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Home > Archive: May, 2010

Archive for May, 2010

I'm back! And so is my internet access!

June 1st, 2010 at 04:06 am

Sorry I have been MIA! I wasn't feeling well this last week and the laptop that we thought we were going to use for the summer has a virus and we can't use it anymore, it won't let us on the internet! Frown Bummer! So we went and took my old laptop in today. They were not able to save anything off of it or turn it on.....they said they may be able to try to do some more extensive tests to try to get my info back, but would cost $170 just to try. Since I have had that laptop for 7 years I really think that I have gotten my use out of it (I use it EVERYDAY!). So we shopped around town and got a new laptop. It was $330, plus spy ware package, Microsoft Office Suite and warranty came to $641.00. I am really excited as it is really fast and also has a number pad, which I have never had on a laptop and since I have worked at banks in the past I use the number pad much more efficiently! We did 18 months 0% interest at BestBuy. As soon as I got home I transferred $600 from one ING account to a seperate ING account and labeled it Laptop. Now it can sit there and earn interest till December 2011. I am so happy to have a working laptop again! Smile I will try to get caught up with posts this week. Hope everyone had a safe and happy Memorial Day!

Summer Budget :(

May 23rd, 2010 at 07:20 pm

Well after reviewing the budget for the summer it sadly is a reality that we will not be able to put much extra at all to the mortgage till September. DH is a teacher and gets paid 9 months of the year. In the summer he works at a daycamp and makes about $600 less per month.....and as is I have been pulling from savings occasionally because of overspending and not planning ahead. So our choices to make it work were either lower savings contributions, lower retirement contributions, reduce spending (which we need to do anyways) or reduce extra mortgage payments. We are going to have to cut expenses already to make sure we don't have to take extra money out of savings. But we don't spend enough to have $600 to cut, so the next lowest priority would be the extra principle payments to the mortgage. We are going to try to still pay $100 or so but it will be very tight. That will put our actual mortgage decrease each month at $400 - $500.....not where we want to be, but still going down. I think for June we can swing the extra payment, but July and August will be minimal.
Summer Budget
$3200 Monthly Income (After retirement is taken out)
-$1300 Mortgage
-$1200 Cutback Expenses (car insurance, cell phones, internet, cable, gym, fuel, groceries, household, electric bill, water, misc everything!)
-$700 Savings Contributions
=$0

Yeah for Comps!

May 20th, 2010 at 04:13 am

We got a comps letter from Hooters Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas today. I am very excited since we are going to Vegas again in August!
Here is what we got:
4 Free Nights
2 Nights for $9.99 each
4 Free Poolside Drinks
$100 in Free Play
8 Free Show tickets
20 Free wings

We are waiting to book our flights till they are a little cheaper. Right now they are $99 per person one way. We have seem them around $59 per person one way so we are gonna wait for awhile and see if a better deal comes along.

A little shoppin

May 19th, 2010 at 02:07 am

Got another free coupon for VS undies. That is the 4th one I have gotten this year and I have still not bought anything from there. I just walk in, get my free undies, and walk out. The pair they gave this time cost $7.50.
Also picked up my Mom's BD present. I had a GC that I had bought for her for Christmas, but then I found a better gift, so I saved the GC till now, and used it to buy her BD present so only had to pay $1.97 for the difference.
Had my ring cleaned and inspected for free to keep my warranty active.
Also went to Target, I was out of body wash. I had found a $5.00 coupon in the coupon box at work. $5.00 off 2 Nivea body washes, they were $3.99 each, so after coupon came to $1.50 each! Then also saw some clearance and found 2 Pantene conditioners, Liter bottles reg $8.29, on clearance for $4.14, 50% off! And for a liter bottle that is a great price! So bought both of those too.

Rummage Sale is over

May 18th, 2010 at 01:28 am

Well we had a very successful rummage sale weekend. It had been raining here for the last 3 weeks and miraculously it was warm and sunny Friday - Sunday! So that was surprising and awesome! Friday we made $34.50, Saturday $37.75 and Sunday $9.00, plus my husband made $39.65 on his sports cards. So DH and I made $120.90. The rummage sale as a whole made $1114.75, my brother, SIL, Mom, and 2 friends were in the sale too, most of the money made was my Mom's as she has never ending stuff to sale. She really could have been on that "Hoarders" show at one time. She is doing a lot, lot better now, but still has garages full of stuff to sell and is working on getting items cleaned up, marked and boxed for the next rummage sale. We will probably have another one in a month or so. Our goal was $200 which we did not make, but I am happy with the $120 considering the most expensive things we had in the sale were only $5, most things we had were $2.00 or less. We put the .90 in our "pig" to add to our house payment (our pig is very full right now so June should be a good payment!) and I am saving the $120 for our trip to Deadwood in 2 weeks.

Temporary Solution to the dying laptop

May 15th, 2010 at 01:55 am

Well I have not gotten around to taking my laptop in yet to see if it is repairable at all. But we have a temporary solution. DH has a work laptop that we can use for the summer as long as it is just for internet (no downloading or saving anything) so that is good enough for me for now. In the meantime we will research finding a new, cost effective option.

Rummage Sale

May 14th, 2010 at 02:19 am

We are having a rummage sale with some family this weekend. We are hoping DH and I will make $200 for ourselves. We don't have much for big ticket items, mostly just books and clothes. We are also going to sell snack and pop. Usually there is a good turn out and $200 is pretty average for us. So hopefully it doesn't rain and we have a good turn out. I will keep you posted on our $200 goal!

Payday - $20K Challenge

May 14th, 2010 at 02:11 am

Current Total = $7,660.00
+1.03 King Mattress CD Interest
+3.97 Even out Amount
+$50.00 to EF (DH payday)
+$50.00 to vacation (DH payday)
+$50.00 to EF (My payday)
+$50.00 to vacation (DH payday)
+$100.00 to ROTH hold account
+$100.00 Anniversary Vacation Fund
New Total = $8,065.00

Into a new thousand bracket so that is exciting. We are going on vaca in 2 weeks, but only for Memorial Weekend so only 3 days should not be too much. Keep moving forward is all I ever hope for. DH is a teacher and receives his paycheck 9 months of the year. He does work in the summer, but it is about $600 less per month then during the school year. So I think we may have to pull back on something this summer. We really are not very comfortable with the amount we have in savings right now, so I imagine we will have to pay a little less towards the mortgage till school starts again starting next month. I do have 2 bonuses coming up though, so we will wait it our for now and see how it goes. I always want to "make" us have enough to do everything we want, put tons in savings and pay hundreds extra on the mortgage.....too bad it doesn't exactly work like that! Smile

Biggest Loser Week 7

May 14th, 2010 at 02:05 am

Week Seven
Pounds Lost this week = -2
Total pounds lost = 0
% weight loss = 0%
Place = 6th out of 8 people
Total down since original BL = 2

Sigh. Up 2lbs from last week. I have been doing so good too! I finally got back to the gym last week and had great 20-30 min runs on the treadmill 6 days in a row. I took one day off and then had our first softball game last night. I did super good, 1 walk, 3 base hits, 1 double and 1 triple.....so I was R U N N I N G my butt off. Apparently not doing enough. Blah. 2 more weeks to try to make some headway, but I think winning is out of the question now. Frown

My laptop died :(

May 9th, 2010 at 07:43 pm

My husband's laptop died a few months ago and apparently mine died yesterday. I am very bummed. I had a few things of mine saved on a zip drive, but unfortunatley most were saved on the laptop. I think I will take it in tomorrow and see if they can get it to work, or at least enough for me to access my files....otherwise I have a lot of work to do with spreadsheets to get my info back in place. Let that be a life lesson to me and hopefully anyone that is reading this is backing their files up right now! So if I am MIA for a week or two that is why. I have access to a laptop on the weekends, so at least I can check in then. We will most likely be getting a new laptop either way because mine was 6 1/2 years old and used an average of 5 hrs a day, probably more....so at least we got our moneys worth from it! It was getting realllllllly realllly slow, especially since my husband's died so we were both using mine. I am trying to decide if I want to take the money out of savings for it, or do a 0% interest deal, i know we can get 0% interest anywhere we go, or can just pick one of the 0% offers out of the mail that we get daily.....have not decided which route to go yet. I really just need a laptop for internet access and Excel, so if we need to wait a little bit to get the best deal we can. I know my job also has some discount programs for computers/laptops, so I am gonna check that out tomorrow.

May Savings Update

May 6th, 2010 at 03:30 am

Regular Savings:
Emergency Fund $1620
Anniversary Cruise $2405
Home Maintanence $260
Cushion $920
Vacation 2010 $1740
HSA $100
MOH $65
King Mattress $750 - Complete
Total Regular Savings = $7,860.00

Retirement Savings:
Roth IRA $2900
Rollover IRA $1425
401K $10100
403B $8400
Total Retirement Savings = $22,825.00

Total Savings = $30,685

Down $395 from last month....not happy about it, but the damage was not as bad as I thought it would be. We paid off our TV which was at 0% interest so that was a positive. We are also still working on our bathroom remodel and trying to take as little out of savings to get it done. We really need to focus on getting this EF met once and for all. We are going on a mini vaca to SD at the end of the month so hopefully we can keep the costs down on that.

Current Goal - EF $5000

Saved up and Spent:
$250 Bathroom Remodel
$475 Big Screen TV
$600 Mexico Trip
$1200 MN Trip
$1500 Wisdom Teeth
$1700 from HSA
Total Saved and Spent = $5,725

$20K Update

May 6th, 2010 at 03:01 am

Current Total = $7,430.00
-$112.00 to ROTH IRA
+$50.00 to EF (DH payday)
+$50.00 to vacation (DH payday)
+$50.00 to EF (My payday)
+$50.00 to vacation (DH payday)
+$100.00 to ROTH hold account
+$25.25 Even Out Amount
+$2.00 Even Out Amount
+$14.50 April Interest
New Total = $7,660.00

Kinda confused because I could have sworn I already posted this update.....but it is not showing up anywhere....huh??

Biggest Loser Week 6

May 6th, 2010 at 02:43 am

Week Six
Pounds Lost this week = 0
Total pounds lost = 2
% weight loss = 1.17%
Place = 6th out of 8 people
Total down since original BL = 4

No change for me this week. But some others have gone up so I am in 6th place instead of 7th. I am VERY excited to report that I finally started back at the gym this morning. My goal was just to run for 5 min as I have not been to the gym in close to 3 months and was sure I had lost all stamina, so I wanted to start out slow so that I would not get discouraged right away. Well I ran the 5 min and was still feeling fine, so I kept going, 10, 15 and ended at 20 min! YEAH! 20 min run on my first day back, really couldn't be happier with how that went! I have set up a new workout plan to make sure I reach my first goal and keep going to be in amazing shape by the time I have to be a MOH in May 2011. I added some goals below. Of course this session of BL will be over by then.....but the ladies at my work are always up for another round!
1)Down 2 more by 5-27-10 (Deadwood Trip)
2)Down 25 more by 11-20-10 (Guest at a wedding)
3)Down 20 more by 5-14-11 (MOH at wedding)