I forgot to mention that the $218.18 refund finally showed up from BoA yesterday. It was part of the payment I made to the VISA yesterday of $1500. I can't wait until next Friday when I can send them an additional $1000. I wish they'd hurry up and post the payment I made at the bank yesterday. It probably won't post until Monday. It was after 3 p.m. when I paid it and if it's after 3 p.m. they don't post it that day, though they do credit it that day. With everything online, I don't get why they don't, same as I don't get why online banks really "need" that three day transfer between banks. It disappears from your account right away and then it's just in limbo. I think it's just an excuse to get out of paying a few days' worth of interest. They can certainly accept and add to your account a credit card purchase instantly. To me it should all be the same thing.

I went grocery shopping today and bought milk and produce. I also got a pound of sundrops. They are like M&M's only made without artifical ingredients or food dyes. They are colored naturally. My son was happy. I was happy to find them. They have them in the bulk bins at Fred Meyer. That pound should last a few months.

I spent $19.41 at one store and got a reciept that had a coupon for $4 off a car wash. It's normally a ten dollar car wash so that is a good price. I also could have my choice of very cheap pizzas, half off at the pita place, and half off at the pho place. Not that I'd use any of those, but I'll use the car wash coupon. In warm weather we wash the car ourselves but it's been in the thirties with whipping wind for months and the car is filthy so I'll definitely take it in. I'll probably wait until DH comes home. I really hate matching up the tires with those automated tracks.

I went to a second store and paid $18.43 for a large picnic ham. Does anyone have a good soup recipe made with a ham bone? I don't want anything with beans, though. My kids have textural issues and I don't like them. Pretty much any veg except parsnips, turnips, and rutabagas are a go, though. I'd like to be able to stretch the ham as far as I did the chicken. I know I can use diced ham in omelettes or breakfast casserole and the kids will eat it in sandwiches, too, but soup goes over really well here when it's this cold.

I can't find what I did with the receipt, I might have dropped it, to the other store, but it was $21 and something. I bought cans of organic chili and beef stew there. Everyone is feeling under the weather. I have plenty of food made/planned for the next two days for dinners. But if the kids get sick of them they'll have another option and I can freeze the other stuff for next week sometime.

I added $3 in ones to the laptop fund today and $2.16 in change to the coin jar. I found a quarter on the floor at the check out of one of the stores.

$432.94 beginning laptop fund balance
$+03.00 amount added
-----------
$435.94 ending laptop fund balance

I love it when the first payday of the pay cycle gets here and I still have money left in the account. That isn't always easy because that final paycheck of the cycle stretches across three weeks instead of the normal one. I had $100 left so I transferred that to ING to be added to the Emergency Fund. That makes $6,231.35 in the EF at ING. I also transferred some money to be held there that isn't part of the EF. It's part of what I call my holding tank.

The holding tank is for short term savings. I just started it. It will have things in there that are paid bimonthly or every six months. I transferred $100 in there for property tax. I'm not sure what my property tax for the year on the old house is, because they still haven't sent out the paper work, but last year it was just over $1000, so I decided to go with $1200 and put $100 a month aside. I didn't do it in January, but I'm not worried about it. We'll catch it up one way or the other. Maybe from the safety net if we have to. That's what it is there for. But more likely we'll just pay less on the VISA in April.

Also in the holding tank is $6.30 for garbage (I budget $50 a month and the bill is bimonthly and was less than that, but I pay garbage pick up for the old house (that will end soon) as well as garbage pickup here. So I'll save the extra and add it to when the bill for here comes due. Any extra will carry over and just build a cushion for garbage when we have to make dump runs from the old house.

I also put $80 in the holding tank for water/sewer at the old house. It's paid bimonthly and I think it's only $72 per month, but I can't remember, it might be $76 so I built in some cushion. And I put in $17 to go towards the HOA dues that will be due in July. So altogether the ING holding tank has $203.30 in it and the total amount of money in ING is $6,434.65.

As for the safety net, it has $1,068.65 in it. We used $1000 of it to pay some medical bills off.

Other than all that out of today's paycheck I paid:

$1500.00 to the BoA VISA (will pay more next week)

$400.00 to put back in the safety net that I used yesterday to pay on the Master Card

$51.91 for phone out at the old house (still hating on Comcast for that amount)

$65.55 for cable internet

$43.70 for garbage

$490.75 for the car payment

$60 for DD six week allowance ($10 a week)

$36 for DS six week allowance ($6 a week)

$100 for groceries

I will pay out $90 for physical therapy Monday and that will leave me with $116.56 in the checking account until next payday.

Other than that I added $2 to the laptop fund and $1.06 to the coin jar.

$430.94 beginning laptop fund balance
+002.00 amount added
--------------
$432.94 ending laptop fund balance

I finished reading America's Cheapest Family by Annette and Steve Economides. It was interesing enough, but the book is pretty dated at this point and a lot of the ideas won't work for our particular situation. A few of them will, so I walked away with something. I think for the beginner, new to trying to be frugal it would be a good book to read. (Not as fun or entertaining as Amy Dacyzn's Tightwad Gazette, though). I also started and finished reading Live Well for Less than You Think by Fred Brock. It was okay. Again, for anyone living the frugal lifestyle for a while it didn't really have all that much to offer, but it was a bit more current than the other book. And the newly frugal would learn a lot for it.

I'm about a third of the way through Jean Chaztky's From Debt to Wealth on $10 a Day: Pay it Down. This one is a bit more relevant to me, but even so, it's got several things I've heard before. Still, I really like the writing style and the way she presents things, so I think I'll definitley get something out of this book by the time I am finished.

DH finally called BoA again tonight and they had no record of the previous phone call asking for the refund. Yes, BoA, your customer service leaves a lot to be desired. This time he wrote down the name of the person he was dealing with so we know who to complain about if the refund isn't actually processed this time around either. Supposedly it will be here in 2 to 5 buisness days, but I am so not holding my breath. It should not be this hard to get my own money back.

He also looked up the names of therapists on our medical plan. There are quite a few, thankfully, and one of them seems quite specifically tailored to my son's problems and he is within walking distance of where we live. Of course we will wait and see what the pediatrician has to say, but he won't be seeing her until March 17 because he also needs to get his shots for turning 11 which he doesn't do until the 13th and we didn't want to do two medical appointments.

I really don't much care for the new insurance program we have. When DH started this job it was a $500 deductible per person and $1500 per family. Now starting in March it's $1250 per person and $2500 for family. That's a lot of appointments before they even kick in anything. Even if I do end up having to get that surgery this year, I doubt we'll have enough in medical expenses to itemize. We'll certainly hit the deductible, but we won't get the 7.5 percent.

And I'm pretty sure that the deductible we've been paying since he started working there is going to start over in March with the new health plan and not put in anything we've paid up to then, which really bothers me. It's going to put our debt repayment back by months. I wonder if it's too late to do the COBRA plan from his job that ended in October. It's actually be cheaper and cover more.

My mother says if necessary we can stop paying her the $1000 a month we are repaying her on our loan to her, and just do the $300 a month we give her for utilities if we need to to pay our medical. That's the last thing I want to do, but I guess it's a good thing to at least have it as an option.

I took my daughter to the library after picking her up from school and we checked out some books today. I got the one mjrube94 was talking about yesterday by Jean Chatzky about paying your debt down $10 a day and another one by her, America's Cheapest Family and Live Well on Less Than You Think. These are for what I call "furthering my financial education." I also picked up a couple of novels. I rarely read novels anymore unless I steal them from daughter's library pile (the last few have been werewolf and zombie books for some reason, but turned out to be excellent).

This time I got a future apocalypse set in 2017 London and what I'm suspecting is a vampire book (rare blood disorder, yeah, right). They're both teen books, but I find I can usually avoid all the hard swearing in adult books and still read a good yarn that way, so I don't mind. Plus they stick all the adult paperbacks in with the adult hardbacks on the shelves and in the teen section the books are displayed so you can see the covers. I know they say don't judge a book by its cover but I always do. If I can't even see the cover and be grabbed by it I probably won't bother pulling it from the shelf unless I'm in a specific area like cookbooks or finance. I'm certainly not going to do it in fiction.

Anyway I'm halfway through America's Cheapest Family. It's not as good as Tightwad Gazette but so far it's at least interesting. Not particularly practical in my living situation at the moment, but will be someday when we're in our own house again.

I scheduled a payment last night of $400 to the BoA Master Card for today. I had to take the money out of savings, but I will replace it on Friday, which is payday. It was due tomorrow and I wanted to send a decent chunk, not just the little scrapings that were left in checking. It didn't come out of the EF, it came out of the money we set aside for property tax, so that has to be replaced no matter what. If the due date had fallen one day later I just would have gone to the bank on Friday and paid it in person, but this way works, even if I am temporarily juggling a bit of money.

My husband and I decided we were actually going to be more aggressive on the BoA VISA for the next few months instead of paying off the MC. The BoA VISA is an airmiles reward card and it's only got about $1000 of available credit left. We need to get it down so that there is about $3000 worth of available credit so it's further away from that upper wall. We've never gone overlimit, but I would just have more peace of mind this way. This is because this is the card DH uses to pay for his airfare to work and back every six weeks.

Once we get some breathing room, then we will take the extra money and get that MC paid off. We will also then be able to move the last autopay off the MC and onto the VISA. The goal for the VISA will then be to pay the autopay, the airfare, and the interest and about $50 more than that each month, while we throw the rest of our debt repayment money at the MC. The MC should then be paid off in three months time. The interest rates are the same so it doesn't matter too much how we do it, except once the MC is paid off it'll be one less payment and one bigger snowball.

Actually I should check with the health club. If we can take the monthly fee out of checking instead of having it on a card, then I wouldn't have to worry about moving it from MC to VISA. Most of our autopays are out of checking, but I have Netflix on the AMEX, because that is paid off without fail every month. We usually only buy gas on that one. Health club might do AMEX. I'll have to check. I don't want to be charging anything on the the VISA or MC that I don't have to, since the goal there is to pay them off, cancel that MC as it's the non-rewards one, and then only use the airmiles VISA for DH's work travel expenses.

I met with my son's school counselor today. We talked for over an hour. She wants to Vanderbuilt him. I called the doctor today and they'll be sending out the paperwork for that. I don't think he's ADHD, but I know he's OCD and there's other things the evaluation looks for. Bi-polar runs in the family on both sides and though I haven't really seen signs of depression in him, I've definitely seen signs of mania. Combined with his food allergies and his difficulties with peers, she thinks he probably needs therapy regardless of what the test says. I agree. I've suspected for a long time that this is the road we were headed down with him. I put a call into DH to see what our new medical insurance covers in the form of counseling. I can't find where he put the medical booklet.

The local grocery store had whole chickens on sale so I went ahead and picked one up today. It cost $5.15 and is between five and six pounds. We will roast it tonight, make chicken quesadillas and chicken fried rice with the leftover meat, and make soup stock with the carcass. I love getting 3 or 4 meals out of one base item. It's a pretty large chicken. Without DH here, I might have enough leftover meat to make enchiladas or Tex-Mex chicken and rice as well.

I love making roast chicken. I have a very simple recipe for it. Rub it with extra virgin olive oil, then sprinkle it heavily with basil, oregano, salt and pepper. Simple, but so good! For variation I will rub it with crushed garlic before rubbing it with olive oil, but I only do that when I'm not planning on making Mexican based dishes off the leftovers. I don't like the way garlic clashes with Mexican spices.

Monday of last week DH called BoA about getting a refund on the amount we overpaid when paying off the loan balance of our Gold Star Option loan (which happened, mind you, because of an error on their part). They said it would be in our account no later than Friday. Friday came and went and nothing. Today there is still nothing.

I called DH at work, which I hate to do because his office is always so ridiculously noisy and he is always so busy. He's going to call them again. I can't do it because my name is not on the loan and they won't talk to me. They'll probably say another five business days and then it will probably still not be there. This is making me grumbly because I wanted to use that money on the MC bill that is due on Thursday. Now I won't be able to add that in. Oh, I can do it when it finally shows up, but I wanted to do it on this one.

I wish we could fine the credit card companies when they are late doing something like they do when people are late making payments. A lovely $15 to $30 surcharge every time they didn't follow through on their commitments would be nice. Or charge them the same amount of interest they charged on the loan (6.9% in this case) compounded daily. Might make them less tight-fisted when paying back the people they owe. Or at least get them to do it when they say they will.

I paid out $90 to the physical therapist today. My session went really well and I am almost walking normally again.

I noticed that Verizon did not take out the autopay today. It is supposed to come out on the 12th but when it falls on a weekend it usually comes out the following Monday. If it still hasn't come out by tomorrow that'll be another call for DH to make. He needs to put me on the Verizon account.

I have to go to the store for milk and DD is going to need cough drops, too, (I'll spend around $15 instead of the planned $12) so a bit of that $103 reserve is going to have to be used for that. Not too much of it, though. I should have at least $99 or $100 leftover still by payday Friday for savings.

I added $0.78 to the coin jar today and have five ones to add to the laptop fund.

$424.94 laptop fund beginning balance
$+05.00 amount added
---------------
$429.94 ending laptop fund balance

I broke my no eating out rule today. I made it 15 days, so not too bad. I got a double cheeseburger and drink from DQ for $4.71. It was actually very good. I was afraid I'd be disappointed because usually when I stay away from fast food for a long time it doesn't taste that great, but this did. Not great enough that I'll be tempted back into eating fast food several times a week, though. I'm probaly good for another couple weeks.

So far this month my ING savings account has made $2.37 in interest. I don't add that in of course until the end of the month when they actually add it to the bank account, but I like watching it accumulate, so I tend to check it once a week. I'm not sure what the interest rate is there right now, somewhere just under 1% I think, but it's a heck of a lot better than any of the CU's I bank at which are .4 to .1 percent.

The wind is blowing hard today. I've got flashlights located and lots of blankets ready in case of a power failure tonight. The temp is 45 degrees outside right now. Not too bad, but still, the house will get cold after a couple hours if it does go out, so best to be prepared.

The $50 from the Verizon refund hit the account today. I had thought they were going to send a check, but apparently because we autopay out of our bank account each month they were simply able to deposit it back to our checking account. We weren't supposed to see that until next week sometime.

The $218.18 refund from overpaying the interest on the BoA Gold Star Loan however, which was supposed to be in our account "no later than Friday," did not arrive. Stupid Evil Empire. It will probably show up on Monday. I won't be withdrawing the $50 until Monday anyway so it's not that big a deal. Hopefully it will be there then.

I got my Costco AMEX rewards check today and took it to Costco to cash since I had to run out that way anyway and buy butter. This is the first time I've done this. I've only had the card for a little over a year. It was for $143.61. I threw the 61 cents into the coin jar along with a dime I found on the floor at Costco. The $143 will go into my laptop fund along with the $50 on Monday. I rolled the coins in my coin jar and have $13 for deposit to the laptop fund as well. I need to remember to get penny wrappers because I have a few dollars in pennies but nothing to roll them in.

$218.94 laptop fund balance
$050.00 Verizon refund
$143.00 AMEX cash back
$+13.00 rolled coin
--------------
$424.94 new laptop fund balance

I am halfway there, just have to put the money in the proper CU on Monday.

I had originally planned to put the BoA refund into the laptop fund as well, but have decided to use it on the MC instead because it was originally allocated for paying debt and it should go back to that. It's not like I'm going to buy the laptop before we pay our taxes in April anyway.

I am waiting for the rest of my World Points to hit my account at the end of February and then I will have enough points to cash out for a $250 refund. We have had this card for years and I had never really looked at our points balance before. I didn't even know it had a cash back system, I thought you could just get "stuff." But you can get cash, and we have 25,000 points so I will do that as soon as we can. That money will go to pay on a credit card also, so an extra $468.18 will go towards paying off the Evil Empire between this month and next.

Now for today's meal planning (I think I am going to stop listing prices at the end of February. I pretty much have a handle on the grocery budget now).

Breakfast:
Homemade sausage patties ($1)
Cucumber slices ($1)
Milk (just the kids)($1)
Total: $4

Lunch:
DD
Organic deli meat sandwich on homemade bun ($1.75)
Apple (.50)
Homemade cookies (.25)
$2.50

DS (was sick, ate with grandma)
Free

Me
Roast beef panini with tomato, lettuce, onions, mayo ($3.99) I bought it premade from the store. I was being lazy. Still it is better than McD's
Homemade coleslaw (.25)
Total Lunch $6.74

Dinner:
1 can green beans ($1)
Leftover Meat (me)(free)
Leftover baked potato soup (kids)(free)
Quesadillas made with leftover chicken (free), tortillas, and cheddar cheese (just for the kids) (.80)
Mozzarella (me)(.50)
Milk (kids)($1)
Total Dinner: $2.30

Total food: $11.54

My stomach was rebelling against milk today so I just drank water and had a string cheese for calcium.

I hate it when I don't sleep well at night. It just throws me off for the whole day. Especially when I have a cold. I was just starting to feel halfway decent and today I've been sneezing and having a runny nose like I was three days ago. I'm taking something to make sure I sleep tonight so that I don't go back downhill. I really don't want to have to buy another box of cold medicine to manage my symptoms. It is getting expensive to buy and I don't have any coupons.

Today was a busy day. I had my physical therapy appointment today so that was $90. I will be so glad when my deductible kicks in, but they raised it this year to a ridiculously high $1,250 per person or $2500 per family. Well, I'll definitely make up the bulk of that. The kids have each been to the doctor once this year, but probably won't need to go again this cold season. They will have to get physicals before camp. But mostly it's going to be me.

They did start an HSA though so DH is going to start having them take out $300 a month pretax for that since we easily spend that much on my medical alone and I am likely going to have to have another surgery in the next couple of months. I see a specialist on the 15th. Our out of pocket for the surgery, if I need it, will be about $2000, since it's just a laproscopy and will be done in office as an outpatient. Glad I decided to keep a decent sized EF. We'll try to swing it without touching it, but it's nice to know it's there.

Just once I'd like to go more than a year and a half without a visit to the slice and dice boys. My last surgery was 12/07/09. This has been going on more or less since I was 33. I'm turning 41. That is a lot of surgeries to have. On the bright side I might get my jury duty postponed again, which would be nice, as it's scheduled for a time when DH is supposed be gone for most of it. If I could postpone it for two weeks it would be perfect since he doesn't work when he is home.

We got gas for the car, so that was $38.02. It was running on fumes. It's a twelve gallon tank and it took 11.89 gallons so definitely don't want to cut it so close again. DH has been doing a lot of running around without me this week so I hadn't kept as close of an eye on it as usual and DH doesn't pay much attention to it.

I paid $4.46 on BoA MC #1, the one we paid off, but the last bit of interest came through. I also transferred off the autopayment for our credit monitoring service to the other card so nothing more will be put on that card. It has been put away. Once the second MC is paid off we will cancel it entirely.

DH called today to get a refund of the $218.18 we overpaid on the Gold Star Loan that we paid off last month. They said it will be in our bank account by Friday and to call them back when we get it and they will officially close out that line of credit and will report to the credit bureaus that it has been paid in full and the account closed by us.

I'm trying to get our available lines of credit down lower well before we are ready to buy a new house. Our credit score is at 780, but it says because we have so much available credit it will not go above 800 until we get rid of some of it. I know it'll take a dip first, closing accounts always does, but that is why we are doing it so far in advance of buying a house, to give it time to bounce back up again. The loan line of credit is $41,000 available and the MC is $3000. I think I might have them lower my AMEX limit, too, since it is $15,000 and we never use more than $2000 at a given time with it and we pay it off in full each month. So maybe get them to lower it to $7000 or something.

I spent $35.79 at the grocery store today on organic milk and orange juice (very much a luxury but I like it when I am sick), veggies, some organic deli meat, and the giant jar of peanut butter that's the size of a tub of Crisco.

I took DH to the airport as he flies back to Alaska for work. I won't see him again until the 2nd or 3rd, I believe. I don't remember if he comes home on Tuesdays or Wednesday now. Which means he misses my birthday on Saturday, but then he usually does. He will be home on both my son's birthday and our 16th wedding anniversary in March so that is much more important to me. I will go this week and pick up my two birthday presents on my own, a giant coffee table sized cook book (that I got my niece for Christmas and coveted greatly) from B&N and season 4 of Lost. I have the money set aside. At first I was tempted to just add it to my laptop fund, but decided I really want to have something this year.

Meal planning for today:

Breakfast:
TJ's Crisped Rice cereal ($1)
Milk ($2)
Bacon ($2)
Total: $5

Lunch:
2 Kids
PB&J sandwich (.50) (free homemade jelly from aunt)
PB&H sandwich (.50) (free honey from Mom's bees)
apple (.50)
banana (.25)
hard pretzles (.50)
water
$2.50

DH
Leftover pot roast (free)
Leftover potatoes and gravy (free)
Leftover green beans

Me
Leftover spaghetti (free)
Orange juice ($1)

Total: $3.50

Dinner:
Me and kids
1 can of TJ's chili ($1.50)
1 can of TJ's chicken noodle soup ($1.29)
Can of Green beans ($1)
Oranges ($1.50)
Milk ($1.50)
Homemade cookies ($1)
Total: $8.79

DH will eat at the airport. That is part of his work travelling budget and does not come out of the grocery budget.

$14.29 for the day and there is a bowl of leftover chicken noodle soup so I will have that tomorrow for part of my lunch. With DH gone and work providing all of his meals for the the next 22 days, our meals should cost much less. We should easily be able to hit the goal of keeping it under $20 a day. Probably under $15.

I sent $100 off to ING today to add to the Emergency fund.

$6031.35 ING account
+0100.00 Transfer amount
--------
$6131.35 Total ING amount
$2068.65 Safety Net at local CU
--------
$8200.00 Total Emergency Fund

I probably ought to transfer that $68.65 of the Safety Net over to ING since it makes more in interest there, and I feel comfy with only having $2000 in the safety net, but I wasn't thinking about that when I made the transfer. I'll do it next time I make a transfer.

Made a mini-payment to BoA of $86.16, just to chip away a little bit more at what we owe. We won't get paid again until February 18th. I have $800 left for six days. $450 is set aside for bills that come due between now and then (cell, insurances, storage). $200 is set aside for groceries. $150 is for miscellaneous expenses, like gas or anything I forgot about. Anything left over when payday hits will go to the laptop fund and the EF depending on how much there is.

I should only need to buy milk, fresh fruit and veg. We still have plenty of meat in our freezer, but we will be using the $40 gift card to Safeway to buy meat. Either whole chickens or beef potroasts (or if they aren't too expensive picnic hams). I need something for Sundays for the crockpot.

I am terribly annoyed with The Evil Empire (BoA) today. On Jan 21st I made an online electronic payment to them to pay off the last of the loan interest that came in after I had "supposedly" paid off the entirety of the loan with their "payoff amount." It was supposed to be credited that day, but it never posted and it showed no record of payment pending. Then after that I couldn't even get into the account again for the next couple of days. It kept taking me to the VISA instead.

Finally I was able to get in there and it still showed us as owing that $218.18, so I sent DH to the bank with a paper check to pay it off. He asked them to look it up there and make sure there was no electronic payment pending first, so that we didn't end up with a double payment. There wasn't so he went ahead and paid it. Guess what just showed up today? The electronic payment that should have been credited on the 21st like the website claimed it would be! So now I'm down an extra $218.18 in the checking account. And who knows how long it'll take them to send the refund check. I am beyond irritated.

It's not like I need that extra money at the moment, I've got plenty of cushion in the account, but it's the principle of the thing. Can't these people just do their jobs right in the first place and keep a functional website and have their tellers know what they are doing?

So I still feel like death warmed over so meals for today looked like this:

Breakfast:
Joe's O's cereal for 4 ($2)
Boiled Eggs (free, from chickens)
Milk($2)
Total: $4

Lunch:
2 Kids--
PB&J sandwiches ($1)
Apple (.50)
Orange (.50)
Pretzels (homemade) (.25)
water

DH--
1 can of chili ($1.29)
2 biscuits (.30)
Leftover homemade chicken nuggets (amount taken out earlier in the week)
water

Me--
1 bowl of ice cream ($1)
1 glass pineapple juice ($.50)

Total: $5.34

Dinner:
Homemade chicken noodle soup
--onion (.75)
--2 carrots (.50)
--2 celery stalks (.50)
--parsley (free from plant in yard)
--salt and pepper (.02)
--garlic (.25)
--chicken broth ($1.25)
--half package egg noodles (.50)
Milk ($2)
Leftover chicken (amount taken out previously)
Total: $5.77

Hopefully tomorrow I will feel better and make better food for the family. DH cut up everything for me for the soup and followed my directions for putting it all in the crockpot and it turned out great. We only ate half of it despite everyone having two bowls but me so plenty leftover. Still, it was a pretty cheap food day all in all.

I am tentatiely planning better food for tomorrow but I think I'll wait until then and see how I feel and then post it for the day. I've got two written out, one for if I feel better and one for if I don't.

DH spent $5 on a box of Campfire Girl Mints. I told him they have to last for two weeks at that price. I also bought several vitamin supplements today for my immune system and because of muscle cramps in my calves. Magnesium, potassium, golden seal, echinacea, vitamin C, and fish oil. Spent around $75. I'm rounding because I don't feel like getting up and checking the receipt.

I've managed to catch a cold on top of my kidney infection. It's that awful sort of full head, dripping nose, sore throat, don't want to do anything productive cold. So my meal planning kind of went out the window. We did not get takeaway though, no matter how sorely I was tempted. This makes...16 days I think with no eating out.

Instead I opened the cupboard doors and pulled out chili for the boys and beef stew for the girls. I don't like to do that sort of thing often. I'm not a big fan of processed foods but the chili was from Trader Joe's and the stew doesn't have additives or preservatives so in a pinch it'll do. That was about $7. I also ate ice cream twice today. Not something I normally do, but my throat hurt so much I just didn't care. It's $4 a quart and I ate half of it. Yikes. Oh, well. I hope I feel better tomorrow.

DH spent $25 on a plumber's snake today and used it to clean out the dryer hose. The dryer hasn't been drying properly in ages and after going through three cycles on high heat with one load he figured out it was jammed up. It's twenty feet from the dryer to the outside vent so he bought a 25 foot snake. He got out enough lint to make a cat with. Now it's drying nicely. One thing to look for when we buy a new house is a dryer connection on the outside wall of the house. It was so easy at our old house, you just reached in from the outside and pulled out anything that was there. This house was badly designed when it comes to accessing things.

The final interest payment on the loan posted today so it is officially paid off, unless they pull something like interest on the interest. Darn evil empire(BoA).

My meal plan for Wednesday is basically Joe's O's (like Cheerios, but organic and from TJ's) cereal for breakfast and whatever DH packs the kids for lunch and chicken noodle soup for dinner. I've got onions, carrots, celery, parsley, chicken broth, some leftover chicken, and noodles and they can just go in the crockpot and simmer away for four hours.

I rolled up the rest of the coins in my coin jar, at least until I ran out of penny wrappers. I think there are at least 200 pennies left to do. DH went ahead and took the rolled coin to the CU. It was the wrong CU, but oh, well, I'll get it back tomorrow in dollars and take it over to the right CU, along with the $45 I've squirreled away for my new laptop fund. Come to think of it, there is money in the checking account over there, too. I think I'll add that to my fund as well.

$42.47 opening balance
$63.00 rolled coin
$45.00 squirreled money
$63.47 checking money
-------
$218.94 total laptop fund

I'm about 1/4 of the way there. Yay!

The payment I made online last week for the interest that came through after we paid off the big loan didn't go through and now it's not letting me access it. Every time I click on the link it takes me to our VISA instead. Fortunately the statement came in the mail today so I just wrote out the check and DH took it down to the bank when he picked up DD from high school, so that is taken care of. That was $218.18. So that should see the last of the loan. If they try to slap us with anymore interest charges I will be annoyed. The previous amount was supposed to be the payoff amount so that this wouldn't happen in the first place.

Other than that we spent no money today, although we did spend $133 last night on new clothes for the kids. My son has grown two inches since school started and my daughter has lost enough weight that all of her clothes are super baggy on her and she was constantly hiking her jeans back up. Not too bad for ten articles of clothing.

Meal planning for tomorrow:

Oatmeal ($1)
Eggs (free, chickens)
Milk ($2)
Canned peaches ($1)
Total: $4

Lunch:
2 Kids--school
PB&J sandwiches (homemade bread, homemade jelly) ($1)
Carrots (.50)
Baggy potato chips (.50)
Baggy Natural Cheetos (.50)
Yogurt ($2)
Water

2 Adults--home
1/2 a leftover cheeseburger (free)
2 leftover chicken legs (free)
oranges ($1)
leftover potatoes (free)
Yogurt ($2)
Water

Total: $7.50

Dinner:
Spaghetti ($1)
Homemade sauce consisting of one onion (.75), 2 cans tomato sauce ($1.50), 1 6 oz can tomato paste (.50), 1 can diced tomatoes ($1), garlic (.25), and herbs (.50)
Homemade Texas Toast ($1)
Milk ($2)
Dinner: $7.50

$19 for the tomorrow's food, not bad. Probably the best since I started keeping track.

I paid Mom $1000 on the medical loan I took from her today. I paid off the AMEX today ($1000 out of the paycheck and $500 out of the EF, leaving EF at $7,600) and the last bit of interest on the loan I paid off earlier this month hit our account so that was $218.18, which I also went ahead and paid so we should now be able to close that account down and have it marked as closed and current on our credit report. Yay.

That leaves us with $21,021.22 on the VISA and $4540.42 on the MC and that's it for our unsecured interesting bearing debt. That's a total of $25,561.64 left to pay. If we can manage $2500 a month in payments (which should be no problem) we can have it paid off by the end of the year. I think the MC will be paid off by the end of April. Wow, that light at the end of the tunnel just keeps getting brighter and brighter.

So this leaves us at:

$92,000.00 (no interest loan to Mom)
$25,561.64 (VISA 11.4% and MC 12%)
$22,053.10 (Mortgage 5.5%)
-----------
$139,614.74 Total

I looked up how much was left on the car after Wednesday's payment went through and it is $16,640.84. At the current rate of payments it'll be paid off 7/21/14, but once we get the credit cards paid off we will be doubling the car payments so I'm thinking more towards the end of 2012, probably.

I didn't make it to the pharmacy before it closed yesterday, so went today and paid $19.59 for 2 RX and then we went to WalMart to get non-prescription meds at $56.68. 4 boxes of nasal spray, 2 big bottles of antacids, and 2 mega packs of Dayquil/Nyquil gelcaps. Hopefully that will get us through the rest of the winter. I'll have to pick up more Sudafed at some point, but that can't be bought in bulk without a doctor's note so that comes a bit at a time.

Well, DH and I talked it over and we decided to go ahead and pay off the AMEX card on Friday. I'm still getting the hang of the new budget and the higher income, but it looks like I'll be able to come up with $1000 of the payment just out of the paycheck and only have to dip into the emergency fund for the just under $500 of the remainder. I feel a lot better about that. I really didn't want to take the whole amount out of the EF. It'll be a little tight doing it this way, but I'm used to living on tight. And anyway, it'll make things less tight from the end of February onward.

The car payment came out of checking today so that was $490.70 for that and then I bought some groceries today at $37.47. We also filled up the gas tank for $37.09. There was no other spending today.

We are on day ten of no eating out. Today was the first day that the kids really fussed at me about it. Their dad came home today and in the past we have usually gone out on that day. Instead we made spaghetti and hamburger for dinner. We had a little leftover hamburger from last night and then did up another pound. Between the milk, spaghetti noodles, the tomato sauce, the herbs, and the hamburger it cost about $8 to feed the four of us. Going out to Olive Garden like the kids wanted, even with drinking only water and having no dessert, would have cost us between $65 and $100 with the tip. Pretty darn good savings, methinks.

I made homemade blueberry jelly with my mother yesterday. We took frozen berries from the freezer. The berries were free since they came off her bushes this summer. So just a bit of money for the sugar.

Planning for tomorrow, breakfast will be eggs, milk, toast with jelly, and bacon. Eggs are free-ish from the chickens and toast is pennies because I made the bread myself. Bacon is $3.99 a pound for the nitrate free kind and we will go through half a package. So breakfast will be about $4 with the cost of the milk. Not bad. We're really starting to get the cost of breakfast down.

Lunch will be club sandwiches all around to use up the rest of the bacon and the nitrate free lunch meat that has one day left on it. Plus we've got 3/4 of a tomato that needs using up and a bit of lettuce. The kids don't mind eating them cold in their lunches, but DH's and mine will be delightfully warm. I use Dijon mustard on mine instead of mayo for a bit of a kick. We've got some carrots that need using up so will add that and some bananas that have just ripened for fruit. We drink water at lunch. Not quite sure on the price range for that, I haven't sat down and done the calculations yet.

Dinner will be baked chicken ($4.29), green beans ($1.50), potatoes and gravy ($1.00), corn bread (.79 Jiffy mix) and oranges ($2.00) and milk ($2.00). Mom will be eating with us so that will feed five and we should have two pieces of chicken and some potatoes and gravy leftover for later meals. Possibly some cornbread but probably not. So $11.58 plus leftovers, not too bad.

Tomorrow is my second baking day of the week so I will make buns, biscuits, cornbread and possibly pumpkin bread if I still have the ingredients and the time (I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow so may not have as much time as usual). I think I saw a can of pumpkin kicking around last time I went through the cupboards. I think I'll try to talk DD into making sugar cookies tomorrow after school if she doesn't have too much homework. She's got it down pat and they are so good.

I keep going back and forth on whether or not I should take some money out of the EF and pay off the AMEX card or not. It's currently got a balance on it of $1,475.68 and the EF is at $8,100, so if I did, that would drop the EF to $6624.32. The EF is only earning 1.1% or whatever ING is at the moment and the credit card is at 15.24%.

In the past the interest rate never mattered because I never had a balance on it. We only used it for gas at Costco and paid it in full each month. When DH got laid off and then hired by another company, we had to go several weeks without a paycheck (even though we knew one was coming and we'd be okay in the long run) so we put about $2000 worth of expenses on it. We've been carrying a balance on it since November and it's been driving me crazy.

I think the problem with taking money out of the EF for me is that it finally has one month's income in it. I don't ever think I've had it at one month's income before. (This is not, by the way, the same as one month's expenses). That was something I tried so hard for in the past, but something always came up. And logically, I know we'll have the AMEX paid off by the end of March without dipping into the EF, but my brain keeps going pay it off, pay it off, pay it off NOW.

Conversely, I know that if I do pay off the AMEX now, we can get the EF back up to $8,100 by the end of March and save ourselves two month's worth of interest payments. This really should be a no brainer. If I do it, we'd be down to only having two credit cards left to pay off and it would make payments and budgeting a lot easier come next month. It would leave us with one card to aggressively pay down and one card that was slowly going down until the other was paid off.

I feel like I'm on a merry-go-round.

Bills paid today:

Water bill (4 months)--$302
Physical Therapy--Medical--$90

Was very tempted to pick up a double cheeseburger after PT today. I did not, though it was touch and go there for a bit. It helps that they've changed the road there so you can't easily get to the McD's without making a huge, inconvenient loop several blocks out of your way. We ate up all our leftovers for breakfast, lunch, and dinner today, as planned. I need to sit down and figure out what dinner is going to be tomorrow. Maybe chicken.

So I sent off $1,438.00 electronically to pay off Master Card #1 in full. I also paid $300 on Master Card #2. I set it up last night so that it would come out today and I'm glad I did now since the BoA website seems to be down but good. It's payday so I will be paying some other bills today, but that will be later after I go to the doctor ($20 co-pay). For now I'm just excited to have a card paid off.

$144,460.08 Debt
-001,438.00 MC#1 payoff
-----------
$143,022.08 Debt Left

I won't adjust for the other credit card or the mortgage I paid a couple days ago until new totals have been posted to those accounts.

Well, I did it. I went down and paid off the Gold Star loan in full at Bank of America. They were kind of impressed. The teller was like, "Wish I could do that," grumble, grumble, sigh. I messed up my numbers the other day and had to go back and correct them.

$182,783.95 total starting debt (minus car)
- 38,323.87 payoff amount
-----------
$144,460.08 total ending debt (minus car)

Take that Evil Empire of Creditors! It feels marvelous to see such a huge drop like that!
That leaves just $29,133.45 of interest bearing unsecured debt left and I really do think we can pay that off this year if we are careful with the budget. 18 months tops if we leave a little more wiggle room. On Friday I get to pay off Master Card #1 in full. Yay! Then the money that has been going to pay that will go to the next credit card we will pay off.

On my quest to not eat out I had leftover potroast/sweet potato hash in a tortilla and for dinner tonight I am making salmon patties from canned salmon in the pantry (just egg, green onions, garlic, salmon and a bit of salt and pepper). Easy peasy. I'll probably open a can of green beans and a can of corn as well.

I found 2 more pennies in the snow in the parking lot at the physical therapist's office. That makes $5.05 this month.

Wrote a check to the physical therapist for $90 as well. That is the only money I will spend today.

Edited to add: I forgot about the fact that I paid the mortgage today as well, so $375.86 was also spent for that.

Well, today I paid Mom $1000, bringing the amount owed to her to an even $100,000. That means so far we've paid her back $58,000 in six years or so. So much progress has been made on this debt. I know that $100,000 still sounds overwhelming, but it brings us down to having exactly 100 payments left. In eight years and four months that debt will be gone. Sooner if we find a way to add another $100 per month to it.

It's been a really long road, but I'd rather be in debt to her at 0% than the hospital and its 18% interest. I really do want to find a way to dig up another $100 a month though. If I could add just that much more to each payment it would knock down the time left to seven years and seven months. I know that Chris will probably get raises between now and then, he gets them every 18 months to 2 years, so we'll definitely be adding more money to debt then. At least his job is secure and thriving.

I also sent off $500 to credit card debt today and wrote out the check for property taxes which I'll drop by the courthouse tommorrow when I'm down town.

I cleaned out my purse today and found $7.22 in ones and coins so added that to my coin jar.

$87.94 starting amount
+ 7.22 amount added
------
$95.16 ending amount

Tomorrow when I go to the courthouse I am going to deposit at least the ones I've been saving, which is $49, and pick up some coin wrappers and ask them if they have a counter that I can just bring a jar of coins in and put through or if they need to be rolled. Normally I'd just roll them, but there is just so much change that if I don't have to, I'd just as soon not.

Not too much going on around here this week. I sent off $2600 to credit card debt, paid off my surgery debt of $863, and paid the phone bill for the old house (have to keep the line for the security system).

The most excitement I had was chasing three ducklings and one chick who refused to go back into the chicken coop after their airing. It took three of us to catch them all. It's a far sight harder catching those ducks now they weigh two pounds then it was when they could fit in the palm of your hand and only had a bathtub to race around instead of a yard.

I've finally gotten a medication that seems to be killing this sinus infection I've had forever and am feeling a little better. At least I'm able to breathe through my nose again which does wonders for my ability to sleep through the night. I have been eating out too much though this last week when I was feeling miserable. I was getting the cheapy fast food meals which was better for my wallet, but not great for my health. I did eat up the pre-cooked frozen meals first though at least.

Because of the eating out I had $8.46 in change to add to my change jar. No, I still haven't gotten around to taking it into the bank.

$79.84 starting amount
+ 8.46 amount added
-------
$87.94 ending amount

I think tomorrow I will feel good enough to start cooking again so my goal is no more meals out for the rest of the week. One of the nice things about being so sick was that I did manage to get off Pepsi. My soda habit was getting expensive again and even if I was drinking the Throwback instead of the stuff with high fructose corn syrup, pop is just never healthy. I can already see improvements in my sleep pattern and in my skin tone, both of which always suffer from the combination of caffeine and that much sugar. I think I will start adding the $15 a week I was spending on soda to my EF. And that's about it.

Yesterday was payday so I sent off $1200.00 to the credit card and the autopay for the car payment came out of 490.75 and we are down to having three years left until the car is paid for.

I did a bit of grocery shopping, not a lot, just for things like milk, tortillas, bananas, sour cream and scallions. They also had a special going where if you bought one beef roast you got the second one free along with a five pound bag of potatoes. Now, it wasn't really a great sale. You paid about as much for them as you would have if you'd bought two roasts on a regular sale, because they jacked up the price of the first roast you had to buy to get the rest of it free. It was still a good deal, but definitely not truly "free." But accepting that, the potatoes truly were free. Since I want to make baked potato soup tomorrow and we always are making pot roasts in the crockpot it felt like an acceptable sale for our needs.

When I got up this morning I assembled all the ingredients I would need to make dinner and put them in the crock pot. I've been devouring a blog on slow cooker cooking that Monkey Mama linked to a few days ago, and she had a recipe on there for orange chicken. Orange chicken or pineapple chicken is pretty much my all time favorite "fast" food from the polynesian takeaway place we have here in town. But we don't eat there anymore because of T's allergies. It's full of all kinds of chemical goodness so it's off the list of places we can go to and with us cutting back on going out anyway, we just haven't been there in ages.

I made a lot of changes to her original recipe for orange chicken: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2009/09/slow-cooker-orange-chicken-recipe.html

And basically ended making my own version with what I had on hand. It turned out perfectly and I was completely thrilled, because it tasted better than the takeaway place and cost about half as much to make from scratch.

I didn't have any frozen OJ in the house so I substituted frozen pineapple juice.

Here's my version of Pineapple Chicken. I doubled her recipe because I wanted to make some for the freezer as TV dinners.

3 pounds chicken wings
1 cup of flour for dredging
2 tsp kosher salt (her 1 T was too much for me to even think of putting in, especially considering I'd have had to double it)
1 12 ounce can pineapple juice concentrate, thawed
6 T brown sugar
6 T ketchup
2 tsp apple cider vinegar (I didn't have balsamic)
olive oil

Dredge chicken in flour and brown in a bit of olive oil, just long enough to make sure the flour sticks to the chicken. Dump the chicken in the crock pot. Mix all remaining ingredients in a bowl and then pour over chicken. Cook on low for 6 to 8 hours. I pulled mine out at about 7 hours. I had a couple little containers of sesame seeds so I dumped some on my portion because I like them.

I had some frozen, cooked brown rice in the freezer so thawed that out and warmed it up and ate it mixed with the sauce and chicken. Added canned green beans for a veg. A good meal all around and there was enough left to package up 8 TV dinner meals for the freezer.

I really like cooking in the crock pot. It's nice to make something in the morning when you have energy and have it ready for you in the evening when you don't. Or even to do it before you go to bed and have it ready for you to deal with in the morning. I like cooking once and having enough leftovers for several meals down the road. It saves energy, it saves time, and it seems to save money as well.

I didn't really feel like dumping out my bank today, so I don't know how much is in there at the moment, but I did empty my purse today and gathered up all the loose change and one dollar bills.

$ 8.00 in ones
+ 8.59 in coins
--------
$16.59 in the coin jar

Tomorrow I'll take the time to shake out the bank and see what's in there and add it to the total. I know there's some loose change floating around on my dresser and night stand, too, so when I declutter those I'll add that amount in as well.

The kids have been wanting pizza really badly the last couple of days and have been begging for Round Table pizza and I almost gave in to them today because it was payday and hey, it would be easy. Plus it's one of the few restaurants my son can eat at with his food allergies.

The thing was that there was plenty of time before dinner to start mixing dough in the bread machine and we had two unopened packages of pepperoni and Canadian bacon and a 2 pound brick of mozzarella. I had herbs and tomato sauce. The pizza pan was even clean. There was absolutely no reason to go out for pizza when I could make a perfectly good one that they would like better at home. The only thing stopping me was lazinesss. I got over it. *laughs* Just one of the things I need to do in readjusting my thinking back to a better way of doing things for financial gain.

So it was 3:45 and I popped the five ingredients I needed into the bread machine, set it on the dough cycle, which takes 63 minutes, and had enough time to run to the bank drive-thru and pay the credit card bill (take that evil empire!) then stop at the grocery store for milk.

They happened to have broccoli (crowns for 69 cents a pound!) and asparagus (for 99 cents a pound) and cauliflower (79 per pound) and a head of cabbage (33 per pound) on really good sales so I picked up those and glanced at the fruit. Nothing really looked good despite the prices and we still had apples and oranges and frozen bell peppers at home, so no need to buy anything even if the green bananas were 29 cents a pound.

I made my way over to the fish counter to see if they had anything on sale. They had wild Keta salmon $4 per pound if you buy the whole fish. They filet it for you right there and since the counter was devoid of customers I didn't feel guilty about taking the time to do it. I ended up with four pounds of usable fish for $20 which works out to $5 per pound after all the discards are taken out of the original five pound fish. Not bad for what will amount to six meals worth of salmon.

Nothing else was on sale and I have plenty of meat in the freezer so that was all I bought. Between the milk, veg (I bought a lot of veg, we eat a lot) and milk (organic), I spent $48.74.

I got back home to my mother saying the bread machine had just dinged (ha, timing!) So while my son and I divided the dough and put two balls in the fridge for later this week and started stretching out the other one, my daughter preheated the oven and shredded the cheese. We added the sauce to the dough, sprinkled on basil, oregano, and thyme, added cheese and the meats and by the time we were done the oven was warm.

With everyone pitching in it didn't feel like a huge production making it, we all had fun and instead of paying $30 for a large pizza, we'll end up with three pizzas for the same price of on hand ingredients we would have paid for the other. I used to do this all the time. I used to be good at it. It's coming back slowly but surely.

I can't believe it's been over a year since I've made an entry here. I used to be so good at this. Well, it's not because I've been piling on more debt. Quite the contrary. When I first started this blog we were $250,000 in debt due to medical bills (which was $150,000 of the total), mortgage, and credit card debt from all the money spent on meals out when I was far too ill to cook (which believe me, really adds up over the course of three years in and out of the hospital).

Where we stand today?

$103,000.00 left of the medical debt
$ 25,254.32 left on the mortgage
$ 70,000.59 credit card debt
-------------
$198,254.91 total debt

$51,745.09 is how much we have paid off since April of 2006. The $103,000 is a no interest loan from my mother. The mortgage is at 5.5% and the credit card debt varies from 12% to 18%.

Because that debt mountain is still so very high and because things have changed dramatically in the last year, we have decided to sell our house. My father went into a nursing home earlier this year and my mother, who is 70, simply can't get on like she used to. My oldest sister had been living with her for a couple of years but had finally gotten back on her feet again and moved out earlier this year. This left my mom alone in a seven bedroom house, and since she had fallen twice this year, I did not like that.

So we all sat down and talked about it and we decided we'd move in with my mother and take over making sure everything got taken care of. So, we'll be paying all the day to day living expenses for everyone (electric, gas, water/sewer, garbage, groceries, phone, etc.), but no rent. We'll be saving on gas because we won't be driving 50 miles every time we need to do something in town. And I'll have peace of mind.

When we sell the house, we're going to wipe out our debt with it. It may be a while though, because we have to repair a lot things and repaint and replace the carpets. And the market isn't great, but we're not looking to make some big profit off it. Right now I'd be happy to walk away with enough to pay off the mortgage and all the credit card debt, even though it's worth more than that. I just want a clean slate, and the only person I owe anything to to be Mom.

So that's where I sit at the moment. I'd really like to get back into the habit of blogging again, because that saving mindset comes into my thought process much more rapidly when writing about it is a priority to me. Besides that my goal for the month of February is going to be to start building up my Emergency Fund/Safety Net once again. It's been sorely neglected.

So, it's been a little over two months since I last posted an entry. Things have really changed so much for us in that time period. DH was given yet another raise of $50 per day with the new contract. This puts our income at a level I never thought I'd see while we were still in our 30's.

The raise did not go into effect until this month, so we won't hit $117,000 for a yearly income this year, but that's what it'll be next year. I cannot even fathom this amount of money. I know there is a huge chunk of that going for taxes, but our liveable income has gone up so far in the last 8 months it's almost ridiculous.

The first thing we did was raise our 401K by 1%. I'd like to do more but we have to buy a new car and until I know what the payments will be I don't want to do anything more.

If all goes well, by the end of the week we will be the proud new owners of a fully loaded 2006 Ford Escape Hybrid with 21,000 miles on it. We have $2000 for a down payment and will be financing the rest.

I'm currently using my mother's car because I'm afraid to drive mine. Especially after an $805 car repair to my '92 Crown Vic that still didn't fix it all the way, I'm not putting anymore money into that car. And Blazer needs the transmission fixed and I just don't want to spend that kind of money on a '96.

We've made some large purchases so far this year. The first was a new couch that seats six and came with an ottoman for $1387.94 which included delivery. The old one has been moved into the playroom which never had one before and is horribly broken down and offers no support at all. It took us several months to save up for that.

Then last month we bought a new TV with my husband's yearly safety bonus. We spent a lot of money on that, but I figure it's a long-term investment for us since we don't go to movies or out to do anything much (besides eat) entertainmentwise. We just watch movies from Netflix. So we got a big screen HD plasma from Costco and it's fabulous. 50 inches. $1300.07.

Our entire tax return of just over $3600 went to pay down debt, which we still have far too much of. I'm currently working on making up a new budget to reflect the new income.

We will qualify for the entire tax refund coming out in May for two adults filing jointly with two children and when that check comes it's going straight into the emergency fund.

I really wish we had not gotten so far into debt in the past. I know that it was mostly medical debt but when I think that we'd have over $2000 a month from this point on now that wasn't allocated to something if we didn't have debt, it would be amazing. That's $24,000 of net income that could be going into retirement and stocks and vacation planning. Oh, how I wish.

I'm going to try to keep this blog going better now. I need to stay on top of the budget now with the new numbers and a new payment that will be coming into the mix. Other things, our 401K is still above $50,000 and our mortgage is almost down to $30,000, so progress is being made. Always a good thing.

I'm trying to get back into the habit of daily blogging again but when you stay home all day and spend nothing, there's not much to talk about, now is there?

DH wants to save part of the raise towards vacations instead of all of it towards that credit card. My view is that we are saving $100 a month right now for vacations. I think I'll give in a bit on this one, though and start saving $150 a month for vacations and then the rest of it can go to the card.

I know its not the practical or logical thing to do financially, but I also know it promotes marital harmony which actually is the practical and logical thing to do there. So I suppose it all evens out in having a smoother running life.

I find it to be a bit weird not having to have the belt so tight these days. I got rather used to it and I really have to fight hard about letting my guard down completely. Because I want to, but I know that's no way to get out of debt. So I guess this daily blogging thing needs to remain in the forefront of my brain, lest I forget that rather important fact, hmm?

I got shanghied by another website

www.whofic.com called A Teaspoon and an Open Mind and have been off playing with them all week, since I had a cold and didn't want to think about reality. But reality is back and 20,263 words of fanfic later, and an empty spot in my head where a story used to be, I'm back to reality and blogging again.

Oh, I'll still play over there, but it won't be as time consuming. Anyone into Doctor Who and Firefly there is an amazing crossover story called Out of Joint. I usually don't like fanfic crossovers but this one is just done so amazingly well. Especially River and the Doctor, though there was a good bit between mechanic Kaylee and the Doctor's TARDIS. But I digress.

So, bills so far this week:

$1000.00 to medical debt
$1000.00 to Chase (last card)
$ 129.50 to BoA (leftover interest, but now its clear)
$ 9.58 to Citi (leftover interest, now clear)
$ 100.00 to the gas card
$ 200.00 to groceries and toiletries
--------
$2439.08

Otherwise its been a pretty low spend, low key week. We haven't done much since I was getting over the cold.

DH comes home tomorrow, finally. I haven't seen him in a month. There will be some spending as we are going out to eat at a nearby restaurant while we get a new car stereo installed.

I am starting to settle in to this new payraise DH has and I feel so much better about everything. Life has gotten a whole lot easier in the financial ring, but I really want to make sure we maintain our focus on getting out of debt and building up the EF. I am so close to $2000 and then after that I want to build it up to $2600 and that will be half a month's wages saved.

I haven't done much in the survey area this week. Too much time spent writing and reading instead. But I'm pretty close to cashing out again with Global Test Market for a $50 check. I think I need just 50 points to do so. So time to refocus and get on with it.

I've missed being around here and now I need to go and get caught up with you folks!

I haven't spent money in awhile. I never went in and got the new car stereo, I was so tired from fighting of my kids' colds. Sometimes I hate the germ factory (school) and dream of homeschooling again, but I don't have the patience with the younger one and the older one doesn't want to.

Yesterday was payday and $1000 of this check goes to the remaining credit card and $1000 goes to the medical debt. Next week's check will mostly go the remaining credit card.

Well, we've done it. We have transferred all of our Bank of America credit card balances and our Citi credit card onto the debt consolidation loan and they are now reading with a balance of zero. We have one credit card left with a balance on it and it is at 1.99% until October of 2008.

We are going to aggressively pay this credit card down now. DH and I decided we will not start saving seriously for a new car until after this card is gone. We think we can have it paid off by March or April if we throw everything at it as hard as we can.

As soon as it is paid off we will start saving for that car. We will be putting enough aside though to get our current primary vehicle in tip top shape so it will last another two years. And we will do some repairs to the Blazer and try to sell it. I don't know if anyone in their right mind would buy a vehicle that gets an average 16 mpg. It is a luxury version (and no we didn't buy it new) so its possible some dumb 16 year old out to buy his first vehicle might plunk down a few thousand for it cause its pretty and status-y.

Over all it is in decent shape, but the air conditioner needs to be refilled and the 4 wheel drive needs $200 in repairs and I think a new serpentine belt soon.

The only reason we bought a 4 wheel drive was to get out of the mountains when it snows bad, but we've come to the conclusion over the years that when it snows bad it is better to stay put until you absolutely must go out and by then the roads are plowed and the regular car is fine. So it really isn't needed.

I don't even remember why I ever thought it was so urgent to get out of the driveway and out of the mountains to begin with. I don't have an outside job and DH works in Alaska. There really is no real reason to leave during bad weather as we have a good store of food laid up especially in winter time.

Anyway, so if we can get two or three thousand for the Blazer and drop it from our insurance we can throw that money at the last credit card as well. And that is also where our income tax return will go.

It will be nice to get down to medical debt, mortgage, and debt consolidation loan.

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.

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.

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.

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.