I can’t believe it’s been over a month since my last post here.  It’s been quite a busy month, with a lot of disappointments.  On October 22nd, Sean and I took a trip up to New York so we could pick up the loan check at HSBC.  The following Saturday, after numerous unreturned phone calls, we found out that the place in Ohio fell through.  The complex we were looking into is currently between owners and Sean’s brother Brett is moving down to Florida to be closer to his family.  They aren’t literally brothers, but they grew up together and I’d say a 20+ year friendship is a brotherly type of thing.  So with this news we were taken back as to what we were going to do about moving into our own place.

For now we’re staying put and hoping to bank on the money that we did get from the loan.  Unfortunately we’re already down $4,000 and it’s only been a little over a month.  But I’ll fess up to a quick $2,000 being dropped on Christmas gifts, this is only because that’s the route I’ve taken for quite a few years now.  I’ve always banked at least $2,000 over the course of the year to put towards Christmas gifts, but you also have to factor in that I come from an extremely LARGE family.  My mothers side alone consists of about 16 people, that includes my mother and step-father.  My father’s side is a bit easier, but I tend to spend more money there based on my comfort level with this side of the family.  My father I tend to go over board on, same goes for my aunt and uncle.  His brother and sister truly are the greatest people in the world.  I then have to shop for my sister who isn’t really picky at all, she likes money and needs clothes - a gift card can kill two birds with one stone when it comes to her.

This year I added a few more people to the list though.  I have Sean and his mom, plus his mothers sister and her kids.  The kids are pretty easy to shop for though, I figure a $15 gift certificate to a local game store could really do the trick so it’s not that big of a deal.

Either way the shopping is completed, and now I’m slowly rebuilding the money that’s been spent over the last month.  However, it’s only the 3rd and I’m already at about $300 so figure if that’s about $100 a day on average I hope to have around $3,000 back in the account by the time the New Year rolls around.

: crosses fingers :