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It’s Official, Our Debt Load Has Increased by $1,600

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A while ago, I mentioned that there was a mistake on our 2005 taxes. After fixing it, it showed that we owed over $2,000 to the IRS. I sent as big of a payment as we could at the time (a little over $600), filed the amended return and waited for the official word from the IRS about penalty and interest.

Well, we got word. The total owed is a little over $1,600 and that’s about what I thought it would be. I am also pleased that the interest rate is at 8%. While not the best rate (the best rate is 0%, of course 😉 ), I can live with that.

I still haven’t received information regarding the payment plan that I wanted in place for the debt. I am hoping that information will arrive soon so we can start paying on it. The thought did cross my mind to use a balance transfer check to pay it in full, but I still have that feeling to hold off on doing any balance transfers for a little bit.

The big question is whether I should include it in our credit card debt total. Technically, we are paying back part of a refund that we received. That refund went towards our credit card debt. In a way, I probably should add it back into our credit card debt total. The other thing I could do is track it separately with my NetWorth IQ profile. I still have to think about it some more.

I’m actually glad the bill arrived, because now that we have concrete numbers, I can plug that into a debt reduction calculator and gauge how we are progressing. While this added debt will set us back a little bit, I’m not about to give up trying to meet our goal date of May 2009.

Frugal Ways We Beat the Heat Today

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Yesterday was a pretty hot and humid day. Today was supposed to be more of the same, so last night and today we did a few things to help keep ourselves cooler today.

Put fans in the windows to bring in the cooler night air. Once the sun went down yesterday, we got some relief. Unfortunately, our house was still pretty hot. We put some fans in the windows and sucked in as much of that cool air as we could before going to bed.

In the morning, I shut all of the shades. It’s a little depressing to live in the dark during the day, but it worked wonders to keep our home cooler. Just one ray of sunlight coming through the window can really heat up things. We have good shades in the home we have now, but in that past we’ve hung blankets on windows to keep out the sun.

Throughout the day, I drank water. I recently purchased a large jug/water bottle to hold 8 glasses of water. It will help to make sure that I drink enough water in a day. When filled with ice water, it it really hit the spot to help keep me cool.

After work, we headed to the lake. Lake Superior (the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area) can be quite chilly for swimming. It’s so large that it takes a lot for the water to warm up in the summer. The minute I stepped into the lake, I couldn’t stop. I had to keep going because it felt so good. Before long, I was dunking myself and swimming around like an alligator (that’s what my son was calling me when I was chasing him around). Man, I love that lake.

I do have to confess that I did turn on the air conditioner for about twenty minutes around 3:30pm. My office gets the afternoon sun for about three hours before my trees start blocking it. My office is also upstairs, and all of the heat rises up there. I broke down and kicked on the air to help cool things down a little bit.

In all, it ended up being like a game for me to try to do what I could to prevent the need for the air conditioner. Making it a game where you are challenging yourself makes it fun. What Rob in Madrid discussed about fighting discouragement about debt applies here as well. I really wanted to see how much I could do.