Today I paid bills, bills, bills and more bills. I suppose most of the big stuff seems to be due this time of year (property taxes, home insurance, flood insurance, umbrella insurance, disability insurance), plus paid for school lunches the rest of the year, paid the refi deposit, auto insurance, and some car repairs - new battery and new tires. All of the above was $5000+. Of course, we set aside 1/12 of all these type bills every month so no biggie, but I imagine not preparing for the bill landslide could be VERY overwhelming. Just a reminder to "plan ahead." Aside from the refi, all of this was extremely foreseeable. I paid for the refi deposit with cash Xmas gifts.

I put some of this on the credit card and so I don't have to pay cash for about $1000 of it until February. Some I had to pay off in December (Am Ex had a very short grace period) - so if kind of spreads over 3 months. It's just most of this stuff is due between Dec. 10 and Jan. 10.

Oh disability insurance ticked up. I barely noticed but then saw that it was about 30% higher AND that it had been stagnant the past several years. I guessed it - getting older! IT's still dirt cheap. About $300 with a "one-time 10% discount" due to the economy. But I saw the rates tick up every 5 years. (I also have to belong to two professional associations to get the rate, so that doesn't tell the whole story. It's still reasonable when you consider that - maybe $1k-ish per year). They've been aggressively trying to get me to increase my coverage. Um, considering it can't be more than 60% of my current income? I'd love to, but they are sure wasting a lot of paper and postage trying to convince me to get more coverage - I simply can't.

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Appraisal is tomorrow. Woohoo! Crossing my fingers for $250k+.

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My mom slipped me $40 for Christmas food and stuff. Lord knows we spent nowhere near $40, but it is appreciated. I returned $20 to dh for the money I took to pay the mortgage this month. I was going to deposit the other $20 but was digging in our cash stash for $5 bills (that's a LONG story). Anyway! It occurred to me I didn't need the $20 for anything, and so should add it to the cash stash. The "cash emergency fund," which we do have but is not always front of mind. It's probably been a couple of years since I added to it. Since MIL has been handing us so much cash, I will have to remember to add to the stash next time.

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I think I will pay the mortgage again tomorrow. That way it will be paid up through mid-March, and won't have to deal with that again during the refi process. (You know, every time you make a payment, it changes the balance due, etc.). Then there's no "don't make the mortgage payment" if it doesn't close in time or it doesn't go through - don't want to deal with a potential late payment. I am quite sure I am being overly cautious, but overly cautious works for me. That, and it does just simplify things for us. I have the cash flow with Christmas cash gifts. I get paid Friday anyway and will just do ROTH contributions with the next paycheck after - usually I do ROTHs on 1st and mortgage with mid-month paycheck. IT's just a little shuffle helped along with a little bit of extra cash.