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We Saw Wall-E This Weekend

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had promised our son that we would go see Wall-E when it came out in the theater. On Saturday, he was so excited he was almost bouncing off of the walls.

We were a little concerned about the possibility of the show selling out because it is opening weekend and because the movie was getting such great reviews. So we planned on getting there 1/2 hour early, which was when the previous show was getting out. We only saw a few people leaving from the main entrance. The rest must have left through the other exits, I thought.

We went in as soon as they let us in and found a seat. I couldn’t help but notice that there weren’t many people there. The previews started rolling and the attendance didn’t change all that much. I’d guess that the theater was probably less than 1/10th of capacity.

I couldn’t help but wonder if the economy had something to do with it. I have seen people lined up down the street for this theater years ago. But not this time. Who knows? Maybe everyone decided to do something else or maybe they don’t like the theater. After all, the projection was a little off and the sound was way too “hot” (yeah, I’m a pretty picky movie watcher when it comes to the total experience).

Anyways, my son was happy to see the movie and even got a little Wall-E promo watch with his ticket. Mom and Dad were happy to see the movie, too, because it was really good. I didn’t think I would cry, but the softie in me let it out when, well…I can’t say because I don’t want to spoil anything

We are looking forward to when it comes out on DVD so we can see it again and pick up on the things that we didn’t catch the first time when we saw it. Cars (also by Pixar) was the first movie we saw in a theater with our son and we didn’t really like it in the theater. Since renting it, we love that movie. There was so much that we didn’t pick up on the first time around. Wall-E, well, we really liked it in the theater so we will probably really love it once we view it at home.

Posted by Tricia on June 29, 2008 at 11:46 PM in Spending Money | 13 Comments »
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Mortgage is Gone, Cash is Bad, Big Debt Tomorrow, Catching Up and Nine Months

I spent some time yesterday catching up on my blog reading. I was pretty far behind. I follow over 120 blogs so I had some reading to do! Here are some articles that caught my eye to share with all of you.

Kevin is now mortgage free. Congrats!

Ms Broke argues that keeping cash on you is a bad idea. I follow her reasoning and we barely have cash on us. We end up spending it too easily. But everyone is different.

Twiggers shares a cautionary article about spending $10 today, be out $100K tomorrow. Very interesting.

Things have finally caught up to JW. Paying off debt is important, but it’s not the most important thing in the world. JW, we wish you a very speedy recovery!

Arduous has spent nine months not buying new stuff. Congrats!

Posted by Tricia on June 29, 2008 at 8:59 AM in General Personal Finance | 10 Comments »
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Hurry – Suze Orman’s Women & Money Download Available Again

Oprah offered a free download of Suze Orman’s Women & Money before, and she’s offering it again. But you have to be quick!

A download of Suze Orman’s Women & Money is available TODAY (June 27, 2008) until 7pm CST.

Here’s the link to Oprah’s page – scroll down and you’ll see the little pdf icon.

I know some of you missed it last time (including me – I opened the download but didn’t save it to my computer!).

Thanks, Oprah and Suze…and thank you so much to Beverly for the email about this!!

Posted by Tricia on June 27, 2008 at 2:27 PM in Free Stuff | 2 Comments »
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Spending Freeze Partially Lifted

Those who are close to me sometimes tease me because I have a thing for mail. After the mailman goes by I’m usually the first one out there to see what he brought. You can imagine the mailman jokes I get

Mr. Mailman didn’t disappoint me today. I finally received the payment I was owed from an advertiser. It was postmarked a week ago so it was definitely sent late. I haven’t received a reply to my emails, so I have no idea if they just sent it late or if they ended up sending a new check. I guess I’ll have to keep an eye out for next month.

With that check, we are definitely okay this month. While our spending freeze has been nice, I am pretty glad the money came in. Quite a few months ago, I told my son we would go see Pixar’s Wall-E (which opens tomorrow) in the movie theater as a special treat. He’s at that age where he 1.) Remembers everything we say and 2.) Really understands ads that state when a movie is opening. So deep down I was hoping our financial situation improved so we could partially lift our spending freeze so we could go see the movie. I’m not sure if we’ll see it this weekend, but at least I can set the money aside now.

I should have done that when I first told him we could go see it but I am still trying to adjust to the “setting money aside thing” for occasional treats like entertainment. If I was really on the ball, I should have set up a jar to place money in every week as we saved up to go see the movie (for the three of us, a matinee will cost $17). We tell him all the time at the store that he needs to save his money to get the toys that he wants. But seeing mom and dad actually saving money will have a lasting impression on him, I think.

We really need to be doing more to help our son learn the financial habits that we are learning as adults. I think that as a family we should determine our next “treat” and save up for it. I think it will be a nice and rewarding experience for all of us.

Posted by Tricia on June 26, 2008 at 11:11 PM in Kids & Money | 11 Comments »
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We Are on a Spending Freeze

Because things are tight financially right now, we are on a spending freeze. We are only spending money on necessities. We put this to the test last weekend when we returned something to Walmart. Even though we walked through the store, we walked out without buying a single thing.

It felt so weird to do that. We should have a cart full of stuff we are pushing out the door. I felt like an oddball walking out of the store without a bag in my hand. At the same time, though, I felt pretty darn good.

For example, I didn’t decide to buy some clothes for next season on clearance. Normally, that would be a great thing to do. But not right now. We don’t have money so we don’t need to be spending money. That was a big problem that I had in the past. I’d often buy things on sale and make frugal purchases – but I put it on credit! I wonder if there is a word out there to describe that behavior. In my mind I was being a great shopper.

Probably tomorrow I will dig into our Quicken file again since some income has come in. I will have a better idea of where we stand and hopefully we can replenish our savings account some. I do think this spending freeze is helping.

We should do them more often

Posted by Tricia on June 25, 2008 at 11:29 PM in Spending Money | 17 Comments »
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Open Call for ING Savings Referral Links #2

There is a great bonus at ING Direct where you can earn $25 for opening up a new ING Orange Savings account with at least $250. To get that bonus, you need to use someone’s referring link.

EDIT: Thanks! I have enough links for right now. I will be updating this post as I work through the links so you can keep an eye on it to know when I’ll be asking for more.

I have been out of my links for a while, so I host ING Orange Savings referral links for others on my referral page. Every now and then I ask for more referrals on here so I can keep up the supply. The last time I did it was in April.

Very important – please do not send me ING links now and do not post them in the comments.

If you are interesting in having me host some ING links for you, please leave a comment below saying “I’m interested”. Once I get a good list going, I will close off this post to new comments and that will be all until next time when I need more.

As I need to refill my links, I will go through the comments on this post and will contact you when it is your turn (I’ve been asking for three links). I will note my progress along the way so you will know when your turn is approaching in case you want to keep track, or if you are curious when I will be asking for more again.

For the specifics here, the owners of the links receive $10 from ING when their link is used and I do not receive any of that. I do this to give back since I have been fortunate to have mine used thanks to my blog. I cannot guarantee that your link will be used before it expires and I cannot guarantee that your link will be used correctly. I am agreeing to post your link on my referrals page and while I hope someone uses them correctly so you earn the bonus – I cannot guarantee it.

As a reminder, please do not post referral links in the comments! I will contact you when it is your turn to send me some.

Please just leave a comment saying you are interested. If for some reason you submit a comment and don’t see it right away – please contact me and I’ll fish it out of my spam filter (it gets a bit hungry sometimes).

Thanks!

Posted by Tricia on June 25, 2008 at 7:23 PM in Making Money | 10 Comments »
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Hitting a Low on the Roller Coaster Ride

For quite a while now, we have been doing great with reducing our debt. There would be times where I’d look at our finances and see how much we can squeeze out to put towards our debt (or savings). Usually, there was some breathing room. That’s not the case right now.

I feel a little helpless at the moment, and I haven’t felt like this in quite a while. I look at our Quicken file and I can’t do anything. Our account is dangerously close to being in the red at the end of this month. Right now I am preparing myself mentally because we may have to pull more money from our savings account. While we have our emergency fund there to help when we need it, that doesn’t make it any easier to have to use it.

As some of you noticed, I took a break from blogging. Part of it was technical (I changed all of my passwords after my blog was hacked and I misplaced the one sheet I wrote all of them down on – doh!). But part of it was the fact I have been debt-depressed. The series of events so far in June brought my mood down. It didn’t bug me too much when I wrote about it, but the next day when I said I was going to dig into our Quicken file to see how much we could put towards savings (but couldn’t) – that was the kicker.

We have also been anxiously waiting for some medical test results for my husband. They called today and all is well. Whew. That weighed very heavily on my mind. I feel bad about not blogging about it, but sometimes I have to step away from things and get my head back on straight.

I’m still not all that happy about our financial situation right now but I do feel better overall. It’s just one of those lows on the debt reduction roller coaster. I hope that means we are going to kick some debt booty once July rolls around. By then we should have some reimbursements for medical expenses we paid out of pocket and hopefully I will have the one payment an advertiser owes me. I was informed Friday that they had email problems and they are responding to emails sent the last few weeks as quickly as they can. So we’ll see how that plays out.

I do feel silly for letting things like this get to me. Things could be so much worse. I really should be thankful for what we have and not dwelling on what we don’t have. If there is one lesson that really needs to sink into my head during this journey – I think it’s that one right there.

Posted by Tricia on June 24, 2008 at 11:45 PM in Life Experiences | 17 Comments »
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