So I have a nice day off today. All offices at work are closed. Yesterday, I sold another item from the local virtual garage sale. That's another $5 to the total for the week. I also earned $5 from Smart Panel for the month of December. I joined this app called Achievement that gives you points for being active. It uses my fitness apps to track progress and give points. I'm 12% on my way to a $10 reward and I just signed up on Monday!

I need to return two items to Macy's. One is a shell that I do not need (and upon opening, do not like it anyway). The other is a suit I purchased at a reduced price, but it's not a need. I may need a new suit if I get offered a position for which I'm interviewing. There are multiple hurdle interviews to get through and of course, a board meeting for approval. I will purchase closer to if I actually make it onward. So that will be a total of $105 back to my account.

I went through and updated the balances of a few accounts whose payments hit and new statements were generated. I noticed an error in my formula and fixed the student loan total. It's significantly less than what I had listed! Whew! Both balances went down. I'm going to love watching those continue to shrink. Glad I ripped the bandaid off and was honest with myself. Now I can truly track it and think, "do I really NEED this? " The answer is almost always no. I'm clicking hide ads and unsubscribing to emails as much as possible too. Trying to reduce the temptation of online purchases.

I recently had to purchase more heavy duty permanent shopping bags and while at it, also purchased reusable produce bags. My municipality is now charging 10 cents per bag (paper and plastic). When I went to our local grocery store yesterday, there were no bags out at the self check-out lines. I hate those bags anyway and usually recycle them, but had forgotten to bring a bag. Luckily, it was only a few items and I was able to carry them to my car. This morning, I viewed an NPR article on garbage in our oceans. Maybe another challenge will be to utilize reusable containers as much as possible. I will work on that too.

I had a very productive day on the Christmas challenge front. One of my unused gift cards sold on Raise. I also worked on decluttering and posted a number of items on a local virtual garage sale site. It's local so it's pretty quick turnaround. I earned $58 from selling items. I also received an unexpected refund for $29 from my hospital for a payment made through insurance. While decluttering, I found an unused $15 Target gift card. All have been added to the Christmas challenge total.

I also found a $50 gift card to a dry cleaner that I never used after I had my wedding dress preserved. I need to have a few items dry cleaned so while it's far, I'm going to make the trek over there to have them cleaned there for free. The day was full of fun surprises!

I made a pot pie out of the leftover prime rib roast that should last us two days. Ate leftover mashed potatoes with it. All told, I'm calculating the cost of the roast at $2.20 per serving (I purchased it for $17.94). I froze the rest of the meat and bones to throw in and make gravy (pasta sauce) next week. I'm going to make chicken taco meat that should last us through Saturday. I will then make the ham Sunday and use it to make some creative meals throughout the week. The ham was $9 so that's pretty good.

I did some rough calculating and I know for sure I can reduce my debt by about $17K by January 2019. It will be more than that just with regular payments, but I only calculated debts paid off in full by then. Here's to sticking to goals and keeping eyes on the prize!