Today I received a sweet $25 from Swagbucks in my PayPal account. It made a lovely little mortgage chip.

A few days ago, I received a check in the mail from Tango in the amount of $4.19. This was also courtesy of Swagbucks somehow, I believe a bonus paid for a particular offer a month or two ago. It also made a lovely little mortgage chip.

This last week was lots of fun, though busy.

On Wednesday, I attended the company Xmas party of my part-time job. There weren't many people there I knew, but I had a nice evening anyway.

On Thursday, I met a girlfriend for coffee after work. I hadn't seen her in awhile, and we had a good visit.

On Friday, the "kids" and I went to my mother's. My nephew's step-son was playing basketball in my mother's town, the nephew, his wife, and two of their children came as well. We had a nice time visiting at my mom's house.

Tonight I am going to yet another party, this one in the home of some friends of mine. There will be a white elephant gift exchange, which is always fun with this group.

I redeemed 2500 swagbucks this morning! A sweet $25 mortgage chip is on its way to my Paypal account.

I will work Monday, then have 2 days off! Yay.

Look at this place. It is priced at 6k less than I paid for my current house.

My company Xmas party was this past Saturday evening. Our little group was served dinner in the wine cellar of a local restaurant. It was very private, which made the atmosphere very comfortable. I think everyone present had a little too much to drink. We stayed late and laughed often. What a fun evening!

My Xmas bonus this year was $2,100. I have already sent $600 off to my traditional IRA, and the remainder off to Visa. Kind of a bummer that I didn't get to keep some, but paying that Visa down to zero every month is a higher priority.

On payday, I did a wallet sweep and sent $2 off to the mortgage. Today I received $3 from PineCone, and have sent that off as well.

Yesterday I set up the 2013 income tax software on my desktop at work. To do a test run, I plugged in most of my tax numbers. Bad news (but not unexpected). I owe $1578 federal. I will get a state refund of about $1000 to help (don't have California software set up yet, so estimating).

I asked my boss to withhold an additional $300 next payday, because that will get my balance due low enough that I won't owe a penalty as well.

I also changed my withholding, so will see a little less take home pay. I will have to jiggle my budget around a little bit.

In other news, I got my eyebrows threaded last night, and they look fabulous. I was overdue, and I have my company Xmas party this Saturday. I can't have caterpillars crawling on my forehead.

This month's mortgage chips were:
WF Visa $25.00
budgeted extra $13.62
wallet sweeps $10.00
Pine Cone $6.00
HauserNet $3.50

Chips for the month: $58.12

After making my regular payment, my mortgage balance is down to $175,577.08.

Chips to date: $389.94

Interest savings this month: $1.29

Interest savings to date: $5.83

Eventually, the interest savings on the chips I have already made will compound to $892.81, provided I own this house until the mortgage is paid in full.

Beginning Jan 1st, I intend to bump my automatic mortgage payment up another $5.