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Today I started crunching numbers in preparation for doing taxes. I always use it as an excuse to run summaries of my income and expense categories and try to identify areas for future budget action. So here are the significant changes between 2005 and 2006 in no particular order. I succeeded in reducing my "eating out" expenses by about a third, which was an area I was really targeting. Regular groceries crept up a little but not at all significantly. I was also aiming to keep book spending under control and only managed this on paper by virtue of an advance declaration that purchases at Kalamazoo were "off budget". Entertainment expenses (i.e., movies, CDs, DVDs) were down about 40% -- again, an item I was targeting. Household furniture tripled, which isn't at all surprising given all the major house projects. I succeeded in my resolution to spend more on my own health than my cat's (thanks to all the dental work I got caught up on). Computer software and hardware as a combined category were reduced about 2/3 simply because I didn't need to replace anything major. I knew from my running budget-planning totals that I was running way ahead of my transportation budget, but it hadn't hit me until now that it was entirely due to the new clutch in the car. Overall, it looks like I should keep the same budget targets and keep trying to meet them more precisely. (I should note that my budget targets are set up to have plenty of leftovers, as well as including several different flavors of "sock it away" items.)

Now to make an appointment with the tax man and do my initial stabs at the forms so I can find out how close I'm coming.

I really meant to get some carpentry done today. Installed the lifting mechanism for the crawl-space trap door. I knew there was some sort of little handle-type object that would lie flush with the surface. Home Depot had no idea what I was talking about, but Orchard Supply had it right there with the rest of the knobs and handles and hinges and whatnot. It required some creative drilling, chiseling, and routing to get it to sit flush before installing the screws, but I'm very happy with the result. But the "bridge" that fits over the trap door to lift the bookcases up on that section is still unsawn lumber in the back yard. I finished shelf-checking the books moved downstairs so far and am finding that about 5-10% of them aren't in the database yet, so it's going slower than expected. Still, it's the ideal time to do the check and get everything logged in.