I Love February!

I don't love the weather. And I despise Valentine's Day (long story). But this is turning out to be a good financial month for us - every year. First of all, it's bonus month at my company. We simply add that money to what we have saved for our vacation since it's not in our budget. I don't know what mine is, yet. But any extra helps. Secondly, it's "opt out" month here also. Which means, since we use my husband's health insurance, I get extra for opting out of ours. That's also extra vacation money. Again, since we don't count on it every year, we don't put it in our budget. And it's tax month. Our W2's are here, so we'll e-file our taxes this weekend (probably) and should have the money in our account by the end of the month. That goes into the savings account since if we'd been getting it throughout the year, that's what we would have done with it.

This year - it's even better. I just locked in a fabulous refinance rate on our home! So, we just knocked 1.75% off our interest rate and 8 1/2 years off of our loan! And over $200 a month off of our payment as a result of all of that. We have been putting this re-fi off for a while, but now, with the credit markets all but crippled, the interest rates are dropping. That makes it prime time for people like us - no debt, near perfect credit - to take advantage of it. Now, I'm not advocating taking out any addtional loans. And we didn't. We aren't taking out any extra. Simply taking what we owe on our house & getting a better loan. No money out and a shorter term.

In some small way, this makes up for the crappy weather this week.