Just checking in. We haven't set real goals yet, so I just have abstract things to chime in with.
We had a 5 night trip to Disney World at the end of January, which was fun but sad since we don't have concrete plans to go back yet. And we had lots of fun at Moonlight Magic thanks to
@Jen and Ashwin After credit card points for flights and hotel, and discounted or free/earned gift cards, it ended up being around $700 - about a third of what we spent on a similar trip last January
We are scaling back on our eating out, which was our big budget buster last year, and meal planning. I'm trying to use up things that have accumulated in the pantry. I have gotten back on track with my Starbucks spending... I originally was aiming for a couple times a month at most, but it got way out of hand last year when the well water was bad. I'm sticking with my brewed coffee and little instant coffee packets at work.
I'm still coming up with us owing around $1800 on our taxes, bummer but we've got the cash to pay for it. We're really sitting on way more than we should be currently, since we haven't done anything with our extra income since we paid off our student loans... it's enough to pay off one of our cars, it's bad! Need to straighten that out this week. I'm glad we've slacked on it though, because of the tax thing and also some wedding expenses coming up. BIL gets married in SoCal in April. We leave 7 weeks from tomorrow, and DH just officially found out he was in the wedding a few weeks ago, and just last week what he's supposed to wear. So we need to budget in that cost, and also a wedding gift. The wedding is on a Friday, and we figured we (including the in-laws) would have to miss work Thursday too since the venue is an hour and a half from any airports, so we'd thought of flying into San Diego Wednesday night and sharing a room with the in-laws, covering that and tickets to the USS Midway, and then splitting the rental car cost... and that all went out the window on Saturday. MIL doesn't want to take Thursday off
We had decided before to make a small trip out of it and go to
Disneyland after the wedding, so I bought tickets with some gift cards I had stocked on Saturday before the price increase. I redid the hotels and flights now that we're not flying in with the in-laws, so now those are all covered with credit card points, including a night on the Queen Mary in Long Beach. The rental car is slightly cheaper with the new plans than splitting it 50/50 with the in-laws was. I've got almost $300 in Disney gift cards now, so I'm going to try and earn gift cards/money through things like Swagbucks to cover the rest of the trip stuff. Aiming for another $200-$300 in free/discounted Disney gcs, and $350 to cover other meals/rental car. I've got some things to sell on eBay and that money will go towards the trip too.
Work OT has slowed down a little, as we have gotten someone to help us work third shift until we hire and train a new employee. We also had the last three weekends off, so my paychecks this month are my smallest since I was on my honeymoon -
only 16 OT hours each
And then some people are taking time off, so I'll have to help cover, so it looks like next month my checks will have 30+ hours each.
I feel like I've been waiting forever for the IRS to update their withholding calculator, so I can change my W4... Hoping to straighten out the extra income this week, and then switch our retirement savings around. I haven't changed my 401k from 25% since last summer. We need to bump up DH's, get IRAs going, and maybe increase my HSA savings. I read something recently that it might make more sense to fund 401ks to get match, max HSA, max IRAs, and then go back to the 401k. It's the same I'd read before, but I'd never seen HSA taken into account. Lots to do around here