) goals. So we'll see. I'll be crunching lots of numbers over the next few days/weeks/months, trying to see what this new scenario might look like.

I haven't done much these past two days. Last night I took two small bags of clothes to a donation box, and today I listed our carseat on Freecycle. I thought it expired in early 2015, but it actually expires January 2016, so that's nice; if someone wants it they'll get a lot of use out of it before they have to get rid of it.

I'm feeling pretty sleepy tonight so probably won't get anything else done.

Work has been crazy, and my email inbox is already back up to 150 after I cleared it down to less than five a couple weeks ago. But my writing assignment seems to be going well, so I'm excited about that. I got my raise in my 4/15 paycheck; $30 per paycheck or $60 per month. Not too bad! If I get into writing full-time at work I can hopefully see a more substantial raise than that, though. Not that it will probably happen for a long time, if it happens at all.

Last night AS and I talked to some new acquaintances about my dedication to personal finance. As always I offered to share any tips I'd picked up along the way and invited them to my Ordinary Savers group and blog (which I haven't updated in several months -- gulp!). The woman of the couple mentioned that she had a lot of student loan debt and would like to talk about it sometime. She did say she was paying off $1000 per month, so that's promising!

NT mailed off our taxes yesterday as well as the W-9 for the land deal. I emailed the guy whose business card was clipped to the W-9 asking him what amount I was getting and when I could expect it, but I didn't hear anything. I don't think he cares now that he's got the right of way. I'm just one of four people in a very small (for the energy company) piece of a huge deal.

I've learned some of what's going on in WVa. right now by doing a bit of internet research. There's a big area called Marcellus Shale that's located under several states including NY and PA. The state with the most shale area is WVa; it looks to be under about 75%-90% of the state. And also, WVa is an energy state. They are practically owned by the companies. It's looking really bad for that formerly beautiful state, and I'm more determined than ever to donate a large sum of money to an activist group in the area. That's not to say I'm not still terribly grateful to my dad and excited to receive a large sum of money and possibly speed up our long-term goals, but I wish it weren't from this type of business.

I can put "results!" back in my title. I filed away that lingering pile of stuff. No photo because there's nothing to see!

Actually I noticed some bits of paper that had started littering various spaces already. But, much more manageable now that the main pile is done.

I was so busy at work today that I didn't get chance to go mail my taxes or the W-9 for the land deal. But I did make tax copies for my records right before I left work, and gave all the mailing for NT to do at his work tomorrow.

The reason I was so busy at work is I suddenly have a rather challenging, rather high-profile writing assignment. It's a bit stressful because my supervisor and others are kind of giving off signals that if this goes well, I could be on my way to a full-time writer job (which I believe is quite a bit better-paying than my current position). So of course I want to get it just right, but I'm also paying attention to how it makes me feel to make sure it's the kind of job I would want. So far I kind of like it; I think I'd like it more once I gained more confidence in my professional writing skills. We shall see.

NT is undergoing some interesting times at his job. They kept making and breaking promises to hire one more person to make work manageable. So he's been looking for a new job. Then his supervisor and friend found a job and is leaving at the end of this month. His upper management is freaking out and I know they want to keep NT. I also know they're stuck on this idea of not hiring an extra person. I think they'd give him a promotion and raise but try to hire only one person, instead of one to replace his supervisor and one to fill the gap they've had for a couple of years. And that is just not going to fly long-term. So I really hope they come to their senses and hire two people, OR I hope he finds another job, even if it's lower-paying. Things have slowed down to a normal pace for a little while, but when it ramps up at his work, there is no relief and it starts to affect our home life. I don't want to go through that again with no end in sight.

AS is also assessing her long-term career prospects now that we're not planning to move to the UK. So we'll see where all of this leads!

I can't really say "progress"; I didn't do much. But when you consider the weekend I had! Saturday morning I find out we're staying in the U.S. for sure. Today I receive the W-9 for what could be a $70K+ windfall. I've been very distracted!

The few things I did do this weekend:
- Moved some outgrown kid sneakers to the garage sale section of the closet.
- Got AS to sign her state tax form so I can take all our returns to work, make payments and mail them off.
- Shredded some duplicate/unnecessary tax paperwork.
- Uhh...

I think that may be it! Although, I think my decluttering of the past few days inspired NT, who organized some stuff in the kitchen, and added some things to the garage sale pile. And, even though AS is back now (woo hoo!), I still continued my new practice of laying out my clothing and packing my breakfast & lunch for work.

Ah well. It's been a great weekend of decisions and action. I did another practice 5k and feel OK about this Saturday's real 5k. We've been staying on the grocery budget and menu plan. I stayed steady on my weight. Did a TON of drooling over homes for sale online (OK, that wasn't exactly productive).

Some interesting job stuff is coming up for me and for NT, but it's getting late and I can't really organize my thoughts. I'm sure I'll get to talking about it eventually. Nothing concrete at this point anyway.

So I hadn't heard anything more about the land deal for about three weeks, and kind of figured they just wanted my dad's sign-off in case they were going to do the pipeline, but maybe hadn't gotten anywhere near that point yet. However, tonight I went to get a package that had been in the front office of my condo since about Thursday or Friday, and it was a W-9 form from the company, with a request to fill it out and a return envelope. No other info, just that.

Here we go? I don't have any knowledge of how these things work, but if they're having me fill one of these out, I would think a payment is imminent.

I'd kind of calmed down and accepted that the deal might not happen after all, so now my heart is pounding and mind racing all over again.

But even though it's terribly exciting (and nerve-wracking), it's still not cash in hand. So we'll see.

Today, we have a very different perspective for the foreseeable future.

The WV land deal is still uncertain.
Prospective career/income changes are still just pipe dreams.

BUT ...

An uncertainty much bigger than either of those has been settled: We're staying in the U.S.

AS's trip to London was first and foremost to represent her publishing house at a book fair. But we all acknowledged that it was also for her to network, suss out the British publishing industry, and think about the possibility of getting a job in it.

She came home with a very definite sense that a long-term future in the UK publishing world would not be good for her -- or us. It was mainly a lifestyle thing; most of the people she talked to had chosen publishing over having children. Or having a social life outside of publishing. Or (if they worked for a small press) having a decent income.

It also bothered her that the culture itself seemed to be everyone's obsession. She got into publishing because she loves books, loves editing, loves experimental fiction writing. All that seemed secondary to gossip, careers and faux glamour, with most of the people she met.

She doesn't want to pursue that path, and that was the only clear path we saw into the UK. We didn't have to discuss much after that -- NT had already prepared himself for that eventuality and is just ready to head in a concrete direction, and so am I. So we now have one path -- fixing up our condo for sale and saving up for a down payment on a house in Minneapolis.

There's a wistful feeling giving up the UK dream -- at least for the next 5-10 years. But there's a great deal of excitement having something definite to work toward.

I of course immediately rejiggered the numbers to focus just on moving within Minneapolis. And I'm figuring them with a 10% down payment, because we want to move as soon as possible but without having to sell the UK flat to raise funds.

These are my very rough estimates, which we'll use as our benchmarks unless or until we have more concrete numbers:

Upgrade US condo for sale: ($13,500 total)
- Kitchen $5,000
- Bathroom $5,000
- Floors $2,500
- Misc. (painting etc.) $1,000
Total UK flat reno $19,200
Down payment (10% on $425K home) $42,500
Closing costs $4,500
Moving $1,000
So that would mean we'd need $80,700. If we count every liquid asset (including the emergency fund), we have $32,874. That leaves $47,826 we'd need to raise. (Would probably take us over a year to raise that, depending on whether career and income changes happen, and which direction they took our take-home pay.)

Interestingly, my estimate of what we'd clear if the WV land deal goes through is $48,000. Which means if that went through tomorrow, we'd have enough money to start the ball rolling immediately!

Of course this assumes we wouldn't lose any money on the sale of the condo, but that's more likely if we wait a year. So even if we were to get that windfall sooner, we'd probably wait longer anyway. And, it would be nice to pull this off without draining every bit of our medical and emergency funds, so that's another incentive to wait and save up money.

Very exciting stuff to contemplate.

OK, made up for lost time a bit.

I tackled the bigger of the two front closets. Threw some stuff away, recycled, and organized. One of the time-consuming but satisfying chores was gathering all the scattered gift-wrapping and gift-bag detritus, recycling the damaged stuff:



... and organizing the usable (and reusable) stuff:



Here's one side of the closet before:



... and after:



Can't tell much difference? Well, 80% of the stuff there now is designated for the garage sale next month. The only things we're keeping are the strollers, the steamer/mops, and three articles of clothing. (All the hangers tied together are going to the sale.)

Here's the other side of the closet before:



... and after:



That one is hopefully noticeably better, but it's not the end of it. There's a carseat that's Freecycle material, a broken printer and hard drive that need to be recycled at a special facility, and an entire shelf of old painting supplies that will be pared down with NT's help at some point this month.

I moved some things to other closets where they made more sense, and I've got two bags of clothes for the donation box NT will pass on Tuesday night. And I need to take some recycling and free-table stuff downstairs. Might do that when I'm done with this post!

Today, work just got out of control, and I'm going to be tied up more than half the day tomorrow on a conference call, so I brought work home and used my "free" time to get caught up.

I did about 3 hours of work, which was good for getting my workload back on track, but bad for my April challenge since it sucked up most of my prime decluttering/organizing time (after the kids are in bed but before I am).

I've got to get some done tomorrow! What with three nights of taxes, one night of barely decluttering and now a complete fail night, I'm itching to do something concrete. I've got my eye on the front hall closets; may try to sort the garage sale stuff into one half of the big closet so we can see how much of this stuff will be gone come May. I think I'm also safe to add some of my least favorite sweaters to the pile; I'll keep a few to make sure I've got something to wear on cold snaps, but that's about it. I'm sick of 90% of my sweaters; they either don't fit well, don't flatter or are uncomfortable.

Where do I begin? What a day. This morning I was getting the girls ready, doing a pretty good job of staying on track, I thought. I set SL (the 2-year-old) up on the changing table. I stood her up to pull up her pants and then realized she was wearing short sleeves. So I turned around to pull a sweater out of the closet -- and heard a huge crash.

I turned around to see it as it was happening -- she had leaned against the wall and inadvertently pushed the changing table away from her (it's on wheels, though pretty sturdy and doesn't usually roll around), and as her legs slid out from under her she'd kind of scissored up and fallen behind the table and onto the floor.

She was freaked out, and crying, and I held her and examined her. But after 5 or so minutes of hugs, she calmed down and was talking and walking normally, and there were no visible injuries. So I took her to daycare.

I told the daycare lady about it and she chuckled, since SL was running happily around, but said she'd keep an eye on her.

Well, my cellphone was dead, but NT called me at work about 40 minutes later saying that the daycare lady had called him. SL had thrown up three times after I left.

He went and got her and took her to the children's emergency room (luckily a short walk from daycare) and she threw up several more times. Because that can be a sign of concussion, they did a CT scan. Luckily, the vomiting subsided and the CT scan came back with nothing, and she's been back to her normal self, if a little subdued (which I could chalk up to being worn out by the terror of being in the CT scanner; apparently she was so terrified she nearly passed out a couple times).

Needless to say, I was beside myself at work until I heard the results of the scan. When I started to relax and calm down, it felt like I'd just worked out for hours, I was so weak and sore.

We'd already planned a little extravagance: getting takeout at our favorite little Greek cafe. So I picked it up during work, using the rest of the grocery budget for it. I had a board meeting to attend at the condo representing my little cost-saving committee, but I begged off. Instead we took the food out to the nearby park and had a nice picnic with the girls, and let them run around and play.

When we got home it was already past their bedtime, but we let them have a snack (the Greek food was a bit new to them) and gave them a bath (necessary after all the puking and outdoor play).

Probably also needless to say, I was exhausted by the time I had time to myself. I asked NT what decluttering I could do that didn't require any effort, and he pointed out about ten balloons that had been sitting behind a chair for about a month, because AA didn't want us to pop them after her birthday playdate. So I pulled them out, popped them and threw away the scraps. And that was my decluttering for the day.

On the money side, it was a pretty fruitful day; I received the $500 in Amex gift cards for my referral bonus at work, and redeemed my Southwest Visa points for $500 in Amazon cards. Of course, I fully expect that to be offset by the ER bill from today's visit, so we'll call it a wash. I'm just tired and grateful to have my beautiful girls apparently well, and AS's UK trip over halfway done (she'll land near midnight on Friday).

Well, today I buckled down and prepared my and NT's state tax return. I couldn't get the fillable forms from the state site to work, so I printed and filled in with a pen, the old-fashioned way.

As I was pulling up the forms I knew I needed from looking at my rough drafts from February, I could not find one of the forms that added to my MN taxable income. I did some digging and realized that a law enacted in March had rendered it obsolete. Which meant nearly $900 less in taxable income!

It only shaved about $50 off the tax bill, but I'm really happy with that! It means we only owe about $750 between the three of us. That is really good news! Again, since I already had the money set aside, that's $50 I can put back into our surplus.

I separated out a pile of papers that could be discarded, but they should be shredded, and I didn't want to do that with the girls sleeping. I'll have NT shred them on his next day off.

We still have to sign, make copies and send them off, so I haven't removed the files. But I organized all the papers into the appropriate files so when we're done, they just need to be stuck into the filing cabinet. That will happen Monday, probably, because AS needs to sign her state return before I can mail it off. (She gets back from UK around midnight on Friday.)

So now I can turn my energy to the decluttering side of things again. Looking forward to it!

Last night I devoted my free time to taxes again. This time I tackled my and NT's federal return. I used the "free file fillable forms" tool, which lets you do them half manually (but with some help doing the math after you fill in your numbers).

I was checking my work against my scribbled notes from February. Everything was nearly identical -- until I got to the Lifetime Learning Credit. My old notes showed over $300 less of a credit than my new calculations. Weird! The only thing I can think of to explain it is that the form we got from the college says "corrected"; so maybe I was looking at preliminary numbers online and got the actual form later with bigger numbers. Or maybe I miscalculated what 20% of the tuition paid would be.

Either way, I'm going with my new number, since I can't figure out where the old number came from. That means instead of owing $291 to the IRS, we get a $75 refund! Hooray! That adds $366 to our surplus, since I already had the money set aside to pay that bill.

By the time I was done it was pretty late, and NT needed the computer to apply for jobs. So I'll tackle the state side another time (maybe tonight depending on how I fee). I don't think I'll be as lucky there -- I think my estimate of owing over $1000 will be correct. But, overall, we'll owe about $800 between us all when you factor in the refunds, which is better than the $1150 I thought we'd owe after refunds!

Once I finish the state portion of my and NT's taxes, I'll mail everything in and be done with that, and can get back to more tangible decluttering/organizing!

OK, I didn't make much visible progress in decluttering (in fact, my folders are temporarily more visible), but I made some progress in getting my life organized -- namely, taxes.

I couldn't remember where I'd left off in February, except that I'd e-filed AS's federal return for free and received the refund. The other three returns, which I knew we'd owe on, I'd set aside in varying degrees of completeness.

Turns out AS's taxes, I hadn't really done the state side. I'd jotted down the state taxes that TaxAct reckoned she'd owe, so I knew I could do them by hand for free and do an accuracy check based on whether my final number matched TaxAct's.

But staring at it, I knew it was at least a couple of hours of work. I went into her TaxAct profile to print the federal for reference -- and saw the enticement to have them printed and ready to file for only $14.99. Facing hours of work and knowing I'd still have my and NT's taxes ahead of me after that, I caved. I'm projecting a small surplus in my annual budget of about $200, so $14.99 doesn't seem that big a deal when I factor in how much time it'll save me. So in less than 20 minutes I had AS's taxes printed and ready to send in to MN. And I already saved up the money to pay what we owe, so I can send it off whenever I feel like it.

I also glanced through my and NT's taxes. It looks like I scribbled down all the numbers that will go in the main federal and state form, but didn't really "show my work." So that will entail completing the main forms for real plus all the supporting worksheets, double-checking my calculations while I'm at it, and printing them, writing checks and mailing them. I think one good weeknight or weekend afternoon of work will be enough for filling them out. I decided to save that for another day, as I was pretty exhausted already.

Oh, and this doesn't really fit into my monthly goal, but I got very organized preparing for tomorrow morning. AS is on a plane to the UK for 5 days as I write this, and so I'll be flying solo for three mornings in terms of getting the kids ready and getting them to daycare and me to work. (NT is taking two days off next week, so he'll be able to help me two of the mornings. He normally goes to work before anyone else wakes up.)

So tonight, in addition to laying out the girls' clothes for tomorrow (a good habit of AS's that I'm trying to keep going while she's gone), I also showered, laid out my own clothes, got breakfast and lunch together in a plastic bag which is in the fridge and ready to grab, put my makeup out in case I have time to apply it in the morning, made sure everything was in my purse and hung my purse by the front door, chose which coat I'll be wearing and put my hat and gloves in the pockets.

So tomorrow should be pretty straightforward: Get myself dressed and do basic grooming. Put makeup on if I've got time. Get the girls dressed and hair brushed. Set out the diapers for pickup. Get all three of us into coats and shoes. Grab my lunch from the fridge and my purse from the front hall.

I am feeling pretty together, which is good since we're down a parent. I tried out Car2Go, another carshare service in our area, to take AS to the airport. We signed up a while ago but hadn't tried it because their fleet is all Smartcars, which only seat two (we're a family of 5 and Hourcar's fleet of Honda Fits and Priuses accommodates us, just barely). But this was one of those rare instances where there were just two of us, so it was a good test case.

It was pretty slick. Unlike Hourcar, they don't have set locations; people can park them wherever unlimited free parking is available, and someone else can get it from there. You check their website or smartphone app to see if one is convenient to you when you're ready to go. There was one only a couple blocks away, so I went and got it.

It took an hour to get to and from the airport, and the cost was $17.50. Not bad considering taxis to the airport are at least $40 one way, and public transport would be over an hour one way! I would consider using this service in the future for sure, as a supplement to the Hourcar service. (In this case, the Hourcar cost would have been comparable, though the closest one is a longer walk away. But for one-way trips for just one or two people, where you can just leave the car and not pay for it while it's sitting there waiting to be returned to the spot, I could see it really saving money and hassle.)

So, feeling pretty good. I have hundreds of cars at my disposal, for a fraction of the annual cost (if I don't use them, my only fixed cost is $15 per month for Hourcar membership) and none of the hassle of maintenance, insurance or fillups!

I finally got out and exercised today, after taking 2 weeks off (the longest break I've taken since before Thanksgiving). NT mapped out a 5k route for me and I jogged as much as I could, walked for short periods when I couldn't take it any more, and completed the course in 38 minutes. I'm happy with that time, and I still have 2 weeks to train before the 5k! I'm so glad most of the snow is gone; it's much more pleasant running outside than on the treadmill. Bonus: I'd lost 2 lbs. over the past 3 weeks when I weighed in.

We made a bit of progress on the UK flat reno question. NT emailed the management company to see if there was any hope of a decent renovation for the amount we'll have saved up by July 1 (8100 pounds plus 20% VAT). If he says absolutely not, then we'll have to figure out a way to get the money over there, because it sounds like (and NT confirmed on a walkthrough last May) it's getting harder to rent because of its poor condition. (I'm fairly sure he'll say we need more money, because our contact there has indicated that a solid reno would run at least 10K plus VAT, and that he himself spent 15K plus VAT on one of the units he owns in the area.) The money we would need is about $3000 U.S. (for a basic 10K plus VAT reno).

One possible route is to ask the company if they'd mind taking the remaining money out of future rentals until it was paid off. They've done this in the past when emergency repairs or replacements were needed; just stopped sending us rent money until the bill was paid. But this is a larger project and they'd probably have to stretch that over 3 or 4 months, so I'm not sure. Even if we did that, it would mean we'd have to cover 3 or 4 months of mortgage payments, since we'll be draining the UK accounts completely to pay for this. But that would be $1200-$1600 US, so half of what we'd send otherwise.

If we get the money from my dad's land deal (which I've heard nothing about for the past two weeks), sending over $3000 wouldn't be that big a deal. But if not, it would be a bit of a wrench. Already this reno is going to drain the 2/3 of our EF that's housed in UK account. The remaining $3K would either have to come out of 1) the remaining 1/3 of our EF, taking it down to just $2K, 2) the money we've raised so far for our downpayment/moving fund, or 3) the money we've saved up for our bathroom reno. In any case it would set us back a ways on our other goals. (I mean, it would even if it came out of future UK earnings, since it would set back rebuilding the EF, but it wouldn't feel as tangible.)

Anyway, when NT emailed the management guy he got an out-of-office until mid-April, so that gives us some time to think about it regardless what his answer is. If I have time once the taxes are done, I think I'll run a couple of money scenarios, of how long it would take to reach our goals if:
- We get the land deal and do send the $3K to the UK
- We don't get the land deal and send the $3K
- Both above scenarios if our take-home decreases because of career stuff
- Both above scenarios if our take-home increases because of career stuff

I'd also like to reassess when it would look like we could move to a new home (both in UK an here) if we decreased down payment to 10% (I'd always planned for 20%-30%) but didn't sell the UK flat. (The idea of keeping it appeals to me more and more.)

Depending on how it all looks, we may need to be prepared to cut out some luxuries in the worst-case scenarios in order to still meet our goals (we now desperately want a real house with a yard, whether it's in the UK or here). It'll just be good to know where we'd stand in various outcomes, so we can be mentally ready for whatever comes.

It was a busy day, so I didn't get much done on the declutter front. But I did gather up a bunch of home and daycare art projects that had been laying around. I had AA decide what to take off the walls of the kids' room (which were already pretty bare from stripping off all the Xmas/winter decorations recently), and decide what new art should go up on the walls and which I could recycle.

Wall 1 before:



Wall 1 after:



Wall 2 before:



Wall 2 after:



And the pile of art I recycled:



So, at least I got something done!