alliteration is good for you

Anyway, my goals are going well. My financial goals for this year were:
1) pay off house (orig $1300 left)
2) pay off Capital One (orig $1477 left)
3) pay off Student loan (orig $2590 left)
4) pay off DH's grandma (orig $3000 left)

Got the house paid off in December...should have taken until March 6, so even though that was before 2010 started, it still counts.

Swept $83.59 last paycheck toward Capital One. This paycheck I don't have any more to sweep, but my snowball is $455, so that can go today. That makes $800.08 I've paid since the last due date. Today, the balance was $864.88, so after the payment is applied, I'm down to $409.88 on this card. Yippee! It will be gone for sure by next month.

Last month was a huge household bill month for some reason.
- Farm electric was $77.23, and the highest it had ever been before that was $53.66. Asked DH why, and he said he had to keep the tractors plugged in all the time so they would start in the cold weather. Ok, good reason. Just so long as we hadn't left something plugged in without realizing it and it was just draining energy.
- Cell phone was $95.64 because I had switched plans, usually ~$70. I think my roaming is causing more trouble than I thought it would.
- We are going crazy renting movies from our VOD service. $40 in movies last month? Really? I keep saying we need to sign up for Netflix, but I haven't yet.
- Gas bill for house was $126, the month before only $67, the month before that $26. Darn this cold weather!

Most of those I can usually count on to have extra to go to the snowball, but I only mustered $35 extra. I upped all of those categories in the budget, and it balances until the end of April, so if bills get down to normal, I'll have a lot more to go towards the snowball after paying each bill.

Only paying $50 / month for the Student Loan, so not much progress there, but the pickup loan Gma gave us is down to $2100.

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The tax game I played worked out well. I had rolled over a little more than $16,000 from my 401k to an IRA in December, and then rolled exactly $16,000 to a Roth IRA. Because I was laid off, got a lower paying job, $2400 of the unemployment was not taxable, and farm depreciation, when all taxes were said and done, we had an AGI of only $26,000ish. We are supposed to get a large refund...about $9000. Should be here next week. That will turn around and go right to the swather loan, and we'll only have to come up with $3300 more for that by the first week of March.

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Baby news: well, lack of baby news: I've been charting for two full cycles now, and from what it looks like, I simply don't have enough mucus. My doctor upped my Metformin, and told me to get Mucinex Max to help the mucus production. Three days after I ovulate this month, I'm supposed get blood tests done every other day for 11 days to see how my progesterone levels are doing. If they are off, I'll take a supplement. I lost 6 pounds on my diet since Thanksgiving, which is good, but I need to stay on the wagon instead of cheating.

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Last week was hell at work. We sent 1099s out on Jan 30th, and they were totally and completely wrong. We sent out the amount of grain that was settled in 2009. That doesn't take into account grain from previous years that was sold in 2009, pushed forward up to 4 years ago. It also doesn't take into account grain that hasn't been sold yet. My boss, the accounting manager and I spent probably 80 hours last week trying to get this right. To add another complication, some of the taxes that are taken out when grain is sold (the checkoffs that I have complained about before) should count as income to the producer and an expense. Ok, that doesn't look right, but we had to add those things back in, and then send the producer a second paper showing the amount of taxes they paid so they could count it as an expense. Except not all of them, and we got that wrong twice. It was really hell. I think we finally got it done on Tuesday, but people are still calling because we have never sent these out before and they are confused. My boss told me I can take a day off sometime in the next month or so and not have it count as vacation because I put so much time in. In a few weeks, after I get some of the confusion out of my head, I'm supposed to start over and try to get it right the first time so we have a process to use next year. Bosses won't be happy if we have this same problem again.

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I didn't know Big Love had started again! I finally checked it, and they are on like episode 5 already. I watched s4e1 last night and e2 tonight. Looking pretty good.