I think I've bought many things for over $500, but not many have tipped the scales into $1K territory. For being 36 and a former disorganized spender, I think this is a pretty modest list.
Physical things:
Condo $207K
Treadmill $1K
Table $1K+
Entertainment center $1K
Computer $1K
Laptop $1K+

Nonphysical:
NT Bachelor's $45K (estimated future total)
AS Bachelor's $25K (guess)
AS Master's $15K
My Bachelor's $15K
UK vacation $7K
Vegas vacation $5K
Va/Md/WV/DC vacation $4K
Wisconsin vacation $3K

Of course, NT bought a flat and a couple cars and probably some other things for more than $1K before we met, but I have no idea what they were and how many.

I don't think AS and I ever spent more than $1K on a vacation before NT moved in, because it was airfare for two, they were shorter trips, and we would cheap out on redeye flights and Priceline hotels. We may have spent $1K+ on our first trip to see NT while dating, because we kinda went all out on food, drinks and presents.

The only two appliances I've had to buy so far, dishwasher and fridge, each came in under $1K.

I never bought my own car (dad bought me two used and gifted me another of his which he had bought used), and my parents paid for our $2K+ wedding.

That's it, as far as I can remember. Overall, it seems we spend more on experiences (education and vacation) than toys! This experience of having a baby is probably going to make this list soon...

I'm kidding, of course. But I feel like we finally saw some kind of benefit from all the financial turmoil swirling around.

We just got notice of what our mortgage (an ARM) is going to reset to starting Nov. 1. It started at 5.0%, then reset for the first time in 2008 to 5.75%. This November, it's going to reset to 3.875%!

Last time it adjusted slightly before it actually hit, but that was an adjustment downward. Hopefully they wouldn't adjust upward after telling me the rate.

Our payment is changing from $1445.01 to $1256.24. That extra money is going straight to principal on our personal loan. With nothing going wrong for the rest of the year, we could have the loan balance at $4000 by mid-December!

Today I'm at 12 weeks in my pregnancy! Yippee! I feel so much more relaxed about my prospects, though I know it's never a sure thing. Also my vague dislike of food is waning and my energy steadily returning.

Vacation starts Saturday! Actually, I took Friday off as well, just to putter around getting ready with no hurry. Some friends are having a BBQ Friday too, which will be a nice way to see some folks before we leave for a week.

We're leaving Saturday morning, stopping off in Wisconsin Dells for lunch (no waterparking, though we'll probably be able to see some of the more impressive rides from the highway) and arriving at our first cottage in the late afternoon. We're staying on Lake Kegonsa, about 20 minutes outside of Madison. I've done research on veggie-friendly restaurants in Madison and we'll probably check out a few, but we'll also have a charcoal grill (a rare and decadent treat) at the cottage and will want to grill some as well. We'll try to take a day trip out to see the House on the Rock, a crazy funhouse/museum built by an eccentric and prominently featured in the book American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

We're staying three nights, then heading out next Tuesday morning and driving about four hours to a cottage in Ephraim, a small town on the Door County peninsula. We'll be there for four nights, and might take a ferry, go minigolfing, rent bikes...whatever takes our fancy. We'll probably mostly cook there, but I did find one veggie-friendly restaurant a town over that we can check out if we feel like it.

We'll get back to Minneapolis next Saturday night, and head over to a friend's birthday party (he's visiting from New York, so we really hope we're not too tired). Then, Sunday or Monday, we'll go stuff our faces and look at crafts at the State Fair.

I've already transferred the money from savings into checking. We're down to $740 spending money because of furloughs and tuition, but I have high hopes that it'll be plenty for whatever we want to do, since we'll be cooking some and using the grocery budget for that. We'll each have our $60 spending money for the week too, so that will help.

I got a glimpse into how expensive this pregnancy is going to be on my high-deductible insurance; my first visit is going to cost me over $500. Hopefully some of the visits will be cheaper than that, but I bet the ultrasound one is going to be nuts. I have about $650 in checking and $630 in my HSA, with $250 more going into the HSA each month. So this first visit's going to cut that money nearly in half. Well, the EF is there if I need it, though I hope it doesn't come to that.

I've been keeping a spreadsheet of baby expenses and savings. (The savings is $20 each month that I don't have to spend on birth control pills.) Thus far I'm actually in the black, though of course when that $500+ bill comes I'll be permanently in the red from then on. Still, I think it'll be a great exercise in considering each purchase and deciding if we need it for my or our baby's well-being. We'll be taking any handouts from our friends and seeing how much we can get second-hand.

NT had three $3 Pinecone surveys recently and I got a $7 rebate in the mail. I've put those toward the personal loan payment going out in September.

We're nearly a month behind on 365 Days of Dinner! I'm hoping AS or NT will do an entry or two for me, just to get me back on track. I feel more able to do the entries since I'm not as nauseous about food, but I feel overwhelmed by how many days there are to do. So don't be surprised if you see a guest post from one of my spouses sometime soon!

One of AS's student loans hit, and $79 went to principal. $1483 down, $117 to go. It's going to be a bit of a squeeze with the current scheduled payments, but I think we'll make our goal, probably right on the 31st.

And we hit a pleasant little milestone, with AS's total student loan debt dipping below $30,000 to $29,946! She has two degrees to show for that debt, so I think it's not too bad. Once I get out of CC debt and debt to my dad, AS's student loans will be my next target, but it's looking like that won't be for a couple years now.

My personal loan hit, with $760 going to principal. So $1404 down, $196 to go on my August goal.

$8100 left on that personal loan. I can't wait to see it cut in half by the end of the year, if all goes according to plan.

Whew, starting to come down from the massive adrenaline rush I got from hearing my baby's heartbeat! We decided to go ahead and tell the rest of the world even though we're not quite at 12 weeks. It's been fun reading comments here and on Facebook. I can see how people who are already moms get super-excited when they find out someone is pregnant--now I'll always understand what a crazy high it is the first time you actually feel like the baby is yours. (I've been calling it the "embryo" and then the "fetus" this whole time; now I can't stop calling it a "baby"!)

Anyway, back to reality...even though we're going to cut back on savings and ramp up debt repayment soon, I decided to finish out August as planned. I'm not THAT impulsive. So the regular biweekly savings hit, and I put $225 into the baby/emergency fund. $945 saved this month, $255 to go on my goal.

At 10 1/2 weeks! That's all. I'm wordless. Just so excited and overwhelmed.

Eeeeee!

So Frugal Dad (a good personal finance blog) posted an entry today about creating a dream budget: basically taking your existing budget, removing all debt payments as if you were debt-free, and playing around with what you'd use the extra money for. I went one better: I created a "Basic Dream Budget," which imagined we were debt-free except the mortgage, and an "Ultra Dream Budget," in which we no longer had even a mortgage debt.

It was exhilerating but also kind of bittersweet. I mean, we won't be there for many years, if we get there at all. But it did make me consider that maybe I should be knocking this $623 personal loan payment out before Baby #1 comes in March.

We currently owe $8860 on the personal loan, which means at my current accelerated rate (I recently bumped up my minimum payments to $200 more, paying about $750 in principal each month) I would pay it off in about 12 months, or July 2010.

I tried cutting back all savings through Dec. 15, besides my minimum required biweekly $25, plus $600 for Xmas. I also cut my remaining full-strength grocery line items (most have already been cut to pay tuition & fund furloughs) to $350. If I do that, assuming no financial hiccups, we could get the debt down to $4500 by mid-December. That would give us only 2.5 months to pay off the rest, or about $1800 per month.

Clearly that wouldn't happen on our current budget, but if there happened to be any windfalls--tax returns, bonuses, gifts--we might be able to come close.

So what would happen to the baby/emergency fund in the meantime, you ask? Well, the UK account would continue to run a 300-pound surplus each month. We may owe a bit in taxes, which could cut into that, but assuming we don't owe UK taxes, we would be at about $8000 by the time baby was born (depending on exchange rate). That would get us through a little over a month completely unpaid--if NT and I took turns with parental leave, we could get through two months unpaid. More if we made some cuts to our normal budget (easy).

If AS gets a job before then, we will have lots of extra money to throw at debt and EF. If she is still taking odd jobs from home, we can forgo some of that unpaid time because she'll be able to watch Baby during the day.

I don't know if I'll stick to this accelerated debt repayment, but it seems like there's an outside chance we could get that debt gone by the time Baby is ready for daycare--and that freed-up $623 could cover about half the monthly daycare costs! So it seems like something I should consider. I'm going to talk it over with the fam tonight and see what they think.

I welcome comments on both sides of the argument. To sum up all the above number crunching, I'm basically thinking about taking approximately $2000 that would go to the baby fund and putting it to debt instead.

All our mortgage payments hit:
U.S.: $281 to principal
UK #1: $253
UK #2: $54
UK #3: $56

That equals $644 down, $956 to go on our debt-repayment goal.

Also, I transferred GBP300 (US$600) into NT's UK savings account for the baby/emergency fund, and $120 into the U.S. savings account for AS's retirement. $720 saved, $480 to go on the savings goal.

OK, as I warned, I'm going really, really easy on myself. So I'm having free months in all areas except debt repayment, savings, and my "Other" category (I really need to get NT's taxes done this month; they're due in October, but I'm not going to want to do them in September).

My credit card payment hit early this past month, which is why I surpassed my goal so much. So debt repayment will be modest in August; I'm going for paying off $1600.

Savings should be pretty good this month; I'm going to put $120 away for AS's retirement, and I'm going to try and save $1080 for the baby/emergency fund. So $1200 total.

And, I need to do NT's UK taxes. I'm nervous because he might owe this year, and I'll need to take that out of the EF. But it can't be avoided.

Well, my first trimester is my excuse for not completing most of my goals. Luckily the financial goals were accomplished despite some budgetary hiccups.

1. Debt: Pay off at least $2,000 of debt.
Balance as of 7/29: $393,334
Goal balance: $393,579
Progress: DONE! $2245 paid

2. Savings: Save at least $800 ($125 for AS retirement; $675 for EF)
Progress: DONE! $870 saved

3. Fitness: Swim at least three times. Failed. Sigh.

4. Environmentalism: Try to get off some junk-mail lists. Failed.

5. Creative/crafts:
a. Super-secret gift for AS. AS and I agreed to skip this nice idea once we realized how little energy I was going to have the rest of the month.
b. Start another blog. Progress: Some. I did take some photo essays for this blog, so I'm hoping to keep going. HOWEVER, it's a cooking blog, and I really don't like food very much right now, so this will have to wait until I start feeling less nauseous and picky. So we'll see if I still feel like doing it in a couple months.

6. Philanthropy: free month

7. Side hustles: Do some more Mechanical Turk tasks. Progress: none. I've been hella busy at work (which is good for job security), and haven't wanted to do anything that requires thinking once I get home.

8. Other: Finish and send out RFE packet by the second week of July. DONE! Thank goodness I got right on this and finished before all of my get-up-and-go went elsewhere.

First, my biweekly savings deposit hit, just $60 this time. But that's $870 saved for the month, and once I redeposit the money I took out of my EF for tuition, my EF will be $4410!

Then, my credit card payment went through, with $199 going to principal. That brings my July debt payment to $2245. But that's not the exciting part either...

Our non-mortgage debt is now at $99,956! We have $26,644 in CC/personal debt and $73,312 in student loan debt. That's right, we just got it under $100,000, into the five-digit zone!

An AS student loan hit. $57 went to principal, which means we've paid $2046 toward debt in July, passing our $2000 goal. And I have a credit card payment set up to hit tomorrow.

I should hit a very exciting debt milestone with my credit card payment tomorrow, but I will hold off writing about it until it actually happens.

One of AS's student loan payments hit, with $114 going to principal. $1989 down, $11 to go on the July goal! I have two payments that should hit this week, so I'm hoping to easily surpass the goal.

Most of my other goals have fallen by the wayside for obvious reasons, but I'll still do a wrap-up at the end of the month. And I'll probably give myself a super-easy month in August, since I'll still be in my first trimester.

RECAP: So I switched to prepaid in late March, meaning it's been 4 months. We have 2 phones on T-Mobile prepaid and 1 on Net10 prepaid.

Initial layout: $241.63 to get us set up with phones and minutes.
NT's late-May Net10 fillup: $32.65 (He hadn't used up his previous 300, but they roll over as long as you re-up in time.)
AS's second 1,000 minutes with T-Mobile: $107.40. (We hope to get this batch to last longer than three months; AS has gotten much better this past month at controlling her conversations with her mom, and at insisting that she call her mom via Skype vs. her mom calling her.)
NT's late-July Net10 fillup: $32.82

So our total cost so far is $414.50.

So far, if I divide our total cost by 4, our new plan has cost us $103.63 per month (our monthly average is down from $127.23 per month).

We have a good chance of gradually getting that average down. I've barely used any of my 1,000 minutes and I don't need to re-up until March of next year unless I run out of minutes before then.

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

We just got notification in the mail--he should receive his 10-year green card within two months.

I'm soo happy and relieved!!!

We agreed on what to cut from our budget so that we can put the money withdrawn for tuition back in the baby/emergency fund:
$100 each for August and October car rental=$200
$100 of misc. entertainment money from November
$100 of grocery money from August, September and October, and $50 from November=$350
$20 per person spending money for August, September & October=$180

That comes to $830. The remaining tuition (after we used $900 of our vacation money) was $894.77, so that leaves about $65 that we need to come up with. Since our paychecks with furlough reductions were a bit more than I predicted last week, I think we'll make that up gradually when subsequent furlough-affected paychecks come in slightly higher than the budget accounts for.

Good to have that out of the way! Our meals will have to be a bit more carefully planned, but otherwise there won't be much pain over the next few months.

I don't actually have all the money in checking available to transfer back into savings, but I'm not recording the reduction in our EF on my spreadsheets (just a mental trick to make me feel good). I've got a line item in my Number Crunch worksheet to return the $894.77 to our savings account as soon as we've accumulated it.

Ugh...today is the first day I feel noticeably nauseous. Hope this isn't the beginning of a period of morning sickness; I was beginning to think I'd escape that disagreeable side effect altogether. Fingers crossed for that. So far my main symptom has been overall drowsiness and low energy, which hasn't been great for my monthly goals or my cooking/housekeeping efforts but isn't very unpleasant in itself.

Today I confirmed that USCIS received NT's evidence packet on July 13. I hope they send us something soon so that weight will be lifted off us.

Ooh, one more tidbit: I did another rental-car search and found an identical reservation at the same place for $40 less than when I booked ours a couple months ago. I promptly made a new reservation at the lower price and canceled our old one. I noticed insurance rates went up a tiny bit, but we still save overall. Anyway the insurance rate isn't something we can lock in, so it wouldn't have stayed lower if we'd kept our reservation. Woo hoo! $40 more for summer fun in Wisconsin.

So I never should have celebrated yesterday about how our emergency/baby fund has grown. Call me superstitious, but later that day, I checked NT's student account to see whether the remaining financial aid had transferred over and paid his summer tuition. Not only had it not, they had socked us with a $30 late fee!

After some stressed-out calls to the University, NT and AS determined that his summer classes don't qualify for financial aid (even though he was awarded $3750 more than he needed for spring classes) because he's "not enrolled at least half time." Um, yeah he is; he's actually taking this summer class to get done even faster! But apparently, they mean "at this moment in time are you taking at least half the credits of a regular semester?" Soo, the upshot was that he's most likely not getting any financial aid for this class, which, with the late fee, costs just under $1800. And we had to pay it off fast or risk getting hit with another late fee.

So where to come up with $1800? The obvious answer is our EF, which wouldn't have hurt much if we weren't expecting a baby. NOW it feels like we're taking away a valuable safety net from under our baby's feet if we take it out of the EF.

NT suggested we have an even more laid-back vacation in August-September. We've already spent about $1300 on the two cottages and the rental car, and we had $1600 for food, drink, spa, boating, and all other fun activities. At NT's suggestion we shaved $900 off that. We'll now have $700, which means not enough for massages or boat rental or lake cruises, but we should still be able to eat out once or twice, maybe take the ferry to Washington Island, go bowling, play mini-golf, see a movie, etc. And we can look around for free activities, and take tons of books and games with us. It'll still be a good time, and hopefully even more relaxing since we won't be trying to cram a bunch of activities in.

Of course, that still leaves $900 (well, $894.77, to be exact). For the time being, to get the tuition paid, we took that amount from our EF savings. But we really don't want to do that, so today we'll be looking at places we can cut our budget down even further to make up the $900. Compared to a lot of SA bloggers, we actually have a lot of fat in our budget. So it'll hurt, but hopefully we can come up with the other $900 out of our upcoming budget over the next few months. We can't simply reduce EF contributions as we have for other budget cuts such as the furloughs; that would be defeating the purpose of not affecting our baby fund. So I suspect it'll mostly come out of groceries (so long, fake meats and pricier fruits and veg) and spending money (buh-bye, hopes of saving up for a bike).

The one bright spot in all this is that it isn't an unexpected expense. We just didn't expect to be paying it until 2012. It's for NT's education, and it will save us a bit of (admittedly tax-deductible) interest over the long haul. But this will definitely affect our quality of life more than any of the other recession-related cuts we've had to make, because we've already cut so much from our budget and because we can't simply reduce future savings as part of the cut.

All of this cumulative pressure has made AS (and all of us) feel that she doesn't have as much time to grow her sewing business, so she's stepping up her job-search efforts a bit. Yesterday she applied for a job similar to the one she got laid off from; without crazy co-workers and budget stress it would have been a good job, so hopefully she gets an interview. She'd be a really good fit, and it's actually for a college of art and design, so it ties in a bit with her sewing and dressmaking!

Good grief, this is turning into a long entry! OK, one more thing: Our snowflake hit the personal loan today, with $34 going to principal. $1875 down, $125 to go on our July debt goal.

My personal loan payment hit, with nearly all of it going to principal thanks to some snowflaking during the past month. $601 went to principal, to be exact. That makes $1841 down, $159 to go on my July goal. The personal loan is down to $8894! I managed to send another small snowflake payment yesterday because my calculations of mine and NT's furlough-reduced paychecks were slightly off; that payment should hit tomorrow. AS's other two student loan payments at the end of the month should push us slightly over our goal.

Also, the regular biweekly deposit into savings hit, with $50 going to the baby/emergency fund. That is $810 saved in July, so I met and passed the savings goal of $800. Our baby/emergency fund, counting UK savings, is now at $4350.27!

Whew, back to real life! Thanks again for sharing my excitement in my last post.

One of AS's student loans hit, with $82 going to principal. That's $1240 down, $760 to go on my July goal. We'll be cutting it close but should make this goal.

Last week AS got barely any unemployment benefits because she used up her state funding, and stimulus unemployment wouldn't kick in until the next week, so we got about $300 less than we thought we would. Today, my paycheck and NT's reflected the three furlough days taken so far, so we got about $350 less than normal. Back in the bad old days, this would have been devastating--to my credit card, because I would have just charged even more than usual to make up the even wider gap between my paycheck and what I was spending during a fortnight.

AS's unemployment loss was an unforseen blow, but we were able to absorb it temporarily, and there will be a pay period in September where she'll get three unemployment checks instead of two, so we'll make it up then.

As for the furlough losses, we had already trimmed our budget in preparation for those months ago, when we first learned about them. So even though it felt strange to look at the smaller direct deposits, it actually won't have any new impact on our lives.

I also am losing $6 per month permanently because they've started taxing a benefit that we've always had but hadn't been taxed for before. And at the beginning of this year, my new healthcare and high deductible took a huge bite out of my paycheck. And of course AS's unemployment is about 60% of what she used to bring in, and will run out before the end of the year. I haven't had a raise in years, and probably NT and I will not get one this year or maybe even the next.

It hurts to see our income stagnate, and even get smaller and smaller, but I'm glad to know that we have a system in place to help us deal somewhat dispassionately with these problems, and a small surplus going to discretionary spending, savings and debt repayment that can be dialed back when there's less money coming in.

OK, first: I finished and sent out the evidence packet for NT's green card on Friday! It was such a load off my mind that I pretty much lazed around all day Saturday and Sunday without even pretending to tackle any of my other goals. It was great.

And the big news, probably coming too early but I wouldn't be able to blog if I couldn't mention it...

I'M PREGNANT! I got a positive result on an at-home test last Wednesday!! I know you're not supposed to reveal it this early in the game because things could still happen but ... this is a semi-anonymous blog so I think it's OK. (Oh, and if there are any friends reading this, just keep it under wraps for a little longer, though if it slips out it's OK!) I have my first appointment July 30 so I should know more then about how it's going, but even just to know I can conceive so easily is really exciting!

So far we've told our parents and a few close friends. We're going to be inviting a few people out to dinner the 24th for my & AS's anniversary, and I don't imagine we'll be able to keep it to ourselves! Well, our friend advised to only tell people whom you'd be comfortable telling if something went wrong, and everyone we're planning to invite falls under that category.

So probably hold off on congratulations till I confirm it's a healthy pregnancy, but some good luck and positive vibes sent my way would be greatly appreciated!!

Today has turned out to be a slowish day at work. That is, I have some work, but doesn't have to be done today, so I am choosing not to do it, and to drowsily surf the web instead.

Monday I got up kinda early to get caught up on work after Thursday's furlough and Friday's holiday. Tuesday morning, I was awoken by intense abdominal pains--exact cause still undetermined, though I have a few suspects--at 5 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep, so I lay awake for an hour or so and then got up with NT and went in a bit early to work. Last night I tried to make it an early night and was in bed by 11:20--not bad. However, sometime after midnight I woke to AS's frightened shriek and a loud noise. I said a gust of wind must have slammed into the screen and blinds, but she said she thought she'd heard wings flapping in the room.

I reassured her otherwise, but in a few seconds there was indeed some loud flapping--not in the room, but right outside the screen. AS didn't have her glasses on so she couldn't really see it, but I saw a largish winged creature of some kind sort of flapping and grabbing at the window and tiny ledge, as if trying to find a place to land. The wings were just a dark silhouette because of the city lights outside. NT half-woke and said he thought it was a bat. It flew away after about 10 seconds of moving around outside the window. Its wings sounded so loud! AS put her glasses on and lay there for a second, but then said she had to go watch TV to calm down. I too gave up on sleep and went out to watch TV with her. When I got there she said the critter had been a pigeon--that it had moved to the livingroom window and clung to the screen for a few seconds, flapping its wings. It moved off toward the balcony and she ran to close the glass door in case it wanted to grab onto the screen door there, but we didn't see it again. How freaky is that? I've never heard/seen any kind of bird outside our 18th-floor window at night--once there was a large bug flying against the screen and that was scary enough, but this was seriously unnerving.

We watched TV until about 12:45, when we started to drift off and decided to go back in the bedroom. About a half-hour to an hour later, there was another loud noise, this one definitely in the room. I sat up and looked around (already rather freaked out by the first occurrence), but AS said a small framed print had fallen off the wall and dropped behind the dresser. Took me probably another half hour to get back to sleep.

In the morning I could have gone to work early again to get more caught-up, but I'm not too good when I'm sleep-deprived these days, so I told AS to wake me up at 8:30, and I didn't get to work until about 9:15. Even with the small lie-in, I've still been really tired today, so once I got my must-dos out of the way, I've been unmotivated to do any more. I feel a little guilty, but I know I'll get it done another day, so it's OK. Here's hoping I get uninterrupted sleep tonight!

INGREDIENTS:

1-1/2 cups warm water
1/2 teaspoon honey or sugar
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups white flour
Fresh or dried Italian herbs (optional)
semolina or cornmeal (optional)

DIRECTIONS:

Pour 1/2 cup of water into a mixing bowl and mix in honey and stir to dissolve. Stir in the yeast, and set aside until foamy, about 10 minutes. Add the remaining water, olive oil, and salt, then beat in the whole wheat flour (and herbs if using), followed by enough white flour to form a shaggy dough (just so it's slightly sticky, says AS). Turn it out onto the counter and knead until smooth, adding flour as needed to keep it from sticking. For a crisp, light crust, pizza dough should be on the moist side, which means it will be slightly tacky.

Put the dough into an oiled bowl (AS usually oils the bowl with spray oil, canola or olive oil), turn it once to coat, then cover with a towel and set aside to rise until doubled in size, 40 to 60 minutes. (AS tries to put it somewhere warmish; in the winter, she places it in front of a heater vent; in summer, in a sunny spot.) Turn the dough onto the counter and divide into the number of pizzas you want. Shape each piece into a ball, set on a lightly floured counter, cover with a towel, and let rise for another 20 to 30 minutes.

Taking one ball at a time, flatten it into a disk, pushing it outward with your palm. Working from the middle, push the dough out with your fingers until it's about 1/4 inch thick and fairly even, thickening slightly at the edge. Or roll the dough into a circle, then push up the sides to make a slight rim. Dust the peel or pan with semolina, cornmeal or flour, set the dough on top, cover with a towel, and let it rest for 10 or 15 minutes.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Prebake crusts for about 5 minutes until slightly puffy and brown. Remove pan and puncture and flatten any bubbles in the crust. Add sauce, toppings, cheese and put back in the oven. Bake for about 10 minutes until cheese is melty.

This usually makes 6 individual pizzas for us; we've got hearty appetites though. But most people we cook for do finish theirs too. Also, as I said in my note to you, you can just make some of the crusts, and wrap the remaining dough balls in cellophane and put them in the freezer, then thaw them in the fridge the morning of the night that you will want to make pizza.

Oh, and sorry about the American measurements. Hope you don't find it too hard to do conversions.

My regular biweekly savings deposit hit; just $25 this time, going to the baby/emergency fund. That makes $760 down, $40 to go on my July goal.

Today is a furlough day for me and NT (well, I may have to work a bit later, but if I do I have to take unpaid time Monday instead), so we're relaxing at home. We might go to the rooftop pool later if the sky clears a bit more. Ah, sometimes the economic downturn has its bright sides.

Have I mentioned I love the first of the month? Oh right, I did, every month for the past two years.

Many payments hit:
US mortgage: $280 to principal
UK #1: $254 to principal
UK #2: $54 to principal
UK #3: 54 to principal
CC: $205 to principal
Personal loan: $308 (all extra snowflake money!)

All told, $1558 paid toward debt, $842 to go on my July goal.

Also, I put $125 into savings for AS's retirement, and transferred US$610 from NT's UK checking into UK savings to be counted toward the baby/emergency fund. $735 saved, $65 to go on the July goal!

Progress on the RFE packet: Got my dad's affidavit attesting to his belief in my marriage. Still waiting for a few more affidavits and a statement from the condo office, and I just have to write a cover letter and a few pages of explanatory statements about the evidence.

OK, I think I've got my goals settled. I decided to add two more categories, "Side hustles" and "Other," to allow for more flexibility. I won't necessarily give myself a goal in all eight areas every month; in fact, this gives me more room to be creative and think of goals that inspire me.

So, for July, my goals are:
1. Debt: Pay off at least $2,000 of debt. This will be a bit of a stretch, but I think attainable.

2. Savings: Save at least $800: $125 for AS's retirement, $675 for the baby/emergency fund.

3. Fitness: Swim at least three times in our rooftop pool. No time or duration requirements; just get up there and at least swim a little bit!

4. Environmentalism: Try to get off some junk-mail lists. We did the thing a couple years ago where you sign up to get taken off junk-mail lists, but we still get lots of credit card and other offers. I'll try to call each company and request to be removed from their lists as junk mail comes in this month.

5. Creative/crafts: Two goals this month; I have to finish the first one for sure, and the second is if I feel inspired.

First goal: Some super-secret crafts goal for AS for our 12-year anniversary. (We agreed this weekend to give each other handmade presents. I won't be able to talk about it till I give it to her, since she reads this blog, but I have one or two ideas floating around.)

Second goal: Start new blog. I know, I know. I already have this blog and one where I blog my thoughts about trying to get pregnant. But I want to try and make a money-making blog. I think I know what I'm going to do, but in this case I don't want to write too much about it until I've made some progress.

6. Philanthropy: Free month. If I see a charitable opportunity I may take it, but no specific goal.

7. Side hustles: Perform more tasks on Mechanical Turk. It's this thing on Amazon.com that I learned about from either The Simple Dollar or Get Rich Slowly, where you do small tasks online for pennies. The money gradually builds up and they pay you once you reach $10. I started it this month and made almost $2, but I had to stop and devote all my time to the RFE for NT's residency. Which brings me to:

8. Other: Finish compiling evidence and send out RFP by second week in July. This is an absolute requirement for NT to stay in the U.S., so I wanted to put it up there as a concrete goal and make sure I get it done in time!

1. Debt: Pay off at least $1600 of debt.
Progress: DONE! $1804 paid
Balance as of 6/30: $395,579
Goal balance was: $395,783

2. Savings: Save at least $1440
Progress: DONE!
* $620 to the emergency fund
* $120 to AS's retirement
* $700 to the Wisconsin vacation

3. Fitness: Try out my new personal-trainer Wii game.
Status: Failed (unless I try it out tonight, which I'm not sure I will)

4. Environmentalism: no goal this month

5. Creative/crafts: Crop art. DONE! Created a beans-and-grains version of the Obama symbol.

6. Philanthropy: Hold a vegan bake sale and raise money for a charity.
Status: While I started doing the research and recruiting friends, I soon discovered that Minneapolis ordinances are very strict concerning food sales, so I would be unable to hold a bake sale. One charitable act that came up randomly this month: donated $10 to a walk to raise funds for lupus research.

So overall, I completed 3 out of 5 goals, and one I was unable to complete through no fault of my own. (The fitness one, though, is down to pure laziness. )

One of AS's student loans hit today, with $60 going to principal.

That means we've paid $1804 of our debt this month, exceeding our goal of $1600.

That's the last payment that will come today, and I don't think I'll do anything else toward my June goals (unless I work out tonight, which considering my recent lack of any desire to do so is unlikely), so I'll write a wrap-up of my goals shortly and set some for July. (I haven't really decided on them so I'm not sure how specific or fleshed-out they will be.)

So I switched to prepaid in late March, meaning it's been 3 months. I initially paid $241.63 to get us set up with phones and minutes.

NT's phone is with Net10, and he started with 60 days of service. So we had to buy more minutes for him in late May, at $32.65 for 300 minutes and another 60 days of service. (He hadn't used up his previous 300, but they roll over as long as you re-up in time.)

AS just used up her first 1,000 minutes, so I bought her another 1,000 at $107.40. (We hope to get this batch to last longer than three months; AS has gotten much better this past month at controlling her conversations with her mom, and at insisting that she call her mom via Skype vs. her mom calling her.)

So our total cost so far is $381.68.

So far, if I divide our total cost by 3, our new plan has cost us $127.23 per month. However, we have a good chance of gradually getting that average down. I've barely used any of my 1,000 minutes and I don't need to re-up until March of next year unless I run out of minutes before then.

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

One of AS's student loans hit: $113 went to principal, increasing the amount we exceeded the June goal: $1744 toward debt instead of $1600.

NT just got news in the mail that he's getting some kind of payment from one of his pension companies: 214 pounds if he agrees to have his fund rolled into a new company or something. Sounds good to us, so all we have to do is send back confirmation and they'll mail us a check (or cheque, I guess ). I don't know when it will come, but then we'll mail it back to his mom to put in his UK checking account (to avoid currency conversion fees) and we'll put it in our baby/emergency fund.

No other money news for now. It's a hot, lazy Saturday and I'm just trying to get my banking done before we go over to our friends' house for dinner. (Yay, not cooking! )