Last night DH found a Verizon rebate card that we'd misplaced several months ago and it's valid until 8/11. It is for $50 and we can go online and have it direct deposited to our account, so that is going into my new laptop fund. I also emptied my purse on Friday before going to the CU to get this week's money out. I have a new rule that anything less than a $20 goes into the laptop fund. I had $13 and some change. I also pilfer ones through out the week. Monday I will go and make a deposit. Right now I am just stuffing the money in an envelope and the coin jar. I've got quite a lot of change I need to put through the CU's change counter.

DH opened his mail finally and found that his new work had sent him a $40 gift card for Christmas. The only place it is good for around here is Safeway, which is a 30 minute drive away, but none of the other stores even exist in this part of the state. So we'll swing out to Lynden the next time we visit his parents. Even if they don't have anything we want (son's diet makes it difficult to shop without reading every label in the store), we can at least buy fruit, veg, flour, sugar, yeast, honey, molasses, and other baking supplies. I normally buy the 25 pound bag of flour from Costco as it's cheapest, but I could get two ten pound bags this time instead. I don't think I'd buy meat there as I'm not sure about their policy on antibiotics and growth hormones and injecting meat with flavor enhancers or BPA packaging and I don't want to take the time to find out.

DH also has a $75 gift card from his previous employer that he needs to use, but it's on him how he spends it. I told him if the places it is good for don't have anything he wants we can always give him $75 cash and I'll use the gift card at one of the stores to buy clothes for the kids. The one thing he wants is $35, so the extra may just end up in his savings fund. He wants an electronic book reader of some sort.

Last night I made pizza for dinner. It was so good. The crust was perfection. It cost about $8 for all the ingredients and we topped it with cheese, Canadian bacon, pepperoni and leftover hamburger from spaghetti night. A pizza that size with that many toppings would cost $25 at our favorite pizza place. There was enough left over for lunch today.

Tonight's dinner is cheeseburgers with homemade buns and baked french fries. We will open a can of pineapple for fruit and have cucumbers for veg. With milk and condiments that'll come to $7.50. We've almost made it through two weeks without eating out. What a difference that makes to the food budget.

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.

My goal for the week was to make it through without any meals out, via planning my meals well, and we did it. I'm rather proud of myself considering eating out is generally caused by personal laziness on my part and not a planned thing. I want to make it through this week, too, without eating out, but it will be harder because DH comes home on Wednesday and it is always harder when he is home because he loves eating out. Still, the kids and I are getting into a routine now and the great thing about DH is that even if he wants to go out, he won't grump about it in front of the kids. He'll grump about it privately to me, but he won't make it so that the kids start whining about it, too.

We've had some talks this month about our goals and he really wants to get the credit card debt gone by the end of the year so he has agreed "in theory" to eat out far less. Maybe one nice meal out a month and possibly go get a bag of the cheapy double cheeseburgers and freeze them for "emergency" purposes. I am hoping to eliminate it altogether, but realize that is probably highly unlikely. And what he agrees to abide by when he is 3000 miles away and having all his meals provided for him by work and what he agrees to abide by when he is at home and might have to cook for himself may not be entirely the same thing.

I used the last of the frozen beef pot roasts I got on sale a couple months ago for $1.99 a pound today. I'll have to be on the lookout for another good sale. Threw it in the crockpot and it got nice and tender. We had that with leftover potatoes and gravy from yesterday which we used up but for a little gravy, green beans (will have what's left tomorrow), some leftover biscuits from earlier in the week, and my little splurge of fresh dark red cherries for desert. We each got twelve. So delicious. Mom ate with us tonight.

There was enough pot roast left for another meal, but my kids don't like warmed up pot roast and neither do I unless I can make some sort of hash from it, so I put it into a baggy and froze it for when DH comes home. He loves making sandwiches with leftover potroast.

Tomorrow is going to be an odds and ends day for lunch and dinner since it is a school holiday. I actually got the kids to agree to it. We'll use up the green beans and the leftover broccoli and corn from earlier in the week. There are 3 pieces of chicken left, 2 biscuits, 3/4 cup of gravy, 1 pancake, 1 cut up orange, half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, half a can of chili, 1 slice of frozen pizza, salad fixings, and a cup of macaroni and tomato sauce. This will actually be the first time in ages we won't have thrown out any food in a week. Let's hear it for leftover management.

I added $20 to my new laptop fund to reward myself for not eating out all week. That's about a third of what we would have spent if we'd gone out this week as much as had become normal. The rest went to the grocery budget and whatever is left at the end of the paycycle will be saved.

I just signed in, spent almost half an hour composing a long and detailed blog entry, went to post it and got a notice saying I am already signed in as me. Yeah, duh, I know, what's your point? Give me back my entry. Of course it's gone into the ether. Between that and having to sign in every single time I come here this week instead of it saving it like it's supposed to when you hit remember me, it's getting really frustrating. I don't even have the energy now to recompose the whole thing. Too bad, for it was light and witty and would have changed your world. *snerks*

So the basics for yesterday:

Medical--$20 co-pay doctor visit
Medical--$11.81 prescription for kidney infection
Allowance (six weeks) kid #1--$60 @ $10 per week
Allowance (six weeks) kid #2--$30 @ $5 per week
Utilities for my mother--$300
EF deposit--$100, bringing total to $8,100.00
Parking meter at library--$0.25

Added all the ones in my purse to the coin jar for the computer fund and dumped out all my change save a quarter for the meter.

Got another hold from the library yesterday. This one is significantly more useful. It's called $3 Meals by Ellen Brown. A more appropriate title would be $3 per serving Meals, but otherwise I'm quite happy with it. I think I might be able to cut out about $50 a month from my grocery budget using her strategies. It was published 2009, too, so it's not terribly outmoded when it comes to how much stuff actually costs. I just wish it didn't rely so much on some of the things we're allergic to here like vinegar (allergic to grapes and apples so wine and cider based vinegars are out) and mushrooms. Still it's not all beans, rice and lentils. It actually has meat, poultry, and fish, so yay. We'll see how it goes.

I have more bills to pay out of this paycheck but will do that tomorrow or Monday.

I want a new laptop computer. I sort of think I need a new computer, but the truth is really that I want one. And I know it. The one I am using is still perfectly serviceable...for a while. Yes, I've worn all the lettering off most of the keys, but I've got the keyboard memorized. It's not like I need them.

Yes, the screen does have some colored, verticle lines running down it, but it usually doesn't interfere with anything I'm doing. It's on the side of the screen where all the ads usually go on websties so it doesn't really interfere with my reading blogs or articles or whatever I'm doing. It doesn't even really affect my word processing (which I do a lot of) because the closest line to the document is right at the right hand margin. I've been putting up with that for almost a year, but they are gradually creeping further to the left. It's annoying, mostly when I watch DVD's on it.

And yes, I had to superglue parts of it together when it was only six months old, because the frame was falling apart on me. It's actually held up really well since I did that. And yes, I've had to replace the power cord twice, but the battery still holds almost a full charge (which lasts 3.5 hours on powersaving mode).

It's also very heavy. Which is hard on my hands when I carry it anywhere with me. I really want a lightweight one. Something I can easily transport when DH isn't around to be my beast of burden. The one I want is about two to three pounds. It feels like a feather in comparison. And it comes in hot pink, purple, green and red. *sighs*

It'll be two years old in February and really...I just don't need a new one. Not yet. However, I think I am going to start putting money aside for one, because obviously this one is falling apart and there is going to come a time when it moves firmly into the need (as much as a computer can be a need) column.

I've got this little savings account that I call my WANTS account. It's got a grand total of $47.37 in it at the moment. So I think I'm going to find ways to add to that. I think that since I am regularly contributing to the EF with regular deposits, I am going to take any found money, all of my coin jar savings, and any little thing I do to save myself money that I normally would have spent it on, into that account. So today I cut my bangs myself. Even at the cheapest place in town that would cost me $7. So I will $7 to my WANTS account for that.

It rained really hard this afternoon and all of the snow melted. It's 47 degrees at current. Hard to believe it was a snow day! We ended up going to the library because some of our requests came in. I spent a quarter today for the parking meter. The stupid, newfangled metering system no longer has fifteen free minutes on it. It no longer has the option of using a nickle or a dime, either, and the quarter only buys you 20 minutes. And the five minute drop off slots were all full. I miss having a library with free parking. We only needed five minutes tops to pick up our holds. Holds are self serve and so is checkout. It takes hardly any time at all.

Anyway one of the cookbooks I put on hold last night was in. It's called The Healthy Family by Sandi Richard and has a lot of easy to prepare, quick to make recipes in it. It was rec'ced over at Get Rich Slowly so I thought I'd check it out. The kids were reading it over my shoulder and it looks like they will actually like at least half the recipes. That's a first. Mostly they looked pretty good to me.

I was a little disappointed in some of the recipes ingredients though because they called for things like "cream of" soups. I've never found a healthy "cream of" soup. They are all loaded with sodium, MSG, and other chemicals that I don't really think should be anywhere near a "healthy" cookbook. Those tended to be the ones the kids turned their noses up at though.

And there was almost an abuse of white rice. I mean, I know if you are going for time saving then brown rice isn't your first option, but white rice probably shouldn't be either if you're going for healthy. And with brown rice you could do up a big batch on the weekend for use throughout the week and still save time. But lot of the other recipes seem okay. Especially the Asian style ones. We'll see how they taste and I'll try to follow up if I remember. They do call for a lot of sauces and again that generally means a lot of sodium.

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
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$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.

I am very glad I went grocery shopping yesterday as we woke up to snow this morning. Hard to believe there is so much of the white stuff still out there when the sun is shining so brilliantly, not to mention blindingly. I'll have to go out and clean off the car before the sun goes down so that I don't have to do it in the morning when I drive the kids to school.

I found $5 in a wad of ones in the middle of the Trader Joe's parking lot yesterday. There was no one else around who could have dropped it so I took it and put it in the coin jar when I got home. I don't understand people who don't put bills in their wallets. It is so easy for money to fall out of your pockets, especially when it is so cold that you have your hands in them a lot.

Today has been the kind of day where I am very glad I put a pot roast in the crock pot this morning and pizza dough ingredients in the bread machine this afternoon, because otherwise I would have been extremely tempted to order a pizza delivered. A $27 x-large all meat pizza, plus tip. I really do not need to do that when I have all the makings for a great pizza (ham, bacon, ground beef, homemade sausage, salami, pepperoni, proscuitto, onions, peppers, tomatoes, sauce, herbs and cheese) in the freezer, fridge or pantry. I won't use all those toppings on one pizza, I just have the choice to do so. Well, two pizzas as the crust recipe makes two large (or three smaller) crusts, but I usually just freeze the second one for later.

The pot roast had enough meat for two meals and I made microwaved sweet potatoes and a can of green beans to go with it. I think I will make a sort of beef and sweet potato hash with the leftovers. I like to do that and eat it in whole wheat tortillas with a salad added for a later meal. It is surprisingly good and I never would have thought of it except my ten-year-old has been going through a phase of wanting to eat everything in tortillas this year. There will be plenty of leftover pizza for the kids to take in their lunches for school. I am so glad they will eat cold pizza. They didn't use to eat any leftovers cold, so they have come a long way.

The ducks are mad because their little pond froze over and have no trouble expressing their displeasure with the situation. We had to put some hay down for the chickens. They are so funny to watch walking through the snow, but they really do need a hay path to have a break. They need to eat more feed in this weather to produce well. Most days this winter have been around 40 degrees, which is still warm enough for them to forage for most of their food, but during these cold snaps they need grain. We are getting seven eggs a day which is still more than we can use, especially with DH in Alaska. I should probably make up some meatloaves for the freezer to use up some of the excess.

I should probably go ahead and make buns and biscuits for the week, too. I've gotten lazy about making bread and just tend to make rolls and buns instead. Well, it is part laziness and part making the right portion sizes so someone doesn't hack off a huge chunk of bread to eat and suddenly it is all gone. The kids don't care what their sandwiches come on so long as it's homemade (or tortillas). They really don't like store bought bread of any kind anymore. I usually do that on Mondays and Thursdays, but I have an appointment tomorrow with the physical therapist and may be too exhausted afterwards.

My goal for the week to save money is to not grab anythng out to eat. No drive-thru meals and definitely no sit down restaurant meals. Our biggest wasted spenditures are from eating out too much. So today is day one of that.

We have set a goal to have all of our unsecured interest bearing debt paid off by the end of the year. As such, I am determined to start blogging again for real to help us in accomplishing this. The last year has been really unfocused and I need to find that focus again. I know we can do it, but it's going to take dedication and the determination not to be lazy about things.

So where we stand at the moment as far as total debt is concerned (minus the car):

$ 93,000.00 medical debt
22,326.63 mortgage
38,323.87 personal loan
+ 29,133.45 credit card debt
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$182,783.95 total

So we have paid off quite a bit this year. And considering when I started this blog we owed around $250,000 I think we are doing pretty well.

The credit card debt is spread over 4 cards. We will be paying one of them off this month and we will also be paying off the entirety of the personal loan this month, which will bring that debt total down to around $123,000. We should be able to pay off a second card by the end of March.

The $93,000 is a non-interest bearing loan from my mother. We are paying her back at a rate of $1000 a month. At that rate it will be 7 years and 9 months to be paid off. She doesn't want us paying it back any faster than that, because she wants a steady influx of cash to live on each month. I'd prefer to add more to it, but I suppose once all other debt is paid I can always just put any extra in a savings account dedicated to paying her back.

My husband is working for a new company and it came with a substantial raise in income of about $2000 more net each month. He started there in November. He's guaranteed work (on contract) for the next three years so we are going to make hay while the sun shines.

We need to finish fixing up the house by mid-Spring so we can put it on the market. At this point I don't care if we get the true value of it, I just want to be rid of it. I'm tired of maintaining two households. As long as it pays off the mortgage and gives us $50,000 in the bank towards our next downpayment on a house, I will be happy. I think if we price it right and as a fixer upper we could probably unload it faster than the other people selling houses in our area. They have so overpriced their houses for the location and the depression.

We've got somewhere around $20,000 left to pay on the car. It's about three and a half years left. I'm not sure of the exact amount because it is on autopay and so I kind of don't pay attention to it or count it in the overall total. I should, but I don't. I know we are three months ahead on it, though. It will be the next focus after the unsecured debt is paid off. I think we can finish paying it off by the end of 2012.

I'm not sure when we'll start looking for a new house but it's not going to be this year. It's not something I'm prepared to even try to do until the unsecured debt is gone.

We've got $8000 in the emergency fund and I will add to it a little bit at a time, but not aggressively, this year. Just mostly saving change, throwing in whatever I cut from the grocery budget, and adding $100 or so a month consistently. Eventually I'd like to have $50,000 in there as a long term goal.

Okay, I think that about sums up where everything stands. Now if I can get myself back into the habit of doing this again on a regular basis I'll be a happy camper.

Well, it seems like I rather suck at blogging anymore. I just tend to pop up from time to time now with an update and that's about it. So much has changed in the past year it's ridiculous. Things are slowly coming down debtwise. I am seeing real progress being made in some areas. There's still a lot of debt left though. And we had to pay for more surgery which added to our debt.

$ 94,400.00 left on medical debt
$ 23,139.75 left on the mortgage
$ 42,100.00 left on personal loan
$ 30,000.00 left on unsecured debt over 3 cards
------------
$189,639.75

Considering we started out at around $250,000 when I started this blog we've done well. We do also have around $23,000 left on our car loan.

All of our debt should be paid off in 6.5 years if we continue at this rate. If we sell our house, which may or may not happen any time soon, we could take a large chunk out of it. With the market the way it is I am not counting on it.

We are still living with my mother. She's taken a couple more falls so I really do not regret my decision to move into town and take care of her. She's still mostly self-sufficient, still has her mind, but she really needs someone to just be here for the bad times. I'm not sure we'll buy another house after the one we own right now sells until she's ready to go into assisted living or a nursing home and that's probably several years away. This house is huge and it just makes no sense to move away from her right now.

It's a good school district here. After two years of homeschooling I've got the kids enrolled in the public school system again. They are both thriving and getting good marks. My daughter is a freshman and well on her way to honor roll. Probably five A's and a B. They do weekly updates online and also every three weeks, so I can check it obsessively and make sure they aren't screwing her up.

Things are a little up in the air at DH's work. Contracts are up in December and they aren't being very forthcoming on whether his company is even going to get the subcontract from the main company this next year or not. We've had job security for 14.5 years and not having it anymore is a little unnerving. DH isn't as worried about it as I am. He's got feelers into several companies just in case and says he's gotten positive responses so hopefully if his company doesn't get the contract he'll simply be able to switch to the one that has it. It'll mean no medical insurance for a few months, but it'd be work and that's important with a debtload like ours.

I'd feel better if I could work. I'm pretty much disabled these days because of my knee and the pain I'm in all the time. I am working to strengthen it with swimming, but it's a slow road. The rest of me is getting fitter, but it's still very difficult to walk. Standing still is even harder. I can cook sitting down, but I don't think they'd let me do that in a restaurant.

I am doing what I can to cut back again. We were getting really lazy there for a while with eating out because it was hard for me to cook when I was in so much pain, but I've been teaching my daughter and between the two of us we are managing a lot more home-cooked meals.

Last night I made my special spaghetti sauce from 3 fresh roma tomatoes, 1 chopped onion, 2 tbsp minced garlic, 2 14.5 ounce cans tomato sauce, 2 6 ounce cans tomato paste, basil, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper to taste. Tomatoes and herbs came from the garden. The kids and I made parmesan breadsticks from scratch (dough made in the bread machine), and homemade spaghetti noodles in the pasta maker (had it for years, but have rarely used it). It was really good, better than a meal at The Olive Garden and cost about $8 altogether, as we all drank a glass of milk as well. It would have been about $50 for 3 of us if we'd gone out for that same meal.

Today I'll be making a beef potroast in the crockpot and microwave baked potatoes and green beans and tomorrow I'll be doing up a big pot of Texas style chili. There will be enough of that to freeze for several meals. I've got all the ingredients on hand and am focusing on cooking from the freezer and the pantry this month as much as possible. Chris comes home on Thursday and hopefully he'll be on board with this whole not eating out thing. He claims he likes my cooking best anyway, but we shall see.

Okay, so yes, I'm really still back. It's just that after the last time I posted we promptly all got a very nasty sickness that ran through all of us but managed to do it one at a time, so once I was done caring for one child and got him well, the next child went down. And then I got her well, and I went down. I'm finally on my way back up and my daughter went back down again, this time with an ear infection. She's got antibiotics now so hopefully we'll see the back door of all this soon. All this while trying to homeschool.

Anyway, one of the things that has really fallen by the wayside with me is having an emergency fund. With the last raise my husband got things got so much easier for us that I pretty much stopped worrying about having an emergency fund. I thought, hey, we can absorb it if something happens. And yeah, for the most part we can.

Only after our last vacation, which was in October, and was paid for in cash, we were pretty much running low on reserves. And that was the time that one of our car tires exploded. We're still not sure why but that puppy was shredded in ways the tire guy claimed he'd never seen before. Fortunately it happened in a very safe place and I have AAA so everything turned out fine.

Except one of the lovely, lovely things I never knew about is that if you have a car with all wheel drive and you have to replace the whole tire, not just repair it, that means you have to replace all four tires even if they're only a year and a half old. It doesn't matter how good your remaining tires are. They all have to have the same level of tread wear for all wheel drive to work right. The tire places won't even sell you just one in that case. Which, yeah, makes sense, but totally bites, because the $150 you expected to pay to replace the tire, suddenly becomes $600 and oh, great, no emergency fund because we can absorb it.

Um...yeah. Right before Christmas. Right after vacation. Well, we absorbed it all right but it wasn't much fun. So I knew it was time to get my act together and reestablish an emergency fund.

So last month I started with my safety net. My safety net is always an amount that is kept in a locally accessible credit union that I can drive to within a moment's notice and have cash in hand that day. It was a tighter month because my husband had had an extra week off over the holidays unpaid because they shut down to a skeleton crew. So I was only able to squeeze out $300 with which to fund the saftey net. It's not near what I'd like it to be, which is $1000, but still, a good start.

This month I've sent $500 to the actual emergency fund, which brings it to a whopping $520.26. This money I keep in an online bank where it's out of easy reach, but I can still get it transferred in 3 days time. The bank no longer generates much interest, but this is more about available money than earning with it so I don't mind too much. I haven't delved back into the "which online bank pays you the most stuff" yet. I've been sick and busy and just haven't got around to it.

I am hoping to contribute $500 a month directly to the emergency fund and $100 a month to the safety net. I want to eventually have about $15,000 in the emergency fund at which point I'll probably want a better interest bearing account.

I also am going to start up collecting all of my coins and one dollar bills again to add in to the EF. This amount will be above the $500. I've still got my trusty old salad dressing bottle for the dollars and I have a talking TARDIS money bank (yes, I can be a silly fangirl at times, but it was a Christmas present) for the coins. It's silly, but I like it and it works, and I love the way the little light flashes and it make the dematerialization noise. Plus, it holds as much in coins as the jar ever did.

Anyway, that is my current plan to rebuild things again. Hopefully I'll be able to stick to it.

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.

Well, I dropped off the face of the Earth for a couple of weeks. I'm getting over walking pneumonia. Isn't that lovely? But I am feeling like a human again and starting to resume living.

We finally got all of our books for the virtual school week before last and are plowing full speed ahead with the homeschooling. The kids seem to be thriving and we are falling into a routine now.

The bathtub/shower remodel is almost done. It's done enough to use the bathtub anyway and I had my first long soak in three months last night! It was wonderful. I won't be able to use the shower part of it until DH comes back again and finishes securing it and then it needs to be caulked and then we still need to put the back wall on and paint it, but at least it's useable and there is still the other shower so it's not like we have nothing but a tub.

Okay, what else? Oh, I sent money to savings, to the EF fund.

$1211.96 old balance
150.00 deposit
+ 2.79 October interest
---------
$1365.75 new balance

And I transferred the $40 from the October coin jar savings to the Vacation Fund. It's moving along nicely.

$536.46 old balance
+ 40.00 deposit
--------
$576.46 new balance

$31.61 beginning amount
+09.74 deposit
-------
$41.35 ending balance

I had a bunch of ones in my purse today so I decided to go ahead and throw them in the coin jar when I cleaned out the change pouch. I also found a quarter and a dime on the floor of my room so added that in, too. I've met my new October change goal of $40 saved. I'm tempted to push for $50, but I'm not sure I'll be buying anything else in cash before next payday to make change with. All coin jar savings goes towards vacation costs.

$28.91 beginning balance
+02.70 deposit
-------
$31.61 ending balance

So I've officially met my goal of saving an extra $30 this month to put towards vacation. Since I still have a week left in the month of October, I'm going to up my goal to $40.

Today was payday and I paid the American Express card in full as I do every month. It is used for gas only. I also paid the car payment and the property taxes for the half year out of this paycheck. And the kids got their monthly allowances.

I will do a bit of grocery shopping on what is left and then figure if there is enough money to send the $150 deposit to ING or if I need to wait until next week. I still need to pay cable/internet/phone and garbage as well out of this check. Just have to sit down and write out the checks. Everything else was paid for online.

I took my son to the Doctor today and she is happy about the improvements in him since we changed his diet to one of no artificial anything. He's doing a lot better. Still a long way to go though.

Yesterday we filled up our gas tank at $2.89 a gallon at Costco. I really hope it keeps dropping like this. It's freeing up about $50 a month in the gas budget at the moment. It's only been a few months since I was paying nearly $4 per gallon. If this keeps up I'll be adding the difference left over each month to our vacation savings account. Which will make us reach our goal that much faster.

This is the first time that we'll be doing a fully cash vacation ever (not that we haven't tried, but we didn't fully succeed before) and I want there to be no reason at all to fall back on excess credit card spending, so I'm trying to save up 1/3 more money than I think we'll actually need. Anything left over will go to seed the next big vacation, which we'd like to be a trip to Italy in five years, but that may be a pipedream. We'll see.

I'm not saying we won't use our credit cards on this trip at all. They are convenient and we will, but we will keep track of every dime and not go over what we have in savings and then pay it back immediately when we get home. There's a big difference between using cards on vacation and abusing cards on vacation.

But so far, condo is paid for (free from Mom), airfare is paid for (free with airmiles), and we're saving now for food we will eat and the tickets to get into the theme park. I've got over $500 and aiming for about $1500.

Fortunately DH has hit that point in the year, for the first time ever, where they stop taking out FICA (I think it's FICA) tax. So for the next 12 weeks we'll be getting quite a bit of extra money in his paychecks. $800 will go the vacation fund, and $800 will go to the emergency fund. The rest will go on debt.

I know that I should probably put more on debt, but our repayment is going at a pace that I'm happy with and honestly we've never had this kind of freedom before, really. It's been nose to the grindstone for so long and this last year of ease has made it so much nicer.

In return for this, though, we've buckled down on all the excess spending, especially the eating out. We had gotten to a ridiculous amount of meals out each month. Probably around $400, going out twice a week or more. That is a lot of unnecessary and wasteful expense. Almost every meal is at home now, though.

Oh, I found a box full of stuff we were given at Christmas from our extended family. Most of it was that kind of stuff that you will never use and people just give you because they feel obligated to give you something, but it's never something useful. Anyway, tucked inside was $20 worth of McDonald's gift certificates. So that's two free meals out if we order off the dollar menu, that I can save for a couple of crazy town days and not be tempted to spend real money from the budget on.

Okay, guess that's about it then.

So we are slowly building our emergency fund back up. I met my primary goal of getting back up to $1000 last month. Now I'm setting a goal for $2000. I no longer do the $10 a week deposit, instead I now do $150 every four weeks and then if there is any little bits of extra money I'll send it along, too.

$1061.96 beginning balance
150.00 deposit
---------
$1211.96 ending balance

Only $788.04 to go. I reckon that'll take me five months to save up for, but I can do it.

Well, it's been a long time since I've done one of these, but I thought it'd be nice to get back to it again. All coin jar money will go for vacation savings. I will save all coin and throw in one dollar bills, too. When I was doing this before I was averaging about $30 to $40 a month.

$7.94 starting change
$3.20 amount added from purse
------
11.14 ending balance

It's hard to believe but it's been six months since my last entry. We're doing well here financially now and it's harder to blog when you have enough money it seems, than when you don't.

In the past year my husband's income has almost doubled. It made things get easy, but it also brought along with it some very bad habits that I want to stop. Because despite the extra income, we've only upped our debt repayment by a couple hundred dollars a month. And it's time to really buckle down and get going again. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

Thing is I don't really want to. I like having the extra money around. It's nice not to have to scrimp and save every little extra bit of cash that comes into my hands or funnel it all into debt repayment. But I know I need to, because I'm still tired of having all that debt hanging over our heads.

Our emergency fund is far lower than I want it to be at $1000. That's certainly not anywhere close to even a month's salary anymore. So I'm working on building that back up. And I'm starting to save up $1000 more for our vacation in February. I have $500 currently saved for it.

We're going to Disneyland. Our airfare is free from DH's miles. We're staying in my parent's travel condo for free, except for the $50 one time fee for end of stay cleaning. We're just needing to pay for the entry tickets, car rental for 2 days, and food while we're there. It has a full kitchen and there is a Costco close by so we will make and eat all of our breakfasts and one other meal a day and only have one meal out at the park each day.

The kids are saving up their allowances, birthday, and Christmas monies and will buy their own souvenirs.

As for the rest of our finances, we've raised our 401K 1% for the last two pay raises so it is now at 5%. On the next pay raise it'll be up to 6%, the full amount the company matches 50% of contributions on.

The mortgage on the house just went under $30,000 at $29,956.07. Our medical debt repayment is down to $142,623.81. Our unsecured debt is down to around $45,000. The website for that one is down at the moment so I don't have the exact numbers. So we've still managed to make significant progress. But there's so much more we could have made and I'd like to really get out from under this debt.

We can pay at least another $300 a month towards debt repayment that we are currently wasting on eating out. So that's my goal for now, to try to stop wasteful spending and put it onto debt.

We'll be cooking at home a lot more, but that's a good thing. Healthier, too. And it won't be so hard now, either. I just took my son out of public school and will be homeschooling him for the rest of third grade. He was being bullied pretty severely this year and it had totally turned his personality bitter and sad and he was behaving horribly. Two days at home and he's back to being the sweet kid he used to be back when school went well and he was popular.

I gave the school several weeks to sort this out but I just couldn't give them any more time. It was sucking the life out of my child and I couldn't bear it. The difference is like night and day. I wish I still had the curriculum from when I homeschooled my daughter for third grade, but I don't, so I'm starting all over again. I'll be spending about $300 to get started, but fortunately I have that money at the moment.

His math is above grade level but his reading is significantly behind. They don't really teach phonics at his school and it shows. So I'll be starting almost at the beginning with phonics for him but I saw what a difference it made when I did that for my daughter, so that'll be okay.

He's been bored out of his mind at school, too, insisting that they are teaching either "baby" stuff or stuff that his dad and I have already taught him about ages ago in science and history. I think we'll all be happier.

And my son loves to cook with me, so being able to save money by not eating out and cooking at home will be easier, because I'll have a helper in the kitchen and not a strung out child who wants nothing to do with me or anyone else, standing by my side.

My daughter, on the other hand, is thriving at the junior high. She's doing really well. It's funny because she's the one I was so worried about at the start of the school year. Life can be so unexpected sometimes.

I made it to the new Trader Joe's yesterday. It was nice to have so many choices in healthier foods, though I was kind of surprised how much they had in the way of junk food. So many cookies and candies and chocolate covered nuts, and candied dried fruit dipped in sugar. Organic junk food is still junk food and at least it wasn't made with corn syrup.

Still I managed to find $55.61 worth of stuff that we could eat. I tried their store brand milk and it's decent tasting, though I will probably stick with Organic Valley and buying it from Fred Meyer since its a dollar cheaper there.

Never made it to Costco, just didn't feel good enough. Mom took the kids for the weekend, I get them back Sunday noontime. I am spending a lot of time sleeping and a lot of time reading over at Teaspoon and writing some. I've told myself that if I write a chapter on something over there, I've got to come and write at least one blog entry on that same day.

Yesterday was payday so I sent $100 to ING. That brings my EF to $2004.87 and my goal of $2000 is now achieved. I need $600 more to meet my goal of 2 weeks wages. That will take a couple of months.

I've been ignoring my surveys lately, just haven't felt in the mood to answer a bunch of repetive questions. I suppose I should get back to it, as it does help the EF to grow bit by bit. Just kind of apathetic about it.

Part of the apathy has been being sick and part of it has been the onset of SADS with the fall overcast. Time to dig out my light box and start light therapy again. It always hits me very hard in the fall, but it seems like it always a couple weeks in before the light bulb clicks on and I realize what it is I need. I think there was a bad pun in there somewhere.

I need to sit down and do bills still today. I am just in a lazy lay around do absolutely nothing physical mood today. Other than emptying the dishwasher and doing a load of towels, that is. I suppose I ought to do more. The laundry won't take care of itself no matter how hard I wish for it.

Finally got a new car stereo installed today, that comes with CD player, MP3 player adapter and a place where you can plug in a flash drive and bought a S-cable to hook the computer up to the TV so we can watch streaming video on TV. Cost just under $250.

We went out to breakfast at Shari's, which was $27.30 and left a $6 tip (she did a really good job).

Also bought a gallon of milk and two bottles of nasal spray. Nasal spray is getting ridiculously expensive, it was almost $8 per bottle. And the milk was $3.59. Could be worse and often is.

While we were waiting for the car we walked over to the mall and looked around FYE and Walden Books. Didn't buy anything though I would have if they had the CD I wanted. I haven't bought my September CD yet and I'll have to order it online. I think its an important, so this may count as both my September and my Ocotober music purchase if its too pricey.

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

$1891.33 Old EF Total
+ 10.00 Deposit
---------
$1901.33 New EF Total

Just $98.77 to go to hit $2000. Slow and steady wins the race. And I want to win.

So it is official, DH is working 28 days straight, then will come home for a week and then he may have to work an extra week again after that. But the two extra weeks are guaranteed now. So I won't see him until the 27th, when normally he would have been home today.

That will give us an extra $5250 net this month. I am planning on spending in this order:

$5250
- 700 car repair
-----
$4550
- 302 2 new twin mattresses for the kids
-----
$4248
- 400 new car music system
-----
$3848 to remaining credit card debt

I don't think it is going to cost $400 for the music system, though. The simple CD player/radio I want is around $100. I am allowing $300 for installation fee, but I don't think its anywhere near that. But whatever is left will go to the EF.

DH may very well get 2 or 3 more extra weeks between now and Christmas. There is a huge backlog of work due to the first guy quitting. So he is doing his own regular two weeks in the field engineer position and then in his extra weeks he is either training or helping with the backlog in his old position, but at his new rate of pay. Works for me. Especially if it means this card might be paid off by year's end and not with next years tax return. Sure would love that.

Today is another no spend day. I'm not going anywhere or buying anything. This makes 5 no spend days this month so far. That's over 50%, so not bad at all.

Today I have to balance the checking account. Yuck. My least favorite financial chore. I should also get around to listing all the bills I wrote out yesterday. If I don't procrastinate it. And I need to make up a weekly menu plan as well. So let's see if I can get all that accomplished today instead of being totally lazy and only doing laundry and dishes today.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Today I added $4 in ones and $1.20 in change to my change jar. I don't have enough coins to roll any one type just yet, but I do have $24 in ones now, so I will deposit that on Monday along with my two checks and send them off to ING to the EF. That will give me a deposit of $72.22, which will bring my balance in ING to $853.27. Just $146.73 to go to hit $1000.

Starting in September we will be contributing the $10 per week I've been doing all along to the EF, $100 every 4 weeks, and all survey money to the EF.

We will be starting a new car fund and contributing $500 a month.

And we will be paying an extra $1000 towards debt. That should still leave enough of the raise left to raise our food budget by $100, pay for the kids activities and get the current vehicles into shape by the time we are ready to buy our new vehicle. And we will be raising our 401K contribution by 1%.

There is a large rumor that Toyota will be releasing a Hybrid Sienna mini-van in 2008 and that is what we have wanted all along since they started introducing hybrids. It may not be until 2009, and who knows, Ford may beat them to it at the rate it is chugging along pushing out hybrids.

But that is what we are aiming for and I'd like to have somewhere between $5000 and $10,000 saved up for a downpayment just so our payments are reasonable. Any bonus money that comes along will go to the new car fund.

The only way I will consider buying a new car is buying a hybrid. Otherwise we would go used. And there just isn't a huge used hybrid market. And there are no mini-vans yet.

We have talked Prius as well, but that is only good for the four of us. If we ever want to take the kids places with their friends, its impossible with our current vehicles. T has to be in a car seat until age 8 by Washington state law and it is impossible to have two adults, two car seats and two ten/eleven year olds in either of our vehicles.

Now, why start in September instead of August? Well, August won't have a full paycycle at the new raise. We'll only have an extra $1000 this first paycycle and I'll be using it to fund some accounts. I used to have a budget that took so much for each item and saved it up until that item was due, but its been a long time since I actually followed that kind of budget.

Well, I want to again. So each month I will set aside money for medical, auto and house insurances, property tax, auto repair, house repair, and propane. There may be more, I'm not sure at the moment. Maybe an activities and vacation fund as well.

I'll divide the bi-yearly amounts up into monthly amounts and deposit those into a savings account for common expenses, and will have a spreadsheet to track what goes in which category. So that is where that first $1000 will go, seed money for some of these categories. It will get this plan up and rolling again and hopefully allow us to stay on top of the budget instead of swimming with our heads barely above water.

The only thing left for me to do now is to make the new budget spreadsheet and the new maintenance fund spreadsheet. That's easy enough.

I've had writer's block since the end of April. I really hit a wall with it, but last night it finally ended and I wrote five pages. It probably would have been more but it was late and I needed to go to sleep. But I've got lots of ideas now and I'm sure I can get another ten pages at least today.

Of course, I have to do yard work and harvest some food from the garden and add some compost around the cucumber vines and the kohlrabi and take the kids to the pool for an hour at least, so I probably won't get to it until after supper or possibly after the kids go to bed tonight. But at least I feel like I'll finish this book before the end of the year. Which is my goal.

Today is a much more manageable 75 degrees. Still a little hotter than I like but soooooo much better than yesterday's temp. The house is nice and cool from the fan's running all night and early morning. And I don't have to use the oven, so it won't get hot from that.

We aren't going anywhere today so it will be a no spend day. I do need to schedule some electronic payments to be made for next week, but I count those as made on the day they go through.

Shoot, I know there was something else I wanted to blog about today. Phooey. Well, it'll come to me eventually.

Today was my weekly transfer of $10 to my ING savings account. That brings the new total in my Emergency Fund to $596.05. $1000 does not seem so far away anymore. My long-term goal for now is the have $5000 in that account. Although maybe I should call that my short-term long-term goal. Because my long-term long-term goal is to have six months of living expenses and that's oh, way off, and $30,000.

For now I just hope to hit $1500 by the end of the year. I think we can do that. $250 will come from the weekly ten, so that leaves just an additional $650 to come up with. We have another $150 rebate coming, so that will make it $500 to come up with. Which is about $84 a month to come up with. I usually make $30 a month at the least on surveys, so that leaves $54 a month to save.

Well, that puts things in perspective. I sure can save an additional $54 a month, no problem. I'm glad I took the time to figure this out.

Well, I'm off to do my monthly Costco run. Not that much that I need there today, fluorescent light bulbs, sirloin patties for making hamburgers, and chicken pot pies because I've been promising the kids. Some lettuce, some fruit, and maybe some seafood if it looks good toay. I also need to put money on the gas card, so I probably will hit over $100 there. But definitely not for food.

I'll also make a brief run to Haggen to see if they have any kohlrabi in. I think it might be between seasons.

I'd like to make a stop at Lowe's to see what kind of veggie starts they have, maybe WalMart for the same reason. Depends on how crazy I want to make myself today. If Haggen has enough of what I want in their garden shop, then I might not bother with the other two places.

I'll try not to go hog wild and I won't be eating out today.

I wrote three more pages today. Really didn't want to stop but this is the last day I have to go shopping without the kids.

I've just been typing for the last hour and looked at the clock and realized, oops its after 1:00 a.m. So I'm taking a break from typing to do more...typing. Yeah, go figure.

But I busted through my writer's block tonight and have gone from page 97 to page 113. I was having a problem for about 2 weeks now. One of the characters was being difficult and didn't like the way she was being written.

I finally figured out that she was right and how to fix what was bugging us both, and 16 pages later I am rolling. Yes, I know, but you try living in my head with all these other characters and maybe you'll talk a little crazy, too. Ah, the life of a writer. I love it when the book starts writing itself.

Maybe I will finally get this book finished, and then published, and then...well, there's the next one half way done, too, just waiting. And its not nearly as difficult as the other one. I've always known where it was going.

And now, well, I probably ought to get some sleep, unless I can figure out a way to sleep and write at the same time. Nope, didn't think so.