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Sep 18, 2012    |       5 comments

Pictures!

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This photo perfectly captures their unique personalities!

As I’ve said once before, I like blogs that post pictures.  Today I am sharing our Christmas pictures from 2011.  As we’ve done a few times in the past, we took these pictures with my ex-husband at the “photo shoot.”  The kids have been doing this since they were little so it is the norm for them to take shots with me and then shots with him–separately.  The kids have had a camera in their face since very early because of my love of photo albums/scrapbooks!  When DD was around 2 and 3 years old, any camera belonging to anyone created an automatic pose in her!

I took some time last night and went through old photos and found that to be a great reminder of how good things are now.  Photos tell so much about each of our timelines.  As life got to be a steeper and steeper climb on just basic day-to-day stuff, I noticed that the photographs I took (both number of photos and the photos themselves) told the story of a stressed out family!  I’ve recommitted to capturing our lives with a lens and preserving those photos in the childrens’ scrapbooks.

I found out via an internet search of local court filings, that Steve has filed the divorce.  It was filed yesterday so this means that it can be final as early as November 17.  I only felt relief when I saw that entry on the county website and prepared myself for sadness to set in, but it didn’t.  This is absolutely the right thing.  As hard as it has been, the time and distance now between “then” and “now” is all the proof I need.  If he stays true to his word, I will receive a waiver of service to sign.  If not, I will be formally served.  I’m prepared for either scenario.  I”ll file a standard answer in response and we should be good to go.

Have a blessed night and wonderful Wednesday.  Remember your many blessings and make someone laugh until it hurts.  🙂

Sep 17, 2012    |       5 comments

Free Debt Tracking Tool For Bloggers

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debt tool for wordpress

Over the last couple of weeks, we have been working to put together a tool that better shows the debt reduction progress Claire has achieved thus far, as well as show what debt she started with. There were a number of readers who expressed that they would really like to be able to see what each of the debt amounts were originally even after the debts had been paid off. You can see the results in the right sidebar. We figured that since we were putting it together for Claire, that other bloggers might like to use it as well, so we turned it into a free debt, asset, networth wordpress plugin. Anyone with a wordpress blog can use it and if there is sufficient interest from those of you on another blogging platform, we would be willing to make it so you could use the tool as well.

The tool is pretty simple and straightforward. Each of the debts shows both the current amount and the starting amount of the debt. To the left of these is a small graph that can be clicked to bring up a larger graph which shows the entire history of the debt. Since Claire has had some non-typical things happen as she has been paying off her debt, we also included an area where a comment can be made with each payment. This means if there is something that needs to be explained, you can do so and even someone that comes to your blog at a later date can understand what went on without having to go through all your old posts. For example, when Claire consolidated a few credit cards into a consolidated loan, all those debts went to $0. The tool allows her to explain this with the graph so that anyone looking at it will know it wasn’t paid off, but consolidated into another debt.

While the tool is used to track debt on this blog, we also added an asset area so that someone who blogs about increasing wealth can track how their asset building is going. It’s also possible to combine both debts and assets to create a net worth list. The graphs can be placed in the sidebar if desired (see the graph on top) and the size of the graph can be customized to fit your sidebar.

The best part is there is no need to go to another site to do all of this — it can now all be done within your wordpress admin area making updating your numbers easy and efficient. If you are a blogger that tracks and shares finances with your readers, I think you’ll really like the ease of this tool, the ongoing history it can provide, as well as having it in your blog admin area rather than another website. If you do decide to use it, we would love to hear what you think of it and what other functions you would like to see implemented in the future.

You can find out more technical information and download the tool here

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