Update for December

Long time since I last Posted..Man how time flies. Networth is sitting at $264K. Considering the year we have had I really can't complain. This is a 70K increase from December 2008. I am very pleased that my cash accounts are now over $50K (sleeping well at night) and my 401K and 403B balances equal over $100K now. That's a nice milestone to achieve. My wife and I are still planning on building up our cash accounts for a potential move of paying down a bit of the mortgage, resetting our rate (we have a 5 year arm) and increasing our monthly cash flow. Our mortgage has a nice feature of not needing to refinance but with a $700 fee we can have our mortgage reset with a new payment and new rate.
We continue to wrestle with our wants and needs and have purchased a second flat screen TV and a new rug for our dining room. At least we got a good deal on it since we purchased it around the holidays. We are now anxious to purchase some new dining room furniture to increase our storage capacity and lesson the burden on the Kitchen cabinets. Of course furniture is hugely overpriced which makes the process ever so painful. We continue to use a very useful system for determining future big purchases. We have a piece of paper on the refrigerator and simply write items on the list and cross them off when we get them. This at least helps control the impulsive buys and allows for some level of planning.