I've got some great gifts for my birthday - we had our family party over the weekend. My parents slipped me $100 and told me that I MUST spend it on myself (how well do they know me??). I had a few items of clothing on my wish list so my mom decided to let me do my own shopping, since I usually return anything she gets me anyway I also received a $50 g.c. to get a new pair of bowling shoes from my MIL. DH got me a new memory card for my camera and two shirts (that I picked out and handed to him at Target). One brother and SIL made me a beaded bracelet with my boys' names on it - the other brother and SIL bought me a TON of really nice scrapbooking stuff. My BIL regifted a $25 g.c. to a restaurant! And my SILs sent me a beautiful sweater from the Gap. I love my birthday
I have not been keeping track of my freebies in quite a while - I'm probably too far behind now to catch up. But one thing I did want to mention - DH found out that his grandparents took out their trashcompactor once Grandpa started using a walker (it was in the way). He called and asked for it, so they gave it to us. My father has been trying to fix our trash compactor for weeks, but found out that the part he needed was no longer made (these things are OLD). The one we received is the same brand, so we are going to try to make one usable compactor out of two old ones. Yeah for recycling!
We have three days left until payday and still about $100 in our checking. Except for the $60 DH took out of our savings, it looks like we made it through another two weeks without going into the EF (of course, now that I said that, we are going to have a financial emergency tomorrow).
My BOA Keep the CHange account netted me $36 and change over the past year. Not too bad, but I think I could have done better just getting a $50 sign-up bonus somewhere. Oh, wait, I think I did get a bonus too when I signed up with them. I am going to keep the account because the bank is so convenient to my work.
Still toying with the idea of taking $2k from the EF to pay off the car and pay down the cc (tuition). It would leave us with $5k. I am very optimistic about DH finding work, as he has four interviews coming up this week for subbing. It seems the substitute teachers are in high demand around here - good news for him!