We finally have a sofa!

Monique Y. Mudama wrote:

I have plans to buy an L-shaped sectional couch for the living room
and move my old couch to the bay window, and give away the hand me
down couch ... but sectionals are expensive! Youch! We'll see. We
(mostly I) actually have a lot of home improvement plans, but it's one
thing to say "I want a new bed" and another to actually come to grips
with spending the money to get what you want. Meh.

I did all that when I moved last year; bought a new bed (lovely!), new
bookcase, new desk (well, not new, it's from an antiques auction) etc.
That (along with Frank's vet bills) pretty much cleaned out my savings
account. The last of the money will go next Friday when I finally get my
new tooth implant. I'll just have to start saving again. Hope the cats
don't get any serious illnesses in the meantime.

--
Marina, Miranda and Caliban. In loving memory of Frank and Nikki.
Stories and pics at http://koti.welho.com/mkurten/
Pics at http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/frankiennikki/
and http://community.webshots.com/user/frankiennikki

On 2006-08-27, Marina penned:
I did all that when I moved last year; bought a new bed (lovely!),
new bookcase, new desk (well, not new, it's from an antiques
auction) etc. That (along with Frank's vet bills) pretty much
cleaned out my savings account. The last of the money will go next
Friday when I finally get my new tooth implant. I'll just have to
start saving again. Hope the cats don't get any serious illnesses in
the meantime.

Yeah; DH bought a new car, and we just paid the yearly property taxes
on it, and money is pretty tight. DH is supposed to be laid off at
the end of the year; the severance package should help us pay off some
of our smaller loans, which will be nice. I think we've decided on a
rule of "If you're contributing extra money, contribute it to the loan
with the highest interest rate, but if you have enough extra to
actually pay a loan off, then do so." So we pay extra into our HELOC
(this may be a US-specific construct; it's a portion of our mortgage
that is actually a line of credit), which is our only variable-rate
loan, but if we had a lump sum, it would pay off one of our
motorcycles. Or if the lump sum were large enough, the HELOC.

Obviously from what I've just said, money isn't tight in the sense of
not being able to afford the necessities; we've made some choices that
right now have us watching money more closely than we usually do. One
of those choices was to max out our 401K (retirement contributions)
for the year, meaning that I just more than doubled my per-paycheck
contribution. That's going to hurt in the short term.

--
monique, who spoils Oscar unmercifully

pictures: http://www.bounceswoosh.org/rpca