If I had $5,000...

Every so often I like to think about what I would do with an extra $5,000. It's not millions of dollars winning the lottery which is so unlikely to happen. Five thousand dollars is technically an attainable amount of money, like a new job sign-on bonus or a crazy tax refund. It could happen.

Obviously I could only do one of these things, but in no particular order:

• Replace kitchen appliances
• Fancy yard landscaping
• Car down payment
• New furniture
• Living room
• Dining room
• Bedroom
• Home repairs
• Update fence
• Kitchen floor
• Kitchen granite 
• Bathrooms
• New roof
• New air conditioning
• Add bedrooms basement
• Redo floorplan upstairs
• Lasik eye surgery
• Invisalign 
• Vacation
• Throw it at the mortgage
• Put it in savings or lock it in something that earns interest

I think of all the money we spent on treatment and wonder if we'll ever have extra for any of these things. They're not needs, they're wants. We can absolutely go without most of them but it's fun to dream. I like having a wishlist and adding to it every so often. It may be boring but it's mine.

We've been living intentionally frugally so that we can do what we need to do to build a family while still trying to be financially responsible. It's kind of ridiculous to think about trying to stay out of debt when I still have an insane amount of student debt, but it's the principle of the matter. It's easy to let spending get out of control so we do our best to curb it as much as possible. The holiday season kind of put a monkey wrench in the budget so we're going on a temporary spending diet. It's a pretty trim budget to begin with but I know we could be more careful about grocery shopping and food waste so that will be our goal for November.