The last time I had a slow period at work, I tried to line up my financial goals for next year, and this is what I came up with:

- pay off student loans ($12,200)
- cashflow NT's remaining tuition ($6,470)
- renovate US condo bathroom ($5,000)
- renovate UK condo (cashflowing $5400)
- add to medical EF (at least $900)
- slowly build moving fund (maybe only $50)
- start to rebuild EF after I use it for rest of UK renos (hopefully $6000 of it will be restored over the next year)
So in total, $36,020 of progress in 2014.

Today I had another slow period, so I took a more detailed look at my 2014 outlook (which is easier to do now that I have an annual budget worksheet!) and tried to see if that was realistic.

Most of them look doable. In an ideal world, if I didn't have to dip into our surplus at all, I could *almost* take care of adding $900 to the medical EF, cashflowing tuition, renovating the US bathroom and paying off student loans. Basically I'm $493 short for the year.

That's nothing; a couple of credit card rewards could make up the difference. We may still be getting a couple grand in tax refunds; that hasn't been figured in. But of course, there are unplanned expenses that eat at the surplus, such as household needs that can't be covered by the grocery budget, and swim lessons/other extracurricular activities for the girls.

Still, there are other possible windfalls, such as if any of us gets a raise, or if I overcalculated the effect of flex spending withholding on our net pay. So I think we could achieve those goals if nothing too drastic comes along to hijack our surplus.

The $50 for the moving fund will come from savings interest, so that should be no problem.

I believe we'll be able to cashflow $5400 of the UK renovations, but only if we save up until May. Add in another lost month of rental income for biannual management fees, and we'll only have 6 months of rental income to rebuild the EF. At $579 per month, we'll only get to $3475, not $6000, by the end of the year.

I could put the $900 of savings that would have gone into the medical EF into our more general EF instead, and scratch that goal off the list.

So if I achieve everything else on the list, building the EF and medical EF will be my next priority. But for now I'm going to downsize those goals:

- pay off student loans ($12,196)
- cashflow NT's remaining tuition ($6,470)
- renovate US condo bathroom ($5,000)
- renovate UK condo (cashflowing $5400)
- slowly build moving fund (maybe only $50)
- start to rebuild EF after I use it for rest of UK renos (hopefully $4375 [$3475 UK rental + $900 US savings]) and medical EF (probably nothing in 2014)

Total goal: $33,491 of progress in 2014.

The last time I had a slow period at work, I tried to line up my financial goals for next year, and this is what I came up with:

- pay off student loans ($12,200)
- cashflow NT's remaining tuition ($6,470)
- renovate US condo bathroom ($5,000)
- renovate UK condo (cashflowing $5400)
- add to medical EF (at least $900)
- slowly build moving fund (maybe only $50)
- start to rebuild EF after I use it for rest of UK renos (hopefully $6000 of it will be restored over the next year)
So in total, $36,020 of progress in 2014.

Today I had another slow period, so I took a more detailed look at my 2014 outlook (which is easier to do now that I have an annual budget worksheet!) and tried to see if that was realistic.

Most of them look doable. In an ideal world, if I didn't have to dip into our surplus at all, I could *almost* take care of adding $900 to the medical EF, cashflowing tuition, renovating the US bathroom and paying off student loans. Basically I'm $493 short for the year.

That's nothing; a couple of credit card rewards could make up the difference. We may still be getting a couple grand in tax refunds; that hasn't been figured in. But of course, there are unplanned expenses that eat at the surplus, such as household needs that can't be covered by the grocery budget, and swim lessons/other extracurricular activities for the girls.

Still, there are other possible windfalls, such as if any of us gets a raise, or if I overcalculated the effect of flex spending withholding on our net pay. So I think we could achieve those goals if nothing too drastic comes along to hijack our surplus.

The $50 for the moving fund will come from savings interest, so that should be no problem.

I believe we'll be able to cashflow $5400 of the UK renovations, but only if we save up until May. Add in another lost month of rental income for biannual management fees, and we'll only have 6 months of rental income to rebuild the EF. At $579 per month, we'll only get to $3475, not $6000, by the end of the year.

I could put the $900 of savings that would have gone into the medical EF into our more general EF instead, and scratch that goal off the list.

So if I achieve everything else on the list, building the EF and medical EF will be my next priority. But for now I'm going to downsize those goals:

- pay off student loans ($12,196)
- cashflow NT's remaining tuition ($6,470)
- renovate US condo bathroom ($5,000)
- renovate UK condo (cashflowing $5400)
- slowly build moving fund (maybe only $50)
- start to rebuild EF after I use it for rest of UK renos (hopefully $4375 [$3475 UK rental + $900 US savings]) and medical EF (probably nothing in 2014)

Total goal: $33,491 of progress in 2014.

For January I'm just aiming to pay the minimum on debt, so about $900.

My main financial focus will be saving up money for the bathroom renovation. If all goes well and we don't need to dip into the surplus, I should be able to have $4000 of the $5000 we need set aside by the end of the month.

AS's student loan payment hit today, with $133 going to principal. That takes us to $3236 of progress for December, exceeding the $3200 goal.

Our total payoff this year is $35,113. SO close to breaking the record we set in 2008, but not quite! Still, a really good year.

That takes our total debt payment since the journey began to at least $194,649 and possibly $196,319 (the records are a bit patchy from back then). We'll be hitting the $200K mark soon!

I've spent all morning on the computer, tidying up various financial things:
- Checked all our credit cards to plan future payments and also make sure the Target breach didn't cause any suspicious charges.
- Tried to cover our holiday overspending with current and upcoming credit card rewards. Got within $80, which we can hopefully cover by having a light grocery week.
- Put holiday money from the grandparents ($130 total) into the girls' mutual funds.
- Redeemed Barclay travel rewards ($1275 across 3 cards) to partially pay for our Feb. vacation (airfare and hotel for Puerto Rico!). That was a really great deal; spent about $1000 each to earn $425 each in travel rewards. They're super easy to redeem too. I recommend that card if you're planning a trip in the future.
- Figured out some Paypal stuff, including redeeming for my Dietbet and some Pinecone rewards.

Shudder -- Dietbet. I'm glad I'm not in it anymore; it's been a very indulgent week. I'm afraid there's going to be quite a bit of food wasted/thrown out, because I stuff myself on something, have leftovers once and then never want to look at it again. Oh well; we hardly ever throw out food, so it won't be the end of the world.

We might also need to throw out some veggies; we bought food to feed AS's mom, but it's hard to plan around when she's coming over, and she hasn't been coming over for lunch, just dinner, so we have way more than we needed. There are things like bean sprouts that you can't freeze or cook; if you don't use them in time they just go bad.

Well, we'll have a reckoning on Sunday after she's gone, clear out what isn't going to be eaten, see what ingredients are still salvageable, and try to create a menu out of those with minimal grocery shopping required.

It's been fun to break from all our normal routines of frugality, sensible eating and strict schedules. But part of me can't wait to get back onto them. Our routines may seem constricting but they really work for us!

Just chiming in because I liked seeing all the Christmas wishes from other states! Having a fabulous Christmas; the day went so fast, what with the girls' infectious excitement. I'm glad we donated a big box of toys last week, because with all the grandparent presents they got quite a big haul.

It's slowish at work right now and I'm too burnt out to work on my self-assessment like I should, so I thought I'd just spew random thoughts on here instead.

The first year of our big, ambitious, 3- to 4-year plan to get ready for a move (whether to UK or a bigger home in Mpls) is coming to a close. We've had incredible success even with some setbacks (mainly my dental work, but also NT's ER visit and some little bill increases here and there). Although I'm not keeping a formal tally of progress (only what we still need to accomplish), I know we needed about $100K of progress to happen over the 3-4 years, and I see we have just under $60K to go. That means we accomplished about 40% of our goals, when we only needed to hit 25% for a 4-year plan, or 33% for a 3-year plan!

Next year, if we can stay the course, we should be able to tackle the remaining student loan debt, pay for the rest of NT's college education, and get $5K of the US condo renovations and ALL of the UK renos done. The UK ones will require dipping into the emergency fund (about US$9925, in other words two-thirds of our EF) so rebuilding the EF will become a new goal. Still, about $5400 of the renos won't come out of the EF, so that will be progress. There will also be incremental progress on the medical EF and saving for the move.

So what I'm hoping to achieve next year:
- pay off student loans ($12,200)
- cashflow NT's remaining tuition ($6,470)
- renovate US condo bathroom ($5,000)
- renovate UK condo (cashflowing $5400)
- add to medical EF (at least $900)
- slowly build moving fund (maybe only $50)
- start to rebuild EF after I use it for rest of UK renos (hopefully $6000 of it will be restored over the next year)
So in total, I would like to get $36,020 more in progress in 2014.

Sounds kind of insane, but it makes sense; we essentially got to $40K in progress last year, and this year our take-home pay will be about $4K less because of upping our flex spending to cover my dental expenses.

If we did all that, all we'd need to do the following year(s) would be:
- finish building medical EF ($804)
- finish building the moving fund ($11,381)
- finish rebuilding the EF ($3,925)
- finish renovating the US condo ($8,500)
So, in 2015 we'd only have to scrape up about $24,610 to complete our big-picture goal! We could probably do that in about 8 months if we kept up the pace.

And if we did that, we could start saving toward my "pie in the sky" goal, which I haven't talked about much: saving an extra $68,000 so we could potentially achieve a home purchase and move without selling the UK flat. I've gotten used to the income it generates and love the idea of someday having a fully paid-for property that we can either continue to rent out or sell.

But. But. BUT.

Before I make all these ambitious predictions based on our current incomes, pace and lifestyle, I feel like some more soul-searching is required.

NT's October ER visit was (in the end) an important wake-up call about how hard we're all pushing ourselves. We've tried to make some changes, but I see that we're all still pushing ourselves to the brink of exhaustion with everything we've taken on. I have the easiest lot in life of the three of us and I feel I'm at 99% capacity, so it makes me wonder how the other two keep going at this pace.

Last night I had a bit of a heart-to-heart with AS and expressed some of my fears that we were not succeeding in being happy.

Her job is stressful on so many levels: WAY too much work, not enough pay, difficult co-workers, lots of take-home late-night work, lots of pressure to do after-work and weekend events, etc., etc. BUT it's giving her the international presence that may eventually lead to a move for us, and she does get to help produce great works of art.

NT's job has slowly sucked away his lunch hours, added on (unpaid) overtime that they no longer seem to give him comp time for, added the occasional Saturday shift, taken away the vibrant social life they used to share as co-workers, and now is making him go to Canada next year for off-site work. He is basically a dead-eyed zombie by the time he gets home, and then it's usually off to study or write papers. He is an incredible person to be handling full-time work, half-time college and two spouses and two kids. He just got a big bonus at work so you know he's doing well there, and he routinely gets As in almost all his classes. Something's gotta give, and it's definitely family; time with us and the kids is in short supply and of lower quality than it should be.

And me? I'm doing all right by comparison, but definitely suffering empathetically for both of them, as well as selfishly wishing I had more/better time with them. My work's not my dream job, but it's interesting, fairly well-paid and challenging and doesn't take over my life too much.

AS did assure me that her job is cyclical and that it's at a peak right now that will dwindle away by the end of January. Overall it's not ideal, but me assessing it right now isn't really accurate because it does get less crazy.

And NT's school commitment should be a lot less all-consuming next year. The spring semester will be just for his final project, with no classes and only a few in-person consultations with his adviser. The summer and fall semesters he just needs to top up his number of credits with any elective classes he wants, so hopefully those will be EASY and not require as much studying and writing.

So I think I should hang on until I see what next year looks like. And if it looks bearable, I'll also know that the following year could be even better, with NT out of college. Of course I know there's the possibility of big-expense shocks, like further injuries/tooth problems or even deaths in the extended family. But all you can work with is the data you have in front of you. I plan to plan as if it'll be a predictable couple of years.

But as AS said, you should consider all options. So part of my soul-searching as the new year approaches, and possibly into 2014, will be about the other possibilities besides the current path we're on:
- Cutting more pleasure spending (travel, spending money) and trying to supercharge our saving
- Cutting pleasure spending so that one (or all) of us could quit or scale back our jobs
- AS (and possibly me) taking on freelance work to supercharge saving -- temporarily adding even more stress, but with the end goal of getting to a more relaxed state sooner

Checked savings accounts and recorded interest and automatic deposits:

$75.30 of deposits and interest went into the medical EF savings account, bringing the medical EF to $3,296.31 ($1703.69 to go).

$6.83 in interest to the house/moving fund. That takes us to $4,568.54 ($11,431.46 to go).

I can't believe this year is almost over! It was very busy and productive and fun. Even with the constricted budget due to my upcoming dental expenses, I'm hoping to accomplish a lot financially in 2014. I suppose I should think and write about that in a more organized way soon!

I thought to see if NT's spring semester had posted yet, and it had. $1953, which I set up payment for right away. After a couple months of inactivity, it feels good to get truckin' on our goals again!

My estimate is that we have about $6470 left to pay on NT's tuition, which will be divided between his summer semester and final fall one. Could be a bit more or less than my estimate, but I think that's close. Then he graduates! So excited to be done with both student loan debt and tuition around the same time, so we can put our money to other uses.

NT surprised me with a check stub for his bonus! It was only $4k, not $5k, but we cleared $2800, which was enough to pay off one more student loan with enough left over to cover holiday tips.

$2318 paid, taking us to $3103 down, $97 to go on our December goal.

It also takes our total student loan debt to $12,329! If we can manage about $1000 per month next year, it should be done for by the end of 2014.

YIPPEE!

Today the kids stay at daycare for a sleepover! Meanwhile us grownups are having our anniversary dinner a bit late at a fancy restaurant in downtown Minneapolis. AS and I went there last year around this time and remembered the view of the snow and holiday lights through the big glass windows was just gorgeous, plus the food and service were outstanding. This will be paid for by NT's first, smaller bonus.

Still waiting for the bigger bonus, from which I'll hopefully be able to pay off one of his student loans and also fund all our holiday tips! Word is it'll be distributed sometime next week. They let him contribute 4% of the bonus to his 401(k) with the 2% company match, which will give us another $100 if it's a $5K bonus like we think it is. Sweet!

Tomorrow I'm going to have my oldest daughter go through their toys and help me pick what we can donate to make room for the upcoming Xmas gifts. I've been prepping her for this and she seems very open to the idea. The challenge may be stopping her from donating things she may regret later. Maybe we'll sock them away somewhere to make sure she doesn't have a change of heart; however there's barely anywhere left to hide things with all the Xmas gifts stashed everywhere, so maybe we'll just take a leap of faith and donate. The church across the street has a van parked outside every Sunday for donations to their charity shop, so it's very handy.

I had a business trip this week, and I charged about $400 of expenses (including the hotel room) to my Chase Sapphire card. It'll help get to my rewards bonus, but I'll be reimbursed for it. That felt good!

Sunday is the bday party of one of AA's first friends from her first daycare, and it's also my college's local alumni party, which always takes place in a massive mansion of an eccentric rich alumna. Will be fun! Babysitting for the second event will also be paid for from the smaller of NT's bonuses. (And maybe there'll be enough left to pay for the little girl's bday present.)

We decided to plan a warm-weather vacay instead of a trip to Boston in 2014; we figure the girls will like it a lot better, and we'll appreciate a break from the MN winter. We're thinking mid-February. The budget is still the same, and $1200 of it will be funded with Barclay travel rewards from the three cards we got.

I recently got notice that our condo fees were going up 7.77% next year, and then aNOTHER notice that they'd been mistaken, they're actually going up over 8%! It was going to be $50 more per month, will be more than that now. It's not that we can't handle it, but it does make me afraid that it'll be harder to sell our unit eventually, when there are so many newer condo buildings with much smaller dues.

It does feel like we've been hemorrhaging money lately, though I know the bigger chunks have been planned (like Xmas spending) or unavoidable (like big medical costs). I've asked that we have as low-key a January as possible, partly to try and tone down the spending but also because our social and work calendars are filling up rapidly in all the other upcoming months. Our December calendar looks nuts, and February will be our vacation trip, and March is our 5-birthday month plus two business trips (one for NT and one for AS), and April may be another business trip for AS, and in May our UK friends will be visiting. Yikes!

One good thing is that I rolled over vacation days this year, so I'll have some extras to use just for me next year. Now to find time to use them!

Another good thing: Almost all Xmas gifts have been bought (mostly ordered online). We have a few more for AS's mom since she's coming to visit, and I need to ship my parents' once I receive my mom's, but that's about it. Then wrapping before Xmas, but that's always kind of fun. I just scored some free wrapping paper from my job, so that won't cost any more.

Next week should be semi-relaxing; not too much to do. I'm going to take AA on her first Xmas shopping trip to get gifts for all of us. She has a budget of $50 (not that she knows what that means, so I'll have to steer her toward cheap little trinkets. ) Then AS's mom arrives for a week's visit. She'll be staying at a hotel so it won't get too overwhelming, I don't think. Plus, maybe some free grandma babysitting for us.

All our mortgage payments hit today.
US: $470 to principal
UK1: $218
UK2: $47
UK3: $50

All told, $785 down, $2415 to go on the December debt goal.

Lots of financial doings yesterday:

We got another bill from NT's hospital visit. It seemed higher than what his insurance site had led us to believe. I took a closer look and realized they'd tacked on a $398 charge from 2011. NT reckons that's from a finger injury that he ended up getting worker's comp to pay for. He's going to call the hospital and see why it's showing up on a bill now.

Money in the mail: Got $20 from my mom for our anniversary, and a $3 check for a wine rebate. They will both go into surplus to hopefully help pay down debt.

Paid our second holiday tip, $30 to our condo association's holiday fund for the employees.

I raised the possibility of starting our oldest on an allowance next year when she turns 4. I think about it every year but we've always decided she's too young. I think she's much more able to grasp concepts now, so it'll be a good time to start. Thinking about doing the thing where we make her save 1/3 and donate 1/3, and then 1/3 is for spending.

We decided to use an offer that came in an issue of Kiplinger's to get 15 bottles of wine for $90 (that comes to $6 per bottle). All we have to do is cancel the membership it signs us up for after that. That'll be good for the holidays.

Speaking of Kiplinger's, I think the most recent issue finally tipped the scales for me on doing something with my cash besides stashing it in savings. snafu, you'll be so happy! I'm making it a New Year's goal to figure out how to divvy it up and put it in places where it will earn at least a little bit of money. I'm thinking my EF will go in online savings and the house down payment money (when we get some) into a Vanguard fund of some kind. Kiplinger's recommended a bond fund from them.

And, some non-financial but fun news tidbits:

I won NaNoWriMo! I completed a 50,000-word novel in less than 30 days. The writing is terrible, the plot kind of half-baked, but I got to stretch my creative muscles and my self-discipline.

I've lost all the weight I needed to in order to win the DietBet I'm in. As long as I don't *gain* any for the next week, I should at least get my $35 back and maybe win a bit extra!

AS heard that she might get to attend the London Book Fair in April next year! This would be great both for boosting her presence in England for potential future career prospects AND to get to see our friends for a bit. Our best UK friends are visiting us in May, so she'd get to see them two months in a row.

I still don't feel confident that NT is going to get the full bonus we're hoping for, but he's feeling confident so I'm going to plan December accordingly. I'm planning to use it to pay off one of NT's loans, which has $2318 left on it. Combined with the approximately $900 we pay just in minimum debt payments, I'm going to say the December goal is to pay off $3200 of debt.

Now that I've said it, I'll try to make it happen even if we don't get the bonus! Though it'll be nearly impossible without it.

I'm also depending on the bonus to fund our holiday tips to service providers. The first of them had to be paid today; our house cleaner won't come again until after Xmas. So I left him an $80 tip and hope to be able to fund that from NT's bonus when it comes!

We're giving our providers a slight raise this year (more than a slight one to daycare since they've given us so much extra this year):
$80 for house cleaner
$30 to bldg mgmt
$60 to diaper service
$300 to daycare
Card to our lawyer
Total: $470

AS's student loan payment hit, with $133 going to principal.

That takes debt progress to $910 for the month, just over the $900 goal.

I was hoping to use what little surplus we had this month for a snowflake toward one of the student loans, but lots of minor purchases ate it up. Winter gear for the kids, new litter box for the cat, batteries, bike stuff, etc., etc. I didn't even bother keeping track of specifics. I've got about $75 of surplus left, so if we haven't spent it by Nov. 30, it's going to student loan debt (it will count toward December debt progress).

I've had a crazy productive November, so I haven't been blogging m (uch. I'm 3000 words away from finishing a NaNoWriMo novel! I've never even gotten close to this before, so it's kind of astounding. I've been writing for at least two hours a night, every day this month.

We've also been doing DietBet (me and AS). I'm a little over 50% of the weight loss required halfway through, she's at a little less than 50%. If we can survive Thanksgiving weekend without gaining, I think we can make it.

Despite not getting to pay down much debt in November, I'm kind of feeling invincible right now! I know that feeling can either be dangerous or extremely helpful in accomplishing things in life. But I'm not feeling lucky -- just feeling that I'm capable of hard work and being reliable about sticking to something I set my mind to. For a while it only seemed to work for certain things, like budgeting and not eating out, but now it feels like I can just set myself to a task and it'll get done.

I want to preserve this feeling of confidence, because I have to write my annual self-assessment at work next month and I really want to talk myself up. I've worked harder and more strategically at work this past year than I ever have before.

It's been a really good month overall (except finding out about the extra dental procedure). NT went to an anniversary/transfer of power party at his company, and they handed out bonus checks on the spot. $500 after tax! And they still intend to issue a year-end bonus; NT reckons that could be as high as $5000 (before tax).

NT and AS requested that we set this smaller bonus aside to pay for a fancy anniversary dinner as well as babysitting for a couple of upcoming parties. I agreed as long as I could have the bigger bonus, which I've already pre-spent in my head! They agreed to that.

NT's big $4K medical claim finally processed in his insurance account. I was holding my breath, thinking they might make us pay up to our max out of pocket, but it was nowhere near. Cost to us for that particular expense: $579.97.

So I'm feeling pretty good! I had $3,250 set aside in case we had to pay the max out of pocket, and so far we're just going to owe $1,543.56. No new bills have come in for weeks, though I know that's a possibility. But since we already have four claims, we might be done! That would mean we have $,1706.44 left over.

I don't want to jump the gun and put that money toward debt (much as I'd love to), so instead I'm putting it into the medical EF. Plus 31 cents interest that was added to the account last week, that's $1,706.75 to the medical EF, taking it to $3,221.01! That's more than double what it was before, and just $1,778.99 short of the $5K goal. If I have to take some out to pay more medical bills, it'll be a bummer, but not a tragedy.

Got the bad news this week that I *will* need the extra $2200 procedure on my mouth next year. Sigh. So that brings my estimated costs up over $5000. But, as I detail in

this post on my other blog, I have ways of making up about half that money in tax savings and CC rewards.

In other money in, money out news:

- Got an unpleasant jolt when I saw $80 in charges from the wine place we thought we'd canceled membership for, plus a $25 late charge on the credit card (since I hadn't even been checking that card's balance anymore)

- NT called the wine place and got an $80 refund! So I called the credit card company and got them to reverse the charges. It was a good feeling to see that unexpected $105 expense just disappear. (I'd paid the bill in a panic when I saw the late charge, so now I have to wait for a refund check, but still!)

- Our grocery co-op sent us a $20.02 profit sharing check. I never remember these are coming!

- NT sold (on eBay) a Wii set he found on the free table at our condo: We're netting about $80!

- Got some more free clothes from one of his co-workers, and she's going to check her ex's house to see if she has a snowsuit in AA's size!

- Our anniversary is coming up in December, and we found out that our daycare lady is having a sleepover with all the kids (NO extra charge!) just a few weeks after that. So we moved our celebratory dinner to the night the kids will be gone. Free babysitting and no curfew, woo hoo! She's getting an extra bump in her bonus this year; this is the third sleepover she's had for our older daughter and the first where she'll be keeping our younger kid as well.

- I keep forgetting to blog about this, but I'm transitioning over to an annual vs. monthly budget! It's pretty much in place, I'm just fine-tuning it a bit. Basically instead of one budget sheet that I paste into my "future checkbook" and adjust all the escrow stuff and dates, I have a 12-sheet spreadsheet with actual dates, where I don't save up for 12 months for annual expenses but rather just have more or less surplus each month depending on whether the big expenses are due. I think I'm going to like it once I get used to it!

- Our net worth next week should look really good if the market doesn't crash; I got an annual statement for one of NT's UK accounts that showed an increase, plus his company put an extra bonus in his U.S. 401(k).

- I joined a DietBet like FrugalTexan! One of my friends started it. I don't care if I win extra money, I just really want to make the goal weight so I get my $35 bet money back! I've been really strict about calories since it started, so hopefully I see some good results at my weigh-in Sunday. The bet goes over Thanksgiving (gulp)!

- I pretty much gave up drinking at home for the month. I still have a drink if I'm out somewhere, but no wine with dinner. I did it to A) cut calories and B) have more energy after the kids go to bed so I can work on my NaNoWriMo novel. But I've found a C) benefit -- more spending money left over! Wine only costs about $25 every three weeks (we take turns paying), but hey, that's $8 more per week I get to keep in my wallet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now I can post my October goals!

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

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

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

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

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

Here's the

calculator if you want to check your projected costs.