I have now paid for my whole airfare AND booked (and paid for) all my accommodation for the WHOLE overseas trip next year. I paid off the flight and Moscow B&B today which took care of things. I've got beds in Helsinki, Moscow, St Petersburg, Tallinn, Riga, Berlin, Krakow, Edinburgh and London. woohoo!
(and I must highly recommend hostelbookers.com - I got a lot of great/cheap B&Bs booked from there - no 8 bed dorms for me!)

That officially means I've paid for almost half of my entire trip and I'm well ahead of schedule. I have 9 months to save another $5500... I reckon I can do it easily.

Of course, I have something like $50 to survive on for a week now, but geez it feels good knowing I somehow managed to save up $4500 in the past 3 months for this dream holiday.