Archive results for “February 2009f 2009”
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I received a comment earlier today, and instead of responding in the comments I thought I would respond in a post since it brings up some good points.
Hey Tricia,
I love ur site and I know you are going to leave soon but I feel that in the last month or so it has gotten less personal and more linky/ady. It’s good info. for people that need it but nothing a google search won’t find. I think there are others that might agree with me when I say I started following this blog because it was a story. A story that I could learn from and enjoyed reading.
Anyway, that’s just my 22 cents
I agree that there have been links lately. I don’t always keep up with my emails on a daily basis and I often spend the weekend replying and sometimes I take longer than a week to reply. I still try to reply to every email I receive and I tend to be long winded in emails. I easily get behind. When I go through my emails, I find some links readers have sent me. They have found value in them so I sometimes pass them on. I don’t always do it. It depends on the link and if I have time to check out the validity of the links.
That said, those links have come in handy. Our financial life has been pretty darn boring lately. I’ve been mentioning new things we have been trying (like the grocery price book) and I’ve had to vent a little (like with our gas bill). Expense wise, we haven’t made many changes lately. Many of the changes have been made during the past three years and I’ve already discussed them.
Which brings up a good point. The three year anniversary of our debt reduction journey is coming up. I haven’t posted many financial details lately, so I’ve been working to get some anniversary-related posts ready. I really want to take a closer look at everything, since that was put on the side burner for a while. I tend to be a perfectionist when it comes to things like that and I will keep looking even when I’m only missing one receipt. It’s a character flaw.
Income-wise, things are pretty boring as well. We are still working the same jobs and our business is steadily growing. I’ve chosen to not discuss details of our business on here – at least not at this time. That’s not to say that I won’t discuss things in a private setting. I know a few of you have written and received novels in response. That’s me! LOL
When your financial life is boring, it’s tough to blog. That’s why I did one of those various updates posts the other day. There isn’t enough to make a full post out of each point. In a way, it’s a good thing when your financial life is boring since there aren’t any bumps in the road right now (knock on wood). I think that could be contributing to the knot in my stomach as well – things are going well…almost too well right now financially.
That’s not to say that all is well in other aspects of our life. Our son has been needing a lot of our time after a disability has come to light. It is not life threatening, but in Tricia fashion I hit the books and the internet hard to learn as much as I could to help our son (it reminds me of how we started with debt reduction – I read a lot). It hasn’t had much of a financial impact yet, unless you consider the time spent as lost income-producing time. There could be costs if we need additional testing/therapy and it could put us in more debt. I’m taking it one day at a time in regards to that. Out of respect for our son’s privacy I have decided to not discuss his disability in length on here.
About the leaving part, yeah, that will happen. I’m not sure when, but our credit card payoff goal date is still May of this year. It will be bittersweet, and there will be more on that later. I’m still coming to terms with the whole credit card payoff – retiring from blogging thing. It still seems a bit surreal.
Oh boy, I’m writing a novel again 
To sum it up, I have been linking to other sites lately. I’ll try to tone it down some or keep it to a weekly thing (if possible). I think I can do that because anniversary posts will be coming this weekend and early next week and today was a good mail day (no bills – just things that I could discuss). It will be a balancing act because I receive some great tips from readers.
I do, however, have to sneak in one more link right now because I found the cutest thing to make with your old credit cards! Credit Card Flower Box Fridge Magnet. I am soooo making one (or two) of these when I get a chance!
Hearst Magazines is offering a sale right now on some magazines subscriptions. You can get one year (12 issues) for $5 for titles such as Redbook, Popular Mechanics, SmartMoney, O Magazine – just to name a few.
I’m tempted to get a subscription to Popular Mechanics for our son. His gift subscription to Highlights magazine recently expired and he enjoyed getting mail like that. He didn’t enjoy the content that much, except for Goofus and Gallant and anything science related. He may be too young for Popular Mechanics, though. I’ll have to think about it some more.
If you are interested in checking out the deal, here is a link. I’m not sure how long this sale lasts – they are promoting it as a Valentine’s Day Sale so it probably won’t last long.
Thanks Beverly for the tip!
This weekend was a nice weekend. We were spoiled with some warmer weather, which I was oh so happy about after having some sticker shock over our last gas bill. It makes me really want one of these.
I took a few minutes to do some blog reading. I don’t do that as much as I’d like to due to so many things going on. There were a few articles that caught my eye.
I read an entertaining article at Financial Hack where Beks is debating her weekly treat of Bud Extra. She buys two cans a week as a treat. She’s looking for comments, so I thought I would see if any of you have anything to share. Since I no longer regularly drink and didn’t give it up for financial reasons, I don’t have much to add to the conversation.
Plugged in Finance shared how he did some grazing for free food at Costco. I don’t have a Sam’s Club or Costco near me, and we rarely see samples at our grocery stores. I’m jealous
Lastly, a few of you have been asking about JW at Need to Be Debt Free. His blog has been deleted so I contacted JW about it. He said that I could share with you that they are fine. Due to some recent events he had to delete his blog.
It seems like you can’t flip through the channels anymore without catching something about the recession. I caught part of a story on ABC about consumer spending. It turns out that Hyundai Assurance program I blogged about last month is turning out to be a very good move for Hyundai. Their January sales were up 14%.
Netflix is also showing some hefty profit increases. We’ve been tempted to go to Netflix but our local video store still has 99 cent rentals and we would end up spending more with Netflix on a monthly basis (we have been also using hulu.com).
On the downside, the Girl Scouts are feeling the pinch of consumers tightening their financial belts. That might end up being the case for school fundraisers as well. I know we haven’t purchased anything like that in some time and I turned down one young man selling pizza kits not too long ago. I used to sell things like crazy when I was a kid so I know how it feels when you do not make a sale. It’s not easy saying, “No thank you.”
You can read the entire article here.
I keep thinking of things that I should give updates on. You know, things I say we are doing or thinking of doing. I’m not sure I could write a post about each, so I’ll put them all here. Here we go…
Bread Making – It’s fresh in my mind since I made some a few days ago. Yup, we still love our homemade bread. We still do buy bread from the grocery store when it’s on sale or we need sandwich bread (I’m still playing with recipes for a good sandwich bread). The recipe I use is here. I’ve even used it for bread crumbs and I make our own croutons now. Yummy!
Soda Pop – Are we still a non soda-pop family? If it has caffeine…yes. If it is caffeine free…no. However, we have only purchased one 2 liter of Sierra Mist since January 2nd. We had it as part of a special movie treat for the family. All of us had the day off but the weather did not cooperate for outdoor fun. So we got a few treats and rented a 3-D movie (Journey to the Center of the Earth).
Sewing Machine – I have tried probably 4 more times to get that thing to work using my non-mechanical brain. No luck. I did hear back from the company and they said that they don’t have any record of that model. Granted, the model is from the 70s, but I can find references to it. I did find a manual on eBay, but I’m going to shop around to see if I can find something else. I may also look into a sewing class, sewing tutor or find a sewing buddy that may be able to help me.
Grocery Price Book – I love our grocery price book. It does have a few drawbacks. Instead of suspecting that a price of something has increased – I know for sure. That happened the last time we went shopping. Numerous items went up 20 cents each. Ouch. I need to figure out how to downsize it a little because a four page shopping list (since I print our price book when we do our monthly shopping), pen and calculator are a little tough for me to hold/use.
Paper Towels – Paper towels are still hidden and our use of them has plummeted. We enjoy using our washable kitchen towels for hand drying and simple clean-ups.
Drying Clothes – We are still hanging a good portion of our laundry to let it air dry (shirts, bath towels and soft pants). Blue jeans still get put in the dryer since they air dry stiff as a board. As a result, we’ve cut our dryer use in half.
Swaptree – I haven’t traded again on Swaptree and I officially did not receive my book and probably never will. Swaptree has went through their procedure of trying to contact the other user and was unsuccessful. I did have a few successful trades and received some great books so I don’t regret it. I probably shouldn’t be spending money on books anyway. We still love the library!
My Trusty Shovel – My shovel is still broken (I wasn’t able to repair it) and we haven’t replaced it. Stubborn as I am, I figured out a way to hold it so I can still use that shovel! I occasionally use another one when I have to lift heavy snow.
Whew! I had more updates than I thought
Yay! We made it under the $5K mark with our credit card debt! I am happy, but I have to be totally honest here…I am feeling very uneasy right now.
Maybe it’s because of the economy. Maybe it’s because I almost forgot to make a credit card payment (but didn’t – whew!). Maybe it’s because I just recovered from being sick and I made calzones for dinner tonight. In any case, I have a bit of a knot in my stomach and I want it to go away.
I think it may be is fear-related. We are getting so close to the finish line that I am waiting for something to happen to derail us. It’s not a rational thought, but it’s there. It’s not the first time I’ve felt this way and I’m sure it’s not the last.
I did a search on the internet and found an article that somewhat relates:
You are actually doing what everyone does — anticipating a future experience…Routine anticipation of events typically doesn’t prompt anxiety…However, new or special events add anxiety to the mix — that fear that we haven’t anticipated enough and we’re not prepared well enough for every possible contingency.
That explains my brain so well. I like to be prepared – at the very least mentally prepared. Paying off our credit card debt is a big event and it is getting so close to being a reality. A set-back now would be a very discouraging thing to get through and that is probably why there is a knot in my stomach.
I have to remember that we are in a lot better shape financially now than we were a year ago. If something comes up, we have so many more tools now to be able to handle it.
I read an article on Yahoo about how Americans are saving more and spending less.
On Friday, the government reported Americans’ savings rate, as a percentage of after-tax incomes, rose to 2.9 percent in the last three months of 2008. That’s up sharply from 1.2 percent in the third quarter and less than 1 percent a year ago.
[Via Yahoo.com]
The article notes that paying off debt is considered savings and incurring debt is negative savings. We may even begin to rival the penny-pinching of those in the Depression-era. I think that is a possibility since it appears that being frugal isn’t looked down upon as it once was.
I can’t help but wonder if the change would stick if the economy rebounded. Would Americans go back to spending again?
About This Site
My Debt
- Original Debt: $38,495.86
- Added Debt: $1,781.50
- Total Debt: $40,277.36
- Paid: $36,084.36
- Remaining: $4,193.00
- Broken Down
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