I know, I know - the year is not over yet! But all the bills are paid, and my head is in 2011. (Most any expenses left for now through 31st should be charged and paid in January).

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Anyway, first, dh already sold the game system he bought yesterday. He bought it for $50 (a GameCube plus about 15 games). He ended up selling the GameCube in a couple of hours, for $20 (with the crappy games). He posted 11 games on Amazon, and already sold 7 of them. His profit on the games is $100 so far.

So, $50 purchase, $120 in sales, means net of $70 with 4 games left to sell.

IT's been kind of slow lately, indeed, but deals like this aren't every day, either! Woohoo.

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Anyway, estimating my December expenses, at face value we spent $4k more than last year.

BUT, it was kind of a crazy year. The increase is due to medical expenses and some major home maintenance we did.

INCOME:

My compensation was about $10k lower than last year. Most of it was the economy, but I also lost out on a lot of overtime with dh's surgery. (This year will only be worse since I will be the one having surgery during busy season at work. Joy!)

The only other thing of note was that we seemed to do better on extra income this year than last year. About $300 more income??? Interesting since ebay sales have been rather slow since summer. We seemed to do a ton more focus groups this year. Our focus groups and ebay type sales netted about $1700 for the year, thus far.

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EXPENSES:

Our auto expenses were the same as last year. (Well, except I didn't have to spend $2200 to replace a side door this year!) Everything else was about the same.

Childcare/Preschool - with LM in public school we saved $500 this year. Should be more substantial next year!

Clothing - we spent about half as much as last year. Lord knows how or why.

Dining out - we spent almost $1k less this year. Again, lord knows how. We don't eat out that much to begin with...

Way less on extra-curricular this year. WE actually signed up BM For 2 activities that were canceled (one them, one us). He quit karate this year, and soccer was only $100 (about all we spent for the year).

We spent a little more on gifts (like $100?) but we also bought both our parents used Wiis. So, I think we got some good bang for our buck.

Groceries - we spent less than last year. Averaged about $450/month for groceries and any household misc. items, pet food/litter, etc. This number seems to go down every year. I think we are just always constantly improving. But I have noticed this year in particular we have been spending less on groceries. We may come out $600 ahead this year over last year.

Home maintenance - spent $2k to paint our house - a chunk of change there.

Medical - spent about $5k more than prior year, with dh's surgery and all.

Misc - spent $1k over last year. That would be dh's T.V.

Property taxes - $300 lower than last year.

Utilities are up about $500 with our super high speed internet and TV upgrades. Of course, all the utilities seemed to increase their rates as well (our usage is rather consistent for water, gas, electricity).

Vacation - spent another $250 about, this year. Not bad at all. Last year we staycationed, plus a couple of weekends alone around the state. This year we went to Colorado and Hawaii, but didn't have to pay too much for the trips. Most of the $1900 vacation money we spent was to visit my Grandma in Colorado. It was a last minute declining health kind of thing. Vacation wasn't much on our spending horizon considering the type of year it was.

Vet care - this was a new category since my cat has been pretty low maintenance for the last decade. About 12 years old, we spent $1k on her this year. We paid $300 to find out nothing was wrong with her (she was drinking a lot more than usual) and about $700 for her urinary infection (emergency, etc.). BTW, she has been totally fine since.

Everything else was pretty consistent with last year.

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I wish I could say next year would be way better, but 2011 looks to shape up a lot like 2010. Deja vu as I face going under the knife in a few weeks myself. I am still waiting to hear back from my biopsy (doctor assumes it might be inconclusive or set out for a second opinion, which doesn't sound too great), but he put me on the surgery queue on Friday since it was taking so long. I should get a surgery date soon - he wants me to have it in January unless it comes back malignant - then it would be like next week!!! I just feel in total limbo in the meantime. Since work is so much more quiet May - November, lord knows why this stuff always has to happen this time of year!

That said, dh's surgery in January went far better than expected, so I am not too stressed about it. I am just realistic that I may not be able to earn any overtime this year, as I recover.

Anyway, looking at the numbers, I do think I can get about $7500 in our ROTHS. $500 credit card rewards will go to my ROTH. I can put 10% of my overtime (which may not amount to much this year). So, I am thinking the focus group/ebay income can help us max out. That said, we may find we need it for medical bills next year. But hopefully the medical bills will calm down after 2011. Any overtime I can earn is going to medical bills - why I only guess I could put 10% to retirement. (Dh is still in limbo himself since the cyber knife procedure has not been ruled out. & it sounds pretty expensive - so who knows. We have insurance, but between that and my surgery we may need to come up with $6k out-of-pocket this year - that is our max. From what I have heard about it, it's not a cheap machine or procedure!).