Now that my 23-year-old adult stepson has returned to his sunny, warm state, I thought I'd share a few eye-opening moments that he experienced while visiting here at the North Pole over the holidays.

Despite having grown up here, he has never had to pay for his own skiing. Nor has he had to buy his own plane ticket to come back here from the tropical state that he chose to attend college in (at our expense).

However, because he is now a gainfully employed college graduate, he had to pay his own way this trip (well, up to a point....)

The first revelation that life was not cheap came when he went skiing and the lift ticket cost $86. He came home baffled by the expense, and wondering why people pay this much to be cold and wait in long lines.

My husband and I just smiled and said "Now you know why we don't ski anymore...."

Then there was the revelation over dinner the night before he left that his departing flight was leaving at midnight. I thought this was odd since I once was berated by his mother for making her poor then-20-year-old baby spend 2 hours in some strange city's airport during a stopover because I wanted to save some money instead of flying him back here on a direct flight.

But, apparently the thought of flying all night seemed appealing to said baby when it was his money and he could save a bundle on the red-eye flight.

I have to admit I'm enjoying watching my stepson deal with life's realities. ...

I have begun the liquidation of my stained glass supplies by posting 12 books of patterns on eBay. I also posted some of them on Amazon.

I kept everything fairly simple, so here's hoping they sell and I can start the $20 challenge.

If not, I will have to count on the freelance job coming through. I finished another project today and billed the client $150. Because I worked the other job so much last month, I only have to make $70 in freelance money this month to cover my basic spending plan income in January. I'm well past that amount already, so even if the auction stuff doesn't bring a decent price I'll do OK this month on the challenge.

Initially my plan is to split the extra income between savings and debt. Usually, I'm a firm believer in the 1/3 split, but I'm not feeling the need to fund my immediate needs right now as much as I'd like to fund the new car.

I have a whole room of supplies for making stained glass. However, I have not done anything with it in more than 8 years and do not anticipate getting back to it.

In the interest of de-cluttering and raising funds for the $20 challenge -- and thus paying off debt faster and/or saving for a new car faster -- I'm thinking of selling all my supplies.

I've never sold anything on ebay before, but I think I'm ready to give it a go since I've been reading up on it and feel inspired by DisneySteve.

My plan is to start small -- maybe sell some hand tools or something that is easy to ship. If all goes well, I hope to at least have my now-defunct hobby area cleaned out by summer.

Another thing weighing on my mind lately has been whether to participate in the challenge and -- assuming I did -- what "rules" I would follow.

I've decided that I need to rise to the occasion and join in all the fun, so for my challenge I'm going to keep track of all the extra income I make -- and save or put toward debt repayment -- above and beyond our household base salary of $8,316 a month. This does not include money I already have earmarked for savings or debt repayment -- just anything extra I put toward these categories from extra money that comes in. This also doesn't include dividends from investments, which are automatically reinvested as it is.

The tricky part for me will be to not blow that extra income -- as I've been known to do in the past.

I could get really optimistic and say I'll also count any money leftover from the basic spending plan at the end of the month (i.e. any of that $8,316 that I don't spend or put toward previously budgeted debt repayment), but I figure there's little chance of that happening -- since it never did in 2007 -- so why kid myself....

Since it's so early in the month, I have no extra income but I anticipate a few extra bucks later in the month so wish me luck.

One thing that has been weighing heavily on my mind lately is my car situation -- or, more accurately, my husband's car situtation.

He drives a '92 Honda Odyssey that we paid cash for in 2000. Every time we take it in for repairs, we expect to get a call saying it's not worth fixing. However, that has yet to happen despite semi-annual visits to the mechanic. This time, we both went so far as to start shopping for cars online. I'm pushing for another used car, while he's thinking of leasing or buying a new car. While we have yet to agree on what makes more sense, we have at least agreed on the model -- either a hybrid Toyota Highlander or Honda CRV.

But, once again, the mechanic put an end to our fantasy of driving something that isn't a rust bucket. Today he called to say the strange noise we've been hearing was a minor fix -- to the tune of $200 -- not enough to justify getting rid of it yet.

Being the frugal guy that he is, my husband was pleased by this, while I have mixed emotions.

A new(er) car would have been nice for all of us since the Odyssey resembles a rolling trash heap. Of course, the car payment we would have been taking on wouldn't have been so nice.

Ultimately, though, this means we have more time to save a bigger down payment, so I guess there's always that. For now, though, I'm going to invest in some of those new-car air freshners and hope that nobody notices the mold that has started to ooze out of the Odyssey's hatchback....

I also spent no money today, so there's my first no spend day for 2008. Here's to many more....

I just got back from two days of non-stop eating at my mother's house. She does a traditional Japanese dinner on New Year's Eve, followed by a full day of follow-up eating on New Year's Day. Then she sends all the leftovers home with us, so I won't be cooking or grocery shopping again until next weekend.

I've had a lot of financial stuff on my mind the last few days, so will hopefully be blogging a bit more as I share. But I now must go unpack all the goodies sent home by dear ol' mom.