DH turns 30 in March and I am planning a super fun bus trip from town to our local casino (about 45 min away). I am inviting about 35 people and am hoping to have 20+ attend. We get the bus for as long as we want (within reason) and can bring drinks/coolers on the bus and each rider will get a $10 free money when they get to the casino. It costs $750 for the 34 passenger bus. So if we filled it up it would only be $22 per person plus they would get the $10 back when they get there. I am thinking we will have about 20 people and then it will be $37 a piece. We are super excited, should be crazy fun!!

We get tons of credit card offers in the mail, but because we love our Discover Card so much we normally just shred them. Recently I got an offer from Chasse Freedom for a card with 0% interest until Feb 2013 and you get $300 cash back just for making an initial purchase on the card. So I applied for the card and have now received it and activated it. When I called to activate it I checked with their phone rep and she verified all I have to do is make one initial purchase and in 6-8 weeks we will get a check for $300! YEAH! Love free money!

Stillllllllllllll waiting for 2 more W2s (we had 4 this year), our HSA statement and our interest statements from our banks. Normally I would use what I already have to get started on Turbotax....but been so busy between work, OT, second job, and now I am also playing on a volleyball team....busy, busy, busy. So I think I will just wait till we get the forms and do it all at once.
All of the tax money is going into savings (not sure which account yet) so I can't wait to see if/what we are getting back.

We have been planning a big group trip to Vegas for about 2 yrs now for my little bros 21st Birthday and my husband's 30th Birthday. Finally it is almost here! We have about 15-20 people that are going. We will be going in March and we have been watching flights like crazy trying to get a good price. We were able to get them for $89.99 on the way there and $114.99 on the way back, which I am super happy with. The prices had been really high, sometimes over $200 each way, so I think we did good. DH just started getting paid for coaching track (which he won't actually start coaching until mid Feb) and we are going to use his first 2 track checks to pay for the flights so we don't have to take any out of our Vegas savings yet.
We are only taking one bag, so that will save us $50 in baggage fees, and we also went to the airport to book the flights, so saved $15 a piece on online convenience fees by doing that. We are still working on the hotel, I think DH is going to be in charge of that part.

So I never play pulltabs....(if you don't have pulltabs where you live they are 3 little pieces of paper that are attached together, you buy then for $1 a piece and then you open them up to see if you won any money.....which I never play or win)...I think they are super boring and not fun at all. But last night DH and I were at the bar with some friends and a couple of the friends were really into pulltabs and were saying how one of the jars still had a lot of winners left in it, and not too many pulltabs left. They have a sign that says how many winners are left in there that are over $50 each. There were 35 winners left for over $50 each. It always looks like there aren't that many tickets left cause they are so little....but in reality there were probably like 1000 or more tickets still in the jar. So I bought into that and was playing with them...I bought $20, won nothing. I gave my husband $20 to go try, won nothing. Another friend said lets try together and if we win anything we will split it....so we each put in $40, won nothing. So by now I feel like am idiot but I am also drinking and thinking we HAVE to win cause the jar is so empty.....well my friend didn't want to play anymore, so I said to my husband, I am going to get $100 out of the ATM and I am going to buy 100 pulltabs, then I will quit. He said ok. So I bought the 100 pulltabs...I opened a $50 winner. I thought ok, now I will keep that and at least I got "some" of my money back. I kept opening them hoping to get another $50 or something. I got all the way down to my very LAST pulltab..ticket #1 $100, $100, $100 ticket #2 $100, $100, $100 ticket #3 $200, $100, $100.....equals $1000!!!!!! OMG!!!! I won $1000! There is only 1 $1000 winner in the entire jar of tickets and I am not sure how many tickets they start with.....maybe 5000 or 10000 or more? I was totally freaking out, I just couldn't believe it! Of course I was not up $1000 since I had already put in about $180, but I am so excited, I have never won anything that big at once before! I also gave our friend $100. But don't worry, I won't be addicted to pulltabs, I still think they are boring.

It seems I forgot to mention it on here, but my work has been giving crazy amounts of overtime for about 5 weeks now. We are able to work up to 10 OT hours a week. This is pretty close to impossible due to the hours that we are open, and me having Bingo as well....but I have been putting in about 5-7 hrs a week in OT for the last several weeks. My job usually has occasional OT, but this amount is unheard of. I asked my boss how long she thought we would have this OT and she said we can expect to be offered 10 hrs per week through March!! OMG! The money is nice, but I am definitely starting to feel burned out. Hopefully I can find a happy balance between working some OT and not going insane...lol. I have the whole week off after Christmas, so they should help me recharge. This week I was able to get in 9hrs of OT because they let us come in Saturday and do some trainings. Can't wait to see my check...$$$$$!

We are doing ok on our Discover Card Challenge that goes from 9/28/11 to 10/27/11. So far our bill is at $343 (trying to keep it under $1300 for the cycle). We need to go grocery shopping and DH needs gas in his car. We also have to get oil changes on both of our cars. We are going out to eat tomorrow for dinner, but we have mapped out the rest of the week and there should not be any other eating out the rest of this week. Also since I have the CVS giftcard, I won't be spending any OOP there. Hopefully we only add about $200 to the card this week.
$60 - 2 oil changes
$50 - groceries
$30 - Eating out
$50 - Fuel for DH's car
$1346.85

Women in Red (WIR) Racers is a online financial support group I have been a part of since about 2005. They have many groups you can join and I was part of the savers group until 2007, because we didn't have any debt at all. In 2007 we bought our house and aquired our mortgage loan, so at that time I joined their debt boards as well and have been racing with this great group of ladies and gentlemen ever since.

Every month (or more often or less often if you like) you post your debt total as you "race" to become debt free. Others will cheer you on and give you advise to help you on your way. It is completely anonymous. I love the WIR and encourage everyone to check it out! They have helped me immensely as we have gone from $170K in debt to $125K in 4 years...and just keep picking up speed as we go!

Racers come with all kinds of debt, student loans, credit cards, personal loans, boats, cars, houses, campers, garages, LOC....you name it, we've seen it...and destroyed it!!

Please come check it out as we, as a group, help to bring down the national (and international) debt!!

Here is the link if you are interested, just click on your region to get started, please let me know if I can help you, I go by Banker Gurl on those boards as well!

http://www.notmsnmoney.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=redracers

This just made me happy so I thought I would post it. I organized our "junk drawer" (I hate to call it that as it is too organized to be a junk drawer).

It's so pretty!

My work is changing their payroll in March 2012. Currently we get paid for 1 week that we have worked and the next week that we have not worked yet.
The payroll is going to change to getting paid for the last 2 weeks that you worked. So for 1 paycheck in March we will only get paid for 1 week to make the adjustment. A lot of people are freaking out about it, but I don't think it will be a big deal since my paychecks are pretty small since I have taxes, 401K, HSA, medical premium and charitable donations taken out before I see any of it. So I will only be missing about $400 and I also get a bonus in March that should cover any missing pay.

So we thought that DH's first paycheck for the school year would be today. I went and checked our checking account today and they only deposited $77! Awww! I called DH and he checked and said he doesn't get paid until 9/15/11! OHHHHH NOOOOO! So that means there would be a whole month with no pay between his summer job and the school paycheck. Stressed out now......I still don't know why they put that random $77 in there, but will check with DH when he gets home. We were so close to $15K in regular savings and now we may be back down to close to $10K. >CRYING<

ETA - Ok after talking to DH and looking at my blog from last year and our checking account....the exact same thing happened to me last year! D U M M Y! So apparently I didn't learn my lesson last year when we came up short in September.
So I will number crunch and NOT SPEND for the next few weeks to see what we can do, but there is no way we can go a whole month with no pay for DH and get by without taking out of savings. All I can do is try to control how much we have to take out.....oh yeah and remember this for next year!

DH had a death in his family this weekend. So may have to take more out of savings to travel for the funeral and also missing work. Not sure of the details yet....

My husband just found out he got a job as the head cross country coach at one of our high schools! YEAH! I am so proud and excited for him! He has been wanting to get into track or cross country coaching since he finished college and started teaching 5 years ago.
We have not decided yet what we will do with that extra money, but I am going to leave it all up to DH since he is the one putting in the extra effort.

Today is our 4 year Anniversary! YEAH! I have softball tonight, so nothing special happening. But we did go out to dinner at Red Lobster on Monday to celebrate and it was DELICIOUS! Love my baby so much!

I have been working hard at my parents rental for the last week. Have taped and primered 2 rooms, painted 3 rooms and primered all the bathroom cupboards. Have 11 1/2 hrs in so far. Not sure what I will do with that extra money yet. I will wait till we are all done to turn my hours in.

My parents own several rental properties including a trailer. The current renter in their trailer got freaked about the flooding situation and after 5 years of living there they just up an left and told my parents to keep the deposit. Of course they left it a huge mess, and after 5 years of my Dad not being in there it needs some work done. Most of it is not too hard, lots of cleaning, painting and a few minor repairs. The deck also needs to be removed (it is about 30 years old) and a new deck needs to be put on. So starting 6/10/11 I will be helping and making a little extra cash. My Dad usually pays about $9 an hour for stuff like this, plus free food/drink while I am there. Hoping DH will help as well.

So I took my car in to get the radio fixed yesterday. I was thinking it would be $100 or less. NOPE. Apparently the "body control computer" was ruined. That is why the radio was not working, and why my car battery was constantly dead. $543.73 later....and my car and radio are fixed.....heavy sigh..... Oh well at least I can stop worrying about when my car will start now. Hoping to not eat out much this month and then we won't have to take any money out of savings to pay for this....we will see I guess.

We are back from our trip. It was fun, we didn't do very well at the slots, but we did ok on the tables.
I entered my very first Texas Holdem Poker Tournament. I was the last woman standing and got 5th out of 48 entrants! So that was very cool and super fun!
We did bring back enough to put that extra $300 I wanted onto the mortgage, but with the current flood situation, I think it would be best to keep that cash until we have a better idea of what it going to happen. Right now they are still building dikes and levys and it "sounds" like we are safe where we are at from actual flooding, but things seem to be changing hourly, and there will probably be problems with ground seepage. So for right now I'm just going to hang on to the cash we brought back.

I live in the Midwest and we are preparing for flooding. I am trying not to freak out or worry too much as 2 years ago it was supposed to flood, we moved everything upstairs and were all worried and then nothing happened. Apparently this year the river is supposed to be much higher.....and our city is in major sand bag mode. Hopefully everything will be ok, we should know more by Friday.

The wedding was yesterday and it was so fun! I am beat though....looooong day and some aching feet from dancing all night! I brought $30 and ended up not spending any because they had drinks for us in the limo, kegs and drink tickets at the wedding. I did have to pay for hair, $45. There were a few mishaps, as I suppose there are with all weddings.....it rained ALL day and the bride spilled red Boone's Farm on her dress in the limo after the ceremony....at least it was after the ceremony. All in all a wonderful, fun day! Now back to normal life...lol.

I finally won at Bingo last night! Normally the bar down the street from us has Bingo every Friday night for about an hour and we will stop in every couple of weeks for the last year or so and never win at Bingo. Usually it is always packed so the pots are pretty good, but last night it was dead (probably why I finally won) and so I only won $11....lol. Oh well it payed for our Bingo at least. I also cashed out $5 ahead in blackjack. Somehow when I counted my money this morning I still had $11 more then what I started with yesterday.....which doesn't make sense....I spent my Bingo winnings on the Bingo cards, plus had drinks and only won $5 on bj, so by my math I should have been down about $7-10, depending on drinks/tips. Weird, but good!

Last night DH and I went to the casino.....I know we shouldn't have because we have that huge CC bill due next month, plus we are going to Nevada at the end of the month....but we did. Lucky for us, luck was on our side and we came home $200 ahead, plus a ton of change for the mortgage! YEE HAW! I would love to put the extra $200 into savings, but if I did that I would just have to take it out in a few weeks when this bill is due, so I am just putting it in checking now, at least that is $200 less we will have to take out of savings to pay the CC bill.

WOW!! We hit 100,000 hits today! That is amazing! Thanks so much to everyone who reads and comments!

Our CC bill cut for the month.....a normal month is about $1200 - $1400.......this month it cut at $2400!!! AWWWW!!! A lot of it is from DH's trip to TX, he spend a lot of money on food, drinks, entertainment and some shopping. I am glad he had a nice trip, but YIKES! Since we are already playing catch up as is, I doubt we will be able to make it through the next month without taking out of svings to cover this bill....sad face...

Happy Easter everyone! I have not been getting many entries in this month. I have been super busy with stuff for this wedding and working my booty off at the gym. I am down 12 lbs and would like to be down 11 more by the wedding.....but only 3 weeks left and even though I tried REALLY hard at Easter it is still slowing me down. We went out of town for Easter, but only spend about $30 for food we had to bring to the party. Also went to a casino there and lost about $100, but was fun family time, so it was worth it.
Just got home from a walk, so happy for sunny weather finally!!

Had the Bachelorette party for the wedding I am MOH in this last weekend. I was pretty happy how the costs went. I stayed with the bride to be, so no hotel costs. I took $60 out of the ATM and still had $21 left at the end of the night. I did use my credit card for dinner and at one bar, but that was only about $30 total. Then the next day I had lunch, $8, and had to fill my tank to go back home, $50. Overall pretty cheap time considered how much we drank. It was a very fun time and I didn't even puke!.......ok maybe just a little. :0 Haahaa!

A friend of mine was on Wheel of Fortune today and won $56K!!!!!!!! WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!!!!!

My aunt and uncle have been telling my husband and I how fun Wendover, NV is for awhile now, and apparently last time they went they put us on the mailing list because we got a flyer from Wendover a few days ago.
It is for roundtrip airfair, 3 night stay, and $100 in coupons for free play, food etc. All for only $189 per person! Our trip to Deadwood cost that much and that was only for 2 nights and driving for 10 hours instead of flying for 2 hours. So we decided to do that as an end of the school year/my birthday/our 4 yr anniversary trip. I am so excited! But it is not till the end of May, so gotta cool my heals for awhile.

www.wendoverfun.com

Question:
Hey, I was noticing you have your savings at $13K. It seems like no matter how much I put into emergency savings, I can't get it much beyond $500. What is your secret?


Banker Gurl Says:

Well, although we have areas of overspending we still need to work on (eating out, gambling) in general we keep our costs down. We also have no debt other then the house, so that frees up a lot more cash for us, then if we had a car loan, SL or CC to make payments on. You have probably heard the saying "They nickle and dime you to death". My best savings "secret" is that we nickle and dime our savings to death. Everytime we get $5 in a birthday card, $10 rebate, or any kind of "unexpected/bonus money" I always try to put it in savings. I have many friends who only think if you have $100 or more that is what you put in savings. But that is silly, $5 adds up too, and if you only wait till you have $100 to put in savings you may be waiting a long time. If you find $3 in the bottom of your purse that you didn't know you had, put it in savings. Every penny does count, and you don't even feel the "Strain" of savings if you are constantly doing a little drop in the bucket here and there.

Yeah the day is finally here! We are off to Deadwood today! We have all of our money set aside already, so don't have to take any out of savings for the trip. Everything we bring home we will put into savings for our next goal which is the "new car" fund. The goal for that account right now is $2000 and we are currently at $1250, so I am hoping we will bring home enough to finish that account, but we shall see! Fingers crossed for good luck!