Today is the day! Dropping by the bank mid day to deposit my paycheck. Will go home and pay the mortgage down below $200,000. (& eat lunch). WOOHOO!

Our 10-year anniversary of living in this city/buying this home will be Tuesday. We can also add "a mortgage balance under $200k" to the celebration. I don't care if the lender updates their website or not by then, but it's likely that I can log in next Tuesday and see no more "2" at the beginning of my balance.

We decided to take the kids out to a fondue feast to celebrate. So much of where we are today, when we decided to have kids, etc., comes from this brave move that we made. So, it is a lot to celebrate. I will post more about that next week.

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I mentioned my long-term goal trifecta was a no go at 12/31 because AmEx demanded payment 12/29 for my reward card.

Oh well - I still got two of three. & close enough on #3. At this point it is just semantics. I was going to pay the card off 1/1.

So, what next??? I mentioned all the reasons I need to continue saving cash and will likely pay a little extra to the mortgage. I also discussed tax efficiency as a motivator for some of my financial goals.

SO, I revisited the HSA. For about 5 seconds. Um, still a no go for us. Thing is our medical exenses were about $15k for 2011, and about $9000 of that is tax deductible. So, putting money in a HSA doesn't save me any taxes. Then I only get to deduct what I put in the HSA, AND California will probably never recognize HSAs as a tax shelter, which is a whole other thing. So, basically, the HSA still makes absolutely no sense for us. It might be worth the hassle if we have a huge jump in income down the road. But, I suppose I was rather relieved to find it still makes no sense. Not any more sense than it did last year, anyway. I just might actually have cash to put away this year, is the only difference, and why I revisted it. (This state not recognizing the tax break is just a huge nightmare, and kind of why I am relieved. Plain vanilla medical bills are deductible by both Fed and state if they amount to more than 7.5% of your income, and if you itemize. We have that WELL covered, refinance and all. Our interest and propety taxes alone will still be enough to itemize).

& I do share because so much financial advice is *one size fits all* but some of this tax stuff is really complicated. We will be personally skipping the 529 plans and the HSAs, because they are of absolutely not tax benefit to us, at current. (If my spouse was working, we would likely fund both. That is just a WHOLE other ballgame!)

We don't pay any taxes of note with just me working. So, ROTHs are our primary savings venue. We don't need the tax savings now - but we will take it later.

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I called the CU today. They told me that our underwriting was approved yesterday. Well, at least something is going on. Someone is supposed to call me today. & their "loan status" website is down.

All I know is squeaky wheel gets the grease. I am not accustomed to being a squeaky wheel, but I think it's a good idea for a 4% mortgage loan! So I am being pretty squeaky for my personality. This means I have to call them first thing Monday if no one calls me today. Why do I get the feeling I will be very squeaky with this whole process??? Well, I want them to be sick of me so the loan closes in time.

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How funny is this? Checked the kids' school lunch balance and LM's balance will be $0 after lunch today. How is that for planning? I had put in enough to get through 2011. OF course, I had a wee bit more of a cushion in there, but lots of extra school lunches these last two weeks with "daddy sick" and "mommy busy."

BM is not quite as fond of school lunch - he has a $15 balance. I will re-fund both accounts January 1, for the rest of the school year.