Archive results for “August 2008f 2008”

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Credit Card Debt Update: $8,473

Another slow month for our debt reduction. Recent medical bills/prescriptions have taken a chunk out of money that would normally go towards our debt. There are still some medical bills to come (more about that later). Just goes to show that I better start taking care of myself. We can’t afford not to!

I was really hoping to have progressed farther than we have this summer. Before we know it, we’ll have heating bills and from what I’ve heard natural gas prices are bound to go up this winter. The Farmer’s Almanac is predicting a winter that is a little warmer than normal, so I am hoping that is the case. I never really thought much of the Farmer’s Almanac until I saw my neighbor pruning his fruit tree. There was still snow on the ground, but he said the Farmer’s Almanac said to do it. They had an awesome harvest. We have the same type of fruit tree and our harvest wasn’t as great (we didn’t prune), so guess who will be pruning next year when the almanac says it is time to prune?

I’m not sure what September will bring. Historically September has always been a rough month since a few annual payments are due. We’ll see how things go.

Posted by Tricia on August 31, 2008 at 11:36 PM in Debt Updates | 5 Comments »
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Open Call for ING Savings Referral Links #3

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.

Thanks! I have enough links for now. I will ask again when I need 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 June.

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. Just a note – it will be a short list this time around.

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 each). 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 August 29, 2008 at 1:44 PM in Saving Money | 8 Comments »
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Does Paying in Cash Reduce Your Spending?

Dawn sent me a link to a Yahoo video about a couple that took on the challenge of using only cash for one month.

Yahoo ABC Video
ABC Printed Story

What was the result? They lived with some inconveniences, but managed to cut their spending for the month by 24%. For them, that equaled $1,800. That’s quite a bit of money.

We are a lot like the Farhats. We rarely ever have cash on us. Sometimes I wonder if switching to a cash only system would save us money. But we haven’t tried it because cash can be harder to track and it’s easier to lose. I have been tempted to try it, though. Does anyone have a cash only success story to share?

Thanks Dawn for the tip!

Posted by Tricia on August 28, 2008 at 10:56 PM in Saving Money | 23 Comments »
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Always on the Lookout for Freebies

Yahoo Personal Finance section posted a gem of an article today that listed 30 freebies.

Fabulous Freebies 2008

If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out. Not all of the freebies may apply to you, but some just might. I found a few that appeal to me.

Hulu – This site has full movies and TV shows that you can watch – and it is perfectly legit! I probably spent too much time this evening browsing the site, but they have some of my favorite shows on there: In Living Color, A-Team, Doogie Howser and King of the Hill. With so many TV shows now popping up online, it really makes me wonder if we should cancel the cable. At $18/month perhaps it is time to say goodbye.

Mutopia (note: the link in the article is incorrect, the correct address is www.mutopiaproject.org) – You can print sheet music from some of the greats…Bach & Mozart, just to name a few. In all, there are 1431 pieces of sheet music. As someone who really wants to get back to her musical roots, this site is a treasure.

I’ve really realized lately that there are tons of things for free. The hard part can be finding them, so articles like these are always great to read!

Posted by Tricia on August 26, 2008 at 10:16 PM in Free Stuff | 11 Comments »
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Frugal Family Fun – Bike Riding

Before we go any further, I have a proud mommy-moment to share. I was coming home from the doctor’s the other day and saw a child riding a bike near my house. I first thought it was my son, but then I noticed that there were no training wheels. So it wasn’t him. Wait – that’s his helmet. Oh my…it was my son! And he was riding without training wheels!

I parked the car, and yelled to him, “Aren’t you missing something?” He smiled ear to ear. I gave him a hug. I was so proud of him. He had been riding well with his training wheels, but he was scared to try it without so we didn’t pressure him. I guess he wanted to give it a shot, and off he went leaving his training wheels far behind.

All morning yesterday, my son was asking, “When are we going bike riding?” He had to go out again and stretch his bike riding legs. So we went out riding for a few hours and had a blast. That night, he wanted to go out again. He reminded me of Forrest Gump – when he was able to run without the braces on his legs, he ran everywhere. My son now wants to bike everywhere since he no longer needs his training wheels. He is so proud and mom and dad are so proud too. This opens up some great frugal fun since there are plenty of biking trails where we live. All three of us can go out and enjoy them and my son can enjoy his training wheel freedom.

“I’m free…I can go anywhere!”

Sometimes the things that kids say are so cute

Posted by Tricia on August 24, 2008 at 7:36 PM in Saving Money | 7 Comments »
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Wife Swap is Looking for Families – Pay: $20,000

No, that’s not a typo up there. If you participate in ABC’s Wife Swap show, you get $20,000 at the completion of taping. I noticed an announcement a while ago and tried to get the hubby interested in the idea, but he doesn’t want to do something like that. I thought we would be an awesome family…

We have a bit of credit card debt
We live frugally
We live in a rural setting
We live in a smaller house, and are even looking to downsize that
We have a non-traditional husband/wife roles
We both work from home
We have one car
We are not big on the social scene

I do think it would be interesting to swap lives for a little bit. It would provide a different perspective and we’d probably learn a few things. At the same time, though, I know how television works and it’s all about the drama. Not sure if I’d enjoy that part of it. While the money would be awesome, Wife Swap probably isn’t for us.

If you are interested in something like this, they are currently looking for people according to this post at WAHM.com. The contact info is over there. It was posted the 19th – I’m guessing the post will disappear when they receive enough responses.

Posted by Tricia on August 24, 2008 at 9:43 AM in Misc | 14 Comments »
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Husband and Wife Discussion #2

My husband said one thing during our camping trip that left me pretty much speechless. It came about after our discussion about a smaller home. He said, “Why don’t we sell everything and start over?”

My silence gave me away. “You’re thinking about it now, aren’t you?” he said. I was thinking about it. At first glance, it seems pretty silly. There’s no way we’d make a lot from all of the stuff we have and then we’d have to buy new things. No, we couldn’t do that.

I broke my silence, “We couldn’t sell everything.”

“But, we could sell a lot of it,” he said.

By golly, I think he was onto something. In order to downsize our home and simplify our life, we really have to trim out the fluff from our lives. We trimmed a lot during our garage sales last summer, but there is still a lot left. Off hand, I can think of a desk that we really don’t use (except to put stuff on), an extra air conditioner and a cabinet we no longer use because everything was moved into the cabinet I used for the bald eagle collection I sold.

It’s not just the big things, either. My husband sorted through our kitchen and discovered that we have four spatulas, three slotted spoons, three solid spoons and three whisks. Do we need all of them? Nope. But somehow we accumulated them through the years. My guess is that I saw some on sale and bought the extras (I still fight bargain blindness!).

Let’s not forget about clothes. My husband brought up a great point, “I wash the same clothes all of the time – we don’t even wear half of the clothes that we have.” Again, he was right on. I have clothes that I haven’t worn in years, not because they don’t fit, but because I prefer to wear other ones.

I find it amusing that I thought we got rid of a lot of things last summer. Turns out, there is so much more we can sell and it won’t affect our quality of life at all. That’s the thing…I think we were so used to having excess things that it didn’t even dawn on us what was happening. We got so used to it.

My son is excited – we’ll be having another garage sale soon!

Posted by Tricia on August 21, 2008 at 11:21 PM in Life Experiences | 22 Comments »
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