**LM has just enough lunch money to get through to the winter break. Which was the plan - but impressed how spot on I was. BM has extra because his lunches were initially more expensive (at the middle school location), but then they changed it back. Initially he told me his lunches were bigger, to boot. Which I did not mind because he is a ravenous high-metbaolismed child. But, all I can figure is they keep a separate middle school menu and were confused the first few days of school. They went back to charging the lower price - so he has an excess in his account. But not too much because I had told him he could not eat there as much at the higher price.

I will re-fund their lunch accounts January 1, for the rest of the year.

**I was hoping to save more, but learned I would only save $100 per year if I increased our home deductible to $5,000. Oh well. I just took it because I could not imagine making a claim for less than that. Ever. (Unless I wanted to be dropped and insurance-less). Our cash savings is getting to be robust, so it probably makes sense. We view all of our insurance as catastrophic - not to cover $1k, $10k or even $20k emergencies. I am worried about the six figure and seven figure emergencies. We probably should have always had the larger deductible.

**Christmas doings are done. LM's class sent a wish list for Christmas party and books were on the wish list! So we provided those (As were gotten for free). To be truthful, dh spent $0.56. He has calculator head. I am not wired the same way, though I love numbers. People stop me on the street and tell me about his calculator head. For that, $0.56, might have been off his game a bit. {To clarify, he had a $100 voucher worth $125 worth of books - something like that - so he bought $125.56, and owed the $0.56 overage. There were times he owed pennies or a dime - which leads to random comments from others who have witnessed his shopping skill}.

Actually, I have done everything "Christmas" but still need to be reimbursed from the kids for their gifts. Maybe this weekend we will settle up and see if they have any cash for the bank.

**Dh is in pure heaven as he has found a new avenue to make money for his love of video games. The used music store, which for a while has also been heavy in video games, is now in the used book game. What they pay isn't bad compared to other book stores AND the credit can be used for video games and such. Dh cleared out our bookshelves and made some sales this week. He finally took in some really old books I had asked him to get rid of a while ago - I am surprised they were worth anything and pleased with the return. To be fair, 90% of his Scholastic earnings is going back to the teachers and the school, but he decided to grab some books for himself to sell. Will see how that pans out. I definitely have some more books he can sell, since I Was impressed with how he did with the "useless/who would want those?" books.

**This month has been extremely profitable on the extra income:

http://monkeymama.savingadvice.com/little-savings-add-up.html

We have already surpassed November's numbers.

Of note, our grocery store has re-arranged their rewards, which initially is making us wary. But, so far it has been *more* rewarding. Keep getting $5-off on almost every purchase. Gas rewards have been $1-off per gallon or 50-cents off, versus the usual quarter off per gallon. Woot! Plus we keep getting free stuff thrown in (useful things we would buy anyway, or could use). So far, I like!

**Oh, and American Express I am finding to be really "odd." They have not credited me any rewards for gas or groceries yet. They told me that current months' rewards show up on next months' statement. (I have *never* seen this before). THEN, since I Asked to move up the closing date, they decided to do like a 60-day cycle rather than give me a shorter cycle. Since they are doing such a long cycle, I am going to ask them if they can move up the date a couple of more days. I got the impression I can only do 3 days at a time or something. So, they really rather do 60 day cycles every time I ask? This is crazy. (I am going to pay my bill this month as if it were due - I pay the balance off monthly for all my cards). So, no rewards yet.

BUT, they did give me the new card $150 bonus. I redeemed it for a statement credit. When I Redeemed it they asked me a bazillion questions in the name of security. Seriously? Because I am trying to steal rewards from an account by redeeming them as a statement credit. Yeah, makes sense this would be an area rife with fraud? NOT?

So, American Express is weird. It will be nice when I get my rewards for the first 3 months.