Sweet!

A rare money post tonight!

I was just about topped out on available vacation, so I sold 2 weeks worth back to the company. The money was in today's paycheck - 3 weeks of pay for 1 week of work! Without going into actual dollars, because that's no one's business but mine and Scott's, I used the money to pay off my credit card (all except $8. also, I noticed that they increased my credit limit to $2,000. not sure when that happened, but it made me happy) and still had enough left over for us to have a little bit of fun with. I don't really know what we're going to do. Without a plan, we'll probably fritter it away on stupid stuff like dinners at new restaurants.

aside: when considering what fun to have with the money, I actually floated the idea of getting a steam cleaner. when did I turn into a grown-up?

Right now, I'm trying to figure out what to do with the money in our CD when it matures next month. Since we're planning on buying a house, the longest CD I could put the money into would be 3 months, which only has 1% interest at our bank. I can't just keep it in the regular savings account because if it's accessible we're likely to not have the discipline to keep our sticky fingers off of it. I've been looking into interest rates online, just to see if I can find a decent savings account that we could dump the money into, but not have quite as much access to. And since we won't have the money in there long (hopefully), even an introductory teaser rate would work.

I'm so proud of what we've managed to save in the past year. Of course, I'll be even prouder to write a check for the full amount and hand it over to a random dude in exchange for a set of house keys. I thought last year was going to be the year, and was heart-broken that it wasn't. But I really think this is our year. I don't think home prices are going to get any lower, and as long as we can qualify for a mortgage, I'll gladly swallow a higher interest rate.

Just get me out of this damn apartment!!