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Thursday, December 31, 2009

2009

This year we made it through some drastically reduced paychecks, more unexpected medical and dental bills, and a generally lousy economy. So I was more than a little encouraged to see that our total debt still went down

$7609 for the year!

Some things we accomplished this year:

Paid off one of the car loans
Paid off one credit card
Paid off a checking overdraft balance

We are cautiously optimistic moving into the new year, and are looking forward - never back - as we formulate our financial goal for the next 365 days. What that specific goal is, we don't know yet, but when we do know, you'll find it here.

Happy New Year, and have a happy, blessed and prosperous 2010.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Mid December Check-In

16 days till Christmas! The tree is trimmed, the presents are bought, the plans are made, and the kids are enjoying their annual Advent fun.

Overall, we've done very well sticking to a Christmas budget, and we have no doubts that the kids are going to be thrilled with their gifts on Christmas morning. We've even managed a few surprises this year.

We made it through the first majorly reduced paycheck of the holiday season, and are faring at least as well as we'd hoped for. Mike and I are both looking forward to the New Year, when the furloughs will be over and he'll have a relatively stable employment forecast for the near future.

In another positive bit of financial news - I periodically check our house's value at Zillow It's been like a train wreck for the past two years. I didn't want to look, but I couldn't seem to help myself. So I watched, feeling sick all the while, as it went down down down, often by several thousand dollars a month. The past couple of months the dropping had finally slowed, and when I looked yesterday, it had gone UP by $1000 over the last 30 days! I realize that it's going to take a long time for the market to stabilize, and for it to come up enough to make a difference. But a rise of any sort, now matter how small, feels very, very promising.