Fiance got his bonus and it was $700.00!!!! That's about $2, 600.00 we have so far for shoulder surgery.

Here's an update on our goals:
Shoulder surgery: $4,000.00
Fiances time off: $6,000.00
Roof: $2,000.00
Gutters: $1,500.00
Fence: $10,000.00
Siding: $15,00.00

Yikes!! :-(

Fiance got a letter last month from his bank that he has his mortgage through. The escrow payment is changing...not sure why. But his monthly payment will be $50.00 less a month (starts in November) because of escrow going down. He also gets his surplus returned to him, which is $224.15. What good news! :-)

Also, last year we had to buy a refrigerator because ours broke on us and fiance put it on his Sears credit card, it was no interest for a year and we had no emergency fund back then. Last payment is this month, so that will be another $70.00/month!

Hope everyone has had a fabulous past couple of weeks. It has been a while since I have posted anything. Haven’t had much going on, just very busy being mommy and working and trying to keep up with the mess at home… haven’t been very successful with that. And homework…well, that’s not doing itself, unfortunately.

Anyways… on another note, fiancé wants to get shoulder surgery done in JANUARY of 2014 . Evidently, he can’t stand the pain anymore… shucks! Our plan is to come up with $10,000.00 for this. He has done some research and believes that after insurance pays, we will have to pay somewhere between $3,000.00 - $4,000.00 in medical bills. His disability insurance will cover 66% of his income for the time he will be off. We expect him to be out of work for 3-6 months… I’m crossing my fingers that he will be able to go back to work sooner than later. We estimate about $6,000.00 to cover the rest of his income. These figures and time-frames are just what we are expecting. We are not for sure on anything as we have not talked to a doctor yet. Fiancé is suppose to be contacting the doctor he wants to see to schedule an appointment in January.

My goal before I knew about the surgery was to have $2,000.00 in my savings account by the end of the year. Now that we are planning on the surgery, that money will go towards that.

How we plan to come up with $10,000.00:

Money already saved: $1,974.00
Only $24.00 to reach my goal of $2,000.00!

Money from tax returns: $2,000.00
We usually file as soon as we can

Other money we will receive: $1,000.00
2 bonuses = $500.00 each bonus/$1,000.00 total (One bonus in December and one in March)

That’s $2,500.00 by January (money we have already saved and at least $500 from one bonus) and $3,000.00 more by March for a total of $5,500.00. The other $500.00 for bonus will not be until March. So in order to come up with the other $4,000.00, we will probably stop funding our retirement accounts beginning next year until everything is taken care of. That should give us at least another $800.00 per month next year. We will have to hit our retirement accounts hard after that. I would still like to max out my retirement in 2014.

Hopefully we can both save a little bit yet this year. We both usually get about $200.00 each for Christmas, so that would be an extra $400.00. I will also get paid for the sick days that I do not take this year. We only get 42 hours a year for sick time and as of today I have used 10.5 hours, so I still have 31.5 hours available. But then again, we do still have two and a half months to get sick and 3 co-workers have been sick this week already. But if I can keep the bug away, that would give me a few hundred extra bucks at the end of the year. I estimate that we could easily come up with an extra $500.00 with Christmas money, sick pay, etc., by the end of the year. And if we don’t use all of our Christmas budget, that would help!

What a headache! I was definitely hoping to get the housework done outside before surgery... oh well!