There's never much to do with finances during the two weeks out of six that DH doesn't get a paycheck. It's always the lull before the storm of payments. Or maybe the one after. But he did have another pile of coins that he left on his dresser to add to the coin jar, so $1.55 went in today. I also rolled coins, one roll of quarters, one of dimes, and one of pennies, so that will be ready to deposit to the Emergency Fund (Safety Net portion) whenever I manage to get to that CU.

The safety net is at $307.03. My goal is to slowly get that portion of the EF up to $500 and then eventually $1000, just with coin jar savings. Of course the bulk of the EF is at ING and gets more regular feedings of larger amounts of money, each month. At least $100 and any more I can scrounge up.

When this new round of medical bills comes through and the last credit card is paid off (hopefully within the next six months), I will be happy to jump our EF savings up to $1000 a month until it gets to where it needs to be. I would ultimately like it at one year's worth of income (not expenses, but income). Once the debt of the credit card is gone, one year's income would be enough to live on for 2 years if something were to happen to DH's job. I don't think it will (or if it did, he'd just move companies again like all slope workers eventually do), but I just want to have it. Having several months of uncertainty last year made me feel like this would be the best course.

I think it would take several years to get it to that point, but like I said it is my ultimate goal, not my immediate one. My immediate goal after everything is paid off is to build the EF to $10,000 and start saving for the new house downpayment. We still have to sell the old house, too. And at the rate we are going fixing it up it won't even be on the market until next summer. Not that I am in that much of a rush. Even with what we might get for it, we will still have to save money for about a year to get the downpayment we want to make.

We probably won't get anything near what the bank ($110,000) or the tax assessor ($115,000) says it is worth. But I would honestly be happy getting what we paid for it back in '98, which was $69,500. That would give us enough money to pay the realtor, pay off the mortgage, and have $40,000 to $45,000 for the downpayment. I honestly just want it to be gone. If someone walked up to me today and offered me $50,000 in cash for it as is with no repair demands, I'd probably take it.

Combined with our mortgage, all the bills related to that house roughly come out to $1000 a month that could be used for other things. Storage, water/sewer, power, phone, security system, insurance, HoA dues, time for maintaining the yard...it could all be used for better things. I know technically I would at least have to pay storage anyway until we move, but I still consider it part of the overall expense of not having our stuff in a house.

Sometimes I wish I had a financial fairy godmother who could come down, wave her magic wand, and everything that needed to be done would be done with no effort on my part. But no one ever gave a beggar a free horse ride, so...bit by bit, step by step, pulling up my own bootstraps and getting us where we need to be is my job. And I'll do it. I will get us there. Eventually.