Well just had to say I jumped it with the Net Worth. It was up an additional $250 after Friday's stock market close. Not that it means much for the long haul, but always nice to end the month on a nice note like that.

I was listening to Dave Ramsey Friday (some older podcasts from the last 2 weeks) and it was really depressing. Lots of people just at the end of the rope. A little off from the usual. IT also seems a lot of layoffs in the air. & yet the economy seems to be chugging along all the same. Extra scary since it seems like the beginning of something big and prolonged. We'll see. I won't continue listening to Dave Ramsey if it is so depressing though. What a bummer. It's just, sad, to listen to.

I guess it is in the fall that we get a lot of one-time bills. Got car registration, newspaper subscription, zoo membership renewal, etc., etc. I finally got off my butt and went through Quicken for the last year and eyed all the unusual 1-time expenses that I really haven't particularly squeezed in the budget. I only came up with about $500/year. (I really expected it to be worse). I have been putting $800/month away as a kind of escrow fund for bigger things, but all of our auto insurance went down at least $500/year - I think more. So I can breathe a sigh of relief on that. I will continue to do $800/month but tap it for all of the little things as well. It makes things easier. It also means I can still budget $100/month to savings, $50/kids and $400/month retirement like I have been planning. Wasn't sure if I'd have to shift some to "Escrow" or come up with another plan for another $50-$100/month. So just getting to the point where we really don't need much else but to hit retirement hard.

I still feel like we are setting the stage to be doing well, but just not quite there yet. It's all relative, just a bit out of our comfort zone until we can hit retirement more heavily. I don't think it is something we have ever done, but always seems to be something. (Sure we have always done the 10% but for the long haul it is just not enough). For now figuring out preschool and trying to get our efund to an acceptable level, before we hit retirement hard - moving above the 10% crawl. It's one thing to be stressed out that we aren't hitting retirement as hard as we would like. It's another thing to think that we don't have to worry about buying a house or starting an emergency fund or paying off debts like so may of our peers. But I see too much room for improvement to sit back and happy. We already did that and it didn't do much for us.

Preschool is stressing me out a bit as it is official that LM starts next week. However, honestly, I just wrote a check for $480 for September. It isn't so bad. We were paying just over $400/month for BM when I joined pfadvice, but I restructured it to save gas money and preschool money - been paying more like $300 lately. September is a shorter month too. But if I look at it that way we aren't that far behind where we started. Just temporary. Plus I no longer have the car payment which I was juggling at the time. I am sure I will get a raise to cover LM's portion soon enough anyway. But if not, we'll survive.

While I was looking through Quicken I saw some car repair payments and decided to dig out dh's car records and check on the tire situation. As organized as I usually am I have no repair bills in there (just a bunch of oil change recipts). Given that I know the car has hardly ever needed a repair, doesn't sound so bad but Quicken shows we spent $186 last fall. I remember we took it in to get it checked out before our Disneyland trip and I remember being shocked that nothing needed replacing/repairing. BUT all the same we spent $185. I Am sure those were new tires. So I will definitely call to get a quote for them on tires and compare to what my dad comes up with. If it's in the $200 range, the convenience of just going there and letting them do it would be great. Dh has a little car with little tires so mine will probably be pricier. I would also consider longer warranties since the car is newer and I plan to keep them forever. (However, with all the flat tires and endless construction, maybe I should just go with 40k mile tires. They might all get obliterated anyway...). Anyway, I still have hope I will find that dang receipt. But looking at dh's tires it seems obvious they are rather new. Well, I haven't given up hope of finding it - just not where I expected. I guess I can ask our mechanic to check his records so I can be sure.

Oh yeah it is really HOT (well over 100) so we decided to stay home all weekend. Forget the trains. It is just awful out there. We went to the pool twice today (could walk but didn't because didn't want to fry). & I told the kids we could go Sunday and Monday. We really rarely go because it just gets hectic. Dh would never take them - lord knows why - I wish he would work on their swimming more. They have all day but he is just not a swimming guy. My days and weekends and nights are so filled. But not much planned this weekend so decided to enjoy. I love going early in the morning. No need for sunblock and the place was deserted. Just very nice and peaceful - just a handful of people swimming laps. If there were any shade I'd probably go plop by the pool and read or spend more time floating on a raft with a drink pretending like I was at a resort. Hehe. But tonight wasn't so bad either - everyone must be out of town. I guess that is the other reason we never go - turns into a madhouse once everyone gets off work during the week. The only saving grace is our kids tend to stay up late and it it so hot we can swim until 8 or 9 sometimes. It thins out and we can sometimes enjoy.