Happy Thanksgiving everyone. My husband is working tonight so I spent a quiet night with my daughter. We ate dinner as a family together last saturday, and I just froze some of the leftover turkey today for later.

Things I am thankful for:
1)One more week of school and then I get a month off (much needed).
2) I am in the middle of a five day weekend.
3) My DH is no longer in the armed forces, 5 years ago at this time he came home to me. Stop losses suck is all I will say.
4) My immediate family is healthy.
5) My DH and I are still gainfully employed and able to pay our bills.
6) Tomorrow marks my first week with 20/20 vision thanks to the miracle of lasik surgery.

There are many others, but I need to finish my term paper before saturday.

My 2009 goals are simple. I'm trying to follow the KISS method:-).
1) Get B.S. Degree in June 09'.
2) Not add on to existing debt, continue to pay same amount to reduce it
3) Apply any windfall amount to paying off car loan (7200 balance) including tax return and overtime money. After that, its the other car loan then CC.
That's my financial goals for 09 in a nutshell. The degree part is included because I *should* get a raise if all works out after I get it... I am not counting on it, but it would be nice.
Personal goals
1) Repeat of 1 above
2) Stay happily married
3) Continue raising daughter :-)
4) Look at master's programs for entrance in 2010

So, I am getting lasik surgery on friday; two months earlier than planned. I guess the economy is hurting the place because they said they would give me a twenty percent discount for getting it done this month. Since 20% is a better saving then I get using the FSA, I'll take it!
I have been planning (and saving) for 3 years for this, so I'm pretty pysched.

This is an example of how poor customer service can ruin a store reputations, but good service helps it out...
I bought something from Victoria's Secret a month and a half ago, it's 45 bucks but the stuff is usually really good quality. Well, not this time. I wore it once and washed it and it broke. Since I live 45 minutes away, I didn't get back to the store to return it yesterday. There, the manager tells me she can't help me and I should be aware of the return policy (and some other attitude that drove me nuts)... Apparently, because I didn't handwash it, it is not returnable. Oh well.
I called to talk to customer service because I was pretty frustrated by the attitude of the manager, and the poor quality of the manager. When I told the CSR said she would send a gift certificate out for the amount of the purchase and to have a nice day. No arguing or anything. Gotta love it when customer service is better at the 800 number, I just hate that I had to go to the trouble of calling.

Does anyone else have any "planned" purchases that get pushed off because something else keeps coming up? Well, we do. We have been planning to buy one for four years, but it has been put off by buying a house, cars and just general life expenses. It looked like we where going to get a large lump sun (8k or so) pretty soon, so we where going to buy a boat with that. However, that lump sum now looks like it will happen sometimes in the next year..
In the meantime, my husband is calling me a debt nazi; I can think of worse things to be. I don't mind buying a boat with an unexpected lump sum of money, but I don't want to do one with payments.. All of our extra money right now goes to my schooling and bills so while we *could* afford the boat, it would be affording it on payments and I just don't want to do that. Good thing my husband is patient... He is the one that really wants the boat, but is willing to not push it when we have other debt...