Whittling it down, bit by bit.

I've worked my budget so that I have aalmost $800 a month to pay towards my credit cards.  Now, that's some serious frugal living.  How awesoime will it be when I have $800 extra dollars a month to just put into savings?!?!?!?!!!!  Anyway, I'm now paying off my Washington Mutual (evil people) card.  Hopefully that will be completely gone in another 2 months.

So far, the cat has been put on lower quality food.  It bothered me at first, but them I reminded myself that our family cat lived almost 19 years on Friskies and she was just fine.  The dog, however, is still eating the $1.79 cans of Merrick.  But I am switching to making my own dog biscuits/treats, which are ridiculously easy.  Chicken livers/giblets are only .79 at the supermarket.  So I just cook them up or add some flour and bake them and he gobbles them up.  I'm still going to splurge every now and then for a Flossie, though.

I can't begin to tell you how much $ I've saved by bringing my lunch and not buying Starbucks.  It's a strange feeling to go through an entire day and not spend any money.  It's quite easy to do.  I'm sure millions of people have been living financially responsible for years and this is no suprise to them.  But to me, it's all still new.

I'm still selling on eBay (check out my stuff I'm girlandadog).  Right now I'm pretty much just trying to sell off all of my books.  Over the weekend my father gave me some old books to sell to see if I could get anything for them.  My parents have been inspired by my leaf turnover and are beginning to "downsize" themselves.  My father must have 1,000 books (and he's actually read them all).  All hardback.  I'm pricing some of the antique/rare books, but so far I don't think I'm going to get much for them unless I start the auctions at .01, which is always kind of risky for something that is actually worth something.

Still selling my clothes at a nearby consignment shop as well, although that really doesn't make any money.  I've basically been using whatever cash I get as my weekly cash (which I'm actually not spending, but it's cash on hand in case I need it).

The only major expense I've had is a medical expense - I finally had my appointment at the headache clinic, which had an out of pocket uninsurable cost of $400.  I'm okay with it, because the headaches have gotten really serious.  The neurosurgeon feels that I may have an avm.  Best case scenario is that one of the major nerves leading to the brain is inflamed/pinched.  I have an MRA scheduled this week.  In the meatime, he gave me a nerve block (needle inserted into my brain stem area, FUN), which didn't really help that much.  Hopefully it won't be the worst case scenario, which would mean I'd have to go out on disability for awhile and only get 60% of my pay.

I'm worried, but I'm more relieved that I finally found a doctor who took me seriously and didn't just brush me off saying that my "migraines have changed."