Lucky Robin's Personal Finance Blog

I reckon I'm going to have a lot of these no spend days over the next few weeks, and will really have to keep a sharp eye on the spending. That's okay, though. I don't want to be lax with it. Tomorrow should be no spend, also. It helps when you don't leave the house?

Dinner tonight was out of the freezer, turkey necks, which the kids love and broccoli and cauliflower, which the kids also love. I ate other food that I had on hand as I didn't feel like thawing out two packages of turkey necks. This was a pretty cheap meal as I got the necks the week after Thanksgiving when they were selling for 29 cents a pound.

My goal for the next two weeks is no eating out at all. Not even cheapy fast food places. Everything home-cooked and from the current stores in the freezer, fridge, and pantry.

I found out last night at the grocery store that they didn't have gallons of Organic Valley milk because it was affected by the big power failure down Seattle way. Bummer. Not sure when they will get it into the stores. That will be the only grocery spending I will do until the 5th, but only if they get production back up and running.

Okay, these late night or early a.m. entries are starting to be a habit with me. I think the whole holiday thing threw my sleep cycle out of whack and I need to reset the whole system.

DH had to leave for Alaska today so on the way to the airport we stopped at McDonalds to use all the gift certificates we got for Christmas. Not the greatest eating healthwise, but I didn't have any sugar, just drank water with my burger and fries (I'm sure those had transfats!) Felt sluggish after eating it, too. Well, what do I expect eating white flour?

I withdrew $50 from the bank today, $30 for DH's travel money and $20 for my incidentals. I'm going to try to make it last until January 5, which is our next payday. We won't eat out at all between now and then, either.

I used the last of the grocery money tonight, too. I bought apples, organic milk, bananas, marked down shrimp and salmon (from the day before Christmas, (I froze them when I got home), hamburger, lettuce, green bell peppers, and a Danish squash. This will supplement the rest of the produce I have on hand and some of the fruit should last until payday. If not I have canned pineapple and home canned peaches. I may have to borrow from my change jar to get milk, but I think it should last if we keep it to one glass each at mealtimes (and I only drink it once a day) since DH is gone now. He's the biggest milk drinker.

I had to work out a very careful budget but I've covered all the bills there will be between now and the 5th. Buying that generator really knocked us for a loop, but I still feel it was a necessary purchase, even if we don't have another power failure this cold season. It will definitely hit our savings account hard, but then what was I really saving for that can't be put off so we can absorb the hit?

What else today? I read another chapter in The Underground History of American Education. Honestly, its like working my way through a thesis. It is interesting and it is giving me a lot to think about, but its sooooooo long.

Oh, and I watched The Devil Wears Prada, which was given to me as a Christmas present. I liked it, it had a wicked sense of humor. It sounds like it was quite different from the book though. I don't know if I'll keep it or not. I've been trying to winnow my DVD collection down a bit, preparing to sell stuff on half.com. I'll have to think on it a bit. I've got a box of books ready to go, though. I just have to find where DH put them.

The last two days went pretty well for the most part. Two no spend days in a row. Of course, nothing was open today but the casino, so that makes it pretty easy to not spend, and only someone with the patience of a saint would have gone into a store on Christmas Eve. Which, if you were wondering, does not even remotely describe me.

Yesterday was good, nothing bad at all happened, the Ice Queen was even there and she was actually (gasp) nice. Maybe she's thawing out after all these years of being, well, the Ice Queen. It would be nice to have two sisters who actually behaved like sisters instead of just one.

Today was great for most of the day until my husband's uncle showed up at MIL's house. He was NOT supposed to be there. He was not invited. We called and made sure that he was not to be there. It was a very tense 10 minutes before he left. I was about to take the kids and run. This man is nuts.

When my little boy was four years old, this man kicked him out of his chair by physically lifting him up and tossing him on the ground and then sat down in the chair himself, even though there were plenty of other chairs and my son had been sitting in this one for a good twenty minutes. Well, T got mad at him and said, "Hey, that's my chair, give it back." He was ignored. He said it again, and was still ignored. He then said, "If you don't give me my chair back I am going to kick you." Again he was ignored. So my son kicked him. His reaction? To strangle my son.

And then when DH stopped him he claimed my son gave him a migraine by kicking him. I mean, hello? Unless your head is your butt (which in his case that very well could be), you aren't going to get a migraine from being kicked by a barefoot four year old (not to mention he was playing volleyball one hour later in the full sun, and he has a migraine?). I do not believe my son should have kicked him, though if I had been treated the same way at that age, I would have. Heck, I might have done it NOW. It's not like my son did not warn him or try to solve it himself first.

Then the uncle tried to claim that T could be taken away from his parents for assault, to the boy. At age four! And he said it was an unprovoked attack. I'm sorry? If you toss a kid to the ground how is that unprovoked? Well, we talked to the police the next day and they laughed at that line and said no way would a four year old ever by charged with assault. Which we knew anyway. But we were advised to never, ever let this man anywhere near our kids again. And we hadn't had any contact with him for 2.5 years.

The police said it was up to us whether to press charges or not but it most likely wouldn't make it to court, so we chose just to sever all contact. Seeing him again enraged me. Especially since he was uninvited. DH and FIL did form a barrier so he couldn't get past them to where my kids were and I wouldn't look in his direction or even acknowledge he was in the room.

It was very prickly until he left. I am glad he did. I did not want to have to. It took a bit to calm T down, he is still afraid of this man even though we haven't seen him or talked to him in so long. He ran and hid. He seems to be fine since then, but I will not be surprised if he starts having nightmares again like he did after it happened.

Other than that, it was a good day, though. With good food and good company and DH and I scored big with a really nice weight bench.

I am mass producing lasagnas today, it is a long and exhausting process making these babies from scratch, but I'd rather do several in a day than one at a time anyway, since it pretty much involves getting every pot and pan in the house dirty, not to mention the food processor and the salad shooter, a couple cutting boards and a chef's knife.

But it is coming along and it is sauce time so the house is about to smell very, very good. In the midst of thawing and cooking hamburger, boiling whole wheat noodles, shredding cheese, chopping onions and garlic, digging around in the cupboard to find the big bulk containers of basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, sea salt and green, white, and black peppercorns, draining diced tomatoes, making sure there is enough butter to grease all the pans with (hey, this is not low-fat lasagna, after all, even if I am using leanest hamburger and skim mozzarella), I also had to make peanutbutter cookies for Santa Claus.

I did make the peanutbutter cookies a little healthier by using extra virgin olive oil instead of vegetable oil, whole wheat flour instead of white flour, and an omega-3 organic egg. At least they are higher in protein than most cookies. I had one with my balanced dinner and they taste much better than regular peanutbutter cookies so I'm happy. I probably won't eat anymore of them, though.

Well, my break is over. DH has processed more onions for the second batch of sauce. He is crying. Literally, from the onions, so I best go help him out.

By the way my blood pressure is down to 120/80 and I am feeling a lot better today.

Today was a really long day. The good news is that we have completed all of our Christmas shopping and I only have maybe 20 rows left to knit on my Dad's second hat. We did not use credit at all, it is an entirely cash only Christmas.

The bad news is that I have been feeling kind of generally bleh this week, even though the sinus infection is starting to clear up with the antibiotics. This morning (12-22-06) I woke up and my hands and feet were horribly swollen and my face was all puffed up. I immediately went to take my blood pressure and it was 145/95, yikes. Called the doctor and he sent home some samples of a different BP med with a diuretic in it with my mother who just happened to be in the office when I called (happy coincidence, especially as they closed at 12:30 today and I couldn't get him on the phone until noon). And called in a potassium prescription to my pharmacy.

I'm to monitor my BP, which is already down after one dose and if it gets too high, I'm to go to the urgent care clinic. I think this will solve it but it was a little scary for awhile. Most of the time I don't even think about the fact that I have high BP, I just take a pill and eat right and I go along with my life. This sort of thing really throws me for a loop when it happens. Makes me remember that yes, I am still dealing with a disease that causes high BP and with a family history of high BP. Just because the disease is under control 99% of the time does not mean it is not there.

DH and I did manage to pick out a new door knob and deadbolt set several hours later when I felt more normal again. It is really pretty. We were going to go for brushed chrome but when we saw this gorgeous brown brushed copper we got it instead. It matches the brown trim on our house almost perfectly. DH installed it tonight and we now have a front door that opens and shuts again. So much more convenient. We spent almost $60 on it.

DH and I argued about that for a bit. I just wanted to replace the door knobs as the deadbolt was perfectly fine, but HIS opinion was that having a door knob and a deadbolt with two different keys would drive ME crazy. Not him, me. And he didn't want to be changing them out again in a month when it happened. So I eventually agreed with him that it probably would bug me and so we got the full set. For twice the price. Sigh.

I think our EF is going to take a major hit. It isn't going to be as easy to absorb the cost of the new generator as I thought it would. $867 is a huge purchase to just take in without a blip. We'll see. I'm going to try really hard to not touch the EF but I think in the end I may have to sink it down to $700 or so. Sigh, again.

Other spending today included $10 for the potassium prescription.

Things I have done that needed doing:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My day in a nutshell.

Finally! We put up our Christmas tree today. I don't think I've ever had to wait this long before to have one in the house. We still haven't decorated it yet, the kids are watching Ant Bully and DH is watching with them and I'm not going to be the one to go drag the ornaments out of the shed in the dark. So maybe it won't get done until tomorrow. That's fine with me. Just putting it together was exhausting.

It was a no spend day today which I am glad of, being as its the first one in a good while, what with all the Christmas shopping and eating out twice. My package from Amazon came today so that takes care of my mother. I still need to get the gift certificates from McD's for my nephews and finish knitting Dad's hats, but then I'm done on gifts. I think.

I haven't done any PTR's since DH came home, we have just been too busy. I might get a chance to do one tonight, who knows though.

Tomorrow the kids are going to spend the day at MIL's house along with SIL's two daughters and DH and I will finally get some alone time. Looking forward to that. We are going to go see a movie, the new Cameron Diaz/Kate Winslett one. I've read mixed reviews but I still want to see it. It's been so long since I've seen a movie in the theater. The Lake House and X-Men 3 were the last ones we saw. We will go at matinee time as it is much cheaper then, although not nearly as cheap as it used to be. We never buy from the concession stand, we just make sure we are not hungry when we go to the movie. Movie popcorn never tastes as good as it smells anyway.

I think that about covers it.

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

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

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

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

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

Lisa in WA

I haven't been blogging much these last two days. I got distracted by reading the online edition of An Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto. It is fascinating. I suppose that's what I get for clicking on one of Perky's links. I know better than to do that when I'm supposed to be busy doing other stuff, but do I ever learn? At the rate I'm going its going to take quite some time to get through it, but I've read something of his before and really liked what he had to say and how he said it, so I'm sure I'll wade through it. I'm learning a lot of stuff I never learned in school and probably the reasons why I never learned it in school.

Anyway, on to financial stuff. Christmas is sure a spendy season. It is very easy to think about raiding the savings acoount! Not good. So far we've resisted it but the temptation is very real.

DH did spend $40 today on getting his hair cut, his beard trimmed, Tobias' hair cut and buying the shampoo and conditioner they talked him into at the salon. Sigh. The shampoo is expensive and totally unnecessary, but well, DH likes it better than other stuff we have on hand and when he gets that way, which is rarely, I just roll with it.

We spent most of the day at my mother's house doing laundry and had to make an emergency trip to the orthodontist when Rose's wire came loose. It's to be expected when she's lost 3 teeth in 4 weeks time. She was supposed to have an appointment tomorrow, but the Dr. just fit her in today so now hopefully I can get in and go to my doctor about this pernicious sinus infection/cold/bronchitis whatever the heck illness I have. Not to mention I think my blood pressure meds aren't working anymore either, so will have him check my BP while I am there also.

That's about it from my little corner of the universe.

Rose's games went pretty well today. They didn't win either one, the first
one was hard as the other team had 3 girls who were taller than Rose by a
head or more and she's the tallest player on her team. And there was a lot
of fouling going on that wasn't called.

The other team would hook their feet around in front of our players ankles and trip them. It looked like a move that they were taught to do, when you have four out of five players doing it consistently, it is not an accident and it isn't just one person playing poorly. That's bad coaching and bad reffing to allow it. I've seen similar things in soccer and it can really cause injuries. In fact it did here, one of the girls had to leave the court and sit out for about 15 minutes it hurt her ankle so much. At least the refs were calling on the double dribbling and traveling the other team did. So the end score was 22-12.

The second game went a lot better, they only had one girl who was a head taller than Rose, and a few of similar heights to our girls. It was a tight game, well played, although one of our girls suddenly got really scared of shooting. She is a good shooter but it's like she's afraid of missing so instead of taking shots when she's in a great place with no guards on her, she'll pass it to someone, and not usually to someone who is open. She could have scored half a dozen times, but its like her confidence
went away. Still, our team did great and the score ended up being 32-26,
only a six point spread.

Afterwards, the kids went with MIL and FIL down to Stanwood for the Christmas thingy at some campground, like a Christmas Fair with tons of lights and stuff to do, so DH and I got a lot of time to ourselves. We went out for RM dinner to our favorite Mexican place. I'm sure its not hydrogenated fat free, but I gave in as DH really wanted to
go there. We ate way too much food! But only spent $24.14 plus $5 tip.

DH and I went shopping and got gifts taken care of for FIL, MIL, both young nieces, and the yarn for me to make Dad two hats. I'll have to knit in overdrive but since I can do a hat in 3 hours it should be no problem.

I also bought the throwaway containers to make the 2 lasagnas that are BIL and FIL's requested Christmas presents. And two more because both sets of parents (mine and DH's) have requested my lasagna at their Christmas get togethers. At least its easy to mass produce! I still have to buy the ingredients, though. I make them in the throwaways or it can be months before I see my glass cookware again.

Then at home I ordered Mom's present to be delivered by Wednesday, and 2 CD's that I wanted for DH to give me. That just leaves me with the McD gift certificates for 3 of my nephews (I quit giving to nieces and nephews after their senior year of high school). Now I just have to go with DH to buy his weight bench and I am done!

So obviously it was a very busy and very productive day. Tomorrow will be
productive too, but for less happy reasons, we are CLEANING the house.
Yuck. Deep cleaning. But then we will finally put our tree up. Yeah, don't have it up yet. But you should see the outside of the house. In fact, you probably can from googlespace, LOL. It's a tad decorated with the lights. Oh and MIL and FIL gave us two more yard decorations, like we needed more lights! DH will put them up tomorrow, though.

Oh, and we bought gas today on the Costco cash card.

We're about to get hit by another storm tomorrow. They're talking 100 mile per hour winds. It's already dumping huge amounts of very cold rain, the back half of our driveway is a little lake. We need to regravel next summer so it doesn't get so bad.

DH and I spent the day looking at generators and finally decided on one. He's gone back to town to pick it up while I do Mom duty with Rose at basketball practice. He took Tobias with him.

The generator we decided on costs $779, is water and rust proof, and will run for 10 hours on one tank of gas. I belive it is a 2 gallon tank. They had the sign up that says if you apply for the Home Depot card you get 10% off, so DH decided to do that. We won't use it though except for this and will pay it off immediately. It should cover a little more than the sales tax. Our sales tax is 8.4%. WA state has the highest sales tax in the nation, I think, and our county has one of the highest in the state.

This is a really big purchase and I was planning on making it, just not this soon. With the extra paycheck we have the money to do it, and I do not want to lose another $500 worth of food because I can't run my fridge and freezer. On the drive home I started having a really bad feeling that we needed to go back and buy it today and not wait until tomorrow. I've learned to go with those feelings and so has DH. DH called a bit ago and he got the last one there, so I'm glad I sent him back.

I'm not sure on the grand total yet but I'll edit this to add it in when he gets home.

Edited to add:

DH made it home safely! The rain is getting torrential. He decided not to apply for the Home Depot credit card as he thought it would be too easy for him to use it! So no 10% discount but no future temptation to use a credit card either, so maybe we still save in the end. The total cost of the generator with tax came to $844.

I picked up DH today and we went out to lunch at Black Angus. We spent $36.39 including the tip. It was very good and it was nice to chat over a relaxing meal.

We had conferences this afternoon (finally!) and both kids are doing well, except Rose in spelling, which is laziness, the teacher agrees with me on that.

Both kids are good kids, helpful, kind, leaders, that try to make sure no one is left out. They are friends with everyone, but have a good circle of closer friends, also. I like hearing that about them.

Not much of an update tonight. DH is giving me sad puppy dog eyes so I best go attend to him.

And not a minute too soon. 23 days is an awfully long time. I do miss him so much on these really long shifts. The money is good, though, that helps some to compensate.

I spent $14.07 today on dinner. I woke up with a barking cough so decided maybe I shouldn't get my germs in the kids' food. So they had both breakfast and lunch at school today and then boughten dinner. Which reminds, I wrote a $20 check to fund T's lunch account.

I'm not sure what I'll do about breakfast tomorrow as it is Cook's Choice, which means they don't list what it actually is. Drives me crazy when they do that. But hot lunch tomorrow is something both kids will eat and then DH can cook dinner.

I am having a devil of a time getting through to my doctor. Half the time they forget to turn the answering machine off and its not one you can leave messages on, either. Since he is semi-retired, he only works 3.5 days a week. And the other doctor that I go to is a specialist, not for general sickness, so she can't help here. Maybe I'll just go to the clinic. I hate doing that, though.

Okay, I'm being a little hokey with that title. First issue, the power, is back on. In fact it woke me up and I can't get back to sleep so I decided to come here and write a bit.

Second issue, one. Or rather ones. I have decided to not just save my coins, but to throw in any one dollar bills I get. I've seen a couple people here doing it and well, I decided to jump off that bridge because Tina did it first. No, I've been thinking about it for awhile. Resisting it really. But I keep circling back around to the idea. So I decided to go for it.

So tonight when I emptied the coins out of my purse I also took out the ones. I had $6 in ones. So into the change jar they go. My change jar is an old Miracle Whip jar, by the way. It serves its purpose well. I used to keep it in a Litehouse 1000 Island dressing bottle but at one point there was too much change in it and the bottom of the jar came off with the weight when I picked it up. Miracle Whip seems a bit sturdier so far.

I have not been getting the rush I was getting before when everything extra was going into building up savings. Sending extra off to the credit cards just does not give me that same thrill. So, I think that I will go back to putting all my little bits and pieces into savings and take the bigger hunks that I have carved out of the budget, like the money we used to pay for cable, and use that for the extra on the credit cards. Otherwise I just lose the motivation, I think.

But I am also going to work hard to keep all expenses down so I can still send extra to the cards. I think that is a good trade off. I can still see my savings grow to a level I feel safer at. Right now the level I want to reach is $2000. Beyond that, $4000 or one month's pay. I just feel the need to have that for peace of mind. I mean sure, six month's living expenses would be grand (majorly grand, like 24 grand), but that could take ages. So one month's pay is the long term goal for now and half that is the short term goal. I am $399.02 away from the short term goal.

My $5 cashout from TinklyCash arrived at paypal today (24 hours, yay!) and so I transferred that to my CU and when it shows up I will send it off to ING along with the next $10 weekly deposit. It should show up the same day so that will make it pretty easy to do all at once.

All right, I'm getting sleepy again, so that's enough for now.

I am getting very annoyed with Puget Sound Energy. This is the 3rd power failure in less than a month's time. Okay, I know there is a big windstorm (again), but I didn't even see any trucks in our area working to get stuff up and running again and this was 3 hours after it had gone out. You would think the portion that has a school on it would be considered a priority, but no, it's not.

It's been out for several hours and if they don't get it back on tonight, I'm going to end up losing food again. I think I'm going to insist that they knock some off my power bill as they've cost me an awful lot of money in ruined food with their slow (lack of) service.

I did spend just under $15 on taking the kids out to dinner. I am just getting so tired of this. I also didn't do any of the other things I had planned to do because I didn't want to get stuck on the wrong side of a downed tree from the school.

Today, well technically yesterday as its after midnight, was a no spend day. We didn't go anywhere so that makes it pretty easy to achieve.

I cashed out a PTR today, $5 from TinklyCash. They generally have 24 hour payout, but after that last time with the owner gone on a trip it took a couple weeks, so who knows?

I was able to put up a few more light displays, a nutcracker and a penguin on tree stumps in the garden, and the seal that spins a package on its nose I decided to try to put up on top of the arbor. It was a little difficult to hoist it up there, but I got it up there and cabled it to the arbor and it looks great. I like having...I guess I'd call it texture in my display. So stuff isn't all just flat and at one height.

I'll have to wait until DH comes home to do the train. It is just too heavy for me to lift with one hand and where it goes, I have to climb a ladder to get it up there. Fortunately he will flies home on Wednesday morning.

I wanted to go out to eat today but told myself no and we had a smorgasboard of leftovers. They need to be eaten and money certainly didn't need to be spent. I really didn't want to cook and I think that is why I was wanting to go out, but I really only had to warm stuff up in the micro so its not like I had to cook.

I am planning on going to town tomorrow as soon as the kids get on the school bus. I have a few groceries I want to pick up and I need to deposit a check that came in the mail yesterday. Depending on my energy levels I may pick up the gifts for MIL and FIL and my mother. I hope to be back home in time for lunch. If I eat a good breakfast before I leave I don't think I will be tempted to go out for lunch, but if I leave the house without eating, which I am prone to do, I will have no resistance at all. Now is not the time to be wasting money. Especially with a fridge full of homecooked leftovers.

Now onto less of the boring in this, my third entry of the day...

I spent a good 3.5 hours at the high school today watching Rose play basketball. After today she will only have one game a week until week 6, 7, 8. It should have been two games back to back, one scheduled at 1:30 and the next at 2:30 but one of the refs never showed and since there were supposed to be two games on at a time that didn't work out very well. So the 2:30 game didn't start until 3:00.

The first game was so-so. We lost 16 to 6. It took our girls awhile to get into the groove, but they finally did in the last quarter. The second game was much better, the girls got their rhythm down and had a great passing game and we won 28 to 18. Rose made 2 baskets. She's never made a basket in a game before so we were all really excited. This is only her second year playing. I was a little worried as she missed two practices this week due to the barfing thing. But she's got her groove on.

Most of the other baskets were made by one player. The girl who used to bully Rose made one basket off a pass from Rose, and she and Rose were passing back and forth and acting like real teammates. They even smiled at each other. I am so glad that whole thing seems to be in the past now. Rose's skill level has come way up since last year, but she spent a lot of time this summer shooting hoops, so she's much better at that.

I did spend money today, since it took us so long at the high school. I spent $2.95 at the vending machine for pretzles and peanuts for Tobias and Rose. Afterwards we stopped at the Casino store and got sub sandwich kid meals, so spent $8.65 there, then we stopped at the convenience store closer to home and I got a few things and paid $8.88.

Most of the evening was spent being a slacker. Okay, I did PTR's while I watched a Buffy dvd. Did do some cooking, well, really just some warming up of leftovers and a load of dishes and a load of laundry. Okay, not that much of a slacker, just I have so much else I could be doing, but I am really uncomfortable with moving around much after sitting on those gym bleachers as long as I did. And why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?

More of the boring...

Money left to pay off on the house mortgage--$35,724.84.

Time left: 10 years, 6 months, and $25 left to payoff date. But I pay a little extra each month, so sooner than that really.

I didn't get a chance to come on again last night and blog the boring stuff so here goes.

$800.00 Bank of America Visa
$165.00 MBNA MC
$ 70.94 Cell
$ 41.64 Phone
$ 38.67 Water Delivery
$ 37.36 Garbage (2 months)
$180.50 Car Insurance (3 months)
$ 43.75 Vehicle Registration Tabs
$100.00 Propane (into savings for now)
$ 34.00 Security System Monitoring
$ 29.29 Life Insurance on DH
$ 50.00 Costco Cash Card for Gas
$100.00 Christmas presents

I guess I've gotten out of the habit of keeping a running total on savings since I started diverting some of the money that was going there to paying off debt. But I did do a tally today and the grand total of all my savings accounts is now at $1600.98.

I am so anxious for January to get here. I am so anxious about what DH's raise will be so I can plan out the year. That is just about driving me crazy, not knowing yet. It is supposed to be substantial this year. Supposed to be. I hope so. Last year's raise was more than eaten up by the insurance rates going up. And they are going up again this year by $6 a week. Not nearly as bad as last year's increase which was about $150 a month if I recall correctly. It might have been more.

Gas and propane costs are out of control here. It really doesn't help that our gas tax is 30.1 cents per gallon. I think I may order a cord of super dry firewood to help with the less seasoned stuff that does not want to burn. Almost all the snow has melted off the wood pile and it has thawed out enough to break it apart again, but it still is quite damp from the soaking it took back during the bad rain/windstorm where we lost power.

I have added more Christmas lights. I ran green twinkle lights around the picket fence that goes around the garden and did the arbor in red LED lights. They don't appear to have green LED lights yet, or at least don't have them in our area. Over the last couple days I also did one tree in pinkish purple lights and one tree in amber yellow lights.

I stil have a ways to go. I have to do 4 windows, put up the penguin, the nutcracker, the seal that spins a Christmas present on its nose, the lollipops, a star, the rope light train and the blowup Santa Train. I'm getting there, though. The place where the rope light train goes has almost melted down enough that the snow won't be in the way anymore.

I'm hoping to get some done tomorrow. Rose woke up feeling great today (hooray for zithromax!) so we will be going to her basketball game, or rather games (2) tomorrow. They are back to back, thank goodness so it doesn't mean going to the high school twice in one day. I dislike that the 5th/6th grade teams play at the high school. The 3rd/4th play at the elementary which is where they all practice and it is closer. It's driving 10 miles instead of 1.2 miles one way. But the gym is nicer and the bleachers are better, so there is a bright side.

Today was payday so I will do a seperate entry on bills paid today, later. Otherwise, I think that is it for today.

I sent $86.80 to ING this morning from CU#2. That leaves $500 in that CU, which is the amount DH and I agreed on to have immediately available for emergency use.

I am also building savings in CU#3 that will eventually go to opening a second ING account in DH's name so he can get the $25 for the new account and I can get the $10 for referring him.

After that I will work on building accounts in the children's names of $250 each so again we can get the total of $70 for that. That will take a bit more time as they save pretty slowly. But they are young yet so they have time.

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

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

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

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

$50 for Physical Therapy appointment.
$15 co-pay to take Rose to the doctor.
$10 perscription of Flonase.
$10 perscription of generic Zithromax.
$23 at KFC.

No shopping after all today, and ended up taking Rose to the doctor. She has a sinus infection. Plus something else. She managed to take her medication, then 3 hours later she threw up. Sigh. I hope it was down long enough to enter her system. Obviously she missed basketball practice today.

I was going to try to go to the doctor myself tomorrow as I think I also have a sinus infection, now I will most likely just stay home with Rose. Maybe he will call me in something without my having to see him. He does that sometimes just because I know the symptoms so well. Or maybe Rose will be okay enough for me to drag her with me.

I so do not have the energy for a sick child right now. But if it has to be one of them, Rose is the better patient. She'll stay in bed and rest. Tobias just gets hyper most of the time when he is sick.

The school rescheduled conferences again for next week, on Wednesday and DH flies in next Wednesday morning so it looks liike he'll get to go after all. Of course, I'm thinking the school setting a schedule for them again is just them asking for another natural disaster or weather incident. We will see.

I sent an ING referral to Alianora (Thanks!) and she signed up so I earned my first $10 for doing that, today. That brings the total in my ING account to $586.38.

If anyone else wants an invite, I have plenty.

Today is a no spend day. I got a call this morning reminding me of a follow-up physical therapy appointment for tomorrow, so I decided to try to do my shopping before the 1:15 appointment instead of maing an extra trip to town. I have to go in again on Friday so if I don't get it all done before the appointment, that is okay.

I put up some more Christmas lights today and did some basic housekeeping chores. I've been thinking a lot about goals for next year, but until I know what DH's raise is going to be, which I won't know unitl January, I'm kind of unable to plan well. I don't like that. Still there is no help for it.

The most frugal thing I did today was cook a potroast and chicken at the same time in the oven. I have enough meat for the rest of the week and will just have to add veggies and potatoes each day. I have enough leftover veggies and potatoes from today that I won't have to make any tomorrow. And plenty of chicken gravy. I will save the beef drippings to make beef gravy later this week.

I think I'll go ahead and cook up all the chicken sausage tonight so that I can just reheat it in the microwave for breakfasts through the week. I like the whole reheat and eat thing. It makes my life much easier and I tend to waste less food that way.

I've almost got the freezer completely cleaned out. Garbage went out this morning so I have an empty can again. I have one full shelf of stuff to throw out still and one partial shelf where everything is frozen to it. I'll probably have to turn the freezer off and pull it out in the morning. I need to turn it off to get all the ice out anyway, then wash it down and unplug it.

I think I can switch with Mom as soon as DH comes home and we will have the smaller one that is actually ours and she can have her old pain in the butt bigger one with a door that doesn't latch right ancient ugly freezer back.

I'm not sure if I will use the one I am getting back from her or not. The half size chest freezer and the one in our fridge seems to be doing the job fine now that we are not buying processed foods. TV dinners, 3 kinds of ice cream, frozen pizza and other easy boxed fast food takes up a lot more room then meat, chicken, fish, vegetables and fruit. But I might be able to sell it. Or maybe we will keep it outside by the shed and use it for over flow or if we get a quarter of a beef or something. I'm not sure yet.

I wonder if our electric bill will go down once we get rid of the one freezer and don't plug in another? Well, this won't be the month to tell with the Christmas lights and all.

Three more things for the list.

10. DH and I got a little ornament of two foxes snuggled in a snow-covered log that says Our First Christmas Together the first Christmas we started dating (we were engaged by then). Every year we hang it on the tree together and then kiss and listen to the kids go ewwww. It used to be the first ornament on the tree before we had kids old enough to be too impatient to wait, so we just do it now when we come to it in the box of ornaments.

11. We have an ornament we buy each year from Hallmark, in the Puppy Love collection. We have collected them from the start, which was the year after Our First Christmas Together.

12. Each one in our family has a giant bulb that I have used gold glitter glue to write their names on. I've had to replace a couple over the years, DH's has been broken twice and Rose's once. We each hang our name ornament as a ritual at the end of decorating the tree.

...that DH's 401K has more money in it than our mortgage has left to pay off. I've been watching the amounts come closer to meeting for awhile, but this last month just blew it right past it. It's a good feeling.

Today was a very lazy day for me. I read a little, did dishes, and cooked a bit. Spent $10.60 on food, so an almost no spend day. Yesterday was a no spend day.

The $3 from Paypal was deposited today so that will go to the CC payoff account.

Tomorrow I am going to go to town and try to get the rest of my Christmas shopping done. I know what I am getting for FIL and MIL, I have one neice left to shop for but I'm pretty sure I know what I am getting there, also. The nephews just get a $5 gift certificate for McD's, so I need to pick up 3 of those. I don't buy for my sister or her husband we just do the kids 18 and under.

I need to pick up the ingredients for making lasagna pretty soon. I am making two pans for SIL and BIL to have as their present, they love it so much. Then I have to make a pan for Christmas Even and a pan for Christmas Day.

Plus I need to knit 6 square potholders and finish Rose's scarf. That shouldn't take too long, I just need to find the time to do it. If I hadn't been so lazy today I probably could have finished the scarf.

Since the last statement date in October, DH's 401K has increased by $2792.09, bringing the account to an ending balance of $41,454. The account has more than recovered from the 2nd quarter slump, it is barreling along. When DH gets the raise in January we will raise his contribution to the account. Right now it is only at 3% so I'd like to see it go up to 5% or 6% in the next year.

We are going to visit MIL and FIL today. I am packing along a beef potroast, potatoes, and broccoli and cauliflower to make for dinner so that I won't be tempted to go through the drive-thru and spend money later on. The last thing we need right now is to be putting that poison into our systems, what with everyone sniffly and all. I remember reading a factoid once that said something like for every teaspoon of sugar (or maybe tbsp) in your food, it reduces your immune systems ability to fight by 16% or something like that. So eating right during cold season is crucial.

So with this advance planning we should be able to make this a no spend day.