Lucky Robin's Personal Finance Blog

Using up freezer supplies this week.

Monday--
Roasting 2 chickens (packaging the meat on one for the freezer)
Baked potatoes (making extra baked potatoes)
Green beans
Oranges

Tuesday--
Calzones (chicken, homemade spaghetti sauce, pepperoni, onions, bell pepper strips, cheese)
Cole slaw

Wednesday--
Chicken enchiladas (homemade sauce)
Cole slaw
Oranges

Thursday--
Baked potato soup (using extra made on Monday and bacon is the protein in the soup)
Salad
Oranges

Friday--
Bacon cheeseburgers with homemade buns
Homemade French fries
Cole slaw

Saturday--
Pizza (tomato sauce, homemade sausage, onions, bell pepper strips)
Cole slaw

Sunday--
Beef pot roast
Mashed potatoes and gravy
Green beans
Drop bisucits with choice of homemade jams

Lunches this week will be low carb meatloaf, chicken quesadillas, salads or cole slaw and any of the leftover stir-fry I made last night.

Breakfast this week will be pancakes and eggs for DS, sausage and cabbage or cucumbers for Me and DD

The broccoli finally kicked it in the 27 degree F freeze we had Friday night. The kohlrabi survived and I picked it.

We got 10 eggs today. Go, chickens.

I forgot about making buns for the cheeseburgers today, so I ended up throwing together a quick stir-fry. I cut up 4 boneless skinless chicken thighs that I ransacked the chest freezer for and put them in a marinade of 1 cup low sodium gluten free soy sauce, 2 T of honey, 1/2 T of ginger, and a 1/2 T of garlic powder. While that was soaking DD and I cut up 3 carrots, 3 stalks of celery, 1 cauliflower, green beans, and 1/2 a yellow onion. I did more of a combination of stir-fry and steam-fry as I don't like to stir constantly. It made enough for us to have it for dinner, for lunch tomorrow, and maybe still have some leftover. Doesn't it look yummy?

I also made a batch of cinnamon ice cream tonight and I have some French bread going in the bread machine.

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I went to the store today and I ended up spending $127.53. I just didn't have the energy to go to Kmart and the grocery store so I bought the toiletries at the grocery store. I got a couple of things not on my list and forgot the peanut butter which we are totally out of.

I meant to spend about $100, but I went through the bakery. *sighs* I should know better, but I swear the box of cinnamon rolls just jumped into my cart when I wasn't looking. I also bought two boxes of psuedophedrine from the pharmacy and 1 box of Dayquil because my supply was woefully low and I feel a sinusy thing coming on. And then I remembered I needed batteries. But I won't need to buy anything else before payday on Friday and I have $70 left.

They were having a good sale on whole fish, but the fish counter reeked. I could smell it from 10 feet away. I have noticed that a lot at the small Haggen since the remodel. I know that they've instituted some cost saving measures to pay for the totally unnecessary remodel, like not restocking the salad bar or letting the hot food in the deli run out when it runs out, carrying less selection in some areas and way too much in others, raising prices, and pushing their own store brand far more than they ever used to, but the fish counter should not smell like that. I draw a line there. Clearly they are holding on to fish that previously would have been out the door before it stank. So no more buying fish or seafood from there. That makes 2 grocery stores I will not buy fish from.

Haggen has always been my favorite grocery store, but I will either have to go to the big one 5 miles out of my way or just stick to Trader Joe's and the Food Co-op (which carries fresh fish) from now on. It's a shame, too. I've been shopping at that store since I was 4 years old and they were just that store, not a small chain of stores. That's almost 39 years now. I have never been disappointed in them until the last year, but now I am.

I had planned to go today, but I decided to take another look through my freezers first. I am glad I did. I had thought I was out of hamburger, but I found six packages of it on the wrong shelf behind some frozen veggies.

I had thought I needed chicken, but I found 2 whole chickens. Unfortunately the chickens are frozen together so thawing in the micro is not really an option. The package is too big. I'll have to thaw it in the fridge roast it, and then divide it into portions for the freezer. I also found 2 pork chops, 1 pound of ground pork, 1 pound of ground lamb, 6 steaks and five packs of bacon.

After that I cleaned out the fridge and found a head of purple cabbage and kohlrabi in the back. These are both good keepers and were perfectly good. I have a cucumber that I will need to eat tomorrow. If I put it off much longer it'll be chicken feed, not people food. And of course I have broccoli. I am halfway through my lettuce, celery, and carrots, and I have plenty of potatoes and onions, so really, there's nothing I need to buy except dairy and fruit.

So how do I make use of that great coupon of $10 off a $50 purchase good through Monday? Well, $22 of it will be milk. And I will buy some flour and some tuna and some oranges. That should put me to the $50 point and then I won't need to set foot in the grocery store for another week, although I still need to go to Kmart for the toiletries.

I am going to make homemade sausage with the ground pork and ground lamb for breakfasts next week and make a couple of meatloaves for lunches. And the steaks will definitely make it into a couple of dinners.

I sent $100 (my January allowance) to my friend who is in desperate need right now. That'll leave me with about $100 for the week in checking after I do the shopping. I should be just fine with that. No more bills are due before next payday.

I sent for another $5 gift card from Swagbucks for Amazon. The last one hasn't come yet, should show up this weekend.

I added $5.64 to the coin jar.

Today is payday, finally, the first one of the new year, and the damage is $123 and some change more in taxes out of this first check. Next week will be a bit higher as it is a seven day paycheck and not just a five day one.

I started my morning by taking a shot at the Evil Empire and paid off another $2000. DH bought his one way plane ticket on Wednesday which had brought the balance on the BoA VISA to $5,983.64. So the new balance on the VISA is $3983.64. I will have 3 autopays coming out before the end of the month, so that will go up a bit, but I am still on track for paying the card off by month's end. Total credit card debt currently sits at $9083.64. This is the first time in a very long time I have been under $10K. Go me.

Then I made the car loan payment. I also paid another medical bill to the podiatrist and made a payment on my crown to the dentist.

$2000.00 to BoA VISA
757.82 Van payment (plus extra to principal)
205.30 Dentist
75.00 Podiatrist
50.00 Two weeks of allowance for the kids
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$3088.22 Total

I still owe $350 to the dentist for my crown and should have that paid off by the end of the month. I am thinking of rescheduling my 2nd crown until after vacation in March. The tooth has not been hurting since getting the other crown put in. I don't think I'm hitting it anymore when I grind my teeth at night. The last one ended up costing $200 more than the estimate because of how much novacaine they had to give me.

I have just under $300 for the next week. I need to buy toilet paper and tissues. Normally I go to Costco for that, but I am just not up for a warehouse store, so I'm heading to Kmart. I've been out of tissues for a week, not great when everyone is sick. Even if Charmin is nice to blow your nose on, tissues are better.

I need to do a grocery shop, too. I have a coupon for $10 off a $50 purchase. This is one of the rare times I will use coupons, since most are for processed junky foods and are useless to me. They are also having a sale on Organic Valley products so I will get milk, heavy cream and half and half (the last 2 for making ice cream) if the sell by dates are decent.

I have been wondering about maybe paying off the Sienna when we sell the house. Right now we have close to $800 a month going to it (we're paying more than the actual monthly payment). The van will be 2 years old on June 6th, so we have a while yet to go to own it free and clear. We've knocked off about 4 months worth of payments by paying extra.

This is only if we get anywhere near our asking price and can still bank a good amount for a new downpayment. With the car paid off it frees up $800 a month to go towards college or the EF or the downpayment. But I don't know. A bigger down payment means a smaller mortgage. Guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I did talk to DD about the fact that if she went to the local community college for two years and then transferred to the local university (they partner so credits from BCC are transferrable to WWU), it would save us about $15,000. She seems amenable to that and it would give us more time to save the money for WWU.

I figure we can save about $12,000 a year for college each year once the credit cards are paid off. The $10,000 that we will save by her going to the community college the first two years can be saved for WWU and should be enough to cover the shortage for years 3 and 4. Assuming that tuition doesn't go up too much, of course. There will also be tax returns and hopefully yearly bonuses that could be saved for college if necessary.

How did college get so expensive? When I went it was about $100 a credit up to 15 credits and then anything between 15 and 18 credits was free and if you took more than 18 credits (not recommended) it cost money again. Mom paid for half, I paid for half.

It helped that I had a scholarship from work that was enough to at least pay for my books. It also helped that taking classes in the summer session was cheaper. But it's been 22 years and tuition has just gotten ridiculous, even with the local discount. We are definitely going to feel it, but we should still be able to manage without loans. I guess I've gotten good at managing these last almost 18 years since I've been married.

If my daughter can manage to find a job, I'll expect her to contribute. Same for my son when he gets there. But that's a big if in today's economy and I don't see that getting any better. This depression is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I am just hoping we won't see an all out collapse of the American dollar, but the rate at which the government is spending I'm not holding my breath.

They just make me so mad. I mean, the aid to help Sandy victims has been tacked on with so much crap with each elected official getting a little something something for his own state. That sort of thing is business as usual for our elected, but it needs to stop. It should be about helping out the victims, not seeing what you can get for you and yours before you'll okay help.

I wish we could add an ammendment to the Constitution saying that bills had to be specifically for that one thing only and not to help pig farmers in Arkansas or corn growers in Nebraska (just randomly picking here) when it's supposed to go to rebuilding stuff in New York. That's half if not more of the problem with our debt. So much greed. That's the kind of entitlements that need to stop, the ones the officials get away with.

I wish we could make all elected officials live on a wage that was just high enough they couldn't get food stamps and make them have to pay for their own medical insurance and lose their vacation days until they've balanced the budget or at least cut all of the fat our of it. I bet it would happen pretty darn fast if they had to actually feel it.

Sorry, this turned into a bit of a rant. Don't know where it even came from.

Tomorrow is payday and I'll get to see what the higher taxes does to the paycheck. Ah, well, maybe that's where that rant came from. The waiting.

I spent $6.43 on two prescriptions today leaving me with $20 in the checking account until Friday. I also bought two burgers at DQ today out of what's left of my December allowance, leaving me with $6 in cash. No biggie. Plenty in savings still.

Now onto the chickens. I swear the majority of the chicken pictures I take are of chicken butts. I swear they are facing the camera when I push the shutter down, but by the time it goes off they have turned around. It's the one thing I really miss about film cameras, there is no delay between when you snap the photo and when it is taken. Still, film was expensive to develop and I do love the ease of digital. I managed to get a few non-butt chicken shots today though.

First up are Queen (Rhode Island Red), Curious (gold sex-linked orpington), Goldilocks (Auracana, gold cheek puffs), Henrietta (Auracana, red cheek puffs), and Kyri (Bantam Auracana cross, gold cheek puffs).



Henrietta has the most beautiful markings.



Georgie (gold sex-linked orpington) on top of Fort Knox. Of course. If there is a roof, she will be on it.



Georgie and Kyri



Silver (silver lace-winged wyandotte, I know, creative naming). I swear she was facing me. At least it's not a full on chicken butt shot. This view shows off her gorgeous wings more fully, though.



Patricia (Barred rock). She is a stubborn bird. That is why she is named after my mother, who is also a stubborn bird. She is second in command of the pecking order, after Queen.



Curious, Silver, Pipsqueak (black australorp), and Ecru (white leghorn). Pipsqueak stayed small for a long, long time. Now the only chickens bigger than her are Silver and Half-pint who also stayed small for a long, long time.



Half-pint (black australorp) and Eggshell (white leghorn, I think she's been rolling in the mud)



Queen (HBIC)



It has been such a wet January so far, the area around the coop, shed and Fort Knox is just mud. It doesn't matter if you scrub out the buckets every day (which we do) and fill them with clean water, they are filthy within a couple of hours.

We are hoping to reseed some of the area in spring, although I don't know how successful that will be. The chickens have pretty much ravaged that area. We'd have to pen it off for weeks. Fortunately there is plenty of nice grass outside the main pen and they don't spend the whole day in the mud, just the main feeding and scratching session. The rest of the time they are chasing bugs and worms and eating plants around the property.

Laying is going well. With 9 pullets, a 20 month old hen (who finally stopped molting), and two that are nearly 3 we have a very good supply. I'm not looking forward to next year at this time. We'll have 9 hens molting for the first time and two hens molting for the second time. The yard will look like a slumber party after a pillow fight. And one hen laying consistently. I hope they don't all go into molt at the same time! There is a bit of variance between the breeds, but still most of them molt at approximately 18 months and it can take several weeks.

Now Mom is saying she doesn't want to raise anymore ducklings after all. I think that is probably wise. We all love them, but they are seriously filthy animals and not as biddable as chickens. I wasn't really up for it this year anyway with homeschooling. That takes up too much of my time and you seriously have to worry about baby birds a lot. I'd really prefer a more carefree spring, but we'll see what happens when they appear in the feed store and start making their cute little duckling noises.

I spent $6.43 on two prescriptions today leaving me with $20 in the checking account until Friday. I also bought two burgers at DQ today out of what's left of my December allowance, leaving me with $6 in cash. No biggie. Plenty in savings still.

Now onto the chickens. I swear the majority of the chicken pictures I take are of chicken butts. I swear they are facing the camera when I push the shutter down, but by the time it goes off they have turned around. It's the one thing I really miss about film cameras, there is no delay between when you snap the photo and when it is taken. Still, film was expensive to develop and I do love the ease of digital. I managed to get a few non-butt chicken shots today though.

First up are Queen (Rhode Island Red), Curious (gold sex-linked orpington), Goldilocks (Auracna, gold cheek puffs), Henrietta (Auracana, red cheek puffs), and Kyri (Bantam Auracana cross, gold cheek puffs).



Henrietta has the most beautiful markings.



Georgie (gold sex-linked oprington) on top of Fort Knox. Of course. If there is a roof, she will be on it.



Georgie and Kyri



Silver (silver lace-winged wyandotte, I know, creative naming). I swear she was facing me. At least it's not a full on chicken butt shot. This view shows off her gorgeous wings more fully, though.



Patricia (Barred rock). She is stubburn bird. That is why she is named after my mother, who is also a stubborn bird.



Curious, Silver, Pipsqueak (black australorp), and Ecru (white leghorn). Pipsqueak stayed small for a long, long time. Now the only chickens bigger than her are Silver and Half-pint who also stayed small for a long, long time.



Half-pint (black australorp) and Eggshell (white leghorn, I think she's been rolling in the mud)



Queen



It has been such a wet January so far, the area around the coop, shed and Fort Know is just mud. It doesn't matter if you scrub out the buckets every day (which we do) and fill them with clean water, they are filthy within a couple of hours.

We are hoping to reseed some of the area in spring, although I don't know how successful that will be. The chickens have pretty much ravaged that area. We'd have to pen it off for weeks. Fortunately there is plenty of nice grass outside the main pen and they don't spend the whole day in the mud, just the main feeding and scratching session. The rest of the time they are chasing bugs and worms and eating plants around the property.

Laying is going well. With 9 pullets, a 20 month old hen (who finally stopped molting), and two that are nearly 3 we have a very good supply. I'm not looking forward to next year at this time. We'll have 9 hens molting for the first time and two hens molting for the second time. The yard will look like a slumber party after a pillow fight. And one hen laying consistently. I hope they don't all go into molt at the same time! There is a bit of variance between the breeds, but still most of them molt at approximately 18 months and it can take several weeks.

Now Mom is saying she doesn't want to raise anymore ducklings after all. I think that is probably wise. We all love them, but they are seriously filthy animals and not as biddable as chickens. I wasn't really up for it this year anyway with homeschooling. That takes up too much of my time and you seriously have to worry about baby birds a lot. I'd really prefer a more carefree spring, but we'll see what happens when they appear in the feed store and start making their cute little duckling noises.

In relation to talking about how hard it is for people to find a job in a previous post...my husband's work is hiring. They had hired a guy for this one position and he was to start working on Friday. He never showed up. He never even called to say what happened. DH found out through the grapevine that he'd accepted another job with another company.

I find it totally unacceptable that a person would accept a job and then not call to say they were taking another job instead. It is highly unprofessional and this industry remembers things, so he could easily have shot himself in the foot. Also, it's like a slap in the face to all of the people who are out there desperately looking for work to be so arrogant as to not even bother to call. On the bright side, financially anyway, it looks like DH may get more extra weeks if they don't find someone.

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Disneyland parkhopper tickets went up by a huge amount. It was $235 per person for a five day parkhopper and now it is $290. That's a difference of about $400 for the 7 of us. I'll be watching in case there are sales. They do sometimes have them. We won't be buying until the end of February.

With that jump in prices we will definitely be eating most of our meals in the condo. I figure we can get by with about $300 in groceries for 8 days for the four of us. I have no idea what organics and all natural foods will cost in Anaheim so I'm budgeting high. I am not risking DS's allergies by buying chemically laden foods.

DH and I are working on meal plans. I will be having some kind of meat (sausage, bacon, ham) and vegetables (probably cukes or cabbage) for breakfast and everyone else will do pancakes and eggs or french toast and bacon, ham, or sausage. We'll have sandwich and salad fixings for lunches. I'm thinking a beef roast and either chicken or turkey for meats unless they have actual deli meats without additives and corn syrup solids.

We get one free breakfast at the park for our magic morning. We want to eat BBQ one day at the ranch if it is open, we want to get Monte Cristo sandwiches once (possibly twice), and there's a great Italian place at CA that serves wonderful lasagna. I want skewers from the Bengal Barbecue, DH and I are thinking about just doing Blue Bayou for the two of us on our anniversary because of the expense. And we are thinking maybe either Mickey Mouse waffles or pancakes one day. We have requests for getting ice cream at the Carnation Cafe at least once, churros at least once, and one of the big turkey legs (split amongst two) and corn on the cob. I haven't set a budget yet for that, but I will be looking up prices at mouseplanet to see what I'm looking at.

We did find out we could reserve seating for the Colors show with the $15.99 dinner instead of with the $45 dinner and DH is supposed to find out about reserve seating for Fantasmic and the fireworks show as I am well past my days of sitting on the concrete for 2 hours to get a good seat. Plus with my knee I'd never get up again.

Boy, big vacations are expensive. But it is worth it to give this experience to our kids, our nieces and DH's sister.

I feel like I am just waiting for the days to pass until Friday arrives. I thought when we were ahead of the game like we almost are now, waiting anxiously for paydays would be a thing of the past. But no. I'm still waiting for paydays. I'm restless for them to come so I can shell out for the debt repayments this month that will finish off that darn BoA card. I am particularly wanting to see how much the extra social security tax is going to affect paychecks.

And then I will be restless for the income tax refund so that the Chase card and the rest of our credit card debt will be a thing of the past.

I imagine even after that I will be anxious to start socking away money for the emergency fund, the HSA, and college and to pay off the mortgage, so I will still be waiting for each paycheck.

Maybe one day it won't be a waiting game for me, but somehow I doubt it. I think there will always be something that I'm wanting to add to or save up for. Of course once the EF is to 3 months I imagine the waiting will take on less anxiety and be more like a simple ordering of where the money goes.

Once the credit cards are paid off I want to get the EF to $18,300. That is 3 months' expenses. If we can save $2000 a month for that starting in May, we should hit that by the end of the year. After that I'll add to it more slowly, aiming for $30,000.

Meanwhile I hope to start socking away money for college0 (DD will start in the fall of 2015) and bump up payments to the mortgage. That will be under $13K by the end of April. Also, get all the last minute fiddly things finally done and the carpet replaced in the old house so that we can get the dang thing on the market.

I have no idea if our tax refunds after this year are going to remain substantial. That depends on whether or not we max out the HSA again like we have done for the last two years. If we do, any substantial tax refund will likely be thrown at savings for college. If we have a healthy year, likely we won't need to max out the HSA again. I have a feeling we will do it again at least this coming year. I'm pretty sure I'll need another MRI done on my knee and possibly more knee surgery at some point this year the way it has been acting so I need to save up some for the HSA, too.

Not to mention that I'm paying off the rest of my crown ($525) and will be getting another one in February, so at least another $700. That's almost halfway to our deductible right there. Throw in one BP prescription and we'll be at the halfway point by the end of Feb.

So the waiting game continues. 3 more days until payday, 3 more days until I can make the next $2000 payment to BoA and the total dropping to $3,610.74. Ten more days to drop it to $1,610.74. 17 more days to drop it to $0. I am forever counting the numbers.

3 more days with $27 left in the checking account, no bills to pay, and $25 left of my December allowance. Just ticking along, waiting, waiting, waiting for the end of the month to arrive. Waiting for the future to begin. Waiting.

I found this to be a fairly thought-provoking article:

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/65-percent-of-am...

It sounds like the American public just might be starting to wake up a little and notice what our elected (both sides) are doing and how it's going to end up hurting all of us. One can only hope.

Also read an interesting article about the hopelessly unemployed, those who have been unemployed for four or five years and have ceased looking for work for at least a year. Or the kids who have been trying since high school to find a job, still couldn't get one in college, and upon graduating and a year of job-seeking end up going back to school hoping it will come out better on the other side of their student loans. Or the women who took 20 years off to raise their kids and are now trying to get back into the workforce. Or the 55 year olds who were laid off and now won't be hired because they're the wrong age. These ones of course do not make it into the unemployment statistics. I managed to lose that article or I'd pass it along as well.

I do worry for my daughter. She's going to start volunteering in the spring to at least have that as job experience. I was doing farm work at 4 every summer, though not seriously until age 8. We could always find summer employment. I remember walking into a restaurant once and asking for an application and the manager coming over and interviewing me on the spot and asking if I could come in for orientation that night. The work was always there. Now sixteen year olds can't even get a job flipping burgers.

How does she help work her way through college if there is no work?

Today is the 3rd anniversary of the murder of my daughter's friend F. She would have been 17. Murder is always senseless, the murder of children doubly so. F died at the hands of her mother's live in boyfriend. Domestic violence, alcohol, and a gun were responsible for her death.

I wish that she had left that house instead of going out and getting between her mom and her mom's boyfriend. I wish he had not disconnected their phone line. I wish she had run through the dark in the early hours of the morning and knocked on our door, on anyone else's door. I wish that I'd found out about it in a better way than reporters knocking on my front door and asking if we knew the murdered child. They hadn't even given us a name, but I could look down the block and see where everything was centered and I knew immediately who it was.

F had never said a thing about her situation, had never mentioned the abuse her mother was going through. She'd never gotten in the way of it before and like most children in such cases, she was a silent witness, until one day she wasn't.

It rocked our little neighborhood to the core and was the impetus for us leaving the area and moving back to town. My kids just could not handle living in a place where a child they had played with for years was killed. No one felt safe anymore, especially my kids, despite the fact that the murderer commited suicide and was no longer there.

I hope my daughter makes it through the school day without crumbling. We have decided not to remind my son of what day it is. He was 9 when it happened so his memories are not so sharp, but he adored F. She never minded when he tagged along with his sister. She was such a sweet girl and will always be missed. As a mother, it just broke my heart.

Still feeling kind of drug under (I am getting better, though) so the meals this week are going to be pretty simple. I just don't have the energy to go all out. Yeah, I know. Simple for me can still be pretty complicated when I make almost everything from scratch. (I have premade meatballs and premade sauce that I froze the last time I made spaghetti and meatballs, so the first two days are not as difficult as they might appear).

Monday--
Spaghetti with homemade sauce
Lamb and pork meatballs
Broccoli

Tuesday--
Meatball sandwiches
Cole slaw
Oranges

Wednesday--
Herb roasted chicken
Baked potatoes
Broccoli
Hoem canned pears

Thursday--
Tropical Chicken Stir-fry (broccoli, carrots, onions, celery)
Canned pineapple

Friday--
Homemade pizza (sausage, tomatoes, onions, bell pepper strips)
Cole slaw

Saturday--
Bacon cheeseburgers on homemade buns
Homemade french fries
Cole slaw

Sunday--
Wild-caught salmon
Broccoli
Baked potatoes
Oranges

Lunches this week will be low carb meatloaf and leftover chicken (wraps, salads, quesadillas). Breakfasts will consist of pancakes and eggs (DS), and sausages and cucumbers (DD, Me). DH is gone until the 23rd so work is providing his meals.

We are out of pot roast so no Sunday pot roasts until I can drive out to the farm again, which probably won't be until the 12th or the 19th. It depends on how much extra taxes are taken out of the 11th's paycheck. The drive to the farm is not worth it unless I pick up $300 worth of meat at a time. We haven't been since we picked up our turkey in November so supplies are running low. Still I have a lot of frozen wild salmon and cod and some chicken in the freezer so we'll cope without beef and pork for a while if we need to, or I can venture to the food co-op if need be as they have some sustainable organic meats.

So Queen--you all remember Queen, right? The one who sulks if you put her back in the pen if she doesn't want to be there.

So Queen has apparently noticed my absence outside in the last two days. I've been sick and so not been out to see her since Thursday. Even though the kiddos went out and talked to the flock apparently it wasn't good enough for Queen.

About 3 o'clock I hear an unheavenly racket going on outside my bedroom window. I thought one of the chickens had flown out and couldn't figure out how to get back in. That still happens with a couple of the heavier chickens. I opened up the curtains and looked out and there was Queen, who of any chicken besides Curious and Georgie, can get anywhere she wants to except the roof (that's still Georgie's claim to fame, none of the others have managed it yet).

Boy, when she saw those curtains open, she got so excited. She started jumping up in the air. She was getting a good three feet of lift with her wings and was chattering the whole time. As soon as I opened the window and spoke to her through the screen she started cooing at me. It was so funny. She settled right down and after about five minutes wandered back to the fence and hopped over. I guess she just missed our daily chats?

The girls seem to be very happy this winter, probably because it hasn't snowed yet and the ground is thawed at least for part of the day so they can still scratch. Egg production is going well. It is nice not to have to buy eggs. A few days ago I noticed the going rate for organic, free range, sustainably farmed eggs at the grocery store was $8.99 a dozen.

We're getting between 7 and 10 eggs per day. I'm going to have to take a couple dozen to my physical therapist and have SIL and MIL stop by for some, too, soon. The backlog in the fridge is getting so big.

Mom is talking about getting ducklings again in the spring. She might as well, since Fort Knox is sitting there empty, but I'm not doing them in a brooder in the garage again. They can be raised in the spare bathtub just like the first set were. It socializes them better when we can spend more time with them and pick them up more frequently and that only happens inside the house.

Speaking of ducks, Lady is doing well at her new farm. I still miss her, but she and the widowed drake are getting on famously, beyond all of our hopes. We'll try to go visit her next weekend if I am better by then. I miss having duck eggs for cooking, but I'd much rather she be happy.

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There isn't much to talk about on the financial front right now. Everything is ticking along on autopilot until 1/11. That's a good thing, I guess. And it'll give me time to finish up writing about the food stamps challenge. No, I haven't forgotten about it.

Also wanted to give a great big thank you to all of my readers. My blog hit 1.5 million hits this morning! That's half a million since April. It still amazes me how many people want to listen to (erm...read?) me blathering on, even when I wander off topic *coughs* chickens *coughs* But I am very happy that you do!

There is a quote that goes "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." Lately I've been having to make do or do without paper towels. This wasn't an actual choice on my part, I just apparently get a brain cloud whenever I go to the grocery store and keep forgetting to get paper towels. This probably has something to do with having a case from Costco that lasted a year so I never even had to think about it for months.

I don't use them too much, just mostly to drain food that has a bit too much oil on it or collecting out the hamburger fat. We use wash cloths or linen napkins at the table. For a while now I've been using napkins instead of paper towels for draining food. We don't eat out that much here, but there is a drive-in we go to about twice a month and they give us enough napkins to clean a small country.

Well, I finally made it through my stash of those napkins and I've been looking around for what I could use in place of paper towels. It needed to be something absorbent and that got me to thinking. Flannel. I had a small stash of flannel that had never been used left over from my mother's cloth diaper making years ago for my sister's last child. They had been cut to diaper size but never hemmed. I took one and cut it in half, did a couple quick hems, and washed the two pieces. I tried it out when draining my homemade French fries. It works very well. And once used can just be tossed in with the towels to be washed.

I'm not sure I'm ready to switch completely away from paper towels just yet, it's one of those non-frugal things I've held onto, but until I remember to actually buy them, this is working out fine. Plus I had a lot of fun teasing my kids when they asked what I had drained it on and I said, "Oh, just some old diaper...material." They totally freaked with my pause. But once they realized the material had never been used as a diaper they were fine. Yes, sometimes Mama has a slightly twisted sense of humor.

I think once the flannel sheets go on clearance this year, I will pick up a twin top sheet, and make it into non-paper toweling and we'll give it a shot for awhile. I need more practice hemming anyway.

What do you make do with when you find yourself without a convenience item easily at hand?

Got statements in the mail today from two CU's showing the interest earned there. $4.21. I added it to the Emergency Fund, which now comes to $1550.00. It's almost never at an exactly equal amount like that. I am hoping to get the EF to $1700 by the end of this month.

I've been dinking around with my spreadsheet and assigned dates to my categories, so I know what to pay when and what to fund when this month. It's more complicated than usual this month with the high amount of debt payoff that will be happening. I decided to leave plenty of cushion in each payday to account for any changes in taxes and I still will be able to pay off the BoA this month, even if we were to charge $1000 on it this month so my worries were unfounded.

Extra money will be dumped into savings at the end of the month and I'll allocate from that. Even with my worst estimates, I'm looking at a surplus for January due to the extra week of pay, so I'm not as panicky as I was. That money will mostly go for Disneyland and to replace the money that I borrowed from the MacBook Fund. A couple hundred dollars will carry over for the 2 day paycheck week.

Otherwise I think we are good. We should be able to absorb the tax changes in future months okay. It's going to affect savings of one sort or another, but it won't affect anything else. I'll know by how much once we get the paycheck on 1/11 and the one on 1/18.

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I recieved a $5 giftcard from Swagbucks for Amazon last night and I cashed out for another one today.

The BoA payment I made yesterday posted. DH's hotel for his trip up, travel food, and our gym membership hit today, so the new balance is up a bit from what I said yesterday to $5,610.74.

The mortgage payment posted this morning. I made a payment of $570. Of that $68.51 went to interest and the rest to principal. The new mortgage balance is $14,446.84. My goal for February is to bring that under $14K. I am trying to pay off $500 worth of principal each month right now. I will reassess my mortgage goals after the credit card debt is paid off and I know what is going on with paychecks with the new tax laws.

Homeschool went okay yesterday, it just took forever. Although I understood the math right away (totally new concept to me) it took DS longer to cotton on to it. We are doing rays and angles and line segments, and defining whether the measured angle pairs are complimentary or supplementary or neither. The lesson ended up taking 90 minutes instead of the usual hour.

Then history took a lot longer than usual. Sometimes the curriculum splits stuff up in really stupid ways. Wednesday's history only took a half an hour while yesterday's took 90 minutes. If they divided it up better it would come to an hour a day. One day you are reading 3 pages in the history book and the next day you are reading two chapters.

It wouldn't be so bad, but we started The Secret Garden yesterday. Normally literature lessons consist of one short story or 3 or 4 poems that are read and then questions are answered about plot and character development or in the case of poems, analyzed. But when he needs to do actual books, which happens twice a semester, they divide it into ten lessons, no matter how long the book is. So he ends up reading 30 to 40 pages a day for that which wouldn't take too long, except it is using regional dialect.

Now I personally hate dialect in books. It's a pet peeve of mine. It's overdone and it makes things difficult to read. It's enough to say, hey, these people are from Yorkshire, they talk a little different and maybe give a bit of the flavor of it, but not pound the reader over the head with it. On top of that it also is using old-fashioned language so things like thyself instead of yourself are used. But when you use dialect, it's thysen instead of theyself, or youn'un instead of young one. Then a ton of questions afterwards so literature is ending up taking way, way too long.

Now all that would be fine in high school, but this is 7nth grade. We were already at 5 hours for the day with only those 3 subjects. Add on top of that grammar and usage, vocabulary, composition and either art or science, plus 20 minutes a day for PE and we were at around 8 hours and school is only supposed to take 5 and a half hours per day. We were both cranky by the time we finished.

I ended up reserving the unabridged book on CD. I'm going to allow DS to read along with the CD instead so that he isn't struggling with dialect and old-fashioned language and we can get through it faster. Fortunately the library had it in so I can just go down and pick it up today.

Hopefully today will go better. We haven't started yet as DS didn't sleep last night and I let him sleep in. I think he's coming down with what DD has. *sighs* Me, too, maybe as I didn't sleep all that well either. Well, I was well for a whole week. That's better than nothing.

I made my first payment of $2000 to the BoA VISA today. At first I screwed it up and forgot to check the date I'd scheduled it for. This was because it used to put the first day available for payment, but they switched their payment page to the same one they use for MasterCard (which I haven't used in months) and now it automatically schedules it for the day the payment is due, which wasn't until 1/21.

I tried calling them to see what I needed to do to change it, but their phone customer service is completely unhelpful in this situation and offered no option for speaking to a human. Plus it takes forever to get to the point. Ugh.

So after that I thought about just leaving it scheduled as I had planned to make another $2000 payment on the 18th, and could have just let it go through on the 21st instead and then scheduled a different payment for today, but I really didn't want to do that. I like having the money in the account before scheduling a payment.

So I slogged through all the FAQ's and stuff on the bill pay and finally found where you can make a change to a scheduled payment, so I was able to change the date from 1/21 to today. The payment should post tomorrow. That will leave that card with a balance of $5407.11, with 3 more payments of $2000 each going at it this month.

DH will have to charge a plane ticket, a hotel night, and travel food once before it is paid off, but I'll figure out how to absorb that. It'll be about $750, so I'll just need to come up with $158 more dollars unless interest hits at that point, then I'll have to come up with a little more. I still have $140.65 in the MacBook Fund I can borrow from if needed and $400 in the vacation account. If I do wipe out the MB fund I'll need to repay it with some of the income tax return as DD is to start her senior year with that and it is eight months away.

As it stands that brings our total credit card debt down to $10,507.11 for the moment. It feels good to finally be moving forward with this January plan.

All of them. I'm not picking sides.

I do not like the hit we are going to be taking with the end of the payroll tax holiday. I'm estimating $500 a month on a normal month. Probably $750 this month due to the extra week of pay. I may come up short paying off the BoA VISA this month. I am still going to try to squeeze it out, because gosh, darn it, I want it gone, but any breathing room the extra week of pay gave us is gone. Your gubmint dollars at work.

I am just very, very glad we have spent the last few years buckling down hard and paying down our debt with a vengeance and that we are used to living on less than half our income. And if it is that bad for us with a good middle class income, I can't even imagine how hard this is going to slam those who are barely scraping by. Well, hello there Great Depression 2. I'm not an alarmist by nature but I don't see us coming out of this for a long time. I worry about what the world will be like when my kids are adults.

I am starting to think about putting the whole buying a new house thing on hold for a few more years. Well, I've been thinking it for the last few months, but this may just be the final nail in the coffin. It's going to take longer to build up an emergency fund with $500 a month missing from DH's paycheck. It's certainly going to make saving for and cash flowing college harder than I thought. And Mom isn't getting any younger. With two mini-strokes to her name already I really worry more about leaving her on her own.

It's even crossed my mind to cancel or postpone Disneyland. I'm not going to, but I think this is going to be the last vacation of consequence for a few years. I'm just really glad that we'll have a full kitchen in the condo.

It's possible DH might pick up another week in February. If he did I could bank that and it would go a long way towards making up the shortfall for the rest of the year.

I am worried about my knee. It has been swollen and painful since Christmas and it's started clicking. I am going to try to get a hold of the doctor tomorrow now that the holidays are over. I am hoping it is just needing to be drained of fluid. I do not want cortizone. I also do not want to end up having knee surgery again and having yet another medical debt to pay off.

Okay, I know I sound negative and down, but I am actually in a surprisingly good mood today despite everything. This has been more of a getting it out of my system rant. DS was pretty easy on me with his first day of homeschooling since the holidays ended. And I am totally understanding the math today, so go me. I thought I was going to struggle the whole year, but I think that this unit at least will be easy.

I transferred the money from savings that I saved for January and paid out the following:

$300.00 to Mom for her utilities
39.53 Life Insurance DH
32.70 Life Insurance Me
59.89 Car Insurance
45.63 House Insurance for Old House
41.16 ADT Security System for Old House
153.00 Storage
570.00 Mortgage
29.80 Electricity Old House
100.00 Chase VISA
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$1371.71

I have $227.43 left in checking and $28 of my allowance left in cash to get by on until the 11th. No problem.

I transferred $2000 from ING and it should arrive on Thursday and I will then send that to BoA VISA, my first of four $2000 payments to be made to it this month. I am so excited about putting this card to rest by month's end.

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I have decided that I will be sending my $100 January allowance to a friend of mine in New Hampshire who is in dire straights right now medically. She and her husband are in fear of losing their medical insurance and they both have numerous ailments. She has to take like 12 different medications a day just to stay alive and her husband has to take some too and is in need of surgery.

They have both been unemployed for a while, no more benefits, he's now got a seasonal job that bounces between 10 and 20 hours a week and could end at any time. They have been desperately looking for work and are down to eating one meal a day and were out of heating oil. I also asked her if she wanted me to ship her a 50 pound bag of rice. I have enough gift cards at Amazon to do that. Waiting to hear back from her on that.

They can't get food stamps or Medicaid because of the face value of a life insurance policy, their only asset, despite the fact that they are well below the poverty level at this point. That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. What sort of state denies someone food stamps and healthcare because if the wife dies they will then have $750,000? New Hampshire!

If she dies they won't need food stamps or the Medicaid, obviously. Basically she's been told she can either die or move to Vermont where they have different rules. Your tax payer dollars at work, people. If I lived in NH, I would seriously be yapping at the heels of my congressmen and my governor and any news channel or paper that would listen right about now.

I am really looking forward to this being an easier year than last year. It's got to be.

So I've made a few goals for the year. I don't call them resolutions since I don't believe in them, they are just some things I'd like to get accomplished between now and 2014.

1. Pay off the last of the credit card debt, of course.

2. Rebuild the Emergency Fund.

3. Sell the house.

4. Start putting money in the college fund, at least $7000 by the end of the year. Won't start until #1 is accomplished. I'd like to have $15,000 by the fall of 2015, which should cover a year at our local university or two years at the local community college for DD.

I know #3 is not really up to me, it will either sell or not, but hopefully it will. I do have some other goals, but I will reassess after I pay off the credit card debt and the EF is up to at least $5000.

Oh, and I added $2.45 to the coin jar last night. I had $1.99 in interest hit my ING account and deposited $20. So that $21.99 went to the EF, bringing the new EF total to $1545.79.

For Thanksgiving DH's work gave us a $40 gift card and for Christmas they gave us another $40 gift card to Safeway. Safeway is quite a ways away from us and requires an hour round trip and 3 gallons of gas. Well, I pulled one out today and gave it a good look.

It's also good for Von's. We don't have one of those at all near us, but there is one near the condo in Anaheim. In fact that is the very store we planned on going grocery shopping at. So we for sure have $80 on gift cards we can use and possibly $9 left from one we didn't use up last year, assuming it didn't expire or something. Cutting our grocery expense by almost $100 for something that was going to be a hassle just to use is great.

We got an offer from Disney Visa today, too. If we open their credit card and spend $500 in the first 3 months we get a $200 Disney gift card to use. So I am thinking about doing that and using it to pay for our Parkhopper tickets, easily hitting the $500 three times over. And if we use it at the park a lot of stuff will be 10% off. Then we can just pay it off when the bill comes. Having an extra $200 to spend at Disneyland would be nice.

If they'd accept the gift card in the restaurants that would be great. We want to do Ariel's Grotto because you can reserve for the time they are doing the Colors show and it's supposed to be great seats. But Ariel's Grotto is like $45 per person, which multiplied by 7 people is going to be expensive. It could bring the price down from $315 to $115.

We have decided to skip Blue Bayou altogether this year. It is too pricey now and since we can get the Monte Cristo sandwich at Cafe Orleans for $7 less and no split plate fees (because half of one of those is enough for one person) we'll do it. You can see the restaurant from the Pirates ride anyway. The only way we might do Blue Bayou is if we just went for dessert, which is still $8 per item. But I think we can give SIL and her daughters the idea of it just from the ride and we'd rather spend for Ariel's Grotto, which will also have princesses roaming about, then just a nice riverside dinner.

Well, it's nowhere near the $57,010.88 of principal debt we paid off in 2011, but that had extenuating circumstances. I still think we did a good job with paying off over $21K of principal in 2012.

$18,544.28 Mortgage Amount as of 12/31/11
-14,948.33 Mortgage Amount as of 12/31/12
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$__3,595.95 Amount Paid Off in 2012

$20,228.79 Amount of Credit Card Debt as of 12/31/11
$12,514.07 Amount of Credit Card Debt as of 12/31/12
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$-7,714.72 Amount Paid Off in 2012

$87,000 Amount Owed to Mom as of 12/31/11
-77,000 Amount Owed to Mom as of 12/31/12
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$10,000 Amount Paid Off in 2012

So I paid off a total of $21,310.67 in principal this year. I have no idea what I paid in interest, but it was a lot. I have $104,462.40 left to go. All but $5200 of the credit card debt will be paid off by the end of January. That will leave me with a 0% loan from Mom, a 0% $5200 credit card debt (well, $5100 since I will pay off $100 of that in January), and the mortgage which is currently just under $15K.

As usual I am not including the car loan. I never have included car loans. Probably because if we had to sell it and not have one it wouldn't affect our bottom line. We barely drive as it is. We have 12,000 miles on our car and it is a 2010 and probably 4000 of that was on driving vacations, which again, could be easily cut without affecting our bottom line. I may put it up there after everything else is paid off, but I consider it more or less a fixed expense. It's at 1.9%.

Mom still wants the steady $1000 a month so she has a steady income stream to go with her social security check and can put a little in the bank for emergencies, so she doesn't want us paying it off early. So that is another 6 years and 4 months worth of payments to go. This will be the first year where we shouldn't have to take a month or two off from paying her back, due to high medical bills.

We also paid a little over $12,500 in medical expenses out of pocket, $6500 (the HSA amount) of which we will get back on our tax refund.

By the end of March or April (depending on whether or not taxes will be refunded promptly) I can pay off the last of the CC debt. And then just deal with the mortgage, the car loan, and Mom. So two secured debts and no unsecured debts. Well, I suppose technically the loan from Mom is unsecured, but she's my mother and there is no way on God's green earth that I will not pay her back. So that loan is very secure, so to speak.

So I will be focusing on the mortgage and the EF after CC's are gone. I'd like to get that finished off by the end of 2013 unless we manage to sell it. We should be able to do that with no credit card debt left. Also will be building the college fund.

On the hard ice cream maker front, the ice cream hardened right up after placing it in the freezer. 2 hours later it was as hard as hard ice cream from the grocery store. Nothing at all like the soft ice cream that your typical ice cream makers produce. I tried a taste of it today and it was delicious and the texture was perfect. And the ingredients cost less than Haagan Daas, so we now can have a nice, safe, all-natural organic ice cream that won't make those of us in this house with food allergies sick.

Here's the meal planning for the week:

Monday--
Beef and vegetable stir-fry
Oranges
Milk

Tuesday--
Turkey and vegetable soup
Blueberry muffins
Milk

Wednesday--
Baked chicken legs
Baked potatoes
Stir-fried green beans
Milk

Thursday--
Baked potato soup (bacon is the protein)
Blueberry muffins
Broccoli
Milk

Friday--
Homemade pizza (homemade sausage, onion, and bell pepper)
Coleslaw
Milk

Saturday--
Wild caught salmon
Broccoli
Oranges
Milk

Sunday--
Beef pot roast
Mashed potatoes and gravy
Cole slaw
Drop biscuits with homemade jam

I finished knitting DS's scarf. Yellow is his favorite color and it is a hard one to find at a store. It was hard enough finding bright yellow yarn. This one is a single thickness.



This is one I made previously and I did fringe on that one. DS didn't want fringe on his as he thought it was too girly. It's a deep rust or copper color and a double thickness as well.



Now I'm working on one for DD, but the pattern on the yarn wrapper does not actually match the yarn, which is supposed to be purple for so many rows and then black for one row and then purple again. It says fourteen per row but it really needs twenty and it does make a difference so I am going to have to unravel it and start over. This annoys me, but oh, well. Life goes on.

On Christmas DH's FIL forgot to put the turkey neck into the roaster (or maybe didn't because it was still frozen). Last night I put it in the crockpot with some water and DS and I split it for lunch. I can't believe the amount of meat on a turkey neck, I always forget. And it is so tender and flavorful. Anyway, to the juices left in the crockpot I added all of the turkey carcass bones that I'd frozen along with all of the peels I've been saving for the last few months (onions, carrots, garlic) and some celery leaves, salt and pepper and filled it to the top with water, so it is cooking down for a total of 20 hours.

Tomorrow I will make soup with half the stock and freeze the rest. I wish I had some fresh parsley for it, but I'll add some parsley flakes to the finished stock. I am defiitely planting parsley next year. Right now I'm looking at potatoes, celery, carrots, and an onion for it. I don't think we'll be adding noodles this time, just lots of potatoes. I might even thicken it to make stew. This will be the last of the turkey, so we will have used every part. The chickens got the organs. I am very happy to have had a zero waste turkey this year, considering how much it cost.

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We made a simple ice cream recipe in my new hard ice cream maker. It's definitely harder than soft serve, but still not as hard as hard ice cream from the store, but that might have been because we didn't do a custard base, we just did a simple one of 1 pint cream, 1 pint half and half, 1 cup of sugar and 2 tsp of pure vanilla extract. It will freeze all the way up overnight though and I'll see how the end result is. I haven't tasted it, but everyone else did and pronounced it good but light on the vanilla.

Their website has all kind of recipes for it, regular ice cream, sorbets, sherbets, and sauces. I'll experiment with recipes until I find ones that freeze harder. There was a note with the recipe for Champagne sorbet that said that the alcohol will make it thaw quicker, so I am wondering if maybe that was part of the issue, since pure vanilla extract is basically vodka and a vanilla bean.

I probably won't eat too much of it since I'm trying to stay away from sugar more and not become diabetec, but there was one sorbet that used strawberries and 2 tbsp honey that might not be too bad. I won't even have to wait until summer since I have strawberries from the last season in the freezer. (I usually won't buy fruit out of season because of the cost).

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Got a bill from the podiatrist, $114, for DS's toenail thing. That's for two visits and he spent a half hour with us both times. Since my podiatrist is way out of network the insurance didn't cover it. Still, he's the best and my family has an established relationship with him. Plus $57 per visit? I mean, who still does that? No one. Most doctor's charge $90 or more around here. Anyway, I mailed that off.

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DH took the kids to Kmart today. DS got two more pairs of sweatpants and one more pair of PJ's. DD got one more pair of PJ's. They should both be set now for the rest of the winter. Stuff was marked down even more than the other day. DH ended up spending $48.87. I forgot to give him the saving's card again. Oh, well. I need to start keeping it in the checkbook, I think.

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DH also picked up a prescription for himself, $2.50 and toiletries and cleaning and laundry supplies for $61.34. The latter stuff is all unscented, coloring free, natural stuff because of DS's chemical sensitivites and allergies so a bit more expensive, but we shouldn't have to buy it again for quite some time.

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DD has volunteered to cut DS's and DH's hair tomorrow. We have a clipper so it's not like you can go wrong much with that and she's getting to be as good at it as I am. I just don't want to do it right now with a swollen knee.

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I still haven't watched the Doctor Who Christmas special. I guess I am not quite the fangirl I once was in the Eccleston and Tennant years. I still hope to watch it tomorrow, though. I haven't watched anything since before Christmas. Who has time for TV right now?

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I received a $5 Amazon giftcard from Swagbucks and cashed out for another one yesterday. I think that about covers it.

We have actually managed pretty well with the portable heaters. I mean it wasn't comfortably warm or anything, but it wasn't freezing either. Just more sort of adequate. Fortunately the new control board for the furnace came in a lot earlier than they claimed it could get here and the guy came out and installed it around 2. It is nice to actually be warm again. I think that's something we can really take for granted sometimes until it's no longer there.

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Some expenses that have gone out this week:

$50.47 for 3 prescriptions
$90.00 for physical therapy

Also $76.95 to AMEX which had a couple of autopays go through before I could cancel one and switch the other to the BoA card. The holidays made me absent-minded. Or maybe I'm just naturally absent-minded. It has a zero balance again and I don't plan to use it for gas until the BoA is paid off.

And $30 to DD for last week's and this week's allowance. Also 4 cents to DS who has finally paid off his advance and will resume getting his full allowance next week. As of next week the kids have to start banking half of their allowances for Disneyland.

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Finally got through the preface of the book I got for Christmas. The review at Amazon said it was written from a Christian perspective, but I think it's coming off more like he's a religious whackadoodle. If it doesn't tone it down some I may not make it through the rest of the book. So far the writer does not come off as the sort of Christian that I strive to be, certainly. More the type that I tend to look at and think please get out of my religion, the type that makes that verse about not judging others very difficult to apply. At this point I am glad I did not purchase it myself. I hope it gets better. I hate to think it was a total waste of my SIL's money.

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I do plan to get back to the food stamp challenge menus soon, but I totally torqued my knee on Christmas day and so it's making it hard for me to concentrate for the amount of time it takes to devote to one of those. It is getting better but is still swollen and sore. Hopefully it will continue to improve.

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DH and I have been planning out more of our Disneyland trip. We have a hotel narrowed down for our overnight in Seattle. It has a hot breakfast included (not continental). That was the last thing that needed to be booked.

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The chickens are doing really well. Finally put a light in a week or two ago. Today we got 10 eggs out of 12 chickens. Not bad. I miss Lady, though. She is doing well at the new farm, but I still miss her. She was my favorite duck and such a sweetheart.

Well, it's not really as bad as all that, I don't have to pay for it, but the furnace stopped working. It has to do with a control board, not the actual furnace itself, but it will be a week before they get the part. It is cold in the house. So DH and I broke our no shopping on Boxing Day rule and went to Lowe's (the parking lot was pretty empty) and bought two ceramic space heaters, spending $54.86. One is for the bathroom, which was registering at 40 degrees F and the other for the living room which has three huge windows and was about 45 degrees F. It is 34 degrees outside and raining ice.

There were already space heaters in two of our bedrooms and Mom had another one for the third bedroom. Fortunately for her there is a gas fireplace at her end of the house so she has it cranked and is doing just fine.

I certainly miss having a wood stove though. It's hard to keep our wing of the house warm, even with the heaters, sweaters and blankets. It'll be fine once we go to bed and can keep the doors shut. A wood stove would have had us toasty within 30 minutes. If our new house doesn't have one we are going to install one of the ones you can stick in a corner of a room and vent directly outside instead of up a chimney.

Well, it's not really as bad as all that, I don't have to pay for it, but the furnace stopped working. It has to do with a control board, not the actual furnace itself, but it will be a week before they get the part. It is cold in the house. So DH and I broke our no shopping on Boxing Day rule and went to Lowe's (the parking lot was pretty empty) and bought two ceramic space heaters, spending $54.86. One is for the bathroom, which was registering at 40 degrees F and the other for the living room which has three huge windows and was about 45 degrees F. It is 34 degrees outside and raining ice.

There were already space heaters in two of our bedrooms and Mom had another one for the third bedroom. Fortunately for her there is a gas fireplace at her end of the house so she has it cranked and is doing just fine.

I certainly miss having a wood stove though. It's hard to keep our wing of the house warm, even with the heaters, sweaters and blankets. It'll be fine once we go to bed and can keep the doors shut. A wood stove would have had us toasty within 30 minutes. If our new house doesn't have one we are going to install one of the ones you can stick in a corner of a room and vent directly outside instead of up a chimney.

I've run the numbers to see exactly how I will pay off the BoA VISA in the month of January. I will be using the money in the freezer fund to help with this, so:

$2000 on January 4th--$1000, from the freezer fund and $1000 from the extra money set aside for January that I don't need now that the AMEX has been paid off.

$2000 out of the January 11th paycheck.

$2000 out of the January 18th paycheck.

$2000 out of the January 25th paycheck.

That will pay it off even with DH charging a new plane ticket, travel food, and motel cost for his overnight stay in Anchorage.

In February I will need to take $1252 along with the money I have saved in the vacation fund, $400, to buy 7 parkhopper tickets for Disneyland/California Adventure for our planned March trip. So while there will be some debt repayment to the last card, the Chase card, it will be closer to $500 for this month, I think.

When we get our taxes back, it should be close to what we got back last year, which was $8,425. Most of this was caused by deducting the entire HSA amount since we spent so much on medical. The same will be true this year. DH's income should be about the same, maybe off by a few hundred dollars.

About $3000 of that money will go towards Disneyland. The condo is free, the airfare was mostly free, and what wasn't was taken care of a few months ago. That probably seems like a lot of money, but I am overbudgeting to be on the safe side. We will be renting a limo to get us to and from the airport. It actually turns out to be cheaper to do that than to divide seven people and their luggage between two cars.

The only cheaper option is to take one of those buses that stops at every single hotel near Disneyland (and yours is always the last one), but those are always so full you never get to sit with your family and with four children, two of which have anxiety issues, that is not an option. The nine passenger van doesn't have enough room for us and our luggage.

Once we have settled into the condo DH and I will leave SIL with the kids and take a taxi to the nearby Von's to do some grocery shopping. We plan on eating breakfast at the condo and most of our dinners, then purchasing lunch in the park. It will cut food costs substantially.

DH and I have determined to buy everyone one sweatshirt, one t-shirt, a Splash Mountain or Grizzly River Run beach towel and one set of mouse ears as souvenirs. Also autograph books and pens for the kids.

We will need to rent two motel rooms for the night in Seattle before we fly and we will also need to pay for airport parking of two cars when we get back. Also one meal at the airport at least.

Plans for what is left of our tax return after Disney money is taken out is to put $1500 in the Emergency Fund and $3500 towards Chase. I will have an additional $500 from March's pay cycle to pay off Chase completely.

And at that point we will start saving and building the EF and paying down the mortgage which will be under $14K at that point. Currently $1000 is going towards principal every 2 months, so I'd like to make that $1000 towards principal every month until it is either paid off or the house sells. I will also be trying to save $1000 each month for college and will ear mark the tax refund after this one to college savings as well.

3 months and the future begins, unfettered by the credit card debt of years. At least as long as Murphy keeps to himself and all goes well.

I've run the numbers to see exactly how I will pay off the BoA VISA in the month of January. I will be using the money in the freezer fund to help with this, so:

$2000 on January 4th--$1000, from the freezer fund and $1000 from the extra money set aside for January that I don't need now that the AMEX has been paid off.

$2000 out of the January 11th paycheck.

$2000 out of the January 18th paycheck.

$2000 out of the January 25th paycheck.

That will pay it off even with DH charging a new plane ticket, travel food, and motel cost for his overnight stay in Anchorage.

In February I will need to take $1252 along with the money I have saved in the vacation fund, $400, to buy 7 parkhopper tickets for Disneyland/California Adventure for our planned March trip. So while there will be some debt repayment to the last card, the Chase card, it will be closer to $500 for this month, I think.

When we get our taxes back, it should be close to what we got back last year, which was $8,425. Most of this was caused by deducting the entire HSA amount since we spent so much on medical. The same will be true this year. DH's income should be about the same, maybe off by a few hundred dollars.

About $3000 of that money will go towards Disneyland. The condo is free, the airfare was mostly free, and what wasn't was taken care of a few months ago. That probably seems like a lot of money, but I am overbudgeting to be on the safe side. We will be renting a limo to get us to and from the airport. It actually turns out to be cheaper to do that than to divide seven people and their luggage between two cars.

The only cheaper option is to take one of those buses that stops at every single hotel near Disneyland (and yours is always the last one), but those are always so full you never get to sit with your family and with four children, two of which have anxiety issues, that is not an option. The nine passenger van doesn't have enough room for us and our luggage.

Once we have settled into the condo DH and I will leave SIL with the kids and take a taxi to the nearby Von's to do some grocery shopping. We plan on eating breakfast at the condo and most of our dinners, then purchasing lunch in the park. It will cut food costs substantially.

DH and I have determined to buy everyone one sweatshirt, one t-shirt, a Splash Mountain or Grizzly River Run beach towel and one set of mouse ears as souvenirs. Also autograph books and pens for the kids.

We will need to rent two motel rooms for the night in Seattle before we fly and we will also need to pay for airport parking of two cars when we get back. Also one meal at the airport at least.

Plans for what is left of our tax return after Disney money is taken out is to put $1500 in the Emergency Fund and $3500 towards Chase. I will have an additional $500 from March's pay cycle to pay off Chase completely.

And at that point we will start saving and building the EF and paying down the mortgage which will be under $14K at that point. Currently $1000 is going towards principal every 2 months, so I'd like to make that $1000 towards principal every month until it is either paid off or the house sells. I will also be trying to save $1000 each month for college and will ear mark the tax refund after this one to college savings as well.

3 months and the future begins, unfettered by the credit card debt of years. At least as long as Murphy keeps to himself and all goes well.