Personal finance

We bought a car! I have the pic in my camera, but haven’t uploaded it yet. I shall soon. We went with the Mazda3. It’s quite beautiful and I definitely love the bluetooth integration of modern cars. Heh. It has enough space for the baby (obviously) in the backseat and Mobi in the hatch, which was our biggest concern in picking out a car for our growing family, aside from the presence of air conditioning.

We sold our Civic! I took a final drive but I need to get a final picture of the car that’s served us so well for the last 7 years. *hug* We need to get it smogged and then we’ll be ready to pass it on to the new owner, who is our coworker. It is the cleanest and best maintained it’s ever been (new tires last year, 2nd 90k tuneup this year, fan fixed, rebuilt transmission last year, etc.) and I know it’ll treat the new owner well for years to come. If it weren’t for the lack of air conditioning and 4 doors, we could have kept this for another 10 years.

We are refinancing the house to a significantly lower rate, which will lower the total paid interest and potentially cut several years off the total lifetime of the loan (depending on which strategy we decide to go with)!

We still have to decide if we’ll be able to fix the upstairs bathroom before the baby arrives or not. If not, we can always wash the baby in the kitchen sink for several years. That sink is hugenormous, after all, and at a much better height for easy baby-washing, with a spray head even. 🙂 The issue with fixing is both money and time. Obviously, we need to save money to be able to take time off after the baby is born, but we also need money for daycare going past that, and for various baby-related costs.

And on top of everything, the Hawaii trip is a go! You’d think we were nuts but we know this will be the last vacation we’ll be able to take in a long time. And given that in our 11 year relationship history that we’ve only really gone on two other vacations (honeymoon in 2006 and Tulum in 2007), we really wanted to make one more trip for just the two of us. Plus, the tickets only cost $10 due to years of saved up frequent flyer miles. 🙂 We’ll need to book lodgings and a rental car, but it’s so nice to have the tickets for just about free.

Because I am such a skinflint, all this money spending is making my head spin and my palms sweat profusely. But I know we’ve managed to do all this very economically and with plenty of slush in our various savings accounts for emergencies, long-term savings, and planned spendings (like the car, which we’d been saving for for a while now), so I know I need to just unclench a little and breathe. Plus, the refinance actually saves us money in both the long term and on a monthly basis, so it’s the right thing to do, even with a little cash out of pocket.