nothing much to report

A few days ago, I was on a message board and somebody had posted that she was denied a savings account because her banking history was sketchy (ok, I don't remember the technical term). Being curious about my own report, I requested a Chex report. I received it yesterday, and it was clean all the way through. Phew! I certainly had no reason to expect otherwise, but I was curious to see, that even though I have not had overdraft fees for two years now, if any would show up. I was sort of awesome at getting them in my past life. Thank god, no!

I had sent my Louis Vuitton bag out for repair two weeks ago. I'd accidentally scraped it on a cement/textured wall three years ago and torn the piping (thank god that was all!). It finally got to the point where the plastic inner piping material wouldn't stay inside the bag, and well. It looked pretty ghetto. And so I sent it out to be repaired. [They told me 8 weeks, but I got it back after only two!!]. 127 dollars. Not something I had the money for exactly, but I'm STOKED to have it fixed. It was well worth it.

Boyfriend and I celebrated our seven year anniversary this week! And we splurged and went out to dinner. And he had flowers delivered to my office. [He's known as the best boyfriend in the office, since I've gotten… no less than 15 bouquets delivered to me in three years. Not joking.] And we're done spending money for now. But it was totally worth it. :-)

Food wise, I've been making something with many servings on Monday, and it lasts us through Wednesday, sometimes Thursday (like quiche, lasagna or chicken pot pie), plus a salad. Then the rest of the week we're doing cheap meals like rice, veggie stir frys, etc. It's cutting my dinner grocery bill down significantly. However, our bill for produce seems to have skyrocketed. Since it's all I eat for lunches, and boyfriend always has an apple, grapes and veggies on his sandwiches, plus we eat fruit for snacks at home now, it's getting costly! At least it's a lot of money of healthy food though. But I do need to be more careful about cost.

We talked at dinner tonight about finances and what we wanted to do with our savings (um, when we HAVE it). It was decided that for three months (after our debts are squared away) we'll put 1,000 in our joint account, and 1,000 in his personal account (which is actually a joint one, but I've designated it as "his"). He spent a great deal of the money that his grandfather had given him on stuff for us, and we want to start rebuilding it, because we know that's what his grandfather would want. After we have about 3k in each, we'll start putting all but 500 towards our joint savings. We figure that by the time we have 10 or 15 grand in there, we'll be able to start maxing out our Roth IRAs. Probably stupid to wait that long, but that's what we plan on doing, for now. But he said something interesting to me tonight, that he fully considered my debts to be his debts as well. I know I've said before that I consider my debt to be mine. And I do mean that… I would never expect him to take responsibility for it. Ever! But I will say that it was really nice to hear him say that. We've always been 100% a TEAM. Always. Honestly, we've been practically married since month 1 of our relationship, and we have always helped each other out financially. And not once, did either of us feel any sort of bad feelings in that respect, we just do it because we love each other and that's that! So we're working away on our debt right now, and the plan is to be rid of it in January (December depending on Christmas bonuses, etc). I will still have my last student loan, but the interest rate is so low, the monthly payment is peanuts, and the tax write off isn't bad. It's just not worth it to pay it off before we amass savings. I am thinking of doubling the payment though, sometime next year.