I am finally getting around to posting the bills I paid from last week's paycheck.

$910.37 Medical Mortgage
$400.00 House Mortgage
$282.22 Propane
$201.89 Comcast (installation charges on top of cable/phone/internet)
$ 44.58 Garbage (2 months)
$ 71.36 Cell phone
$ 84.00 Herald
$445.00 MBNA MC#1
$110.00 Power
$ 50.00 Physical Therapy
$185.50 Car insurance (3 months)

A fair chunk of change going out, there. Tomorrow is payday again, but not like this one. This is the big one for the month and has a full seven days of wages on it. Tomorrow's pay usually only has one and a half days on it. This time it will be two and a half days on it with the new schedule change, and it will be like that from now on. The first payday will have 4.5 days on it instead of 5.5 days, so the difference is at both ends of the cycle. Then we have one week where he doesn't get paid at all, out of every four.

I'm glad the vacation money is taken care of now. And the association dues, which I thought were due at the end of June are actually due at the end of July, so that makes me happy.

Yesterday was payday. Bills paid were:

$820.00 to BoA Visa
$372.00 to Water/Sewer
$ 88.90 to Citi MC
$ 34.00 to Security system
$ 93.00 to Puget Sound Energy
$ 30.57 to Life Insurance
$ 60.00 to Medical
$100.00 to Gas Card
$ 76.83 to Costco groceries and toilitries
$105.89 to Haggen groceries
$ 72.00 to Cell phone

So quite a bit of money out yesterday. Water/sewer is 6 months. They've switched over to a new computer system and have their elbows up their noses when it comes to billing. Fortunately I've just been keeping the money in account until they got around to billing. It's supposed to be $104 every two months.

Next week will be a rather large payout as well, as propane goes out, garbage, medical and house mortgages go out, homeowner's association dues, car insurance and $200 to Comcast for hooking up the new digital phone, putting in a new cable system for the internet and moving an existing cable to a new location for the telly.

I'm still not a huge fan of having cable telly again. But I absolutely adore cable internet. Makes me happy. I also like having caller ID for the first time. It's not an extra with the new system, it comes standard. I ignore call waiting. I think its rude and always have and I will not use it. Well, unless its DH. That could be an emergency. So I would then. Just have to figure out how.

The PC went belly up this week. I'm not sure if I said that before or not. When DH comes home he will do some tinkering and if that doesn't work we will take it in to 3-D, the local computer fixer people and see if anything can be done. We'll at least retrieve the photos off the hard drive. Then we will be looking at saving up for a little Compaq desktop. Doesn't have to be anything grand or expensive.

Oh, gas prices have dropped again, here. I filled up at Costco yesterday at $2.99 a gallon. It didn't even cost $45 for just under 15 gallons. Last time it was $52! So that's nice. It's also nice to still have over $50 on the gas card.

I need to remember to call and make an appointment to have the steering fluid flushed in the car. It's in serious need and I will try to schedule for next Friday as I will be in town doing all the banking for next payday then. I have a couple more repairs to schedule as well. It seems it's always something, but I suppose when your car is 15 years old, you do what needs doing to keep it on the road. The repairs still aren't more than half a car payment averaged throughout the year, so I think we're still doing good there.

Not much else going on. Oh, I was able to watch Doctor Who Utopia today. Took a good bit of hunting to find a working download, but I finally did. It only aired on Friday in the UK. It'll start airing in the states on July 6. Not sure when the DVD will be out, but definitely not until after it finishes its run on Scifi channel. I'll need to start saving up for that, too.

I found out Torchwood starts airing on BBCAmerica in September. Not sure if SciFi will do the spinoff or not. Well, I've watched them all online anyway. No info on when the DVD of that comes out either, but it'll probably be just as pricey as DW, so I should probably just double the amount I'm putting away for DW.

I think that's about it then, for today. No money spent at all today.

I transferred $16,000 of credit card debt from one of my MBNA cards to my Chase card. It's going from 12.9% to 1.9% until February. There is still almost $3000 left on that card. I have over $2000 worth of room on my Citi card that I can get transferred at 6.9%, which will stay at that rate until November of 2008.

That will leave me about $1000 on the MBNA card, which will easily be paid off before February. Round about the time Chase goes up, I imagine MBNA will be offering me a better rate. That tends to be the way it goes.

Well, today was payday and a lot of money went out today, but bills must be paid and life rolls on.

$1300.00 to Bank of America CC (they own my life)
$ 42.00 to 3 month newspaper subscription
$ 42.01 to phone bill
$ 64.54 to cell phone bill
$ 233.40 to Costco
$ 63.27 WalMart
$ 17.46 Haggen
---------
$1762.78 Total spent

$100 of the Costco money went on the cash card to use for buying gas so that is not really as horrible as it seems. I stocked up a lot of canned goods I am low on and cheeses, part of which I froze.

WalMart was relatively healthy snack foods for the kids, medicine, a reinforced set of garden gloves that will allow me to pull out the trailing sticker plant that is invading my yard from the neighbor's house (their motto: yard, what yard?) a small handheld ratchet pruner and the bigger one you need for pruning limbs on trees and one music CD I had planned for.

I usually get one music CD a month, if I get more in a month its because I lose my discipline and impulse buy more. I did that two months ago, so I am trying to keep a leash on it, even though there are two more CD's I want to get. They'll just have to wait their turns. Music has a relatively important place in my life, having learned to play violin, viola, flute, and piano in my lifetime and having sung in Concert Choir in high school. Music is just that important to me.

Another payday gone and another paycheck spent. Next week is mortgage and more CC payments. Lovely. Ah, well, life goes on.

I sent $10 off to ING today to add to the EF. It's now at a whopping $52.58. We decided to use the $600 to pay on a credit card, instead of putting it back into the EF. I'm just so tired of the debt. Every payment I make comes just one step closer to bringing down the evil empire.

And if push comes to shove the CC can act as an emergency fund. Though my mother said anything up to $500 she could lend us if it was a minor emergency, with no interest so that is why I feel better about putting that $600 against debt.

I will still continue to send the $10 a week to the EF and any survey money will go there, too.

Today was kind of crazy, but it was the last banking day before my trip. I leave Sunday. So today I paid:

$335.29 Property Tax half year
$910.37 Medical Mortgage
$400.00 House Mortgage
$100.52 Citi Master Card
$400.00 BOA Master Card

And I got $1000 in traveler's checks and $70 in cash. I will be taking along a roll of quarters and a roll of pennies from my change jar. My cheapy souveniers are those flattened pennies you get with a design etched onto them. They have quite a few scattered about Disneyland and I try to get different ones each time I go. I have quite the collection.

I am going to try to keep my expenses down to $1400. I am allowing $330 to go on credit card but that will be paid off once the bill comes in. There are some places that will not take traveler's checks even though they are supposed to. I don't know why but they don't. Fortunately the park does and the hotels do. I am hoping not to use the CC at all. With splitting so many costs with my friend it is possible to achieve this. Probable is another story.

I also got out $100 for DH to use the week I am gone. He shouldn't need to use it all but I'm not counting on there being any when I get back. It should cover the two fast food meals a week for t-ball nights, adding money to their lunch accounts and replacement of milk, bread, eggs, etc. if needed. I tried to shop ahead so they won't have to buy much of anything.

Then we got our wifi network system and DH is going to try to get that installed and up and running tomorrow. Lots of money out but all of it planned and saved for so I don't feel bad about it. Maybe a little.

DH's check was supposed to have his raise on it but guess what? It was on the paper statement but not on the electronic deposit. What the H E DOUBLE HOCKEYSTICKS good does that do us, I ask you? Anyway, the extra will be added to next week's paycheck, which means a smaller tax bite out of it since next week's is the two day check. I am so over this company. REALLY BIG SIGH.

So that's me today. I'll try to do one more blog tomorrow before I pack. We'll see. If not, I'll blog you when I get back.

The kidlets have happily convinced Grandma to have an overnight so I am completely free to do what I want tonight. Which means dishes and laundry then at least one episode of 24 and some writing.

I took a $1 survey today and am slowly getting caught up on my backlog of MyPoints.

I paid $1065.95 on one of the credit cards today. Drove to the little branch in the border town 10 miles from my house so I could get them in today. The new road is open now, so crossing back towards the highway is much easier now and takes about 15 minutes less time, going round the closer end of the foothill instead of the farther one. I could have paid them online but I had to stop by the post office there anyway and the BoA website is slow as dirt.

I filled up with gas after dropping the kids off with Mom, since I was in town. I wasn't happy with the price. $2.69 a gallon at the cheap station. I didn't want to go all the way to Costco today so I just went to the Arco. I won't make that mistake again.

I got really irritated at the cashier, who also happens to be the owner or one of the owners. I paid with a $50 bill, you have to pay ahead there, and when I came back in to get my change, he told me I didn't have any. It had only come to $36.95.

This is not the first time he has done this, it has happened a couple of times over the last year and it is always the same man. Last time he said he was trying to be "funny" or at least that was his excuse. It isn't always easy to tell, with his accent. But his accent always gets much thicker when he tries to pull this. I've heard him speaking perfectly good English with a much lighter Indian accent.

I think he was trying to rip me off. I just told him "What are you talking about? I can't understand you. I need change on pump 8." And just repeated myself until he gave me my change, the right amount, too. Don't tell me I don't have change and then give me the correct amount and expect me to think you don't know better. I will no longer be buying my gas there. I wonder how many folks have taken him seriously?

I am tempted to report it but don't have a clue as to who to report it to. The only reason I even went there was I had forgotten he had done this before until he was doing it. What is with people? As if the gas industry isn't trying to rip us off enough as it is, the owners are trying to get in on it now? Not with my money.

I don't usually do this because I like to be a bit more vague over where I live. I am going to this time, since it is not in the city I live in, just the one I was born in. This was the ARCO AM/PM on the corner of Bakerview/Airport Way and Bennet Drive in Bellingham, WA 98225.

It does not pay to make a blogger mad!

Our tax return showed up in our bank account today. This is the fastest we've ever gotten it. Just 3.5 weeks.

I haven't done anything with it yet, but the plan is:

$2000.00 to a credit card
$1000.00 to Vacation fund (but will send to ING until needed)
$ 458.13 to education fund (but will send to ING until needed)

Might as well earn some good interest on those last two things. I am setting up a spreadsheet to keep track of what's in the ING account so nothing ends up in the wrong place.

Well, I added up the numbers today. The real numbers, not just what I think they are from memory. Having that one card at such a high interest rate for so long really hurt us. I am glad it is under that now, down to 6.9%, but wow did it mess us up while it was high.

Credit card totals:

$19,458.14 Bank of America Visa
18,666.97 BoA/MBNA Master Card
+ 5,940.00 Citi Master Card
-------------
$44,065.11 Total Credit Card Debt

I thought it was a lot lower than that, but nope, its not.

$44,065.11 Total CC debt
35,251.24 House Mortgage
-----------
$79,316.35
147,354.13 Medical Debt (Mortgage on parent's house at 5.75%
-----------
226,670.48 Total Debt

Scary number isn't it? But we started 2005 with $250,000 worth of debt, so we have made progress. And we will be knocking off $2000 more when we get our tax return.

And our 401K is at $42,314.20 and we have a meager amount in savings, so even though our net worth is totally in the red, we are doing okay in the retirement department. Thank goodness.

Facing the numbers was really helpful to me. It has shifted my mindset over one more degree. We really have to crack down on the things that waste money. Like eating out, which we still do too much of even though we have cut way back. This is our Latte Factor (even though I don't drink coffee and DH barely does and when he does he makes it himself, and its espresso).

On Monday I am going to the library and finding a good Mexican cookbook and a good Chinese food cookbook. And I am going to figure out how to make our favorite eating out foods at home.

I finished re-reading The Automatic Millionaire last night and tonight while Rose is at basketball and Tobias is doing his Headsprout lesson for reading practice, I will start working through the workbook.

Once I do that, I will probably buy the Finish Rich Workbook, too, but I may not be quite ready for that. I think that one is more into teaching about buying stocks and bonds and IRA set ups and all that while the workbook that I bought is about getting out of debt.

Chase (a card I have now with no balance) has offered me a 4.9 percent interest rate for the life of the loan which I am thinking about taking. I have one card that is at 6.9 percent until March of 2008 and another card that is at 15.9 percent which is a fixed rate air miles card. The 6.9 card loses its rate in March and goes up to 17 percent.

So I think I will use Chase to transfer the balance on the card that is going to go up to 17% and then focus on aggressively paying down the air miles card. The balance on the 17% card is almost $19,000 and the limit on the Chase card is $16,700. We will be taking $2000 of our tax return to pay on that card and with the two payments I have to make between now and then, the balance should be under $16,700, so that card will be empty and then we will cancel it.

I have been wanting to cancel it as it was an MBNA but got bought out by BOA and now I have three cards owned by BOA, which I don't like to have so many from one company. Once it is cancelled I will have one BOA VISA air miles card, one MBNA/BOA Master Card, one Chase VISA card and one Citi Master Card. The Citi card is the one at 6.9% and still has $2000 worth of credit line I can access at that same precentage, so if I need to I will transfer around a bit so I can stay with only 3 cards with a balance on them.

So for now, that is my plan.

One of our oldest credit cards just raised our credit limit by $5000. So now instead of it having a limit of $20,000 it has a limit of $25,000. Are these people nuts? Who in their right mind allows someone to borrow that much money without it being secured? Oh, that's right, Bank of America.

Our other two cards with them, which used to be MBNA, have also raised significantly since BOA took over. One has a limit of $19,000 and the other of $16,000. Ridiculous. They really, really want to lure people into debt.

I think the reason they are so high is that we are finally starting to make headway in getting our debt down and they want to tempt us back into spending to get out balances up higher and making more profit for them. Greedy.

3rd Entry for today

I found a penny on top of the microwave (?) today so added it to my coin jar. Just five to go and I can do a roll.

And Autovantage still sucks, in case you missed my rant 2 entries ago.

2nd Entry for today.

Today was the automatic deposit of $10 to savings. I think I'm going to hold off on sending anymore moeny to ING until payday. As it would take 3 days to get there and 3 days to get back it would be awfully hard to tap it if needed before payday. I really don't want to need it.

And AutoVantage still bites, sucks, and has the rudest customer non-service trolls on the planet. Just thought I'd repeat that if you didn't catch it in my last entry.

Okay, so I posted how I had to cancel several of those programs on the 19th. Well, what do you suppose AutoVantage does? Charges me on the 21st after telling me there would be no further charges. So I called them up for the 3rd time. This time instead of LaTosha, I got Lilia or Lilian, not really sure as her English was not that great and the boiler room she was in was very loud.

Her line, "Our records show that you are still an active member." Snarky voice.

Me: "That's funny because I cancelled on the 19th and you charged me on the 21st."

Her: We have no record of that.

Me: I have a confirmation number and the name of the person I talked to.

Her: Oh. (Pause). Okay, give me the number, then the name. (I do.) Oh, here it is. You're right, it didn't get into the computer. (Switched from Snarky voice to Dumb Blonde voice).

Me: Oh, really? Then what are you looking it up on? (Silence) This charge better be removed from my credit card within the week or I am contacting the BBB and I will be disputing this with my credit card and blocking your charges.

Her: It'll be taken care of. (Back to Snarky voice)

Me: That's what they said the last two times I've called.

Her: I said, It'll be taken care of. (Nasty voice now) Thank you for using AutoVantage. (And she hung up on me).

Me: Screw you, you rude little troll and the horse you rode in on.

I will never ever do business with any company owned by Trilegeant again. If any of you feel like doing a trial membership with AutoVantage, DON'T. It's nothing but grief. They should have cancelled back in June!

Things I have done that needed doing:

Cancelled (again) AutoVantage
Cancelled (again) Tickle.com
Cancelled (again) Preferred Home Network
Cancelled Onlingo
Cancelled Video Professor

I don't know if I will get any money back from the companies that I had already cancelled months ago and they failed to stop charging my credit card or not, but I did lodge complaints about AutoVantage and PHN, with BBB. They were very rude to me on the phone about it, even though I had confirmation numbers and names of people I had spoken too. Tickle was very nice to me and promised they would look into it and refund any money that was due back. Notice how they didn't get reported to the BBB. If any of them try to charge me again we'll go the route of disputing with the credit card and seeing if we can't block charges from those companies.

I finished knitting one hat for Dad and worked some more on Rose's scarf.

I went to the bookstore and bought my Christmas presents from Mom which I will give her tomorrow to wrap and give back to me on Christmas Eve. It seems silly to do it that way and a waste of wrapping paper, but its what she wants to do, so okay. The books I got were by David Bach, both that I have read before and wanted my own copies of, The Automatic Millionaire and Smart Couples Finish Rich. I had $3.65 left over out of the money she gave me for my present. I think I may break my no sugar rule and get a gelato for myself with it! But not until I'm alone after the kids have gone back to school and DH is up in Alaska again.

Today was the day of the automatic deposit of $10 to savings so I sent that off to ING.

I went to Costco and got all the fixings for my Christmas Lasagnas, except noodles, they didn't have there and I forgot to get them when we were at Fred Meyer later so I'll have to get them tomorrow. We have to go back to town tomorrow because our front door knob will not open from the inside anymore. It just stopped working and DH is unable to fix it with his usual tinkering. We could just go out the back door but its not in the best location what with all the extension cords for the Christmas lights. It's also quite a ways from the alarm system, which gives you 30 seconds to get out the door before it goes off. Which is fine if it is just you and not two little kids you are trying to rush out the door. So we will be buying a door knob and lasagna noodles.

I picked up a copy of The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto at the library today. Reading it on the net was just getting to my eyes and really, I just prefer reading books on the printed page.

My day in a nutshell.

Not too much to report on today. I did finally get my antibiotics so maybe I can put this sinus infection to rest. That would be good. Prescription cost $25.

I also spent $23.17 at the grocery store buying organic meat.

DH took the kids to the Santa Train. I decided that I would just make myself sicker if I went, so I didn't. They had a good time, and had a great photo taken with Santa.

I did drive down Starry Road tonight to see some of the lights. They have some amazing houses out that way, storybook beautiful, so I at least saw a little without being exposed to the cold air.

DH found my notebook tonight of all the trial offer membership numbers and when stuff was cancelled, confirmation numbers and the name of the person I spoke to. Now I can go to town on the companies that did not cancel my memberships when they said they would and have continued to charge me. And I will take no prisoners.

Lisa in WA

I cashed out $3 at ReadRevenue last night. When that shows up it will go to the CC payoff account. All these amounts sometimes seem so tiny against the bigness of the debt it has to go against, but even little dents mean something.

Today was also the day of the weekly automatic deposit of $10 to savings, so that will be transferred to ING eventually.

Rose stayed home from school today. Her stomach is still sore but no more barfing since last night, so yay. I think she will be able to go to school tomorrow. No basketball practice tonight though.

Oh, I forgot to mention yesterday I wrote each child a $20 check to fund their hot lunch accounts, so that was $40 more out then was listed.

Did my big Costco run today. I went in with a list, I came out with 3 items that were not on my list. Sigh. We go in with such big expectations sometimes. But the three things I did buy that were not on the list were okay.

Blackberries
Blueberries
A Duracel charger pack with 6 rechargeable batteries ($30)

The fruit was a complete and total impulse buy. It looked very, very good and I rarely buy Costco fruit but these just jumped into my cart of their own accord, so what can you do?

The charger pack was so I could have my own charger that DH doesn't know where its at so that he can't put it somewhere that I can't find it. Oh, he claims its in the room with the books, but um...can't prove it by me. This way I'll also have a set of rechargeables for the digital camera and a set for each of the childrens' Christmas presents charged and ready to go. I was planning on this purchase anyway, just not today.

I put $40 on the gas card while I was there. But I spent more than I planned and this is the first time I've gone over $100 (not counting the gas) in months. I had to buy Ziploc baggies and T.P. though and that does get pricey. It should last quite awhile, though. I also bought slipper socks, 10 pounds of chicken and 10 pounds of beef, pot pies, eggs, cheese, lettuce and yogurt. I am restocking a bit after the loss of the big freezer last week. So I guess the higher amount is to be expected. Didn't over do it because everything must fit into the half size chest freezer. Ended up with a total bill of $187.33 (including the $40 onto the gas card). I would have made it under $100 without the impulse buys and before the cost of gas. So I still feel I did okay.

Anyway, at check out I asked for boxes and they packed the one ridiculously full. It had all 20 pounds of meat in it, plus 4 pounds of cheese and the package of pot pies. We're coming up on 35 pounds of food. I just looked at the guy and I said in a good-natured tone, "Tell me something. Do I look like SheRa: Princess of Power to you?"

He gave me a blank look and I said, "It's too heavy, I can't lift that into my car."

Then he laughed, I guess he finally got it, said "Oh, nope, not really, I'll repack it." He didn't look older than me, he should have grown up with the same cartoons, should have been a little faster on the uptake. But oh, well. He did repack it so I could then lift it easier. At least, I didn't have to rescue my Omega-3 eggs from this one.

After that I got gas. The machine kept shutting off, even though I know it should have gone to 15.5 gallons as I had just over 2 gallons in the tank and its an 18 gallon tank. That gas gauge is computerized so I don't have to guess. I finally gave up at 12 point something gallons, so not a full tank but close enough to end up with 15 gallons in there. Spent just over $30 and have enough left on the card for another full fill up.

I spent $15 (including tip) for lunch at the Mexican place, had beef fajitas without the tortillas, about half a cup of the rice, no beans (they gave me lettuce instead), lettuce, and some chips and salsa. Ended up bringing half of it home for a whole other meal.

Deposited $15.50 in rolled coin at the bank with the CC payoff account, but forgot to deposit the $5 check from Your2Cents.

Went to Haggen and bought bananas, organic milk, shrimp, hamburger, Isernio's mild Italian chicken sausage (Fern, they have a website if you were interested in these nitrate/nitrite free and sulfate/sulfite free suasages, www.isernio.com, its a Seattle based company), 100% apple juice, 100% whole wheat hamburger and hotdog buns, a magazine for me and some Ocean nasal spray for Rose. Spent $73.29 there.

Then I went and picked up the kids and came home. The roads were really good. The highway is completely bare and the main roads in town were a lot better. Mom's street is still bad and my own street is still bad, but things are melting and it got up to a balmy 41 degrees F today, so all's good here on the weather front.

More people have put up Christmas lights now that they don't have to freeze to do it. We even had two new houses on our street put up lights so the kids were excited. I suppose I'll have to go work on finishing our display. For normal people, we'd be done with what is already up, but we aren't normal people. We get our address submitted to the paper of lights to go see in the county, though after last year I may request they not print it since we had $90 worth of lights stolen. We budget twice as much for electricity for the month of December. You can see where I'm going with this. I'm not much of an indoor decorator, though we do put up a tree and a little village, but we all love the outdoor Christmas stuff and the neighborhood kids adore it. One kid asked at Halloween when we were going to set it up.

I think I've covered everything for the day now.

3rd entry today.

Today I went ahead and activated my Citi MC that has been sitting in the credit card box since February and transferred the 22% MBNA mastercard balance onto it. It is now at 6.99% until March of 2008.

Another thing I will have to do is call up Auto Advantage, Preferred Home Network, Bargain Auto Network and a couple of others that I did as trial offers months ago and cancelled, mind you within the 30 day trial periods, so I never should have been charged more than $1 for any of these things. Well, they've been charging the card. I thought DH was watching that one and he thought I was and we didn't catch it. Well, I'm going to get on the phone tomorrow and raise high holy hell with these folks. Just as soon as I find my notebook with the confirmation numbers and names of the people I talked to when I cancelled.

DH is also taking care of disputing the charges. As soon as we are credited back with all that they owe us than that MBNA card will be cancelled.

I guess I won't be doing business with TriAlegant ever again. Their the parent company that is currently ripping me off by not following through on cancelling all those things. Very irritating.

I also have a few other things to cancel that need cancelling, so have to get my papers together for those as well.

Well, Yummy's Kmart rant reminded me that I haven't updated on the Suncoast rant so here goes. Five days after I emailed them I got a nice form letter that basically said "Your correspondence is very important to us and will be answered in the order of which it was received. If you want to speak to an actual human good luck, because we don't actually have any here, though you may be able to coax out a customer non-service troll if you hop up your front steps on one leg backwards while whistling Dixie and rotating a hula hoop around your hips. You must submit the digital recording of this via our email which we probably still won't answer." Or something to that effect and meaning, but not quite in those words. 2 weeks from the date of the complaint and nothing further has been received from them.

I sent off the payment to my MBNA master card of $1200. This should bring the balance down to right around $5300. I am hoping to have this paid off by the end of April. It has the highest interest rate and lowest balance. I like it when it matches up that way, as it means I can get rid of the smallest balance first without feeling like I should be paying the higher rate cards first. It seems more motivational to know I can pay this off in a few months than it does to think of how much longer it would take to pay off one of the higher balance cards.

I need to find out about transferring the balance to a lower rate card. Originally the interest on this one was 6.9 percent for the last year, but now its jumped up to 22% and that is not acceptable to me. Maybe it won't matter that much if I can't if I can pay it off in 5 months, but it is the principle of the thing.

Entry 3 for today.

I have decided that each month I will take all of the money that was previously going to savings, except the $10 a week and put it into savings account at CU #3. Then when I go to write the regular check to MBNA MC1 ech month, I can also transfer the saved money into the CU #3 checking account and write a check off that account and tuck it in with the first check.

That will be the easiest way for me to do this, plus it will help me keep track of how much extra I pay each month, because it will be a seperate check. I'd like to keep a running total of the extra used the same way I was keeping a running total of how much I was saving. Well, I'll still be keeping a running total on the savings, but it won't be going up as fast as before. That will start next month.

This next payday there will be $1000 extra to send off to that card so I will do that online out of regular checking. Since I've already mailed that off yesterday (due on 17th), I don't want to wait a whole month to add it to the next check.

I think we should be able to pay this card off by April and then I plan to cancel it. I really do not need two MBNA Master Cards and since Bank of America bought them out, I now have 3 cards with them and I don't like that. I also don't like the changes that have been made since then with this one MC so I'll be glad to see it gone. Then I'll transfer as much as possible onto my empty Chase Visa when the lower rate on MC #2 runs out, they are always sending me balance transfer checks at lower rates. Then I will pay off what is left of the 2nd MC and hopefully that will be gone by the end of 2007. Next we will tackle the B of A Visa and then last the Chase.

Entry 2 for today.

DH and I had a long talk on the phone last night and we have decided that because gas prices have gone back down and because both vehicles are still running okay that we will put off buying a new car.

So the new plan is now this:

Keep $500 in my ING account
Open a second ING account in DH's name and keep $500 in it
Keep $500 in local CU
Continue to add $10 a week to savings
Take the $65 we were putting in savings from the cable bill and put it on debt
Take anything I make from surveys, product trials and PTR's and put it on debt
Try to sell the Blazer
Put entire income tax return to debt
Put entire bonus to debt
Use rolled coin we save for debt
Use recycling money for debt

This was a hard decision to make because we both wanted to get a newer car. But we each weighed it and both came to the conclusion that yes, we want a newer car, but no we don't currently need a newer car. We do NEED to get the debt gone.

We struggled with this for awhile, the same way we struggled with cancelling cable. It was hard, but after the decision was made, it was clear it was the correct decision because we immediately felt better afterwards.

Debt reduction will be covered in Bringing Down the Evil Empire because the credit card companies behave just as badly as any other business that gets on my nerves.

Today was a lazy day because tomorrow will not be. I sat on my butt and watched Batman Begins and worked on knitting a scarf. Movie was really good, I liked it. I haven't seen Christian Bale since he was a boy in the musical Newsies, he sure did grow up the right way. LOL

I'm reading an anthology of SF short stories right now. Today I finished Combat Shopping by Elizabeth Moon. Very different from a lot of her stuff, but interesting. Also read Incarnation Day by Walter Jon Williams. Made me think. But in a good way.

I drove the kids to my mother, they will spend the first two days of their vacation with her. I went to Target and purchased a few things, I bought a blue velvet stocking with a rhinestone L on it. Now everyone has a personalized stocking in my house. I also bought a box of 2 peacock Christmas ornaments for our tree. Very pretty and unique looking. I found a ladybug ornament and a ladybug CD case for my niece who collects ladybugs to give to for Christmas. I'm still looking for something for the other neice who collects elephants. I may have to go back to the Asian store to find elephants this year. Spent $33.65.

Gave into cravings and bought a Big Grab bag of Cheetos for $1.07. I've been wanting them for a week, so I decided it wasn't going to go away and it was just better to get them. So I got them. And I haven't even eaten them yet 3 hours later. Because I finally forgot I wanted them!

Suncoast has not responded to my email, not even with a computer generated "we have received your email and someone will get to it soon," email. I have little faith I will hear from them at all. Really bad customer service.

I stepped on Thomas the Tank Engine and split my heel this morning. It is to one side so I can walk without limping but I can't put full pressure to the outside of my foot. Each step stings and I went through three band-aids before the bleeding stopped. One little boy just about found himself out of a train collection.

3rd Entry for today, do make sure you read #2 as it has goals met that are pretty cool if I do say so myself, and this entry gets its own new category, that will go for badly behaved companies.

Here's a copy of the email I sent off to Suncoast (the video and dvd store) today after an incident in their store, also today.

On November 7, 2006 I went into a Suncoast store located at Bellis Fair Mall, 1 Bellis Fair Parkwway, Bellingham, WA 98266-5563 to use my $20 Replay Reward Certificate from my Replay membership. My membership number is 094797404. The replay reward certificate expired 11/7/06. The employee rudely informed me that he could not accept the certificate because it expired 10/31/06, even though it clearly stated on it that it expired 11/07/06. He even acknowledged that the certificate said it expired on 11/07/06, but that didn't matter because it really expired on 10/31/06 and said there was nothing he could do to honor it. He would not explain why, that was just the way it is. To me this is false advertising and failure to uphold club membership rules.

When I called the membership line to cancel my membership because they failed to honor it, they refused to refund the money I paid just a few months ago for a two year membership, as apparently there are no refunds. I understand there being no refunds if a person cancels just to cancel, but if a person cancels because the company lied to them about being able to use their certificates in their stores or to honor a valid expiration date, than I believe a refund is justified. When I asked to speak to a supervisor I was rudely informed that it would not matter because there were no refunds period. I was rudely brushed off. I believe this was because it was five minutes before the system shut down for the day.

I believe because your company failed to uphold its part of the membership agreement, that you owe me a refund. If this incident is not resolved to my satisfaction, I will be emailing a copy of this complaint to the Better Business Bureau. I want you to understand that you are losing a customer that you have had since July of 2002, one who has spent several hundred dollars at Suncoast each year, for your failure to honor membership terms. I will be reporting on this incident in my blog. I will also tell as many people as I can on my various email groups and in person. The behavior of your company is unaccpetable. And your employees need to learn better customer service skills, as I was perfectly polite, but they were far from it.

******

Plus my contact info, of course. Now of course, I really don't care all that much if you choose to shop at their overpriced stores or not, what I care about is their bad behavior. If they had just been polite or explained things properly or at all, instead of me having to figure out through their website what the deal was (which is that they switched to a different type of membership and don't have reward certificates anymore just points in the computer and 10% discount, which 10% of overpriced dvd is still overpriced there, the certificates and sales would make it somewhat worthwhile before, they did not offer to change it in the store or on the phone, by the way).

But I do want the store to know I mean business, so the letter and the posting in my blog.