Hello! It has been a while since I have posted. Part of it is that I have been busy, a bit has been me just taking a step away from tracking our finances now that our income has increased significantly (with my finally getting a job!). Moving from living on a grad student salary (25,000 a year) to 62,000 combined has been a big shift! I feel so relieved, and it has been so nice not to feel like I needed to track everything so carefully. I've also been able to see the doctor about an ongoing medical condition I have that was a bit out of whack.

However, now that I've had time away from tracking our finances, I find I miss it! I also notice that in the last month or so we've been spending a bit more than usual--this past month, when I looked at our credit card statement (we always pay off our credit cards each month) and realized that last month we spent around $1,200 (so including rent--which was just raised $15--that was around $2,000 for the month). And we're only two people. With no major medical issues. Or car repairs. Or...anything, in particular. Wasn't even a month we had to pay insurance. Sigh.

HOWEVER, regardless of my semi-mindless tracking/planning of the spending, being used to spending so little (and continuing to make most meals at home) has helped us make good progress on our goals ! Most significantly, yesterday I sent our LAST PAYMENT to my student loan (*happy dance!!!!*). When I clicked "submit" I air punched at the computer monitor for a good five-ten seconds...DH looked at me all bewildered, and when I told him I was sending the last payment he was like "oh, cool!" and went back to his paper lol

So, progress! Our net worth is also no longer negative! Since December 2015, we've improved our standing by almost $20,000. Here's where we're at now:

August 1, 2016 ($17,585.83)

Debt: -$5,500
(My remaining student loan: BIG FAT ZERO as of July 31, 2016)
(DH's student loan: $5,500 - not in repayment, not accruing interest)

Non-debt: $23,085.83
(EF: $5,976.81)
(Checking/buffer: $550)
(Roth 403b: $13,219.84)
(Roth IRA: $297.05)
(House fund: $2,236.20)
(Early retirement fund: $805.93)

(Travel savings: 1,023.50 - I don't count this toward net worth, I consider it already spent)

I remember when I wrote the goals on my sidebar, and thought they were really ambitious. Now that we're 7 months through 2016, I feel like maybe I was too tame! We're going to kick the butt of those goals (it's been no problem stashing the $1,500 from my paycheck into retirement, since we're used to me not getting a paycheck at all :P and next month we'll hit our emergency fund goal, and we've already met the goal for increasing our downpayment fund), so I'm thinking about making some new goals...but my dental saga is still not over, so I don't want to set us up for failure. I'll have to talk it over with the marital unit and see.

In the meantime, for now, I'm just going to start monitoring our spending a bit and trying to trim wherever possible. I've got my eye on you, grocery spending! And I'm going to start walking/biking to work instead of taking the bus (I always walk home, I've just been lazy in the mornings)

OH, the BEST thing about me working again? Now that it's super hot I allow us to turn on our window AC unit when it gets unbearably hot. SUCH an amazing luxury in this heat and humidity. Oh, but this month I realized I was an idiot before, since using the AC last month whenever it was hot in the bedroom (where we have the AC) RAISED OUR ELECTRIC BILL BY LESS THAN $5. It's a new, small unit (our apartment complex provides and installs AC units as part of the rent) and we have thermal curtains in our small bedroom...so I guess that shouldn't have been a huge surprise. But I swear I thought the bill would have gone up like $20-$30 a month at least...DH has been teasing me mercilessly the last two days, since last summer I didn't let us have the AC installed lol