Taking Control of Our Money

October Utility Bills

2008-11-03T13:10:00.003-08:00

Are down again!

This is so fabulous. I realize that the weather has something to do with
it, but it amazes me how small efforts are paying off.

Diapers

2008-11-03T13:10:00.001-08:00

This weekend I put the last diaper in the house on the baby, gave her to
hubby, and ran out to Target to pick up a new package. I realized that
we could get 20 more in a box if I went for the regular Huggies instead
of the special ones. Okay, I'll give it a try...

Turns out they're better than the uber-spiffy ones!

They are shaped slightly differently so the legs don't leak as much.
They fit better in general.

And for $0.05-$0.10 less a diaper!

Sunk-Cost

2008-09-10T13:31:00.001-07:00

http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/09/08/the-sunk-cost-fallacy-good-money-after-bad/
Has a sunk-cost article that makes me think about our recent attempts to
sell excess stuff.

It's really hard to put prices on some things. I know what it cost new.
I know what we paid for it. And it's HARD for me to accept less than I
think we "should" get. So I lower it /a little bit/. And then I get
really pissed at all the low-ball offers I get. $15 for that baby swing?
Are you kidding me? $75 for my exercise equipment?

The thing that really made me think about this article is the point that
it's important to only base decisions on what something is worth now. It
doesn't matter what you paid for it. If it's not worth anything to you
right now, then it doesn't matter what you get for it. If it's taking up
space that you NEED, then it's more important to get rid of it than make
all the money you can.

Something to think about, anyway.

Update

2008-09-03T13:06:00.001-07:00

I haven't forgotten about this blog!

We're still determined to control our finances rather than the other way
around. We're making progress. We've had some bad months and some good
ones, but overall we're doing very well.

- We have not charged anything on our credit cards.
- We have paid every bill on time.
- We have money left over at the end of the month to put in our
emergency fund or pay off debt.
- We paid for SIX FULL MONTHS of car insurance, which we've never been
able to do before. This saved us bunches.
- I've rented out my office a few hours a week to the tune of an extra
$50 a month (and still have the option of using the room at that time)
- I've completed my first round as a teacher and am now officially able
to sub and already have two more dates at the school set in my calendar.
- I've joined Stampin' Up and already have workshops and classes
scheduled. I'm on my way to earning back my initial investment.

That's a brief update.

It was my original intention to blog here everyday. To be honest I don't
feel like I'm qualified to write articles about basic
credit/debt/investment stuff. That seems to be what every successful
blog does and you know what? I think there are many qualified writers
out there. I don't need to add the stress of being one on my shoulders.

This is what I have going on in my life right now:
- Full-time mommy of a baby
- Food/house/etc.
- Faculty member at local school (part time as needed for 10 to 20-week
intervals or substitute work)
- Member of local chorus, rehearsals every Tuesday night
- Member of networking group
- Member of stamp club
- Stampin' Up! demonstrator
- Business owner
- Massage therapist

(I separate the last two because I'm also the person who does the
website, email marketing, networking, and so forth as well as the actual
massages.)

Sept. Utlities

2008-08-27T19:07:00.001-07:00

It seems like I just wrote about our August utilities, but I guess time
has been a flyin'!

Our water/sewage bill went up $4 and our electricity went down $1. Not bad!

I can't believe how much less we used compared to last year. The hottest
months almost always had our electric bill around $270 and we're barely
breaking $200!

I'm so glad we got the Kill-A-Watt meter. I guess we could have just
figured out what to turn off/unplug on our own, but seeing the numbers
and doing the math was the extra incentive that we needed to really make
a habit of it.

Not much new!

2008-08-23T15:24:00.000-07:00

I've been busy lately.

I auditioned and subsequently joined a choral group. It's something I've
wanted to do for a long long time. These are the benefits that I foresee:

- FUN! I love singing and have always wanted to be part of a group. I
also miss performing.

- New people. This will give me the chance to know people as friends and
possibly clients. This will expand both my social and business contacts.

- Community. It's hard not having a group. Hubby has work. Some people
have church. Others have a very large family. I'm looking forward to
being a part of something.

I've also officially joined Stampin' Up! I'm excited about this. If
nothing else I hope that my scrapbooking/cardmaking addiction will start
paying for itself!

I've scheduled two workshops in September and a number of classes in
Sept., Oct., and Nov. I've updated my demonstrator website. I've sent a
number of email invites out.

*Crosses Fingers*

I love Open Office

2008-08-16T21:16:00.001-07:00

On my laptop I was debating whether to get Office, which I am very used
to using, or whether to do something else. Since my hubby is getting my
old computer I can't transfer the license like I would if I was getting
rid of it entirely. (We would format the hard drive in that case so that
none of my programs or files would remain or be easily useable.)

I downloaded a copy of Open Office, which is very close to Microsoft
Office and is completely free. It's a very nice package and extremely
easy to use. I highly recommend it!

crosses fingers

2008-08-15T10:33:00.001-07:00

Hubby had his six-month review this week. His boss is extremely happy
with him and told him he's getting a raise! He wasn't given any details
since they've been slammed, but this is a really good thing. This
paycheck doesn't have it so we'll see on the thirtieth how good the news
really is.

Walmart Clearance

2008-08-15T10:30:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to say that I found quite a few nice tops on clearance at
Walmart yesterday for $5 and $10.

Also bought some notebooks for five cents each.

Car Insurance

2008-08-13T07:04:00.001-07:00

I finally made the choice of who to use for car insurance once ours expires at the end of the month.

The winner is Progressive at $623.53.

Not only did we get better coverage than Geico, plus "gap" insurance (even though they don't call it that) which Geico does not offer, we were able to do so for far less.

Geico wanted over $850 to renew. I changed our two deductibles from $500 to $1000 for collision and comprehensive and got rid of car rental reimbursement. New total? $770. I called and spoke with the lady over the phone to try and figure out why I could get better coverage elsewhere for more than a hundred dollars difference. She couldn't find any other discounts but did give me a huge schpiel about how in 2010 we'll automatically get accident forgiveness and how wonderful this is.

Blah blah blah. I get it. I am not a person who believes that "that kind of stuff never happens to people like me," or that I am such a great driver I would never cause an accident. Nope. I know that it takes the blink of an eye for something to happen. Where we live we have lots of older folk we call "Sunday Drivers", intermittent rainstorms throughout the year, and many other things that could easily turn into a fender bender or worse, no matter how good of a driver you are.

I personally think that saving $300 a year is a much better deal. If we do get into an accident we will simply deal with the increase or find a company that won't hold it against us. I could purchase that from Allstate straight off, for example, without a five-year wait. Geico lady couldn't tell me how much an increase might be. She said it didn't really matter how bad the accident was, it was more a matter of circumstance and how many and yadda yadda. In other words she was very vague. I'd lose my $50 good driver discount for sure and I may see a rate increase of $100-$200. Well geeze, it seems to me that I would end up paying about what they're asking me to pay now, don't you think?

*sighs*

Hobby into money?

2008-08-11T13:15:00.000-07:00

I've made a decision to join the Stampin Up demonstrator team.

I've always hated Avon, Mary Kay, Candlelight, and all those other "party" type businesses. Especially the vitamin and wellness ones. Because I'm a health care professional they always try to recruit me. On my networking webpages I even put "Please do not contact me regarding vitamins or other wellness items, thanks!"

Even with the more girly organizations, however, I have a bad taste in my mouth. When I was younger I had some friends who would have parties and invite me. Being a good friend, I went. They were always boring and the one time I ordered anything not only did I not get part of my order, and the rep never returned any of my calls, but the products I did get were not nearly the quality promised.

So it surprised me when I discovered how excited I am by the possibility of joining Stampin Up. It's been something we've talked about for a long long time.

I was going to join before hubby got laid off from job number one. Then I was going to join and he got laid off from the next job. Then I couldn't because I delivered my baby and then he didn't get hired again for ten weeks. Then my business ended up dropping off due to summer and economic issues and it didn't happen a third time. Now, however, hubby is doing very well in a non-construction-based company that is very stable, my business is steady, and we have the money put aside.

So why am I doing this?

- I am very impressed with their products. I've been using them for almost a year and find that they are far superior to other companies. It doesn't matter if we're comparing paper to paper or punches to punches or stamps to stamps. Every item is a better quality.

- The starter kit is a great value, especially when signing up during a promotion. I already get over 350 worth of items for under 200, right now I'm going to get an additional 47 worth. Lots of people sign up for the kit, which you fully customize each time, let themselves drop of the active list, and sign up again to get the awesome value.

- I've been asked by people for awhile to teach technique classes. This is something I could do and make more money by having product for them to order.

- Home parties intimidate me but I can make money if I do them. Yes, it will take effort and all that. I am not naive. I've researched a lot of companies and I know what the reality is versus the promises.

- I'll get a discount on everything I order plus hostess benefits which make it even better. Face it, I'm going to spend my monthly allowance on craft stuff. I can get better quality items that coordinate with each other by doing it this way and not feel guilty for not opting for cheaper items just because I could have gotten them with a coupon.

- I can sell card fronts on ebay for additional money. This is a popular thing right now and they go for fifty cents to a dollar each most of the time.

I'm excited and I'm sure I'll be posting more about this later on. Wish me luck!

Our Anniversary Supper

2008-08-09T17:00:00.000-07:00

Six years ago we enjoyed a frugal wedding. Elopement, more accurately, though we had our parents in attendance at the courthouse. Afterward they treated us to lunch at a little place called Freds. That evening the two of us had a very special dinner at The Melting Pot. Our server was the best I've ever had in my life and they did everything they could to make our night special. My favorite memory is when we walked out to the car and found the staff had tied balloons all over it with congratulatory phrases.

We decided that we were going to go back there to celebrate or sixth wedding anniversary. Hubby made reservations, the money was set aside in the budget (we decided that rather than spend our anniversary allowance on buying each other gifts we would have a nice dinner out), and we both looked forward to it for weeks.

I was disappointed. The food was okay. And it is fun to use the pokey sticks to cook your own food. The cheese course is always my favorite. But when it comes down to it, I really didn't feel like the meal or the experience was worth near what we paid for it.

I'm a great cook. There's very little that would intimidate me even for the briefest moment when it comes to kitchen mastery. I think a souffle might make my knees shake a little but really, when am I going to make one?

There are also other restaurants that are our special celebration places. I adore JoTos, for example, which is almost thirty dollars less. You get a great show and the food is fantastic.

So all in all I felt like we should have gotten more for our money.

Ultimately we skipped the dessert course, another fourteen dollars, because we were stuffed and I would much rather go out another night and get some amazing cheesecake and maybe bananas foster at Stonewood for roughly the same price.

The evening ended on a very poor note and I feel very badly for ruining it. It wasn't my fault.

I went into the ladies' room to use the facilities and as I was reaching up to lock the door (I had closed it but was multitasking and unbuttoning my pants so as to sit at the same time) and some woman flung it open. The door hit me in the head and the movement was so swift and surprising that my hand flew back and my thumbnail scratched my eye.

I have a huge eye thing. Nothing scares me more than the thought of losing my eyesight. I was legally blind for a large part of my life and LASIK completely changed my world. Any eye injuries scare the crap out of me.

I didn't tell her what had happened. I figured she thought she just invaded my privacy and was likely embarrassed. There was nothing she could have done and I didn't think we both needed to have our evenings ruined by the event.

So I'm sitting here typing this in bed--I took some generic Tylenol and then came in to lay down as soon as we got home--while hubby is off on a quest for ice cream.

I'm bummed. The scratch isn't that bad. It hurts, burns, and itches at the same time, but now that I have finally stopped crying it's a lot better.

I did get a chance to wear my jeans. Most everything in my closet is maternity issue and at seven months I'm sure it's quite time to stop looking sloppy. Most of my jeans shorts were commandeered by my husband--we buy size 36 men's shorts because they fit us both and are inexpensive--so all that's left are maternity clothes or my scrubs for work.

Dillard's had a big sale and I got two pairs of really nice jeans for under thirty-five dollars. One of them I wore tonight. They are really form fitting and I feel sexy in them. It's the first time I've felt sexy in an outfit since way before I got pregnant. They're dark denim. The other pair is also flattering but is a lighter denim and more casual for every-day wear.

I'm going to be hitting Goodwill soon once a week or so until I can rebuild enough clothes that when I go to networking meetings or to mom's groups I can at least look somewhat put together. It really does impact my business.

Birthdays

2008-08-04T11:41:00.001-07:00

What is the difference between:
- Spouse giving birthday gift of check, cash, or gift card to be used as recipient desires;
- Spouse taking specific list of items, shopping, and then wrapping them as presents for the big day;
- Birthday person spending money in budget for what they want

We recently decided that this year we're simply going to distribute the budgeted cash for our birthdays and allow the person whose birthday it is to go buy what they want.

It's great to open up a fabulous gift from your spouse and say, "wow! That was really thoughtful!"

But in our family, at this moment, it's not really the best option. Why? Because our wants and needs are pretty specific. The last thing we need is more stuff in the house that needs to have a home or that we're going to end up selling in a garage sale. If we want something, then we want that particular thing. Also, time is awful. In order for my husband to go shopping he'd have to take what little time we have together to do it. I'd much rather spend time with him and spend the money however I want it.

This year I spent my money on two things. One was a keyboard that goes to the PDA I use for my business. This will allow me to focus on writing inbetween clients, keep better client notes, and so forth. It was $20.00.

The rest was put towards a laptop.

The only thing I don't like is that I don't feel like, "my husband bought these things for me." It's not like a piece of jewelry that I can glow about and say, "Oh thank you for the compliment! My husband picked this out himself." Yes, he contributed most of the money towards the budget that was put towards these things. Yes, he helped me pick out what I wanted and was a great sounding board. But when it comes down to it, I'm the one that actually bought them.

I don't know if any of that makes sense. We'll see how things go shortly.

For our anniversary (five days before my birthday--what was I thinking?) we decided that instead of getting each other gifts--we didn't budget very much at all--we're going to have one nice dinner and have a great evening together.

Final Decision and Purchase

2008-08-04T11:23:00.000-07:00

We have been seriously discussing a laptop since last spring. There are a number of reasons why we decided to purchase one.

One reason has to do with space. We simply do not have room for both computer desks anymore. Therefore one computer has to go. My mother wants it and gave us $250 towards a laptop in exchange. A laptop takes up much less room.

A second reason is that as an instructor I can use one of the school's two laptops, however having my own will make things much easier. I don't have to worry about transferring files or trying to get my windows stuff to work on a mac.

As a writer having a laptop will allow me to work on projects far more often. Prior to yesterday the only way I could write was if the kiddo was napping (in which case she doesn't nap well because she's in the same room as the computer) or if I took time away from my husband on the few evenings we have together. The laptop now allows me to write while I supervise her playtime. (No worries - I'll still spend hours playing with her on the floor. At this age, however, she mostly plays by herself. There's interaction but her play isn't exactly interactive.) This also allows me to take on some freelance website stuff if I have the opportunity.

So the decision was made after hours of discussion.

I've been looking at ads from the three major office stores and two major big box stores every weekend for the past three months. I feel I can spot a pretty good deal when I see one.

We picked out the laptop we wanted. It's normally $899 but was on sale for $749. We received an additional $150 off because we signed up for Verizon's Air Card. It's a brand new promotion and anyone who signs up gets the discount and 30 days to try it out. I returned it and canceled the contract within 24 hours so we won't even have an activation fee and the $150 off is still ours.

The laptop cost $600 plus tax so slightly under $642. My mother gave us $250 towards it which brought our cost down to under $400. I put about $75 of my birthday money towards that. That left us $318 to cover. Not bad for a thousand dollar laptop, eh?

Some specs:
AMD Turion64x2 TL-60 2Ghz
Nvidia graphics card GeForce Go 7150M
4 gb ram
250 gb hard

Black Hole Hobbies

2008-07-31T09:43:00.001-07:00

At what point does someone who is involved with say, oh, I don't know... scrapbooking.... say, "I have enough stuff," and mean it?

I'm beginning to feel overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that's available. And oh, I long for it! I look forward to each new month and the little bit of money I get to spend on myself and I count the days.

But at what point does this black hole hobby finally stop sucking on my finances? There are people with far less than I have who create beautiful layouts and cards and are quite happy. There are people with far more than I have who are equally happy. I'm sure there are those with the exact amount who are, also, very happy.

So why am I not?

I'm going to be seriously examining my motives over the next few weeks and try to figure out what it is about "new stuff" that is creating this craze. I've been working with what I have and making some really cool thing. I challenged myself to do so. And I'm finding I have plenty... but I still want more.

Stay tuned for more about my black hole hobby and how I'm going to carve a cork large enough to plug it up.

Budgeting Forward

2008-07-28T07:58:00.001-07:00

Yesterday we discovered how to do something new with our budget. It's almost August and we needed diapers, formula, and baby wipes (oh my!). We found some deals at Target and ended up spending just over $100.00. This is what we got:

- Two extra-large boxes of Huggies size 3 on clearance. This will last us the month, if not longer.
- One large box of sensitive wipes. Again, this should last us through August.
- Two cans of "bonus size" formula that includes 20% more formula "free". Same price as we normally pay. This is two weeks worth for our seven-month old.

Here is what we did:
- Took one can of formula out of this week's food budget.
- Took the other can of formula out of next week's food budget.
- Subtracted remaining amount from remaining July household budget.
- Carried remainder forward to August's household budget.

I don't like to "borrow" from money that is in the budget but not funded yet, however we made an exception this one time. I was very proud of myself for figuring out what should come out of where and how to do it.

Due in August: Utility Bills

2008-07-26T11:05:00.001-07:00

Our efforts (assisted with the Kill-A-Watt device) to reduce our utility bills yielded the following:

A $45 reduction in electricity.
A $19 reduction in water/sewer.

We reduced our bills by over $60.00 for this past reading. I'd say that was well worth the time, effort, and $20 for the Kill-A-Watt device!

Garage Sales and I (heart) My Car

2008-07-23T05:49:00.001-07:00

I found several toys for the baby this weekend at garage sales. One is a shape-sorter. It's a simple tube with a cap that has three shapes and a number of colorful plastic shapes to go through the cap. I think everyone has seen a variation of this at some point or another. Fifty cents. Another is an interlocking floor puzzle--not one of the great big ones--with characters on it. Buck-fifty.

I found a few other toys that I was interested in and luckily I spoke up, "do these work?" I did not bring batteries with me and so could not test them. They had an extra set and tested both. Unfortunately neither worked. They admitted that they tend to leave batteries in things for too long.

My mother called while we were out. She said she things that we should get a dresser for the baby's clothes and that she'd like to buy it for us if we found one. The only catch was that it had to be real wood. I thanked her and we looked at each garage sale. Finally we came across one that had a dresser. It was perfectly sized for a little girl, was made out of real wood, and was only $20! I asked, "will you take $15?" and to my surprise they agreed. The dresser is worth far more but it was a warehouse filled with things five different households had donated to raise funds for a charity. Some of the things had prices that were hugely inflated and some were a little low. I got a fabulous deal!

I didn't think it was possible to love my new car anymore than I already did. We managed to get the baby (in car seat), full-size stroller, diaper bag, garage sale loot, and the dresser in the back of my PT Cruiser. AND we were still able to fit in it ourselves! We knew the seats folded but I didn't know that they could also be moved out of the way. Very, very cool. (The only concession was that I had to drive; hubby was too squished with the car seat behind the driver's seat.)

A correction/apology

2008-07-23T05:42:00.001-07:00

I have since changed my mind about said friends decision to buy pants simply because she was soaked. I did not realize that she needed pants for work and that she found two very nice pairs of khakis on sale that fit her in a flattering manner.

I do, however, have issues with the two rings, earrings, and the watch she bought. (She bought the watch because it's a "$55 watch that was only $20! And then they gave me a scratch-off card because I used my store card and I thought 'what the heck'.") Granted, the jewelry was only about $5 a piece, but that's an extra $35 on top of the two pairs of pants.

But, it's her life. I see some of the mistakes that we've made in the past few years and I see a few things she does and realize we're doing the exact same thing. She's such a good friend and sometimes a good mirror. I wouldn't want to be without her friendship.

Swap Bot

2008-07-22T05:46:00.001-07:00

I used to love a website called nervousness.org. Basically someone would create a project and people all over the US would sign up and take part. One of them was a wolf book. I sent a blank journal to the first person on the list. She added something wolfie to it and mailed it to the next person. Eventually I got the book back and it was all decked out. I worked on many projects and created many. There were also swaps where one person would trade something with another. It was great fun.

I've now got quite a pile of scrapbooking and cardmaking loot. I want more, of course. That's the nature of the beast. I'm trying to make up for my indiscretions earlier in the month and found a website called Swap Bot. Basically it's a website where people sign up to swap things with each other. Some are artist trading card swaps, others are embellishment swaps, and some call for swapping handmade items.

I've signed up for a few. For the cost of postage I can let go of some of the items I had purchased and either wasn't that impressed with, have scraps leftover that I can't think of a use for, or am simply bored with. In return I get an envelope full of things that are new to me! We'll see how it goes.

An unwise pair of pants.

2008-07-22T05:42:00.001-07:00

It's so easy to judge the actions of a friend, and that's just what I'm going to do here. I've already told her what I thought of her decision, so she knows everything I'm going to say in this post.

My friend went to Orlando, which is about a three hour drive in bad traffic. She got caught in the rain shortly before it was time to come home. Soaked, she ran to her car and took off her shirt/bra in favor of a sweater that she keeps in there. (I'm assuming nobody was flashed in the making of this story.) She was giving me an update, by phone, when she said, "Oh good! There's a Kohl's right next to the campus. I've got my Kohl's charge card. I'm going to stop and buy a pair of pants so I don't have to drive home in wet ones."

She had also commented that there was another store, at chain at which she works in our town, right next door. "Why don't you just run in to your store, get your employee discount, and buy a really cheap pair of shorts or something." She basically said that she didn't have the money to buy a pair of pants from her place but she "could afford it" if she put it on her charge card.

I've made the drive in soaked clothing before. I went to Orlando for college and drove home almost every weekend. (At the time gas was less than a dollar a gallon!) Being Florida, sometimes you get soaked, ya know? Also being Florida, however, I did not freeze to death nor even get hypothermia.

Since I can't make choices for anyone else, all I can do is learn from the choices they make and hope to not repeat the same mistakes.

This month...

2008-07-17T06:14:00.001-07:00

I fell off the wagon this month. Only a little bit. I think my hip might be a little bruised, but other than that I managed to crawl my way back on and am now strapped down and clinging for dear life.

I read somewhere recently that when you buy stuff the result is that you want to buy more stuff. It's not something I've ever really thought about. This month, however, made me realize that this is completely and totally true for me.

Most months I am content with my $50 spending money. I can throw it around however I'd like. I use coupons and sales and the like to extend this money and usually get about $60-$80 worth of items for it. What I can't buy I eagerly place on my "want" list and look forward to my next envelope of cash like a kid waiting for Christmas.

This month, however...

I had some cash laying around that was from things I had sold. I mentioned my success with ebay and craigslist last month some time, I believe. Additionally the amount was the same as what I owed myself for spending money. I figured it saved me a trip to the bank. My favorite scrapbook store was having a 40% off sale. This is a place that doesn't do coupons or have weekly specials or anything like that. Two or three times a year--usually New Year's Day and 4th of July--they open their doors and it's first-come first-buy-out-the-store. I mean, first-come, first-served. It's hard to resist.

The mental process of having cash that was not specifically withdrawn for a purpose was interesting. I didn't really treat it like I treated my usual spending money. It didn't seem so important that it last throughout the month or that I had already earmarked a certain amount for something else. I spent the entire wad. All of it. In fact, I had to run out to the car for the $5 I had stashed from a few months ago. (I keep $5-$10 hidden in my car for "just in case".)

I was gleeful as I came home. I got so much stuff! Stuff I had been wanting for ages. Stuff I had drooled over and fantasized about. Really cool stuff.

Well, I somehow convinced myself--and I am shamed to admit this--that since it wasn't money I had pulled out for my spending money that it didn't really "count" as my spending money.

I decided that since I had sold my stuff and we had enough to pay the bills last month that I should be able to spend the money on whatever I wanted. After all, I sold MY STUFF to get that money. I put the work and effort into it. I shipped the items or arranged times with buyers. Therefore that money, leftover from our needs, should be mine, right?

I asked hubby about it and he said that it should absolutely be mine. After all, I did all the work, I sold things I had owned, and therefore as long as the bills were paid and our debt and savings goals were met for the month, have fun and good job and I'm proud of you and all the things that supportive hubbies say.

Woohoo! That meant I still had fifty bucks to spend!

Part of what I purchased at the scrapbooking store were Tim Holtz's alcohol inks. I had read about them and various techniques and had yearned to try them out. The day I bought them I came home and the first thing I did was a small project to test them out. Not only are they as cool as I had read about, they completely surpassed my expectations. I am in love with them. I would probably marry them if I could. Fabulous stuff.

So, what did I do? The week following the fourth I drove back to the scrapbook store and bought all the colors they had in stock that I hadn't already grabbed on Saturday. At full price. (No big deal, actually, since their prices are lower than even what I could find online for this particular item, so I till saved about $0.60/each on them.)

Then, since I had a particular project in mine, I headed to Michael's to get the other items I "needed" for this project. And a few of them were a little more expensive than I had anticipated.

I ended up spending my $50 cash PLUS about ten dollars more.

But that's okay because I "had" to have these items to finish a project I started and isn't it more important to finish something that you start--something which had a deadline of Wednesday--than to have yet another thing sitting around waiting and...

Do you see where I'm going with this?

My stamp club met the second Friday and I was more than a little upset with myself. I have a commitment to spend $15 (plus tax and shipping) each month and in exchange I get 2-3 techniques and projects a month plus food while I'm there for free. Stamp club is one of the reasons why my artwork has improved so dramatically and it's really a sanity saver to be able to get out of the house without the kid (most months, sometimes I do bring her with like I did this month) and have some adult conversation and a project to work on at someone else's house.

But Yipes!!! I had to write a check.

So total for the month I've spent $40 more than I was allotted and I'm still having to hold myself back from running out the door. After all there are several other items that I've wanted for a really long time and don't I deserve them? And on top of that I already blew my budget so why not just really go for it and spend more money... we can technically absorb most of it and so what if we're a little short...

These are what the voices in my head are telling me.

I've had days on diets that were like this. You know what I mean; you eat one piece of chocolate more than you meant to and suddenly the whole box is gone. Plus the chips. Plus a Starbucks on your way home from errands because you might as well. It's awful!

So this post, while disjointed and a little psychotic, is my way of being accountable. It's my way of admitting what I've done and putting it out there. I don't know if this might serve as a warning post or a "you're not the only one" post, but I do hope it's somewhat helpful to someone else. Learn from my mistakes!

How not to spend a zillion dollars on craft supplies

2008-07-17T05:55:00.001-07:00

Okay, the title of the article is misleading. Frankly scrapbooking and cardmaking and all those great hobbies are probably the worst ones to get into when you're trying to save money and build wealth. Why? Because something new and sparkly is always coming out and it's so hard to resist! There are many new techniques that are just screaming your name. Projects made by others make you say, "wow, I never thought of that--I have to try it!"

So the title of this post should probably be more along the lines of, "Why organization will save you money on your craft stuff."

Here is a short quiz. If you answer "yes" to any of these questions, chances are you need to reorganize your crafting space:

1) I sometimes forget what I actually have and am surprised when I go through my stash.

2) I've purchased more than one of an item because I could not find the first one or forgot I had one already.

3) I find it hard to see what supplies I have so I use the same small section over and over and get bored.

4) My crafts have gotten things spilled on them, wrinkled, or otherwise damaged because of the way they are stored.

I'm sure I could come up with more, but you get the idea.

I went to the dollar store yesterday and purchased some clear shoeboxes with lids and other containers to help me reorganize my crafting area. Until yesterday I was mostly using little boxes that I got on clearance at Michaels for about ten cents each. They are very colorful and pretty and I can't see a darn thing. They're great for things that I don't need to see. For example, glue sticks. Glue sticks aren't exactly inspirational to look at. Therefore a quick label and a shove to the shelf and viola! The glue sticks are stored. But for ribbon and bling and stickers...

One of the items I picked up are plastic baskets that are somewhat V-shaped. The bottom part, that sits on the shelf or desk, is slightly smaller than the upper part which flares out slightly. I bought three. One has all my stickers, one has my rub ons, and one has those "special" items that I hoard and love to look at. I may not use items from that basket frequently but they are the crafty items that inspire me and make me drool over the idea of making something.

I discovered that these items are only good to me when I can see them. Otherwise I don't think about them. Having them out where I can leaf through them allows me to get ideas. Not only for how to use them but also for color combination, themes, and so forth.

I replaced my boxes with the shoe boxes. I only bought five because I wasn't sure that my system will work well. If it does then I'll go back and get some more. Many of my more important items are now in the clear boxes. I can pick it up and see what I want rather than having to open every lid of every box and poke my fingers in. It sounds simple but this really will save me about an hour a month, if not more.

The other benefit of having things more organized is that it's also easier to put things away. If my boxes are labeled and I can clearly see what is in them I have little excuse for not cleaning up after projects. More time saved, not to mention a happier household.

I am going to challenge myself to the following: Make at least ten scrapbook pages, ten different cards, and finish at least two projects using nothing other than the items I already have. Care to join me?

Security

2008-07-13T12:46:00.001-07:00

I've realized over the past few weeks that the $3000 sitting in our emergency account has made me feel more secure than I've felt in a long time. Even with everything that had happened, such as hubby getting laid off for 12 weeks when our daughter was born, taking a job for $6,000 less a year, having to pay 100% of our own health insurance, and having business dry up, we managed to put that much aside. And not touch it. So it sits there earning interest and it makes me feel really, really good.

Killawatts

2008-07-08T05:48:00.000-07:00

Our electricity bill has been climbing. Yes, we live in FL. Yes, A/C is far from optional. No, we can't turn it off when we aren't home because someone is always home. No, we can't raise it by even 1 degree because it's already at the point where my mom, who gets overheated very easily, can barely stand it, spends most of her day undressed and under the fan. Something needs to be done.

I looked online and found a meter that tracks the measurements of the electronics. It also tracks kwh based on how long you plug it in for. This would be useful, except I don't want to plug stuff in and walk away. I wanted to go through the house and figure it out.

Based on a website "how to" guide, this is what I did in an excel spreadsheet:

Column 1 Find out watts of the unit while in use.
Column 2 Divide that number by 1000.
Example: 200 / 1000 = .2
Column 3 Multiply .2 by our kwh rate (just over 9 cents)
Column 4 Multiply that number by 24 (this gives us how much per day)
Column 5 Multiply that number by 30 (this gives us how much per month)

I also figured out how much the electronics use when they are off. Surprisingly, it wasn't a whole lot. The items that we can turn off cost us just over a dollar a month to leave off. Some items we have to leave on. One example is our portable phone that's connected to land service. It has to be charging on the base. Another would be our television/entertainment center. We have a DVR service and it must be plugged in for it to record shows. Unfortunately the most common ghost items such as cell phone chargers and so forth don't give a high enough reading to tell us how much they're costing us each month.

We discovered that if we turn off our computers every evening before bed we'll end up saving about $11/month. If we go down to one computer between the two of us and giving mom the old one so she can get rid of her ancient one AND turning mine off at night, we'll save almost $16/month. That's over $180/year!

I haven't had a chance to get around to every corded electronic device yet. Cross your fingers that this will help us reduce our electricity bill. It was over $240 last month!

A very expensive carwash

2008-07-07T05:05:00.001-07:00

Hubby took my car up the block yesterday morning. There is a do-it-yourself car wash there. It has power sprayers, soap, vacuums, and everything else you need to wash a car in a short amount of time. Usually this costs slightly more than a drive-thru wash, somewhere in the neighborhood of $6. Since our neighborhood has all kinds of deed restrictions and rules about what you can do when plus factoring in the complete lack of space due each of the three of us having a car, it's not a bad bargain.

Unless, of course, it costs almost $70.

Why did it cost that much?

Because as he was vacuuming out the interior hubby took out the stroller system. And left it there. And didn't realize until our shopping trip later. By the time we returned it was nowhere to be seen.

We left a message at the contact number they have posted on the door. I also checked all the businesses in the strip mall next door. No one had turned it in. A quick search revealed it hadn't been moved/stashed anywhere. I posted an add on freecycle, hoping that maybe someone has an extra one or one they've outgrown.

My fear is that I will be somewhat housebound with the baby now until we replace it. We have two strollers, one is a regular push stroller and the other is a jogging stroller. I don't know how to use either yet. I do know that baby is so amazingly good about traveling and will sit in a coffee shop with me and people watch for hours. Her attention span continues to impress me. But, I'm not sure that it will continue if she's closer to the grown and wants to try and get out. We'll have to see.

I know that $60 is a lot of money. Our July budget is completely dependent on whether or not I get enough massages to cover our basic expenses. We have some money socked away in case I don't... June and July usually suck. However, things will start to pick up again and when they do it's usually fairly quickly. Unless we dip into the emergency fund, there is no $60 just laying around.

Plan:
- See if stroller base can be recovered
- Failing recovery, see if I can find one for free on freecycle
- Attempt to use regular stroller
- Failing freebie and regular stroller, leave word at consignment shops that one is desired
- Failing that... If none of those steps result in replacing the stroller base, I'm going to buy one. I'll sacrifice something in the budget... not sure what. I do know that a large part of my enjoyment, and sanity, as a new mom is the ability to pick up and go whenever I want. She loves to get out of the house and see new people and things, I love to meet with my friends and be able to network and have a good time with business acquaintances, and we both need a change of scenery from time to time. Even if I have to reduce the grocery budget by $10 for the next six weeks well... that's what I'll do.

Borrow before you buy

2008-07-06T07:06:00.001-07:00

My neighbor is a physical therapist. I want to get back in shape. I asked her what she thought of the mini trampolines that were very popular in the eighties and that are making a come back. One of our sets of neighbors is trying to sell their house and is storing theirs in another neighbor's garage, which I had seen, and that's where I had gotten the idea, thinking I could borrow it. She said they were great and suggested that I borrow one before I buy one. Then she offered me hers.

I finally saw her out with her son and dog again yesterday and walked down to chat. I asked if the option was still open for me to borrow hers. I figured since I already had the offer I didn't want to see if I could get an offer from the neighbor whose equipment I had originally seen. She was more than happy to allow me to borrow it. In fact, she sent me home with it!

Their trampoline has probably three times the surface are of the smaller ones. I didn't realize that they came in different sizes. The trampoline wasn't heavy. I carried it easily up the street. It was, however, large enough that half my face and down to my knees was covered. I probably looked pretty funny!

If her husband wants it back I told her he can come and get it anytime. She says that he's been talking about how he uses it but never actually does. Guess they'll figure out who's right fairly quickly! Otherwise we can keep it for a few months.

I highly recommend borrowing before you buy exercise equipment if at all possible. My main fear is that I'll have bladder issues that will come up when I'm jumping. (The PT still has problems four years after childbirth and I'm quite sure she does her kegels!) And, of course, there is always the fear that the equipment will take up a lot of space we don't have and gather dust. At least in this case I can walk back down the street and give it back. I'm not stuck with depreciating equipment or a monthly payment.

Office Supplies

2008-07-06T06:59:00.000-07:00

It surprises me how many people have made money off of buying office supplies, such as binder clips and brads, and repackaging them as scrapbooking and cardmaking embellishments.

Tips:

If you want to try a certain technique or use a particular embellishment, find out where it originates from.
Use Google's shopping service or another online comparison tool to find out if the item is generally less expensive from Home Depot or Scrapbook Warehouse, for example. You'll almost always find it's far less at the hardware or office store.
Find out what changes have been made to make it scrapbook specific. Many times the only change is that the items have been repackaged. Do you need special packaging? Are there special modifications? Are they worth the money? What about if you use a 40% off coupon that some stores are notorious for?
Many modifications can be made at home. Brads and other non-porous items can be easily colored with inexpensive alcohol inks.
The scrapbook and craft stores might, however, offer options that you cannot reproduce at home. Or you may not want to take the time to glue gems onto the head of your brads.
Don't buy a craft item just because it contains "project ideas" or instructions. You can find thousands of these online.
Search You Tube and other internet sites for detailed tutorials that will give you other ideas on how to use your new tool and get the most out of it.

Amazing Supper

2008-07-02T05:35:00.000-07:00

I was a little embarrassed last night. There is a group of wonderful ladies that gets together once a month to network, talk about husbands and kids, and generally have a good time. Last night the restaurant was a little tapas bar on Main Street.

I'd never been to a tapas bar. I did some research online, even going so far as to look at their menu and write down the four things I was interested in. They were all from $5.95 to $7.50. (The menu items went up to $16.00 in some cases, more for wine.) I figured that I would bring a $10 bill, which I did. This would cover an $8.00 dish and leave $2.00 for a tip. Seemed fair to me.

I got there and found out that the group had ordered white sangria, which I had never had. They poured a glass for me. It was delicious. A theme of this post will be, "I don't usually like (insert item here) but it was so good!" I don't normally like white wine. I'm not a big wine drinker in general. However, I have to admit, this sangria was fantastic. I had one glass; the one that they poured for me.

The group had ordered a bunch of food with most ladies ordering 2 tapas items to start. They were brought out as they were prepared rather than when everything was ready. I enjoyed this feature. I tried a few things at the urging of the others including items that I would never have dared try. Tuna tar tar, for example. It was delicious. I also really don't like salmon. I try to like it. In fact, any time I can try some I do. Usually it's one bite, chewed for far too long as my gag reflex tries to make me spit it out and I sip water to try and get it to go down. Last night I ate several bites. It was yummy.

The evening ended with the bill. The group had decided that they were going to each order 2-3 items and then split the bill. There were seven of us and with eighteen items the cost, including tax and tip, was $27.00 per person. Oh crud. I had a $10.00 bill. Luckily one of the ladies was more than happy to put in for me and laughingly said to tack it onto the end of her next massage. So she gets fifteen more minutes of pampering and I got a great discount on a fabulous meal.

I left the restaurant stuffed. I had tried every dish except those that had shellfish, since hubby is deathly allergic, and didn't find anything that disagreed with my pallet. My favorite memories of going out to eat all involve multiple people; this time certainly fit the bill.

But that bill...

I'm going to send an email to my friend that put in for me and ask her if she'd do me a favor and email me some hints for dinners in the future to avoid faux pas. I hadn't eaten at a tapas restaurant before. I understood the concept of sharing, but I didn't get the whole picture.

Would I have gone if I knew that it would cost me around $30.00? I'm not sure. Hubby and I both get $50.00 per month to cover our wants. Most of the time we end up treating it as an extended entertainment budget. Near the end of the month we'll take each other out, treat for ice cream, and that kind of thing. $20.00 of mine goes to craft supplies. Do I want to commit the rest of it for one meal?

Sample Goals - Financial "Easy" Goals

2008-06-30T06:03:00.001-07:00

Earlier I wrote a post about my new body/exercise goal setting philosophy.

I'm happy with it so far, about a week into the process. I can't guarantee it will work long term or for anyone else. Right now it seems to be much more manageable than the high-pressure goals I'd set in the past. List-making is fun for me, you see, and I oftentimes get so involved in making a great list that I forget that I'm the one that has to check everything off of it! Whether it's a to-do list or a goal list or a marketing project, I'm often over ambitious and get burnt out or discouraged too quickly.

Here is my rough draft of the financial goals. This fits the first two parts of my new goal philosophy. I'm setting a large number of goals, many of which are easy to checkoff even though they are important.

"Easy" Goals:

These goals are ongoing that I can check off monthly:

- Pay each bill on time.

We do this anyway so it's one of the "freebie" checkoffs. Yet, if we didn't do it, then financial disaster would occur.

- Track bill paid date and bill amount in spreadsheet.

An easy step, barely takes any time since I pay all bills via computer anyway. I also have my excel spreadsheets already set up. I'm not happy with them yet but I can track what's been paid and what's coming up fairly easily. (Haven't switched to Quicken yet... maybe in July once I see how busy I'll be.)

Goals that I can set on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis that are also easy:

- Call (Service Provider) and ask what discounts are available.

Variations of this goal would be, "Shop for auto insurance and find the best deal," "call credit card company and ask for lower interest rate," and even, "look online and check for rebates on recent purchases." I obviously can't call Comcast or Chase once a week to ask for a discount, but I can call each of them once every six months or so. We saved hundreds of dollars by doing this recently and it took me less than three hours to do so.

- Review Credit Report.

I could do this three times a year for free. Checking for inaccurate information is very important. If I track who I asked for a report for an when I can do this indefinitely and easily at no cost to me.

Setting Goals

2008-06-30T05:48:00.001-07:00

I have some goals. They aren't related to wealth-building, though I do have those goals as well, but they are "new" goals and I'm very proud of them. I decided that I was going to work on my body. I'm not concerned about losing weight. Certainly that does play a part in the overall picture. What I want is a body that I can enjoy and move around effortlessly in. I want to be able to do martial arts, dance, even circus stuff if I'd like!

I remember the first time I ran a mile and what an amazing feeling that was. There was much panting and sweating and effort that went into that first mile. It was hardly effortless. But I did it. I did what so many other people brag about being able to do. Something that I had always pictured as being off limits, or too hard, or simply impossible for an out-of-shape asthmatic. It was a lovely high.

Right now I couldn't run a mile if I was running from Godzilla. I couldn't run a mile to save the life of my child. I don't know that I could run three straight blocks.

This is an overview of my thought process/system for goal setting. Over the next few weeks I'm going to apply it to my finances as well.

Goal Setting #1: Set more than one goal

I find that if I only have one goal to look forward to, and I fail to meet it, I feel like an overall failure. Having multiple goals allows me to feel that I have succeeded and made progress even if I didn't cross everything off the list. After all, how do I know how much and what exactly I'm going to be able to do right now?

Goal Setting #2: Set goals that are easily achievable

I find that in my list of goals I need some that are easily achievable. These are either things that are a part of my regular routine anyway (only if they reinforce my goal) or are simply easy to do.

This week, for example, among many goals, my goal list included:
- Drink one bottle of water upon waking up before any food is consumed.
- Stop eating lunch when full.
- Stop eating dinner when full.

These are very easy to do things that can have big results. Yet they don't cause any kind of hardship. And it's simply lovely to be able to go to my goal paper, which is taped on a kitchen cupboard, and check off goals several times a day. Then, in the spirit of having "done something" those slightly more difficult goals seem less threatening.

Goal Setting #3: Modify goals frequently to fit

I've broken down goals week by week. For example I eat oatmeal most days of the week for breakfast. Not only is oatmeal healthy, it's extremely cheap. My husband and I can eat breakfast for a full week for about a dollar. Incredible. He makes his with plain water whereas I currently can't stand it being that plain. I use almond milk. Almond milk is fairly expensive. (I hate regular milk and it doesn't like me all that much.) This week I'm reducing the amount of almond milk I put in each bowl by 1/3 cup. My goal reads, "2/3 cup almond milk in oatmeal" and the column for check-offs reads, "2/3 cup," to remind me what it is. Next week it will be 1/2 cup, the following week, 1/3, then 1/4, then none. By making my goal into little goals I am more able to achieve watery goodness than by going cold turkey with it.

I'm also modifying my exercise goals. This week I've done one set of squats and two of pushups. I have one more set of squats this week and then I've met my strength training goals. I set a goal of two walks for cardio. Yes, it's a slow start, but that's what's recommended by most experts. Next week I'll add something else like tricep dips or lunges. By the end of the month I'll be doing two sets of a number of exercises twice a week. I may also add in some of my VHS tapes and so forth, but not until I know what I can do and stick with.

Goal Setting #4: Pick an irregular week

For some reason Sunday-Saturday or Monday-Sunday weeks just don't work for me for goal setting. I've known this for quite some time. This is why my "weeks" are Tuesday-Monday. Starting a day late doesn't make an impact, however having that Monday to catch up really helps. Today is the last day of my first week. It's a purely psychological thing for me that might not work for anyone else. I know that it's made a big difference to me.

My next step? Making a list of financial goals, similar to my body goals, and working on those.

Another tasty night

2008-06-24T07:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon I spent several hours in the kitchen with my mom. I love spending time cooking. The baby was being an absolute doll and was entertaining herself quietly in the playpen. (Except for one much-needed bottle fuss, which was right on time for her new schedule. Yay, schedules!)

I made pita bread from scratch. I've discovered it's incredibly easy and I love working with the dough, feeling it change as the yeast starts to interact, feeling the gluten strands start to stretch and become elastic and... it's fabulous. I love the smell as it starts to rise and then simply go into nose heaven as it bakes. *happy sigh*

I had made batches of hummus the night before, so that was taken care of. Mom found a recipe for tziki sauce (I have no idea how to spell that and don't feel like looking it up, so sorry). I hate yogurt, always have, and it amazes me that I love this sauce so much. It's simply yogurt, cucumbers, onions, garlic, dill, salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Fabulous!

Our salad consisted of romaine hearts, a cucumber, two tomatoes (the seeds of which I removed and ate greedily), artichoke hearts, black and green olives, roasted red peppers, sweet onions, green onions, feta cheese (of course!) and some of those sour sandwich peppers that I adore. My Greek dressing turned out wonderful as well.

Mom made a black olive, green olive, garlic, and olive oil spread for the bread as well. Yummo, as RR would say.

I love cooking things from scratch. There is something so satisfying about it. Not to mention, of course, that doing things from scratch is tremendously cheaper than buying things premade.

We realized the other night that we don't ingest a single item that has high fructose corn syrup in it. We occasionally have a soda. Maybe once a month. Other than that everything we make at home is pretty much free of all that crap. Isn't that fabulous?

The dinner was a big hit for all three of us. I enjoyed it as much as the gyro platter we get from a local restaurant and didn't even miss the meat. Especially since my Greek salad was so big!

This week, so far

2008-06-24T07:37:00.000-07:00

We did our shopping on Sunday. This is pretty normal for us. The day starts with a scoping out of deals at CVS, Walgreens, Kmart, Target, Walmart, BabiesRUs, and Publix using online sales flyers. (We get Sweetbay and Albertsons in the mail.) I keep a list throughout the week of "must haves" that we are out of or will need to purchase. These include things like toilet paper, baby formula, diapers, sugar, flour, etc. I also have a list of things that we use all the time that we are down to our last one or two on. These are "look for good deals" items.

Then I make my list based on store and category. I used to make my list based on the aisles at Publix but our home store recently got reorganized. Now I just do it by category. This saves me a lot of time in the store itself.

Finally I get together all my coupons for the things that are on sale, paper clip the lot together, and off we go. We always hit Publix last because of the cold foods. The rest of the stores we go to based on a route designed to save miles. There are many times we'll have to go to more than one Walgreens or CVS. This isn't a big deal as there are many within a couple of miles.

Our budget is $100 for the week for all of our groceries. We also have an $80/month "household and baby" budget. I usually just say "$120/week" to make it easier on us, but that's not always possible. Some weeks we don't use any, others we use $40.

This was an "overage" week. We spent about $130.00 even though the household budget was drained the week before. Summer always has excellent deals. The money is in the account (from selling stuff over the past month) and I would much rather save a ton of money by going $30.00 over this week than to wait until next week and miss the deals.

An example would be that I managed to get two cans of formula, usually $25.00 each, for just over $30.00. This will do us for two weeks. I also got us a month's worth of TP (for under a quarter a roll, which is good for Charmin) and ended up being able to get us four things of ALL for $0.55. (That's just over $0.10 each for a normally $5-$7 item.) I love CVS. Love it, love it, love it. Baby food was also a need item this week and I got a lot of it. Usually we pay about $0.50 a jar. This week I got some for just over $0.10. (It was 3/$1 and I had a buy four get $1 off Q, for example.)

We stocked up on some essentials. We spent a little more money. All in all, we spent just over $130 and we "got" over $250 worth of food and items by combining sales and coupons. Go team!

Mattress

2008-06-18T13:16:00.001-07:00

Goal: Find and purchase a queen-sized bed without it costing us any money from our regular income.

Part I: We found out that a friend and her husband were selling their Queen-sized bed. We expressed interest. After some bargaining we agreed on $180.00. The original price was $200.00, but as none of us have a truck they took off $20.00 to help pay for us to rent one.

Part II: Money

To rent the truck (including gas, etc.) was $71.91. I can't believe it. We were thinking it would be around $40.00. Crazy! We applied the unexpected 44.65 that we got back from the car dealership (for the tag) to this and ended up with a difference of 27.26.

In an earlier post I described how I sold our twin bed, which we bought for $50.00, for $60.00 awhile ago and I sold my table cart to a student for $50.00. I gave the couple this $110.00 when we picked up the bed. This means we owe them $70.00 when they come this Sunday.

I transferred 69.87 from my paypal account to my bank account. This was all from selling stuff from around the house. Go me!

And, to top it all off, I sold our double bed, which we bought for $150.00 for $175.00 this morning.

Maybe I should get into the mattress business?

Part III: Where's the rest going?

This month has sucked for me business-wise. The good thing about selling things around the house is that it has raised funds not only to cover the very comfy queen mattress but also to cover some of the appointments that I missed because clients were on vacation or dealing with kids just out on summer break.

Part IV: Was it worth it?

You may say that a mattress upgrade was not necessary. I disagree. To picture this: my husband is 6'4". He's rather trim, but even then he's got a very large chest and wide shoulders. I'm 5'10" and about forty lbs overweight. Neither of us could stretch out on the bed on our back and have our feet be on the bed! We were barely making a double bed work and frankly weren't getting good sleep. We were beating each other up in the middle of the night. Our sleep quality has increased tremendously since picking up the bed last Tuesday. In the past week I've had less headaches and back pain and I feel much more refreshed. He's reported similar results. It was totally worth it.

Free Fun

2008-06-16T05:39:00.001-07:00

I love board games. I absolutely adore sitting around with my friends, laughing and competing, moving stupid plastic pieces over a stupid cardboard game board... all of it. I just love it. And yet we rarely do it. (I also love to play cards.)

We played Trivial Pursuit the other night with some friends. Between the two families I think we have about forty board games. (They have five kids.) I usually don't like Trivial Pursuit because it makes me feel stupid. Turns out it helps if you're using an edition that has questions from your actual lifetime! We played a version that was 1982-2002. The older versions went up to mid-80's. I was born in 1980 so I've always lost, badly, and felt like a moron after games. I enjoyed this one, however.
I'm hoping to implement a board game night soon, probably at our house. With the five-kid-friends we'd go up there, but for all our friends that are closer to us, we're the only ones with a kid so they can come here. We've also gotten an invite to go play cards at another friend's house. I think we're going to do that once a month or so.

I highly recommend looking at Goodwill for board games, by the way. Some of our friends have bought a bunch of them, almost new. Unfortunately we found out that most of them were just stupid, but it sure beats paying full price for stupid. Right?

Life or Debt

2008-06-16T05:34:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Life or Debt and I really enjoyed it. It was a quick read, unlike some other financial advice books. There wasn't a lot of new information. However, I find that a lot of my "a ha!" moments come from old information that's presented in a slightly different way. I had several "A HA!"s:

The way the author not only addressed the cost of buying things on credit, as most do, he also dealt with the opportunity costs of buying anything. It doesn't matter if it's cash or credit. He gave a formula to figure out exactly how much of your life you're trading by spending a certain amount of money. Wow.
I really enjoyed the way that the author used example people. Even though they were fake, had fake lives, and so forth, it was a lot easier to read about "someone else" figuring out their budget, finances, etc. than trying to picture myself in the book. I was able to relax and take in the information, process it, and then apply it. Usually I'm too busy trying to mentally interact with the book and that makes it harder to get it the first time around.
The author gave standard tips for saving money. This was an added feature and I'm sure that some of those tips will hit readers as new. It was an expected part of the book that didn't impress me all that much. What did impress me, however, was how he used those tips with his example people. He needed to find "debt destroyer" funds in the budget. He went through a category-by-category budget search to find the amount and showed how it can be easier than one thinks to free up 10% of the income. He really stresses making saving money painless so that it's not about deprivation.
The thing I like the most was the way that he continually stressed that you can either make the same minimum payments for dozens of years, pay thousands more in interest, and end up with very little or nothing OR you can do 10% of your income now towards debt, get out in a matter of years, and end up a millionaire. That really hit home with me. Normally I don't like repetitive things, but this was one I needed to hear.

Father's Day

2008-06-16T05:28:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was my hubby's first father's day. We broke a few rules, but overall we had a lot of fun.

The Card: I handmade my husband's card. It's one of my favorites that I've ever made; I learned a really cool new technique that I've been experimenting since. I wrote a very sweet little inscription in the flap about how I always thought he'd be a good dad--but I was wrong. I had underestimated him; he's a GREAT dad. He got very teary. It was beautiful to watch. (side note: I admit it, scrapbooking and cardmaking are on the top 10 list of "hobbies that people trying to increase their wealth should get addicted to". There's always something new and exciting to buy!)

The Gifts: Mom and I had gone to WalMart earlier in the week. They had coffee beans on sale. I got him a pound of extra bold beans and some espresso truffles in dark chocolate. One of the ways we've saved money is that we don't get him coffee or beer every week. We save those things for special occasions. It really has turned an every-day item into a decadent treat (speaking coffee, not beer). He was very excited about both, especially, I think, the chocolate. Usually I'm the one trying to make a bag of excellent chocolate last for weeks, and I admit I'm not all that great at sharing!

The Time: We had a good friend come over and babysit. She's been asking a lot lately and even though mom was going to be home for most of the time we'd be gone I went ahead and invited her over to sit. She and babygirl adore each other. We decided to hit a matinée movie (The Incredible Hulk--he wanted to see it, I didn't really, but I did end up enjoying it!) to save some money and avoid the larger evening crowds. We avoided $3.00 parking by saving our ticket stub. We had also stopped at Walgreen's and gotten a few favorite candies. I don't see the point in paying concession stand prices: $4.50 for a small soda! So yes, we broke the rules by sneaking in our own stuff, shame on us. For supper we went to Longhorn. He got a Coke and I got sweet tea. (This was a splurge for us.) We split a 9 oz fillet and he got the baked potato and I got the salad. Between the sides, the bread, the drinks, and the 9 oz of meat, both of us were full. I can't imagine paying for two plates when one does the trick. Very yummy. After babygirl went to bed we did as well. (Free entertainment and free exercise, who can beat that?)

I forgot to have him write a few things for the Father's Day scrapbook page I want to do, but he agreed to do that tonight. All in all it was a great day.

June thus far

2008-06-13T10:19:00.001-07:00

June is always a slow month for me business-wise. This year has not been an exception. I'm hoping things pick up, otherwise the lovely bonus that hubby brought home is going to make up for my lack of income.

I was offered a sideline of income yesterday. I had a nice conversation with some ladies at the craft store (yes, I stayed within my budget and yes, everything I bought was on sale, and yes, the purchase was planned) and they asked me to come out and teach them basic techniques. "We'll pay you, of course!" And of course I agreed! We've been emailing back and forth. Not sure what will come of it, but I'm excited. I love crafts and would love to teach for money.

This makes me kick myself for not going ahead and signing up as a Stampin'Up demonstrator during SaleABration. I am not a MLM type girl. I wanted it for the discount and the fact that their products really are lovely and high-quality. During the celebration it was 20% off the kit (which is already a huge value) plus an additional $50 towards any one stamp set. *sighs* I may still go ahead with it. That's a whole other post.

Meanwhile we got $44 back from the dealership in the form of a check. They refunded the difference between what the registration cost and what we had paid them for it. That was a happy surprise.

Hubby rented a uhaul last night and took off with our best guy-friend to go pick up a bed that we bought from another couple. By selling some household items that we weren't using I managed to get $110/$180 that we agreed on. We'll sell the bed we have now for between $150 and $175 quite easily. I'm surprised the truck rental is going to be close to $60 (including the gas he put in it). They charge $0.70/mile now! I hate that we don't have any friends with trucks anymore.

We managed to stock up on chicken and beef at $1.88 lb for cuts that are normally quite a bit more. I'm so glad to have meat stockpiled. I can cook really well, and I love doing it, but it's hard to go to the pantry and make a meal out of the things we'd scored on before. With meat the possibilities are almost endless. I have 11 meals of chicken and at least six of beef at my fingertips. And, considering that we eat many, many vegetarian meals during the week, our stockpile should last us for quite some time. Yay!

So much going on!

2008-06-12T04:54:00.001-07:00

There's been a lot of things happening over the past two weeks. I'm definitely going to continue posting regularly; it's just been hectic and I haven't had a chance to do so. (Yes yes yes, I should be writing posts for times when I get caught up; great blogging advice to live by... as soon as I have time to set that up...)

Quicken Versus Money

2008-06-09T15:32:00.001-07:00

http://www.consumersearch.com/www/software/accounting_software/reviews.html

This is a good link to get a general overview of many ratings. I'd explain more, but I'm too busy reading it myself.

Aargh

2008-06-09T15:25:00.001-07:00

So Mint was interesting but clearly does not meet our needs. I keep thinking that if I "just tweak" a few of the spreadsheets I've been messing with I'll have the perfect system for us. But damnit, why I am I trying to reinvent the wheel?

I'm going to go ahead and do some research on Quicken versus Money. Yes, it's about $29.00. But then again, I "lost" 29.00 because I paid fees for having insufficient funds in an account because my system was not adequate.

Mint

2008-06-09T08:56:00.001-07:00

I'm trying out a new website called Mint. It keeps track of all your online banking accounts for free, allows you to set up budgets, track trends, and then offers you suggestions on how to save money, albeit usually by offering a different credit card or online investment.

I'm in process of setting it up now. I'll let you know how it works out!

First impressions:
- It's useful to have all of my accounts in one place and set up categories so I can see spreadsheets quickly.
- Categories are predefined and don't go along with our current budget.
- Budget setup is very clunky and needs much improvement; don't think I'll be using this feature much.
- Excellent variety of alerts.
- Ability to "hide" accounts from Mint; this is great since I'm on my mom's accounts but don't want her info showing up in the list.
- Ability to add any accounts you have login for; this allows me to add hubby's accounts too (with permission, of course).
- Participants include PayPal, which is great.

6 words

2008-06-02T07:04:00.001-07:00

Lise tagged me again: the goal is to take six words that sum up your life and post them.

learning to dance in the rain

It's very similar to hers, actually.

The woman who I split an office with was responsible for decorating it. It's quite lovely, actually. Perfect for a massage room. The colors are rich cream, red, and brown. She put up several framed pieces of art as well as several quote plaques. One of them reads, "Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass; it's about learning to dance in the rain."

I hadn't heard that quote before and it struck me so profoundly that I still, even three full months later, stare at it and feel instantly grounded and centered while I'm working.

Recently I've realized it also sums up my financial life; no matter what is happening, breaking, needing replaced, or coming unexpectedly, it's not about "getting through this" so that we can "finally _________". It's about _________ing even though things didn't go as scripted. It's about finding ways to enjoy life and rising above the thought that we are only as great as our pocketbook. (Suggested fill in the blanks: live/living, be happy/being happy, get ahead/making progress...)

Windfall!

2008-05-30T10:07:00.000-07:00

My husband brought home his check today. Usually it's direct deposited but they switched payroll companies and the information hasn't been put in their system for that yet. Included is a completely unexpected $500 under "bonus".

Sweet!

Straight into the Orange savings until we decide exactly where to apply it.

$110, 2 days

2008-05-29T05:43:00.001-07:00

Day 1: I sold the twin bed that was in our garage. Compared to other items, it wasn't taking up much space. Since it is no longer needed, however, I didn't see a point in keeping it. I put an ad on craigslist for $60 and sold it by that evening. (Awesome thing too... I only paid $50. So I "made" $10 after using it for a year and a half!)

Day 2: I sold a table cart I had bought when I was doing many many housecalls. Our business used to be housecalls exclusively. I don't do many now and I've learned that the table cart is a bigger PINTB than it is a time-saver so it's been getting in the way for the last two years. I paid about $90 after tax. I sold it to a student for $50 last night.

Total: $110 towards our "stuff" fund.

What will we be using said fund for first? A friend of ours is selling an almost-new pillow-top queen bed for $200 (OBO). I've told them we want it. I know that I can get $175 out of the double that we are now using, especially if I throw in the two sets of 400 thread count sheets and the waterproof mattress protector. (BTW - I paid $150 for it.) I should be able to buy the bed as soon as they are ready to move, sell ours rather quickly, and possibly even come out ahead.

We found a solution!

2008-05-27T14:42:00.000-07:00

We love our house. My parents started renting this house in 95. My husband and I moved in with my mom in 05 after dad died. I spent most of high school here, a few years after college, and now over two years with my lovely husband.

It's a 3 bed/2 bath house. It's like this: the three bedrooms are pretty much in a row on one side of the house. The one on the end has the bathroom attached and big closet. This is mom's room. Then the larger bedroom which is now an office and the nursery. Then the small bedroom which is where we sleep. On the other side is the livingroom. Then the kitchen. The garage is on the "back" of the third bedroom.

It has worked fine so far. Having stuff from four people (now five) has been a bit of a challenge, but we're managing. Now that we have a kid, however...

We'll be okay until she needs her own space. When does a kid "need" her own space? When she's old enough that she needs one room we can put her in and know that no matter what she gets into, she is going to be relatively unhurt. So basically by the time she starts walking, which will be within the next six months.

We originally decided that we'll "make due" and renew our lease in August. This means we'll have at least six months of a rough time while we figure out how to manage all the things we have in the house and create a space where we can put her, even if that means using fifteen baby gates. There's no other choice... we can't go through the rest of the attic and pare down our belongings enough in the next three months. We've worked at least eight hours on the weekends and an hour or two almost every night and it's just too large of a project. Also, finances to move right now aren't where we want them to be. And, on top of that, our rent is hundreds below what we'd pay for a similar house, let alone a larger one.

It would be impossible, as things are, to give her her own room in this house. Equally impossible to get a four-bedroom house within six-hundred of what we're paying for rent now.

However, I found a solution.

The biggest issue is what to do with the computers that are currently in the office. The paper and labels and CDs can be put somewhere to keep them out of the way. It won't be great, but they aren't the problem. These giant honkin' computer desks with the laser printer, printer/scanner/copier, and everything else are the big issues.

If we get rid of one of the computers (we'll give the slower one to my mom who will be getting a massive upgrade by switching over) and get rid of one desk entirely. Hopefully we can sell it. Then we'll have enough room in the larger bedroom (currently bedroom/office) for our bed as well as the other officey-type stuff. We'll move the nursery into the smaller bedroom.

Alternatively, if it's only one desk, we might be able to find room somewhere in the living room. We'd likely have to get rid of something, but it's do-able. This would mean a computer-free bedroom.

One of the reasons we wanted to keep an office was so that the computers are completely out of the way and we don't have to worry about baby getting into things. We simply close the door and viola! So chances are this option will not come about; we'll have to deal with a bedroom/office which is much safer than a nursery/office.

Now, that means that we've gone from three computers in the house to two. This may or may not work. The plan is to keep "stuff" money and put it towards a replacement for the one computer in the form of a laptop. Yes, yes, electronics are expensive wasteful junk. However, in order to get a promotion at my evening teaching job I will need a laptop anyway. Plus I will be much more productive with my writing. (More writing=more "extra" income for debt.) My mom has agreed to pay for 1/2 laptop in exchange for the upgraded computer. Another space-saver is to take the money from selling one of the desks plus the money that I will hopefully get from selling all our old computer games (great games, just beat them or played them to death) and get a flat-panel monitor.

That's a lot of IFs... but it will keep us in this house for years to come.

Selling "Stuff"

2008-05-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

I've been on a stuff-selling spree. Just today I (think I) sold the twin bed and boxspring that's sitting out in the garage for $60. The lady is coming tonight around 6. She says she is pretty sure she wants it; I want her to inspect it and make sure that she's entirely happy before she drives away.

I have a debate about what to do with this "found" money from selling our items.

Smart Thing To Do 1: Put this money towards debt.
Smart Thing To Do 2: Put this money in our Orange account and use it to buy other stuff.

Okay, 2 doesn't sound all that smart when phrased that way. I just reread it and went, "oh my." Here's what I really mean: There are certain things that we need or will need to buy. Whether it's for an individual, the adults, the baby, or the household in general, it's almost impossible to get buy without buying more stuff at some point.

An example would be new straps for my husband's knee brace. The VA will pay a thousand dollars towards replacing the whole thing but refuses to pay a hundred dollars to replace the straps when they wear out, which is once every few years. It's not something that happens on a regular basis and it's hard to find money each month to save towards. We feel it's not right to waste money like that so we pay the $100.

Another example would be tires on the older car. (PS: I LOVE my new car! So does mom!) We shouldn't need them for awhile, but it's very easy to hit the edge of a curb or run over a nail here in FL and end up needing repairs to the tires or entirely new tires. I'd prefer to have money set aside rather than draining our fabulous emergency fund. You know?

So I'm thinking that having a "stuff fund" would be a neat idea. If we have something we really want or need we have to raise money by getting rid of stuff we aren't using. This helps to manage both our pile of stuff as well as our budget.

Where do you apply your "stuff" money?

I done gone and screwed up

2008-05-20T11:42:00.001-07:00

I have an explanation, but not an excuse.

My explanation is this:

I've been using two new spreadsheets to try and track our money and create budgets. One uses a zero-based budget, which I really like, and the other uses an electronic envelope system. Since one is more of a budget and by the way how much did you actually pay and the other is what did you pay, towards what, and when, I figured I could use both to create a good system. It's been driving me nuts!

For one thing I've "lost" three hundred dollars somewhere according to spreadsheet number two. My account balance is $300 more than it should be and I cannot figure out wherein the error lies. In the first spreadsheet, however, I am short by quite a bit when I add up with my real numbers. I cannot figure it out. So I'm frustrated and sicking hubby on building me a new spreadsheet with the modifications I want. This will allow me to budget with a zero-based system and "fund" certain items with each paycheck very much like an envelope system. This is important because I need to use certain funds to pay certain things. Otherwise I don't have the money until later in the month and the bill is due in the first part. I need to be precise or we're a little screwed.

Then there's the business account. I hate hate hate the online system that the business account uses. I love online banking, but this bank's system drives me nuts. It shows all credits, all deposits, and what you have available. (I just got an email back from the bank manager with a "no problem" and instructions on how to display the running balance... why isn't this "on" by default?) So up until two seconds ago I had to figure things out on paper and apparently I screwed up.

Ladies and gentlemen, yours truly who brags about never overdrafting accounts, bouncing checks, and so forth made a big boo-boo worth $211.05 overdrawn.

Damnit.

I was so proud of us for doing so well... and you know what? I still am! So what if I made one very minor correctable mistake? Accidents and mistakes happen. They are a part of life and a part of learning.

I formally forgive myself.

*sighs*

Stockpiling this Weekend

2008-05-19T10:54:00.001-07:00

The cash system for our grocery and household expenses has really been working. The envelope has instilled a lot of stress, however. We rarely went over our budget before, though I have to admit, we did once a month on average by $20-$30. That's a hefty amount considering the new car payment. It's really interesting to be walking around, adding up numbers in my head (which I used to do anyway), and knowing that, "I only have $16 left" at a certain point.

Yesterday we did really well. I had $5.00 left over for the produce stand, even! I stocked up on Cottonelle flushable wipes. Target had them on sale and with my $1.00 coupon I got eight 84 packs for just over $2.00 each. They also had our cat food on sale. I was going to get the larger bag and realized that I could get two smaller bags, which were $0.50 more than the big bag if you added them together for the same size, and use two $1.50 coupons instead of just one. The other items, a Diaper Genie Refill and a small toy for the baby, were priced competitively.

We stopped by Richard's for the bulk items that we get. We both eat oatmeal in the mornings so we get a great big bag of rolled oats at $0.59/lb. I also like to eat nuts. (I'm allergic to peanuts but treenuts are fabulous.) I also picked up some almond milk. (I can't do regular milk, except in cooking, or soymilk.)

At Publix we spent the rest of our money and even including baby's brand-name formula brought our total to $115.00 for the day out of $120.00. Not bad! $120.00-$130.00 used to be what we spent each week just on food, plus several last minute trips, plus eating out, and if it was a household need week (paper towels, cat food, etc.) we'd spend $150.00 easily. Now it's $120.00 no matter what--and if we want to eat out it comes out of the entertainment envelope or we save money from the food envelope for it. No borrowing from the following week, either!

I was very excited last week because Publix formula is $10.00 less and has the equivalent nutritional structure of Enfamil Lipil, which we usually use. We gave it a whole week and are going to finish off the can. However, we're switching back. She's been throwing up worse than ever. This is an issue for her anyway, but it's been steadily improving. The Publix formula has put things back on "fountain mode" again. We've also had a few really rough patches of gas, which hasn't happened for a really long time.

Two days later

2008-05-19T10:46:00.000-07:00

I was terribly afraid that I would wake up yesterday, Sunday, with buyer's remorse. The thoughts in my head, this fear I was carrying around, would be that I would feel a large sense of letdown. After all, we're trying to get out of debt. So what do we do? Rack up $9500 more.

Yet Sunday I woke up and was very happy to see my shiny new car in the driveway. I enjoyed driving it as we ran errands.

Today I let hubby take it to work and traded cars with him when he came home for lunch. I saw Mortimer (my car--yes, I named it) outside and got a big grin.

I'm very happy that all three of us now have reliable, safe cars, with working air conditioning, no fumes, that start each time, and that don't make funny noises. I'm thrilled that we were able to purchase the two cars rather than do a lease because our deal was so good the payments were even better.

Yay!

New Cars - Official!

2008-05-17T12:03:00.001-07:00

Both mom and the two of us have new cars! 2007 PT Cruisers both.

Amount financed: $9508 at 7.14%

Not the best, but not too bad either.

You'll notice I'm not going to add that to my debt pie chart. That's only for credit card debt. Once that's complete I'll add another for the car, then for student loans.

I'm so excited!

Finally -- Resolution

2008-05-15T10:55:00.001-07:00

I was on break last night and checked my phone messages. My husband left me a very nice message and it was obvious he was both proud of himself and extremely excited. His message would have left a smile on my face even if it had been, "we're out of pickles!"

His message wasn't about pickles. It was about the cars. After a lot of role-playing and discussion on Tuesday evening hubby had the confidence to call last night and talk to the manager.

He explained that we are going to buy two cars. Whether we buy them from that dealer remains to be seen; there are many other dealerships that would love to sell two cars. He said, "the deal is only hinging on one thing." As you can imagine the sales manager was practically drooling all over that little tid bit.

Happy story short, because little bit is going to wake up from her doze soon, is that they are honoring the original really-awesome deal.

Car 1: 2007 PT Cruiser, Touring Edition, Rim Upgrades (which I could care less about, honestly), 9,400 miles (rounded up)
Car 2: 2007 PT Cruiser, Touring Edition, Slightly over 20,000 miles so we'll call it 20,500.

Basically 2 almost brand-new cars. Our walk-out price (tax, etc.) is right around $10,800 each.

Extra Income: Wish me luck

2008-05-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

I've put several things in motion to bring in more abundance in my life. One of them has been selling items on ebay; so far things are going well. I'm getting my feet wet and learning the easiest way to list and ship items so that I can commit to selling more.

The second project, the big one, is to focus on my writing. I have two books in progress, a children's book completed and ready to shop around, and many articles in varying stages of production.

Three minutes ago I sent out my first magazine submission. I should hear in 8-10 weeks. I expect rejection, however I'm picturing that check coming in the mail. I'm opening it, smiling, and running inside to show it to my mom and my husband. I'm picking up my daughter, twirling her around, and then sitting right down with a deposit slip. I'm putting on my shoes, grabbing my purse, and heading to the bank. I'm home again, at my computer, and I've just put the entire amount of the check towards a debt payment. I feel great.

Wish me luck!

My ebay stuff

2008-05-14T06:22:00.001-07:00

I've sold a maternity support belt, leftover boxed disposable cameras, and two tee-shirts. I've made about thirty dollars. Not bad considering that paypal makes it so darn easy to print off shipping and USPS delivers free boxes for the asking. I'm certainly getting more for these things than I would at a garage sale.

Another reason why I hate credit cards

2008-05-14T06:21:00.001-07:00

They are almost impossible to pay off!

I don't mean as in making payments and slowly decreasing balances over time. Yes, the willpower involved with that is hard. Yes, for many people it's almost impossible. But that's not what I refer to.

The payoff amount at anyone time changes because of how the interest compounds. And then, at the end of the billing cycle, you get even more interest based on your balance over the course of the month. My husband and I both got statements from cards that we "paid" off. One was for less than five dollars, the other less than ten.

It's so frustrating!

I even payed more than I knew was due for one of the cards. They had to send me a check for the difference. And yet, somehow, I owe them $4.50. And of course since the payment won't go through until tomorrow, what about the interest that's going to be added.

I want to call and really bitch someone in the CSR field out. Right now I just don't have the energy or the time. Maybe next week.

More on the car deal

2008-05-14T06:16:00.001-07:00

The flip side of the standing on principle coin is the "I feel like I'm cutting off my nose" coin.

The price we were given on each car is a fantastic price, even with 20k miles.
20k miles on a 2007 car isn't that big of a deal; it's just that we were expecting one of them to have under 10k.
We didn't "lose" anything because we never "had" the cars. Therefore this is like complaining that we only won $200,000 on the suitcase game when we could have walked away with $450,000 but turned it down. We still have a great offer on the cars.
I put a LOT of research into different cars, companies, dealerships. I've exchanged quite a few emails. I've made dozens of phone calls. If we pass on the cars then I now need to start all over again and choose a different set.

However, if we walk away from this deal, which we probably will if they don't give us what they agreed to:

There are MANY dealerships who would love to sell two cars. We live an easy drive from Tampa and St. Petersburg where many many car dealers live and, if needed, could even drive down to Orlando. Worst case scenario is we invest a bit in gas to go pick up our cars.
I'm sure we can get close to the same deal for two cars in this economy.
We should be considering cars with better gas mileage anyway. This will be a major expense--actually, it already is--so there's no point in buying a new to us car unless it is one we really love or one that will save us money on gas.

Also, I realized something.

I've wanted a PT Cruiser since they came out. Drooled over them. This is, in fact, my third attempt to buy one. I wasn't able to make a great deal the other two times so I walked away. Every time I see one I make a comment, even if it's in my head, that "that's the car I'll be driving some day!"

Now that the reality of ownership is but a few details away, I find myself less than excited. I don't know if it's the effect of all the stress that goes along with the car buying process accumulating or if it's because I've realized that the kind of car I drive doesn't really matter.

It's weird. I'm so close to something I've wanted for a long time and I'm ready to turn my back and start all over. I really thought I'd be jumping up and down and calling everyone I know to tell them. Not really. I don't feel good about the deal. And if I don't feel good about something, I don't do it. I've learned to listen to that internal voice that says, "not right now."

Also, now that I know we can get a 2007 car of several different kinds for an affordable price, we don't have to lease. This has made me realize how much I don't want to lease. This is weird, considering I was gung-ho about it. But for us it's financially stupid and if we can own a car and keep our payments roughly the same, we're good. (I am NOT a payment buyer, however I am conscious about what our payments will be and how much I can spend on a car. I am negotiating overall price, not payment. No way I'm financing for more than 60 months and even that I'd prefer not to do.)

If my mother had air conditioning that worked, I wouldn't worry about this right now. If my husband was comfortable driving his car (btw--airbag light has not come back on since first day) and I knew I would be okay with him putting the kid in it fume-wise, then I would rest for a few months and then start to look for other cars. I've worn grooves into my current car. I don't even have to think about driving it anymore than I think about walking. It's very comfortable and I have no issues with it.

However, hubby's car needs to be replaced soon. It would make a great commuter car for someone without kids. My mom either needs to put $1500 into her car to fix the a/c or she needs a car that has a/c. (She has some health problems and gets overheated very easily.)

I don't know what to do.

In the meantime I'm going to wait until next week, I think, to start the process over again. So I'm going to sit and be still and listen. When something feels right, I'll know that's what we're going to do.

The importance of principle

2008-05-14T06:02:00.001-07:00

I worked out an awesome deal on the car front Saturday when my hubby and I went to the dealership. Their initial offer surprised me; it was $600 ($300/each car) lower than what I wanted. That never happens!

Sunday the dealership was closed so we checked out the Toyotas. I wrote about that in another post. Long story short, my husband cannot fit in the cars and I barely can.

Monday I took my mother to the dealership so she could drive the car that would be hers. She was okay with it. There were a few things she didn't like. As we talked, however, we both admitted that things like the headrests would feel weird. We've both driven our cars for 10 years now. That's a serious case of "being used to" our current cars!

We sat down. I had a check in my pocket for the deposit. It was unlikely we'd get the cars that night since my mom hadn't gotten her Capital One packet in the mail and we weren't sure what financing the dealer could offer. So the check was part "hey, we're serious--don't sell these cars" and part down-payment.

Then the salesguy started talking about the cars we had just driven. My mom had driven the one that we had talked about; I had not. I was very confused. We had been talking about mileage under 10k and rims; I had even joked that if he'd seen my car he'd know they weren't a huge selling point for me. I had written down the exact mileage. Well, if we wanted the lower mileage car he'd get us the best price possible.

We went home instead of putting down a deposit. I was confused but I had an appointment. The rest of the afternoon was spent on the phone with the salesguy trying to get him to understand that we wanted the cars we had talked about for the price we had talked about. We got some hemming and hawing about the stock numbers and I told him straight out that it would be a matter of principle with my husband. Even if it's, "only $700 difference for 10,000 miles--what a deal!" the fact is that we were quoted the price on the lower-mileage car.

He didn't get it. He supposedly talked to his manager and the big boss. Sorry, couldn't do it. But for his money, he knows what he'd do.

We went in later to have them appraise our cars. I figured maybe since he'd backed himself into a corner about the price of the cars he'd be able to offer us more for the trade-ins.

Nope. $800 trade-in value on two cars. (I didn't expect much; they both have close to 100k on them and they are in "fair" condition.) $200 was for my hubby's, $600 was for mom's. I know I could sell either car for over a grand. (Guess which we'll be doing?)

Yesterday we didn't talk with them at all. The store manager called and left a message with mom--he wanted to thank us for coming in and see if he could do anything for us. Hubby and I spent a long time talking strategy about what he should say and how.

We also called my best friend Brian. He's the son of the mechanic that works at the dealership and one of the reasons why we were given a damn good price to begin with. I asked if we were being crazy for standing on one part of principle. But, like he said. It's not the $700. It's not the 10k miles. It's the fact that it's not what we originally agreed to.

So hubby will call today and we'll find out what's going on.

Insurance

2008-05-12T05:46:00.001-07:00

We'll be changing from Geico to Allstate here in August.

I found out we can save over $110/6 months by switching.

Also, for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to put us on the six-month plan if they offer it. Right now at Geico we have a 4-month plan. I want simplicity. Absolute simplicity. One even payment a month is a lot easier to deal with than four unequal payments and two months "off". Drives me nuts. So, if they offer it, we're going to take advantage of it.

Yay, I've got some opinions!

2008-05-12T05:45:00.001-07:00

I've read about six books from front to back now on the topic of personal finance.

I'm surprised how infrequently the experts have anything close to the same opinion. They really are divided on a number of issues. I was surprised to see that I had formed some of my own. I normally have quite a few, you see, but I wait to form anything strong until I've educated myself some more.

The Emergency Fund

Suze Ormand says no emergency fund until all credit card debt has been paid off. I disagree. I feel that I have a good reason to disagree; my husband has been laid of twice in the last year. He was working in leasing and estimating for the construction industry and down here many people have lost their jobs. Both times we had enough money saved that we were able to pay our bills until he found another job. Unemployment helped a lot, too. Without that savings we would have been screwed and even deeper in debt.

Credit Cards

Ms. Ormand also says that your emergency fund can temporarily be credit cards. She also suggests that once all your debt is paid off, you apply for as many cards as you can until you have about eight month's worth of income available as your limit. Then you don't use them unless you need them. This would be a recipe for disaster in our family. I would imagine that most people would be the same way. Like telling an alcoholic, "Hey, I know you aren't going to use this alcohol unless it's a real emergency--maybe a buddy loses a leg and you need to cleanse the wound--but you should have enough laying around anyway." My name is Lizz and I have a problem with credit cards. Therefore I have a bare minimum. And some would argue that you don't truly need any.

Bulk Buying

One of the authors, I think it might have been in the Automatic Millionaire but I'm not sure (I returned the books I had read as soon as I read them--I'm awful about late fees and am trying to change that), suggests that you should not stock up on things that you use. You should instead use the money you would have spent on these items and save it. Then, when you need it, you buy one of the items.

I never used coupons or anything like that until I came across The Grocery Game. It's been an inexpensive education that has really changed the way that I shop. We get razors, shaving cream, body wash, toothpaste, feminine products... you name it and we have gotten it for free or very very cheap. Name brand items that we use. At first I was so excited about getting free stuff that I "bought" a lot of things we wouldn't use. It didn't go to waste, however. My best friends have five kids so I cleaned out my stockpile and gave them lots of goodies.

Still, why would you pay $9.99 for a razor when you can get it for free? Or pay $3.59 for a cleaning solution when you can wait until they are B1G1 and then use coupons to get two for $0.27 each?

Yes, we're spending money each month on things we'll use in the future. It's not a "necessary item" right this second. And yes, we could be earning interest on that money. However, by doing things this way we've done amazing things to our grocery bill and we've saved thousands of dollars on things we needed anyway. (I kept a spreadsheet for a long time. I hit a thousand about four months into The Game.) I still have some items left that I bought last summer when they were dirt cheap. Do razors spoil? No.

The author suggested that having a closet full of toilet paper isn't the best use of money. I suggest that the author has never found their favorite uber-expensive TP on sale of twelve cents a roll. (The one brand loyalty we have is to Charmin.) It's a definite "need" item and paying the normal price is crazy.

When to throw in the towel?

2008-05-11T17:48:00.003-07:00

(My Husband and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (PART 2))

The value of my husband's car, based on age, mileage, and condition is under $800. Add in some of the things that need to be fixed and you'd have to be a real sucker. It runs and has A/C, so it has that going for it. It also has fumes so bad that 1) my child is not allowed in it and 2) if it's parked in the garage the door needs to be cracked for a few hours because the whole house will stink. On top of that something is wrong with the airbag. It starts... almost... every time he drives it though sometimes he needs to try a few times. Those are the basic issues, anyway.

But again, it runs. And he only needs it to go to work. However, in order for us to feel safe with that we need to:

Pay the dealer $110 for a diagnostic of the airbag system.
Pay to either repair the system (the least expensive option according to one mechanic is the clock spring which is $300ish. Since the horn works, this is probably not the case. However, my research on the internet says it could be a few other things in the $60-$80 range.)
Or pay to disconnect the system (and no, he does not have an airbag on/off switch as some cars do)

If the work that had to be done to make it drivable was $1500 on a $600 (or so) car, then I feel like the better choice would be more clear. (He is driving it right now as his bike is in the shop for about a week. He may decide he's okay with the conflicting advice, but I don't think it's likely.)

At what point do we throw in the towel? When do we say, "You know, I don't want to put half the value or all the value of this car back into it when we know it needs at least another thousand dollars of other repairs within the next year,"?

We have $400. It's sitting in our account. Heck, I saved $125 this month towards automobile repairs, so we'd only have to dent the rest of our savings.

I hate his car. I really really hate it. I haven't ridden it in several years. It stinks, it's noisy, and I'm always terrified that we'll be somewhere and then can't leave because it won't start.

Car Options

2008-05-11T17:48:00.001-07:00

My posts make more sense when the first posts are actually posted...

Option 1:

48-Month Lease
2009 Toyota Corolla
About $2000 due at signing

Pros:
Gets excellent gas mileage
Lease = tax write off (part of it)

Cons:
Big OOP cost
Insurance goes up over $50
The lease is for four years
12,000 miles/year

(Note: "due at signing" is very likely going to end up changing as part of the negotiations since we're buying 2 cars... one for us and one by my mom)

Option 2:

36-Month Lease
2008 PT Cruiser
$1995 due at signing

Pros:
I've wanted a PT Cruiser since the first time I saw one, about three months after they came out.
Much more interior room; hubby is 6'4", I'm 5'10"
Easier for business to carry equipment
Lease is only for 3 years
Insurance goes up less than $20
Lease = tax write off (part of it)

Cons:
Big OOP cost
Gas mileage sucks
(Note: The $2.99 gas card for three years only is a better deal than the Corolla if gas goes over $5.50/gallon)

Option 3:

Purchase
5 year finance
2007 PT Cruiser
under 10,000 miles

Pros:
Excellent price - under 11k drive-out price
Financing is same monthly payment as lease
Lifetime Powertrain Warranty
Own vehicle at the end
"New" used vehicle
Can trade in
No mileage worries

Cons:
Monthly payments for five years
Not sure if we get the gas card or not

Mother's Day

2008-05-11T13:48:00.000-07:00

My hubby did good. It's amazing how a $3.00 bag of a woman's favorite chocolate, a card from the husband, and a card "from" the baby can feel like a diamond necklace. (Of course, I've never really gotten a diamond necklace, so I might be totally off base. If anyone wants to educate me on this matter by giving me one, I'd be willing to revise my opinion!)

My mom hates her digital camera. It's a Sony Mavica that takes pictures on a floppy disk. It's heavy, bulky, has a longggg shutter lag that always frustrates her, a preview screen that cannot be seen outside, and takes very low resolution pictures (compared to today's models).

We decided that with the money we budgeted for mother's day and her birthday that we were going to get her a new digital camera. We went to two stores today and found what we wanted at Circuit City. We were also able to get her a 2 GB memory card for only $17. She loves her new Kodak Easy Share camera.

The easiest decision ever

2008-05-11T13:45:00.001-07:00

We arrived at the Toyota dealership and after a brief recap of our needs (the internet rep I was dealing with had the day off) we were on our way towards the Corolla. I got inside and was instructed how to move the seat down and back, change the tilt, and maneuver the steering wheel. Right off I could tell I was in trouble. I would be able to drive the car--barely. And that was with everything set optimally.

I looked at my husband and said, "before I even put the key in this car, you need to see if you'll fit."

With his knee brace on, there was no way that he'd be able to drive the car. Without it he could drive it, but only if he really had to.

We also tried out the Matrix which had the same lease. They tried to get us to try a Scion, only $30 a month more. No, thanks.

I called mom on the way home. All of us were cracking up about it. When we got back she admitted that's why she didn't want to go with us. I asked why she hadn't told us about it. She said we needed to see for ourselves. I assume she meant that she really wanted us to feel like we had done due diligence in looking into other cars so we could get our PT Cruiser with a clear conscious.

Tomorrow mom and I are going back to Chrysler so she can test drive. If she likes them I'm going to work on negotiating the price lower and seeing if I can get us gas cards. I think they're only for the 2008. Since these two are 2007 they don't apply. Cross your fingers and wish me luck!

If things work out favorably I'll make a small deposit so that when our Capital One checks come in the mail we can complete the deal. I can't apply for financing without my hubby so there's no point in doing that tomorrow. Mom is undecided.

The last thing we're going to do, when we go back to write the actual check and check their financing, is to say, "by the way, what would you give us for our cars?"

My Husband and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (PART 1)

2008-05-09T06:00:00.001-07:00

The warning light for the airbag system turned on in hubby's Tuesday. I've talked to five different people--all who know things about cars--and I've gotten some conflicting advice... even from the same person!

The Tool at the local dealership (the same one, by the way, that missed a cracked axle in three visits which our non-dealership mechanic found on the first visit!) told me that we needed to make an appointment immediately. The airbag "could go off" if we hit a pothole or the curb. It might even go off randomly. And, he added, since it's a 1995 car the "airbag isn't nice and soft like the ones they have today; it's like burlap and will cut your husband's face up".

Yes, he really said that.

Hubby took this as an opportunity to call said service manager and chew him out. The "cut your face up" comment was incredibly inappropriate. Anyway, the same service manager gave us two other answers including that the airbag is disabled and shouldn't deploy. *sighs*

Four other people all said the same thing. 1) The airbag shouldn't deploy. 2) But since it's a Ford, you never know.

Wow.

Needless to say, he's a little nervous about driving his car!

(More on the issue later.)

Hubby woke up and told me he was taking his bike to work. No problem; it was a nice day outside. (For Florida nice day = "no hurricane heading our way, clear skies, and a slight wind so that 100 degrees only feels like 97.") I got the kid and had time to walk her into the nursery, open her diaper, and start cleaning her bum before the garage door went up again.

"What's up, love?"

"My bike... is broken."

At that point I had to crack up. It really sucked but both of us have gained a lot of perspective since our daughter was born. It was just a thing. (A thing that can be fixed for little money.) I had him finish snapping her onsie and put her in the car seat while I threw on some clothes and brushed my hair and teeth.

Off we went to his office. He wasn't even late. In fact, he was the first one to arrive.

He put the key in the lock and found out that his boss had given him the wrong one!

At that point I had pulled out of my parking space and was alongside the curb to the entryway of the office. I reparked the car, rolled down the windows, and waited with him until his coworker showed up.

That's how the day started. Luckily, thankfully, the rest of it was pretty good.

April and Early May Successes

2008-05-05T12:06:00.000-07:00

In the three weeks since I've taken control of our finances we:

- Have gone from no emergency savings to having $2500 in an interest bearing account.
- Have switched to a zero-based budgeting system which has curtailed our spending a great deal.
- In addition to the zero-based budgeting we're also using a cash-envelope system for some things and an electronic-envelope system for others.
- Have money saved towards several goals that are very important to us.
- Have changed the way we deal with non-monthly expenses.
- Have consolidated our debt and reduced our interest rate by half.
- Have acquired liability insurance for myself personally and for our company.
- Have canceled over $670/year in unnecessary monthly services.
- Have switched our phone service over to our cable provider and in turn saved over $380/year.
- May have an additional $500-$1000 at the end of the month to put towards something (I haven't decided what yet).
- Have come in under-budget for food and household items the last two weeks.

I think I'm going to post my successes on a regular basis. It's easy to start feeling badly about our previous choices and to get discouraged. I think we've made a terrific amount of progress. So that's what I'm going to focus on. We're building wealth, one day at a time.

Judge-judge-judge

2008-05-05T11:51:00.001-07:00

It's fairly easy to write a preachy "I would never do that" post, and it's fairly common to find those types of posts lurking around personal finance blogs. A lot of them are amusing, some are thought provoking, and some prove that everyone is their own person.

One of the things that I don't "get" is why people buy dressings for their salad.

(Confession: I do buy blue cheese in a bottle. This is because T. Marzetti is the best ever and I find that blue cheese costs enough that it's just as efficient for me to buy the dressing on sale.)

It is SO easy to make an absolutely delicious dressing that exceeds anything I've found over the counter. Believe me, I've tried quite a few in my time. Why? Because I hadn't yet learned how easy it was.

Sure, I had made my own dressing, but I didn't learn this one trick...

Mix in olive oil!

I had always put some herbs and spices on the salad and threw some vinegar, usually balsamic, over it. It worked but it certainly wasn't great.

One day when I was musing out loud I received some insight from my mom. I love caprese salads (tomato/mozzarella/basil/balsamic dressing) and it's one of the only salads I've actually purchased when eating out. We make it at home all the time but the dressing just wasn't the same, and that's a big deal breaker with this salad. "Oh, just add some EVOO in the blender. You have to add it slowly."

So guess what I've made fresh just about every day since then? You got it--homemade salad dressings.

My favorite is balsamic vinegar but we use all kinds. Tarragon white is also pretty good. I put my herbs and spices into the blender, dump a bunch of vinegar in, add a tad bit of sugar, and then put the lid on. "Blend" then slowly raise the center part and drizzle the oil in slowly. It ends up being absolutely delicious and far better than anything you can get at the store.

Now that I know the trick I wouldn't even consider buying it. Why bother? I can have a different type every day. One day I might have a tarragon/oregano dressing. The next I might have basil and garlic. The following day might be a rosemary/sage. It never gets old and it sure costs a lot less!

Choices

2008-05-05T11:29:00.001-07:00

Here are my choices for the $500 we'll have "extra" this month if no more of my appointments cancel. Since I'm trying out the zero-based budget system, this has to go towards something.

Open a new ING account for the baby's educational expenses. This is for opportunities such as field trips, considering private schools, etc., not college. Right now this is not factored into my FSA accounts.
Open a new ING account for a house down payment. This is a goal we need to start saving for now. Right now this is not factored into my FSA accounts.
Put it in our FSA ING account in the "car emergency fund" which is for car repairs or replacement. Right now I'm putting in $3000/24, or about $125/month.
Put it in my Roth IRA, which I have not contributed to since 7/07 due to upcoming maternity leave and knowing my business would fall back. This would almost make up for not putting in my $60/month in the meantime.
Pay off $500 more towards Capital One which would reduce my monthly payment by another $15. I mentioned before that I realize at 0% APR this is not the loan to pay off first, however lowering my monthly payment frees up monthly cash and gives us some breathing room if we need it. We are still going to have the full amount we planned on paying automatically deducted each month and only change it if something happens. (I know, good intentions, right? That's why it's automatic.)
Pay off $500 towards the BOA Gold Loan which has an APR of 15.99%. This will reduce the term by about a month and a half but not reduce the amount we pay each month.
Put it into our FSA for next month, see if we need it, and then apply it to an above option if we don't.
Put it into our FSA in the "unexpected expense" category.

This scenario may need to be for $1000; I haven't gotten my first due date for the Bank of America Gold Loan yet. The counselor on the phone said it would very likely be the beginning of June. If it's at the beginning of June, it's covered with next month's pay. If it's at the end of May, it's covered with this month's.

What is an FSA? Something new to me. It's a Freedom Savings Account. Basically instead of having my life insurance, which is $44 every three months, come out in one lump sum that we plan for four times a year, we're taking a third of that and putting it into our FSA account each month. Then when the $44 "hits" I withdraw the amount from FSA (which has meanwhile been earning 3% interest) and put it into the account the expense comes out of. We have this set up for all our expenses that happen every two years, annually, and several times a year.

I also have set up a vacation fund and emergency car fund. I want to have these fully funded in a certain amount of time. The down payment for a house should be automatic, as should the educational expenses, but in our zero-based budgeting system we don't have it every month. It depends on how many appointments I have (and cancellations), and whether or not the school renews my faculty option in August after this round of classes ends. It also depends on student loans that come due. Since my husband is due for a raise, possibly, this month, that will also affect it as well as the amount of payments that he needs to make.

We have our FSA through ING. It's just a savings account that we named "FSA". We also have one named "Emergency Savings".

Great conversation

2008-05-05T05:56:00.001-07:00

Hubby and I had a really good conversation last night about the issues that have been popping up. He was in a receptive mood, we were both relaxed, and I managed to present it in a way that finally made sense to him.

What's more, I think I found the root cause of our issues. Obviously his will power is not the issue. But something keeps happening that causes issues to repeat themselves. Big issues.

Remember the chicken I mentioned? An example of this issue would be that he refused to ask the butcher to take a package of chicken that was far larger than what we needed and cut it to the size we did need. This is one of the reasons I decided not to buy it. (Besides the fact that it was over four dollars a pound!) His response was that he could easily vacuum seal it and then store the excess in the fridge.

My hubby "gets" stockpiling. He understands buying on sale and then storing for later. In fact he does some of this on his own now and I'm proud of him for it. But if it requires "bothering" someone then he won't do it. So, in his mind, he'd rather take a $12 loss over a receipt or pay too much for too much chicken.

This reminds me of one of our first dates; we went to the county fair with a bunch of friends. The group of us were walking and I suddenly noticed we were missing someone! I had to go back to the area we had just come through--the game booths--and extract him from them. He was standing there, politely listening to the booth-worker's attempt to get him to play the game. He didn't want to be rude!

He's not nearly that bad now, and there's nothing wrong with being polite, but I don't get it! He's received numerous bonuses and kudos at his jobs for his negotiating skills. He just wouldn't use them in his personal life! He's the type of guy that would pay $4,000 too much for a car because he doesn't want to be a jerk customer. (This hasn't happened, but it wouldn't surprise me if it did at some point in the future if he continued his current mindset.)

After our conversation he now things of himself as the CEO of his own life. I said, "Honey, if you don't want to go through the trouble for you, then think of it as working for me and the baby. You might be willing to eat that $12. How about you instead go and get the receipt and put the rebate money in her savings account. I know you don't care, but that money can go a long way towards a goal for the family."

That's a very short version of a very long conversation, of course, but it worked. He gets it now. You will not get what you don't ask for.

Habits

2008-05-04T13:12:00.001-07:00

I decided that even though our money arguments, while very few and very far between, are educational and I feel like others might get value out of them, I'm not going to share them.

I am, however, going to talk about one thing that happened last night.

We were given a rebate for a type of Whiskey through a program called bzzagent. Hubby decided last night to go to the store and pick some up. We looked at the form, discussed what we needed and what size qualified, and off he went.

When he got home we noticed that we weren't given a receipt. I looked twice in the bag, checked out the floor area surrounding the kitchen, and even checked the bottom of the bottle. Nope, no receipt. Not in the car or in his wallet, either.

He absolutely refused to go to the store and ask for his receipt. I couldn't believe it. We live just over a mile away from the store and there was no traffic.

This actually sparked a big argument.

His thought: I paid for this with money from "my" envelope which you said I could do anything I wanted with. So, I can buy a $13 bottle of whiskey if I want.

My argument: It will take three minutes to go back to the store and get the receipt and get $12 of that money back.

This is a common issue and I don't know how to bring it up in a way that I can make him understand.

Whenever there is an issue that involves asking for something that would monetarily benefit him in some way, he closes up, gets extremely defensive, and will throw up issues that are related but have nothing to do with the one we are discussing. This is the only topic he does this with.

He won't call clients a day or two after he's given them a massage to check in; nor will he call clients he hasn't seen in a few months. He doesn't want to "bother" them.

Last night he didn't want to be a jerk by going back. They probably had dozens of receipts in the trash and he didn't want anyone to dig through the trash. There were eight people there when he was there and he didn't want to wait in line, make a fuss, and then have people waiting and getting impatient.

It was better, to him, to let go of $12 than call someone on their mistake of not giving a receipt.

We didn't get anywhere in our conversation. I couldn't get him to see that it wasn't about how he spends his money. We both get an amount to spend however we want, but once it's gone, it's gone. He can buy quarter-dispenser-rings and gummy worms for all I care.

Finally I called the store. I apologized for bothering them on a Saturday night and acknowledge that I appreciated their time and help. She laughed. Apparently, other than one rush, it's been dead due to the Kentucky Derby.

I told her about the receipt and she asked me a few questions. What was purchased? What size? Was anything else on the ticket? How did he pay for it? Which cashier was it?

I asked when a good time would be to come by and she said anytime. So I told her I was on my way.

The two clerks were extremely nice and apologized for my having to drive back there. I thanked them for their help. One other customer left when I walked in the door. Otherwise I was the only one.

It took me five minutes, less than ten cents worth of gas, and I made $12. If he doesn't want it, I figure, then I'll take it!

I need to find a way to have this conversation with him, however. Suggestions?

Some of my favorite cheap meals

2008-05-04T12:59:00.001-07:00

I love to cook at home and we've found lots of excellent meals that cost very little to make. Here are two of our favorites:

Quesadillas:

Friends of ours had a quesadilla maker that they absolutely adore. We got to try it one night when we were over for dinner. It creates six "pockets" that can easily be cut apart. They hold heat like crazy. One day when I was pregnant and determined I drove to seven stores and called three more looking for it. We ended up getting it through amazon.com. (See below.)

It only takes the larger tortillas, I think 10". One pack of those has 10 tortillas which is enough for 5 quesadillas. We usually have a salad and split a quesadilla. It ends up being more than enough for the two of us. One quesadilla (no salad) is enough for a meal and "sticks" for 4-5 hours.

The best part is that you can customize every single one and that each uses very few ingredients. A large pack of cheese (about $7 at Publix for 2 lbs) lasts for a long time.

Our two favorite recipes:

Mexican - Use blended mexican cheese and whatever additives you'd like. We've found that chives, onions, olives, red peppers, and tomatoes are all really good. (I'd say 1-2 inside ingredients max.) Serve with sour cream and salsa. Yum!

Italian - Put about three spoonfuls of your favorite tomato sauce (a big jar will last you for weeks; freeze what you don't use the first two days into a day's worth of sauce), mozzarella or mixed Italian cheese, some herbs, and pepperoni. Yum! Other ingredients are great as well. This easily substitutes for pizza when we have a craving for it.

Sushi:

We love sushi and we've spent a lot of money on sushi in the past. This is a "quick fix" that is very cheap, nutritious, and that will soothe those evil cravings.

Make tuna fish salad however you like it. We do canned tuna, chopped onions, and a little bit of miracle whip. Roll this up with your sushi rice and nori. Serve with soy sauce. (There are numerous and excellent websites that have step-by-step directions.)

Vegetable sushi can be made with any ingredients you like. Avocado, cucumber, carrot, onion... the list goes on and on.

Make sure you buy both your sushi rice and nori in bulk at a chinese grocery store to save the most. Richard's (a local health food store) sold 7 sheets of nori for $4.99. We bought 40 sheets for $5.99 at the Chinese grocery. Richard's had one pound of sushi rice for almost five dollars. We bought 5 lbs. at the grocery for under six dollars.

Wow. $4.59/lb?

2008-05-04T12:47:00.001-07:00

I'm not a big fan of poultry. It has to be in something for me to enjoy it and a lot of the times we will plan a few chicken meals to give ourselves a break from red meat. (The great majority of our meals are vegetarian; out of 90 meals and 30 snacks, 7-12/month have beef, 2-3/chicken. We eat fish, but I don't count that the same.)

Every week before we go to the grocery store I try to plan as many meals as possible out of ingredients we have on hand. Hubby and I discuss what we're really hungry for. Then I go through sales flyers (usually online) and determine what's on sale. This ends up being the remainder of our meals.

I used The Grocery Game for almost a year. It was my first experience using coupons, shopping lists, and matching up sales to get things for almost free. I learned a lot. Now I use those concepts on my own. We save at least $50 every week by doing it this way.

This week we decided that we wanted fajitas as one of our "hungry for it" choices. Usually this is a low cost meal for us. It's also one of the few ways that I enjoy chicken. I had the tortillas and salsa in my cart, ready to go. We headed towards the meat. I was horrified; chicken was $4.59/lb! Scratch that off the list. I'm really kicking myself for not stocking up with a local store had it for $1.29/lb a few weeks ago. We have a vacuum sealer and hopefully will be getting a chest freezer soon.

We did score big on the bacon this week. I usually avoid center cut bacon. Even at 2/$6 on sale it's only 12 ounces. I wait until the 16 ounce packages are 2/$6 and then stock up. Today, however, they had installed a coupon dispenser ("blinkie") right next to the display with $1.00 coupons! I ended up getting four 12-ounce center-cut bacons for $8!

My birthday came early this year...

2008-04-30T14:04:00.001-07:00

I wanted a nice chef's knife for my birthday (coming in August). Last year I wanted a stand mixer, which I got. I love it. I'm all about cooking and baking at home. For one it tastes a lot better. Two, I know exactly what's going into my food. Three, it's crazy cheap compared to going out to eat.

My hubby has been doing a lot of work around the house lately and somehow got the courage to go into The Cabinet. This is a place in our kitchen where over 30-year's worth of my mother and father's kitchen stuff ended up. (Mom is still around and lives with us/we live with her/however you want to look at it. Dad passed in 10/05.) This is the cabinet that we keep telling ourselves we'll go through. We can kind of find what we need, but I know there's a lot there that can be kept in the garage that would free up space in the house itself.

Hubby tackled it one night this week. I don't think he finished it in the spare hour he had, but he did get some progress done.

And, better yet, he found a chef's knife.

I used it today. It was awesome. I love my fillet knife, don't get me wrong. It does the job most of the time. It's just not the most efficient tool.

Now I get to come up with something else I'd like for my birthday. I'm thinking that maybe I'll ask the household to chip in for a freezer that we can keep in our now-clean garage. This would enable us to stockpile more meat and also to cook more meals ahead. Right now we've got very limited space in our cold box no matter how we rearrange it. (Believe me--we've tried!) Used freezers that still work go for about $50-$100 in our area. (And yes, I'll check the EnergyStar rating.)

What I'd really like to ask for is a gift certificate to one of my favorite scrapbooking or craft stores. Honestly though, I've got half of a living room full of it. I love it, I use it, but I don't need anymore. What I need are things that will:

Make my life easier AND
Save me money OR
Make me money

What would you ask for if you knew you had $50 or so budgeted towards your birthday?

Wow.

2008-04-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

Just wow.

W-O-W, wow.

I'm reading "The Automatic Millionaire". It's one of the ten or so books on finance and wealth that I picked up from the library yesterday. It's an easy read and so far I'm about 130 pages into it.

Why am I "wowing"?

Because David Bach makes one really strong point.

No matter how much money you are currently making, you ARE making enough to become rich.

We've all heard, "pay yourself first," right? David shows the reader exactly how this works and offers some extremely persuasive and motivational points. Another one is, "who are you working for?" Are you working for the credit card companies? No. What about your mortgage holder? Uh-uh. The electric company? Nopers.
You're working for yourself, right?

Are you really?

How much are you paying yourself?

David points out that most people aren't even working one hour a day for themselves. They go to work 40-60 hours a week and not one of those hours a week, let alone a day, is paying them. That's crazy!

For those of us in buckets of debt he recommends putting 1/2 what you would put towards "paying yourself" into accelerating your debt payoff but he does not recommend not paying yourself.

Something to think about, anyway...

Another outside post that inspired me today...

2008-04-29T14:03:00.001-07:00

It seems like all my blog reading today has reminded me of something I wanted to say!

One of my current projects is a book for massage therapists. Initially I had my framework all laid out and was expecting to write my rough draft in 3-4 weeks of full-time writing. I realized, however, that in order to write the book the way I had initially envisioned, I wouldn't be able to write "as me".

The Simple Dollar: The truth is that you should do everything you possibly can to speak in your natural voice, “optimal consumer contact” be damned, and any obstacles you put in the way of your natural voice will water down the message you want to send and the true relationship you’ll build with your readers.

This post reminded me of that dilemma. Instead of creating a (hopefully) viable book I am now back to the drawing board. The idea is still a fabulous one, I'm still enthusiastic as all get out about it, but it's now cooking in my head a little more before I start really going to town on the rough draft.

Is it better to be true to yourself and do things in a way that works for you, even if that means you're that much further away from a payday?

I think so. What are your thoughts?

Renting works for us

2008-04-29T13:36:00.001-07:00

The Millionaire Mommy Next Door wrote an involved post about rental pricing.

We're very lucky. Our landlord lives in Germany and lets his sister manage the property. (She in the mortgage business locally, and she's an awesome landlady!) He bought the home over 15 years ago when housing prices were much more reasonable. Our rent has increased a very small amount since 1996. It's at the point where we're paying in rent for a house what most people pay a month for an apartment! This is such a great situation for us.

Why we love renting:

There's no possible way we can buy a house right now. We'd be beyond "house poor". Since renting is the only option, we're secure in our rent and that it's not going to shoot up. He's actually making a profit off us and that's enough for him to be happy.
We don't have to pay for any repairs. We do pay for small repairs, do them ourselves, and send in the receipt with a reduced rent check. We don't mind and we've earned some serious points with the owner because we don't get on the phone about every little thing. In the past few years we've had a water heater replaced, an A/C unit replaced, the thermostat for the A/C replaced (within 8 hours!), the roof fixed, and some other medium-sized things done. It didn't cost us a penny.
We have the ability to move without worrying about selling the house. I have several friends who want to move out of state and are chained to their homes in this awful market.
We don't have to deal with property taxes. The tax situation in this county is crazy and makes very little sense. Many people bought houses they could afford and are now in big trouble because the property value shot through the roof and they have hundreds more in taxes.

Someday we'll buy a house. It's a long-term goal. Right now getting out of this awful situation with our credit card debt is top priority. After that we're going to use part of the money we have "free" each month to pay off the student loans and the other half to save up a down payment. Yay!

The faster you pull it, the less it hurts.

2008-04-29T13:26:00.001-07:00

Lise is debating about manicures and other small efforts for feminine beauty and their payoff... http://www.electric-monk.net/lise/2008/03/28/the-20000-manicure-question/

This isn't exactly related to those probing thoughts, but it did remind me of a financial "mistake" that I'm happy about:

I made a business decision that has cost me loads of money and you know what? I'm happy about it! I'm duly-licensed as a massage therapist and as a facial specialist. One of the biggest money makers for skin care professionals is waxing. It's a great add-on service, it's fast, it pays well for the time it takes, the investment in product is small, and--this is the best part--your clients come back every 4-6 weeks to get it done again.

After I graduated the skin care program my husband and I hauled our butts up to the big trade show in Orlando. I was surrounded by so many choices! I initially had wanted to purchase everything I needed to expand my business in that direction. After being so overwhelmed I stepped back and did more research. The only thing I really put money into was my waxing system.

I found a booth that had a great product. The selling points were all there. The systems were exactly what I wanted. I ended up talking the lady into demonstrating the product on my husband. He was a good sport about it and let her wax his back right there in the middle of the trade floor! I was very impressed and took both a hard wax and soft wax system home with me.

The training I had received was great--in theory--but I personally had very few opportunities to practice. My next step was to recruit people to wax and I was not short on volunteers.

Unfortunately, my suspicions were confirmed through this process.

I hate waxing.

I don't like to hurt people. I personally find the process ridiculously painful and therefor my attitude is, "shaving takes me less than three minutes a day, if that. What would I want to go through this amount of pain once a month?" Therefore it's harder for me to sell the service to a client; I feel very insincere.

There's a pretty big liability. I've personally been burned and bruised and had my skin ripped off--from three different experienced waxers. Every female friend that had gotten their eyebrows done has admitted they too have been injured. Why should I risk losing clients who love to shell out $70 over a $15 service? It's so easy to make a mistake. The temperature gauge might be just a teensy bit off or the client might be on a medication or at a certain point in her cycle and forget to mention it.

Certain body parts are a pain in the butt to do well. It's time consuming. The positions are awkward. There are some "speed waxers" who are incredible at what they do; but for new clients or those with lower pain tolerances (like me) it's just not an option.

It's also messy. Not all the time; but there are times when wax does get where it shouldn't be.

I decided not to do it anymore. And sometimes, yes, I kick myself, but I'm happier overall.

Another thing that I've decided not to offer is ear candling. For some reason this is a very popular service that I get asked for quite frequently. I personally think it's a load of crap. The mechanism which supposedly pulls the wax out can be disproved by any fifth-grade student in a simple science experiment. Furthermore there is a risk of getting wax on the eardrum and causing permanent damage or the need for surgery. Yikes! There are those who swear by this, but I won't touch it with a ten foot wick.

What do you do when you have an opportunity to make lots of money but personally hate doing it or have issues with the act?

So I made a boo-boo

2008-04-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

I made a decision when setting up our consolidation loans and taking advantage of a credit card's 0% APR. While I can pay back the loan amount that's "overage" due to the credit card offer, it will not reduce my monthly payments, simply the term. This isn't a huge deal as we intend to put every penny into paying down debt that we reasonably can.

However, extra breathing room would be advantageous if we are forced to get the new car soon, when student loan payments recommence, or if something happens economically.

I will be putting $3000 towards the $5000 on the Capital One card. This will reduce our payments from $150 to $60; that's $90. This $90 will continue to be paid towards the consolidation loan, however, if needed, that's half a car lease payment or a week's worth of groceries if we need it.

Total cost of this mind-change: $60. It cost me 2% in transfer fees to put that $3000 onto the card.

Analysis of this new decision:

Short term: Short term this is probably a pretty good move. It frees up extra cash which is still being put towards debt. $3000 would be put towards one or the other anyway.

Long term: There's two ways to look at this. $3000 at 15.9% probably isn't the best thing to carry around compared with the same amount at 0%. However, we'll be cutting it pretty close later on when student loan payments start again if we need a new car which could force us to use our cards in some situations. (Note: the $2500 emergency fund will be fully funded as soon as the rebate payment hits our account.) Long term it's both a smart and a stupid move.

I want a new car

2008-04-27T07:52:00.001-07:00

I say "want" because it's not yet an immediate need.

We "can afford it" meaning that if all our requirements are met (and the dealers I've been emailing have confirmed that this is doable) then we can do it if we decide to.

However:

- We have to drop quite a few things from our budget. Hubby is okay, and maybe we should "trim the fat" anyway, but I think small changes are the key right now. In a few months we'll trim some more and then finally everything we can. Maybe. We'll have to see how it goes and be realistic.
- We will not be able to put money towards a vacation fund. Since I've taken over the budget and reworked things to start in May I've been very excited that we have a little room to save up $3000 over the next 36 months. It was a goal that's really important to us to take our daughter (and ourselves) on a "big" (to us) vacation every three years. The other years we'll do a thrifty weekend exploring Florida. This will be nixed.
- Once our student loan payments start again we will have a whole new ball of fun trying to figure out where the money will come from.
- We won't be able to put as much money towards the consolidation loan we took out.
- My income can fluctuate drastically each month. Each client who cancels is worth at least $65, and cancellations are a fact of life. On the other hand I often get calls from new clients worth at least $70. (Old clients have until June 1 to pay the new client rates, which are $5-$10 more.) I also may not be able to get another class (I teach one night a week) immediately after this one ends in mid-August, so that income is not something I can depend on. Or I may end up with twice as much income if the class is full time. It's all up in the air.
- Not having any car payments right now or for the past three years has been awesome.
- Our insurance will go up, but only $16-$20 every six months. (I called and asked.)

Why I want a new car:

- When we bought hubby's car we knew that it was a temporary fix. He'll get my car. His doesn't always start and the fumes are so bad that I will not allow my baby to ride with daddy. (In an emergency she'd have to, and that terrifies me, however an emergency is an emergency.) (Semi-real reason.) It's likely his car will have to be replaced soon no matter what. (Real reason, but not a "right now" reason.)
- My air conditioning goes on and off for no apparent reason. It will be $1200 to get fixed and I am not okay with that; it's unlikely I could sell the car for over $1000 with its mileage and condition. Summer in Florida requires a working air conditioner--especially with the baby. If it was just me I could handle it. There's no way I'm going to put her in a 130-degree car. But, airing it out will help. So we'll stand in the parking lot for 5 minutes in 97-degrees. No problem. And it does work 80% of the time... for a few weeks at a time, then off a few days, then on for maybe a month, then off for an afternoon, then on for a few days... it's really weird. (Real reason.)
- My car is a safe car, however the new cars have even more safety features. With my daughter in the car this has become incredibly important to me. (Rationalization.)
- My car has good gas mileage however we're looking at cars with excellent gas mileage. Our fuel costs would go down slightly, but not enough to make up for a new car. (Semi-real reason but mostly rationalization unless we get a hybrid, but that's far above our budget no matter what we do right now.)
- We cannot take long trips in my car. I haven't seen some of my friends in Orlando for years. Last time we went up there my car broke down and I had to get repairs and rent a car while we were there. It's done this every trip for awhile. So we stopped taking trips. Each one cost gas plus $400+ repairs. Luckily, however, we haven't had any major repairs when we're driving it locally. Since my hubby would only go 15 miles or so a week, maybe 30 on a weird week, we'd be good. I should also say there are some current noises that none of our mechanics have been able to replicate, so it's probably nothing big, but there's always the threat. (Real reason.)

A definite Vice

2008-04-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

We have a huge vice, my husband and I. It's called, "homemade custard," and it lives less than three blocks from us in the form of a little store called Sweetberries. Oh, is it ever yummy!

In the past we've plopped down $10 on a couple of custards a few times a month. Last night I was having a craving for my favorite concrete (where they mix it in with the custard as opposed to putting the extras on top): caramel and waffle cone pieces. Oh dear! Such YUM.

Hubby got up off the couch to go find his shoes. I asked where he was going and he said, "custard-land." Then I stopped him and told him that it was ten bucks and that the ten bucks would go much farther towards paying down debt than for custard that would be forgotten about in a few hours. He agreed and we made popcorn in the air-popper instead. Very yummy and for far less. (His favorite is butter, salt, and garlic.)

I was so proud of him when he made the comment of, "this sure is good. And you know why it's even better? Because it doesn't cost 10% of our weekly food budget."

How much easier could it be?

2008-04-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

Chase agreed to send me a new card with a lower APR and rewards--no annual fee--when I called to negotiate rates. It finally came in the mail this week. I noticed that it did not come with a "welcome package" as promised, so I'm not quite sure what my rewards actually are. I imagine this will ship separately for security?

The card has been sitting on my desk with my other cards (active, expired, closed, you name it; they're on my desk to "do something with"). The piece of paper that it's attached to has, "Go to www.chaseblink.com to learn more about your new Chase credit card with blink." So I did.

Blink is apparently a small chip that can be used to purchase items without even swiping your card. You move it close enough to the sensor and it takes the information.

Yay for companies finding solutions that make products better. Yay for solutions that save time. Yay for free features and benefits.

But seriously... how much time does waving a credit card around save over quickly sliding it in a slot less than an inch from where you wave it? How lazy would you really need to be?

If it had a key chain thing that I could use like some gas stations have, then okay. I can see that. I don't even have to get it out of my wallet. (On the other hand, how easy would that be to take? I'd worry that someone would swipe it--no pun intended--every time I set down my keys.

Furthermore I have issues with the demonstration on the website; they show Blink being used to pay for a slurpee. A slurpee? I understand using cards for cash rewards and miles, and sure I'd use it then, but the vast part of Americans aren't that savvy. If you don't have $1.27 in your checking account for a slurpee then it's definitely not something you should be charging. (Judge, judge, judge. There I go again.)

Yes, my credit score is going down

2008-04-25T07:22:00.001-07:00

Why? And why am I okay with this?

By closing the accounts that we have paid off we are lowering the amount of credit we have available. So what? The amount of credit used versus credit available directly affects credit scores. By lowering the amount of credit was have access to we are skyrocketing our ratio. I don't know how much to expect my credit score to drop, but drop it shall.

Why am I okay with this?

Because I would rather be out of credit card debt sometime within the next decade, thanks.

To me that means removing temptation.

Faith in God, faith in myself, and faith in my willpower are just not enough to get us through this crisis and get out of debt. If will power was enough, we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with.

So by removing temptation we are drastically limiting our options. We either have the money for something, or we don't. And that emergency fund isn't going to get dipped into nearly as often because it's our money rather than borrowed money. Our definition of emergency will change.

Bye, bye 685. I hope to see you again sometime soon.

The Past Life... and what to do about it

2008-04-24T14:03:00.000-07:00

In my hubby's past life he was married and then divorced. Like many people, he crumbled during this high-stress period. And, as you can tell from our credit situation, he wasn't very educated about credit, finances, and budgeting for personal use. (Ironically, he's a bookkeeper!)

As a result he has a history of "charge offs" from the cards he had back then. It's been almost ten years on some and over seven for all of it. We still get dozens of calls from collectors a week. Check out this post at Broke-Ass Student to see the good info I just found about dealing with these guys and why it's important to NOT enter into an agreement if you're past your states statute of limitations.

Where did all that debt come from?

2008-04-24T13:40:00.001-07:00

I've decided to experiment and see if I can remember what we bought with our credit cards. These are the rough numbers that I can remember off the top of my head. This will be an exercise in finding out if I can recall the majority of the debt we have and whether it was spent on needed stuff or frivolous items.

2002: I met my husband this year and we started dating in March. I remember that on our first official date I was so excited because I had literally just paid off all my credit cards. I had been embarrassed by my whopping $800 in debt. Lol.

When I moved in with him there were things we "needed", of course. A bachelor living in a 425 sq. foot place with a dog and two cats needed far less than a couple. (We lived there for almost a year together. Yikes! That's true love.) I would guess $500.

Then my computer needed to be replaced. Enter approximately $1800 worth of debt.

Then we got married. Instead of spending lots on a wedding we went to the courthouse (I wore a pretty dress I already have; black if you can believe it!) and then on a cruise. I had already decided to go on the cruise for my birthday and had invited my boyfriend. We decided to get married the day before so that we'd have a honeymoon. $1700 plus about $400 in misc. wedding stuff. (Hey--that's a lot better than a lot of people; some spend tens of thousands on the wedding alone!)

We got into massage school this year as well. I am very proud to say that we did not get into debt. We both paid $300 a month faithfully.

2003: We moved to a beautiful house (rented) that did not have a washer and dryer. I had to purchase them. $800.

We graduated from massage school. Licenses were applied for which required a state fee and a national exam fee. We also purchased some equipment. Probably $700.

2004: I decided I needed a hand held organizer instead of trying to juggle a bunch of purse-size calendars for appointments. $400.

Took several CEU classes to the tune of $700.

I stopped doing computer consulting and worked full time as a therapist, which was great, but we did incur some expenses for marketing and such. $1200?

First year's CPA fee $500.

Splurged on random stuff at orientaltradingcompany.com for some reason. $160.

Husband, later in the year, decided he also had to have a PDA. (I use mine every day; his gathers dust. *sighs*) $550

2005: Went back to school! This was all student loan debt (not counted in my credit card total but will eventually be dealt with.)

Car repairs: $600 or more.

My husband got laid off at one point and we incurred almost $2500 here just to get by. (Still living in beautiful house with $1200 rent--what were we thinking?--at $12/hour pay. Yikes.)

My father died in late 2005 and that created some stress mentally. I only took four days off work, but I know we spent a little bit as a direct effect of this. My guess is $400.

2006:

More car repairs: $600 or more plus $500 on my husband's.

I expanded my business. I took out student loans for most of the expense of skin care training but easily $1600 got charged.

Went to trade show, had car repairs (see above) on way, had to rent car, plus cost of tickets and items we bought for business expansion. $1300? That's probably a little high.

Spent at least $2000 for new equipment for skin care.

CEUs $600.

We may have put this year's CPA fees on the credit card. I'm sure we did it two years. I'm not sure which two.

2007: I think I put a total of $300 on my credit cards in 2007. Whoo hooo! This was to renew our licenses.

I was very proud of myself because in late 2006 and early 2007 I got to the point where I could buy retail product to replenish my stock out of the sales I had made, sometimes to the tune of an extra $600 a month. This was a really cool thing, in my opinion. Since our business expansion was complete there wasn't a whole lot I had to charge. In fact, if my husband hadn't gotten laid off again and I wasn't pregnant, I think we could have paid the $300 ourselves.

2008: Zero, baby, zero!

And the grand total... $21,110.

Wow.

I am amazed. I really thought I'd have to scratch my head and go, "what did we spend all this money on?" And while I'm sure a lot of my above figures are not accurate I am happy that I wasn't really far off the mark. I'm a little over it, in fact.

Can you remember each purchase that got you into debt?

Stupid mistakes I've learned from (but not made myself)

2008-04-24T13:02:00.004-07:00

Since I'm not giving this blog address out to people I know personally, I figure this might be a safe topic. Maybe.

A friend of mine decided to go back to school after her divorce. Her parents were gracious enough to allow her to room with them again and all seemed to be well. One of her agreements was to hold a job during the summer when classes weren't in session.

Option 1: Work for an office for $11-$14/hour over the summer
Option 2: Continue to work as a student-employee for $7/hour over the summer.

Guess what she chose? Yep, Option 2. Instead of working for almost twice the money, she kept her student job. Why? "I promised one of the ladies that I would stay and help out over the summer."

I understand commitments, but I also know that there is no way I would keep that promise. I would say, "I'm sorry, but my financial situation has changed and I am forced to take a position that pays more over the summer. However, since you have been so flexible with my schedule, let's talk about the possibility of me helping out again when classes start."

The Fruit Stand

2008-04-24T13:02:00.003-07:00

One of the ways we recently discovered to save money on our weekly
grocery bill is to utilize the local fruit and veggie stand. It's not too far from us and we're often close enough that gas mileage doesn't really factor in.

Based on the prices last Sunday when we went shopping at Publix and from the fruit stand today when I went:

Publix Cucumbers: 2/$1.79
Fruit Stand Cucumbers: 2/$1.00

Publix Beef Steak Tomatoes: $3.29/lb
Fruit Stand Beef Steak Tomatoes: $1.79/lb

Publix Red Bell Peppers: $3.99/lb
Fruit Stand Red Bell Peppers: $1.00/each

You can see that the prices are quite a bit lower.

Another thing I have to admit is that in addition to being a much better price, the food tastes awesome! Oftentimes what we get from Publix is but a shadow of what a garden version would taste like. (I grew up with a huge garden and miss it horribly.) The fruit stand tastes like I remember food. Yummy.

My one thing I have to improve on is learning how to pick out veggies and fruit that aren't perfect. What I see at the grocery store are the perfect-looking waxed primped versions. The fruit stand has "warts and all" versions. I need to learn what's a natural blemish, what's dirt, what's a real bruise, and what signs of rotting are for my favorite freshies. Unfortunately these are things I don't remember from childhood.

I've made a commitment to go to the fruit stand at least twice a month. I'm aiming for twice a week. (What we buy hasn't lasted as long in the kitchen as Publix stuff normally does. I guess it's not "bred" to be as transportable and hardy.)

An investment that paid off, big time.

2008-04-24T13:02:00.001-07:00

I work for myself. There is no such thing as paid time off if I get injured. As a massage therapist, injury can easily take me out of the office for days if not weeks at a time. This is why I signed myself up for a short and long-term disability policy through Allstate Workplace Division.

I've only had to use it once, but it gives me incredible peace of mind. And, it paid off big time. I had the policy for exactly 24 months when I needed to use it. As per doctor's orders I stopped doing massage on October 25. I got paid from Nov 1 - Feb 2 at $1044/month; just over $3000. My investment had thus far been just over half of that.

I get paid for hospital stays, dislocations, dismemberments, illnesses, and all kinds of other things that I really hope don't happen! I even get a check for $50 for my wellness visits!

Some people say that it's better to save the insurance premium each month and have an emergency savings instead. I think, however, that this is the best policy for me because it can pay quite a bit more than my premium if something were to happen.

A new concept... wow

2008-04-23T13:13:00.001-07:00

I've always wondered how people plan for the small expenses that pop up from month to month (but not every month) as well as the bigger yearly expenses.

- Every 8 weeks I pay $20 for The Grocery Game. We've saved thousands of dollars by using this website so $20 is more than worth it.
- Every 3 months I pay just over $22 for a subscription to Shockwave.com. My husband and mother and I all play computer games to unwind. (Yes, our time could be used more productively.) This allows us full access to the full versions of all the games on the site. It works out to about $3/month "entertainment" for the each of us.
- Every year we have a bill at our accountant's. (As business owners we choose a professional.)
- Our car insurance is billed oddly (we may change this) so we have one month with no payment and the first month with a larger payment.

Anyway... these are just some examples. A freedom savings account breaks down each expense in the following manner:

Amount of expense / months until expense occurs

So my birthday, which I'd like to budget $150 for, is in August. This would be 150/3 or $50 a month I'd need to save between now and then. At that point it would be $150/12.

The $20 would be $10 a month.

See where this is going?

Instead of "trying" to keep enough money in the accounts to cover these random expenses we plan ahead.

Some people don't like this and would rather keep the extra money in months without these expenses an interest-bearing account and transfer it later. I'm debating. I think I'm going to budget for the amount of my FSA and then transfer it at the end of the month to my savings account that I just opened with ING. This way I'm both planning for it AND I'm earning interest on the money. Make sense?

Decisions, Decisions

2008-04-23T07:11:00.001-07:00

I have downloaded a few awesome spreadsheets to help us plan our finances. (Thanks It's Your Money!)

Now I just need to choose one of the following ways to go about doing things.

1) The Envelope Method - Using Cash and Bill Pay

Using this method I would take out cash to cover the following: gas, groceries, household expenses, entertainment, and any other things we can physically pay cash for. I would use Bill Pay for our utilities and things that would be too difficult to pay cash for.

Pros: Once the cash is gone, it's gone.
Cons: I tend to spend cash way way way too easily and "forget" where/how I spent it.

2) The Envelope Method - Using Debit Cards and Bill Pay

Using this method I would use a spreadsheet (It's Your Money) to keep track of my "envelopes" though no actual cash would be withdrawn.

Pros: Once the cash is gone according to my spreadsheet, it's gone. Easier to manage.
Cons: Easy to "cheat" by spending more anyway; there's nothing to stop me.

3) The Cash Back Card Method

I have a Chase card that offers 3% cash back on a number of categories including gas and groceries. I could use this for our bills and pay it off immediately, thereby avoiding interest charges and getting additional money back.

Pros: It's like getting a discount on all my purchases.
Cons: So easy to buy more than I need, "pay it off next month" and so forth. Especially since the money will be sitting in our account. It will seem like we have more than we really do.

Each method has pros and cons. Each method is going to require will power.

I'm thinking about option 2. I'm not going to risk blowing cash on who knows what (seriously, it's a blind spot for me) and I'm not going to risk charging things and then not paying them off. (If I could charge things and then pay it off, why am I in debt? Oh yeah, cause I didn't have the money.) If I can stick with this method for four months, consistently, then I am going to try method #3. First time we "slip", however, it's back to method #2 and the card goes back into its ice-block in the freezer.

What method do you use?

I got Tagged: It's not my fault!

2008-04-23T06:48:00.001-07:00

This was never intended to be a typical "personal" blog, but Lise over at

Frugal in the Fruitlands

"tagged" me so it's not my fault.

The rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Share 4 things in the following themes.
4. Tag 4 bloggers at the end of your post with a link.
5. Let those bloggers know they have been tagged with a comment on their blog.

Four jobs I've had:

- Retail (YUCK)
- Software Training and Troubleshooting
- Graphic Design and Photography
- Massage Therapy (YAY!)

Four movies I can watch over and over:

- Twister
- Lilo and Stitch
- Emperor's New Groove
- Dirty Dancing

Four places I have lived:

- Pennsylvania
- New Port Richey, FL
- Holiday, FL
- Sarasota, FL

Four TV Shows I love:

- Mythbusters
- Good Eats
- NCIS
- Grey's Anatomy

Four places I have been on holiday:

- Niagara Falls
- Grand Cayman
- Cozumel
- St. Augustine

Four of my favorite dishes:

- Thai Curry (Mild, please!)
- Sushi (Tampa Roll)
- Fillet Mignon (Medium Rare)
- Soup (too many kinds to list)

Four websites visited daily:

- Bzzagent.com
- Bodywork Biz
- groups.yahoo.com
- No Credit Needed

Four places I would rather be now:

- In Tallahassee collecting the winnings from a massive lottery ticket with my husband
- Watching a Broadway show with a backstage pass around my neck
- Moving into a brilliant new condo on the ResidenSea
- Receiving AMTA's teacher of the year award

Four bloggers I'm tagging (I apologize in advance):

I'll have to come back and edit later to tag others.

Free Electricity!

2008-04-23T05:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, you're probably reading this post for some secret to cutting your utility bill. My "secret", however, is more about a promotion from the yummy makers of Silk Soymilk rather than a way to help the average Joe save money.

This is a quote from an email I received from Bzzagent Jono (I'll write more about Bzzagent at some point soon!):

Did you know that Silk offsets 100% of the electricity used to make their products with clean, renewable wind power? This saves 17,500 tons of greenhouse gases from entering our atmosphere every year. Wow!

Want to help the environment too? Get ready to Go Green! The Silk^® Green Caps for Green Energy^™ program is back again, so be on the lookout for Silk cartons with a green cap (like the ones shown here).

Make sure to head over to the Silk site to help the earth--one green cap at a time. Just visit the website, enter the UPC code from your carton, and Silk will donate enough money to power a home for one day! You could even win a Green Home Makeover!

Oh yeah, http://www.silkgreencaps.com/, will also email you a $0.55 coupon towards your next silk purcahse.

Kudos to me!

2008-04-22T11:49:00.000-07:00

I faced my Giant today and I won. It was a hard battle and I almost had to call home for an intervention and support.

I actually entered JoAnn fabrics, got exactly what I needed (one 8x8 scrapbook and a pack of 8x8 refills for a going-away gift for a friend: 40% off thank you very much) and didn't buy anything else.

I didn't buy anything else.

Holy cow. The only thing worse than a scrapbook or craft store is a bookstore.

*phew!*

I'm practically sweating.

Also, in related news, this purchase allowed me to finish a project. I finished something! My life tends to be filled with projects that are at various stages yet rarely finished. Two boosts in one day! Yay!

A post to remember

2008-04-22T05:30:00.001-07:00

I wasn't lacking in education about money. Certainly, working for small wages from the time I was 14 has helped me understand concepts about money. But if my education was so great, why the heck am I so far in debt?

This post is one I want to remember for later. It has great ideas for teaching the little ones how to understand money. At 10 they are giving their daughter a "salary" that includes money for gifts, activities, and so forth. She gets paid once a month and will be responsible for budgeting. Brilliant!

What we stockpiled this week

2008-04-21T11:59:00.000-07:00

I don't have a chance to build up my stockpile every week. However, this weekend we did pretty good:

I bought eight deodorants at WinnDixie. They were 2/$4 if you had a preferred customer card. Then I used eight $1.00 coupons. Each deodorant cost $1.00 each. Since we use a very particular type of deodorant (Dove Sensitive Skin) it helps to stock up when I can get it on sale. Last year in August I got the same deal at Publix and bought as many as I had coupons for.
We bought four cases of Dasani water at Walgreens for $3.99 each and got a raincheck for four more cases.
I bought enough ketchup for the next three months as Hunts was B1G1F.
We used a combination of Extra Care Bucks from CVS and formula checks to get Enfamil for $15.39/24 oz can. This will last us one week and the usual rate is $25.39 a can.

The Secret and Zero-Budgeting: Making them non-exclusive

2008-04-21T11:36:00.001-07:00

I am going to be using the zero-based budgeting method starting in May. I'm trying to find a way to reconcile this idea with The Secret.

I'm saying, "The Secret," because it's a popular book and DVD that summarizes a strong belief in "how things work" that we've ascribed to for years. One of the subjects the DVD, which we've only recently watched, tackles is debt and finances.

When you think about any certain topic or event, especially if you have strong feelings toward it, you send out a burst of thought to the universe which is amplified and then eventually returned to you. You attract what you focus on.

According to The Secret, those who focus on debt only get more debt. Those who focus on abundance and having plenty get more and have lots.

We put this into play about a month ago and the results were amazing. I focused on specifically receiving lots of checks in the mail. I pictured myself going out to the mailbox, opening the door, and finding an envelope with a check in it. Then I "felt" what it would feel like, pictured the excitement of depositing the check into the bank account, and so forth. According to The Secret you must really FEEL it.

Within 48-hours I had received a check for over $250 in the mail. I also had seen my mother who handed me an envelope. One of her friends had gotten a bonus at retirement and she had decided to distribute it to a few people she knew who could really use it. The envelope had $200 in cash.

More checks started coming. A lot of times they were comical; here's a $20 check and oh yeah cashing this signs you up for (fill in the blank). Some were "checks" for automobile sales. But the point is, they were checks.

I kept picturing this and amazing things happened. The insurance company had settled with our midwife and they changed their minds! Instead of paying her part of the fee they paid it off entirely. I should get my refund of $600 from my deposit any day now.

So I know this works. We've used it for years (before anyone had heard of "The Secret") to get parking spots or arrive at a deli before the line built up. This is simply the first time we've ever thought to apply it to money.

Well, that's not entirely true. We've always had "enough". Somehow we always knew we'd have enough, no matter what. If my business fell short one month, suddenly the pool table we'd been trying to sell got snatched up for our asking price. Things like that happened all the time.

Now we're focusing on those checks coming in and on having MORE. Not on having "enough". We've got that part. Enough to cover all the bills that "have" to be payed. Not necessarily enough to go out to eat or buy the fun toys. (Hello, debt!)

We're moving forward in the real-world too. By leaps and bounds compared to where we were before.

I just need to fix this in my head. How a zero-based budget system will work. I don't want to focus on their being "nothing" at the end of the month. I need to find a way to "put it" in my head that is a positive spin where the two can work together.

Maybe some of these ways will work:

We have so much money that I can pay myself first.
Our money is being allocated wisely so that every penny has its place.
Our savings account is increasing exponentially because of our abundance.
I know where every dollar goes and I know it's increasing our abundance every day.

Note that I'm not saying, "our savings is increasing while our debt decreases." I am not going to focus on putting out "debt" when I do my focus sessions several times a day. I'm even concerned that writing about debt so much is going to "put it out there".

Maybe if I look at our debt as "a step" to increasing our savings. It's something that we just need to overcome, no more difficult really than wiping down the counters before cooking a good meal. It's going to be "easy" and "fast".

And yes, I realize that's not the "reality" of it. I get that. The difficulty, focus, and effort required are why we're still in debt in the first place. However, I want to focus on creating abundance rather than dwelling on mistakes. Does that make sense?

Why we do bottled water

2008-04-21T11:22:00.000-07:00

Bottled water is expensive and wasteful according to most people. Not to mention that many experts cite is as being no better than tap water in many cases. So why do we buy it?

We always provide our customers with a bottle of water after their massage.
I always have a bottle of water with me in the car which I refill from our tap or from a water dispenser in a waiting room. (I use a new bottle every day.)
Having a bottle with a cap on my night stand has stopped me from bathing electronic devices like our charging cell phones and alarm clocks. I don't have to worry about finding a spider in my drink. (This has happened before with a glass of water!)
I can take put a sealed bottle of water in my diaper bag along with some powder and mix a bottle when needed. It doesn't need to be in the fridge and I've wasted much less formula this way by mixing on demand.

Not the best reasons ever, but good enough for us. So how do we save money?

This last week Dasani was on sale for $3.99 for a 24-pack. This is a really good price for most bottled water and especially for Dasani. I purchased four cases and went to another Walgreens that was out for a rain check for four more. This allows me to go back when I'm on my last case and get it for the same price.

As I've mentioned above I reuse my personal bottle. I don't leave it in a hot car or use it for more than one day. This helps keep bacterial growth and plastic leeching to a minimum.

We recycle, which doesn't save us money immediately. I do believe it saves it in the long run by preserving resources.

Giving clients a bottle of water is much more appreciated than a simple paper cup. It doesn't cost a whole lot ($0.17/bottle) and it creates a lot of good will. Plus I can attach a special handmade holder that has our business card, a referral postcard, and a small chocolate. This is impressive and they take our information with them.

We have our own bottled water for events and in the car so we don't end up paying $1.00 for a bottle. (I've often thought about being a water-only-vendor at craft shows and such. We'd make a killing!)

Check those receipts

2008-04-21T11:16:00.001-07:00

Extra money out the door can be as simple as missing someone else's mistakes.

Example: I went to a "getting to know you" lunch with the other ladies that rent space from the same spa that I do. I brought my own bottled water. Its been refilled twice today from the tap, so it's actually water in the bottle, but I prefer knowing that a waiter hasn't stuck fingers in my drink. Call me crazy.

I checked my ticket before handing over the cash I had brought. "Drink $2.19". I pointed out to the server that I had brought my own water. She agreed, apologized, and looked embarrassed. She corrected it immediately.

I can't tell you how many times I've found mistakes on my food bills. One time a restaurant accidentally swapped cards and I ended up paying over $40.00 when my bill was less than $10! (Again, corrected, but what a pain!)

Sometimes saving money is just making sure you know where it should (or shouldn't) be going.

How I saved money:

Saved over $2 by checking my receipt
Asked for a box immediately as the food arrived, cut my burger in half, and wrote what it was and when to eat it by on the outside of the box.
Took cash so that I couldn't impulse-buy a soda, soup add-on, or dessert.

Stuff

2008-04-21T07:49:00.000-07:00

Last year we had a garage sale. We worked for many weekends and evenings going through an accumulation of "stuff" from four different people over two different states and five cities.

I think this was one of the biggest catalysts for us to bring things into balance.

I realized that we don't have "nice things". The majority of what we own was given to us. Some of it was new (like the television with dvd and vhs that my hubby won at a work event) and a lot of it was second-hand. Our computer equipment and business equipment are about the only things we've really put money into.

Instead of purchasing a really nice, comfortable sofa, we've probably spent about ten times as much on little $20-$40 items at Target. It's so easy to spend a small amount of money. What's $20, really? Seen alone in a wallet that twenty dollars doesn't have the "add-up power" that it does in a stack of other $20 bills. It's hard to imagine how $20 will make a difference. It's real easy to say, "well, if $20 makes or breaks us honey, we have loads of other problems."

And yes, we've said exactly those words, at least 2-4 times each month the entire time we've been together.

"If $20 makes or breaks us, we have other things to worry about."

What a wonderful way to think, eh? What a wonderful way to live in denial and build up debt.

$20 is also an amount that is easily paid off at the end of the month. No cash? Don't worry... $20 won't make or break us, we'll just pay that off when our bill comes in.

I feel very embarrassed right now. And rightfully so. We were idiots.

Because in going through the boxes and boxes of stuff in our attempt to declutter and consolidate our belongings into a more manageable amount, I realized just how many items we really had purchased.

Seeing them, lined up on our garage sale tables, made me realize that those items could easily have been a nice new couch, a dining room table, or even a nice down payment on a new car.

Instead of investing our money or using it to pay down debt, we celebrated life in quick bursts of spending that fizzled quickly and left us with a garage full of crap.

And not only was it a garage full of crap; it was a garage full of crap that no one wanted to buy.

One of my favorite candle holders was a pair of wrought-iron loops with four votive candle holders around a bowl that could hold floating candles, pretty pebbles, or anything else that would be pretty. They were on chains that we hung from the ceiling. Total? $40 for the pair plus about $16 replacing the glass votive holders that ended up getting broken.

Our total amount down the drain was at least $56 plus tax. Oh, plus the cost of the hooks to hang them.

We "meant" to hang them up and when we finally found the boxes, dusted them off, and got around to it we had just over a year before we had to move and no longer had the room for the lovely decorative candle holders. Then they sat in the garage collecting dust for almost two years.

They sold for $5 each.

Now, the nice thing is that it was a (very expensive) reality check and it completely changed the way we spend our money. It also got rid of a lot of things that we had no need of. We gave a sizable donation of usable items to Goodwill. (Unfortunately we weren't smart enough to get a receipt.) We had a baby on the way and we needed the space; we accomplished a goal.

We accomplished a goal. We actually finished something that we had started.

This was something we needed to know about ourselves. This was the first "big project" that we had seen through from start to end. It was a big thing.

This garage sale was full of lessons. I'm thankful that we have finally learned them rather than sitting around and waiting another few years. I'm glad we've proven that we can start what we finish. We can work as a team. We can get stuff done.

Now our big challenge is finding a reality check for all the things that can't be lined up on a table in the early morning light of a Saturday garage sale. Like our trips to Starbucks (1-2x/month), getting homemade custard from the shop down the road (2-4x/month), trips for Slurpees (4-6x/month) and all the other assorted "treats".

Why I'm not paying off my medical bills

2008-04-20T17:56:00.001-07:00

I have a balance of a whopping $127 due to a local hospital. My payment agreement with them is $10 a month. I've been paying $10 a month for the past few years. Most "get out of debt" websites agree that since this is a small debt I should pay it off and get the "high" that comes with getting rid of a balance.

Here's why I'm not going to pay it off right now:

I'm not being charged interest on my payments.
The money can go towards our emergency fund and paying off other debt.
The hospital was a pain in the butt about billing me.

Number 3 is actually the biggest reason.

I was admitted in March of 2004 and stayed for less than 24 hours. It was awful, to say the least. We were on a PPO for the first time in my life and I was shocked to see the sheer number of medical bills come in. The x-ray tech billed me. The anesthesiologist that gave me morphine for the pain billed me. Every single doctor I saw billed me. The hospital billed me.

The first thing I did when I received those bills was to pay them. I did my absolute best to get them paid ASAP. Why? Because they provided me with a service and I wanted to make it right as soon as possible.

After a week or so I got yet another bill. I didn't have the money this time so I put it on one of my credit cards. I felt that they should be paid. Plain and simple.

A year and a half later... yes, I said eighteen months later... I receive a huge bill from the hospital. This started a long stream of phone calls to my hospital and insurance company trying to make it right. They sent no less than four revised bills. Then the insurance company changed their minds again.

Finally they figured out what I owed them and sent me a final bill. I called and said, "I did everything I could do to pay every bill that came into me after being released. I even put some of it on my credit cards. We just aren't in a position--a year and a half later--to pay a bill that should have been figured out months ago." I explained that our financial situation just didn't allow us to pay them and that I could afford ten dollars a month. "Ten dollars? Let me send you over to our payment associates. They'll set you up with a payment plan for ten dollars a month."

I was shocked that they would accept such a pittance against my bill. But, they did.

So I've been paying ten dollars a month and that's all I'm going to pay them. I think it's ridiculous that they waited for so long to get things worked out. And yes, I know, it can take that long to deal with insurance companies. I get that. But I don't think that I should be required to put more debt onto my credit cards because I failed to budget for something that should have been taken care of.

It's a matter of principle to me.

It's also the reason why I will always choose an HMO from now on, at least until I have a really big reason not to.

Why an End Date Matters

2008-04-20T16:53:00.000-07:00

Every few months I get out a piece of paper and a pen. I scribble down our monthly expenses and income and figure out how we could do things differently. I play with dozens of scenarios.

Inevitably, I come up with the, "how we can get out of debt in only 3 years," plan. I get all excited. I bounce around. I show it to my husband, who is a bookkeeper, and ask him to check my logic. Yup, it should work.

The next day I wake up and look at my insane scribblings and realize it won't possibly work. All the good intentions lead to a goodly amount of disappointment. It sucks. This has happened several times a year for the past five years. No matter how much we mean to pay off extra, no matter how many coupons and deals I can find, we always make our bills with a tiny bit left over. This amount can range from $2 to $45 on a good month. This goes towards building a padding in our checking accounts. (I aim for a $300 padding.)

It gets frustrating! We've modified our personalities as far as they're going to go. There's just no way that we can make due with Ramen Noodles five times a week or avoid "entertainment" money altogether. We're not going to squeeze packets of ketchup into our bottles just to save on the little things. I'd like to say all it would take is willpower. I know us, though, and the reality is it's not going to happen.

And I think a large part of financial success is being realistic.

So now I know exactly when we'll be out of (credit card) debt, if not earlier. And that matters because it's not some ephemeral date based on scribbled notes in the middle of the night. It's a contract; agreed upon by BOA and by me. 96 months.

It matters because I know that it is going to end.

(Note: We do have a budget, in excel, for the "reality" of our financial situation. We've managed to completely stop using our credit cards due to our budget and this has helped quite a bit. However, it's not getting us ahead. Minimum payments take forever. One calculator located online suggested 22 years...)

This week's goals

2008-04-20T16:51:00.001-07:00

I'm going to create goals each week and post how I do. If they are small goals, there will be several. Larger goals may go over several weeks or more.

Goal #1: Keep in touch

Description: I am going to follow up with every single credit card and make sure that they've received the payoff amounts.

Purpose: Ensure payments have arrived and avoid daily compounding fees.

Revised Goal #2: Manage my husbands card

Description: We are going to cancel my husband's Chase card. (We're going to give them a call and see what they can do for us first. If they can give us a kicking APR instead of the current APR, then we'll negotiate with BOA and the winner gets it. If it's only a few % points, however, we'll stick with BOA simply because managing the card is immediate and convenient. Also, since we don't intend to leave anything on the card beyond a few days, grace period will fall into the equation as well.)

Purpose: Remove temptation, negotiate better situation.

(Update 4/23: Wow. Chase was basically like, "there's nothing we can do for you." My husband said, "I have a better APR through BOA and that's the deciding factor." The operator said, "I'm sure you do." He closed the account. Crazy.)

Goal #3: Manage Stockpile - 2 weeks

Description: I am going to create a list of all the items we stockpile and wish to stockpile and put it in one easy-to-manage system. This way instead of forgetting to tell me we're on the last (fill in the blank) my husband can cross off an item every time he opens a new one.

Purpose: Avoid wasting money by paying $4 for a "must have now" item instead of buying it in advance for much less.

Sneak Peek: Goals for next week (April 28-May 4)
- Set up new money system in excel
- Transfer money to one account instead of three!
- Open IGN account for our emergency savings (update: applied for 4/21)
- Transfer tax rebate money into IGN account once open for our emergency savings fund (goal: $2500) (4/24 transferred $1000)
- Send check to BOA for the overage amount (4/24 set up BOA as a payee in my bill pay so once I'm ready it's a click away)