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I look forward to Halloween every year. It’s the one day that I have an excuse to dress up and for a little bit be another character that isn’t “me.” Don’t get me wrong, I like being me, but an escape from reality is nice every now and then.
Our son was so excited to go trick-or-treating, but he soon got tired of his costume. I think his full costume lasted about 30 minutes before he started getting annoyed with parts of it. By the end of our trip, he no longer looked like he had a costume on at all. Mom started to feel funny when because she was dressed up more than her son LOL.
He surprised me a little bit when we got home. There was still about twenty minutes left for trick-or-treating and he said he wanted to give out candy. I told him that we didn’t have any to hand out and he suggested using the candy he just got. We flipped on our porch light and I fired up our pumpkin and waited. No one came. He was a little bummed.
I asked him if he wanted to stay home next year and give out candy. He surprised me again when he said that he would like to give out candy rather than get it. That made me a little proud, since I’ve been trying to show him that it’s not always about what you get…but what you give. I have a feeling we will have a great time this year shopping for Toys for Tots 
I hope all of you had a wonderful night!
I am happy to report that my husband got a part-time job! It was the one that I mentioned he had a good lead on. It took a while to go through all of the pre-employment steps. For a minimum wage retail job, the process surprised us. But now it is a done deal and we’ll have some more income to help support us until our business kicks into gear.
About the business, I haven’t had much time to work on it lately since I am working more hours at work than originally thought. At least I know that if I want to go back to full time I can. The work is there. So that is comforting.
On the other hand, I’ve already dropped one pant size since cutting my hours. That is not due to formal exercising because I haven’t been doing any. I believe it is due to the fact that I am no longer sitting for so many hours a day. It probably also helps that I haven’t been grabbing as many “comfort foods” since my stress level has decreased.
I have to say thank you to those who mentioned SwapTree in the comments in my post about public libraries. I checked it out and plan to give it a try. I’m already gathering some books and games that didn’t sell at our garage sales to see if I can swap for some books I am looking for.
Lastly, Ray came back to “ER” tonight! Yay! Neela - why did you let him go!!! Why? Why?? As a Neela-Ray fan, I am bummed.
I have had a title for a post sitting in my draft folder for a while. I was going to tackle a question that comes up every now and then…can money buy happiness? I mulled it over and thought I had an answer. I opened up the computer to write my thoughts down, then I’d think of another point that countered what I was thinking. I can’t make heads or tails with my thoughts.
Instead of letting the idea get deleted since I can’t seem to form a solid opinion one way or the other, I thought I would ask all of you what you think. It could lead to some interesting discussion.
What do you think? Can Money Buy Happiness?
Our family has discovered one of the best free places out there - the public library. Many of you probably know about this. It’s not anything new and public libraries are talked about often when it comes to saving money. My work schedule used to overlap the library’s open hours so we never checked it out.
My hours are a lot more flexible now so I was able to stop in the library one morning while out and about running errands. It had been a while since I stepped foot into a library. Boy, have they progressed with the times. I couldn’t believe the vast amount of videos and dvds available at my fingertips. I saw many of the movies we have rented in the past at the video store.
A little sad, I know. We weren’t practicing one of the biggest tips in frugality - use the public library! Oh, the money we could have saved! They even had Star Wars on DVD. You should have seen the smile on my son’s face when he saw that they were there and they were free to borrow. He knows that means no more paying to rent them from the video store and he was really excited.
In the past, I headed to Amazon.com or eBay when there was a book I wanted to read. Lately I’ve been doing some research on learning styles. Our library is a small one and didn’t have a book I was interested in. I requested an interlibrary loan and in a few days I received a call that the book was in. That was faster than an order from Amazon with free shipping. And the price was unbeatable.
I feel silly mentioning this, but maybe there are others out there who haven’t yet checked out their public library. Even if you happen to work during the library’s open hours (like I did), maybe you can stop by during a lunch break. I should have done that and I regret not making the time to at least stop by for a few minutes to check it out. Our public library really is a treasure. I feel like we hit the “saving money” jackpot.
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.
I have enough links for now! Thanks!
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 August.
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!
I usually have a few links for Friday, but today I am singling out a link that Beverly alerted me to. It is a letter a father wrote to his daughter. He shared some parting financial wisdom with her since she was heading off to college. I thought it was so touching and informative. I’m a softie and I found my eyes swelling up even before I finished reading it.
I have a letter similar to that from my mom. It wasn’t related to finance but it was related to being a responsible adult. I still have that letter today, and every now and then I take it out and read it. It means a lot to me and you can bet that when my son is old enough he will get a similar letter from me.
A Letter to My College-Bound Daughter
Thank you Beverly for the tip and thank you mom for the letter you wrote me way back when
We moved everything out of our living room so I could clean the carpet. Before we put everything back in, my husband and I discussed the layout of the living room. We had the perfect opportunity to change things around a bit.
We could put one couch there, the other one there, the wood chest there and the TV stand there. It finally hit me. After all of our garage sales and selling individual things - we only had four pieces of furniture left in our living room! Oh my…did we ever downsize!
Even more amusing was how we organized the room. We put the two couches together like a sectional which made the room smaller (by partitioning it off and creating a little walkway). We both love it - it feels cozier. I thought our son would protest since he doesn’t have as much floor real estate to play on, but he was pretty happy with it. He likes playing with his matchbox cars on the top of the couch that isn’t up against a wall.
At some point, we would like to retire our couches and find a decent sectional. The free couch we picked up a year or so ago broke and cannot be repaired without professional help. You sit in the middle and it goes “clunk” and your butt sags LOL. Our other couch was purchased at a garage sale for $50 six years ago. It was white and in okay shape. White couch + young child + pets = gray ugly couch that is fraying badly. Slip covers don’t work well (it’s a little smaller than a couch but bigger than a loveseat) so I rigged up some solid color sheets as a work-around to make it more presentable.
The price for a new couch or sectional is scary. We found a cute sectional, but it was $1,400 (including tax). I still shake my head thinking about it. There’s no way we’re spending that kind of money anytime soon. At least now we have a better idea of the cost for when the time comes to get something different. That’ll probably be with our next home and we’ll save up for it. No more credit cards 
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Credit Card Debt
- Starting = $37,614
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- $25 ING Savings Bonus
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