The Travel Jar

Tonight I paid off my LASIK bill. Just a few clicks, and that $2,560 beast is GONE FOREVER. So now, just my car payments left until I'm debt-free. 14K to go. I'm going to Oakland, CA tomorrow for 5 days for a work/play trip, and am allowing myself some pleasure spending (ie, really good food) as a reward for paying off my LASIK a few days before the end of the month. Then on November 1, it's back to the spending diet. And I'm not sad about going back to it. It's been good for me. I've enjoyed being less social (even though I don't have to be- there's plenty of free stuff to do, but I love coming home from work and decompressing alone with Petri). I feel awesome. And happy-tired  (you know that feeling. The one when you smile and your eyes are kind of droopy and you feel like a big weight has been lifted off your chest).  One debt left . A recent frugal thing that I did: The toe tops of my brown boots (that I bought in a thrift store in NYC about ...

Last month was exciting because it was the first month of the spending diet... And I set the bar high when I saved/paid off over $2500 in September. This month I'm feeling a little burned out... I keep thinking, "How am I going to pull that off again this month?" Blogging helps... Reading other blogs about this helps... Reminding myself that I'll be debt-free sooner than planned if I can just laser-focus helps... But it's hard not to think of the obstacles coming up too. In November I'm road-tripping back east for 2.5 weeks. I will be working for part of that time, but most of it's vacation/seeing family and friends. I'm also starting to think about December, and the holidays. I would LOVE it if my family would agree to a no-gifts-Christmas, but I'm pretty sure that that would bum them all out. Things I'm doing to save money this month: Making all of my own food from scratch (my hands are burning as I type this, from chopping hot peppers)....