An Update...Or Rather Three Updates

Feeling much better and now ready to rock my financials. Here's the update:

• $1500 challenge. I made it! In addition to the $1000 I had collected in the previous update, I sold a gold bracelet that I never wore for $300 (not at a "Cash for Gold" place but to a local jeweler who pays much higher rates for salvage gold), and hubby won $200 at his weekly poker game so I did complete the challenge (and made my house payment) but I wouldn't recommend doing this with something as important as a house payment because it is TOO stressful. Fortunately I didn't have to tap into the emergency fund to make the payment! The best part is that hubby's credit card is half paid off and as soon as I get my bonus I will pay off the other half which was the whole catalyst for this challenge.
• The house sale. Not so much good new here. We have only had a few people look at the house since the end of the tax credit in April. The house may also be priced a bit high for the market so we may end up just keeping it until the market values raise around here. We aren't pressed to sell and we want to be able to make a reasonable profit so we will decide in June whether to pull it off the market for a while. Once we do decide to keep it, we will begin doing some renovations including a new kitchen floor and new appliances and counter tops in the kitchen., which should make it both nice for us to enjoy while we live here and add some value for the next time we put it on the market.
• Travel. I am heading to Chicago next week for a business trip (of course the hubby is tagging along as we always travel together). We always have a budget, sort of, in mind for our travel but it is usually pretty flexible. I read this post over at the Young Mogul blog and it gave me the idea to set a really tight budget for the trip and see if we can actually meet it. So next week's posts will revolve around how to squeeze every penny out of our travel dollars. I have already done a bit of research (Googling 'free things to do in Chicago') and found that there will be a Turkish Community Festival when we are there complete with free entertainment, a free day at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, and free entrance to the National Museum of Surgical Science which should be interesting as well.