Ah yes, it is that time when my darling daughter is in need of help with her horrible oral situation. As a hygienist I know a little about occlusion and saw this coming years ago. Of course, knowing and actually preparing are 2 totally different things.

We met with the orthodontist for a consultation this morning and she will need to have 4 baby teeth pulled (they are not the least bit loose and the adult teeth under the gums are almost fully formed), a retainer for her upper teeth to help her severe overbite and a retainer for her lower teeth so that they do not crowd any further while we wait for the rest of her baby teeth to fall out. That is just the pre-braces stuff. Oy.

Anyway, the orthodontist was very nice and took time with us to explain everything which is sometimes lacking in medical professionals, so I appreciated that very much. Since the office I work at refers patients to him I also received a small "professional courtesy" discount which was a very welcome & generous surprise. Thanks Doc!

They offer an in-office payment plan so that I can pay over 12 months for this initial stuff. I like that idea also since I'm working on re-building that EF right now. I've gotta go re-work my YNAB budget to show the new monthly payments now.

New EF balance with Bonus from work and one rebate check: $3,096

If you've got a CVS card and some coupons this week is another great week to bring home more ECB's than you walked in with! Today and tomorrow are a HUGE 2-day extravagance of items that are FREE after ECB's, so when you buy them with coupons you will get back more money than you paid. You just can't beat that!

Added paycheck #2 plus part of paycheck #1 and a few small rebates I received in the mail this week to the EF:

Total EF Balance: $2,839.53

Although I have been trying really hard to avoid the financial news these last few weeks, my DH takes it upon himself to remind me that 1.5 MILLION jobs were lost over the last 3 months! Yuck. My patients keep reminding me with all their economic talk as well, so I am glad to be putting my whole paycheck from job #2 toward the EF. Last time I grew my EF I decided that $5,000 was a good EF. These days I am leaning toward building it a bit larger since I have been forced to think about possible job loss. We'll see how I feel once the EF is back to $5,000.

Job #2 Paycheck plus ones place and change from Job #1 paycheck added to EF (rounded up): $251.00

EF TOTAL @ 12/10/08: $2,497.53
Halfway to the $5,000 mark again! Hooray!