So I said I would mention what has been going on. The dog is in chemotherapy and doing so-so. He's had quite a few treatments and not quite in remission. It is quite expensive. But he's in pretty good overall health. I think this will be our last holidays with him. It's hard to imagine life without a dog.

DH got into his boot camp program officially this week, it starts in February so it appears everything we'd planned is on track. We've hit all our goals for moving and spending and now the job appears to be on the horizon. If DH lands a job during the 12 week boot camp about 75% do within the 12 weeks and 98% do within 6 months of the bootcamp. So we'll see how it goes. But right now every target has been hit. I guess we'll see if we are people who know how to plan and hit goals or if we are gamblers.

We are looking into different options for buying a house as well. We are considering not doing a traditional mortgage but instead leveraging our assets and seeing if might secure a loan that. Friends of ours have done it and gotten a rate between 1-2%. Instead of paying 3-4% we could be looking at half the interest rate. This is something we are starting to research now though we don't have any plans to buy until the summer at the earliest. I've also been researching homes and areas more in depth. This is a slow process, I think I'll be using a redfin agent to get 1% cash back on the process. I've been trying to favorite homes so I can see if the market is still hot or cooling off.

Tips or ideas on real estate? We might also choose to rent another year if we can't find anything we like.