Thanks to Laura I learned about a food program that amazon.com has for shipping you food and if you take out a subscription for it, you get 15% off the purchase price. And if you buy more than $25 worth you can get the free shipping. Of course they then wanted me to apply for their credit card and get $30 off as well, but I'm not at the point in my life where I have any intention of adding another credit card into the mix.

Anyway the choices of subscribing had a six month option and could be cancelled at any time so I went ahead and clicked the six month option. I will be getting 12 boxes of a gluten-free, organic, hamburger helper type (but healthier) lasanga dinner. They stopped carrying this particular brand around here. I figure if we go through it faster than six months we can switch to three months and if we don't go through it as fast as I think we will, I can just drop the subscription.

Anyway, I paid $34 for it, which is $2.83 a box. This stuff cost $4 a box when the stores around here still carried it. So, add in the cost of a pound of hamburger (2.29 usually here on sale) and I've got a filling dinner for 4 for $5.12. Add a veg and it goes up a buck. Not bad for something super fast and easy to make. It's good to have back up items like this when I don't feel like making a real effort to cook.

I also ordered a cookbook as a birthday present for me. B&N didn't have it when I went in there before my birthday. Just as well. The price from amazon was $18.79. When I bought it at Christmas as a gift for my neice it was $30. It would have been worth paying that, though. It's a really excellent book that tells all about the ingredients and covers dozens of proteins and hundreds of fruits and veg, as well as having recipes for the items. It's a real learning tool for a cook and the pictures are amazing. I got free shipping on that as well.

Then I ordered a replacement copy of a novel of mine that DH took on an airplane two years ago and left behind. It's out of print now, but I was able to find it new on half.com for $9 plus $3.99 shipping from someone with 100% positive feedback. I'm considering that my b'day present, too, even though it's technically not.

I'll need to set aside the extra money for the AMEX when it comes due. I put a notation in the budget. I've been working slowly to get the budget set up so that it covers extras like this, and put on two columns as holding tank in and holding tank out, to keep track of any extra money in each category and when it's paid out. The holding tank will be saved in the same savings account as the safety net. For now, anyway. I may switch it over to the laptop fund account once I reach my goal there, just to keep it away from the easily accessible portion of our EF money.

I was running numbers last night and once the credit card debt is gone, we will have $4000 a month just to put to saving up for a downpayment on a house. That's $96,000 after two years, assuming all goes well. Add that to whatever we sell the house for and we'll have a pretty substantial downpayment. As much as I'm going to want to rush to get out of here once the debt is gone, after running the numbers it makes so much more finanacial sense to wait two more years. We're probably looking in a price range of $350,000 max and I'd like to not carry more than a $150,000 mortgage. I know it might be closer to $200,000, but hopefully we'll find something closer to the lower end of our price range and not the higher one.

We also want to buy a mini-van in 2013. Hopefully a 2011 Toyota Sienna because they meet all of our needs and are so nice. They are too expensive brand new, but the price drops substantially on two year old vehicles. We definitely want the new redesign though, so a 2011 car in 2013 will be just right. We'll have $10,000 saved by then for a downpayment and we'll have a decent trade in and we're used to paying almost $500 a month on the car anyway, so if we can get around that on financing the rest (probably 15 to 20,000 depending on mileage), we'll be in a good place for it. By then our FICO should be back over 800, which makes low interest rates our friend.

After that there will be at least $2000 a month going into a college fund. Her school of choice is the local U and it, at the moment, costs about $7000 a year (including books and fees) for a local student living at home. After a year of saving we'll have $24,000 set aside right as our daughter is starting college. I'll keep adding to it. Fortunately our children are four grades apart so she will graduate college in the summer that my son will start in the fall. Hopefully they can both get scholarships, too. DD is on honor role as a freshman and DS is testing well above fifth grade level despite his behavioral issues. So it's a possibility. I want nothing to do with student loans or having my kids start out their lives with the debt they cause.