Lucky Robin's Personal Finance Blog

Well, I finally went into ING and set it up to verify with my main credit union. For a long time I wanted to keep them seperate and so if I wanted to transfer money to ING I had to physically move it from CU #1 to CU #3. Oh, I could have transferred it electronically but that would have added another 3 or 4 days to it floating around without earning any interest.

Anyway, once the test deposits are made I will then be able to transfer money from the main account to ING. This will save me some wasted time. I was very hesitant to do this when I first started with ING, but I've been with them since October and I think my internet banking fears are gone. Even though I've been internet banking with my CU for over a decade, it took me awhile to feel comfortable using a bank.

I am going to transfer the vacation fund into my ING account so it can earn some interest in the month before we go. I should have done this awhile ago, but I've been putting it off. No more of that. This week it goes in. Then I'll just have to remember to transfer it back out in plenty of time for vacation.

Okay, in my quest to buckle down and save up the last $290 needed for our vacation at the end of July, I am going back to menu planning. This helps greatly in not eating out and in frugal food management.

Breakfasts will be variations of eggs and toast, sausage and toast, or ham and toast for the kids. For me its eggs and vegetables of some sort, or sausage and vegetables usually cucumbers or kohlrabi. I tend not to eat bread.

I've made up two pounds of homemade sausage patties, so there will be a fair bit of sausage this week.

The kids are having lunches at school through their last day on Thursday and for me, and DH when he arrives on Thursday, its always some variation of the leftovers of dinners. Which is what the kids will get, too on Friday.

Monday:
B: Sausage, vegetables, toast
L: Leftover chicken stir-fry (chicken and broccoli)
D: Wild Salmon, roasted asparagus (from the garden), fried potatoes, salad (from the garden), fresh berries

Tuesday:
B: Salmon and aspargus omelets, toast for kids
L: Salmon patties, cucumbers
D: Crab legs, baked potatoes, broccoli/cauliflower, salad (from the garden), cherries

Wednesday:
B: Crab and broccoli omelets, toast for kids
L: Salmon loaf
D: Chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, salad (from the garden), fresh berries

Thursday:
B: Eggs, ham, toast, kohlrabi
L: Chicken quesadilla, kohlrabi
D: Spaghetti and meatballs, zucchini and yellow crookneck summer squash, salad, pineapple

Friday:
B: Eggs and sausage, cucumbers, toast
L: Meatballs with zucchini and squash
D: Beef potroast cooked with potatoes and carrots, side of broccoli/cauliflower, salad, cherries

Saturday:
B: Eggs and Ham, sauteed red cabbage, from scratch pancakes of the kids
L: Shredded beef tacos, chips and salsa
D: Taco salad and whatever odds and ends are still left from the rest of the week, peaches

Sunday:
B: Sausage, French Toast for the kids, any leftover veggie
L: Meatloaf with salad
D: Homemade battered cod fish and chips, green beans, salad, any leftover fruit

Meals are consumed either with milk or water, sometimes the kids will have apple juice or some kind of junk drink that somehow made it into the house. I may make a half batch of brownies from scratch, depending on behavior this week. I don't like to keep sweets in the house because Rose doesn't have an off-switch when it comes to highly processed carbohydrates. So it is rare to have sweets of the non-natural variety.

Anyway, that's my menu plan and I'm sticking to it!

I've brought my checkbook balance up to date and with what I have leftover from the last paycheck, I am going to take and add $50 to the vacation fund. This will bring me to $402 in the vacatin fund. Which means $298 left to save until the end of July. It's going to be a bit squeaky, I think, but I can do it. Just have to keep focused on not having more than one meal out this month and same for next month. We'll certainly make up for that on vacation.

Oops, I also have $8 of rolled coin I can deposit as well. So that makes it $410 and only $290 to come up with.

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 recieved a .42 ounce sample of Ban deoderant in the mail today from WalMart. That's about a half size but it will last a month. I haven't bought deoderant in a year now. It amazes me how many samples of it there are out there.

I signed up for seven other samples today, including 3 for cat food samples for when Lucky comes visiting. That is what I call the lovely ginger cat that did not end up taking up residence here, but comes by about once a week for a cuddle and a bite to eat. He is such a sweetie, but I am glad I am not the one responsible for him. He ended up at a good home, though.

NFO sent me a 50 point survey today so I hit my 1000 points and cashed out for a $10 check to be mailed. It should arrive in 3 to 6 weeks.

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.

I transferred $10 to my ING savings account yesterday, bringing the balance in there to $90.72. As of yesterday I had earned 11 cents in interest for the month. My goal right now has just been to just reach for $100, which I will reach next week. My goal after that will be to hit $250, then $500, then $750, then finally $1000. When I receive my $50 check from the survey company that I am waiting on, I will put it in here. Building this EF back up has been such slow going, but I am getting there even if I am just crawling.

The $5 payment for the Pinecone survey I took last night showed up in my paypal account this morning. I have to love how fast they are with payment. At first it seemed like they were very slow to send out surveys but now I am getting them at a pretty rapid fire rate. Well, one a week or so. Pretty good compared to some of the slow poke companies out there.

I transferred that to the CU so it should show up and be ready to be bumped into the vacation fund on Wednesday.

Today I cashed out with one of my survey companies and should be receiving a $50 check in the next 2 to 6 weeks.

I did another survey with Pinecone today, which should arrive in my paypal account tomorrow or Monday.

I am 35 points from cashing out for a $10 check with NFO, so that should happen within a week or so.

The $5 from the last Pinecone survey that I transferred from paypal has shown up in my CU.

I am on track for a very good survey month this month. This is the first time I am being paid by the first company I talked about. I have read very good things about them and have had a very good experience with them. They have lots of surveys, usually 2 to 5 daily of which I qualify for at least one or two. Once in awhile I may go a day or two without any survey offers from them, usually over a long weekend or something.

They tend to run 50 points, with an occassional one at 35 and maybe 10% at 75 points. Rarely there will be one for more. Generally you get 5 points if you don't qualify. So if you have five non-qualifying surveys in a day, you'd still most likely get 25 points that day. It has taken me about 3 months to reach 1000 points. Points are cashed out at 5 cents per point, but you can't cash out until you reach 1000 points.

I'll update when (and if) I get the check, but if anyone wants to sign up with them before that knowledge comes through, drop me a note and I can refer you now. Otherwise I'll offer referrals when I get the check. I had researched them thoroughly online before I signed up with them and everything I've read says they do pay out on time and are a good company.

Now I'm off to see what's up with Lightspeed. No surveys from them for awhile.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...is weeds, weeds, weeds, everywhere. But that's okay because when I open them they are gone. Well, mostly. I spent 4 hours yesterday and 6 hours today weeding and weeding and weeding some more. It reminds me of when I was a kid and picked berries in the summer, 8 to 10 hours a day, six days a week. At night when I'd close my eyes that's all I would see.

My garden looks like a garden again. I probably should have taken a before photo, its hard to believe it is the same place. I let most of my garden lay fallow last year. Pretty much everything but the permanent crops of berries, asparagus and herbs. Oh, I had a pot of peas and one of beans and one of tomatoes, but the raised beds didn't get used. So they went to the weeds and the pathways after summer ended went to the weeds.

Now I've pretty much got it all reclaimed and partially planted. I thought I'd list what I have so far.

6 broccoli plants
6 cauliflower plants
6 red cabbage plants
24 kohlrabi plants
10 potato volunteers
7 cucumber plants (one didn't make it before planting
1 large zucchini plant
5 green leaf lettuces (one got eaten up by slugs)
8 yellow crookneck squash
1 hanging basket full of peas
1 Tigerella Heirloom tomato plant in blossom
10 garlic bulbs

permanent plants
asparagus
strawberries
blackberries
blueberries
raspberries
bush cherries
Saskatoons (berries)
apple tree
3 pear trees (one immature)
1 dwarf cherry tree
various herbs

What I still need to plant from seed:
green beans
radishes

Once I get those in I'll look around for space to see if I want to plant anymore.

I also planted wave petunias in alternating red and white down the driveway flowerbed and some bright yellow (not orangey) marigolds in a mass planting with red salvias on other side. The lilies there are getting ready to bloom and they will be deep orange and then towards the end of summer the bright orange Japanese lanterns will bloom. There is some red dianthus that is blooming right now, and the roses have tons of tight flower heads on them. There's also some hot pink something or other I did not plant there, but they migrated from across the yard.

Then I put some hot pink and some magenta wave petunias in the front whiskey barrel that has daffodils in the early spring, pulled the daffs frist and stuck the bulbs in some good compost in a different pot. The front whiskey barrel goes with the roadside flowerbed which is predominately pinks, whites, purples and blues. That bed is starting to bloom. Well the bachelor buttons have been out for a bit and the blue geranium has as well. The hot pink roses are blooming and the white goosenecks, daisies, and something else blue is blooming. Tons more to come in a couple weeks though. That flowerbed is 32 feet long and 4 feet wide.

I need to do the shade bed still. It is still weedy and the ornamental grass is doing a runner and needs to be set back. The hostas all came up beautifully this year but something ate the cyclamen. I have another hosta to plant there and I think that will make five varieties now. It also has some creeping red sedum and some violets. And lots of dandelions, unfortunately. Well, that bed is only eight feet long and one foot wide so it shouldn't take more than an hour to do, if that.

The peonies that belonged to DH's G'Ma are opening. My G'Ma's should open in another week or so. I still have to weed the horseshoe flowerbed, which is 16 feet on one side, 32 feet on one side and 16 feet on the other side. Only one foot wide though, so I might get through that with about four hours of work. Then the caladiums and coleus will need to go in the one stretch of 16 feet of bed. Everything else there is perrenial.

It's a lot of work and I hope the weather holds. I should think of mowing the lawn at some point but since it is already six to twelve inches shorter than anyone else in the neighborhood's at the moment I can let it go a bit longer. It's only been a week.

I got a lot accomplished and a lot of my stress dissolved. It's like I can stick my hands in the dirt and feel the stress just flowing out of me. It is very peaceful.

I did spend some money today. I got a garden hose and two new sprinklers and I got lunch from the Polynesian takeout place, Black Pepper Chicken (has celery and bokchoy in it). It came to less than $4 for the lunch. I can't remember on the hose and sprinklers, $25 or thereabouts.

Just a quick question to the resident techies around here, Tina or B.A. or anyone else who knows. I've been using Firefox because Veoh and Stage6 digi players and downloads don't run in I.E. or don't run well in I.E. Does Firefox do everything that I.E. can do? Because I think I'd just as soon make it my default browser if it does. But I don't want to get stuck in some backwater area of the internet if it isn't as good as or better than I.E. Thanks muchly for any help. I am such a newbie to non-MS stuff.

I decided to make a proper entry in answer to some comments left on my last post about my medical debt, because it just got too long to be a comment.

No, the hospital will not negotiate any further. As it is, my parents put their house up for collateral against this debt because mine wasn't worth that amount of money. If I fail to pay on the debt my parents would have to so it is something I have to be very conscientious about.

I have never been one to walk away from my debt, no matter how tempting or how much easier it would have made my life to do so. And it will get paid, either over the course of the next twenty odd years or when my parents die and I inherit the house and sell it. Even if the house is sold for medical care the mortgage would be paid off first as the oldest debt and then I'd just pay back the surviving parent free of interest. It is more likely they will die before I can pay it off since Dad is 72 or 73 (can't ever remember if he's 5.5 years older than Mom or 4.5) and Mom is nearly 68. But that's obviously not the option I prefer! I want my folks around as long as possible.

My parents wanted to cash out their IRA and pay it and just have me pay them $1000 a month interest free until the remainder of the debt was paid down, since they have enough in CD's to live off the interest plus the thousand, but since their IRA was made from a never taxed pension the penalty would have been enormous. So that didn't happen.

Mom says that when Dad dies she can then cash out the IRA without penalty and pay it off and then me pay her the rest of what is owed interest free. Another route I don't really want to go.

Well, it'll get paid and I'm feeling better today about it. Yesterday was just really hard.

I received the statement for my medical debt balance today. I am now at $146,322.80 left to pay off from a beginning balance of $155,000. Out of the last payment $702.13 went to interest and $208.24 went to principal. Well, at least principal has finally hit the $200 point. It seemed like that day would never come. I am grateful this debt is at 5.75% and that at least progress is being made now, no matter how little. Of course, when I see that YTD interest has been $4227.57 it makes me feel awful.

I know this debt was a necessary debt. I know that I am lucky to be alive today. I am grateful that the insurance did cover some of the three and a half year ordeal and that the hospital cut the remaining $310,000 in half. But some days when I see that balance and how much is wasted on interest it makes me want to cry. It is hard. I get so angry at my body for betraying me the way it did, for not staying healthy and strong.

It is overwhelming. It makes me want to scream. Or punch my hand through the wall. Or some other destructive thing like go on a shopping spree with a credit card. I won't do that. But the fact that I want to is a major red flag.

I try very hard to maintain a positive outlook in my life. Some days it is obviously easier to do so. This isn't one of them.

I deposited $20.50 into the vacation fund today. That brings the new balance in that account to $352.00. I have $348.00 to go to reach my goal of $700 by end of July.

I am going to take my aluminum cans to the recycler on Wednesday and add that in to the vacation fund as well. It will probably only be a few dollars, though, even though the hamper is full of crushed cans. I wish I lived in a state that gave five cents a can like Oregon.

I recieved $5.00 in my paypal account today from a survey I took yesterday. I transferred it to my CU and it will end up in the vacation account when it arrives there.

My last mortgage payment has now been posted to my account bringing the total still owed down to $34,048.11. It will be good to see that first four turn into a three next month. It always feels like a little victory when that happens, and of course it will be a big victory when that three turns into a two but that is a ways to go yet. Slowly but surely it comes down and I get that much closer to having full title on my house again. I do look forward to that day.

Well, so far so good. I have managed to use up two boxes of fish, one filets and one sticks and one box of chicken nuggets from the freezer. They were all taking up a lot of space and were only partial boxes. Now lest you think my shopping habits have been really bad, these were all homemade versions of fast food items that were in big Tupperware freezer containers.

I have also managed to use up half a head of cabbage close to the edge and a head of lettuce rapidly approaching the point of no return. I didn't make it to the farm today to buy the strawberries but I will have to buy milk and bread tomorrow so will buy the flat of berries then. I think I have enough eggs to make it to next Friday as well without buying anymore from the farm.

Oh, wait, you know I am getting lazy again and forgetting. I am going to start a loaf of bread going in the bread machine tomorrow before I head to town. I don't need to buy bread, I have just gotten into that mindset again.

I will be helping my mother out a bit. She still has walking pnuemonia and needs me to go grocery shopping for her, otherwise I wouldn't be going to town. And since I will be in town I will gas up at Costco, pick up my refill on my thyroid medication, and purchase my monthly CD. No not that kind of CD, I wish! That would be my monthly music CD. Rose has put in a request for something by Rihanna, so I'll get the one with Unfaithful on it. That song is so pretty even if it is pretty sad. I think it has S.O.S on it, too, which is quite upbeat.

I don't care that much this month, but next month, July's purchase will be one I've been waiting for, the new Kelly Clarkson. Yes, I am hopelessly a pop junkie. But I watched her new single Never Again on youtube and she is just getting better and better. The trick is going to be waiting until July 1st when she comes out the last week of June. But my limit is one CD a month., so I'll do it. That's my piddly small allowance, but its what I want and does not take up a ton of room so that's okay.

Today was the weekly deposit of $10 to ING. Along with the 12 cents of interest from last month this brings my little savings account to $82.70.

I rolled coin today and I have a total of $18 to deposit tomorrow. I never made it to the bank to deposit the $5.50 last time I rolled coin so that is now part of the $18. It will be added to my vacation fund account. There is also a $5 pinecone deposit that was made that I have not added in to the total.

$308.50 Old balance
18.00 rolled coin
+ 5.00 survey
--------
$331.50 New balance

$368.50 left to save to meet my goal of $700, so almost to the halfway point. Lodging is paid for already and has a full kitchen. Some food we will bring with us and some we will buy on the island. We can only take certain items across the border, but we know where a good grocery store is just outside of Victoria. We will have one meal out per day and visit at least five attractions. Just under two months left to save it up.

I just finished my fill-in purchasing at the grocery store and I am now going on a two week challenge to eat from my pantry, freezer and fridge. I am only allowed to buy milk, bread, and fresh fruit and veggies, but only if I run out of all fresh fruits and all veggies, not just because the ones in the bin don't look enticing at the moment.

I have several cans of pineapple and peaches so I'm going to try to just keep the fruit purchase to fresh berries which go on sale at the local farm on Thursday, which I set aside money for today. That fruit purchase will get me through the next two weeks as I will buy and process a full flat of strawberries for $13.

I have plenty of cauliflower, broccoli, asparagus, summer squash, zucchini, red cabbage, kohlrabi and green beans, so veggies should not even be an issue. Bread and milk I just don't have enough space to purchase ahead of time, really.

There's lots of chicken, fish, and beef in the freezer and plenty of eggs in the fridge. My main goal is to fight against buying stuff in the grocery store just because it "looks good", because that way lies certain grocery budget destruction. This I know. And it is what I am fighting against.

I put nine gallons of gas in the car today at $3.19 a gallon. The last time we got gas it was at $3.32 so that is a welcome drop. I have $16 left on my gas cash card. I will probably have to add more next week.

Our 401K statement came in the mail today. The new balance is $47,276. This is an increase of $3,045 for the quarter. We are getting so close to the $50,000 mark, I can taste it. I don't know if that will happen this year or not, but I think it will definitely happen by this time next year. Depends on the ups and downs of the market, as everything else does.

A bit of money out this weekend. On Friday we had the oil change for 47.56, plus a few other minor maintenance jobbies thrown in. Got an estimate on what needs to be done before we go to Victoria at the end of July and it will cost $246 or so. Oh, joy.

I had a P.T. appointment for my shoulder and that was $50 out of pocket with another appointment scheduled for next Wednesday.

And the jamboree for the t-ball season was also Friday, and it went pretty well. Tobias started batting left 3 games ago and he could really whack it out of there. We never thought to check him for batting left. Rose bats better left, too, but it just never occurred. Neither child has a dominant left hand, they both write naturally with their right hands, but my dad's a lefty and I do a ton of stuff with my left hand even though I write with my right. I always have done so much with the left. I always thought it was my strings training that made it so dextrous, but its genetic as well.

Yesterday was more cleaning and organizing and sorting and storing and on and on ad infinitum. Or so it seems. You can definitely tell stuff is gone now. Whole rooms look almost sparse and I am liking it. The recycle guys are going to love us come Tuesday morning.

Today has been yard work on top of yard work on top of yard work and it isn't done. So I suppose I should get back off the computer and back to work.

So, I was supposed to have a dentist's appointment on Tuesday but they cancelled it. Only they didn't call to cancel it until after I'd already left for town. Ten dollars down the drain in gas. Never let them give you an appointment following a major spring holiday or long weekend. Apparently there are a lot of idiots out there who lose teeth on long weekends and must come in for emergency repairs. I wasn't happy but I made the best of it and did some grocery shopping since I was in town and without DH and the kids who tend to make the spending go up.

When I got home the cable people had finished and gone and we now have cable internet, TV again, and a digital phone with free long distance, all for the cost of the internet and digital phone. I like cable internet. I'm going to come down firmly on the side of saying that. 56K is becoming a fading memory.

Of course, I wasted a ton of time on Tuesday afternoon and evening and yesterday, finding places online to watch the first seven episodes plus the Christmas special of series 3 of Doctor Who, which doesn't start airing in America until July and hasn't even finished airing in the UK yet. That was fun. Also found the first episode of Torchwood, which is definitely not for children! Even if it is a Doctor Who spin-off. I am impatiently waiting for the next episode of DW to go up as it aired last week. My little obsession.

But hey, I wasn't out spending money. Anywho, today was my rescheduled dentist appointment was today. My jaw still aches. Top eight words I do not want to hear from my dentist. Go on now, take a guess. Okay, I'll tell you. "I think we can do this without anesthetic." Oh, really? Do I get an opinion on that?

Turns out I didn't need it, though so that is less money out. I had ground down the area around a couple of fillings and they had to build it up and sand and resurface and fix a small chip. But still, not words I ever like to hear. I don't like going to the dentist, it always makes me quite tense. And my jaw just aches from being open for two hours. But it could be worse. It could always be worse.

After the dentist I stopped at WalMart to get engine oil and some more Rubbermaid bins to put more stuff in to take to storage so spent about $40.

Tomorrow will be a spend day as well. We are getting the oil changed in the Crown Vic and then I will be seeing the P.T. for my shoulder, which got wrenched. Old injuries reasserting themselves. I dislike when that happens. But its not horrible and Ibuprofen cuts it down to bearable levels.

It has been wicked hot here this week. To make up for it, they claim it will rain all next week. I'm not against that at this point. But I'm not sure I believe it, either. I'd like some days were it just sits at 70 with a light breeze so I can get the yard and garden back in order. Here's hoping.

I sent the $10 weekly deposit off to ING today, making the amount in there a whopping $72.58. Well, slow and steady.

All right, I better go and fold the mountain of clean laundry I've been ignoring since coming home.

I received payment in my paypal account today of $5 for a Pinecone survey I did on Friday night. I transferred it to my CU and when it shows up I will send it to ING to the emergency fund, where all survey checks go until it is up to at least $500. Then I will figure out what to do with survey checks from there.

I read a very good article this week entitled "When Banks Turn Evil." I thought I'd pass it along. It is quite enlightening.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Banking/BetterBanking/WhenBanksTurnEvil.aspx

Curious to hear what others think on this one.

So far while I have been organizing and cleaning today I have found $1.40 in change. I added it to the change jar.

Boy, its been a long morning and early afternoon. We are getting much more brutal on what we are willing to trash at this point. I really had no idea we had so much stuff in boxes that absolutely has no reason to exist in our house. Old statements from beyond seven years ago, old check carbons, newspapers, magazines that will never be read again.

If it isn't Discover, Fine Gardening, Fine Cooking or Writer's Digest, it is out the door. I am even thinking about ditching the gardening one. And I ought to just write down or type up the recipes from the cooking one and ditch those, too. Except they also have cooking technique information that is quite useful so maybe not.

I don't think I ever really realized just how big the closets are in this house. They are enormous. And rapidly being depleted. I am running across doubles and triples of things that were bought because the first one got misplaced. That is the ultimate in wasteful spending. I cringe at it now. Before it was just a fact of life.

The thing that keeps going through my head is that in a year when we have built the new cedar shed and bring all the stuff back from storage that we have been putting in there now, will we go through this again? I mean the whole why did we save this, why didn't we get rid of this thing last time. I hope not. But maybe we will. Maybe it takes time of being away from you stuff to just realize how worthless it is and how you don't need it for anything. Something to think on.