Friday isn't even here yet but I've added up my totals for next paycheck! Approx. 6,600 in savings now! Getting closer to paying off that car and breathing a sign of relief. Baby keeps growing inside me, but all I feel is like I'm getting fatter. I'm only 3 1/2 months along but I feel like I should be like 6. The drawback of getting pregnant after steadily gaining a ton of weight over the past 2 years. Blahhh.

I was just thinking last night how amazing it's going to be once these debts are paid off. Like I seriously hadn't even comprehended how when all our debts are gone that money will be ours! No, not that I'm going to blow it all. I'm going to beef up retirement to an awesome level (We're at 10% now, but I'd like to make it 20% once the non-mortgage debt is gone) and after that we'll still have money leftover! I mean, in all honesty, my student loan is probably going to take 3 years. If we had our previous gazelle-like intensity it would take 18 months, but with a baby on the way I can't guarantee that other things aren't going to steal a bit of that money. So even worse case scenario it takes 3 years, I'll be 28/29 - sweet! I'm totally psyched to say we're going to be putting 20% into retirement. Sadly enough it's one of my life goals. Sorry, I just love feeling prepared . I wonder if I'll start feeling the pressure to move again. It's always the nagging thing in the back of my head. Like I can't truly be successful if I'm still living here. Not like it's a dump, but it's not the crazy modern weirdo home sitting on a couple acres of land that I always wanted. It's just way too conventional and we've received remarks on how it's small (1650 livable SF, but only 1250 "counts" cause its not basement) We'll see..Ok, done blabbing for today!

I know, I know. Every moment is a gift. I need to appreciate what I have right now. It's hard though when you're less than 6 months from having your first child and 3 months from eliminating yet another debt and getting soo much closer to your financial goals! All I need is a couple months to pass by quickly. Is that so much to ask!?

But I remember feeling like this when we were in 5k of credit card debt. It was roughly July '08 and I felt like time was NEVER going to pass. But alas it did and that 5k was paid by January. Gotta learn to enjoy the journey, both my pregnancy one and the financial one.

Lame.

Went in for my 12 week NT scan to check for down syndrome. I have an uncle with DS so I've been more than a little concerned. From what they could see things looked "normal" so far. A fully formed nasal bone and 1-1.5mm measurement at the back of the neck are good signs. I gave bloodwork as well so I'm interested to see how that comes back. The other news is they thought I was closer to 11 weeks pregnant instead of 12 based on the overall size of the baby. That made sense to me since I don't think I conceived on the normal dates. My cycle was always like 34-35 days long instead of the normal 28. But yeah, so this means I'll potentially be pregnant for another week more than I previously thought. Ack! Get this over with! Oh well..

I spoke with HR at my job and I think the reduced work schedule is going to work out after all. For 3 months I'll be off full-time from work. Then I'll start working 3 days a week from 7-12 and continue that for the next 6 months before I have to return to work full-time. This helps the situation with daycare for the time being. My mom works her job from 3-6 so that gives us plenty of time to pick up the baby after work for those 6 months. Then once I go back to work full-time she'll be off on the summer. We'll have to figure things out for that next fall but by that time the baby will be like 11 months old. So I've bought myself some time and my mom's saying that her work situation might be different at that point so things might not be as complicated as I was previously thinking. Woohoo!

On the financial front, taking into account my work schedule as written above, I'll need to set aside 5,500 (which includes 2,000 emergency money) to cover my leave/reduced schedule after the baby is born. This is totally doable for us. In fact, we've already got more than this saved already. So it turns out I can pay off the car after all! Baby will be born to parents who only have 3 debts to their name (mortgage, rental prop mortgage, and my student loan!). To think that only 1.5 years ago we were nearly drowning. We were breaking even every month and never getting ahead on anything. Fast forward to today..T and I have $1000 surplus each month to put on debt and are putting 10% of gross into retirement! I know compared to these other bloggers out there this is chump change, but I'm so proud of our progress. If we hadn't made some crummy car decisions and had some crummy car luck we could've dug out of the hole a little quicker. Oh well, it's all a learning experience. Our ultimate goal is to live totally off of my husbands income. I figure we can comfortably pay off my 20k student loan in 3 years and around that point we're hoping T makes enough money we can live soley off his income. I then plan on taking all my paychecks and putting them towards paying off the rental property mortgage. The sooner that is paid off the sooner we get to use the lake condo as a vacation/weekend home instead of renting it out. Ahh dreams .

I'm so excited for baby!! Why does pregnancy last so long?!?!