Wow, it has been quite a while since I've updated. I find when I stray from this site my spending goes up and my motivation goes down. Slowly but surely I�m getting back on track.

Let�s start with an update: our only debt is our mortgage (a whopping 202K) and DH�s student loans for his MBA (around 12K). We have our emergency fund established and need to focus on paying down debt, saving for our kids� college and our retirement.

We�ve only saved about $1500 for my almost 3 year old. We�re just deciding exactly how we want to invest it. With another child due in November, it�s going to be tough to put away any amount of money for both but we�re going to try!

I�m going to take 4 months of maternity leave so I�ve been trying to estimate how much we�ll need for that. We always have the E fund to fall back on but I�d like to save that for a true emergency � not something we know about and can plan for. I think we decided we need around 8K. 4 months of mortgage payments ($6K), $1K for car ins due in December and $1K for Christmas. Everything else we should be able to cover with DH�s paycheck (he makes considerably less than I do). Of course when I go back to work we will have additional childcare expenses. Sigh, it�s neverending!

Some portion of the $8K needed for my maternity leave will be covered with s/t disability. I�m not exactly sure how much this is going to be. I should get 70% of my salary for 6 weeks. But, there is a 10 day waiting period so really that is only 70% of 4 weeks pay. So somewhere around $3000 - $3500. That leaves around $5K. I have $1800 saved up in our savings acct and DH has about $3K in a money market acct. So we�re just about covered. I�d like to have a little cushion though (say $500-$1000) just in case his paycheck doesn�t quite cover everything. I think we should be ok when the time comes.

I�ve started back into couponing. I forget how addicting finding deals can be! It really turns into something of a hobby for me. I hope I can make it worthwhile!!

The next thing I want to do is create a personal financial statement . I�m scared to look at our 401K balances though. I fear we are way behind schedule. We are 35 and 37 years old and I think we only have about $100K total. We each put in 10% of our salaries, but that�s only been for about the past year or so.