Money money money money! (money!)

I just paid off my student loan in full. Yay! I've been accelerating the payments big time since I started working (like making payments between 2 and 4 times what I'm required to each month), and now that I've been working for 3 years, and my savings account balance well exceeded the balance in my loan, I got rid of that bitch.

Now I can take the HUNDREDS of dollars a month I was paying those people and add it to my monthly savings contribution. At least for a while, because my savings account is a bit low due to this little payoff situation. My goal is, in addition to the 401K money coming out of my paychecks, put at least $500 from each paycheck in my savings account. This would approximate how much I already put in, plus the monthly amount I had been putting toward the loan. And I get my annual raise next month (glorious day), so I'd like to up that to $600-$650, depending on the amount of said raise.

I complain about my job a lot, but as I've always said, I am thankful that I have the skills to have a job that pays me really well. Sometimes I think I'd be perfectly happy living off of a dog walker's salary, but most of those times I'm delirious and angry at how shitty my actual job is.

I should have the approximately $10k I've budgeted to spend a month in Italy next year in no time. And I'm working on contributing to my high-interest "condo fund," which is me attempting to even out the investment Blake and I have in our house. Obviously, when we bought it, I had approximately $2,500 (borrowed from my dad) and he had what is a completely ridiculous amount of cash for a 23 year old that he put toward the down payment. So technically, his ownership percentage in our house is higher than mine (yes, we have a legal agreement. Yes, we are cautious, because we are accountants). But within 2-3 years, which is about the time we'll probably look at moving, I should have evened us out completely.

Some days I'm really good at money. Please God, don't smite me by making my car die right now. I do NOT have acceptable funds to buy a new car at this very moment (although that is on my radar...because my car could cease to run at any time really. She turns 10 in October!) Though honestly, I might be able to get by on just a bicycle if I could learn to drive stick shift...right now I can't drive Blake's car because of my inability to master the manual transmission. (Things that aren't helping me learn: feeling completely nervous that I'm going to tear the gears out of the car that Blake treats like a child every time I get behind the wheel. Also, the fact that I'm a pretty terrible driver in general.)

This post is bordering on rambling incoherence right now, so I'm gong to end it with this. I noticed yesterday that my Marriott points balance is teetering on 300,000. It will cost me between 250,000 and 300,000 for my Italy trip (this will cover 12 nights at ridiculously nice hotels. There are no other Marriotts over there that interest me, so for the other half of the trip I'm going to have to actually pay for rooms. Boo.) I've basically earned 150,000 points in the last 6 months (since I got their credit card...and since I travel constantly and stay only at Marriotts). I don't plan to go to Italy until October 2009-ish. By then I should have probably another 300,000 points. What should I use them on?