I almost forgot. I was in town this morning because of Tobias's dance class and I ran over to Penney's to buy a new purse because the strap on my old one, which I have mended several times, broke again and is now completely unfixable, plus there was a bad spot in the leather. I was very upset that I could not fix this purse again as I love this purse. It is perfect, because it is part organizer and it has the slots for all my cards (insurance, library cards for me and both kids, Costco, license, etc.) so I didn't have to have a wallet, too.

I knew I'd have to buy a wallet because there was no way I was ever going to find a purse this good again. I thought I'd try Penney's anyway because that is where I bought the purse 4 years ago. You can imagine my delight when I found the exact same purse. Well, instead of burgandy it was red, but other than that it was identical. They also had brown, black, blue, and white but the red was prettiest. I wish they'd had turquoise, I would have really gone for that. But I was very happy to get this same purse and I will use it until it falls apart.

Oh, and it was on sale, too. Normally $26, it was marked down to something that was $18.32 with the tax. Interesting that my two main purchases today were identical amounts.

I also spent $1.25 for the five red romaine starts from the organic place and $3.83 to get deli ham for Rose's sandwiches for school lunches (also from the organic place).

Okay, I think that's really it this time.

I am very annoyed with my term life insurance company right now. They are supposed to take an automatic payment out of my checking account on the 24th of the month. If the payment day falls on a weekend they can take it the preceding Friday. Which would be today. If it fell on the weekend. Last time I checked the 24th was on Monday. I always make sure there is money in there on the 21st though, because they have been known to do this before. Only this time they took it on the 19th!

So I called them up and yelled at my agent. Long story short, they are reimbursing me for the $14 overdraft fee, but only if I come in to the office today and pick up the check. Thank heavens my CU is reasonable, too. They agreed to not list the overdraft on my record and as long as I brought in the check from Allstate today, they'd put the amount they charged me back into my account and keep the money from Allstate. So I do have to go to town twice today after all. An extra nine bucks in gas, but I'll do some things in town that I have been putting off because I don't want to do them when I have the kids with me.

I wouldn't be so upset if this were the first time Allstate had pulled a fast one. It happens at least twice a year. It just is really annoying. I have worked hard to retain a good credit report and I don't need to have these things messing stuff up. We want our credit in tip top shape so that we can buy a new (to us) car in 3 years and not get taken on the interest rate.

Seems like there are two things that are constants in my life, bills and weeds. I spent a good portion of my morning getting rid of weeds, but you pull one out and there will be another one there tomorrow in its place. Bills, of course, you can see the anaology, right?

Recieved a bill today from my husband's dentist for some extensive dental work done in February. I'm not really complaining about it, because after insurance we only owe $29.60. Our medical insurance improved greatly at the start of the year, but since our pretax amount out of paycheck went from $175 to $550 to pay for the premiums, I will complain about that. Just a little. Fortunately it coincided with a raise that was completely eaten up by the increase. But we do have vision, better dental, and orthodontist now, which if you'd seen my daughter's teeth, you'd know it was needed. Unfortunately we started her treatment last June so we are out all the money we already put into her mouth. Still she will have stuff going on for three years or so, so it is still a positive when it all comes out in the wash. Just sometimes doesn't seem that way.

I worked on knitting my scarf for an hour today, signed up for a freebie, signed up for fatwallet and quickreturns, hung a load of towels, and baked a loaf of bread and some cookies. Where do you all find surveys that pay money? Most of the places seem a bit shady.

Now I'm off to take Rose to soccer practice. Tobias and I will lap the soccer park twice to get in some exercise today. It is gorgous out, but it will be breezy there by the river, so definitely taking jackets.

Last night I had to turn on the furnace. I was not a happy camper. The weather has been in the 50's for a couple weeks now and I had shut it off at the end of March. We don't use it much anyway unless we're sick, we usually use the wood stove, with the thermostat programmed to kick the furnace in if the house temp drops below 60, which it only did twice this winter, once when it got to 9 degrees outside and once at 17. Gotta protect the water pipes.

But with the sleet storm last night it just got too cold in the house. I didn't have any kindling or small wood in the house to start a fire with and I was not going to traipse all the way out to the woodshed at midnight in a sleet storm. Needless to say I've rectified that today.

I am really glad I took the time to zip up my greenhouse door though. It's just a little greenhouse, 3 feet tall by two feet wide and one foot deep. But it has my snow peas and spinach, chard, and lettuce starts in it. I had been hardening them off in preperation to transplant in a couple of weeks, but the weather had been so mild I'd left the flap raised a few nights running. Checked on them today and they are doing just fine, despite the bizarre weather.

It rained all morning, then around five it started snowing. Twelve miles away at the soccer practice fields it was only sprinkling and then after ten minutes the sun came out. Still cold, but at least the girls weren't getting drenched.

On the drive home the tops of Black Mountain and Sumas Mountain (which are really only foothills to Mt. Baker)were just blanketed with snow, but the valley was completely clear. Weird. it's gorgeous now, well, it was, the sun just set.

Things I did to be frugal today:
Hung a load of laundry on my drying rack, which I positioned over the hottest furnace vent last night.
Brought a load of kindling and small wood up onto the porch.
Folded newspaper into kindling sticks until I had a grocery sack full.
Resisted my son's attempts to convince me to run over to the IGA and get him a corndog during Rose's soccer practice. I made him one when we got home instead.
Didn't have to drive all the way to town because it is spring break and there were no dance classes this week.
Signed up for 2 more samples.
Started a fire, but left furnace able to kick in if the temps drop too low.
Baked a loaf of bread when I was baking chicken (in a covered casserole so the smell doesn't get into the bread) instead of using the oven two separate times.

Pretty good, so far.

So I adore Netflix, about the greatest creation for those of us who live in the boonies. At various times I have been on different levels, but have for some time been on what I thought was the lowest level of 3 out at a time, unlimited. Well, it had been so long since I had checked the options that I decided to go and look and see if anything had changed. I was very happy to see quite a few new levels. We've been with Netflix from the beginning and it should have occurred to me to check sooner, but oh, well. Anyway, I reduced it to one movie out at a time, unlimited, so am now at $9.99 a month there instead of $17.99. So that auto charge will drop by 8 bucks. I am not quite ready to give it up altogether.

I spent a good amount of time going over the Freebies lists this morning and signed up for 12 samples. It would have been more but some of them just wouldn't load. I started a notebook that lists the sample sent for, the date I sent for it, and how long it should take to show up, so I can try to track them down if they don't get sent. I fully expect at least half of them to not show up, though.

I thought I'd better be organized about it after reading (from start to finish) someone's blog that had major couponing, rebating, and sample acquiring. Mine is on paper after reading her computer went wonky and she lost quite a bit of info. I will never be that deep into it, though. It's hard to be that organized with the kids around.

I have read about 5 blogs now (archives, too) and am amazed at all the different approaches to this savings thing. All sorts of interesting terminology that I had to look up, like ING accounts and such.

DH and I are discussing other cuts we can make. The big sticker is cable. I'd like to drop down to the most basic program they have. He doesn't want to because he doesn't want to lose SciFi channel. I think that since the two shows he wants to watch (the new Dr. Who and the new Battlestar Galactica) come out on DVD soon or are out on DVD already, we can get them from Netflix. He doesn't want to wait the extra couple months for the DVD's.

For now I will let it go, but I'll take it back up next month and see if sitting with the idea for awhile has made a difference. Could be I'll even manage to get him to suggest it and think it is his idea which I can then agree with. It's been known to happen. My parents have a dish, so maybe we can record those two shows and then he wouldn't have to wait at all. Hmm. Maybe. Mom's a bit uptight about subject matter. We are in there every Friday anyway for Rose's dance class so I could tape it and retrieve it on the same day, even. That might make a good compromise.

Today I cancelled our membership to Columbia House dvd club. We had long ago met our membership requirements and truth be told, I didn't really use it because any dvds we wanted usually went on a really good sale the issue week, much less than the club's price with shipping. The last time I bought a dvd set from the store I had a newspaper coupon for it for 10% off and a store rewards coupon for $4 off any electronics purchase, which they said was good for dvds. All told, it would have cost about $15 more from Columbia House.

I didn't think they were ever going to let me cancel. Why did I want to quit? Half the time I would forget to send the slip in to not get the movie and end up with movies I didn't want. And they were too expensive. Even with their deals? Yes. Every time I said I want to cancel my membership, they came back with some other offer. No, I don't want to switch to just buying when I want to and not worrying about the member's selection card, I just want to cancel. No I don't want to spend the $15 in fun cash I had accrued, I just want to cancel. No, I am not interested in joining your sister club BMG to be sent CD's in the mail, I just want to cancel. I think I said that about 15 times.

The guy was good, but not good enough. I stayed polite but firm and got away with what I wanted and was sent an email with a confirmation number saying it was cancelled. We shall see what shows up in my mailbox. Oh, yes, and I also told the guy to have a nice day before he could say it to me. It felt just a tiny bit wicked. But I meant it, too. He was perfectly well behaved, just pushy.

After I finally got off the phone with them I called Proactiv to cancel that. I use the product, but only a couple times a week now and I have a huge backlog in my cupboard, probably a three year supply. When it runs out, well we'll see. Since I quit eating high fructose corn syrup my skin has been clear.

They were much more accepting of me cancelling there, probably because I loved the product and simply explained the situation and the lady agreed with me that getting them every two months was silly, but in the future if I came back they could send it every six months instead, which is nice to know. I came away feeling a lot happier with them than Columbia House.

So anyway, that takes off a charge of $40 every 2 months from the credit card, and random CH charges as well. I've got a couple more places to call to cancel more auto ship items, but I really did not want to deal with it today, the other two kind of wore me out. I'll try to get to those tomorrow.

But I feel good about what I did do. I might not be saving money with these steps, but I don't feel like I'm wasting it anymore, either.

Blogging is new to me, but journaling sure isn't, so bear with me as I figure out the odds and ends of the system. I found this site about a week ago and completely fell in love with it. I have been in denial of our debt situation for a long time but for the past two weeks I have been searching around for good websites to help us get a handle on things and this one has been simply wonderful.

So, massive debt. We sure have it. It is hard to believe that only seven years ago we were debt free, bought a house paying in cash. We owned both of our cars (still do) outright. But that was before my last pregnancy that turned high risk at week 32 and required more hospitalization than the insurance company wanted to pay for and incurring a $30,000 unsecured debt.

Still, we managed to get along pretty well, but starting in 2002, I have had 3 major surgeries in 3 consecutive years, all with benign (hence the lucky), but too large to leave alone tumors that might endanger other organs and after losing both the appendix and gall bladder, I was glad to get rid of the last one without losing something else. This last year has been tumor free and we hope it stays that way.

Needless to say, our insurance wasn't too forthcoming and we ended up with a massive debt of $150,000 for hospital bills. My parents let us put a 30 year mortgage on their big house, so we pay $935 plus $65 extra each month on that. Fortunately they will leave us the house in their will so they do not mind doing this for us. I'm sure we would have declared bankruptcy without them and I did not want to have to do that.

Beyond that we still have $37,800 left on our own 15 year mortgage we took out to cover expenses while I was sick, so we pay $375 a month on that, plus $25 extra. We had gotten our unsecured debt down to $25,000, but it is at $31,000 now, due to orthodontist work to correct our daughter's messed up bite, and being overextended beyond our budget and DH's pay.

So good news, our insurance changed at the beginning of January and now covers orthodontist and vision and more dental than it did before, but it also is taking out more than double what it took out of DH's paycheck before. Fortunately he got a raise at the same time which leaves us with $50 extra a month than he was bringing home before (again lucky).

We have finally as of the start of this year, stopped using credit completely. I have been slowly cutting stuff out. My son has lost interest in tae kwon do so we took him out of that, freeing up $65 a month. My daughter still has a year on her contract and is still motivated to go so for now she stays in. Both kids have been taking dance lessons, which are paid up through June. It breaks for the summer and then they will not be taking them next year, which together frees up $85 a month. Between those they just about cover our gas for the month which is running $2.79 a gallon here.

After a propane bill in January of $272 we turned off the furnance and switched to using our woodstove full time. We had free wood from family from fallen trees on their properties that had been sitting in our carport for 3 years and was nice and dry. The stove gets hot enough that I can warm up a pot of soup or chili or other meals in a can, can warm up canned veggies or boil eggs or water for tea, so we do that some to save on using the oven (which is electric, not propane). Once our pantry stock runs out I will be making chili and soup instead of opening cans.

When I do cook, I make everything from scratch now. We have maybe a six month stock of canned goods in the pantry, but when its gone, its gone. I bake a loaf of bread pretty much daily, but I had already been doing that because my DH is allergic to high fructose corn syrup and that is in almost all bread these days.

So, we are definitely trying now. Ready to face this debt situation head on. It is scary to not be hiding my head in the sand, and I think DH still wants to a bit, but he has agreed with me that we have to take some measures now and more as we find places to cut.

I am hoping to save on the grocery budget as we have a lot of meat in the freezer so really all we need are fresh vegetables, fruit, milk, and eggs on a weekly basis. I am hoping that we have eliminated the propane bill. Our electric is coming down with the longer days, though we don't see it as we are on budget pay year round.

There are other steps I plan to take in the next few weeks, but just getting to this point has been kind of freeing. Or at least as freeing as it can be with a slightly over $200,000 total debt load. It's just a little, but baby steps still take you forward and I'd rather be going forward than backwards.

Wow, I wrote a novel. Well, they won't be this long in future.

Robin