Holy Carp!

I just fished myself out of the gutter. I've been under a rock trying to get a side-project done, not even realizing that it put me 2 weeks behind for the Showdown. I'm a very bad Ronin. No wonder the feudal lords never made a Samurai of me.

Ok. So... We're past the halfway mark! Woo!!!! A week or so past, you know, when I should have been keeping up with the Showdown, I could have actually posted this little fact when it was timely. Regardless, it's still relevant.

So how are we doing on the downhill slide? Things are not too bad at the Budget-Compound.
Both Budget Naginata and I have some extra money coming in from side projects. Our Budget-Mobile is still on track for being paid off at the beginning of the year. Our credit card debt is now a thing for the history books, at least for the time being and Naginata and I are trying to get things organized for what's coming up next year.

Already we are looking at funding one big home improvement project that will greatly help the resell of the ole' Compound, as well as making the place a bit more energy efficient and comfortable to dwell in. It will cost some money, however, so we're trying to approach it with the mindset of getting as much of the cost front-loaded as possible and have a timely schedule for paying it off.

We also have repairs on the Budget-Mobile to slot and we're looking forward to and actual perhaps vacation this coming summer.

Other updates: The hot-tub still languishes unsold, unused, unwanted in the back. The Budget-Truck could use some nuts and/or bolts to get it back up to 100% and we still have some miscellaneous unpaid debts that would be great to get rid of.

It looks like we've settled on the following percentages for our Budget Buckets right now: 70% household maintenance, 10% Long Term: Savings, 10% Short Term: Projects, 10% Fun (after the Challenge is over, for now, we'll be putting that extra 10% into Long Term). Ultimately I'd like to get our debt for our household expenditures down to 50% and put more in Long Term Savings and add some to a Charity Bucket. There is at least three more persistent things we pay for, two of which we might be able to resolve inside of a year or two. This is pretty critical, especially if we want to take on the extra cost of the home fixup.

I think I'll save more about what we plan to do to the Compound on a later post (perhaps this week's Showdown).

That's all I've got for this quick update.