HEy I just noticed I had 1300 points so I bought myself a black user name - pretty sweet. Black is my favorite color. I Would have got a glowing name - well I don't think I had enough points - but I use firefox and not internet explorer. That sucks. LOL. I might buy it anyway in the future. I use explorer on occasion.

I am just vegging out waiting for the kids to wake up. Baby slept through the night again. I in turn was wide awake at 5am, but that is good. I feel like my life has been turned upside down the last few months. Usually I wake up early to work out and get stuff done, but that has been so out the window of late. It feels good to have some time.

Well yesterday I spent $30 at amazon. I invested in some mutual fund books. I figure it was a good investment and I Was too lazy to go used. I intended to look at the used options on amazon but they were only $1 or $2 cheaper than new so I figured what the heck.

I also started my christmas shopping. I had intended to start sooner, and I Was feeling silly yesterday that I Felt so behind though it is only Oct. 6 or so - LOL. I am kind of laughing at myself - still have lots of time. But during my lunch break yesterday I perused ebay and found some cute things for my mom. Spent about $20 on 2 gifts (most of it as shippping of course). I had budgeted to buy her one gift - $20 so I was pleased I squeezed out 2. HEr birthday and christmas shopping is DONE - woot.

I also donated $20 to a co-workers grandkids' school - in return for wrapping paper. A good cause and one less thing to buy otherwise - eh. I usually do pretty generous with that stuff so spent 1/2 as much as usual. well within my donation budget.

But overall a lot of money spent this last week.

Set up an appointment with the estate attorney who is a friend of the family. We'll see how that turns out. We don't have significant assets on one hand, but if both my dh and I bite the dust we have $1 mil insurance between the 2 & significant home equity house. I decided we really need to get things squared away. ALive not worth much, dead worth a lot. Don't tell the kids. ; ) Plus as a CPA I know you really need to get your affairs squared away - because when you don't it gets ugly - see it time and time again with clients. I should know better, the fact it has taken this long is inexcusable. Anyway, hopefully by the end of the year we will have our affairs in order.

The Merill lynch guy has not sold any of the funds we asked him to. I am back to square one and want all of our money out - I am so fed up with him - I have no idea what the deal is. It is dh's IRA so he has to take care of it - and he isn't actually in a hurry. Gah. Something else I would like to take care of NOW which there is no reason why I couldn't have transferred the funds by now. I just wanted him to sell so I knew how much cash was in there. I am tired of waiting, will probably start one of the transfers, I guess it doesn't matter if he hasn't sold it yet - I have an idea how much money is in there. LEt the new custodians ask for the money...

I hope to get some time this weekend to go over the budget with dh. PArt of the problem is I do all the money and then he kind of does his own thing, and we don't communicate great. HE doesn't buy much, but one month I will be thinking we need to crack down, and he'll go out and buy a DVD or something. Anyway, I have made a sample budget but he hasn't put any input in, so I am hoping he can look at it this weekend and we can revise it again to fit both our needs. Same with the christmas budget - I put it together but may be missing something he intends to buy, etc.

Communication is good - LOL.

I also had an epiphany. When I Was on maternity we lived on very little. It seemed we spent A LOT less on gas which really helped, and little incidental work expenses. But otherwise I Wasn't really sure why we did so good.

Anyway, our credit card bill averages $1800/month, my goal lately has been $1600, and without all of our vacation stuff and gymboree which I paid for with extra money, our cc bill would have been $1200 this month. Why? I then had the epiphany that when we felt broke we didn't spend money and well, that is why we got by so well on maternity leave - LOL. Seems simple but I didn't really get it before. The amazing thing is we didn't feel at the time we gave up that much. That is the beauty of budgeting I guess - if you do it right.

My husband laughed at the "it would be $1200 except for this and this and this" reasoning - but this is all stuff out of the budget now no problem. We are not going to disneyland or spending $300 on my birthday again anytime soon. Guaranteed...

I am starting to see why I should have $700/month for the temp savings funds - it is really there. Yay!

Also, I have always been a general budgeter but once we started throwing everything on cards to get cash back I have really struggled. Obviously where I went wrong was budgeting a total for the cc. IT used to work, but we only put very miscellaneous and extra things on it before. It was never going to work until we sat down and did a line by line budget by expenses on the credit card -and look I saved $600 easy peasy. IT's crazy. Well, we're getting there anyway...