So, how to get my head back into the game of finances? It was easy enough when money was tight and we had to stretch everything just to meet our bills. Now, with things being so very much easier, and a second raise following the one of three months ago for DH, I find it is becoming easier to not pay attention and to let some of the new money fritter away.

I really don't think that is at all a productive thing for me to do. Yet, the desire to ease up has been so overwhelming and the idea that if I don't look at what I'm doing, then I'm not really doing it, is kind of looming large. I don't want to be an ostrich with my head in the sand and yet at the same time I don't want to think, either.

Dangerous, that. Not thinking. Gets you into all sorts of trouble. And out of trouble has been the goal for years now, and it really does need to continue being the goal. Just because we have breathing room does not mean that we don't still have massive debt hanging over our heads. That medical debt is not going to go away of its own accord.

So, what to do? Well, first of all I need to stay out of restaurants and start cooking again. There are a lot of reasons for this, but first and foremost it's because my food is healthier as I know where it comes from. It's either organic, or at the very least, free range, hormone free, and steroid free. Second, it tastes better than any restaurant food. One of the benefits of being a fine cook, if I may be allowed to toot my own horn.

And third, it's also much more frugal to buy my own food and cook it. Even with organic food it is still cheaper to make a meal than it is to do a drive thru run, even off the dollar menu. I know this, I've done the math before. You know this really shouldn't be reason number three. It should be reason number one. This just goes to show how very far my mind is away from where it needs to be, doesn't it?

So all of that requires planning because we are going to be busy. Two days a week at tae kwon do, two days a week at basketball practice and Saturdays are game days. That means menu planning and crockpotting and making lists of the pantry and freezer again. And not wasting food by letting it rot in the veggie bins because I was too lazy to prep and cook when it's so much easier to eat out. Such a vicious circle, that, isn't it?

So obviously step one here is organization. That's not the only thing that could use some organization. I want to get a real bill box. One of those letter box things like Lillian Vernon sells that has a slot for each day of the month, plus big slots for miscellaneous bills.

My method of two little cardboard boxes is not cutting it and every so often a corner tears out. The wooden box would go a long way to curb the frustration, plus I would be able to tell at a glance what bills need to be paid when because they'd be in their corresponding cubby. And stuff would go in there promptly upon opening it. No more little piles and oops the power bill slid under the bed and suddenly you realize oops, I forgot to pay it last month. How lame is that? At least I stay on top of the interest bearing debt. But I need to stay on top of everything, so bill box gets to join spreadsheet in my list of tools to get my head back in the finance game.

We've been careless with gas, too. More than one trip to town in a day, not grouping errands into a single trip, not making sure everything is in the car that needs to be before we leave so that we don't have to go back home after five miles to retrieve something we need. Like say the tae kwon do uniforms. So, I need to concentrate on that, too.

One other thing is that I've let the surveys slide. It's been weeks since I've been serious about them, so I need to get on the ball, go clean out my survey email account and start doing them again. I know it wasn't much but it did help to build up my EF account and that is still one of my top goals here. Get it fully funded. Though just one month's worth would be nice, and I would feel so much more secure.

Daily blogging always helped tremendously in the past, so I should really wrap my head around that. Keeps me accountable, keeps me from hiding and gives me a place to vent if I do something stupid with money or celebrate if I do something brilliant with it. And reading the blogs again, at least some of them, on a daily basis too, because they inspire, instruct and make me realize that I am not alone in this.

So it really comes down to three things in the end, doesn't it? Planning, organization, and follow through. And I think if I follow those three steps I really and truly can get my head back in the financial game.

There was no school today. It's beyond me why the school district thinks there needs to be a day off when there have only been 4 days in the school year for us so far. I understand having teacher work days in any of the other months, except December. They had two weeks before school started to do their planning, so why so soon? Seems silly.

All this to say that I am glad there is school tomorrow so my two little sniping, picking, poking, annoy each other to death children are away from each other. It's like someone turned a switch and turned them into brats overnight.

We went to the chiropractor and to tae kwon do so we did get out of the house some today. Nothing financial today other than I mailed out some of the bills that I should have mailed on Friday. Well, nothing will even be close to being late, so it doesn't matter that I didn't get them off sooner.

I am so tired. Barking dogs last night interfered with my sleep. If I had a dog and it was barking its fool head off all night long, I'd be out there seeing what they heck he was yowling for after about ten minutes. And telling him to knock it off. I wouldn't let it go on and on all night.

Neighbors got an earfull when they got home from work today. I was cranky and not really in the mood to be nice about it either, but I held it in and was polite. Their excuse? I didn't realize anyone else could hear them. Umm, hello? And also, DUH! Everyone else can hear them. My point was proven by another set of neighbors coming by to complain about the dogs as well.

Supposedly they will keep the dogs in the house tonight. We'll see if they really do. This house is clear across the street from me, but closest to my bedroom window. Those dogs are loud. I hope they do what they said, because I don't take well to irresponsible pet owners.

There are steps I can take if I have to. First with the homeowner's board, because it is against CC&R's to let dogs bark all night and they can be fined. Then with SSC which is animal control, that also has the power to fine nuisance dog owners. And if neither of those work than with the sheriff as they are violating the county noise ordinance.

Hopefully it won't come to any of that. Especially since the board isn't too swift on cracking down on the roaming dogs, which are also not allowed. We have a leash ordinance in our CC&R's and a leash law in our county, but dogs are always roaming around sans owners out here trying to get hit by cars and using your lawn or flowerbeds like they were their own personal litter box. Most of the board are dog owners and one of them has a roaming dog. Sigh.

Dogs have their place and it isn't in my yard. If I wanted a dog in my yard I'd own one. And some day I even may have one. But it will be trained, fixed and not allowed to run all over tarnation.

End Rant.

Well, I am looking forward to school staring tomorrow. They posted the monthly lunch menu on the school site today so we went through it and it looks like there will only be two days this month they don't want hot lunch.

Hot lunch prices have risen from $1.90 to $2.00 and milk costs 50 cents now instead of 40 cents. But milk comes with the lunch price, its only if you buy it for your own sack lunch that it costs. 85% of their school is on the free or reduced price food program. Not us, we certainly don't qualify.

Considering the cost of cold lunches, though it is not that bad of a deal. We've got a really good lunch program that is high on nutrition. It was devised by the university food science department and everything is made on site and without the usual additives and preservatives, which is pretty cool. They get to play with our elementary school because it is the poorest county school in the poorest county school district and there is a huge effort to help the poverty stricken with proper food nutrition.

This is great, really, because the lunches are wonderful. My favorite is the roasted chicken leg, blue potatoes, glorius greens (mixed green salad), and apples. If a parent wants to go down and eat lunch with their child they can. An adult lunch is $2.50. A lot of the food in the food program is grown in county and much of it is donated from one of the organic farms in our school district.

The kids have bowls of fruits and vegetables in their classrooms for anytime snacking as well. It amazes me just how much this little public school does for these kids and how much community support it gets.

Over half the students in this school speak English as a second language. About 50 percent are Russian or Ukranian immigrants, 1 percent German immigrants, 10 percent are from our closest native tribe, 10 percent are from our originally migrant Spanish population who end up sticking around and working the dairy farms in the non-summer season because the kids are all back at school. 1% are East Indian and run most of the gas stations out here that the tribe doesn't (not the poor part of the population), 3 percent children of the kids I went to school with that came over with the vietnamese boat people in the 70's, and the rest are regularly born American kids. All that diversity and there's only 3 black kids, though. I guess they are still mostly up in Seattle. I only had 5 in my high school and that was in the biggest city of my county.

The school offers free language classes at night to parents who don't speak English as a first language. This is also a university program. So far they have always been able to get someone out for whatever language they need.

I love what the community has done for this little school. It is one of the nicest elementary schools I've seen, they got some nice grants for equipment from certain WA state foundations. And these kids are really getting a leg up. It shows in our test scores, too, the older the kids get the better their scores, to the point where the high school just got 97% on the reading part of the WASL and 93% on the writing part in 10th grade. Not bad for kids who so many of did not learn English first.

Math's at 73 but that is still a big improvement from past years. Things are working here.

Sorry, guess I went off on a tangent, but I love our school district and our school. One of the reasons I feel comfortable not homeschooling. This was supposed to be an entry about how much I was going to have to shell out tomorrow for the lunch program. $40 buck each for the month this month anyway. But considering cold lunches are made with organic bread, organic turkey deli meat, organic fruit and usually cucumber slices, it is probably a difference of $30 a month from what I'd buy. Not so awful and I seldom will have to stress about making lunches.

Which is good because school starts a half hour earlier this year, though it doesn't get out any earlier, and bus pick up will be at 8:46 instead of 9:19. Oh, well, at least the closest bus stop is our driveway, because I'm one of the moms who can monitor it.

I was also reading in the forums about the homeschool thread and all I can say is that there are a lot of generalizations going on there. I've homeschooled and I've had kids in public schools and some of the stuff about public schools being said is wrong, some of it is right.

But really it is the parent that makes the children social, polite, involved in the community, regardless of whether or not they are in public school or homeschooled. I can take my kids to the grocery store and teach them how to pick out produce and how to use coupons and how to calculate a unit price, and in fact, I do. I can teach my kids about saving money, writing a check, balancing a check book, and the proper and improper use of credit. It has nothing to do with their schooling, it has to do with my parenting. And I think that is what so many homeschooling parents forget, that sometimes public school kids learn just as much as homeschooled kids do because their parents make sure they do. I was a public school kid who learned because I wanted to.

Homeschooled kids aren't better than public school kids, they are simply luckier than public school kids because they have one parent who is able to be more involved in their schooling. And that is what makes a better kid, an involved parent. As a SAHM, I am able to be as involved in my children's public school education as I want to be. If I don't like what I see I would not hesitate to pull them out, or talk to the teacher or principal.

And just as an aside, I have seen so many posts on homeschooling forums and sometimes this one, even in this latest thread, by homeschooling mothers who spell or use so many words incorrectly it makes me cringe and it scares me. Spelling is huge in how you present yourself to the world and if yew kan't speel proporly howse ya gunna teech yer kidz two dew it? Or tell the difference between there and their, bear and bare, accept and except, effect and affect, to, too, and two? There certainly should not be an arrogance about homeschooling in the same paragraph as words that are spelled or used wrong, because it completely undermines the point. Not that there should be arrogance anyway in regards to homeschooling.

The whole thing reminds me of the blown out of proportion SAHM/WAHM debate. It doesn't matter whether you work or don't work, it matters how you parent your child.

I am so glad I am not out in the workforce. I don't think I'd ever be able to hold my tongue if some of the things that happen to DH happened to me. Well, this one didn't really happen to DH, but he is the one most affected by it.

The guy he spent nearly 3 weeks training to cover his old position quit. I know this work isn't for everyone but you ought to know going in what you're getting into. It's not like they don't tell you that you work so many days straight and you work 12 hour days.

So now DH is having to cover the old job and his own job. Sorry, two 12 hour a day jobs add up to 24 hours and that doesn't work. Fortunately he is paid at the higher rate for both jobs. But now the company they subscontract for is getting all snippy, thinking the job should be three weeks ahead of where it is. If it hadn't been for this other company, this position would have been filled months ago and with a different person.

Anyway, they've put up another JVA (job vacancy announcement) for the position. The woman they hired to be the first guy's alternate does not start working up there for 2 more weeks. Meanwhile they look for yet another alternate. DH does not get paid extra for training, either.

I told him to be careful and not allow them to overwork him. He needs to make sure he gets enough sleep for his health and is able to eat right and get into the exercise room before it is closed up.

Of course, we may end up with scads of extra weeks worked during this time period which means the remaining credit card will be paid off that much faster. The only possible silver lining in all of this. Only any extra work weeks means time he won't be at home with me and the kids. Trade offs suck sometimes. At least school starts in five more days. That will help immensely.

I'm so glad we have free long distance. We're going to be using it a lot.

We will be going out for Mexican food for lunch tomorrow. It'll probably be about $40 plus an $8 tip. One thing about this restaurant is the service is never, ever bad, its always above and beyond, so I always plan the tip in ahead of time. I've stopped going to places that have bad service consistently, so pretty much of the time I've got the amount of the tip planned out ahead of time.

I know I am anti-tip, or rather anti-expected tip a lot of the time, but I do tip well. I came out of the service industry, I know both sides of it. To me a tip is a gift. And well earned. Many things go into it, including the friendliness of the waitstaff, the number of times she (or he) comes back to the table (too many is just as bad as not enough), how busy the restaurant is and how many tables I see her serving (if she's covering the whole floor, she gets a lot more leeway in my book!), if the order is right, etc. But friendliness and order right is my biggest thing.

The attitude I am seeing lately tells me too many people have forgotten this. It's like the kid who gets $20 from grandma in their birthday card every year and if one year grandma only sends a card and the kid calls up and says where is my money? They've come to expect it, forgetting it is a gift. I guess that is my thing with tipping. It should never be taken for granted. But I live in a state where restaurants must pay minimum wage before tips and if I didn't I think my views would be different on that score.

I saw a tip container on Baskin Robbins counter today. I was walking by on the way to the store and I always look at all the little shops as I go. I'm sorry, this one just got to me. It is your job to scoop ice cream and put it on a cone or in a bowl. How the heck does that qualify as a tippable service? That's the whole job.

Okay, I know they now have some pretty fancy ice cream coffee drink thingies, which I don't order when I do go in, but I'm sorry, those are not that hard to run, anymore than an espresso machine is. I've run a high quality restaurant espresso machine. It's not rocket science though places like *$ would like to make you think it is. I'd love to tell one of those baristas to try running a restaurant kitchen through a $5000 lunch rush, with only 3 other employees in the kitchen and then they could whine to me about how hard it is to steam milk and squirt chocolate and dump flavoring in a shot glass and mix the drink just so. I mean come on. Only I can't do that in a *$ because I don't drink coffee.

Maybe they should just change the word. Change it from tip to gift or server bonus or something. I'd be much happier giving a good waitress a bonus or gift then an expected tip, that's for certain.

...Just change the size.

I hate when places do this sort of thing. My current rant is against Little Caesar's pizza restaurant. About six months ago or so, they started putting less sauce in the little containers of Crazy Sauce. Used to be one container of sauce was needed to get through one container of Crazy Bread. Now, it's not. Not if you are a real dipper like the people in my family. It annoyed me, though not nearly as much as the change to the smaller container did 3 or 4 years ago.

Then around the same time they did that, they dropped the number of wings in the small size from ten to eight. Again there was no change in price, but definitely a change in what you got.

Well, yesterday when we ordered our bread, and we got 3 packs because we go through a lot of it, it was all very much shorter than its ever been. Usually you get five or six long pieces and 2 shorter ones. Well, all the bread we got yesterday was a good 3 to 4 inches shorter than what its ever been before, and all the pieces were more uniform in length. I might have thought it was a mutant loaf if it hadn't been that all three of them were like that. No change in price, though.

I like my stuff in the quantities I'm used to. I understand if they have to raise their prices on occassion. But this kind of backwards sizing really annoys me. I feel like they are cheating me through deception and I do not like it.

The only reason I go there is for the wings and breadsticks. It's not for the pizza, that's for sure.

Strange things are afoot at DH's work. The Bugaboo has been transferred South. Not just from where DH is to further South in the state, but the other end of the U.S. diagonally. You can't get any further away than that. Guess too many other people found him to be gumming up the works and messing things up for everyone.

An alternate has finally been hired for DH's job and DH will start training him when he goes back after our vacation. Once there is someone else who can do DH's job, DH won't have to pull double duty of doing his own job and doing someone else's job.

But strange things...The guy who has been trying to get DH into the higher job for the last year is leaving the company. He got hired on at a different field. And once he gets there he wants to see if there is a position for DH as well. Since they are gearing up it is highly likely. He asked DH if he would be willing to go. Since it would be a net raise of $24K a year (don't remember what the gross raise was) DH said of course he would consider it.

So DH's two immediate bosses all of a sudden come to him and ask him to please hold on, everything should be sorted by the end of the year and the position they want him in will be available. That's a song and dance he's heard before.

DH is a little torn on what to do if the situation arises. We are doing okay right now. Not winning any races, but okay. I think he is leaning towards staying at his current company. The idea of changing companies is a little scary to both us. We have decent medical insurance and a very good 401K and if he jumps ship it'll mean 3 months paying a COBRA and a year with no 401K, plus all the hassle of a roll over.

Last time we rolled over a 401K they screwed it up and issued us a check instead, which of course, they'd already sent the tax part to the government. There was no way to get it back or fix it so we spent what was left on debt. Now that was over a decade ago and it was a different company, but I've been wary of roll overs ever since then. Or maybe paranoid. But when I think of what that money could have become in retirement. The check we got was for $25,000 after the penalty, and that was 12 years ago. Scares me to think how much the 401K would be if it hadn't happened like that.

I think DH plans to stay. He hasn't said as much but I think he does. He's got the training now for the other job and half the time he is doing the other job as needed. If everything falls into place like it should he will get it. But from past experience I know that you can't depend on anything to ever fall into place as it should.

Mostly I am trying not to think about it. Whatever will be, will be. But until it happens, I try to be satisfied with where I am. I refuse to ever get my hopes up again based on anything that is said by his work.

If I allow myself to think about it my mind races ahead and starts making plans. One of the first things being that DH will go back to school, correspondence style and get his next degree, which is reimbursed by work 100% for A grades, which is what DH always gets.

The second thing of course being rapid debt reduction. Which is something I want so badly that if I allow myself to think about his too much, and it doesn't happen, I know I will be bitterly disappointed. So, for now, I just have to breathe deep and let it go. Life will happen and I will have no control over it whether I stress about it or not. So I choose not.

Last night when I dropped my DH off at the airport, I drove by the cheap gas station, an ARCO. I didn't need gas, but as usual I noted the price of gas there. It was at $2.75. Then after dropping off my kids, I saw a different gas station, a Chevron that was selling gas at $3.21 a gallon. Same grade. Same town. I expect to see a 20 cent gas difference between Arco and everyone else, as they have a local refinery here.

Now I know Chevron has the highest gas around, with Exxon and Shell running a close second, but a difference of 46 cents a gallon is ridiculous. Even the Valero out here in the county is only at $3.05, and county stations are often quite a bit higher than town ones.

The only conclusion I can draw from this is that this Chevron is price gouging. It is right off the freeway, with a back route from the McDonald's parking lot into its lot as well, and easy to get in and out of from the street, but no way is the convenience factor worth 46 cents a gallon.

Even other Chevron's in town are in the mid to low teens. This one actually went up two cents from last weekend whilst everyone else's prices dropped. No excuse for this. It's on the corner of Iowa and King in Bellingham, in case there's anyone local reading this. They certainly won't get my business. I'm surprised they are getting anyone's.

I swear I am the only person I know who has ever been called for Jury Duty more than once. And I only know 2 people besides me who have been called once. I've been summoned 8 times in the last 12 years and I am so sick of it. I've even thought of unregistering to vote just so they leave me alone, but I can't stomach that.

This time around I am going to try to get excused. I haven't always tried, but 4 times I have. Once when I had severe pneumonia, once when I was 8.5 months pregnant with my first child, and once when I was due to deliver my second child. In fact he was born on the day I would have had to report for my first day of JD. I had doctor's notes for all of those. The fourth time I was homeschooling my kids with my DH out of state and they let me out.

Anyway, I decided to go ahead and plead financial hardship, because I can't afford to put my kids in some form of childcare, and I can't afford the gas to drive 55 miles a day, and my DH will be working in Alaska so there is no other parent to take care of the children. My relatives that might be able to help are in a different direction than the courthouse, so I'd be driving 110 miles a day to do this. Or else hoping my mother would take the kids for nearly two full weeks, rather unlikely.

You know, I really wouldn't mind serving again, because its is enjoyable, but it is just so hard to get everything in place to do it. And come on, I think I've done my duty four times!

I am hoping that since there has been a court case in my family since the last time I was called, I have been the victim of a crime, and I now have a close family friend who is a cop (came back from Iraq, went through the police academy and has been a cop a few months now), I'd be seen as far too biased as well.

Once my kids are grown, I think I'd love to do it again, though. Of course, they'll probably not send me a summons by then.

Our new Comcast bill was due yesterday, 6/29. We paid it in person on 6/28 at the local Comcast office. In the mail today we got a late notice bill from them that was issued and mailed on 6/22. What kind of a business sends a late notice bill 7 days before the bill is actually due? Of course, it says if it has already been paid to disregard this notice. But hello? Don't send me somewhat "threatening letters" a whole week before the freaking bill is actually due. Stupid way of doing business, not to mention wasting paper and postage.

The new rate increase came in the latest power bill. I am not very happy with it. Especially since my usage is so much lower than a year ago, when I was paying this rate. It's gone from $93 to $110. I guess I'll have to really buckle down again and see if I can't get it back below $100. We had gotten a little more casual in our energy usage, but its still been below what our budget amount has been.

Hopefully it will stop sprinkling long enough to start hanging laundry. All week long last week it has been either raining or spitting out and just when you think its done, it starts up again.

I know we can afford the rate increase, it is just the principle of the thing. Doggone Puget Sound Energy.

Why does it have to be so darn expensive? I mean here, in the PNW where we have cheap hydroelectric power, it should not generate a bill of $93 a month when I don't heat my house with electricity!

When my husband and I were first married in 1995, the power bill for a two bedroom, 1 bath, 1400 square foot apartment with only one shared wall and a shared floor and ceiling, cost $30 a month. And it had baseboard heaters! It had a dishwasher, it had a washer and dryer and I washed everything on warm or hot.

Flash forward 12 years to us living in a super-insulated 1800 square foot house with all high efficiency appliances. I hang dry about half the laundry and wash everything but kitchen towels, sheets and under garments on cold. They get hot to kill germs and dust mites. I do the short cycle on the dishwasher, never use the heat dry, and stop the washer as soon as the clean cycle is done. We heat the house with propane or wood. We use all fluorescent bulbs. We don't leave most appliances plugged in and the computers are off when not in use. And yet my bill has increased 200 percent.

I know the cost of living has gone up in 12 years, but it certainly has not gone up 200 percent. Certainly wages have not. If our power company was oil based, I'd get it. But its water based. You can't get much cheaper than hydroelectric when there's been an existing power structure for decades.

I have generally been happy this last year that I have managed to keep my electric bill under $100 a month on the budget program (same average payment made each month throughout the year so no one payment is super high in winter). But now, and here is the true cause of my rant, PSE, that's Puget Sound Energy, is being allowed to raise its rates 9 to 13 percent to residential customers. Which even if I luck out and draw the 9 percent, is going to put my bill above $100 and I am not a happy camper. It's a psychological barrier. I brought the bill down from $110 to $93, and now through no fault of my own, I lose that.

My gasoline budget has doubled this year, my propane budget has risen about 30%, food has gone up about 20% due to higher transport costs, and now the non-related hydroelectric power is going up. I really don't see how they can justify this. Don't they know that its one more bill raise on top of many others?

We are fortunate here in that we can afford to absorb it. Before the raise, it would have meant cutting from the grocery budget. It's not ideal, but it will not break us. Now we don't have to. But so many people have already been broken by the rise in gas and oil costs already. There was a letter to the editor in my local paper this week about one person losing their job because they can no longer afford the gas to drive to it.

What are low income people going to do? Especially if they are too high of a low income to qualify for PSE's warm home fund? That concerns me a lot. I live in a predominately low income, but well-maintainned rural area. I know of a few people who are just scraping by and I can't imagine what this new rate increase will do to them. Yes, it is "only" ten dollars a month. But when you are already stretched to the breaking point, ten dollars is a lot of money. I know people that have grocery budgets of $50 to $100 a month or less.

With ten dollars in our area, if you shop sales you can buy:
10 pound bag of chicken hindquarters for $4.90, a 5 pound bag of potatoes for $1.90, a pound of rice for .99, a dozen eggs for a $1.25, 2 carrots for .46 and a loaf of bread for .50. You could have dinners and lunches and breakfasts out of that for a week for a young family of four. Maybe half a week if your kids are older. No wonder everyone out here supplements with gardens.

Something has to give around here and I am afraid it is going to be the people. Do you remember that old song from the 80's called Parent's Just Don't Understand? I think it's time to revamp that, only title it Big Businesses Just Don't Understand. Then again, I think they do understand. I think they just don't care.

I've been really hesitant to jump into the blog contest fray because so far I haven't felt I had anything to say, but I finally feel I have a subject I can post about: My credit union.

So here are my top ten reasons that I love my credit union.

1. They were one of the first to move into internet banking, albeit you had to dial in their special phone number, which eventually you no longer needed once internet use became common and you could access it from any connection. Long before most banks knew what the internet was, my CU took its first brave steps forward. I was lucky to get in on the beta testing seventeen years ago and have happily watched them make excellent user friendly improvements to the system ever since. They make it easy to do business with them. Before that they had touch tone banking (and still do) even when I was a kid.

2. They are convenient to use. They have branches located all over the county, including in the backwater areas.

3. They have ATM's all over the county and they are all no fee ATM's. No fee to members and no fee to non-members. Never have and say they never will. This includes the ATM they have located in the local hospital. This step alone endears them to me, when other banks would pile on extra fees when you might not be able to leave the hospital during critical life moments.

4. They offer excellent mortgage rates and excellent mortgages with no pre-payment fees. In fact, their mortgage coupons have slots for additional principal payments and have done long before other banks and CU's started jumping on that band wagon. My mortgage with them is at 5.5%, fixed, 15 years and I cannot be happier.

5. The friendliest tellers in the universe and they don't charge for using them. I know most of the tellers by name. They know me by name before I give them my account information. The drive-thru teller recognizes me by my car even when I'm not at the window booth, and will greet me with a cheery hello by name before getting my info. She also knows without asking that I always prefer my cash in $20's. She also always puts in stickers for the kids without my asking and whether they are with me or not.

6. Free bill-pay. 'Nuff said.

7. Free debt counseling. And what they call pre-debt counseling, which amounts to learning what you are getting into before you take out your first credit card(theirs at a fixed 12%), car loan (theirs at 5.9 to 7.9%), or mortgage (theirs at 5.5 to 6.9%).

8. The highest paying savings account rates of any CU in town. Not saying much there, but its something. Best CD rates of any CU and all but one of the banks in town.

9. Community education involvement. They are in charge of numerous grant and scholarship programs for the three county colleges and one university in the county and are very good about getting out into the highschools and making sure the kids know about their programs.

10. They are inclusive. They welcome anyone who lives, works or worships in the county to be a member. And they truly welcome them, not just say they do. They also have inclusive hiring practices.

So as you can see, I have many, many reasons to love my credit union and I can assure you that I do.

I read this article today:

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/Advice/RichDontSaveEither.aspx

and I have to say I really did not have a lot of sympathy. Even less than when I read the one about the family living on $150,000 a year and having such a hard time of it.

What is the world coming to when people can't save money on a $250,000 a year salary? Just what are they spending their money on? McMansions?

I guess I just don't get it. To me a house is a house, whether you're living in an RV park, a manufactured home, a log cabin, a garden shed, or a stick-built house. As long as it is structurally safe and is well-kept, one place is as good as the other. Maybe paying for a better neighborhood, I can see, but a home shouldn't break you. It should just be the place you hang your hat and sleep at night.

Fancy cars? Again, its transportation, it should just get you from point A to point B. As long as it is well-maintained and of a size to fit the needs of your family there is no reason for a Mercedes or even a Lexus or Lincoln Town Car if it means you can't afford your bills or to put a little something into savings.

Private schools? Even private schools don't need to break the bank. The Waldorf one here is less than $4000 a year, so it doesn't have to be some $50,000 a year perparatory academy.

I don't know. I don't know what they could be spending so much of their income on that they can't afford their bills and to save money. Even considering a hefty tax bite, I just don't get it.

Maybe they just never learn delayed gratification. I can't fathom it.

I left a second comment (#57!) over on Broken Arrow's blog, the entry about Common Myths. I wanted to say a lot more but I didn't want to deal with the responses I might get from the non-SA people that wandered over here from some other websites, since they seemed to be profanity laden and cop-hating. To an extent I guess I have been heretofore sheltered from. This is not PF related at all, just kind of emotional, because, well, its been an emotional night. Thank heavens my mother took the kids away for the weekend before this happened.

Anywho, I wanted to talk some more about speed traps. So here it is.

One more thing on speed traps. We have one on the highway just behind our house. It's right as you come out of a nasty S-curve, sometimes at one end, sometimes at the other. Speed limit is 30 for it, dropping from 55.

We who live here all know it is there, just as we who live here also know that there are five different crosses and memorials set up on either side of the road along that curve. You might even see them if you take the curve at the lawful speed.

I have seen two cars wrapped around the power pole there with one being a death. I personally have called the ambulance for one of the deaths and 2 of the non-deaths, as the sound effects at such accidents are overwhelmingly loud and I know without looking what has happened. I get on the phone and walk out behind the fence and there is another hunk of twisted metal that was once a vehicle. All I have to say for location is the S-curve on --- Road Highway, they know it without a house number or a city name.

That curve has taken out ten cars and 3 power poles in the last five years. Not one car was going the speed limit or anywhere near it. Sometimes a speed trap is just a speed trap. Sometimes it is because you're driving through a death trap.

So yeah, speed if you want to, but after watching them wash the blood off the pavement for an hour more than once, after holding more than one bloody hand or applying pressure to another bleeding head, please don't make it me that you're tail-gating when I follow the law. And don't get mad at the police when they pull you over in that spot. It being a speed trap may just have saved your life.

And oh, by the way, there was an accident tonight. That was the death I got to call in. Guess there will be another memorial up soon. I wonder what color they'll paint the cross? Maybe if they paint it blood red people will slow down and see it.

DH and I talked on the phone over an hour last night about cars. He thinks we should just start saving $400 a month in the bank until the Crown Vic goes belly up and then go looking with a sizeable downpayment. Reasonable. Better than a giganto loan. Rational decision, I think. Sigh. Okay, then.

Meanwhile, we need to get the two free and clear vehicles we own up to snuff. The Crown Vic needs a major at home detailing session and to find out why the darn engine light keeps coming on five minutes after starting the car. And the Blazer, well, the air conditioning doesn't work, the 4 wheel drive is a $200 repair short of working and something is wrong with the accelerator.

Come to think of it, the Chevy is probably closer to belly up than the Ford. But I don't want to own an SUV ever again, I don't think. Maybe one of those hybrid ones some day in the very distant future when cars run on water or something.

Anyway, DH is being far more reasonable than I am about buying a new car, I think I may be reacting too much from the I wanna factor of my brain. Even though I know I don't want the long loan, so he makes sense. So we will do that, save and save and hope that it works out the way we want by the time we need to buy a new vehicle.

So that means of the $800 net raise per four week pay cycle, $400 goes to car savings, $100 goes to EF, $200 goes to debt repayment and the remaining $100 will go to upgrading our internet connection and possibly getting satellite TV. The kids are begging for it. I'm on the fence, but more on the no side. DH isn't sure he wants to go back to our old TV lifestyle at all. We do want to wifi our computers, though, so that will be a one-time cost of $200. We will see.

And of course, if necessary, the amount in car savings can be treated as a secondary EF, but only for a really bad emergency situation.

My new laptop battery came today and I am now portable again. Love it. And my new flash drive, specifically compatible with my old Toshiba Tecra 8000, came along with it. I am a happy camper. I feel like this computer can go a few more years now without being so darn tempted by the pretty new Toshibas out there. My little workhorse is doing just fine, even if it is a bit slow. Once we have an upgraded internet and a household network, speed will pick way up, anyhow.

I don't think I will upgrade to Vista. I'm doing just fine with the old XP upgrade. I'm just glad I could get a compatible battery for a computer this old.

A girl at my daughter's school is pregnant. This is a K-6. This girl is only 12 years old, 1.5 years older than Rose. She was pulled out of the sex education courses offered by the school because her parents were offended by it. That is their right, of course, but she didn't know anything because her parents told her nothing and now she's pregnant.

For pete's sake, mothers and fathers talk to your kids about sex before junior high! Swallow your embarrassment and do it. Start at 8 or 9 gradually increasing the information as they mature, but get it done and do it by age 10. These kids need to know!

Let them know the true facts of life before it is too late: STD's, HIV, AIDS, pregnancy, emotional trauma of sex too young in a non-committed relationship, preferably in marriage but at the very least a long-term committed relationship, birth control, barrier protection, and the only fool-proof method of abstinance. Give them the facts people or your lives may take a change you were never expecting. Just like this little girl's did.

Well, its been a little less than a year since I started this blog and today my blog's odometer rolled over to the big 100K. That's amazing to me. I know my readership has gone steadily up each month, sometimes each week. I know this because I am addicted to checking my stats pretty much on a daily basis. How lame is that? Is that better or worse than googling your blog name? 'Cause I've been guilty of that, too, LOL. Though that I've only done 3 or 4 times. That's getting to be more and more as well.

It's a weird feeling, knowing people are reading your thoughts, even when you are the one putting them out there. When I started out I didn't think anyone would be reading. I didn't have a clue about what happens when a blog takes off. Or pretty much what a blog really was, just a vague idea of it being an online journal. I certainly didn't read blogs before then. Now I can't imagine not reading blogs because I have learned so much about so many things, the majority of which are finance related, that have really helped me to get my act together. It's been a heck of a ride.

There are days that I think are so boring that what I wrote can't be remotely interesting and I'll end up with a ton of comments. Or days that an incredible amount of interesting stuff was written about and then no comments. If I hadn't been addicted to reading my stats I'd never know that people are actually reading it. Having those stats have kept me going when I was discouraged and thinking no one was paying attention. People are.

I like that. Anyway, thanks to my readers, you got me to 100,000 hits and that is pretty cool for this little ol' stay at home mom in the boondocks of WA state. Having something to say is pretty common. Having people to listen? Priceless.

And today is one of those boring days.

I did not do much today in the vein of saving money. I did take photographs of the three brand name spring sweaters I am going to put on e-bay and will try to download the camera tonight. I am not very good at that as I have only done it once and DH had to hold my hand through it.

I am totally backwards about technology sometimes. Although I have always been able to intuitively figure out any VCR or microwave (or word processing program) I've crossed paths with, the more advanced stuff waylays me. Once I get it I'm good. It's just a question of getting it.

I mean, how hard is it to take the little thingy out of the camera compartment and stick it in the dealy on the printer and let it sort itself out between the CPU and monitor? Doesn't seem like it should be such a challenge. Most of it is automatic. But then again, it took me two years to remember how to look at my photos on the camera without asking DH how do I do it. Sometimes it really is a case of PEBKAC.

And we won't even talk about locking and unlocking my cell phone keyboard so it can be on without accidentally dialing somewhere exotic like Mozambique or Zimbabwe or South Central Los Angeles.

I will muddle through, I always do, I just wish the learning curve wasn't so high. Then I just have to go into DH's e-bay account and figure out how to post what I want to post, which should fall under the intuitive grasping of knowledge (software) instead of the "darn technology and all its advances that are supposed to make life easier if you have at least the retention of a kitchen sponge," (or hardware).

I am so right-brained, left-brained stuff is just a challenge. So if I learn left-brained stuff in a creative right-brained way, I ought to get it eventually. Right?

DH got a call from his alternate this morning. She's the one who works his job on his two weeks off. She just got a job offer with another company up there. Same position, wage range starts $12 an hour higher than what DH is making now, and ends $15 more per hour than what DH is making now.

Well, his company told them that the only way to increase their wage range was to find out what other companies were paying for the same position. And the only way to do that was to apply to other companies and get salary ranges. I guess they can't gripe about it when an employee finds out they are being massively underpaid and decides to go with the company that pays better.

There is no way his company can match that. At best they might, if they tried real hard, allow the range to go up another $9 an hour. But I don't think they would.

Anyway, she's taking the job and leaving. So now what? That's all I keep thinking. Does DH get stuck there because they don't have an alternate for him and there's no one at all to do his job when he is promoted? I don't trust the company not to pull a fast one. I just don't. Not one little bit.

DH says if they do that, and don't promote him in May like they promised, he's out of there. He'll be able to hire on with one of the other companies at or above (most likely above) what he is making now. Because they need people and will be hiring through the end of summer.

DH is perfectly willing to train someone to do the current job. He's trained every one of his alternates (at no additional pay, I might add), so that's no big deal. He can walk anyone through it while he's doing the new job, too. But I don't know. I just have no faith in his company right now.

They have been good to us for years but this last one, not so much. It's a struggle because DH really, really, really likes his job, likes his company, likes the people he works with and that all is worth a lot. But being taken advantage of, not high on my list of good qualities for a job to have. Or his.

Meanwhile, he may end up working extra weeks, which will mean more pay but way less time at home. The last time he lost an alternate he was doing 3 weeks on and 1 week off for 8 months. Not easy on the kids at all. I'm used to it but they never do get used to it.

I just really, really hope that his company doesn't pull the rug out from under us. They promise so much. I am so not fond of their backpedalling when it happens. It frustrates me no end. One could go crazy thinking about this, but I'm no Scarlett, I can't think about it tomorrow because I'm thinking about it now. Argh! One could go mad thinking in circles like this. Hopefully sending it off into cyberspace like this will give me peace of mind. For a while anyway.

Over in the forums under General Discussion, the Pinecone survey post, there is an active link for the U.S. banner ad. It was active as of 11:00 p.m. PST 3/6/07. I just signed up. I am so excited. I don't know if I will qualify but just having the chance to finally sign up has me through the roof.

Woo Hoo!!!!!!!!

Venting. Big Time. Here, so I don't do it over there. I have to play nice in public. Here, a little less than nice when frustrated.

Well, she's back. That woman who drove me crazy because she asked for advice and then came up with every single excuse in the book, and some that weren't, not to take any of the advice offered her from anyone. And of course, there are a few newer people who don't know her M.O. who are still trying to help her. Though there are some people that have been around at least as long as me or longer who should know better by now...All they'll get is a throbbing headache from banging their heads against the wall. Yes, she asks for help, but...SHE DOESN'T REALLY WANT IT. (Caps for emphasis, not shouting, I still can't get italics to work).

I really had to bite my tongue not to post on her thread, but I won't do it. I do have to admit to being fascinated how anyone can bury her head so deeply in the sand. It's like watching a train wreck, you simply can't look away. And I know better than to even click on her threads.

She's still up to my favorite one, accusing you of giving her parenting advice instead of financial advice, doesn't have a clue that sometimes your financial decisions are caused by your parenting ones or vice versa. Just refuses to see it. Or anything that doesn't fit her unpaid for rose colored glasses version of the world.

Someone suggested her child get a babysititng job. Last time around I suggested that and oh, you would have thought I was talking about selling her daughter to a sweatshop, "my daughter will never work to pay the bills," (which wasn't even what I said, BTW) Now, its basically my daughter won't work to pay for her own college education. Please. Well, she didn't blow up about that advice this time. Yet, anyway. But I'm waiting. She's like old faithful, never quite know when she'll blow but it'll be in approximately 55 to 65 minutes.

I won't even go into the withholding debacle she refuses to fix. Like I said, she doesn't actually want a way out.

It's more of the same. Thanks for the vent.

One of the benefits of being sick, one of the few, is that everyone stays down longer, either on the couch or in bed, so I have had a fair bit of time to get caught up on reading the blogs. I don't read all of them, but I do try to read most of them. There's just a few that I skip due to excessive bad spelling or er, umm...boredom, but otherwise I pretty much read them all. So its good to be caught up again. And do so from my bed with my laptop.

I also got to finish watching my entire birthday present by last night. Well, I haven't done all of the commentaries, but everything else though. It was only 15 episodes for a whole season, which is hard when you are used to 22 but that's the BBC programming for you. I guess I should be happy there is more than six per season, like Red Dwarf was when it came out.

So, series 2 of the new Doctor Who was amazing. It took me about 3 episodes to adapt to the new lead though I liked him from the start, but by the time I got to the end it was like Christopher who? And that's hard for me to think considering I thought Christopher Eccelstein was far and away the best I'd ever seen in the role. But this David Tennant fellow, he's going to do great things with this role. It's his now.

But far and away it was Billie Piper as Rose that blows me away every time. If that girl does not end up as an Oscar or Emmy winner or whatever they have in England of the equivalent than there is no justice in the world of television and movies.

Anywho, I've been watching Doctor Who since 1974, when I was four years old (it started in 1963) and there has only ever been one episode that made me really, really sad, which was when Adric dies, back in the era of Doctor #4. But the season finale of this, oh my gosh, I was sobbing for the last 8 minutes of the show. It so broke my heart. I usually don't get that in to shows, but this just was gut-twisting and heart-wrenching. I loved it and hated it all at once.

And I absolutely cannot wait for what happens next. Let's just say the one day shipping was well worth the price!

If you've never watched Doctor Who, I'd highly reccommend the new stuff. If you like sci-fi, high camp, time travel, serious drama, and interesting relationships all tied together, its well worth giving it a shot. It is not classic Who, which was marvelous in its way, but it is even better. Seasons 1 and 2 are available through Netflix. If you like the new Battlestar Galactica or shows like Buffy or Angel, you won't be sorry you gave it a shot. Its better than all of them.

Now, on to disc 5 of season 4 of 24, which has been patiently waiting for me while I go through my little sci-fi frenzy with Doctor Who.

Yes, all right, I'm being a tad bit pompous with the title, I admit it. But, it has definitely been that kind of day. I am now up to 97 pages, although about ten of those were just dreaming...or plotting...or character development...or bits of dialogue or "scenes." Still that leaves me with 87 good pages and lots of ideas. Got to the point where the story was writing itself for a bit. Always love that place. I really am going to DO THIS this year.

And DH and I talked on the phone and he was called into the office of the head dude and he started talking salaries...still don't know if I believe "them" but they are talking a $14K raise with the new position, 10 hour days $450 a day, and that's starting wage. That would give us an additional almost $900 per 4 week period, net. Oh, what I couldn't do with $900 a month extra.

Yes, the dreaming has started, though I still don't believe "them" yet. I don't trust them not to pull the rug out. Even if they are training DH already. Even if...

No pre-spending of course, but dreams...financing a new to us car and still having $400 to $500 to pay down debt and build up an emergency fund every 4 weeks. Or saving half to pay for a car in cash or mostly in cash up to when the current 15 year old jobby goes belly-up and adding $100 a month to the EF and still paying down debt.

But there is no official start date yet. Still saying late March to late April, so...well, I suppose living in suspense is something I've grown rather accustomed to...

Speaking of which I got the results of my CT scan and I am off to see a specialist sometime in the not to distant future and I don't wanna. I still think old doc is overreacting. The scan was clean, so why? Because old doc is paranoid of missing something?

Oh, I know, the last thing I need is another tumor damaging my kidney, but it didn't show up, for pete's sake. Sometimes symptoms are there for completely different reasons. Like a UTI for example. Sorry if TMI. Perfectly natural explanation. It does not mean there is another carcinoid tumor lurking...Plus, they have always been benign when they were there and the only one that really did serious damage was the one that grew through my appendix. Sigh.

But I'll go anyway. I just don't wanna. Medical is expensive. And it doesn't feel the same as the other times. And I don't want another slice and dice session. They better give DH this promotion like they promised. One month of the raise should cover the medical costs incurred between now and April. Fun.

Oh, did I mention both kids now have the flu? The real flu, not the stomach virus thing often mistaken for the flu by folks that don't know what the influenza virus actually entails. Thank goodness its not the stomach thing. I'm not sure I could cope with it coming out both ends of both kids when I still am not 100% on top of fever, chills, bone aches, headaches, respiratory gunky stuff, coughing and sore throat. Rose is on her way back up and Tobias is holding his own and doesn't seem to be getting it as badly as Rose did, but that's par for the course. T has a much stronger immune system than R and always has.

I am glad it is a 3 day weekend so I don't have to fight with T again about staying home from school. This thing is contagious!

One of the legitimate paying survey companies offered me a survey today that would have paid $20. But when I saw what it involved, it totally freaked me out. They wanted me to register 2 credit cards and one bank account with them so they could track my spending. Are they freaking nuts? Give them my bank account number and my credit card numbers? Not bloodly likely!

In this day and age of identity theft this was highly disturbing. In fact the longer I think about it the more I'm thinking I should actually lodge a formal complaint with this survey management team, that's how dangerous I think this is of them to even think about requesting this information from people trying to bring in extra income. And there will be some people naive enough or inexperienced enough to actully give this information away.

I thought buying the dog was dumb when they couldn't pay the phone bill. SIL called up DH tonight and they have had their cable shut off, their internet shut off, their gas is going to be shut off this week, the garbage company came and took away their garbage can, they lost their alarm system monitoring, they are behind on their power bill and on their mortgage. So they very well may lose their house now. And they bought a dog.

Guess the big screen TV and the house full of new furniture was a big mistake last summer. What were they thinking with? Because I know it wasn't their brains.

DH said when he got off the phone that he just wanted to smack his sister upside the head and ask her if she even had a tiny smidgeon of common sense in her head or not.

I made him call her back and at least tell her about the plasma donation place and give her the phone number, between the two of them maybe they can earn $400 a month extra. Although I don't know if they will qualify as blood donors, they have both had a very, shall we say promiscuous history, including a visit from the STD fairy on more than one occassion. I'm not sure if that would disqualify them or not.

Really, a modicum of common sense could have kept them from this situaion. Now they will probably have to move back in with MIL and FIL. If they'll let them and they probably will for the sake of the girls, even though they don't want them.

Trying to find an apartment that will take a convicted felon is pretty impossible around here. The only reason they had an apartment before they got the house was because they were living there at the time of the conviction. I don't know if those property owners would allow them to move back, either. They kind of burned some bridges.

I feel somewhat sorry for them, but I'm also thinking they made their bed, they'll never learn if you don't make them lie down in it. They can't do bankruptcy again, its too soon. And they didn't learn anything from it the first time. I'm so tired of their bad financial choices.

Would you buy a dog if you could not pay your phone bill? Seriously. I want to know. If you had your phone service shut off for failure to pay, because you could not afford to pay it, would you go out and buy a purebred puppy, with all the potty training supplies and food, vet bills, and toys that go with it?

Consider that you are 6 years out from a bankruptcy, that you will never be able to get a different job from the one you have now because no one really wants to hire a convicted felon in that particular crime, that you are upside down in not one but two car loans, and that you still have to pay child support on one or your 2 children from previous relationships (not marriages) for another 4 years and have 2 children at home with your spouse who have to use WIC and the food bank and food stamps and be in housing similar to habitat for humanity but not them because they also did not want to deal with a convicted felon in that particular crime.

Would this be considered an incredibly stupid thing to do by a normal human being? Or is this just me overreacting because I'm not a dog person? Or very tolerant of foolishness. Or of this family member (by marriage, not blood), in general.

Oh, I'll keep my mouth shut, I suppose, for the sake of family unity but I had to let my opinion out somewhere. I think its beyond ridiculous and beyond stupid. And after all these years, why am I still surpised by bone-head decisions?

Someone else wrote a big rant about the cost of weddings and I was going to leave this as a reply but as it got so long, I decided to just make it my own blog entry.

I had a beautiful, gorgeous church wedding with about 60 people. My mother and father's gift to me for the wedding was my $500 dress. The dress was exquisite and I couldn't have been any happier in Vera Wang. My in-laws gift to us was the cost of the church rental, with the accompanying wedding planner whether we wanted her or not, and the kitchen clean up crew for approximately $500. I did spend $119 on a veil. I could have made a perfectly good veil for $20, but I fell in love with this one and paid for it in cash. I borrowed the hoop skirt slip thing that holds the dress out poofy from my SIL. My shoes were $10 white ballet shoes.

What did I spend (pre-paid by the way) on: I spent $750 on photographs. I'd seen what an amateur photographer had done to my SIL's wedding and I felt this was an appropriate splurge. We had a long enough engagement that the photo package was paid for long before the wedding took place. To this day, nearly 12 years later, I do not regret that.

I paid $100 for silk flowers and florist's tape. My wedding colors were burgandy and teal, which would have been hard to find in real flowers and cost about $400 to have prepared. I checked out every video tape and book in the library on how to arrange wedding flowers that they had and I learned how to do it. I put together two massive bouquets for either side of the altar, that stood on 2 $10 rented pedestals. I also made a large swag that went over the fireplace in the reception hall in the church basement and two of the ushers were charged with bringing the vases and pedestals down to the reception after the wedding was over to make them do double duty.

I did my own bouquet and that of my two attendants, did the mothers' corsages and all of the boutinierres for the men, buying a package of pins with a pearl like head for pinning them with for $2. I used about $30 worth of white ribbon (not from the bridal section, where it was much more expensive) and $5 worth of burgandy ribbon leftover from Christmas, to add finishing touches to the flowers and to make pew bows for the first ten pews, every other row (which I also learned from a library video.

We rented two candlelabras from the rental place for $10 each that held 24 candles each, each box of 12 candles cost $2, so $8 for candles. We are still using those white candles nearly 12 years later during power failures. I bought a unity candle at Micheal's for $12. The preacher we paid $50 and the pianist was $20 to play Moonlight Sonata during the lighting of the unity candle and to play the actual Here Comes the Bride Music. We used a CD with Pachabel's cannon in D for the processional, and we played a song that was special to us, also on CD. Both CD's we already owned.

We actually paid for the rental of the groomsmens tuxedos and had a coupon, 3 for the price of 2. So DH got his and the 2 others for $100. We also bought the fabric for the bridesmaids' dresses, a lovely teal satin, and my mother sewed them. They were simple and forgiving yet elegant, as my SIL was quite pregnant and my other attendant was also a bit larger. They were designed to be dresses that could be worn again, as perhaps to a banquet or another wedding as a guest. The material, pattern, and thread cost $70 and the girls bought their own shoes together. The flower girl dress was her Christmas dress, and it was burgandy and she wore her regular white patent leather shoes.

We got our wedding cake from the local grocery store. Instead of buying a wedding cake we got a 25th wedding anniversary design. It was completely white and very elegant, 3 tiers and one sheet cake, simple white cake with white frosting and frosting as the filling. The store set it up for us, and the cake cost $100. Comparable wedding cakes in the same design book cost $300. We had bought a cake topper for $15 at a craft store and put it on ourselves after the store people left.

We mostly used the church's dishes for the reception, though we did use my grandmother's punch bowl and the cake serving set I had been given at my bridal shower, as well as two champagne glasses also given at the shower. We used a $2 bottle of sparkling cider for our wedding toast. We had coffee, tea, punch, nuts and mints. The wedding had been at 2 so that people would eat lunch before the came and the reception was done by 5 as we had a reservation to make for our honeymoon, so people didn't need to eat a meal there anyway. We spent around $30 and most of that was the price of the can of coffee and the nuts. No fancy dinner, no big dancing extravaganza.

Decorations downstairs included 6 packages of streamers and 2 packages of balloons in the wedding colors, 2 teal paper tablecloths for $30, engraved wedding napkins $25 for 100 when we bought our wedding invitations at the same mail order catalog for $100. Aside from the punch bowl of my grandmother's we used a five branched silver candelabra with candles from upstairs that my husband and I and my SIL and BIL had given as a gift to my in-laws for their 25th wedding anniversary. SIL had used it at her wedding, too.

So the grand total for my wedding was $1646 out of pocket, $2646 if you count the gifts of the church and the dress form our parents. Oh, and add in the price of the book How to Have a Big Wedding on a Small Budget, $4 used at the used book store. $2650. A beautiful wedding with not one thing I would have changed, all for less than $3000, and everything prepaid with cash.

Everyone told me what a beautiful wedding it was, how they were sure it must have cost a fortune. I just smiled at my DH and we kept our secret.

Right now I am feeling very overwhelmed by finances. Just am. Not sure why. Well, maybe it is that I have been spending down savings when what I really want to do is be building it up. But bills must be paid when they come due and you know, I really wish they would come at a more convenient time. Like 3 years from now or something.

I guess I am tired of scraping. I know this year is going to get better. Eventually. But it was supposed to be better now. DH isn't the least bit bitter over what his work pulled, but I am. I'm trying not to be because it is far from useful to feel that way. It's just that when you think you've finally come to the light at the end of the tunnel and then you find out its just an emergency flare and you're only halfway out.

I know I'll feel much better when I can start contributing more than $10 a week to savings again. I'm just letting all the negativity overwhelm me. And that's just no good. I am grateful I had a savings to spend down during this long stretch of no paycheck.

Tomorrow is payday and I know getting everything taken care of will improve my feelings. At least I hope so. I usually have a very positive upbeat outlook and I don't like being Judy Attitudy (bad attitude), I like being Sunny Bunny (good attitude). Sorry, kidspeak at my house. Rudy Attitudy isn't around yet (he's got bad manners and an attitude).

I am also exhausted. My sleeping pattern is way off.