Saturday was haircut day in our household. I bit the bullet and got a super-short hairdo that I'm fairly confident could be classified as "fierce." I love it! It's actually shorter than NT's, and he's been giving me pointers about how best to style it. Our barber only charges $15 per haircut and hasn't raised his prices in at least three years. We tip him $5 on each job because he is really good for the price (and a great guy to boot), so the total was $60 for the three of us.

Saturday night we went to the restaurant we'd picked out, Broders Pasta Bar. Even though we knew it was high-end-ish, the name led us to believe it would be a casual, first-come-first-serve atmosphere, so we didn't bother making reservations. Turns out there was an hour-and-a-half wait! We got carryout instead, shared a carafe of wine while waiting, and enjoyed the food at home (it was amazing--we'll be going back--with reservation made next time). Spent $65 instead of the expected $100-$120, because we only had a bit of wine instead of the probable bottle or two, plus no tip and no appetizer. We decided to put our saved money into our vacation fund--why not? We'll be eating out a ton then too, so it's going to the same purpose.

A friend came over Sunday to sell NT a couple CDs because he was hard up for money and needed some to tide him over for the weekend. I don't know much about this friend's financial situation but he seems pretty impulsive and free-spirited. After explaining that he'd gotten down to his last $4 and needed to fill up his car before payday, he proceeded to pull out a new Apple iTouch and show it off! Someone asked when he got it, and he said he'd gotten a "windfall" a couple weeks ago and used it to buy this. Boy, it looked like a neat gadget, but it'll take me awhile before I stop associating it with someone who was so disorganized, they were down to $4 two weeks later. Not like I don't blow my windfall money on luxuries sometimes, but I at least look ahead and make sure I've got money to cover the basics first.

UK credit card payment hit: $82 to principal. Since I made a huge payment to it, the minimum payoff each month has gone down by about $50. But that's OK, because the minimum payment itself has been reduced by $70. The goal with the UK account is to keep a small surplus in there so we can cover flat-rental expenses from flat-rental income and not have to transfer money over at $50 a pop (not including bank fees on the other end). So having a much smaller payment is good. And the interest rate on that credit card is low and fixed, so there are much more urgent debts to pay off quickly.

Anyway, that's $82 down, $2,918 to go on my October goal, and $44,984 to go on my Big-Picture Goal. (That goal got an artificial boost when I used part of a student loan to pay some of my personal loan off. I decided to go with it because it would get confusing to catgegorize part of one student loan under CC debt. I'm going to attack the student loans and mortgages with the same vigor once I'm out of CC debt anyway.)

Several good strokes of luck this week, and many fun things planned as well:
- Got a $50 Target card from one of my bosses for the crazy week I had.
- Got word from another supervisor that I'll be given another batch of writing assignments this fall.
- Friend's birthday party tonight.
- Haircuts tomorrow, and I'm going to coax my barber into giving me a supershort cut (unless he thinks it will look terrible with my round face).
- Nice dinner out tomorrow (Broder's Pasta Bar--never tried it but read and heard good things about it).

Sunday will be all about shopping, cooking, cleaning and homework, but two out of three days will be fun!

...in the checking account!

This was the first week AS's paycheck was due to go up to its pre-tuition-tax-withholding levels (her free tuition had exceeded tax-exempt levels and so for six pay periods we had about $250 more withdrawn from her checks). I knew her check used to be $900-something, but I just lowballed it in my budget estimations rather than looking it up (since AS's paychecks are notoriously unpredictable anyway) and put $900 even for today's deposit.

Well, I finally got a chance to check my account, and it actually was $1,005.22! Nice one! I put the excess aside for some medical expenses; I have some little dribs and drabs of copays and stuff that I've been putting off paying because I couldn't decide where to take the money from now that my September and October funds have both been depleted. Now I can pay all those little bills and won't have to wait till November (or take it out of some other category). It's about time we got a little stroke of luck!

Nothing exciting happening moneywise so far this week.

This is going down in history as one of my worst health years so far. Now I've got a cold/sore throat, just as my teeth start to heal! I have no idea if I should reschedule my final checkup with the periodontist tomorrow.

Ugh, ugh, ugh. I'm only at work because I knew my boss (the only other proofreader) is going home early today. Plus I don't know if I'll be worse off tomorrow and REALLY need a sick day.

I just hope I get better, because we've got a fun few weeks ahead of us; Project Runway night tomorrow, a friend's 30th on Friday, nice dinner out on Saturday, another TV night with friends next Thursday, and leaving for vacation next Friday, to tour VA/WV/DC/MD for 10 days. I want to be able to really enjoy everything!

Luckily this seems to be a minor, if annoying, ailment. Hopefully we'll all shake it off soon. (Oh yeah, we've all got it. Did I mention that part?) Hopefully now that we've all had it for a day or two, we aren't contagious anymore. (Isn't that how it works?)

On the bright side, very easy cooking night; we're using the mushroom sauce we made this weekend, so all we have to do is boil some pasta and reheat the sauce!

I just got caught up reading all the posts from Friday on! I've been so busy at work and home that I haven't been keeping up like I usually do, and haven't had time to write much either.

Last week was crazy busy at work--my time was almost 100% billable, which is unusual for me. Then at home, AS and I are working hard to get a housekeeping rhythm going so NT doesn't have anything to do but homework. Part of the job is keeping an eye on him and making sure he doesn't do any surreptitious housework! It's hard--today I woke up and some of the dishes I'd left for today were done, and the counters cleaned. Grrr...

NT had to write papers and do homework all weekend, so AS and I took a page from a friend's book--he's doing lots of batch cooking and freezing so there's less to do later in the month--and did a lot of cooking for the week. In addition to veggie "chicken" parmesan for lunch and veggie "roast" dinner with 3 side dishes on Saturday; veggie brats/burgers, instant mashed potatoes and cabbage & apples for lunch, and pasta with spicy garlic toss and oven-roasted cherry tomatoes for dinner Sunday; and several strawberry and/or banana milkshakes; we made:
- Big serving of the cabbage & apple dish (we'll have the rest Thursday)
- Two loaves of multigrain bread and one of banana bread, for lunches & breakfasts
- Carrot (with tops) soup to have for lunches
- Radish salad (I'll try that tonight)
- Salsa for tacos later this week
- Mushroom/tarragon cream sauce for pasta later this week

This was partly to save work later in the week, partly to make sure some of the veggies got used while they were at their peak.

We're trying to be extra-frugal with our grocery shopping so we can have a surplus next week and go out to dinner somewhere nice. So far the budget looks like it's working out exactly to plan!

OK, I feel comfortable posting an October goal now that I have a pretty good feel for what's going to happen with AS.

I feel OK about throwing the maximum we have toward debt this month, because I think we'll have enough to cover all the minimums for the forseeable future.

So my October goal is to pay off $3,000 in debt.

I just heard from AS, who just had a private chat with one of her bosses.

It sounds like she will get laid off, and soon! Hooray!

The boss was very nice; she said AS was on her list of possible layoffs, but that she could spare a couple people because she'd saved more money than she needed to. She said she'd heard that AS might not be happy with her job and would want to move on soon, and was there anything she could do to change that? AS said probably not. The boss said she'd made her decisions a little easier and thanked her.

If only all people at her job were this nice and clear about things, she probably wouldn't want to leave this bad! But anyway, it's a good situation, because she was able to say in not-so-many words, Please lay me off. And her boss was able to imply that she would make it so.

It's not official yet, but it sounds like it will happen, and that it will be announced before we go on vacation.

She'll only get one week of severance pay, but at least she'll qualify for unemployment, which should cover health care and keep us from cutting back on anything except extra debt repay. That's a load off our minds! And this would mean AS could afford to do some volunteer work on spec, which is one way to maybe get a job in the field she wants.

Yesterday we got a check for $3,293.72 from the university NT's attending. We received too much financial aid and I thought they'd send the excess straight back to the loan company, but instead they sent it to us.

I was going to just deposit it and write a check to the loan company, but then it struck me: Why use the money to pay off a 5.7% interest loan when I've got that 8.9% personal loan sitting there with over $22,000 left to pay?

So I'm going to use the check to pay off $3,293.72 of my personal loan instead. I'm not sure how much money it will save us over time, but it certainly won't hurt matters any. So effectively, I haven't lowered my debt at all, but my CC/personal debt will be less and student loan debt will be more. Kind of like a little balance transfer to a lower-interest loan, but without the balance transfer fee.

Personal loan hit; $1,036 went to principal. Woo hoo! So my goal was to pay off $1,350, and I actually paid $2,041!

And that's $48,360 to go on my Big-Picture Goal. (I know I won't hit it but I still want to track my progress on it for the time being.)

Yesterday we were going to the mall for some much-needed clothes shopping and a movie. NT got over $100 in OT pay, and since we already reached our vacation goal that it would have gone to, we decided to divvy it up to help us shop for clothes. Good thing, because money doesn't go far at full-price stores (which we almost never shop at anymore). We all made some very smart purchases and got things we needed, and actually got our movie for free, because American Eagle was offering a free movie ticket for trying on some jeans and another ticket for buying them. Two of us liked our jeans so we got 5 movie tickets altogether! Now we can go next week and only have to pay for one ticket between us.

It felt oddly foreign to go to the mall and shop and go to a movie. We even ate at the food court! It did make me think I like shopping and eating out, but the only way at this point I could add more money in for that would be to divert money away from travel, and I think that's our main leisure priority. We can't have all our wants at once, but we could always reprioritize later if we felt like it.

The change jar yielded $84.83 when the bank counted and deposited it! Our vacation is fully funded and then some. We're going to have a lot of fun in October.

Spoke to AS just now. Her job is getting more and more miserable by the day. More worrisome, it seems to be sapping her energy and confidence, both of which she's going to need if she's going to get a job to match her new degree. (It is a new field for her, but I know she can talk her way in, just not with her self-esteem at this low state.)

We talked about how she may need to get out before she finds a job, so she can lose the negativity and also have more time to devote to the job search. We put almost her entire paycheck toward extra debt repay, so with a few other cutbacks, we could survive on just two checks for a little while. All that would happen is that our debt repay would slow to a crawl, and some of our discretionary spending would have to stop temporarily. Of course we'd have to pay for health insurance and bus passes, but otherwise our necessary expenses wouldn't go up.

We decided to wait a week or two. Layoffs are going to be announced soon, and she wouldn't want to give notice before that. If she gets laid off instead of quitting she'll probably get a nice severance package, which could make this a much easier time for us. I've never hoped for someone to get laid off before, but there's a first time for everything! Anyway, she's putting out some feelers, so there's a slight chance she'll get a nibble from some company before she has to quit. But I'm steeling myself for her quitting, just to be prepared.

It's kind of scary, but overall it's a gamble that I think would pay off. AS has fearsome interview and job-hunting skills, but the barrage of blows to her self-esteem from bad co-workers, an unstimulating yet stressful position, a dismal fiscal situation in her department and a revolving stable of ever-worsening bosses have conspired to weaken her somewhat. I think even just the satisfaction of telling them she's leaving will do wonders! Once she's back in fighting shape, I've no doubt she can find a great job, probably one that pays a good deal more than her current crapfest.

...of my new higher vacation savings goal! And since we have $25 automatically going into the account in two weeks, and a big ol' jar of change to take into the bank today, we will easily exceed, maybe even by $100. I think I will accumulate up to $100 more than my goal, and if we want to splurge on something during the vacay we will; if not, the excess will go into savings for our next vacation.

I have a nice big payment going to my personal loan tomorrow, though it will probably not hit until Monday. That will get me to my September goal and then some!

I've been thinking recently that I need to acknowledge my "Big-Picture Goal" will not be reached by 12/31/09. I'll have more money going toward mortgage and student loans and thus less and less to put toward CC debt, at least unless one of us gets a higher-paying job (too uncertain to count on). Also, if I want to start trying to get pregnant, I'll have to divert what extra money I do have into creating a proper emergency fund, and expanding my grocery/household budget to include baby supplies.

I'm now thinking that my main goal should be paying off my personal loan ($23,614 right now), which at 8.99% is by far the highest-interest debt I have. After that I really feel I need to pay my dad the rest of the money I owe him for helping us with our condo down payment. (I paid him $5,000 of the $12,000 within the first two years, but I haven't made a payment since then.) I was going to pay off ALL CC debt and then end with that, since it's no interest and no minimum payments. But if it's going to be several years before we're CC debt-free, I need to pay him by the end of next year either way. It's one of those emotional decisions that doesn't make the most financial sense; I know my dad is good with his money and has no urgent need to get that back, but I want him to feel like he raised a daughter who keeps her word.

Recuperating from an illness or procedure for me is like living life in the outskirts, slightly out of focus. It's hard for me to focus on anything outside of my own health, and I keep to myself more so I feel like the world notices me less.

Today I finally feel a bit more in focus. Yesterday I did go back to work, but I barely communicated with anyone beyond the necessities. Today I feel more up to talking, and people respond to that unconsciously--more people are addressing me in the halls, etc. I'm moving down to 2 Ibuprofens at a time versus 3, and it seems to be working just as well, so I assume the pain is a little less and the healing is happening.

Anyway, beginning to post and follow everyone's blogs is part of coming out of my daze. I'll be going back through the past few days to catch up on your news!

Moneywise, not too much has happened, except:

- We did get about $32 deposited into PayPal for our 3 old, semifunctional iPods. I recommend the site: buymytronics.com. You have to pay your own shipping but they responded quickly and were legit.

- Half.com deposited about $85 for the last few weeks of book sales. The rush appears to be over, but NT did decide to drop one of his classes, so we posted the textbooks, some on half.com and the rest on textbookX.com. Never used that site, so I'll let you know my experience with them! They suggested a higher price for some of the books so I decided to try getting more money that way.

- NT got another $3 from Pinecone!

- Found a necklace my brother gave AS for Christmas many years ago, and NT took it to a jeweler to ask if it was valuable or just costume jewelry. He said that it was 14K gold and a real diamond, and that we might be able to get $100 or so at a pawn shop for it! We'll probably try to take it somewhere over the weekend and see if that's the case.

- Finally sent NT's UK taxes off. Really crossing my fingers again that I did them correctly! He normally does not file (UK will take care of it for you most of the time) so I'm slightly more qualified because I understand US taxes at least. But British legalese and bureaucrat-speak is just different enough (from the US jargon I'm used to) that I feel like I'm wading through clotted cream when I read it!

- Needed a new kitchen faucet; it sprang a leak when we put the new Brita filter on, and NT realized it had rusted through at the top. Was able to afford by using some of my paltry emergency fund, a bit of the home-improvement garage-sale money, and some of our household/grocery money.

- We also had to buy a new vacuum cleaner this month (they stopped making the replacement bags for our old one!), so our grocery money is looking a bit thin. AS and I have taken over the cooking since NT started college, so this weekend will be our first stab at a budget-conscious weekly menu. I think we'll do all right. We've actually been keeping up with the household work and cooking fairly well! This frees up NT to do his homework instead.

- Received a notice from the condo office about a noise complaint, which they suspect may be due to us not having the required 75% of floor covered by carpet. Now let me admit, we do not have any carpet and are in violation of this rule. BUT we've lived here for 5 years and never had a complaint, so I suspect the noise was from moving out the old furniture for the garage sale and assembling/moving into place all our new furniture. Which would have made a lot of noise even if we'd had rugs, I think. So we're not sure if we'll have to buy rugs and put them down, or what. I just hope we don't get some kind of stupid fine, because we've always been tolerant of neighbors' noisy renovation projects and NEVER have turned them in, even when they worked kind of later than they should. I hope instant karma favors us and lets us weasel out of this one without hemorraghing a lot of money.

Well, I guess that was actually more money news than I thought I had!

Thanks for everybody's encouragement and sympathy. I took today off and I wrote in sick for tomorrow, too--there's no pain so the medicine is working that way, but for some reason my stomach isn't tolerating either Vicodin or Ibuprofen too well--I threw up last night and again tonight. I think it's a matter of not taking anything on an empty stomach, but I don't want to be at work nauseous!

The doctor said he felt it all went well. It was very very unpleasant and I panicked much more than I thought I would during the procedure, but it didn't hurt at all because of the Novocaine. He had to scrape and plane some teeth, and "move the gumline" and "smooth some jagged bone" on the other side. Right now I have some kind of plasticy dressing so I can't tell if the shape of my teeth and gums feels dramatically different. Probably best I can't feel it. Unfortunately the dressing tastes/smells slightly chemicaly or mediciny, so when I'm feeling nauseous that doesn't help.

I'm going in to see him on Wednesday for a follow-up. I'm going to ask him if there's anything my dentist could have done to clean my teeth better and prevent this from happening. I'd hate to switch dentists, but I'm a little disturbed how much there was to scrape off. Maybe he can give me some advice to pass along to my regular dentist. My semiannual checkup is next week, and I'm going to keep that appointment so they can get to know my new tooth situation.

Well, time to go rinse my mouth and try to get some sleep. The nausea kept me up most of last night, so I napped off and on all day. Hope I can fall asleep normally tonight!

My gums surgery is scheduled for 2:30 pm today. I'm nervous and excited. If this means the end of feeling unhealthy for awhile, I'll be so happy. If my random health problems continue, I may need to learn transcendental meditation or something. I don't deal well with the feeling of my body slowly breaking down. Obviously I will have to get used to that feeling at some point, but at 34 it feels way too soon. (Yes, I'm very melodramatic when it comes to my health.)

AS suggested moving my physical up this year, as I seem to have lots of things to discuss with my doctor. I may consider it if I don't feel free and clear soon.

Anyway, here's hoping my surgery goes well and I'm not in pain for too long afterward. I bought some pureed soups in case I don't feel like chewing for awhile.

I just hope I feel up to housework, since I'm trying to get NT to stay away from chores and focus on work and school (which combined give him about a 60-hour work week not counting homework).

AS's student loan payment posted today, with $64 going to principal. So that's $1,005 down, $345 to go on my September goal. I only have one payment left before I hit my goal, a big one to my personal loan that should process around 9/13.

We've taken out student loans for NT's first semester of college; he went to his first class yesterday! He's working full-time and taking a full load of classes this semester, so I don't expect I'll see him much. After this semester he intends to take it easier.

I don't know the exact breakdown of the loans, because AS did the final bits of work. I think we took about 11,000 out for the first two semesters or something. At first that worried me because I only estimated $40,000 in loans for four years of college, but NT's already got a semester's worth of credits under his belt, so he won't have to take this many classes most semesters. I'm still hoping we can get his education for $40,000 or less, especially if I pay for most of his books upfront and don't use loan money for that.

So, when I find out the exact loan amounts, I'm still going to estimate the remainder of $40,000 in my debt list, rather than adding more. (Does that sentence make sense to anyone but me? Probably not.)

All our mortgage payments hit today. $488 to principal, broken down thusly:
US mortgage: $300
UK #1: $130
UK #2: $28
UK #3: $30

So that's $941 down, $409 to go on my September goal, and no movement on my Big-Picture Goal.

In other good news, my U.S. mortgage just dipped below $180,000!

My credit card payment hit: $243 to principal. Now I've got $453 down, $897 to go on my September goal, and $49,396 to go on the Big-Picture Goal.

This is the fun part of the month when all my bills hit. I never thought I'd find it fun until recently.

Payment to the UK credit card hit. A pleasant surprise: apparently due to the big extra payment we made earlier this month, almost all of this payment went toward principal: US$210. So that's $210 down, $1140 to go on our September goal, $49,639 to go on the Big-Picture Goal.

We finally found out the details of our mortgage adjustment. On Nov. 1, the monthly payment will be going up $79.97. Then it will adjust every year after that.

Considering we can't do a damn thing about refinancing as long as we owe about what it's worth, $80 is a relief. We can definitely work that into our budget. And the interest rate is only going up to 5.99%, so that's still a good rate for the time being.

If it looks like we aren't going to have enough equity to refi by October 2009, we can start pouring extra money toward equity instead of other debt. I just hope house values start to rebound a bit by then to make it easier.

Thanks for the advice on my last entry! Both commenters said to go with my gut when categorizing spending. Hmm...well, my gut says the barber is a household necessity like shampoo--and like shampoo, we go to the cheapest one possible ($20 each with tip). And calling the "Mortgage/utilities" category "Mortgage/utilities/telecom" allows me to lump my phone and cable in that expense while still sort of calling it out as a separate category. (Telecom fits with the level of necessity of owning a nice condo in a good neighborhood: I don't NEED to live in a nice place, nor do I NEED cellphones and high-speed Internet, but it sure is important to me.)

So my breakdown prediction for my new October budget is as follows:
Mortgage/utilities/telecom: $2044.18 (28% of take-home)
Debt repay: $2687.67 (37%)
Spending/entertainment: $1489.66 (20%)
Household/grocery: $1059.49 (15%)

I'm fairly happy with those percentages. Debt repay has gone down and spending up since the last time I really calculated it. That's because I realized after our England trip how important travel was to my family, especially me. It's a little sobering to see 20% when you add up all our discretionary spending, but I think it's worth it so far.

The Mortgage etc. category will go up in November and I'll probably take that money out of Debt repay. But if AS gets a higher-paying job eventually, I would like most of that money to go toward the debt-repay category. I'd like to see that percentage get back up over 40%, at least for a little while.

Of course I'll need to start saving for babies soon, and when/if we actually have one (or more), the household budget will go through the roof.

I like seeing how my spending breaks down, but I don't always feel the same way about what bills go to which categories. The four main categories I use are:
Household/grocery expenses
Spending/entertainment
Mortgage/utilities
Debt repay

Most things are no-brainers (mortgage and condo fees go in Mortgage/utilities, credit cards and student loans go in Debt repay, Netflix and travel savings go in Spending/entertainment, medical and education go in Household/grocery), but others I'm unsure about:

- Is the cellphone package a utility or a household expense? It's our only phone service.

- Is the barber a household or a spending/entertainment expense? Looking groomed is sort of a work necessity, but then so are work clothes and we pay for those out of spending money or windfall money.

- Cable/Internet package: entertainment or household? We use the Internet for a lot of practical household things, but obviously entertainment is a large part of it, and cable is all entertainment.

Where do you think I should put these items? Or do you have a completely different way of breaking things down?

I added a new page to my blog, showing my household's net worth broken down by individual. Since we have a lot of younger members on SavingAdvice now, this should be instructive: We all three have lots of debt and haven't handled our money the best, but one of us bought a house young and started retirement contributions as soon as he entered the workforce. Now we're in our late twenties/mid-thirties, and guess who has positive net worth?

I received word of my 3% raise, effective in September. Hooray! It's the first raise in a year and a half so I'm happy. The other good news is if the company doesn't do too terribly for the next six months, we might get another raise in April, since that's the month we usually get raises.

Sold a few more books on half.com, and going to send in some old cellphones and iPods to various online places to get a few bucks. I hope to net $6 for three phones and $20 for two iPods (one of which works). Considering their battered condition I think that's fair enough. The only thing I don't like about the iPod place is that I have to pay shipping upfront. The cellphone site takes care of it and sent me a postage-paid envelope. But I'll pick the cheapest shipping possible for the iPods and cross my fingers.

AS saved us at least $40 (probably much more than that if you figure full price) on NT's textbooks by extensively hunting around for the best deals online. I'm confident we'll be able to sell back whatever books he doesn't keep on half.com. I love that site; you can get really nice prices on textbooks! We've sold 16 of the 31 books we posted their in early August, and made about $150 total.

NT got invited to join Pinecone and cashed his first $3 check yesterday. I really hope they have need of a 34YO woman soon! I'm registered and just waiting to hear from them.

Looking ahead to our vacation, it looks like it will be completely funded by Oct. 1. We leave Oct. 3, so once again we'll have paid for a vacation before we even leave. Make that about the second one in my adult life!

Sold two more books on half.com, for $8.99 and $9.99. Also, AS got a small health reimbursement of about $28. And, our change jar is almost full, so soon we can take it into the bank.

We use the debit card for grocery and household spending, so the only cash we use is our spending money. We all throw leftover change from our spending money (plus whatever I find on the ground) into a jar and it goes to the bank when it's full, to put toward whatever we're saving for. So it's a nice way of recycling some of our spending money for other fun stuff.

I had fun yesterday moving around the $1700 that I had saved for dental costs. I:
- Kept $450 for my surgery
- Paid a couple of small medical bills (about $80 total)
- Paid AS's student loan interest ($145)
- Allocated about $650 to my September personal loan payment for a little debt repay. This means we'll exceed our September goal!
- Added $95 to our home-improvement garage sale winnings, taking it to $450
- Replenished our health and education categories for September that I'd dipped into (bringing them back up to $40 each)
- Put the rest into our travel fund. We've now reached our initial $3000 goal, but I'm going to keep saving in hopes that we can afford some spa treatments too.

I'm feeling kinda crappy today. Time-o'-month stuff, plus fending something off by guzzling cranberry juice. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, count yourself lucky and move on!) Also, I missed a call yesterday that would have moved my dental surgery up, so I'm bummed about that, and it started me kind of obsessing over my teeth again. Not as bad as before, though, so it's OK.

Despite all that, I'm having a good money day, so that part of me is happy. Here's the scuttlebutt, smallest to biggest:
- Found several pennies on the ground today and yesterday.
- Sold another book on half.com, for 19.99!
- Figured out the main pieces of furniture we want to buy will only come to about $270, leaving about $80 to play with (kitchen storage, artwork). And we have a ride to Ikea tomorrow to pick everything out!
- I freaked out about my upcoming dental surgery costs today, so I called my insurance provider. To my relief, they swore up and down that the max out-of-pocket cost would be $448! That is much better than the $1000-$2000 my fevered imagination was expecting. That means I will easily cover my health and education expenses in September and have a bit left over for extra debt repayment (and possibly spa treatment on our vacation--I think we're all going to need some pampering, bad!)

Phew, the garage sale is finally over. I've just been recovering today.

All day Thursday, AS and I loaded up borrowed vehicles (first a station wagon, then a minivan, then the first car again) with items for the sale. The Craigslist person didn't come over or call about the bench/loveseat thing, so we threw that into the sale too. When we were done bringing all our stuff over, we helped organize and load everything into the garage to be locked up overnight. We were exhausted by the end! Luckily NT had dinner and wine ready, so that helped restore us.

The friend who loaned us the station wagon let us keep the car for Friday, too, thank goodness, because we had to be at the sale before 7 a.m. to help lug half the stuff into the driveway and arrange the stuff that was staying in the garage. This was a seven-family sale, did I mention that? And that we'd brought over nearly 750 books in addition to everything else? We didn't get the signs out till we were ready, so we weren't mobbed at 7:30 like last year (a relief). AS and I ran the checkout table most of the day, but sometimes it took a third person, because we had to make sure we wrote down each amount on the right family's page even if someone brought up items from different ones. After the sale we helped load the remaining stuff into the garage. We broke a table the hostess had just bought for $50 when we tried to move it! (Luckily she was able to return it to the store.)

Saturday, we slept in a bit, but we didn't have the car and it's about an hour-long bus ride with a switchover. The second day was at least as busy as the first day, and we finally sold our loveseat thing for $40. We were just glad to be rid of it! Several bookworms took away boxloads of books, which was gratifying (we have eclectic taste between the families, and all the books were in pretty good shape). We kept slashing prices more and more throughout the day to make sure we got rid of as much as possible. At the end, we were having a $2 bag sale, and just letting people cram whatever in, because everything left over was going to Goodwill. (And there was still a lot left over!)

After three days of amazing weather, the heavens opened on the late shoppers, so AS and I grabbed the cash and ran inside to start counting and divvying. All told, we had a profit of nearly $1700, and of that, $355 of it was for my family! We're putting it toward some cheap Ikea furniture, stuff we've been wanting for awhile.

I guess if we counted the $181 from the book and CD stores, the $80 from selling the futon, the $90 or so on half.com and the $50-ish on eBay, we pulled out over $750 from this clearout. Our trip will definitely be paid for as well as some sprucing up of our condo. And there's so much more room in our place! It feels positively airy.

It was exhausting, but in the end I think it was worth it.

OK, I hit on a very safe goal of paying off $1350 in September, pretty much the minimum. It's not that any of our student loans have come due, nor that our mortgage has reset (yet). I just don't know how much the dental bills will be or when they'll come due. If I decide later that some of our extra money can go toward debt, I may do that. That's if I get the bill for the dental surgery and it's not as bad as I think. I just don't think I can put off thinking about this bill until later, because I don't know what our student loan bills and mortgage are going to look like, so my whole budget is up in the air right when I look toward September/October/November.

So, $1350 it is, with the possibility of surpassing that by quite a bit if things work out.

Enough about raising money just to spend it for a moment. My personal loan payment hit, with $452 going to principal.

So I've paid $3587 in August, surpassing my goal of $3500! My goal debt balance was $421,204; instead, we're at $421,117.

And, in even bigger news, I now have $49,849 to go on my Big-Picture Goal. Yes, our credit card and personal debt is now under $50,000!!!!

Even as I celebrate, I realize that's a terrible amount for three people to have. But it's sooo much better than where we were in January.

Time to update my sidebar and set my very boring September goal now...

Some items did great, especially my antique book for about $35. Some did kind of cruddily, such as my trio of 80s books for $.99. LOL. Overall I made about $57 on five items, so not too bad. Hopefully eBay and PayPal (aka eBay) won't take too big a chunk.

Tonight we do final pricing, bagging, boxing and disassembly of garage-sale items. We also figure out what time I can have the friends' car.

Tomorrow interested party arrives at noon (hope she's prompt!) to look at (and hopefully take) loveseat. Get friends' car somehow, sometime, and load their stuff and mine in. Take over and drop off at other friends' house. Try and keep trips to a minimum. Track mileage so I can pay for gas. Maybe pick up some cheap furniture I saw at the Office Depot. Drop friends' car back off. Make baked goods to sell at sale, and plan lunches to take to sale.

Friday: get up super-early to help out at garage sale. All-day thing.

Saturday: Sleep in! Head over to help with close of garage sale. Divvy up money.

Sunday: Relax. Clean dusty condo. Go to Mall of America for new bookcases? Go have celebratory drinks!

Since we've been doing so great in the pre-sale of items, I went ahead and booked our hotels and car for the fall vacation. I think it's going to be a great trip, with lots of different scenery from rural West Virginia to trendy Dupont Circle in DC. If we do really really well at the sale, we might even have enough money to enjoy some spa treatments in Chesapeake Beach, Maryland!

Once the garage sale and redecoration madness is over, I'm going to have so much fun mapping out all our routes for the fall vacation. Yes, I'm that dorky.