Wow! It's been a whirlwind of a week in regards to this move being determined. We started off with a list of 70 positions/locations to choose from. We made a list of 7, as requested, and ranked them. This list included our current city, as well as, one other position in our state.

The first response back from the Army eliminated ALL 7 choices. They came back with 5 choices that would be better for DH's career. The five choices were located in CA, WI, TX, and WV. We again ranked the positions, putting Texas at the top of the list. It was pretty hard emotionally to know we would leave the state we have come to love.

Before that list of 5 was final, another position opened up in NM. We had to throw it into the mix of rankings. New Mexico looks beautiful, but we eliminated it based on what DH knows about the unit and their status on the deployment cycle.

And then guess what happens after our list is submitted? The Army comes back and offers a position here in our current state that was on our original list of 7 choices. I'm in the middle of researching schools in and looking for rental homes Texas. Talk about being thrown for a loop!!

So, we have accepted their offer to reside in our current state. We will need to move, but it's just two hours east of our current location. We are moving farther away from family, but it's still a weekend drive for a visit, rather than an airline ticket.

My oldest, high school daughter, is the happiest she has been in this whole process. My younger daughter is disappointed as she was looking forward to Texas and an out of state move. I was more worried about my older daughter, so the stress has eased.

Logistically, moving 2 hours away is sooo much easier than moving 12+ hours away. We can hop on the interstate for a day trip to check things out just about anytime. Happy. Happy. Happy!!

Financially...our housing allowance will drop by $300. It is an area with slightly less expensive housing. However, it will go back up near the current amount we receive next year when DH is promoted. I can work with that. Besides, if we can get the house sold quick enough, we will be back to running just one household. It all works out.

Now to decide to rent or buy. I was originally thinking rent, but wonder if I really should consider buying (only once current house is sold) since rates are so low. It also seems our choices might be much greater too. I will start running some numbers soon.

Soooo...that's the news here. Can you believe it?

We earned a nice little $12.83 on the money in our emergency fund last month. I'll take it. Debating about adding this to our Christmas Fund, but for now I'm leaving it out. I'd like that account to keep growing, even if by a little bit.

I relisted an ebay item last night. This was the one that I sold over a week ago to a non paying bidder. The auction will end on Sunday, or before if someone takes advantage of the buy it now price.

My daughter and I are going to the eye doctor today. Not too thrilled that we have to go less than a year after we went last time, but when you need to go, you need to go. I will put the charges on the CitiDividend card and expect to meet the $500 threshold today for our $200 reward. That's good at least.

My ebay buyer still has not paid. Newbie or in the area of recent tornados. Not sure. I'll wait a bit longer to relist.

I was able to see my husband's January paystub (LES) today. Our exempt status for our state was processed correctly which means no withholding for state!! With the slight increase in pay and the state tax exempt status we have a net increase of $393.74 per month.

I want to set up our Roth IRA's to draft for $150 each per month. That will give us a head start on maximizing our Roth's this year. However, part of me remembers talking to the DH about holding on to as much cash as possible until the move is complete. I might have to just stick with that.

Either way it's all good and we are pleased with the positive financial events.

Our tax refunds from federal and state will amount to over $6,000! We have never had such a large refund. I really try to keep things as close to zero as possible. Last year I even had to pay our state $124 and I was fine with that!

Specifically, we will receive $4,063 from federal and $2,309 from our state. This equals $6,372 back into our pockets. That would have amounted to $531 per month if we had been receiving that money all year long.

We had several factors that caused our refunds to be so large. The first was that my husband was in a combat zone for the first four months of the year. This money is considered non-taxable by the federal government and the state. While in the combat zone he also earned 27.5 days of vacation that are also considered non-taxable. He used all of those days in 2011, thus nearly another month of tax free income.

With only 7 months of basic pay taxable we qualified for the earned income tax credit in the amount of $920. We also earned a $400 saver's credit for contributing to our Roth IRA's (lower incomes can qualify for this credit). And we have two kids which qualifies us for $2000 in credits as well. We ended up paying zero dollars in Federal taxes and will get a return of our withholding, the EITC and the additional child tax credit.

Under normal circumstances, we would not qualify for the EITC or the retirement savings credit. But we tax advantage of them when we can.

I posted a few days ago that our state signed a new law this past year that renders federal military pay of any kind tax free in our state. Thus we will be getting all of our withholding returned to us and a small refundable earned income tax credit. I was not aware of this law until the day I made my post. We could have filed exempt back in May and had nearly $300 put into our pocket for the last 7 months. I just didn't know. Now that I do, we have adjusted my husband's withholding to be exempt for our state. Thus about $300 more in our pockets each month going forward. Very excited!!

The plan is to use $4,166.62 to finish funding our Roth IRA's for 2011. The remainder will be saved until after our move. We are trying to beef up our cash as much as possible, once we are moved we will attack our 2012 goals!

I filed the returns last night. It appears we should have this money returned to us by February 1. Have you completed your taxes? Are you still waiting for forms?

The money is flowing in!!

I received a check in the mail for $4 today. It was a refund of cash that has been sitting in my daughter's school lunch account for over two years. She doesn't eat at school...ever. Nice to have the money back!

I also gave a winning scratch lottery ticket that we received in another state over Christmas to my parents today. They paid me the winning amount and will redeem the ticket back at home. It was a $3 winner.

All money is going to The Christmas Fund. The four dollars isn't exactly free money, but that lottery ticket sure is.

We received my husband's W-2 and the W-2c (which showed a lower wage!) and can finally file our taxes. We are likely getting a huge amount back because of many factors. It will be nice. I'll detail that information in another post once I have everything complete.

OMG!!

I was working on our tax return. I input wage information even though I'm waiting on the W-2. It turns out all military income earned in our state is now exempt from state income tax, retroactive back to January 2011. This also means all income earned going forward is exempt from state taxes. This is huge!

Right now we are having $291.22 withheld each month for taxes. That is now money back in our pocket. Wow! I wasn't expecting that. I guess I'm not listening to the news close enough. This bill was signed into law on 5.11.11.

This also means our tax refund this year will be about $2300 or $1200 more than I expected. Nice!!

Oh, and you got to know I just online with DFAS to change our withholding to exempt. That will be effective February 1. Yipee!!

Now...I've really got to make sure this counts.

The statement cycle for my Chase Freedom card ended yesterday. Today, I received notification that my new rewards balance was 30,502. This is the card that is giving 30,000 point for making one purchase. I made two. One very small one at Old Navy and a donation to the Red Cross, since charities were 5% cash back last quarter.

I redeemed all the points for a check that will amount to $305.02. Can't wait to see that nice bonus check in week or so! And of course, the account balance is zero.

In other credit card news, I applied and was approved for a Citi Dividend Card. I will need to spend $500 in 3 months to earn a $200 bonus. I likely will just use the card to buy regular purchases during the next month and be done with it.

DH is not interested in opening any accounts in his name. If he was we could double these rewards. Oh well. It's his choice.

Members of the military are getting a raise this year. A raise of 1.6%. For my husband that is an net increase of $47.08 per pay period. Or $1129.92 for the year.

I need to make a plan for this money!! It would help if I was clear on our goals.

I could set aside each month to put into our emergency fund. Or use it to fund more college expenses. I could also increase his TSP investment amount and call it retirement savings.

Obviously...we have a decision to make! Any other ideas on what I could do with it?

Here's a snapshot of our financial year:

We earned more interest than ever because we invested in the Savings Deposit Program (SDP) available to deployed military members. We earned 10%!!

Here's the interest breakdown: SDP $583.33, Money Market $106.48, USAA $1.97. Total interest was $691.78.

Our emergency fund took a small hit, and is down $737 from last year at this time. I feel okay about that considering we have had additional expenses running two households and buying new siding and a sliding glass door for our home, all of which were much more than $737!

We were debt free except for our mortgage in mid January 2011 until May when we purchased a new to us truck. We paid part of the purchase ($12,000) in cash which was a first for us. The remainder was taken out in a loan in the amount of $14,776.68. Our remaining debt on this loan stands at $12,412.06. We are simply making regular payments until we are back to one household. That loan will become priority number one once we do.

We did contribute some to our girls college educations this year, but not the full $4,000 we planned. We stopped contributions when we split to two households. Their accounts are each up about $1100 each for the year.

We also stopped making Roth IRA contributions in August. We are currently short of our 2011 goal to max out our Roth IRA's by $4,166.67. We expect to make this up with our tax refund. Thus meeting our goal, but later than normal. We did contribute $5072.76 to the TSP and $5,833.34 to our Roth's in 2011, which is $10,906.10.

I compared this years retirement totals to last year and we are only up $11,028.72. At one point we were up over $18K. But you know how the market is!

Since our goal was to primarily keep the status quo, I think we did pretty good. Yes, we took on more debt, but this vehicle will be one we keep for the long term. We feel good about the purchase.

It has been disappointing to cut back on investments, but it needed to be done temporarily to keep from getting into more debt while running two households. We really are cash flowing this adventure and all that comes with it and it feels good.

How was your financial year? Negative, neutral or positive?

I did receive my $20 Serve check in the mail. It's now in the bank. Right now the plan is to save it for Christmas 2012.

It did seem to take awhile to get the check. But it did arrive. Is everyone else getting their check?

On my side of the family we agreed not to exchange adult gifts since my brother in law is currently unemployed. It worked well for us; saved money and time. Turns out my parents decided to keep on giving! We received stocking stuffers with chocolate, smart wool socks, coffee, and vitamin C packets. And then a card with a $100 check. We were definitely not expecting that!

On my husband's side of the family we gave to our neices and nephews, his mother and exchanged gifts with two adults. Perfect. Except his sister was put on house arrest for a DUI and unable to attend our gathering.

My mother in law decided we should take up a collection, since SIL is unable to work, thus pay her rent and so forth. MIL started the envelope with $20. She asked if we would have cash to donate. Normally we don't have any cash on us. We use our debit card all the time. But I did have cash. So with mixed feelings we donated $25 to SIL.

We have mixed feelings because we feel this is an area of personal responsibility. SIL chose to drink and drive on more than one occassion, was caught, went to court and in house arrest and all that comes with it (unable to work) is the penalty. And if she can't pay rent, then that is part of the penalty too. Not our problem.

I'm sure our $25 and whatever amount was collected won't amount to making a huge difference. DH also doesn't think she will appreciate the thought in anyway. Or that we will ever hear a thank you. But giving $25 won't hurt us a bit either. It is what it is.

What would you do?

I received two credit card offers from Chase this weekend. And I'm diving in. Yes. I'm applying for a credit card!! Yikes.

Both offers only require one purchase. Talk about being easy to keep track of!

And I did talk with DH about applying. He doesn't think we need it. And the truth is we don't. The offer of cash is just too hard to turn down right now though.

I applied tonight for the Chase Freedom card which will give me $300 cash back after just one purchase. One!! It also offers 0% until December 2012. I don't plan on taking advantage of this since we don't carry balances on credit cards. But it is a nice offer.

The second offer is for Chase Sapphire Preferred. At first I thought the card was only airline miles. Even though DH is flying a ton now, I hate dealing with airline miles. Hate. But after looking at the website, I can redeem the points for cash. The offer is for 50,000 points after one, yes ONE, purchase! Those 50,000 points can be redeemed for $500 cash.

I told DH I wasn't applying for the second one because of the airline miles, but he will be hearing from me about this one. It is a better offer.

I have not applied for a card in quite some time, but I expect to be approved. I know my credit must be good enough to receive the offers in the mail.

For those of you applying for these rewards cards lately, do you think I can apply for both Chase cards close together? Or should I deal with one, close it and then apply for the other?

So excited at the idea of an extra $800 in my pocket!!

This is a long month between paychecks. It also seems to have been a bit spendy! I'm already dipping into some money I was hoping I could squirrel away for Christmas.

We have food at our house. Gas in the van. I don't think I'll do my usual fill up on Sundays. I've been filling the tank on Sundays and get a free newspaper for doing so. I know we can do without a newspaper this week.

We have our candy stash for Halloween. No one NEEDS clothes this weekend. As far as I can tell we should be able to make it through the weekend until payday.

Oh, just remembered we might need to procure a piece or two of posterboard for class projects. At least those are pretty cheap.

Did you just get paid or are you waiting until the first of the month, too? Are you looking to have a no spend weekend?

The paycheck is pending, but there is some extra cash in the checking account, so I paid the bills.

The big one was for DH's rent. So wish we didn't have to pay that!

I also renewed the registration on our van. That money had already been saved up for. We do that on a monthly basis. I believe there is a link on the sidebar about how we do that.

Otherwise it was a few smaller bills to record for when they automatically come out of our checking account. One of those is the truck payment that will post on Monday or Tuesday. Which will mean a lower balance!!

In other income news, I received the refund check from the dance studio. I haven't deposited it yet. I'm thinking about where to allocate the funds.

Sold several books to a used book store: $5
These were garage sale leftovers.

Pet sat 2 cats and 2 kittens for 2.5 days: $25
The kittens were soooo cute.

It feels good to see money trickling in. Of course, I'm not against seeing a flood of money!