I'm doing the budget for December and for our living expenses, we should be in the black that month.

BUT with Christmas, my friend's coming to visit, DH's birthday, our 9th anniversary - you can see it'll be easy to find opportunities to spend.

The silver lining is - DH is taking a trip to Tampa for a convention so he should make a couple hundred dollars from that so we can get some Xmas presents for the kids (but it will be last minute since he won't get back till the 18th and then it takes a couple days to get the money).

We're also still waiting on the tax refund from Hawaii $243

After this month's deficit, we have $900 in our savings account. I shouldn't HAVE to touch that money in December but I also have my tuition due in Dec/Jan so that is about $1000 I'll either need to take out another student loan to cover it or put it on my 0% card.

I'm not sure what to really think of the economy right now. Jim Cramer said that he can see the Dow going down to 6000 if GM fails and while I'm not heavily invested ($6K is in the market/$13K is in Government backed funds) the economy is affecting my job and if my job goes away... everything else would crumble.

But I guess its not all doom and gloom. Just because my job goes away doesn't mean I can't get another. It would be tight, I might not be able to finish my master's degree, and we'd have to start paying childcare... but I am sure if I think about it, there are opportunities. I can always work at DFAS as an accountant or do work auditing.

Hopefully all works out though.

But for things I haven't included in the budget yet are:

1) A dress for my daughter's Christmas performance
2) Double date night with my friend and her hubby
3) Drive on the boardwalk (Cheapest thing so far $7 per car)
4) Christmas... which I'm not sure how we're going to do... we're writing out the list for shopping and we're going to have to lower our expectations or something cause the list is upwards of $1000 because the kids want video games and we don't have the consoles for the ones they want.

Maybe I could check out Craigslist or something. My oldest wants a Nintendo DS, but I think she'll have to suffice for Leapster games since she already has a Leapster. My son, well we're getting him a new bedding set and maybe a SmartCycle game since he already the bike. Not sure what to do for my middle daughter. Maybe get more Vsmile games for her.