December is going to be so weird financially

Weird enough that you may not get my big New Year's post until mid-January!

--Right now I'm waiting for about $870 in reimbursements from the conference trip I just took, so my mint.com numbers look really different than the numbers I reported in my last net worth update, which is unsettling to me even though I know that my numbers are accurate. I hope to get these back in the next couple weeks so I can pay off my credit card before Christmas and not see that little red bar anymore.

--Speaking of which, in theory, I'm paying off my credit card -- actually, I definitely intend to make the last payment on the debt I've been carrying on it. I'm waiting for my statement to hit next week so I can see how many cash-back points I can apply against it, to reduce the amount of $$ I have to use to pay it off.

--But in practice, I can't celebrate that because I'm afraid my medical+travel+gift expenses for December are going to put me right back in the red, so I can't really have a big to-do about being debt-free until I'm sure I'm staying that way.

--Also, my university is switching retirement plan coordinators. Right now, my 403(b) is at Vanguard; in a few weeks, it will be at Fidelity. I'm a little annoyed, because I have my IRA at Vanguard and I like to keep everything under the same roof and Vanguard is a better company, but it shouldn't mater that much: I can keep the same funds (Vanguard lifecycle fund) even with the new administrator, and when I leave this job, sometime in the next 6-18 months, I'll just roll it back over to a Vanguard IRA anyway, so it's not that huge of a deal.

--BUT the point is that it's not actually clear to me that come net worth update time at the end of the month, I'll know how much is actually in my 403(b)! There's a "blackout" period of several weeks, between December 16 and sometime during the week of January 4 depending on how fast stuff happens, during which we can't make any moves, because they're just going to be working on transferring everything over. I'm getting the strong impression from the literature they've handed out that during this time, my account balance will be invisible to me. I really don't like that idea. It's not that I think they're going to lose the cash (PROBABLY), but I like to be able to log in and check my balance, you know? And again, it'll really mess with the net worth update.

Like I said -- nothing's wrong, it's all just weird. It'll be good to get everything hashed out and looking normal in mint, which I guess should happen sometime during the first week of January. Harshing my buzz for a planned new year's post though! Maybe I can make one on January 8 and then backdate it or something :-)