The good: I was able to stop by the bookstore and pick up the next set of used books for ebookdrop. Fortunately, I double-checked the ISBNs right before I went over and found that one of the books that they would buy on Saturday they wouldn't buy today. Go figure. The rest were ok, and I got them all. Total profit=$11.25. I'll box them up and get them out tomorrow.

The bad: Got my gas bill. This is the balance month for my budget billing, and of course I was over. My bill is usually $174.05/month, but this month it's a whopping $507.28 to make up the underrun. OUCH! I'm not sure how this will impact my monthly bill going forward -- I'm sure they'll raise it, but I'm not sure how much. I'll need to take a good hard look at this one to see what I can do...

Goals for 2006: My mission between now and the end of the year is to go through the different line items on my budget and compare year-end 2004 vs. year-end 2005, and set new goals for 2006. I also need to come up with concrete things I can do to help me meet the new goals. To that end, I stopped by the library and picked up 5 or 6 personal finance/frugal living books. I'll browse through them as I go through each category to see if there's anything I've missed in the past. I've read all but one of the books before, but I usually find a few new ideas when I reread them.

Other than that, DS went to the doctor today. The 5-year old checkup is a killer because they need all their shots up to date before Kindergarten. So he got 2 shots and a finger prick and was not a happy camper. We had to pay for the finger prick out of pocket ($25) and $10 for a prescription, both of which will come back to us via our FSA. I also picked up ice cream as a treat for DD and DS, because they were both troopers...

So I'm off to start looking at some 2006 goals. I'm hoping to have it all done between Christmas and New Year so I can start the new year fresh...