Lucky Robin's Personal Finance Blog

Today's spending:

$10.43 1 gallon of egg flower soup
$ 3.48 1 gallon of milk
-------
$13.91 Total today's spending
$20.42 Previous January spending
-------
$34.33 Year to date spending

Vizsla asked for my bread recipe so I thought I'd post it here.

1 and 1/2 cups + 2 tbsp water
3 and 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
2 tbsp dry milk powder
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp canola oil
2 tbsp honey (or cane sugar)
1 tbsp molasses
3 tsp active dry yeast

If your wheat flour does not have gluten in it you can add 1 and 1/2 tbsp of gluten as well. If you are grinding your own it will have it. There is no harm to the recipe in leaving it out.

Add ingredients in order indicated by your bread machine and use the whole wheat setting.

I don't have oven directions for it, but you could probably find them online for something comparable. This is for a 1 and a 1/2 pound loaf of bread.

This is a very filling bread, so when making sandwiches for the kids with it, we only make half sandwiches and they are full.

Today I:

Baked a loaf of whole wheat bread.

Made homemade tacos for dinner using a bunch of individual spices instead of from a mix. Healthier and with no fillers.

Cut up a 2 and a half pound pot roast into chunks to make chili tomorrow. If I had bought the pre-cut beef it would have cost twice as much for just under half the amount.

There will be enough chili leftover to package a family size meal for the freezer.

DH spent $10.98 of his travel money for food at the airport. Technically this is money from last year, but since it was spent this year I am tracking it anyway.

He also had enough left over to take us out for a very cheap lunch where we spent $9.44.

$10.98
+$09.44
--------
$20.42 Total spending for 1/3/07

No, not money. Nor political parties. Nope, its January and my daydreams turn to garden thoughts. I can't plant until late April, or mid-April if I use cloches, but my first seed catalog came in the mail and I'm off and running...at least in my head.

I've actually convinced DH to help me this year (so less of the grocery budget goes towards produce and more towards steak!) and the kids know it is going to be part of their responsibility as well. Tobias likes doing stuff in the garden, Rose, not so much. But they both like eating garden produce, so they'll both help this year.

Here are some of my gardening goals for this year:

Plant enough green beans to at least can a six month supply. Some things won't grow in my garden but green beans are prolific. I usually plant one 8 by 4 foot garden bed with pole beans on 8 teepees. Which is great for getting through the summer and having about 2 gallons left over 2 freeze. But I want more than that, and we eat a lot of green beans.

Transplant our two blueberry bushes and our Saskatoon bush out of the yard and into the garden proper where they will get adequate light and nutrients from the soil.

Dig up the asparagus crowns and put them on Freecycle. They grow fine, but I'm the only one who eats them and so much ends up getting wasted. Better to give them to someone else and use the valuable space for something else.

Convince myself not to plant a lot of corn, or possibly any corn. There are a lot of farms that grow corn here and they sell it for 10/$1.00. When you can get 100 ears for $10 to freeze, corn is not a good use of garden space. No matter how good it tastes 10 minutes from picked to cooked.

Do plant potatoes. They taste better than anything out of the stores and haven't been as cheap in the last couple of years, and they grow well in my garden.

Skip the tomatoes. They hate me, they will not grow for me, it doesn't matter how I treat them, they absolutely will not make it. No convincing myself that this year will be different. 7 years and its never different. Ditto bell peppers. Just give it up.

Plant thornless blackberries in quantity. Transplant thornless raspberries to a better location but not too near the blackberries, I don't want to end up with crossbred berries. Transplant strawberries to a better location. That portion of the garden will probably end up raspberries on one end, then blueberries, then strawberries, then blackberries across the shorter side of the garden rectangle. The transplants will grow anywhere in the garden, but they are in the way of how the new layout will go. This will be their permanent home, though.

Plant leaf lettuces only, head lettuce will be consumed by slugs, not me. Mix in spinach, radish, garlic bulbs and scallions. Do not try to grow onions, just use the scallions and deal with the fact that regular onions won't grow from sets in my garden, even if I plant them in the fall.

Plant 2 beds with broccoli, cauliflower, purple cabbage and kohlrabi, all plants from the same family.

Increase the herb bed, replace the tricolor sage that was destroyed by over enthusiastic pruning by children.

Plant 3 zucchini plants (not more!) and try planting cucumbers one more year, with an eye towards giving them up next time. Do not put the beds near each other. Think about squash if there is room.

Plant a second cherry tree to help fertilize the so-called self-fertilizing cherry tree we already have.

That's all I can think of now.

Today is shaping up nicely, well its almost over, but no money was spent. I will be using gas to go to basketball practice, the 2 mile round trip twice. A whopping 4 miles worth of gas.

The French Dip restaurant desire passed and I never made my chili today. The windstorm kept me up late last night. I took down the Christmas lights that are on the opposite side of my bedroom wall today so the clunking wouldn't keep jerking me awake tonight, like it did last night. I also turned off all the timers so the rest of the lights no longer come on. As tired as I was, I didn't think a major kitchen production was in order. Maybe tomorrow.

DH comes home tomorrow, maybe I'll make the chili then. It's a big recipe and there ought to be leftovers for the freezer.

I checked my regular savings accounts today. I made a total of 50 cents interest between the three of them. I am so glad I have ING.

I finally convinced DH to give up our current cell phone plan. Our two year contract expired in October, and isn't the company we signed up for to begin with, because they were bought out. Its been good service and all that but we are not heavy cell users. I'm lucky if I make two calls a month and they don't last long. DH uses his seldom also, maybe 8 short calls a month. We never even came close to using our minutes, and we were on the cheapest plan they had for two phones.

We are going to buy tracphones. $10 per phone and I believe its $9 for 60 days at the minimum for the pay as you go, which is enough minutes for us. Both Bellingham and Anchorage are in the calling zones, so this is great for us. We will have (after cost of phone) a bill that works out to $18 a month instead of one that is $72 a month.

Ever since reading a blog an hour or two ago that the person made French Dips for dinner, I have had a mad full on craving to go get a French Dip tomorrow from this wonderful restaurant down by the border crossing. They make what is probably the best French Dip in the state and I can't get the thought out of my head.

I don't have the cash on hand to buy one. I don't have the money in my checking account to buy one. I do have a credit on one of my credit cards for overpayment, but I don't want to use it. I'm trying to talk myself out of this, because it would be wasteful and I promised myself no eating out. Plus the French bread is white flour.

I hope I get over this by morning. I wish I even had the money to go get some London Broil and do it up myself. I can easily make whole wheat flour French bread in the bread machine. But no shopping until Friday. I'm not wasting the money right now.

My plan for tomorrow was to make some homemade no bean chili anyway. Which I have been wanting to make all week, but is a bit labor intensive. I guess if I get it started right after the kids leave for school the smells will permeate the house and overrun the French Dip thoughts. That sounds like a plan.

I also want to make up some hamburger buns. Basically use the bread machine to do the dough and after the first rise, divide the dough into six balls instead of 12 like I would for rolls, let them rise and bake them in the oven.

Ooh, now chili with crusty fresh hamburger bun type rolls, yes, that will wipe out the French Dip craving at its source.

Today was a no spend day.

I didn't go anywhere so I didn't use any gas.

We ate leftovers.

I built a fire in the woodstove instead of using the propane furnace.

I scheduled a bill to be paid online for 1/5/07, to save a stamp. (Man, that 07 feels weird to type).

I found another quarter on the floor of the kitchen and added it to my change jar.

I did the garbage can dance, where you get into the garbage can and smash it down so you can get a couple more bags in it before you put it out. Technically, not supposed to do that, but my garbage can has a limit of 80 pounds and believe you me, I am going to get all 80 pounds in there, or as close to, and the only way to do it is to do the garbage can dance.

Got all the recyling sorted as we have free recyling pick-up every two weeks and the value of recycled materials is deducted from our garbage bill since it doesn't go into the landfill. It's usually only a couple dollars a month, but every little bit counts.

Just my frugal things for the day.

Looking at blog statistics can get very addicting. Mine have steadily risen each month. I had my best month ever since joining the site. I had 3,162 unique visitors in December. That means that there are over 3000 people out there interested in what I have to say. Pretty cool. Sometimes I wonder if I am boring the universe but obviously the numbers wouldn't keep going up if I was.

And these readers managed to read 11,367 pages in the month of December. Quite the bookworms, or computer worms? No that has a bad connotation, who wants a computer worm. Screen worms? No, that sounds like a disease, doesn't it? We'll just stick with bookworms.

Anyway, to all my readers, thanks for taking the time.

In my quest towards better food management I aiming towards 5% waste as opposed to about 30%. I have been keeping better track this month than ever before. Today was leftovers for dinner, sort of.

There was enough spaghetti left over for Rose, but no hamburger. Tobias had a plate from the other day that has both spaghetti and hamburger on it (I guess his growth spurt is over). So I made fresh hamburger for Rose to have on her spaghetti, but made the entire package.

Then I had leftover hamburger, so I made 7 ounces of rice for me, as I know that is how much I can eat and have nothing left over. There was enough leftover sauce that I added it and the hamburger to the rice and that was my dinner along with green beans, a tangerine, and the last piece of bread from the batch I made last night, smeared with garlic butter.

Number of leftovers currently in my fridge: 0. Yay, me. It didn't even feel like I was eating leftovers. Okay, well, technically I wasn't except the sauce, but the kids were and didn't feel like they were eating leftovers.

So day one of the new year and food management is currently under control.

The interest in my ING savings account was added this morning, $2.05. Total interest since opening the account on October 23rd is $3.23. Sign on bonus of $25, which is counted as interest and one referral bonus of $10, also counted as interest, plus the real interest comes to $38.23. Not bad for 2 months and one week of having my money in their bank.

The total in my ING savings account is now $624.23. I have lots of referral invites, so if anyone wants to sign up and get the $25 bonus for opening an account with $250, leave a reply to this blog and I'll send you one.

Good-bye 2006, Hello 2007.

Somewhere in the neighborhood people are letting off fireworks. I hope all the little cats and dogs are safely tucked away and alseep tonight and not going crazy from fright at all the noise. No howling yet.

The first way I saved money in 2007 was not buying fireworks to light off! Course, I won't be that frugal in July.

I finally got everything cleared out around the bread machine so I measured out all the ingredients and it is busily working away on the dough and we shall have fresh bread tomorrow. This is going to be pretty good, I think. Since we only buy the organic 100% whole wheat bread, which comes to 2/$5.00 at the bread outlet store, and we buy five to six loaves a month, plus the same kind of hamburger or hot dog buns, we should save a lot of money doing it this way.

The organic ingredients came to $10.00 and should be good for about 40 loaves of bread or homemade buns, (I'll track it to be sure) which would come to $125 from the outlet store for that same number of loaves or buns. Homemade comes out to 25 cents per loaf or batch of buns.

So instead of spending $15 to $20 a month on bread products, I will be spending $6 to $8. And the kids will eat the crust off homemade bread as well as the heels. No problem.

I added $7 in ones to my coin jar today. We have enough organic milk to get through until payday, DH comes home Wednesday and he can just go without until Friday. We have apple juice so he will deal. I also found two quarters and three pennies while I was cleaning.

Yes, I know I said I was going to be Mrs. Lazy Pants today since all of my closets are organized, but I decided I was tired of only being able to enter the kitchen from one direction. Our kitchen is laid out where it has an entry to the laundry room and entry to the living room and an entry to the playroom/exercise room.

The hall leading off the kitchen to the laundry room is filled with "stuff" either kitchen or laundry related and needs to be organized. I can't get through that way to the laundry room at all. I have to go through my room, through the masterbath and out to the laundry room that way. Which isn't that big a deal but has to be dealt with before we get the dryer fixed.

Usually we can only get into the kitchen from the living room because there is so much "stuff" in the doorway to the exercise/playroom. You can get into it from the living room so its just a major pain to always have to go around.

Most of the stuff was recycling stuff. A lot of cardboard boxes that needed to be broken down, cans and plastic bottles that needed to be taken outside and put in the appropriate bins. Pop bottles that needed to have the labels removed. Now we haven't bought pop since Labor Day, so this should tell you how long they've been sitting there. A bunch of plastic grocery sacks that needed to be shoved in one bag and put under the sink for use as garbage can liners.

Well, I finally tackled all that. It took me 2 hours, but everything is outside and in its appropriate bin, ready to go out Monday night for Tuesday morning pick-up. And I can walk through my kitchen in two directions and it makes me very happy.

It has really been bothering me that I wasn't able to send in extra principle on the medical mortgage this month. The regular payment is $910 and change but I always, since the beginning have sent in $1000. So after the tough month of January is over, I am going to make mortgage payments of $1010 for the next year. Not just for the next 9 months which would be the $90, but for twelve, because I imagine not paying the $90 extra this month makes more damage than replacing it $10 at a time can make up for. I wish I could make up for it next month by adding an additional $100 but that's not an option.

I will have to make the straight payment on my house mortgage, too this month I think. But that is only a difference of almost $25. If I can, I will squeak it out, if I can't, I will add it onto the next payment.

I tend to track my leftovers pretty well. That habit is getting well-established. But trying to keep menu plans going, well, it works for a week or two and then I let it go. But during the weeks it works, it works really well. I want it to work all the time. Not working leads to meals out and way too much money spent.

I think what I need is six weeks of weekly menues that I can put into rotation. I also need to make enough at meals to provide for leftovers for other meals. Like tacos one night and taco salads for lunch the next day, spaghetti and meatballs followed by meatball sandwiches. Macaroni followed by macaroni pie, that sort of thing.

I want to have in place a working system by the time February starts. In the beginning menues should draw on what I have on hand in the pantry and the freezer. I have a lot of sauces that I picked up for cheap at Sunshine Liquidators, our local overstock and scratch and dent place. And they are all free of allergens or additives that we are allergic to or can't eat. So I need to figure out how to use them. A lot of them have recipes on the back of the bottle so I can play around with those and make sure they are financially feasible recipes.

I'd also like to do some OAMC, well maybe some shorter sessions that can bank some freezer meals for the nights were I am exhausted or sick. Just to make life easier and us not so prone to go out. That going out to eat is really what kills the budget. That and school hot lunches. Have to get those things under control.

One thing that I really need to get better at is balancing my checkbook. I tend to go for days with a general idea of where I am in the checking account, but I don't actually sit down and do the actual math. This makes it really easy to burn through money that probably should have been spent on other things or put into savings.

So I'd really like to break that bad habit. I need to try to keep it up to date and balanced daily, and if not daily then every other day. I also need to enter it into some kind of tracking software at least once a week.

Tracking software goes hand in hand with another thing I'd like to begin. I want to start tracking all expenses. Ultimately I'd like to do it all year, every year, but I think for now I'd like to do it starting with January and try it for a month and then re-evaluate after I get through the month. I'd like to keep a little notebook in my purse so I can write down everything and then transfer it over into a spreadsheet or something like that.

If I can manage to keep a spending journal and balance my checkbook daily, I think the miscellaneous money that gets frittered away would stop frittering and things would be easier for us.

I've been thinking a lot lately about things I can do to stay the course, or improve it. Some may call them goals or resolutions or steps and put them along with the new year, but I don't. Because I don't really like anything that starts with the new year or in any way smacks of a promise to do something better or different in the coming year, because take a wild guess what happens when I do do that? Anyone? Yeah, I don't do them.

So these are just things that I'd like to learn to do so that things go better for me as I go.

I'd like to keep my grocery budget to $200 a month, or rather $200 every 4 weeks. We have four people in this house. DH, who can usually eat a horse and drink a cow in one week's time. But he is only home 12 days out of every 28, and he is fed by work when he is up there. Me, and I eat maybe 2200 calories a day but I exercise vigorously five days a week and on my off days tend to only eat 1800 calories. My daughter, who has 1.5 hour basketball practice 3 nights a week and 2 1 hour long games on Saturdays, who tends to eat 2000 calories on work out days and 1400 on non-workout days. And my son, who is currently going through a growth spurt and eating about 1200 to 1400 calories a day depending on physical activity.

I think we should easily be able to stay within this amount if we completely stop buying convenience foods and eating out. I am wanting to eliminate all not from scratch foods anyway, as they have so many unhealthy ingredients. This should leave us with about $100 for meat protein, $30 for dairy and $70 for 100% whole wheat bread items, fresh fruits and vegetables each period.

We eat a lot of protein due to postprandial hyperinsulinemia (all of us have it except the youngest one and we feed him the same as us as he is showing signs of it, just hasn't been tested) and we don't like vegetarian meat substitues or beans of the non-string or green variety. Cutting back on protein is not an option for us to save money.

I think $100 a month should be adequate. We can usually get 10 pounds of hamburger @ $1.48 per pound, 10 pounds of chicken hindquarters @ $0.39 to $0.59 per pound, whole chickens at $0.59 per pound, beef roasts @ $2.49 per pound, tuna fish $0.99 (label must read tuna, water or tuna, olive oil, salt is okay--no autolyzed vegetable broth or any other additives), turkey legs or necks for $.0.69 per pound. We get 4 18 packs of organic omega-3 eggs a month at $2.19 per pack. If there is a good sale I will buy salmon or other seafood like shrimp or crab, but that is rare. All meat must be free of added ingredients, like a "10% solution added to enchance flavors," non-genetically modified, wild caught and not farmed in the case of seafood, no growth hormones, and free range. We prefer grass-fed and kosher, but sometimes there is a limit to what we can expect from our local grocery stores and most organic meat is out of our price range.

The most expensive thing is the sliced sandwich meats from Applegate Farms that have no additives, preservatives or in the case of ham has not been cured. The kids take that for lunches. Once it is opened it must be used within 4 days. I really need to divide these packages up and freeze the excess because the kids won't go through a whole one in a week's time. And also the organic milk is very pricey, too. DH drinks regular milk but the rest of us drink organic. DH can go through one gallon in 2 to 3 days by himself while we go through 1 in about 5 days. I can get coupons from Organic Valley dairy and I use my reward coupons from Fred Meyer as well.

I also need to start making my own bread products again. I have the bread machine, the ingredients and the recipes, but I never quite get around to it. I need to get around to it. Bread is pretty much my last convenience product but since we buy organic bread and 100% whole wheat bread, it is pricey. I can do this. I just have to want to.

This is all doable. It just needs to be done-able. Okay, making up words now. But I think my point is clear here. Just do it. I'll very grudgingly let this be categorized under goals, but I consider it more of a plan.

When I first came on the boards and started blogging here, I felt like I was drowning. With a debt load rapidly approaching $250,000 I could not see a way out. Not a way that didn't involve bankruptcy anyway. But then one night I was suffering with a horrible bout of food poisoning following my neice's wedding and I was googling money and debt reduction and savings and I stumbled across this site.

And I started to read the blogs. And read, and read, and read, between runs to the bathroom. Not like I could sleep with those stomach cramps. I think I read blogs for 16 hours straight until I finally fell asleep exhausted and woke up thinking there was a way. I continued reading for about 5 days and then I started my own blog. And something miraculous happened.

I was drowning. But the people here threw me a life jacket. And then...then they taught me how to swim. And how to climb up onto the dock and walk away from the edge. Oh, I'm a far cry from the shore yet. But I'll get there. I know I will. Because I have you guys, you are my lifeline, you gave me back hope, you have been there since my very first blog entry and those who joined later as well, with welcoming arms and helpful advice and encouragement when I needed it and even when I didn't. So thank you to everyone. I can't even express what this place means to me or what it has done for me. But I am grateful every single day that I found it that day back in April. And that I found all of you.

I put together a new budget for the new year. It is pre-raise as the January raises obviously have not come through yet. DH is "supposed" to get a big one this year but it was "supposed" to come last summer and just keeps getting put off, so I'll change the new budget if and when it happens.

So far, it looks like we have $100 worth of wiggle room. Not exactly great but we'll manage. I want to try to split that $100 each month between raising the EF back up and saving for vacation.

Today has been a good day. I got all of my errands accomplished, though I think I must have hit the slowest drive-thru bank tellers in the history of the universe. And all I was doing was making a deposit! I didn't even need cash back. The easiest task for them to perform and despite being there first (it was a 3 lane drive thru) I was fifth out of six cars served because I chose the lane with the drawer and not the ones with the tubes. So I had to wait for the girl to press the button to open the door for me to get my deposit slip and check in it, despite having pressed the teller call button twice. Which she might have done earlier if she hadn't run off three times. The other teller seemed preoccupied with filling up the candy basket. Hello, last banking night before a big holiday weekend, get your act together. End rant.

But I got all the various monies transferred to my checking account and I mailed off the check for the Medical Mortgage. This is the first time ever that I have not paid extra towards the principle. I hate that, but this month couldn't be helped. When I pay the house mortgage next week it'll be the same thing. Ugh. But after that it'll go back to normal.

I was going to drop off my house insurance payment at the local office today, but the lazy bums closed at four instead of five today for the holiday weekend, so I had to mail it. I'm not happy about that, I prefer to do as many bills in person as possible but oh, well, what can you do?

I received a check from Your2Cents and deposited that into the vacation savings account, along with the ones and rolled coin. So the total deposit was $41.50, bringing the amount in that account to $61.50.

I can't remember if I wrote about his before or not. I have the opportunity to go to a convention for my support group for my disease in May and it is a tight knit group so it is going to be fun. Some of us will be arriving a day early to go to Disneyland for one day and I am hoping to be one of them.

I do not have to pay for airfare as DH has plenty of miles, so I just have to come up with the hotel fee and the park pass money. I can have a roommate to cut the costs and I may do so. DH's schedule works out so that he will be home to watch the kids. So if I can get the money saved it will all fall into place.

I am taking my kids in to spend the night with my parents, so after I drop them off I am going to the CU to deposit my ones and rolled coin.

$26 in ones
$10 in quarters
$.50 in pennies

Total deposit: $36.50.

Hopefully, I won't have to use it for anything else and it can stay in savings where it belongs. This is not to build up the EF, this is the start of a vacation fund, along with $20 already in that account, bringing it up to:

Vacation Fund: $56.50

We plan to take part of our income tax return to build the EF back up and the rest of it will go to debt.

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

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

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

I decided to quit putting my head in the sand and hoping I wouldn't have to tap savings to make up for the generator money and sit down and crunch the numbers. So I did. And there is no way around using the money in savings. There just isn't.

So I will be left with $600 in savings. I'm a little bummed, but you know what? That means I still have $600 in savings, which is $490 more than I had when I started this blog and $600 more than I started 2006 with. My glass is still half full.

I probably won't be able to throw too much at savings until March. I've got homeowner's dues to pay of $125 at the end of this month, the second half of my 6 months car insurance to pay of $180.50 by February 22, and then I still owe $200 on homeowner's insurance between now and July and Property tax comes due April 30th for the half year of just under $400.

Medical is caught up for the year and hopefully no one gets sick between now and April as our per person deductible is $250 or $750 per family. I will have some dental to pay I think as I have a January appointment. I should be getting a check from the orthodontist in the next couple of weeks. They are usually around $250. Probably use half of that to pay the dues and the other half plus $30.50 to pay the rest of the car insurance.

I am dreading the propane bill. That may wipe out the rest of my savings account. Now that I am well and my wood pile is thawed out, I really need to go back to using the woodstove again. 2 months on propane heat, oh, I don't even want to know.

3rd Entry for today

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

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

2nd Entry for today.

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

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

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

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

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

Her: We have no record of that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet another entry from me.

I just cleaned out my purse and found a $1 bill, 1 dime, 1 nickle, and 1 penny that I added to my change jar.

Tomorrow I will clean up the floor on the passenger side of my car, as I know DH dropped some change there yesterday and I know that there are at least 3 dimes in the Blazer, too. I might just be able to make a roll of dimes by Friday.

I do still have one dime in my purse but that's parking meter money. I don't think I'll be anywhere where I'll need to use it but I always carry one, same way I used to also carry change for a pay phone back before I had a cell phone.

2nd Entry today. Well, third, if you count the one that was for yesterday but went through today. Anywho...

I counted up my coin jar tonight. I am 9 dimes, 6 nickles, and 7 pennies short of rolling new rolls. I did have enough for one roll of quarters (with $6 in quarters left over), and one roll of pennies.

I also have $25 in ones. So depositable amount is $35.50 and just have to wait on the remaining $5.27 worth of coinage to make more rolls.

Actually, I think I will deposit the $35.50 anyway on Friday when I go to town so its out of the house and sent off to ING and earning interest anyway. I still have enough in unrolled coins that if I do have to dip into it to buy a gallon of milk, I can do so, even if I have to pay in quarters!

I want so badly not to touch savings. Oh, this month is going to be a squeaker!