• I sent off an application to consolidate my school loans today. We owe something like $150k, so the monthly payment is by no means going to be cheap, but I’m hoping to keep it around $1000 per month.
  • We’re getting back about $1500 for our state and Federal tax refunds. $150 of that is going to charity for VUBOQ’s 10% Refund Challenge, but I haven’t decided which charity yet. The rest is going to go towards a cruise this May with our friend T.
  • The trip to Mexico got canceled, which is why the cruise with T in May.
  • We’re getting the last of our tuition reimbursement money on March 7th. It’s going to be about $2500, which I’m going to use to pay off/down credit cards. $2800 will close out two of them and leave me with just the one that has the lowest APR.
  • I started using Quicken last night to try and keep track of where our money goes. I like the way it can download all your transactions from your banks, but I have to do a lot of tweaking on the Categories section because the defaults don’t really match how I want to track stuff.
  • Buying a condo got put on hold because of the softening economy and because I feel like my company is making moves towards cutbacks. I don’t want to get into any sort of situation where family would have to bail me out. I priced two-bedroom apartments, but the ones that would give me a break financially turn out to all be income dependent, meaning government subsidized, meaning I don’t qualify.
  • Instead of moving to a larger place, I’m going to revamp my furniture to make more room and have space for a computer desk. I’m really tired of working on my kitchen table. First purchase is a CD/DVD storage cabinet that will allow me to consolidate two sets of shelves into the one piece of furniture. That way I can move the TV a bit to the left and open up a corner for a desk.
  • The second furniture purchase will be the computer desk, and the third will be another Ikea bookcase (my sixth one; I have too many books). That should get the living room set up a bit better, and then I can consider farking around with the bedroom.
  • My personal life (meaning me, Sassy - not anyone else’s) is still a mess but so it goes. At this point I’ve explained and apologized and such and I don’t know what else to do, so I wait. It is what it is.
  • I got a very nice bonus and a decent raise this year, so that’ll help with the money stuff I have going on.
  • My house is completely cluttered and it’s a good reflection of my mind right now.
  • That’s all, folks!