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.

My final deposit to the safety net today turned out to be $21.50, as I added an additional $2 in ones, change from a purchase I made today.

$61.81 previous total
+21.50 deposit
-------
$83.31 New Safety Net Total

This brings the grand total in all parts of the EF to:

$1015.81 previous total
21.50 deposit
---------
$1037.31 New EF Total

I found a penny on the counter at the credit union where I filled out my deposit slip. With that penny included I added 32 cents to the coin jar today. If I had been thinking I just would have included them in with the deposit I made today, but oh, well.

DH comes home tomorrow. I rescheduled my massage therapy for my hip to tomorrow and we will be going to the fair on Friday instead of tomorrow. I wanted to give it one more day. As it is, we may end up renting a wheel chair for me at the fairgrounds.

I took my Mom to Costco today and it really did me in with all the walking. I hate this. Before this happened I was walking 60 minutes on the treadmill 4 days a week and 30 minutes 2 days a week. Now I just feel weak!

Anyway, the appointment will be $50 as its only an hour this time. That's a good price for this as most people charge upwards of $70 for one hour.

Still gets pricey, though.

I added $4 in ones and one dime and one nickle to the coin jar tonight after a quick run to the gas station for milk and salsa (the good organic kind). So my deposit tomorrow will be a bit more than my last update said on it said. I'll figure out what it adds up to tomorrow after I deposit it into the Safety Net.

It looks like DH will be coming home for the full shift this time after all, but that when he goes back he will work 3 weeks on, 1 week off, 3 weeks on again. Which means we will wind up with a total of 2 weeks of extra pay instead of one. That's a whole month's wages in our case. That should definitely pay off what is left on the last credit card after the loan comes through and we pay everything off that we can.

Of course, nothing is ever set in stone and everything is subject to change, but it sure would be nice. Then we'd just have to worry about the loan and the mortgages and regular bills. And saving for the new car would begin right away.

I'd like to save $10,000 for a downpayment on a hybrid. And I'm hoping that by the time I have it saved up that Toyota will have put out the Sienna Hybrid minivan. That should leave well under $20,000 to finance and make monthly payments decent.

It would be nice if it all turns out this way at work. Then he'd be home for the back to school shopping. It goes so much faster when he's trying clothes on Tobias and I'm trying them on Rose.

I've been thinking a lot lately on the house I was raised in. I never ever thought we were rich growing up. My Dad was a mill worker and my mother was a teacher. Not exactly jobs that you would think of as wealth building. Yet, my parents saved a lot of money. They paid off their mortgage early, they had paid for cars, we always had meat at the dinner table, and I always had nice looking clothes (usually not namebrand unless I wanted to buy it myself) and nice things.

I remember how much more it seemed like my friends had than I did. Their houses were showcases, while ours was lived in. They had a lot of namebrand clothes and expensive toys and jewelry. And I realize now, their parents had a lot of debt. But they seldom had meals like we did. Their parents spending habits showed up in the food. There were a lot of meals of soup and sandwiches and rice and pasta. When my friends came over for dinner and saw steak on a weekday, how stunned they were.

As an adult I've discussed things with my old friends and know how true it was that their parents were in debt and also that they fought all the time over money. Meanwhile they were taking fancy vacations in rented RV's on a yearly basis. They always liked how calm my house was and how easy it was to be in and that there was space in it to breathe.

Space in it to breathe. Yes. There was. The house I grew up in has 7 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, a living room, a rec. room, a family room, a full kitchen with seperate dining area, a half kitchen, a storage room, 3 finished built in storage crawl spaces. And a basement. On a half acre. Room to breathe and room to play.

I always thought we were poor because we didn't have "stuff." Now I know we were rich because we didn't have "stuff." My biggest memory of the big strike at my Dad's mill was my parents talking about how they were going to get through it. My mother had just retired from teaching the year before. But they had savings. And Mom went and got substitute teaching jobs and Dad pumped gas at night and walked the picket line during the day. And we got by fine. We always had meat on the table, still had nice clothes and toys and a nice house to live in. The only concession that had to be made was no soda pop or potato chips in the house for the nine months of the strike. That's what I remember. We were fine.

During this strike, I saw marriages dissolve, families break up, people borrowing money from the bank to get them through until the strike was over. It was just supposed to last a few weeks. So many people were unprepared. But not my parents and not my family. We were "rich" in what mattered. And we did quite well because of savings and the ability of my parents to work extra jobs.

I wonder how I lost that lesson so badly for so long along the way. Well, life happened, I suppose. But I get it, now with so much more life experience behind me than I had then. My parents never called it an emergency fund. It was just savings. But we had no downshift in our style of living in what was definitely the biggest use of an emergency fund I've ever seen.

That's why, one day I want to have at least six months of living expenses in my EF. Then on to a year. So that if something happens, we will go on just fine with breathing room. But first I am building the first month. That's where it all starts.

Yes, room to breathe. My friends knew how important it was before I hit my first decade. It was a lesson learned by me and forgotten. And remembered again. I want room to breathe.

I added $2 in ones and a handful of change to the coin jar last night.

Money in jar:
$14.50 in quarters
$ 4.80 in dimes
$ .75 in nickles
$ .62 in pennies
$ 5.00 in ones
-------
$25.67 Total

I rolled one roll of quarters and one roll of pennies. I think I will deposit the rolled coin and the ones tomorrow when I go to town to see the chiropractor. They will go into the Safety Net, making it $77.61, and bringing the total EF to $1031.31.

Nope. It just didn't post right last night and when I went to fix it I lost my network and I wasn't at my computer today to fix it.

It was supposed to say in the body:

On that topic.

As in, that's it, then, on that topic. Not that's it on my blog. I decided the topic was way too touchy and removed it. Simple as that. Moving on.

My Lightspeed payment made it out of paypal and into my CU today. So that $10 is added into the Safety Net. That makes the Safety Net at $61.81 and the grand total of my EF at $1015.81.

I took a survey from ACOP today, the first one in months and instead of the usual $5, they were only paying $4 this time. It's supposed to take up to 4 weeks for the check to arrive.

Waiting for the loan deposit to go through.

I went grocery shopping tonight. They were having one of their big sales, where if you buy meat in quantities of ten pounds or more, you get it deeply discounted. I got:

14.1 pounds of turkey legs for $13.95
13.44 pounds of ground beef for $18.55
10.93 pounds of beef ribs for $10.83
10.1 pounds of mixed pork chops for $9.11
2.5 pounds of turkey ham for $4.60

So 51.07 pounds of meat for $57.94, giving me an average cost of $1.12 per pound. Yee Haw, Baby! Now if someone would just have a good chicken sale, I'd be set for a nice long while. Oh, and maybe a seafood sale, too.

Rose and I spent about 30 minutes dividing up everything into Ziploc baggies for the freezer. Except the ribs which were partially frozen and will need to thaw for at least a day. That's okay. I ran out of gallon size Ziploc's anyway and will be doing a Costco run on Monday, by which time they should be thawed enough to seperate and cut up. I'm happy because my meat stocks were getting quite low.

Today was Rose's 11th birthday. It's hard to believe that my little girl is that old. Not so little either. She's just hit 5 foot 2. She started the summer at 5 feet so that's two inches in two months. Ouch. No wonder her legs are hurting. 4 more to go and she'll be as tall as me. She's now taller than my mother. And she's complaining about how all her clothes are too short. $igh. I know what that means. At least it coincides with back to school shopping.

DH called and told me he will most likely only be coming home for a week this time. He needs to train the new RC's new alternate RC. I guess they had to hire two people to replace DH. Seems that's always the way, with him doing the work of two or more people and doing it so well that when he moves on or up they have some serious scrambling to do.

I'm not complaining though. That means an extra $2,625 coming our way, right in time for back to school shopping. I was wondering how I was going to handle that, as I hadn't quite prepared for it like I should have. They can wear shorts and tank tops to school until the weather turns, as long as the tank tops are three fingers wide at the strap and shorts are fingertip length. Rose's shorts are past fingertip length as she favors the Bermuda style length. So that would have given me a month's leeway to scramble some money together. She can still wear her windbreaker, her lightweight and her heavyweight coats since they were all big on her last year.

Tobias on the other hand will need a new heavy coat and several new pants. He's grown 3 inches since January. Fortunately all of his shirts were bought long so they all still fit nicely. And we're good on socks and unders for everyone. I'm sure he'll need shoes, though. His tennis shoes were tight at the end of the school year and he's been living in his sandles. They'll both need boots, but those can probably wait until mid-November, as we don't usually get snow until the 20th or so.

I need a stadium coat or a parka or something this year. That squall jacket I got last year is fine for fall and spring, but no good for snow. It doesn't keep me warm at all once the temperature hits 28 degrees F. That type of coat will be at least $100. Sometimes I wish I wasn't allergic to wool and down, it would be so much cheaper.

I reckon between all the needs we will probably spend around $600. So that'll leave $2000 extra to put on debt, into the education fund, and maybe a bit into the EF. A very good thing. I need to make the effort not to let it get frittered away. DH wants to start going for his BA through correspondence by October or November. That money will get reimubursed through work after the fact but we need to come up with it in the first place.

He's going to run the numbers for me on taxes and make sure with his new day rate that enough taxes are being withheld. And also see about upping the 401K by 1%. I don't think we can until November.

So much running around in my head right now.

Today was the auto deposit to the CU of $10. I transferred that $10 plus 2 cents to ING.

So this is the status of my EF.

$693.98 at ING
+ 10.02 at ING
--------
$704.00
+250.00 Currently at CU #1
--------
$954.00
+ 51.81 Safety Net at CU #3
--------
$1005.81 Total EF

It's official! I've hit the $1000 mark in my EF. Yay, me!

I just need to transfer that $250 back to ING.

I forgot to mention in the Safety Net entry that I went to my mother's today and we went out and picked her two blueberry trees (yes, they are trees, you don't know how tall they are) and her green beans. I ended up bringing home a gallon of blueberries and 2 gallons of green beans. Not bad for an hour of work.

The thing is though, that in three or four more days they will all be ready to be picked again. Oh, well, blueberries freeze and green beans can, so whatever she gives me I will gladly accept. Meanwhile we are going to be eating plenty of produce.

I've got cauliflower about to need to be picked, broccoli (mine bolted) from the neighbors in exchange for some of my zucchini, the aforementioned zucchini, cucumbers, and yellow crookneck squash. I'm still picking raspberries and the occassional strawberry (some of the plants are everbearing, not June bearing), and plenty of herbs.

I've got lots of tomatoes on my one plant that are green. My garlic is just about ready to pull. My potatoes are ready to be dug, and I've got kohlrabi coming out my ears. My bush cherries are getting there, maybe two more weeks and my own little blueberry bush is almost ready to be picked. I've got pears and apples like crazy but they won't be ready until September. I think I will can pears this year.

Imagine what I could be harvesting if I'd been able to plant more than half my raised beds this year? Scary thought.

I don't think I will buy any produce other than corn and lettuce for the month of August. My lettuce bolted the week the temp went up to 105. Maybe I should plant some lettuce seeds, too. I think there's still enough time for it to produce if I do. And maybe get some radishes in.

There are going to be a lot of good meals this week that are veggie heavy that's for sure. And lovely berries for dessert!

I am starting a new little savings log for what I am calling my Safety Net. It is part of my EF, but it will be in an immediately accessible account, so no more drama having to wait 3 days for an ING transfer to go through if I mess up.

I am starting it off with $51.81 and keeping it in the GPCU account. I think for now I will aim for $250 in this account and maybe down the line double it.

For now I will add survey money from Lightspeed as it is set up to end up in that account through paypal anyway, plus rolled coin. Other survey money will continue to go to the main EF at ING.

The Lightspeed money showed up at paypal today so I am hoping it will show up at the CU by Friday. I also have some rolled coin that I can deposit that I was going to send to ING but hadn't done yet.

I spent $15 on gas today because I didn't make it over to Costco before it closed. I still have money on my cash card for gas, like $80 or something, so this was just a careless use of time expense. I'll fill it up on Friday.

Friday is Rose's birthday. I have already bought her one present, a Zelda game, Twilight Princess. And she will be getting her ears pierced and a set of nice earrings with stainless steel posts, but that will wait until DH comes home. I don't even want to be on the same block when she gets them done. That kid can wail when something hurts. Like an air raid siren. I kid you not.

We are taking her to a place that does both ears at the same time, though. And she's the one who wants to do it. Originally we were going to make her wait until she turned 12 but she's so responsible I think that she can handle the cleaning and stuff to avoid infection, without supervision, which was my main concern about her doing it when she was younger. So 11 it is.

She's already wanting to wear make-up but that's a no-go until junior high. Clear lipgloss and pretty nail polish is it until then. Okay, that kind of went off on a tangent.

We got the debt consolidation loan we applied for. The money will be deposited into our account in 7 to 10 business days. We got the lowest interest rate they offered, 8.99%. Monthly payments will be $937. We can pay extra whenever we want to with no penalty, but only the $937 will be automatically deducted each month. Turns out the lowest term they would give on this one was 72 months instead of 60. But since we can pay extra that's not a problem.

We won't have to make any payments for about two months, so I am going to take all that money and put it on what is left of the credit card debt, which should be about $3000.00. Should be able to have that last card gone by end of November, then all we have to worry about is the paying down the loan as fast as we can. It will be very nice to wave bye-bye to the higher interest rates once and for all. 16% was not helping at all.

If I wait to start the new car fund, I will have it paid off by the end of October. Hmm. I'll have to think on that one. Our cars are getting quite old at 15 years and 11 years old. But neither has hit 150,000 miles yet. Still, they both need repairs, the 11 year old one much more so than the 15 year old one. So who knows? Oh, well, I'll get it figured out.

I'm still walking on the railroad tracks and the light is still pretty bright but at least I'm out of the tunnel.

I just redeemed points at Lightspeed today after doing a very large points survey. So that $10 should hit paypal either tomorrow or Wednesday, and my CU either Friday or Monday. Then it goes off to the EF.

I received a product to test Saturday from NFO so I am testing that for the next two weeks. I believe when I originally was chosen for it about six weeks ago, they said it would pay $5. But considering the product and how much there is of it, I'm happy if all I get out of it is the free product. Surveys from them have been very slow since I last cashed out.

Still nothing from ACOP or Pinecone. Nothing new from Y2C. And I'm up to 187 points at GTM after this morning's survey with them. Oh, I should say because of the high number of points for the last survey at Lightspeed, I still have 235 points in my account there.

Oh, I did do a $5 SurveySavvy survey today. It is the first one I have qualified for with them. They say it takes 2 weeks for it to be credited to my account and then when it is I'm not sure what I do. Probably send for a check or else it has to build to a certain amount before I can send for a check. I signed up with them over a year ago and this is the first time I've actually got the invitation early enough to even try to qualify. I'll keep you all updated on how this process goes and whether or not it is a legitimate company, though I've heard good things about them so I assume they are.

Paep, I sent you your referral link for GTM today. Everyone else, I sent them out a few days ago, the day I posted about it, so hopefully you all got them this time.

Read this article here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20039819/

I thought it explained the connection between what is going on with the sub-prime mortgage field and how it is affecting the regular Joe in the stock market quite well.

Fortunately for me the real estate mess has not clobbered my 401K but I know it has gotten to a lot of people's 401Ks.

I was wrong about my checking account. I mean it did have an error in it, but I had totally forgotten about the $500 cushion I dropped in there a few months back the last time this happened. I put it in but didn't include it in the balance, so that it would always be there for emergencies screw-ups.

I was going over all of my notes today and then I realized that all my checks but one have cleared and I still had more money in the account than I should of. Then I found the note about the cushion. So I'm fine.

I wonder if I can cancel that transaction with ING since they weren't due to take it out until tomorrow?

And now for the bad news. Or semi-bad news. I balanced my checkbook yesterday. And I found an error, where I accidently added $200 in instead of subtracting $200.

If I had done it last week like I'd intended, I could have transferred the money from my EF at ING and it would have been there today to cover the error.
But since I didn't do it until yesterday night, that means it won't transfer until Wednesday or Thursday.

So far, there is still $400 in the checking account from checks that have not cleared, but I don't think the float will last all the way until payday on Friday or until the transfer shows up.

Which means I'll be going into my check privilege insurance, which at a bank would be similar to overdraft. For every instance of using this, it costs $13. Not as bad as a bank, but still pretty bad, though.

Well, anyway, I transferred $250 from ING, so that leaves the EF at $693.98. I won't be able to pay it back out of the payday on the tenth, either. It won't get paid back until the 17th payday.

I think I'll ask my mother if she can float me a loan until the ING money shows up. I hate to do that, but she has always said if I needed to borrow money all I have to do is ask. I don't want to go into the check privilege insurance.

Okay, so my major goals for today were to:

1. Create a new budget spreadsheet with the new net amount for September on
2. Create a new temporary savings account spreedsheet for short term saving up
3. Balance my checkbook (yes, the one I was supposed to balance 3 or 4 days ago, can you say procrastinate)

So the good news is that I managed to do all three things today. I like making my own spreadsheets because no software company makes anything that comes near to what I want to have. They are either too complicated, have the most bizarre or stupid categories, or simply the wrong ones, or they just don't do what I want them to. Plus, why spend the money on it when I have the skills to create exactly what I want? Seems silly.

My new budget had 30 items on it and I'm pretty sure I didn't forget anything. I think I also overtargeted for a few items, but that leaves wiggle room and I like wiggle room, you know?

When all is said and sifted, I have a budget surplus of about $300 a month. Clothing and other miscellaneous items will come from out of this surplus. Everything else gets its own category.

The temp savings spreadsheet is for keeping track of things that don't have monthly due dates, like medical, property tax, dues, insurance, propane, water/sewer, etc. I divided my yearly amounts by 12 and then each month I will put that amount away in the temp savings fund, so that when it comes due that money is sitting in savings waiting to be paid out.

I used to do this all the time before the old medical crisis that screwed my life over. I had forgotten how secure having everything laid out before me, little numbers in little rows and columns, made me feel. Instead of being afraid to face the numbers, I now know where each thing belongs. In a way it makes the power of debt not quite so overwhelming.

Of course, it helps when it is all clearly laid out and there is enough money to work with to not be in the red. It helps a lot.

So, DH and I had a long chat last night. And here is what we decided. We're going to take everything on all of the BoA/MBNA cards and put them onto the Clean Sweep program. That's roughly $33,000, but we'll have to take $35,000 it looks like, just for the way it is set up at increments of $10,000, $25,000, $35,000 or $50,000. We can, of course, immediately pay the extra back.

We will not put all of the CC debt on there though. The one BoA card that is nearly maxed out has an offer on it of 0% until June of 2008. So after we clear everything off the BoA/MBNA cards with the Clean Sweep, we will transfer what is on the Citi and Chase cards onto the BoA card. It will be nowhere near maxed out and it will give us a chance to really plow a lot of money into paying down the Clean Sweep as fast as possible.

We are hoping that we can get the Clean Sweep for less time than 60 months. We can pay it at least $1000 a month which would pay it off in less than 48 months. But again, I don't know if that option is something they will allow.

DH is going to call them when he gets a chance. Of course, the offer is in his name so he has to do it. But he's in the middle of training his replacement and working the new job he was promoted into, so things are a little crazy. Hopefully he can get to it soon, though.

My job is to take all the automatic payments that we have going to the BoA card off of it. There are only 2 things, one is my Curves membership and the other is something I didn't even realize we were still being charged for that needs to be cancelled completely. So I will transfer Curves to another card, the one card we manage to pay off monthly.

Some of you may wonder why I keep the Curves membership. It is extremely important for me to keep my health up and the resistance training there helps me to bolster my immune system. Almost dying a few years back has made this a priority for me. And it helps with my stress levels, also. Which can get very high with DH gone as much as he is. So it keeps me healthier and saves my sanity.

Now, I am just waiting for DH to shoot me the final net numbers on the new job so I can make up our new budget. When he gets some time to do it.

...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.

I've received three offers in the mail over the last two weeks to do a debt consolidation. My choices are Clean Sweep through BoA, Chase, or some company I've never heard of.

It's easy enough to eliminate the company I've never heard of. I've gone through the other two and am having a little trouble making up my mind. On the one hand, I've done a Clean Sweep before with BoA and know how it works. On the other hand, the Chase offer is one percent cheaper on the interest rate. But it is also Chase and sometimes they are difficult to deal with.

The majority of my credit card debt is currently with BoA, mostly because they bought out MBNA some time back. BoA is not taking much risk transferring my debt from their cards to their loan. I also have a long history with BoA and even though some of their policies bug me, I more or less trust them.

Chase doesn't hold that much of my debt at the moment, I'm not sure that they would transfer the full amount offered like BoA would, and I don't want half the debt on a loan and half the debt on cards. I want it all in one place with one reasonable interest rate. Plus, some of their policies really bug me.

So I think I'm leaning more towards the BoA one. It's a known quantity.

Counted out my coin jar today and had enough coins to roll quarters and pennies. I also have $3 in ones in there. When I go to town Monday, I'll deposit that and any other ones that show up this weekend and send it to ING with the usual $10 weekly deposit on Thursday. I'm getting so close to the $1000 mark. Can't wait to hit it.

Okay, ladies, I sent out referral links from the GTM survey site today to everyone that requested them. Please check your spam filters and your junk mail boxes.

Paep, I sent you an email from my yahoo account to get your alternative email addy.

Ima (Julie), do you want me to try again to send you a link with your yahoo address or do you have an alternative one?

Today was a good GTM day. They sent out six surveys and I qualified for three. Makes up for nothing yesterday or the day before.

Read this article last night:

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/cc/20070704_credit_cards_fat_a1.asp

I thought it was quite interesting, despite its rather cheesy headline. It makes a certain amount of sense to me. Basically it says that if you use credit cards at fast food places, you tend to order more food than you would have if you only had cash.

But I think that's true with anything. Clothes, CD's, DVD's, software, accessories. If I'm not writing the check out or handing over the cash myself, I get careless with amounts. Or at least I used to.

I've only ever once used a credit card at a fast food place and only because I'd forgotten to go to the bank to get cash first. But it felt so awful doing it, I think I'd rather pull out of line and not buy it, then ever do that again.

Of course, one of my rules is to try never to use credit cards for food purchases anyway, unless on vacation. We did that far too much the three years I was so sick and in and out of the hospital all the time and it really added up. It's been a hard and fast rule since then. Except that once.

Today was the day of the auto deposit of $10.00 to savings. I sent that, along with an additional $27.00 for a total of $37.00, to ING today. That brings the grand total in my EF to $943.98. That's $56.02 to go to hit the $1000.00 mark.

I have about $17.00 in change in my coin jar, but none of it is quite enough to roll any one type. It's all just short of it. But I'm getting close. I know I'll hit the mark by month's end for sure.

I'm close to cashing out at Lightspeed, I only need 65 points and since their surveys are 75 at the least end, that means just one more. Pinecone is still mindbogglingly devoid of surveys right now. What's up with that? Is anyone getting survey's from Pinecone right now? ACOP hasn't sent me anything but qualifiers in two months, and Your2Cents hasn't sent out anything in several weeks. Sigh. Even GTM is slow today.

Which reminds me, I need to get on the ball and send those links out today. Last night I was kind of out of it, still waiting to hear from my friend in Minneapolis. And my email program is being stupid.

Oh, well. I may be using my backup email from yahoo instead.

Today is a no spend day. I didn't even use gas today as we went nowhere. I like days like this, just laze around and do nothing days...okay, I did do dishes and cooked three meals, well, 2 since we warmed up fish and veggies leftover from lunch for dinner, and I pulled some weeds. But other than that...LOL

I forgot, I did do some laundry today as well, but most of the day was spent reading, writing, and I'll watch the two shows I taped Monday and Tuesday as well tonight while I fold laundry. Kyle XY and Eureka. I don't watch much, just that, Doctor Who and Torchwood, but the stuff I do watch I am fanatical about. Well, not fanatical really. Except for Doctor Who. But anyway...

I wrote eleven pages on my book today so I am happy and the next portion is clearly plotted out so I ought to be able to pound out a whole chapter or two this week.

My cold is still bothering me a bit, I am still getting dizzy if I move too fast or bend down to pick something up off the floor. The cough is mostly gone though. Still running a bit of a fever though and have the joint pain still, which seems to have settled in the inside of my hip sockets and behind my left knee, weird place for it. Well, compared to this time last week, its not much of anything, but its not feel good plow ahead conquer the world which is how I'd much rather be feeling at the moment. August is normally my best month of the year. But it is getting better and that is what I focus on.

I am putting off balancing my checkbook. That's the reason for the overly chatty moment here. Sigh. It's not that bad, I just really dislike doing it. Well, I suppose I best get to it.

Today is a beautiful day here in my little corner of the universe. The weather is just right, not too hot, not too breezy. Just a lovely, perfect summer day.

I've got wonderful fresh food that I'm making for lunch. Fresh green beans and cauliflower from the garden, fresh cherries from the fruit stand, raspberries from the yard, and a lovely salmon caught this morning by local native fisherman off the reservation.

The first of the local corn is coming in to the stores and the corn wagons are up, if not yet filled. Should be open for business by next week. And the first peaches and nectarines from Eastern WA are coming over the mountain.

I love this time of year. We eat simply but so well off the bounty of nature's harvest, and it is seldom expensive. That is one of the best things about living in the country and close to the reservation and the farms.

My last payment to the medical debt has posted. The remining balance is now at $145,903.32. YTD interest paid on this debt is $5,628.83. Ouch!

My last mortgage payment, which I made Monday, just posted to my account, so the remaining balance on it is $33,559.10.