Goodbye Debt!

Goodbye!

2009-12-22T10:58:00.000-08:00

The past 3 years have been a great adventure at saying goodbye to our debts. We learned a lot about spending less than we earn, increasing our income, settling debts and starting to save.
We haven't gotten rid of all of our debts (we are still carrying our student loans and mortgage), but we are at the point in our life where the debt is under control and not keeping us up at night.

Because of this, we are going to say goodbye to this phase of our life as we proceed into the next. The next 3 years will consist of us building up an urban farm business, investing some and saving all that we can so that I can leave my 8 to 5 day job. We're already ahead on the payments for our debts and by summer we will be putting 20% of our income to our IRA's and 20% towards the business. We'll still be updating our NetWorthIQ.com account as shown to the right as we reach our next goal.

We also have been building our children education funds so that IF they decide to go to college they will not have to carry as many debts as we have. College opened many doors for me that I wouldn't have had access to otherwise, but I don't know if the same will be true in 20 years. I hope though that we may be able to teach them well enough so that they do not have to spend 3 years getting back to square 1 as we have.

I Fought the Tax Man & Won

2009-09-23T10:11:00.001-07:00

Back in July I received a letter in the mail that nobody likes to receive...An audit letter from the IRS. They had looked at our 2007 tax return and found some differences than what was reported to them, so they asked us to clarify them. Here is the details:

1. There was a large amount on a 1099-C from forgiven debt that they did not see within the income portions of 1040.

2. There was $1 of interest received on a bank account that we had not received a statement on. The $1 of interest did not affect our amount of tax owed.

Because we were insolvent at the time, we had filled out the proper form electronically to inform the IRS that the forgiven debt should not be considered as income due to our insolvent situation. It appears though that the information did not transmit to them properly. What we did to fix the problem was we provided a copy of the form that was submitted electronically, provided a net worth statement based upon the date the amount was forgiven, a letter explaining the situation, and a form they included with the audit letter filled out. We were able to provide the net worth statement due to my thorough tracking through NetWorthIQ.com.

A couple weeks after we had mailed in the information we received a letter informing us they had received our information and were reviewing it. Last week in the mail a letter stated that they had reviewed the information and that they corrected their information and we owed nothing. We're saving that letter with our 2007 taxes as a precaution. In addition, our 2009 taxes will be mailed in on paper so that we can make sure the information is transmitted correctly to them for the forgiven debt.

Why File for Bankruptcy?

2009-09-13T15:04:00.000-07:00

I spoke to my father just a few minutes ago and he has been toying for years to file for bankruptcy. His credit was trashed back in 2002 when my step-mom passed away and he hasn't had credit cards since at least 2005. He is going out of the country for 6 months this winter and was considering filing for bankruptcy next summer. The question I asked him is "Why File for Bankruptcy?"

Personally, I seek to pay off all my creditors, but for him he does not want to. He also does not plan to buy a house in the coming years, he is on social security disability payments and does not own anything of value. He also does not have any retirement money put aside. Due to his health, all he wants to do is rent a place to live, have a basic car to drive places, and spend time with friends and family.

His concerns was that people were telling him that they can potentially pull money out of his bank account or take his social security benefits. I let him know at least in Illinois that they are not able to do so since he does not receive wages and all of his income is from social security. At the end of the call, he agreed with me and is considering not filing.

How many others out there in the foreclosure fiasco will be like my dad in 5 years and realize that all they really want out of life is a place to lay their head, a car to take them places, the ability to spend time with friends/family, and a tv to entertain themselves when no one is around?

Why Am I Focused on My Finances?

2009-09-11T02:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a rough day at work, I got reminded about how I really can't take much of a vacation due to no one else there to take up my slack and I had a disagreement with a co-worker over e-mail that my boss ended up being on my side (I was focused on our lack of customer service for a client, my co-worker was upset I spoke up on his project). It got so bad that I called my wife in the afternoon saying "I'm about ready to just leave this place!"

She as the sensible woman she is calmly reminded me of why I am there and the reason we've been working on our finances the past couple of years. She said "This job is a means to end right now so that in the future we can reach our goals." and then reminded me of some of them. I have probably listed them in past posts, but here they are:

Retire at 42: I don't want my kids to grow up with the concept that Dad goes to work for 12 hours a day, comes home, eats dinner, then goes to bed. There are things beyond work that I want to do with my wife and kids that "retirement" will make happen. My definition of "retirement" is more along the lines of financial independence, where I will probably still be involved in money-making projects, but it won't be me worrying if we'll have enough for the next month or even next year.

Trip Around the World: Once my kids are high-school age, I want to take them on a trip around the world with my wife. We would spend at least a year visiting a variety of locations, both the standard touristy locals and the places in the world with need. I believe this will help them understand different cultures better and give them an appreciation for everything they have. I also pray that they may come to Christ during that trip if they have not done so yet.

Missions Work: I want to be able to take 3 months and go help with Habitat for Humanity, building homes for those in need. I have a heart for meeting the basic needs of others (food, shelter, water) that is hard to listen to when my own family has troubles with those basic needs. I want to build water pumps where people are walking miles right now to get fresh water. I know I can currently send small amounts of money to organizations involved in such programs, but I want to be the hands and feet of God and involved in the work myself.

Create Companies to Create Jobs: We officially started this process on my birthday this week, incorporating our urban farm business. We will be hiring at least 1 person next year with the possibility of 2 or some temp labor. My feeling on unemployment is that people have forgotten that jobs are created, not found on a "hunt". For example, instead of complaining about not having a job, one can look at their skill set and say "How can I use these to create a business that meets people's needs or wants?". One person sees a 1/2 acre back yard as something they have to spend money to upkeep in mowing and watering, while I see a gold mine just waiting to be utilized to grow local vegetables.

What would be on your list of reasons why you are focused on your finances?

Surprise at Work

2009-08-27T19:36:00.000-07:00

Things have been rough at work this past month with 2 very large projects and I have been putting in a lot of extra hours. My boss, the owner, earlier in the week had invited all of the "production" team out for lunch to have some pizza. He's also been wanting our largest project completed this month and I'm the only one working on it. The pressure from him has been too rough for me to handle and the way I deal with it is just work as hard as I can.

After a meeting this morning, I let him know I wouldn't be able to go to lunch with them as I needed to spend time working on the project. I was so wanting to get away and join them for lunch, but I had stayed at work until 8 PM the night before and did not want to do that again. While they were at lunch, our sales manager asked why I hadn't gone and I broke into tears. I explained the pressure I've been feeling, working as hard as I can and ending up not seeing my daughter yesterday due to getting home after she was in bed.

My boss brought me pizza when they got back and then sent me an e-mail a couple minutes later letting me know that he very much appreciates my work ethic and is going to give me a 10% raise. I was very surprised to say the least. We've been having pay raise freeze for the past 6 months. I'm very certain the sales manager did not speak to him, so I don't think it was because of my conversation with her.

It took me a little bit of time to get the courage to go talk to him in person, but when I did I thanked him for the raise and it's nice and everything, but the thing I need is more support through asking me such questions as "How can I or we help you get the project done?" Even if there is no answer to the question, just the act of asking the question would help me very much.

Looking to Refinance

2009-08-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

I recently called my home mortgage lender (Bank of America) to see what options we have to refinance our mortgage. We bought the house almost 4 years ago and with interest rates as low as they are, I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. My credit as I suspected is not too hot and they were not able to help me directly with a Bank of America loan, but they did say they could refinance me with a FHA loan.

Here's the pro's for going with the FHA loan:

My monthly payments will go down about $75/month.
We'll lock a lower interest loan while rates are low
There are no closing costs or points required to get the rate I am qualified for

Here's the con's regarding the FHA loan:

Stuck with PMI even if I have a less than 80% loan to value balance remaining. The only way out of it would be to refinance again in the future when my credit is better.
Bank of America requires a $400 deposit in case the appraiser does not value the house high enough. If they value it high enough that I can do the loan, I'll get the $400 back at closing.

We're going to talk to a realtor friend of ours to get her opinion on the value of the house before we make the decision. I'd hate to throw $400 down the drain...

There is also a very tempting option for us to look at, the HUD 203(k) loan. From my brief reading, it would allow us to pay for some improvements on the house (total must be at least $5K) and that will be added upon the refinanced loan. There are items we would like to do on our home (fix first floor flooring and put in hardwood, put tiles in the kitchen, fix the driveway, replace our fences) but are holding off so that we can build our business. I know when I started this blog I wanted to say goodbye to our debt, but this is something that I am struggling with.

Everyman Sleep Schedule

2009-08-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

With my son born and us having feedings at random times in the night, last week I figured I needed to adjust my sleep schedule some. I did some research on different sleep schedules and decided to go on the "Everyman" sleep schedule. For those that don't know what it is, it consists of a 3 hour core sleep time (12-3 AM for me) and then 3 naps for 20 minutes each during the day (7:40 AM, 1 PM, 7:40 PM for me). I used to be able to sleep 6 hours a night with no problem and this schedule brings me down to 4 hours a day. Before I started this sleep schedule, I was sleeping 8-9 hours a night because that is what my wife sleeps.

So far, the new sleep schedule has worked very well. My second night on the schedule I slept too much due to taking my evening nap too early and then not having activities scheduled to do. I'm able to fall asleep faster every day when I nap and I have been able to function pretty much like normal. From what I have read, it will take some time for my body to adjust to this schedule. I am willing to go through the adjustment period if it provides me with more time to reach the goals that God has given me.

With my extra time from a couple of days I have scrubbed down the inside of the stove, done some canning of vegetables from our garden, laundry, and painted one of our bathrooms. I'm planning on trying to do more of my blog posts, write up and research for our new business, work on other house maintenance projects and continue to help my wife with the cleaning and our son's feedings. It feels good to be able to work on these items.

Besides the physical adjustments to the schedule, there is a feeling of loneliness since I am pretty much by myself from 10 PM-12 AM and 3 AM-7 AM. I am combating it by putting music on, keeping myself busy, and spending time with people when they are awake. Another negative is the potential "sleep debt" I may be building up over time. My plan to handle that is to take 1 night a week (probably Friday nights) where I don't set any alarms and sleep as much as my body wants to. I won't be starting that until my body has become accustomed to the new schedule (which it is getting closer every day).

In the end the new sleep schedule is like have an extra day and a half each week or almost an extra week every month. That extra time will help me get out of this debt and reach my goals.

Career Planning

2009-08-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

I've been nervous to post anything work-related out of fear of my boss reading it (I was in the Chicago Tribune last year and he knows I blog). I'm just going to have to get over that fear and write anyways.

This past month my highest-paid co-worker put in his 2 week notice. He was the project manager for the design department. He decided that now that his wife has had a job for a few months (nurse) that he wanted to try to start his own web design company. He's planning on staying small, just enough to cover his personal expenses. We were all shocked in the office to say the least. He did sign a non-compete agreement, but it limits it to 30 miles from our office, so he is going to try to find work outside of that area. The one item that it did prepare me for if/when I leave is to make sure I have used all my vacation time before I give my notice.

Before he had done that, I was working on some career planning of my own. I know the next few years I want to stay in web development, so I have been looking at job postings to see their requirements. I have spotted 2 certification tests that I need to take in order to apply for some of those positions and I have started studying for 1 of them. It has been rough going at the studying the past month though because I've been a bit busier at work and I get home tired. I'm not actively looking to go somewhere else, I'm looking to protect my family in case my current employer starts cutting people. I'm also looking at showing my current employer that I am staying current within the industry.

On that subject, the owner (my boss) recently took 4 months of no pay in order to keep everyone on staff and reduce the losses. With my 1 co-worker out of the picture, he is going to start taking a paycheck again. I look though at the amount of work we have in the pipeline and it doesn't make me feel too comfortable. I do have some projects that are keeping me busy until September, but after that I'll be really slow.

Starting A Business

2009-08-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

It's official, we've been out of credit card debt for a little while now and are able to look beyond that debt. We still have some medical debt to be taken care of, but they are not pursuing us, so we are going to put them on hold for now. Our priorities are now the following:

1. Be at least a month ahead on our usual expenses (meaning 1 month emergency fund at $2500).
2. Start a business

Back in college I started a software company with a friend from high school, but things did not turn out well with that business. Since then I have wanted to create a new one that becomes successful, but one thing or another has occurred. With all of our debt, it has been difficult to consider starting one, but we feel we can now.

We're going to start an urban farm and sell the produce at farmer markets, through CSA's, and to restaurants. An urban farm utilizes multiple back yards in an urban/suburban setting, reducing the land costs and bringing the food miles down significantly (the distance the food travels to the consumer is called food miles). We are looking at farming a 1/2 an acre, which is about 20X what we have been doing at our home the past 2 years. Out of that 1/2 acre, our financial goal for gross income is $50K. We will be utilizing bio-intensive methods to produce a lot more than what can normally be produced on 1/2 an acre. We will be hiring an agriculture college student on an either part-time or full-time basis during the summer to assist my wife with the manual labor. We plan on starting at 1 farmer market that occurs on a Saturday and expanding to a second one if needed.

The first year of the business our main goal is to break even with our expenses. Our stretch goal is to have a net profit of $20K on $30K of expenses. All of the expenses will be cash-flowed from extra cash in our monthly budget and then the income from the business. We don't want to get into debt for the business as that will mean monthly payments and interest expenses. We are writing up our business plan that will include such things as a 3 year plan, our exit strategy, marketing, pricing, and crop schedules. Half of the profits will be going towards our debts with the rest going towards expanding the business.

Newborn Son & Financial Effects

2009-08-22T20:00:00.000-07:00

It has been such a busy week this past week that I did not post about my son being born on Monday morning at 6:05 AM at 6 lbs 5 oz. Baby Jack is very healthy and eating up a storm. The financial effects that will be felt (or not) in the months ahead include:

Clothes - Another couple in our bible study at church has a son growing out of clothes, so we received a lot of clothes. We also kept clothes that were unisex from our daughter for him. We should be good for a few years and then we'll probably get more hand-me-downs from others.

Food - We have some formula from when our daughter was born which should last us a little while (it hasn't expired yet). My wife is breastfeeding as well, but he's a voracious eater. My wife did purchase some additional tools to help her gather excess milk which have worked well. The total cost for those was $25.

Bed - We received a bed from someone we knew that no longer needed it. We had lots of blankets from when our daughter was little, so we didn't need to buy any.

Health Insurance - This will be the biggest expense for a while at $40/month with the Illinois All-Kids Care program. Our daughter is signed up for it as well and it has worked well. The only item we have to be careful is that they only cover 1 dental visit per year.

College Fund - In order to keep the two kid's college savings accounts at equal footing, we'll need to start putting at least $25/month into an account for him. We are not planning on paying all of their schooling, just enough so that they have to put some sweat equity into it without the work affecting their grades.

Knowing My DIY Limits

2009-08-15T04:30:00.000-07:00

Last night I got started on the latest big project around the house, replacing the bathtub. I was leaning towards possibly doing it all myself and have one of my handyman neighbors review my work, but I'm leaning towards having the installation part being done by a professional. Here's what has happened so far:

1. We spent a couple of hours at Menards last night, picking out the tub and the walls for the tub. Since we're doing the tub, I also had us pick up paint for the bathroom since the area above the tub walls will need to be painted anyways.

2. I spent an hour last night starting to do demolition. The first step was removing the existing tub wall coverings. While removing them, I first was worried that I found support beams behind some of the walls, but they were not.

3. This morning I started tearing out the beams that had been setup to bring the ceiling down and box in the bathtub a bit. I'll be spending a couple hours today removing those.

4. One of my roommates has a truck, so we picked up the tub and walls this morning. That took 1 1/2 hours between going there, picking up the stuff, tying it down, bringing it home and hauling it upstairs.

In a little bit I'm going to start making some phone calls to find someone to do the actual installation. I figure by putting in the sweat equity of getting all of the supplies and removing the bad stuff I can save some money. I probably could spend the time doing the tub installation, but I would rather have the job done right the first time.

August Budget & July Net Worth +$1244

2009-08-09T12:31:00.000-07:00

I know it's a bit late, but here is August's budget:

$1074 September Budget
$200 Food
$26 Replacement Plates
$220 Car Gas
$53 House Phone
$43 Natural Gas
$11 Cable
$100 Mrs Fun Money
$40 Daughters Health Ins
$203 Mrs Student Loans
$10 Glasses
$100 Mr Fun Money
$250 Car Brakes & Oil Change
$20 Doctor Visits
$75 Porch Railing
$1383 Bathtub Replace & Front Door Replacement
$40 Water
$70 Electric
$15 Mr. Life Insurance
$69 Mr. Student Loans
$300 Savings
$48 Security System

Unique Items:

- My rear plate fell off recently, so we had to replace the plates. The cost was/is $26.
- I have needed replacement glasses, buying them this month
- Car brakes & oil change, my car needed the hydraulic pump for the brakes replaced as well as an oil change.
- The doctor visits are for my wife's thyroid that has been a problem during this pregnancy
- Porch railing is the remaining part to be built on the new back porch.
- One of our bathtubs is losing it's enamel, so we are going to replace it.
- Our front door needs to get replaced as well, it does not seal well.

July Net Worth: +$1244

Most of the growth was due to an increase of our emergency fund and our retirement/education accounts.

Is Canning Financially Worth It?

2009-07-18T14:18:00.000-07:00

I just finished canning some pickled zucchini and figured I would pose the question here, is canning financially worth it? Here are some of the costs:

Main ingredient being canned: For this batch, it's zucchinis from our garden. There was cost for the seeds to plant, but they were minimal ($0.10 packet) and I'll be using the seeds in the future. I was watering them often with rain water, but found out I was over-watering so I just let them be now. They did take yard space, but if I had grass there I would have had to mow it.

Vinegar & Spices: I used about 1/2 bottle of vinegar (2 cups), 1 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of salt and a bunch of spices. The only free spice was dill that I grew from seeds from last year's plants. The other spices were peppercorns, mustard seed, and celery seed. The costs there I will estimate at $1.50

Jars: I picked up a 12 pack of jars for $4 at Menards last week (that is the price after rebate). I used 4 of the jars, so the cost was $1.33 in jars (they can be reused though in the future).

Heat & Water & Equipment: There is the pots, the bowl that they sat in brine for a couple of hours, water, etc. No easy way for me to measure the costs but I consider them minimal.

Time: My active time canning consisted of 1/2 hour total (cutting, preparing brine, canning).

Overall my financial costs this year run about $3 for the 4 jars of pickled zucchini and 1/2 hour of my time. I know the jars can be reused, which if one estimates you can reuse the jar 5 times before they break, the cost comes down to a little under $2 for the 4 jars, not counting my time. If we counted my time like I was at work, the jars would have cost $12 more ($24/hr I get paid).

Overall, for me the cost doesn't matter. I'm not doing it to save money, I'm doing it to have food I know where it came from and can't buy anywhere else (eg: How many stores do you see selling pickled zucchini?). Am I crazy to think that way?

Garden & Food Update

2009-07-15T03:37:00.000-07:00

The harvest of food is starting to grow. Yesterday I used a 12"x36" tray to bring everything in due to how much I had to pick. Here's a sampling:

Kohlrabi: Still bringing in about 2/week. I need to plant some more so that we can have some this fall.

Cucumbers: 4 in yesterday, I'll probably be bringing in many more in the days ahead. Most of the plants have been doing an excellent job, I have had a couple have the leaves wilt with no explanation I can find.

Snap Peas: I thought I would be done with these plants by now, but I still brought a large serving size worth in the house yesterday

Basil: It had been coming in small amounts, I just brought in a sandwich container of basil

Cilantro: It is doing well this year, I'm picking it as I am going to use it.

Zucchini: These plants are growing like crazy. I gave them 5 feet of space originally and some are currently 10 feet long with more to grow. I have brought in about 5 18" ones and a bunch of small ones. I over-watered the plant initially and they had blossom rot from it.

Green Beans: They have been slow this year due to me planting them late (and the cooler summer we've been having). I started harvesting yesterday and should continue to have more in the days ahead.

Dill: These have done wonderfully this year, they are about 4 & 1/2 feet tall and have beautiful flower heads.

Tomatoes: We've been having enough cherry tomatoes for salads so far, they have turned out well

Broccoli: I was concerned about planting broccoli this spring due to last year's crop taking all year to form some heads, but they turned out really well this year (again due to the cool weather). I have pulled out half of the plants and am almost done harvesting the rest.

Turnips: I don't believe I've eaten turnips before, but had some on Sunday and they tasted great. My wife enjoyed them so much she wondered why they are not more common in the stores. I planted some more this past weekend so that we can have a nice fall crop.

Lettuce: I believe we're going to have a crop all summer long. I have slowed down on my picking of it as we have been having a hard time eating all that I am bringing in. I planted more this past weekend to take us through the fall.

Grape Leaves: We canned 3 jars worth this past weekend so we can make a favorite appetizer in our house (stuffed grape leaves with rice, meat, and spices. I like mine with lots of lemon juice, my wife likes very little).

Other interesting items going on in the garden:

Asparagus: We received 8 more asparagus plants that someone dug up out of their garden. They planted them this year and did not like how they looked in their yard, so they gave them to us.

Pumpkin: I didn't mean to plant pumpkin this year, but we had 17 pumpkins donated to us last year and I threw some seeds into the compost pile by accident. The largest pumpkin we have so far is about 4 inches across.

Peppers: I picked a jalapeno pepper a couple weeks back since it was so small and I wanted the plant to focus on growing bigger, but we should be having banana peppers coming in this week as well as maybe some more jalapeno. I actually enjoyed putting the lone little pepper into nachos this past week with it cooked a little bit.

Eggplant: This cool summer has been rough on the eggplants. They really like those 90 degree days and we haven't had much of them. This week for example the evenings are supposed to be in the 50's for the most part and during the day in the 70's. The normal low/high is 65/83 which we are very off this year. Maybe those ice caps melting is messing with our weather here.

Overall the garden has been bringing down our food bills this year. We're spending right now about $25-35/week on food, which consists of sugar, flour, milk, cereal, cheese (a big expense for us), butter, snacks, and misc cooking supplies. My wife makes bread for us, we have a fair amount of homemade jam & syrup, homemade spaghetti sauce, canned applesauce & other apple items, etc. As an ending note, I'll leave you with my breakfast experiment from this past Sunday in order to use up some of the vegetables we have:

1 Tbsp Butter
1 Kohlrabi Bulb, tough skin portions removed, sliced into french-fry sized pieces
6" Zucchini cut into 1/4 circle shapes
6 Turnips at 2 to 3" each, sliced and left as circles or 1/2 circles
Fresh Dill (to taste)

Add butter to pan, cook kohlrabi first with some dill, then add turnips 2 minutes later. Once the kohlrabi starts to soften up, add the zucchini to the pan with some additional dill and cover until the zucchini is fully cooked. Serve with toast or eggs.

July Budget

2009-07-06T03:25:00.000-07:00

I know we're a few days already into July, but we went on vacation this past weekend and just got back.

$1074 July Mortgage
$200 Food
$210 Car Gas
$216 Utilities
$60 Camping
$11 Cable
$9 Netflix
$48 Home Security System
$40 Maternity Dr. Co-pays
$22 Dentist Bill
$40 Daughter's Health Insurance
$203 Mrs. Student Loans
$20 Mystery Shopping
$15 Mr. Life Insurance
$69 Mr. Student Loans
$1074 August Mortgage
$300 Savings
$200 Chainsaw

This month has a few changes than our normal month. We have $60 for camping ($30 for 2 nights, plus the $30 for incidentials). We purchased a home security system last month and the monthly rate is $48 (and we're signed up for 39 months). I know the price is quite high for a monthly rate, but that's the way that company spreads out the equipment costs. I did a fair amount of calculations and I wouldn't have saved much more DIY. The $22 dentist bill is for my daughter, which should have been covered but our dentist did not know that the state only covers 1 visit/year. We will be changing dentist as that is something they should have known. The $20 for mystery shopping is for 3 different shops I'm doing this month for fun, we should be getting around $60 at the end of the month for previous shops we have done. We're looking at getting ahead in our mortgage payments this month as well. We're going to put some to savings and the chainsaw is so that I can start splitting and preparing wood for the upcoming winter(s).

On the income front, things have been pretty slow. We finally have a second roommate moving in today and have 1 bedroom still available. My day job has pay raise freezes in effect, so I'm not expecting my salary to change.

Financial Goals for Upcoming 18 Months

2009-06-27T04:58:00.000-07:00

Since we're over with the credit card and home equity line of credit debt and only have another month's worth of misc medical bills, I'm looking at the next phase of our financial journey. Previously I had thought about holding off any projects on the house so that we could have the money to invest in a business, but after making some improvements on our house, I want to continue doing so. Here is the summary of what I'm looking at us reaching in the coming 18 months:

$6K Emergency Fund
$15K Home Improvements
$9K Mortgage Reduction
$2K Debts
$2K SIMPLE IRA
$3K Pay My Dad Back

With how slow work has been recently, we are going to need the emergency fund. If we can get the house full of roommates soon and I was laid off, we could live off the $6K for 6 months with me not working any of that time. I would though find another job that pays minimal while I looked for work, as well as I would hope I would get unemployment.

The home improvement list is pretty huge, but my hope is that we spend the money and it will either convince us to stay here longer or will help when we try to sell the house. The projects include hardwood flooring in 3 rooms on the first floor, tiles in our kitchen, replace the tub in 1 of our bathrooms, replace the driveway, repair the fences, replace exterior doors, install an AC unit, replace our dishwasher, and removing the drop-ceilings in our living & dining rooms.

The mortgage reduction is so that we can stop paying $70 in PMI a month. When we bought our house we put 5% down due to that is what we could afford at the time. Once we get the mortgage down to the 80% LTV level, we won't be paying it down more except through our normal monthly payments.

The $2K is going towards the medical debts we have outstanding. They haven't been calling or writing us, but I consider them our responsibility to pay. We're not going to rush to pay them though, since I would rather have some money in our emergency fund instead.

The $2K in the SIMPLE IRA will be done through normal additions from my paycheck. We won't be adding more than the 3% in order to get the potential matching.

The $3K of my father's is a story I don't want to discuss much, but he has asked us to keep the money for him until May. We'll have the money ready for him then.

Overall it comes out to about $2K/month, which is feasible if we get some roommates in the house and I hopefully get a raise in the coming 18 months. Our priority will be paying back my dad, emergency fund, and home improvements. Once the emergency fund is built up, we'll work on the debts and the mortgage payback.

Investment Review

2009-06-27T04:14:00.000-07:00

Through my work I have a SIMPLE IRA that I have been contributing 3% of my paycheck, in the hopes that my employer at the end of the year will match the money. So far, it's looking like my co-workers will be lucky to keep their jobs, so we're probably not going to have the 3% match. The IRA is managed by Edward Jones and I decided to have them purchase C shares of funds. The fees I don't feel are worth the advice that I receive. Every month he calls me with what he recommends and so far I have gone along for the ride.This past week I met with my account manager and here's what we discussed:

- When we started, I told him I am aggressive on my investing due to not needing the money for 30+ years.

- He has me on his idea of aggressive, which basically is a balanced portfolio of 26% income, 29% growth & income, 18% of growth, and 27% of aggressive. The title of the report he gave me says "Growth Focus"

- The report does not have a year % increase, it only displays the percent change from amount invested, which is 5.22% when they started investing for me on 2/18. Since Tuesday, the portfolio has gone up even more and the % is now 7.45%.

Items I learned:

1. I am going to ask him to e-mail me his recommendations instead of calling me at work. The past few months when he has called and made his recommendation, I have been too busy to just stop what I was doing, research his recommendations and make a decision. Because of that, I got a balanced portfolio that I do not want.

2. I am going to ask him to not recommend income options. This account will not be my only investment vehicle. For example, we plan on building an emergency fund of $6K and the income options are basically bonds earning the rate of inflation. If you count the fees as well, I'll probably be losing money on them. Their recommendations for the "Growth Focus" is 10-20% in income and I'm currently at 26%.

3. I'm glad to be learning these items with "small" potatoes of under $700 instead of a $100K portfolio.

My daughter's college account has been growing steadily due to my father adding $50/month to it and presents received for her birthday. For the next 18 months, we have shorter-term goals to work on instead of her college fund, so we won't be putting much into it ourselves.

Garden

2009-06-24T09:01:00.000-07:00

Our garden is doing great! With the rain we have been having every couple of days and the cool days (until recently), my cool-weather vegetables have been performing well. We're now averaging about 10 hours a week in the garden, with about 1/2 of that time harvesting and the other 1/2 weeding. We have some wild garden plants that we are waiting on results from, they include tomatoes, cilantro, dill, and possibly pumpkins or cucumbers.

Coming into the house this week:

1/2 lb sugar snap peas/day
3/4 lb lettuce/day
1 cup regular peas/day
1 head of brocolli/day
last of the spinach
Cilantro as needed
Tops of Lemon Basil
Couple of cherry tomatoes
Grape Leaves
2 Kohlrabi/week
Various Radishes (did not do well this year, I suspect the seeds I got do not like our region).

Will be coming in soon:

Zucchini (we have 5 plants and they are taking over, each has 1-2 zucchini)
Cucumbers (plenty of flowers, haven't had ones form yet)
Green Beans (plenty of flowers, haven't had ones form yet)
Jalapeno Peppers (got 1 about an inch long)
Parsley (as needed)
Oregano (as needed)

We have had a lot of stir-fry the past week working through some of what has been coming in. The lettuce we have been giving away to friends in need. My wife pickled some of the sugar snap peas and froze a fair amount as well for future stir-fries. She also canned some grape leaves and I'll be needing her to do some more soon.

In mid-July, I'll be starting indoors some Brussels sprouts so that we can have a nice fall crop of them. I planted 20 Endive the past couple of weeks that we will harvest in the fall.

Money is so tight...

2009-06-18T03:44:00.000-07:00

Money is so tight for us this month. I had committed us to making a final settlement payment this month and knew it would be tight if we did not have new roommates. We're here in the middle of June and still having only 1 roommate. The main reason for the lack of roommates was the broken front bay window for a month. We brought down our rent to $300/month all utilities included this week to see if that will help us get some people in the room.

The other big item that I decided to do this month was replace our back porch boards. We have had plywood as our porch deck since we moved into this house 3 & 1/2 yrs ago and the steps were not installed properly, so they were starting to rot and sway when you walked on them. I went with cedar, which is more expensive than pine but I feel will last longer. The costs for the project went much higher than I expected due to additional support structure needed for the stairs and placing boards over the stair openings so our children would not fall through them.

Here's what we have left to take care of this month that we can't push until next month:

$78 Car Sticker for the license plate
$10 Dr. Co-pay for my wife and the baby to come
$15 My life insurance policy
$40 Water bill
$69 My student loan
$40 Car gas to & from work
Total: $252

We're holding off paying for my daughter's health insurance ($40) until the 1st, electric bill ($70), and my wife's life insurance (and my old policy of $95). We're still a bit short on cash with $228 in the banks and cash on hand. I'm planning on taking 1 extra board back to Menards ($8), my dad owes me $30 for Cubs tickets I will be going to tomorrow, plus I have a $20 rebate check from Menards that I may use to buy an item I purchased for the porch with cash and then return it to get the cash back.

On the positive side, we have plenty of food in the house and our garden is producing a fair amount of food. The settlement payment is the last of our over $1K payment we will need to make to a debt, the rest of our misc debts are $400-600 range medical bills. Next month's goals is to just build up a cash reserve. I will be doing some patching of our basement walls next month, but that should only cost $5 a bag and I'll probably be using around 10 bags.

P2P Lending Status

2009-06-03T00:10:00.000-07:00

I've been ignoring my P2P lending accounts at Prosper and Kiva this year and decided to finally look at them. Here is what I found:

Prosper: One of the reasons I have been ignoring Prosper is because they are in their "Quiet Period", which means basically no new loans. The other reason I had been ignoring them was because 1 of my 2 loans on there had defaulted and not paid. That loan has now been paying consistently since December and my other loan has been paying pretty much like clockwork (there was one failed payment, but resolved 2 weeks afterwards). Those 2 loans from almost 2 years ago have taught me lots. I am pulling my money out of Prosper until they get out of the "Quiet Period" and currently have $71.21 outstanding.

Kiva: I have 1 loan that is delinquent by a couple of weeks, but my other one is not. I decided to use the money I had sitting in Prosper & Kiva to purchase 3 more loans on Kiva, bringing my total amount invested to $100. I know that I don't make interest on these loans, but the benefit of knowing I am helping others with their dreams is worth it.

Next month I may look into lending on Lending Club...Maybe I should change the name of my blog to "Goodbye MY Debt!".

Garden Update

2009-06-02T10:33:00.000-07:00

Our expenses and time this year for the garden have gone down dramatically. My schedule now consists of spending a 1/2 hour in the garden in the morning, picking what is ready to be brought into the house, and picking weeds out as I am harvesting. I utilize a tray with compartments in it to make the cleaning process go quicker. Once they are brought in, they are washed and put into their appropriate containers in the fridge or made into a salad for lunch. I also spend an hour or 2 on the weekends doing an overall scan for weeds and removing them with a hoe.

Harvesting Currently: Snap peas, lettuce, brocolli raab, radishes, spinach, strawberries, chives, green onions

Finished Already: Asparagus & arugula (have just a couple plants left to remove)

Surprises: We have wild tomato, cucumber, and pumpkin plants growing in and around our compost pile. We also started tomatoes in 4.5" containers this year on Valentine's Day and have tomatoes forming in the garden already. I will be doing the same next year for our tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers.

Problems: We have still 3 & 1/2 trays of plants under lights since we were going to help a home for single mothers-to-be, but the spring has been really wet and when it has been good, we have not had the equipment to till the soil. We will be looking for homes for them later this week. Our green beans are having a late start this year due to having to redo our back yard garden, but are coming up nice now.

June Budget & April/May Net Worth +$2891

2009-06-02T05:01:00.000-07:00

June Budget:

$1074 Mortgage
$200 Food
$200 Car Gas
$43 Natural Gas
$53 House Phone
$40 Dr Visits
$50 Dining Out
$79 Car Registration
$2192 WaMu HELOC
$40 Water
$70 Electric
$40 Daughter's Health Ins
$203 Mrs Student Loans
$69 Mr Student Loans
$15 Mr Life Insurance
$45 Mrs Life

We finally got my life insurance plan changed to a cheaper policy. We were unable to get my wife's changed due to her being pregnant. At the end of the year we can reapply and get her brought down to $15-20/month.

We also are making the final payment on the HELOC from our previous home. Once that is done, the only items we have left for this year are some misc medical bills from 3+ years ago. We'll be taking a short break from tackling debts in July so that we can get a couple important items done (eg: dress pants & glasses for me, some house repairs).

The other items in the budget include $50 dining out, which we will be reimbursed for since they are mystery shops we are doing. We currently have 2 dinner shops setup and 1 movie theater shop scheduled and am trying for a third dinner shop. My wife's car is needing new stickers, so we're taking care of that this month.

April/May Net Worth: +$2891

I did not do an update on our April net worth, so this month is a mix of the 2 months. It has been a bit slow increasing since we only have 1 roommate currently, as well as the drama we had in March with a roommate taking both of our cars. Our bay window is damaged right now and we believe it is causing people to not be interested in moving in, so we are holding off renting the rooms until that is resolved. June we should see a better increase if we can get at least 1 more room filled.

May Housing Drama

2009-06-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

I am so glad the month of May is over with. We have had a lot of drama occur this past month and I am hoping we are over it:

- Beginning of the month some kids threw a large piece of marble through our bay window. The glass was supposed to be "unbreakable", so Home Depot Home Services is going to replace it for free. This is a feature I would recommend to anyone in a bad neighborhood with a large bay window. It has been on order for 3 weeks now, supposed to be installed this week we pray.

- We suspect the ex-roommate that caused problems in March has come back around and stolen a few things out of our house. The items include jewelry of my wife's, our video camera, and 1 of our laptops. These occurred at 2 separate times and the second time my wife was in the house upstairs and did not hear them come in or out. We now are locking the doors and windows like crazy and considering moving in 2010.

- We had a roommate move in and then inform us that her family did not want her moving to Joliet, so she had to move out. We gave her the money back so she could get a truck to move her stuff out. She left several items and we have not heard from her since Wednesday. I will be putting the items on the back porch tonight and taking out to the trash on Friday.

Financially, we'll survive through these problems.

Garden Economics

2009-05-10T04:06:00.000-07:00

Since my garden is almost into maintenance mode, I've been thinking about the economic side of a fruit and vegetable garden. I know that for some a garden can help reduce their food expenses, while for others it does not. The difference between the two is how much time and money they spend on it. Buy mulch every year to prevent weeds and there goes your profit margin. I believe more than just the generic concept of time & money, the plants they choose should be looked at. Below is a list of plants that I have learned are not bad choices:

Strawberry: Once you have your initial investment in plants, they'll take over the bed you put them in and keep coming back every year. We put ours in last year near the house with a sidewalk as the border to prevent them from taking the whole yard. The only items I've done this year to the bed were remove some covering I put on it on the fall (which actually killed most of my plants, this fall they won't get as much of a covering) and then take the rake through it once the weeds sprouted. The strawberries are already forming and I should be having strawberries in a couple of weeks.

Asparagus: This is another annual that once you have planted, the only real work is keeping the weeds away (which you can do with plastic over the area). We started them last year and this year had about a side-dish for 2, but expect more next year. We did not plant them in the ground properly, so that is why our crop was a bit low. A friend of mine nearby with a large farm has them growing wild on his property and harvested 2 pounds a week ago.

Onions & Garlic: These are ones that you also put an initial investment into, but they'll keep producing year after year. One of my neighbors has a garden FULL of onions so much that she gave us some bulbs last fall and they are already starting to form flowers in our garden this spring. If you space them close enough and plant them at the right time, the weeds won't have much of a chance.

Spring Lettuce: For my garden, the romaine lettuce is the winner of easiest spring vegetable. I'm still learning how best to do this one, but I've learned the best way is to plant your lettuces real close to each other. The benefit is the lack of weeding that you will need to do. You won't get as large of a head as you do at the grocery store, but the focus is to reduce your time and costs. We have been picking leaves off for the past 2 weeks and have been enjoying them. (We started them off indoors).

Peppers & Eggplant: These don't produce the quantity for me as much as my tomato plants in the same family, but what they do is slowly produce some great vegetables that I can take my time (for the most part) to pick.

Below are some that are bad choices on the time aspect:

Green Beans: We grow lots of them, but they will become your daily chore if you have even just a couple of plants. The key thing is to cut the green beans before they get too big. They'll easily produce new ones from flower to green bean in a day at the peak of the season. For us, the season went from late June to late September. That's 3 months of hunting for beans.

Peas: They are not as bad as green beans, but they will be a daily chore for 3-4 weeks. They produce their pods pretty quickly, so you have to catch them before they get too big.

Below are some that are bad choices on the money aspect:

Starter Plants: The easiest way to get ahead is to start your own plants. When I hear about people spending $3-5 on a tomato plant, I think to myself that they have already lost the war. For the same price I was able to start 18 plants in my house (though I had to put some more time into them).

Potatoes: From the seed potatoes I see at the garden places, it is another one that you have lost the costs war just buying the seed potatoes. I've seen the price of regular potatoes this past week at $0.16/lb, while the 1 lb of seed potatoes was at $5/lb. To just break even one would need to make at least 32 lbs of potatoes from the seed.

Let me know what I missed!

Long Time Away

2009-05-09T05:06:00.000-07:00

My life as usual has been pretty crazy (I type this as my wife cleans up a broken window). Here is what has occurred:

- My wife and I went on a short vacation to Colorado to visit her family in March and took a train there. It was beautiful, relaxing, and no pat-downs from airport security.

- One of our roommates took both of our cars while we were on vacation, used one in a hit & run, the other got a flat tire. Both were impounded by the police. I flew back the day after I found out and took care of getting the cars back & the locks changed ($1K of expenses)

- There has been a decrease of things to do at work, my active project pile is at 1 day's worth of work (meaning if no one finishes their part for me on Monday, I'll be having to go around looking for work on Tuesday). There is about 6 months worth of stuff in the pipeline, but the problem is that it relies on others to get their job done.

- Our garden has been half planted, we have been getting asparagus and lettuce so far. We'll be getting radishes & brocolli raab soon. Our strawberry patch is doing great. We're waiting for the soil to dry out enough for us to rototill the back yard.

- We have attempted to sell rain barrels, but it is going slow. We may have our first customer today. I have been discouraged a bit due to some leaking.

- My wife picked up a bunch of vacuum cleaners for free. She is going to clean them up and sell them on Craigslist.

- We have started getting involved with neighborhood watch starting up in our neighborhood. It has been good to meet some of our neighbors and feel like we're going to start improving the neighborhood (one of the reasons we moved to where we are).

- Our front bay window had a large rock thrown at it last night. The police have their suspicions of the kids causing the problems, but they're building their case. We had purchased a high-end window for The Home Depot At-Home Services the last time this happened 3 & 1/2 years ago and so they should cover the replacement for free.

- We'll be paying off our home equity line of credit next month, we're going to do half this month and half next month.

More detail to come in the future.

March Budget & February Net Worth +$2,240

2009-03-01T03:57:00.000-08:00

We're FREE from Credit Card Debt!!!

Just had to start off this status update post with that. We still have a few more debts and months to go before we'll be consumer debt free (everything but student loans and mortgage). Onto the details:

March Expenses:

200 Food
200 Car Gas
214 Car Insurance (6 month premimum)
275 HELOC
55 Cell Phone (LAST ONE!)
95 Life Insurance (story in itself, will discuss more soon)
50 Water (estimate)
120 Electric (estimate)
69 My Student Loan
380 Train Ride

March Paid Items:

1073 Mortgage
203 Mrs Student Loans
40 Natural Gas
51 House Phone
11 Cable
40 Daughter's Health Insurance

We have removed Netflix from the monthly budget, as we have been using the cable more than Netflix and have run out of stuff on DVD we want to watch. We no longer have a cell phone and are awaiting the final bill in the mail to pay it off. Our car insurance for 2 cars is due this month (though they haven't sent us a letter, so we'll be calling them this week). The train ride is a 2 week visit to my in-laws in Colorado with my wife and daughter. I'll be working part-time remotely when I'm out there. The March paid items list are items we already paid that were due in March. My father has given/lent us $2K to keep safe for him until the end of the year, which we used to prepay items (I know, not the best thing to do).

February Net Worth:

Did I let you know we paid off our last credit card? That was a large chunk of our net worth increase this month. We also paid down on our mortgage, student loans, and HELOC. We're continuing to put $128/mo into a SIMPLE IRA at my work. Next month's net worth increase will not be much unless we get 2 rooms filled with renters.

Renter Update

2009-03-01T03:37:00.000-08:00

Since the renters affect our ability to get rid of our debts, here is another update:

- 1 renter/roommate still with us, she is current and is working on this month to get herself ahead in case of problems in the future

- 1 renter/roommate finished up his work project and left early February

- 1 renter/roommate moved out at the beginning of Feb due to not being able to pay her rent. She had been with us over 2 years, it was a little hard to see her go but it is done.

- We had somone lined up for the beginning of Feb, but she got in an accident, car junked and had her license revoked.

- We had someone stay with us for a week as charity so they could get out of a bad situation, but they lied to us almost every day in regards to their son (was told originally the son was with his father, then "new" details were given about his whereabouts and his criminal past). They no longer are with us.

So right now we have 2 rooms available for rent, we've brought the price down to $375/mo the past week to see if we could get them filled quicker, which did not happen. The price includes all utilities, washer/dryer, & wireless Internet. I'm moving the price down to $350/mo this week to see about getting the rooms filled ASAP.

February Garden Update

2009-02-17T20:09:00.000-08:00

Our shipment of seeds came in the mail today, so I figure it's time to post an update on our garden. We have planted 3 trays worth of seeds, with each tray having 50 inserts. The list includes:

15 Green/Purple Peppers
5 Jalapeno Peppers
5 Lemon Balm
10 Broccoli
10 Eggplant
5 Artichoke (trying for my wife)

20 Tomatoes
10 Banana Peppers
10 Rocket
10 Broccoli Raab

10 Lettuce
10 Leek
10 Celery
10 Kohlrabi
10 Chives

We have them placed above our dryer to keep them warm and assist with sprouting. The total cost so far has been $60 ($42 for seeds, $8 for starting soil, $10 for tray inserts). Other expenses in the coming month we expect are 2 more lights ($15/each) and probably $10 more in tray inserts. After that, the only expenses we may have are some additional posts outside.

Regarding last year's garden items, we're still working through green beans, frozen celery, frozen peppers (pretty mushy), spaghetti sauce, tomato soup, apple sauce & filling, pumpkin pie filling (which my wife made more filling today), pickles, and jam. We'll see how productive our garden is this year.

Redbox is great, except...

2009-02-16T08:12:00.000-08:00

When I first heard of Redbox, I thought it was a great idea. For those that don't know how it works, you get new releases for $1/night out of a vending machine. There is a touch screen that you can select what movies are in the machine, swipe your credit or debit card and out spits your selection.

Here are my reasons though for it not being a great idea:

- Location of boxes. In my area they are starting to get more and more boxes with one a mile from my home, but it's still 2 mile round trip drive to do if I'm not passing by one during the day (at $0.50/mile expenses on my vehicle, that $1 rental grows up to be a $3 rental).

- Waiting in line to return. At the "old fashioned" video store, I can just drop my rental in a slot and they take care of the rest. With RedBox, I have to wait in line often behind someone that is renting. My trip to return a movie on Saturday night took 20 minutes from getting my shoes on to taking them off, with at least 5 minutes of it waiting for someone trying to find a movie that wasn't available.

- Limited selection. What they mainly have is new releases, which is expected when they're going for volume. The problem is that my wife and I watch maybe 10 new releases a year. I know the legal and physical limits, but that's why we have our Netflix membership still.

The first 2 reasons are the main reason I dislike using Redbox. I've used them the past week, but that is because I love my wife and know there were a couple of new movies that she was wanting to see and Netflix had a long wait for them. What are your reasons for not liking Redbox?

February Budget & January Net Worth +$1,159

2009-02-14T10:00:00.000-08:00

I know it's a bit late in the month to put up, but I've not been in the best of moods.

February Budget:

1073 Mortgage
200 Car Gas
200 Food
234 Natural Gas
51 House Phone
265 Electric
50 Water
37 Cable
9 Netflix
10 Garden Supplies
100 Mrs. going on women's retreat in March
55 Cell Phone
20 Oil Change
95 Life Insurance
40 Daughter's Health Insurance
20 Dr. Co-pays for pregnancy
1585 Last Capital One Payment
275 Home Equity Line Credit
203 Mrs. Student Loans
69 Mr. Student Loans

It's another very tight budget, March should be a lot better. Part of the problem is that I committed to making the large payments to Capital One, which blocked off a large portion of our income. The other part is that we are down to 1 paying roommate at this time. God has blessed us with some help from my father in the form of money to buy a dryer this month and money so we can help him file for bankruptcy.

The cable bill is new this month, it will be going down to $12 next month. We also brought Netflix down to the 1 at a time plan and I'm considering letting that go in a couple of months. The problem we've had is the new releases end up having a long wait time and with cable available, there is less of a need for Netflix. My wife has been planning a women's retreat at our church the past couple of months and it is coming up next month, so we're taking care of the payment for it this month. Next month will be our last monthly cell phone bill!

January Net Worth:

We made a large payment on our Capital One CC bill and a small payment on the home equity line of credit. 1 of the roommates has been paying us back, which has helped in that area. We also have been building up our daughter's education fund which included some Christmas gifts. We plan on adding more once we are out of debt, as well as my dad has offered to start putting some away for her.

Last CC Payment!!!

2009-02-14T03:40:00.000-08:00

I've been fighting some down mood the past month, though I think I am starting to get out of it. One piece of good news is that our last credit card payment will be withdrawn from the bank on Monday! It's been 6 years since my/our balances on them have been $0. We have been so late on paying them that we do not have any active that we can use. That will indirectly help us to not use them again.

The question you are probably asking is "Will you ever use a credit card again?" and at this point of our lives, I will have to say it'll probably be many years until we even consider it. I have seen the benefit recently of having one to smooth out bumps during slow cash flow (we had no dryer for 3 weeks while we waited for funds to become available). Our goals though for the end of the year is to have enough emergency funds to smooth out those bumps instead of risking the chance of holding onto credit card debt.

From here on out, we have a home equity line of credit outstanding and then a bunch of small debts to take care of. Unless we have problems with renters paying, we'll be looking at getting it all taken care of by mid-summer. I can't wait!!!

Renter Updates

2009-01-12T10:12:00.000-08:00

Well, K moved out on Friday and we have a new person moving in tomorrow. K also made several bad choices before he left, including:

1. Giving some of his valuables to one of the roommates instead of trying to sell them himself and pay us back, or giving them to us to sell for him to cover what he owes us.

2. Instead of having the title for his vehicle on his possession, it is in New York. He ended up giving his vehicle to a mechanic and said basically the guy can have the vehicle if it costs too much to repair.

3. Due to not taking care of things prior to the last day, he took a train to downtown Chicago in the afternoon and slept in the train station waiting for the morning train to Michigan.

We also had been "babying" our two roommates by having little tins for them to put their rent money in. One of them has an issue with anyone seeing them giving my wife the rent money (they don't even want me to see it), which is why we started the tin method. I have gotten sick of us "babying" them and expressed my frustration about this to my wife. I'm afraid I expressed my frustration too much to my wife, but we resolved it. I don't feel it is a very secure method with the chance of someone saying "Well, I put $100 in there yesterday, I don't know where it is now..."

Considering Cable

2009-01-11T05:55:00.000-08:00

We've been without cable for a couple of years now and have been using an antenna I installed in our attic. It should be installed on our chimney and may need to be even larger. I'm not going to climb onto our roof with it though, due to my ability to work is more important. We get 5 channels OK, though a little static at times. With the DTV box though, we get 0 channels.

My choices are:

1. Hire someone to move it, see if the current antenna works and possibly install a larger one. This could cost up to $200.

2. Purchase basic cable from Comcast for $10/month for a year, then at that point decide if I want to do the antenna option, go to a higher cost package, or cancel.

3. Do nothing and make it hard to watch shows. My roommates may not like this option.

I'm leaning towards #2 for now. I called Dish Network to see what they had to offer and the best they could do was $25/month for basic channels plus their 100 channels, which with taxes and a 2 year agreement would come out to over $700. I'm not up for purchasing a car at this time.

Changing Life Insurance Policy

2009-01-08T10:16:00.000-08:00

The past 3 years we have had a pretty pricey term life insurance policy. For both my wife and I to be covered, we have been paying $95/month. The coverage for her was $186K and mine was $350K. The main reason we got that policy was that my wife worked for that company for a while and it was best for her to be using the companies policy. I have been urging her for over a year now to investigate a different company and plan, but she has not been in the mood to do so. Well, with money really tight for us over Christmas and knowing that we were paying another $95, she decided to do some shopping around.

The plan we were quoted will be a bit under $40/month total for her coverage at $200K and mine at $350K. Her coverage is lower and costs more due to her pacemaker. We have physicals this weekend to go through in order to make sure we can truly get the $40/month estimated price, but even if it's $50/month, that will save us $45/month or $540/year.

The next expense that we need to trim out of our budget is the cell phone, which the last payment will be in March. After that, it's getting these debts out of the budget.

Trading Tips For Coworker

2009-01-06T04:39:00.000-08:00

One of my coworkers is getting the "stock trading itch" and asked me at the end of the day what I thought about eTrade. I'm going to talk him out of it, explaining that 80% of the professional traders do worse than the S&P500, with them spending their full day working at it. If that does not work, I'm going to give him these suggestions of places:

Zecco - I've heard of them a bunch, 10 free trades/month if your account asset value is at least $2,500 and have IRA account available (though $30/yr fee and $30 to close IRA account)
SogoTrade - I've never heard of this one prior to this morning, but found them from searching around. $3 trades, $50 to transfer account out, no minimum balance

My general suggestions for him are:

1. Make sure he has an emergency fund of at least 3 months of living expenses.
2. Make sure he is putting 3% into our work's SIMPLE IRA for 2009.
3. Make sure he has put away $5K for his 2008 IRA.
4. Hold off maxing up his 2009 IRA amount, since our employer may or may not match his 3% until the end of the year.
5. Don't trade any money that you will need in the next 3 years.

2009 January Garden

2009-01-04T05:49:00.000-08:00

It's official, my wife and I our planning for this year's garden. I received some cash from my in-laws in the mail and my wife went to Menards to pick up some lumber. She is going to build me a 7 foot shelving unit for me to start plants in. I purchased a light last year and rigged it to work in our bay window, but it was too cold there. We'll be taking out some furniture from our living room in order to make room for the shelving unit.

I'm also making a list of seeds that I need to keep an eye out for (Cucumbers, Eggplant, Peppers, Kentucky Wonder Green Beans, Cilantro, Zuchini, Sugar Snap Peas, Onion Bulbs, Spinach, Radishes, & Basil). I already have Dill, Tomato, Lettuce, & Celery Seeds. Our Strawberries, Asparagus, chives, & some local onions are in the ground right now.

For most of our new seeds, I'm going to see if Walgreens is going to have $0.10 packets this year (I missed out last year). If they don't do it this year, I know Walmart got some in the spring which I'll use for my warm-weather crops. For the cucumber seeds, I'm going to look for a hybrid that is mildew resistant, since that is what caused most of my cucumber problems last year.

We also have 5 stumps that in March we want to have removed in order to help the garden grow better this year. We are hoping to tear up part of our driveway as well to make more room for the garden, which will be dependent upon the roommate situation. We're also hoping to get some rain barrels as well to reduce some of the leaking in our basement.

We'll also not rush to put out plants before their time this year. We put out our tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants out too early last year and they kind of just sat there and watched us. We'll put a lot more cool-weather crops in first and when we're ready to plant the warm-weather plants, we'll just pull out the cool-weather ones.

Last of all, we'll produce less pumpkin and apple pie filling this year. We've been enjoying them when we have them, but my waist does not need me eating pie every day. I would say 12 of each should be enough for us. On the other hand, we'll need to at least triple the amount of apple juice we made this year. We made 16 quarts of apple juice, which we are watering down to 32 quarts, but our daughter is drinking over 2 quarts a week and we'll be running out by the end of this month. We also are on our last bag of brocolli since our spring brocolli did not turn out well last year.

Roommate Eviction Update

2009-01-02T16:57:00.001-08:00

Here's the latest information I have:

K - Was unable to get money from his parents, asking for an extension but owes $960 and it will be growing by another $350 in a week. I'm going to see what I can do to help him pack up this weekend and bring it to his brother's place.

D - She has been paying like crazy this past week, paying almost $600. She is almost current, but will need to keep it up for another 45 days.

C - She has been paying right on her payment schedule, though concerns about paychecks bouncing is forcing her to quit. She asked indirectly this week for an extension, but we were firm on our decision.

We have someone lined up for the room K is in currently and once K moves out, the new guy will move in. He has steady work and my wife feels comfortable after talking with him. He will probably be someone that just comes to the house to sleep and shower.

$125 Electrical Repair Complete

2008-12-28T16:17:00.000-08:00

We had an outlet go out in our kitchen a week ago and I tried to fix it myself (got a replacement GFI outlet, wired it up based on how I read the directions, still did not work). We also noticed that a light to our basement was acting up as well on the same circuit, so I tried to remove that one to see if it would fix everything. That did not work.

One of our next-door neighbors is doing a major remodeling of his house. It had been split into 2 units and the other person moved out in the fall, so he is rejoining the 2 units. One of his friends is an electrician and was working next door, so he came over yesterday morning with my neighbor and they got it all fixed in an hour.

The total costs were $125, which included 3 new GFI outlets at $12/each. I know if I had to of gone through the phone book, the project would have easily been a $300 project. In the spring, we'll look at doing some other electrical projects.

2008 & 2009 Goals

2008-12-27T08:11:00.000-08:00

2008 was pretty busy for us, here are the key items from the goal list that we succeeded at:

- Chimney Lined & Fireplace Installed: We didn't get it at the exact time we wanted, but we were successful.

- Professionally Removed Tree: We had these removed earlier than we had originally planned due to wanting the room for our garden

- Triple Size of Garden: We were successful at that and are still enjoying the fruits of our labor

- 1 Week Mission Trip: I was able to go in June

- Move daughter into her own room: She has been in her own room and the financial consequences have been felt minimally.

- Increase day job salary by 10%: This one we were the most successful at, by increasing it over 50% in 1 year's time.

- Settle debts: We settled a fair amount of our debts and have just a few remaining

One's we were not successful at: $3K emergency fund (due to debts not completed), reinstate tithing (due to debts not completed), 3 certification tests (only 1 taken), & settle misc debts.

Now onto 2009 Goals:

Financial:
Pay off final CC & misc debts by June
$1.5K SIMPLE IRA by end of year
$8.5K Emergency Fund by end of year

Career:
Increase day job salary by 10%
Take 2 Microsoft Certification Exams

House:
Install windows in basement
Install fence to block driveway
Install rain barrels to collect water
Remove large portion of driveway to expand garden
Replace upstairs bathtub

My Best Christmas Present

2008-12-25T05:21:00.000-08:00

My wife gave me this morning my best Christmas present ever. Underneath the wrapping paper was a pregnancy test with the date October 21st written on it, which was the day she got off of birth control (an IUD for those curious). She promptly took the test and found out we're pregnant with child #2!

We had been discussing for a while that we would be waiting until February of next year to start trying, but I've been itching to start early. She secretly had been wanting to also start early, so she went to the doctor on October 21st and had the IUD removed so that we could try again.

Our estimates for the due date is July 31st, a week before the period of the summer we call "Tomato Hell", which is when we start hauling in 20-30 lbs of tomatoes a day into the house for a few weeks. I'm hoping he or she comes early! If not, we'll be sure to be recruiting help.

What this means for our finances:

1. With my current employer, I am going to not push too hard at getting a huge raise in March at my yearly review. In order to continue on the HMO insurance plan we have, I am not going to consider the possibility of changing jobs.

2. Our savings is going to be even more important and am going to go for the lofty goal of $10K saved by the end of next year.

3. The pregnancy costs should be minimal with the HMO and already having pretty much everything we need from our first one.

Eviction Update

2008-12-23T10:08:00.001-08:00

In case you are wanting to know the current scores on our 3 roommates and their evictions, they are:

K - Will be asking his parents over Christmas for money to pay us back, he's the most likely one to be moving out by the end of the month. He's been looking for work for months and has been unsuccessful. If I was betting, I would say the odds are 1 in 10 of him staying.

C - She paid her 1st of the 8 weekly payments, though our concern is that her employer check bounced earlier in the month, making future paychecks suspect of not being good. If I was betting, I would say the odds are 1 in 2 of her staying mainly because this is her second eviction notice from us and she worked hard to pay us back last time.

D - She just received this past Friday her 60 day eviction notice and we've been answering questions every day. Our latest discussion last night was her letting us know she did the math and believes she will be able to make it. January 15th though will be the day she makes the final decision, dependent upon how many hours she receives from work before then. If I was betting, I would say the odds are 1 in 3 of her staying.

So who is going to stay and who is going to go? Will post my next update once we hear back from K's parents and what K decides.

Christmas Bonus Plans

2008-12-23T04:49:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I received my first Christmas bonus from my new employer and boy was it nice. First off, right after lunch he handed me a card with 5 pictures of Mr. Franklin. Then when I was heading out the door at the end of the day, he asked me into his office and gave me 2 more pictures of Mr. Franklin off his desk. I asked him what the extra 2 were for and he told me that I have been helping him a lot and he wanted to show it. He also said for me to make sure I got my wife and daughter something nice this Christmas, which I told him I had already gone shopping for my wife and that for my daughter we are just saving for her college fund.

In the end, the grand total of $700 will go towards:

$100 - Our church, we have not been tithing. My wife and I are doing our yearly financial bible study and the key item it hits on is our money is not our money, but God's that we have been entrusted with.
$100 - Daughter's education fund
$300 - Kitchenaid Professional Mixer, present for my wife. Started at $430 after tax, then had 20% off coupon that brought down to $350, then received a $50 mail-in rebate)
$100 - Repairs on kitchen outlets I tried to fix but suspect I made the problem worse
$100 - Next month's expenses

Overall I believe that is a good mix of gifts and going to needs we have.

More Recent Savings

2008-12-14T06:42:00.000-08:00

Our natural gas bill came in recently and I calculated we have saved $140 this past month by using our wood stove instead of the natural gas. That brings our total savings this winter to $165. We also have secured a large pile of wood that we'll be picking up in the spring from friends in church. We've been going through the wood faster than I thought we would and we will probably run out in mid-February.

In addition, we did a mystery shop for an oil change on my wife's car that will pay for itself at the end of this month. It's been a while since the company we had used has had them available. My car next month will need an oil change and I'm keeping an eye out for it.

The past month we've also been visiting the library every Saturday, picking up books, videos and CD's. This has helped us while things have been tight financially.

Evictions & Renters

2008-12-12T10:41:00.000-08:00

My wife and I have been having some deep discussions the past couple of weeks about our renters and have done the following:

- Gave a 30 day eviction notice to one roommate now 3 months behind in rent ($1050 owed). He has been struggling trying to find work and he is going to see if his parents can pay his rent.

- Rewritten our house handbook to include our mission statement, roommate expectations (eg: consistent paying of rent), as well as the eviction process.

We are also heavily considering setting into play the following:

- Require 2 other roommates to become current in 60 days or be evicted. After Sunday, both of them are 2 months behind in their rent. If they do not become current in 60 days, they will need to move out.

- If at any point a roommate is more than a month behind in their rent, they have 30 days to rectify the situation or they have to move out.

- If we have to provide 3 eviction notices, the third one is their request to move out.

The problem we're having is that it feels like we're helping them every way we can and they don't view it important that they pay their rent on time. One of the roommates that is behind 2 months just went on vacation for a week to Texas to see relatives. After Sunday, the roommates combined will owe $2200 in rent due. The way we're looking at it is like we're borrowing them $2200 when we barely have enough to pay all of the bills and keep the debt collectors at bay.

Are we being unreasonable?

Debt Status

2008-12-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

Last Friday I went to court with my wife at my side and Capital One received a judgment for the full amount owed plus court costs. We paid $2000 last Friday and are looking at doing $1500 in January and the remaining $1500 in February. We should not have purchased the wood stove until this was resolved and are paying for it dearly.

In addition, we have 1 large debt that I've been ignoring from a foreclosure a few years back, but now don't want to have the same problems I had with Capital One. They sent us a letter recently offering a payment plan or settlement amount. I called them and have setup a monthly payment plan of $275/month through April and we're going to do everything in our power to take care of it in April through settling with them. It took a 1/2 hour to convince them I could not do a settlement and that I wanted the monthly payment plan written in the letter they sent. I'll be updating our net worth statistics to reflect this debt and the true balance of the Capital One.

We also received 2 letters about medical debts that are still outstanding with them offering a 50% discount for the next 60 days if we pay it off. Once we are closer to January, we will look at our budget and see if we can fit them in. Our original hopes were to have this all taken care of by the end of the year, but it looks like it will be closer to May of next year.

December Budget & November Net Worth +$1,801

2008-12-01T03:11:00.000-08:00

Budget:

For December, we are going on a shoe-string budget. The main reason is the court case on Friday with Capital One. We will be paying all essentials except for the mortgage, which will be paid in January. The natural gas bill was paid early in November, so it is not on this list.

-$150 Food
-$50 Car Gas (we have some cash leftover from November)
-$95 Life Insurance
-$40 Daughters Health Insurance
-$40 Weight Watchers (Been coming out of my wife's fun money, still keeping it)
-$30 Dr. Visits
-203 Mrs Student Loans
-69 Mr Student Loans
-50 House Phone
-55 Cell Phone
-50 Water
-110 Electric

Net Worth:

It went up quite a bit, mainly due to 2 of our roommates starting to catch up on paying us back as well as settling on 2 mid-sized debts (which I wish I hadn't done, so that I would have had the money to settle on Capital One). It had been months since we had settled on a debt and I was getting itchy for not doing so.

We also opened up a "Bright Start" account for our daughter with change that we were collecting for a while. We figure if anyone asks us what to get our daughter for Christmas, we'll tell them to give to her college fund. She's at 18 months old right now and a scrap of material works as a fun toy to play hide & seek for her.

Not Following Good Advice...

2008-12-01T03:06:00.000-08:00

I know the good advice is to keep in touch with your creditors, but it can be difficult when they call you so many times. Our Capital One debt that we were going to try to take care of over the summer (but a consulting gig did not pay me for work performed) has filed a small claim in court, which I need to appear on Friday for. I am contacting today a company that helps to mediate before court and seeing what we can do before Friday. We have $2500 in the bank to work on this, will let you know the results.

Next week I'll contact one other large creditor that I've been ignoring (so much that they're not in the net worth calculations) since they sent me a letter this weekend.

I Love Deflation! (Currently)

2008-11-23T13:37:00.000-08:00

Today I got to benefit from the deflationary environment the economy is in right now. On our way home from church, we put a half a tank of gas in my wife's car for $10. The price at the station was $1.69. It's crazy when within the past 6 months we had easily paid $4/gallon. We're still limiting our driving as much as possible, but it's nice to not have to shell out $50 to fill up.

In addition, we stopped at the fruit market and I ran in and got:

23 lbs of chicken quarters at $0.39/lb
3 lbs of grapes at $0.33/lb
12 lbs of watermelon for $0.29/lb
3 lbs of onions at $0.50/lb
2 lbs of oranges at $0.99/lb

The total after tax was $19 and some change. We removed the skin, cut the thigh and drumstick apart, wrapped in plastic wrap and put them in freezer bags. We also recommended to one of our roommates to do the same, which she picked up 10 lbs of chicken and followed our example.

I put (Currently) in the title because I know at work the sales staff has been slowing down on closing of sales. I've been told this is normal for this time of year, I'm just praying that it doesn't continue in January. I am fairly secure in my position (no one else does what I do and the work I do has brought a lot more projects to the company), but there is always the chance of layoffs.

The Dead Malls & Lack of Jobs

2008-11-22T03:36:00.000-08:00

One of our roommates has been looking for work now for almost 2 months and it's not looking pretty out at the malls. He was telling me last night that there are very few people out there these days and even less people hiring. He doesn't have his college degree yet, so the best jobs he can pick up right now are minimum wage type jobs.

He's been hitting 5 different web sites for job postings and is telling me about how there are very few new posts out there. He's also been stopping at the various fast-food places around with no one hiring. For 2 weeks he was also going to one of those "work today paid today" places and they have yet to have enough work for everyone that comes, so he hasn't gotten any work there.

I know at my own job that sales have been a bit slow, but that is normal for this time of the year for the business I'm in. I'm going to see what I can find for him in the area. If he doesn't get himself caught up rent wise in December, I'll need to ask him to leave and I would hate to do that.

Why I Turned On The Furnace Last Night

2008-11-21T03:12:00.000-08:00

As you may know, I've been trying to heat my house with wood this winter and not turn on the furnace. I gave in last night and turned it on. The reasoning behind my giving in to the big machine is the following:

- We have 3 other adults in the house that are not fans of it getting really cold in here. I know one of them has used a space heater already and another has an electric blanket. If it was just me, my wife and daughter, I wouldn't have last night.

- Without us putting in wood through the night, it gets pretty cold in here. Due to me not switching the switch on the furnace itself, it got down to 56 degrees at the thermostat this morning. Farther from the thermostat I wouldn't be surprised if we were in the 40's.

- My wife has been cooking quite a bit the past week tackling the pumpkins (they are complete except for 2 we are saving for later on in the winter). That warmed up the house quite a bit, but we're not going to be doing that every day.

The new gameplan is that the furnace is set to turn on at 60 degrees. This allows the wood stove to keep us warm through the day and part of the night, but helps when the wood stove is not going. We will see as the winter progresses if we need to set that base 60 degrees up more. We also learned a trick last night where if we have just coals remaining in the wood stove, we can open the door up on it and not have any smoke come into the house.

Recent Suprise in the Mail

2008-11-17T04:02:00.000-08:00

Due to the newspaper article a few weeks back about us, we had received a greeting card with a Wal-Mart gift card attached. It was sent with no return address, but we are very certain it's from someone in our church. We figured the card had $25 or $50 on it. My wife put it in her purse and life went on.

We went this past Saturday over to Wal-mart to pick up a few food items (and hunt around for a presser cooker to can these pumpkins). At the checkout, my wife took the gift card out and looked at the back of the card to see the value of the card. I wish I had a camera on her at that time, as she was shocked to find out it was a $250 gift and it showed on her face. I was also quite shocked.

Her first comment in jest was "Let's go on a shopping spree!" I joked back saying maybe I should hold onto the card instead. We discussed it some more and we decided it will go towards the Christmas shopping we were planning on cash-flowing next month. That way the cash we were going to spend can be put to our debts.

2 More Debts Paid Off

2008-11-15T09:28:00.000-08:00

I made some calls today and was able to get 2 more of our debts settled on. Here are the details:

- Hospital bill started at $1301.63. It was from a few years ago when my wife was having pacemaker problems and we had to bring her to the hospital. Our insurance coverage at the time was not very good and had a large deductible. I was able to settle with them for $700. I had an even older letter from another collection agency for the same hospital, which I called first. They had deemed it not collectible, so they returned it to the hospital and the hospital added another visit to the balance. In the end, I'm glad it's done with.

- Bank NSF bill started at $804.49. It was from when everything started tumbling down in 2006, job lost, electricity out, etc. Automatic items started bouncing left and right and I was hiding from it all. I was able to settle with them for $603.37. There is still some work to be done on this one, as they messed up in their computer systems and have a balance for the same bank NSF in two different departments. The other department was not in the office today, so I will have to call on Monday to get that resolved.

The lessons to be learned is always keep your paperwork, question who you really owe and how much you really owe. In addition, don't ignore your problems, otherwise you will have to pay for that mistake in the future. I'll be calling one more small creditor on Monday to settle with that is the cardiologist bills from the same time as the hospital bills.

How to Handle 17 Large Pumpkins

2008-11-14T04:02:00.000-08:00

I walked into the house last night and found 15 large pumpkins bathing in our sun room, 1 on the kitchen floor, and 1 in the oven. We had talked about trying to pick up a few more pumpkins after Halloween to make some pie filling, but not this many. Our church was using them as decoration and they were cleaning them out this week. They had even more than the 17, these were the remaining after everyone else took what they wanted. My wife was able to load them into her car (with the baby and car-seat as well) in just 1 trip.

Here's the breakdown plans:

1. Puree and freeze as much as we can fit. Our freezers are pretty packed already, so it will take some work but I think we can handle a few of them.

2. Cube and can some of them. I'll see about picking up some more jars tomorrow and we have some clean empty ones.

3. Keep a couple in the basement to be used later. I'm reading they can last 6 months, so in January once we've cleaned out some of the stuff in the freezer, we'll have room to freeze more.

4. And most importantly, we will puree and be giving it away on Sunday for families in need wanting to make their own pumpkin pie.

Little Bits of Savings

2008-11-12T19:43:00.000-08:00

Our latest natural gas bill came in and I did the math, we saved $25 this month by using the wood stove. I did the calculations by looking at our usage last year, figuring the difference in usage and then what that difference would have cost today. It's not much, but I hope the coming months will be more valuable.

We also did mystery shopping that will pay for our $25 meal we spent. I have 2 mystery shops scheduled for tomorrow night for a total of $36. JiffyLube appears to have started doing mystery shopping again, so we'll be watching out for opportunities near us.

Overall, every little bit helps.

Another one bites the dust..

2008-11-10T06:11:00.000-08:00

It's been too long since I've called in to pay off a debt, but did so this morning. It was for $400 for orthotics my wife had gotten several years ago. I figured we just threw them out on Saturday, we should probably pay for them right away.

When I called the debt collector, I explained that I wanted to settle the balance. They were more than willing to take the full amount, but I asked them if there was a way to negotiate a smaller amount to settle. Janice (the debt collector), spoke to her manager and was able to bring it down to $320. That was fine with me, though she then wanted to charge me $12 for an "expedited payment" so the debt would not negatively affect my credit. I told her it's already on my credit and asked her if I could pay online or by check without that fee. I was able to online while I kept her on the phone, saving the $12.

Overall, it feels good to say goodbye to one more debt! My wife's latest orthotics that we picked up on Saturday were "free" since they are covered by our health insurance this time (as well as my orthotics).

Homesteading

2008-11-03T03:28:00.000-08:00

Our journey to get out of debt is leaning us more and more towards homesteading. Our weekend activities now include:

- Gathering & cutting wood for next year's winter. It takes a year for the wood to dry out, so now is the time to be looking for it. A house nearby had 2 trees taken down, so we were removing some of the wood yesterday. In addition, we're keeping an eye out for any wood elsewhere.

- Baking bread. My wife has not wanted to make bread due to the kneading doing a number on her muscles, so I decided this weekend to take care of it for her and will continue to do so. Now is the time to stock up on your yeast as well ($.79/3 pack at our Aldi's).

- Gardening. The weather was very nice this past weekend, so we dug up flower bulbs that needed to come in, chatted with a fellow gardener down the street and received some wild onions from her that will survive the winter, planted the onions, and picked some broccoli leaves for dinner last night. Next weekend I'm hoping to get my father out by us to help me with getting manure to put down in the garden.

I was a vegetarian for 3 years and even I am looking at hunting, fishing, raising & slaughtering animals. I'm going to call Joliet city hall this week and see what are the legal requirements for chickens (In Chicago you can have unlimited chickens as long as your raising them as pets or for eggs).

November Budget & October Net Worth

2008-10-31T21:00:00.000-07:00

Here is our budget for November:

Expenses:
$1065 Mortgage
$50 House Phone
$55 Cell Phone
$28 Natural Gas
$108 Electric
$40 Water
$250 Food
$200 Car Gas
$140 Dental
$200 Fun Money
$220 Mrs. Student Loans
$70 Mr. Student Loans
$40 Daughter's Health Insurance
$95 Life Insurance

Base Expenses: $2,561

Income:

$3580 Salary Take Home
$1000 Rental Income

Total: $4580

The difference between our expenses and our income will be going into savings to pay off debt. I suspect some of our creditors are getting hungry with the economy not doing so well, since the number of calls this past week has picked up.

Our phone bill went up due to the price of our Internet plan went up and someone had used 411 at the house twice. We have changed our Internet plan as well to the next higher plan to help with me working from home more and watching Netflix (which comes out of my fun money).

Net Worth:

This is the first time in over a year it has gone down. I decided to write off the bad debt owed by someone I had done programming work for. I know I am in the right for the balance, but the fight to get the money is not worth the stress and morally I should not have been working for them while at my full-time job. In addition, I did an accurate check of our mortgage and student loan balances.

We're planning in the coming month to build up the cash position of our net worth, so that we can get back on track paying off debts.

Roommate Given Notice

2008-10-30T04:53:00.000-07:00

One of our roommates was given notice yesterday that she has until the end of November to pay $600 of her back-rent (2 months) or move out. On Nov. 1st she will be $900 behind in rent. She and my wife had a 2 hour discussion about it, mainly the roommate responding that she felt it was unreasonable, that she is trying everything she can do, and trying to get out of my wife that we want her to leave.

Here are my views on those 3 points:

Unreasonable/Reasonable: If we were like other landlords, we would have already petitioned the court for eviction and she would be moved out. Based upon my research, if you are 1 day late in Illinois, you can receive a 5 day notice. If you don't pay that, then the landlord can take you to court to evict you. If she did not pay her cell phone bill for 3 months, it probably would be turned off as well. We are being reasonable.

Trying Everything: I disagree with this one. She told my wife she thought she had to pay us at least $100 at a time, which in the 2 years she has lived at our house has never been a rule or followed. Trying everything includes giving $20 towards rent instead of ordering pizza.

"We want her to leave": This is a lie that she is trying to believe so that it's not her lack of payment as the reason we are having to do this, but that it's our fault. Being behind in rent is not our fault, it is caused through choices she had made. And from those choices, there are consequences. We would love to have her stay, but when the mortgage and utilities need to be paid every month, we need her to cover her portion.

50 lbs of Apple Juice & Sauce

2008-10-30T04:45:00.000-07:00

My wife just got back yesterday afternoon from visiting my great-aunt north of us. With our daughter drinking quite a bit, we did not think we would have enough apple juice in our pantry and my great-aunt always loves to have us visit, so my wife and daughter went up there Tuesday morning with jars and a juicer. Our daughter was well-behaved and sat at the counter all day (except for nap time) watching my wife working away in the kitchen and running outside to pick apples.

I did not count all of the jars, but my rough estimate is 24 pints of apple sauce, 18 quarts of apple juice, and 6 quarts of apple sauce. We'll be giving away gifts of apple sauce this Christmas. In addition, my wife brought a box of fresh apples for recipes in the coming weeks, as well as some squashes.

Roommate Financial Success Story

2008-10-26T03:29:00.000-07:00

I want to cover one of our roommates. Sometimes it does not feel like we're really helping our roommates improve their lives (financially, spiritually, mentally, etc). Yesterday though through talking with one of our roommates it appears we're having an effect at improving her financial know-how and career.

She had been working at a job that she liked but did not like her co-workers. The two ways to handle it are to just deal with it or look for another job. She asked us for some tips and we suggested the phone book to start calling businesses that she would enjoy working for and seeing if they have openings. She did and found a pet grooming place not too far from our house, paying her more than she was making at her last place and doing what she loves.

She also recently opened up a checking account. She was previously taking her paychecks to a currency exchange, having to pay a fee every time. The reason she did not have a checking account was because she had messed up one years back by not keeping an eye on the balance and was afraid of doing the same. For now she's only going to use it for cashing her check and to learn how to balance a checkbook.

She's still making mistakes along the way, but is learning from them. She quit her previous job in anger over her paycheck missing hours, which my wife and I explained will make it very hard to get that resolved. We also explained that whenever you are working hourly, you need to keep your own record of what your working, just in case of problems like this.

Welcome Chicago Tribune Readers!

2008-10-25T01:00:00.000-07:00

Thank you for visiting my blog from our story. I hope you will find some interesting items in this blog. We're currently planning on getting rid of the credit card and misc debts by February. If you want to help us a bit, click on the paypal link below to donate a $1.

Please post your questions about getting out of debt and I will answer them to the best of my ability.

Heating with Wood Update

2008-10-24T17:33:00.000-07:00

I've learned quite a bit the past couple of weeks with us using the wood stove. Here's a few of them:

- Always on the lookout for more. It's like an addiction where your always looking for your next fix. I've added to my Google Reader a watch from Craigslist for firewood in my area. In addition, as I drive home I watch out for wood I can put in my trunk. What I pick today though won't be good to be used until a year from now.

- It's going to take a lot of wood to keep us warm. Today we did not use any wood until the evening, but we're using on average 10-15 pieces/day and we're not into the coldest times yet. I don't know how long what we have will last, even though we got a lot.

- There are so many little tricks with starting and keeping a fire going.

- The blowers they sell are not worth it, a ceiling or box fan does just fine. We did not buy one, but the only positive items I've heard about them are from the people selling them. If it was an insert, then it would be useful.

Any other tips you have?

What I've Learned From PF Blogging

2008-10-14T16:08:00.000-07:00

I'm being interviewed tomorrow for the Chicago Tribune, so I figured I would write up what I've learned from PF blogging and reading other's PF blogs.

Increase my income

In the past 8 months alone my salary has increased by 43%. This took planning on my part (focusing on an area of expertise that pays well) and being willing to ask for more (told my current employer the amount I wanted to make when I started and negotiated a 6 month review for more money). I don't think I would have gotten where I am career wise without PF blogs causing me to think about these things.

Besides my salary, we increased our income by taking in roommates. A little over a year ago we had 4 rooms rented out, bringing in $1,400/month. That's like working a full-time job making $8/hr. We're down to 3 roommates at $1,000/month, but even that is $5.80/hr full-time.

Decrease my spending

We still need to do some work on this, but have streamlined our budget quite a bit. For a while our entertainment budget was down to $30/month. If we lived in a smaller place that we couldn't rent out rooms, I would have had us move closer to my job(s) to cut down our gas costs and housing costs.

We've been learning how to garden in order to reduce our grocery bills. We also started canning big-time in order to do the same. This year it was a bit expensive due to needing to get equipment, but next year our costs should be minimal.

The wood stove, insulation, and storm doors were also done to reduce our heating bills. We will see this winter if we were successful and if we need to make more changes to cut our costs.

Learn from my mistakes

I've made quite a few mistakes over the years (hence the reason we're working our way out of debt). Those lessons though have helped me make less damaging mistakes. For example:

I looked at where our debts came from and what can prevent them from occurring again. That taught me to pursue health insurance options, use cash when we notice our spending getting excessive, and not buy on credit.
When I shop for something that is going to be in our house for a while, I study it to see how durable it is. When picking out tools for our wood stove, I picked the ones that were single pieces of metal since those with joints can break easily. We started our research on the wood stove 6 months back.
I review how close we were to the previous month's budget and make a new budget based on that.

What have you learned from my PF blog or other PF blogs?

Cheap Menu for 1

2008-10-14T13:46:00.000-07:00

With roommates that are just learning how to shop for themselves, my wife created a sample 1 week menu for them. The concept behind it is low cost, easy cooking in large sizes so that they will have leftovers to take to work, as well as having a basic breakfast of cereal with milk or OJ. Most of the prices are from our local Aldi's, but chicken is cheaper at the local fruit market by us.

The following items wouldn't be bought every week, but could be stretched:

Milk (depends how much you drink each day)
Cereal (stretch to 10 days)
Rice (stretch to 3-4 weeks)
Laundry Soap (depends how many clothes you get dirty)

Optional additions:

Fresh/canned fruit
Margarine
Spices
Ramen Soup instead of Canned Soup

Recipes:

Spaghetti & Veggies:

- Cook spaghetti following box directions
- Warm up can of veggies on stove or in microwave
- Add sauce to spaghetti
- Use slice of bread to clean your plate

Food Groups: Starch, Vegetable

Mac & Cheese, Chicken & Veggies:

- Cook mac & cheese following box directions
- Warm up can of veggies on stove or in microwave
- Cook chicken in a pan or in the oven, using salt/pepper or Italian dressing if available.

Food Groups: Dairy, Starch, Vegetable, Protein

Stir Fry:

- Cook rice following directions on package
- With a little margarine or oil, fry your frozen/canned vegetables with some soy sauce
- If you have chicken, cook with your vegetables

Food Groups: Starch, Vegetable, Protein (optional)

Soup & Veggie:

- Cook soup following directions, but add some of your frozen vegetables to it to stretch the soup out.

Food Groups: Starch, Vegetable

October Budget

2008-10-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

We drafted our budget a bit late this month due to the wood stove project consuming our time (and money). Here's where we are sitting:

Expenses:

$1130 Mortgage
$125 Car Gas
$125 Food
$240 Utilities
$220 Mrs. Student Loans
$70 Mr. Student Loans
$95 Life Insurance
$40 Daughter's Health Insurance
$250 Dentist Visits
$60 Fun Money (remaining of mine, my wife used hers up and I used part of mine)
Total: $2355

Income:
$1650 Day Job
$750 Rental Income
Total: $2400

Our dentist amount is an estimate, we have not been taking care of ourselves properly and have needed some deep cleanings and cavities taken care of. The rest of the expenses are pretty self-explanatory.

Regarding the rental income, that number is very up in the air. Currently every roommate is behind on their rent almost 2 months each. One started a new job today getting paid better than before (and more hours), so she will be able to get caught up by the end of the month. One quit her job last week and does not have anything currently in sight (we're concerned that we may have to ask her to leave). The last one didn't budget his money well over the summer prior to moving in with us and is struggling, but is working hard to catch up.

Garden Results

2008-10-09T05:17:00.000-07:00

The judges are still out tallying everything and we have a few last-minute stragglers, but here are the highlights:

Freezer:

- 35 lbs of green beans
- 50 peppers worth (some whole, some cut)
- 1 & 1/2 gallon worth of breaded eggplant (which is disappearing fast)
- 6 gallons of whole tomatoes (for stews)
- 1 gallon blueberries

Basement:
- 32 qt Spaghetti Sauce (number fluctuates based upon use and production)
- 29 qt Tomato Soup
- 12 qt Apple Sauce + 10/2 qt for Christmas gifts
- 1 1/2 qt Grape Leaves
- 4/2 qt Mulberry Jam (gave a fair amount away during the summer, have some in fridge)
- 9 qt Pickles (also disappearing fast)
- 1 qt Blueberry Syrup
- 22 1/2 qt Tomato Juice (remains after making Spaghetti Sauce, use in place of vegetable broth)
- 3 qt Apple Juice
- 11 qt Misc Soups (Celery, Vegetable Broth, etc)
- 27 qt Apple Pie Filling (We were up to 30, but been using them)
- 5 + 4/2 qt Salsa

Items Learned:

- Less tomato plants and more other plants (eg: Eggplant & Cucumbers).

- Put apple sauce into pint containers instead of quart. We don't go through it fast enough and we had 1/2 a jar go bad already in the fridge.

- Next year we'll be getting a de-seeder for the mulberries so we can harvest more and make more jam.

- During the time your jarring and 2 weeks afterwards, check your jars every other day to make sure none lost their seal. I just checked and I think we lost a jar or two of the misc soups put down last week.

- Don't be afraid to pick the grape leaves in the spring. We were not successful growing grapes, so I'm just going to focus on growing leaves instead and see about picking grapes from a neighbor that let their grapes go to waste.

Now that we have plenty of jars and shelves to hold them downstairs, next year's costs are going to go down.

Wood Stove Installed, Total Project $2,200

2008-10-08T16:44:00.000-07:00

Our garden is almost done with, so I'll be coming back very soon. In the meantime, here's an update.

This past year we had 5 trees in our back yard. They prevented us from growing any food in our back yard and were a safety hazard to our house. We had them removed earlier in the year and split the wood and it's been sitting in our back yard. With all of the wood, we needed a wood stove or fireplace insert.

The original quotes we got were in the $4-5K range with them doing everything. Our budget couldn't afford that, so we found ways to do it cheaper. We had a chimney sweep clean our chimney (cost $110) and let us know if the project was feasible (wood stove yes, insert no). We bought a liner and wood stove from Menards (total cost $1,200). We also purchased slate, firecode drywall, mortar, and grout for the floor (total cost $200) and my wife installed the flooring. I tried to get on the roof to install the liner myself, but my fear of heights prevented me from doing so. We called the chimney sweep and he installed the liner & patched the chimney for $550.

Items learned:

- If the chimney sweep had bought the liner from his suppliers, we could have cut a bit off in the price. It can't hurt to ask, even if you think it will be more.

- Having the chimney sweep install the liner was well worth the cost (possible injury would have been more than the cost to have him install it, plus there were difficulties that only he would have known how to resolve).

- When getting quotes for services, make sure you get a set cost. When we were calling around for a chimney sweep, several of the quotes said the price could change based upon how difficult it was to clean. We went with the one that provided a fixed cost, so we could know exactly how much we were going to spend.

- Will keep track of how much wood we use exactly this year so that we can purchase/locate enough for next year's winter.

- Will be looking for a supplier of wood that will keep our costs below those of natural gas.

- I'm estimating it will take us 3-4 years to recoup our costs, but there is a value in enjoying a nice fire when it's cold outside.

Expected Criticism: I know with debts outstanding, we should be focused on that instead of having a wood stove installed. This winter it should reduce our heating costs by $500-1000 and additional reductions later. We will be keeping an eye on our expenses the next few months and start hitting the debts hard again. Sometimes life is a little more than just getting out of debt...

Garden Purgatory

2008-08-30T10:45:00.000-07:00

If I believed in purgatory, my garden would be pretty close to it. It is what has been keeping me away from blogging this past month (as well as work taking me away). Every day we pick at least a pound of green beans, a pound of cherry tomatoes, enough basil for cooking and 15 pounds of regular tomatoes. Every week we've been picking some eggplant, peppers, cucumbers & broccoli. Almost every night we've been making either spaghetti sauce or tomato soup or just freezing them.

Our lettuce I've decided to just let die, with all of the tomatoes it's been hard to keep up on them. Our chives didn't do too well this year, enough for a little bit of flavor but nothing beyond that. Our corn did not do too well either. Cantaloupe produced a little bit, but I've been having problems with neighborhood kids stealing them. Celery and leeks are doing well. We've got some new Kohlrabi growing and will be ready in a few weeks.

I think the hardest of it all has been the cherry tomatoes. We planted way too many of them and they are the most time consuming since you can't just let them sit for a day, otherwise they start bursting on the vine. Next year we will do 2 or 3 plants only of cherry, not the dozen or so I did this year.

My favorites have been the peppers & eggplants & basil. They have just needed a bit of watering, can survive a few days being ignored. Overall, the garden has been a success and we've learned a lot.

July Net Worth +$1239 & August Budget

2008-08-03T14:39:00.000-07:00

July Net Worth +$1,239

It was a slow month on the net-worth front. We took care of 1 small debt outstanding. We built up our cash reserves so that we can tackle 1 last credit card remaining (I can't wait for the day, it seems like it's dragging on forever). We consolidated my student loans down to 4.375% as well, which will help in the coming years. It is now lower than our mortgage, meaning we'll pay down our mortage before it. The unplanned expenses this past month includes some co-pays, oil change, and some maintenance supplies for the house.

August Budget

We're trying to go bare-bone this month so we can take care of 2 items soon (if the court case goes quickly). We're itching for a fireplace insert in the living room and getting rid of the last credit card.

$1130 Mortgage
$250 Car Gas
$250 Groceries
$232 Utilities
$200 Fun Money
$55 Cell-Phone
$40 Health Insurance (Daughter)
$220 Student Loans
$95 Life Insurance
$20 Oil Change
$75 Anniversary

I've Been Gone A While...

2008-07-06T13:25:00.000-07:00

I have been avoiding a major issue, which has been taking someone to court for $2100. I just finished printing out all the documents related to the case so I can file this week. Out of my avoidance of that, I've been avoiding my blog.

Things have also been busy over here with me out of town for a week on a missions trip and our garden in full force. I've been having a salad almost every day since Memorial Day weekend, plenty of green beans & peas, large Kohlrabi, spinach, radishes and onions. Right now we're in green beans, onions, wrapping up peas, lettuce, cucumbers almost ready and tomatoes in a week. We also made a gallon of Mulberry jam.

In addition we had some problems with our city complaining about all the firewood we had in our yard. We rented a splitter for 2 days and stacked it. We now have it all covered in tarps and in nice piles, which has satisfied them.

I had a few slip-ups with one bank account we haven't been using much, which I closed yesterday so it wouldn't happen again. Most of the fees I was able to get reversed.

We haven't yet fully taken care of the Capital One due to the issues of the $2100, but we finished up our Menards (and a small $300 one) this weekend. Here's where we're standing on getting things resolved:

8/1: Capital One ($2800)
9/1: 1/2 of our misc debts (medical mainly)
10/1: Fireplace installed for the winter. We're looking at a high-efficiency model to replace most of our heating needs this winter (5 trees worth of wood split)
11/1: Second 1/2 of our misc debts

If we get the settlement soon, then everything will get moved up a month. I'm also looking at a raise in September (just had one a month ago, but with the cost of health insurance, it ended up breaking a bit below what I had before). I'm pushing at expanding the marketing material at work to focus on specific industries, developing standard tools to automate the development of solutions, and improving my sales skills to better help close the larger projects.

Troubles in Consultant Paradise

2008-05-20T04:40:00.000-07:00

Remember that great-paying consultant gig I had last month? This month it's not so great. At the beginning of the month I quit it, which I posted on about here. I was first told on the 4th he was going to mail the payment that week, then on the 9th was told the check was on his desk and his wife was in the hospital delivering #4. Nothing then heard from him, so I e-mailed on the 15th.

I get a response on the 17th that one of the controls that I had worked on did not work and he was not going to pay thousands of dollars for a control that did not work. After further discussion, he did not try it out in the past 2 weeks. I did not say it, but the payment was for the hours I had put in working on a dozen different controls.

Yesterday we came to an agreement that once that control is working that he will pay me through Google Checkout by credit card (and pay me the fees associated with it). I e-mailed him this morning the specific features that the control needs to meet in order to be considered working and that after it meets those requirements and he has reviewed it, payment would be sent and work between us is complete. Once I get his confirmation, I'll wrap it up tonight and hopefully we'll be done with this by the end of the week.

Oh the joys of doing everything you can to get out of debt!

Garden Update

2008-05-17T04:44:00.000-07:00

Wild fruiting tomatoes growing in my yard: Last year we had a tomato sprout up in our back yard that we didn't plant and it fruited, they were nice small round fruits. This year I have probably 50 of them sprouted up all around my yard. I first thought they were weeds, but the leaves are tomato like. I let some of them grow and I'm starting to have fruit growing. I'm keeping the seeds to these babies! If you have an idea for a name for a tomato plant that fruits naturally by Mid-May in Chicago weather, let me know.

Rest of tomatoes: We still have 32 plants, but only enough room for maybe a dozen more. I'm going to see if neighbors want them and then put the rest on Craigslist.

Beans: Sprouting everywhere! Bug eating them, suspect it's the flea beetle I've been fighting elsewhere in the yard

Radishes: Still fighting the flea beetle, going to mail in a request for a refund on the bug killer spray.

Hardening Off: I've learned this year how important hardening off is, otherwise I get plants that lose leaves outside from the shock. I'm hoping I have an OK garden this year.

IRS Rebate Received & Waiting for Other

2008-05-13T14:39:00.000-07:00

I checked our bank account this morning and it has been received ($1330). It is going straight to Capital One next week for our settlement payment with them. Can't wait to say on the 21st that they're no longer in my wallet taking my money.

The one thing that may put a hamper on settling is I am waiting on getting paid for the programming work I had done on the weekend. I spoke to the guy a week ago and the check was on his desk waiting to get mailed (his wife had just had a baby, so he wasn't in the office for 2 days). I haven't heard from him since and been checking my mail daily, e-mailed him on Thursday night and no response yet. That check is for $2100.

For now it's nice to see our bank account at almost $3K. Too bad it'll be back down to $0 in a couple of days.

Garden Update

2008-05-10T14:41:00.000-07:00

I'm having a wonderful day over here, been outside since around 8 AM playing in the yard. Here's what's been going on with the garden:

- Finished putting up fence, need to put in a couple of posts but overall it's up.

- My mother-in-law is visiting and she purchased for us 105 tomato cages for the garden, I have put out about a third of them already.

- Planted 30 tomato and 8 dill plants. I'm only starting to see what 150 tomato plants will look like and I'm getting scared. Even spending just a minute on a plant every day will be 2 & 1/2 hours. I'm thinking I'll have to plan a rotation and visit each plant every 3-5 days.

- Planted rest of the peppers and finished tearing up the front yard.

- My mother-in-law also bought us some strawberry plants since I killed most of the ones we had planted due to not having mulch around them. The ones she bought have a bunch of leaves and should take hold. Planted them and put down mulch around them.

- Spinach looks like it will be ready in 2 weeks, getting bigger every day.

- Been fighting flea beetles on my radishes, sprayed with insecticidal soap.

- Peas and green beans have been doing great.

- Grapes are starting to form fruit, pulled some off so that we get nice-sized fruit this year (haven't taken care of it before, so it only produced leaves).

- Onions are at green-onion size, I'm suspecting we'll have plenty once the tomatoes are ready to be picked (if not sooner).

- Planted cilantro outside.

- Started some cantaloupe and parsley inside. The cantaloupe are almost breaking through the soil already.

I Quit (High-Pay Night Job)

2008-05-08T04:44:00.000-07:00

The past month my weekends have been rough helping a startup with a web application for their first client. The project is such a mess that only this past weekend I found out that 4 other developers quit working on it in the past month, leaving just me and the manager. Basic items such as being able to identify who the currently logged in user is are broken. Other problems included the manager breaking items I had worked on every week.

All of this means I'm back to working 1 job, though my garden can be a job at times (fighting flea beetles). I did take the first certification test for MCTS and passed this past Saturday. The next test will be harder and I have already started studying for that as well.

The pay was great for the job, but I've learned well through this that sometimes all the money in the world don't make a job worthwhile to do.

Shopping for Cookware

2008-05-04T04:40:00.000-07:00

I knew it would happen sooner or later, I was hoping for a September time-frame. My wife was cooking a couple days ago and the handle came off while she was cleaning the sauce pan. Another sauce pan is now leaking at the handle and I suspect it's going to have the same fate.

Here's our choices:

1. One of our roommates has a set in their room they brought with them, we all use in the house (but I'd hate to damage their set).

2. Purchase a couple of cheap pieces to tide us over. Our current set we bought 3 years ago from IKEA.

3. Purchase an entire set with 10 year warranty. I'm looking at the Simply Calphalon Stainless 10-Piece Cookware Set for $139.99. They are the 18/10 stainless steel kind I've heard recommended, though they have the aluminum core versus copper.

4. Purchase a high-end set with a lifetime warranty. These normally are in the $300+ range, have the copper core instead.

For now I'm leaning toward a mix of #1 and #3. If I get paid for my work this weekend quickly, then I'd be looking at us purchasing #3 at the end of the week. If they're slow at paying, I'd be looking at #3 next month and we'll go with #1 until then.

One interesting item I did comparing the 10 year warranty and the lifetime warranty was saying "If I had $300 today, what would be the best purchase in the long run?". I took the difference between the two options ($160 on the low end), decided to put it toward something making or saving 6% (i.e. my mortgage) and figured out how much I would have after 10 years. For the Saving 6%, I came up with $96 after 10 years (and my original $160). For the investing at 6%, I came up $126.54 (and my original $160). At a higher investment rate (8%), I could buy another set every 10 years without touching the principal and having extra leftover ($45).

Garden Update

2008-05-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

Our garden is coming along very nicely. The peas have grown nice and healthy, the spinach looks like it will be ready to eat in 3 weeks, the green beans and radishes sprouted, Brussels Sprouts and Kohlrabi and Celery took well to being transplanted. We even had the asparagus try to produce a head (very small one, but a head still), though we cut it so we would have better production next year. Some of the onions are 6 inches tall already. The pepper plants that were mushy have taken well to being outside.

Planted This Past Week: Quite a bit has been planted this past week, just this morning I planted some basil, 3 types of cucumbers, and 2 types of beans.

Planting This Week Outside: 4 Broccoli plants (stragglers of the group), Dill, Tomatoes (both did not get outside due to concerns of frost).

Still to Plant: Parsley, Cantaloupe, Corn, Peppers, Eggplant (probably all around Mother's Day)

Work To do: Our front area has about 25 sq feet left to be torn up, will be working on today and Sunday. Our fences are up in the front, will be putting up the fence for the back probably on Sunday. We're almost to maintenance mode for the garden/farm.

Problems: The lettuce crop pretty much is decimated from the frost we've been having, I'm using it as a learning experience and I'm just planting more seeds every week to see who will win.

Update: Details on Our Debts

2008-04-30T17:31:00.000-07:00

About 6 months ago, I posted details on our debts. I figure it's about time to see which ones are still remaining and which ones are taken care of since then (or about to be).

Remaining:

$308 - Dish Network
$368 - Chiropractor bill
$400 - Foot Dr bill
$401 - Ambulance
$435 - Pacemaker checkups
$517 - Hospital Emergency Visit
$685 - Hospital Emergency Visit
$2187 - My Stupid Mistake
$804 - Bank Fees for closed account
$3629 - Menards (started settlement, will be done by 7/3/08)

Taken Care Of:

$1591 - Cingular canceled account balance
$5333 - Discover
$5774 - Home Depot
$6919 - Capital One (in 3 weeks will be taken care of)

As you can see, I haven't been doing the Dave Ramsey method of tackling debts. I did that initially (hence nothing smaller than $300), but these bigger ones have been more of an annoyance (and higher potential for going to court). If I keep working on Saturdays, we'll see everyone above done by the middle of July, a month and 1/2 sooner than I had originally wanted.

May Budget & April Net Worth +$1,827

2008-04-30T17:17:00.000-07:00

April:

The one budget-buster this past month was the car. We ended up not settling on Capital One and put the money towards the car. In the end, it was an ok month with us having a few NSF fees as well (bad communication).

May:

Income:

1330 IRS
1000 Rent
3434 Weekday Job
3000 Weekend Job

Total: $8764

Expenses:

200 Mrs. Student Loans
110 Mr. Student Loans
1130 Mortgage
77 Natural Gas
50 Water
41 AT&T
120 Electric
200 Car Gas
200 Toiletries & Groceries
55 Cell Phone
95 Life Insurance
200 Our Fun Money
130 House Cleaning
860 Menards (1st payment, two more to go of $760 each on June 3rd & July 3rd)
5100 Capital One
146 Savings

Total: $8764

The items that are different this month are the last 4 items. We decided to go with a once a month cleaning for the harder stuff (vacuum/mop/etc) so that I can work on the weekends. Menards we have made payment arrangements for a settlement. Capital One we made a starter $100 payment yesterday and the rest will be on the 20th. Cash-flow wise, everything is looking good, we're just going to have to focus on communicating.

"Free" Landscape Hooks

2008-04-28T02:50:00.000-07:00

I started putting down landscaping fabric in our back yard to help with weeding our garden and read the directions about needing landscaping hooks in order to secure it down. I didn't want to spend the money on something that will probably be flimsy plastic clips that will break or come up, so here's what we did at our house:

1. Grabbed 50 old metal hangers from a previous roommate (there's the free. Often you can find someone trying to get rid of them on freecycle as well).

2. Using a pair of wire-cutters, cut right below the twist on either side so you have the hook removed.

3. Cut in the middle of the bottom half.

Now you have 2 landscaping hooks! The best way to use them is to put the non-straight edge in first as far as you can, then put the other part in as far as you can. Depending on your soil, you may end up with a few inches of the metal showing, so make sure to space their entrance into the material far apart enough. This can be done while watching one of your favorite shows since it requires very little brainpower.

First Draft May Budget

2008-04-25T22:45:00.000-07:00

I need your help on my May budget. It is looking like such a crazy month (on the income side), I'm going to put up a draft here for you to look at and then I'll post another on Wednesday at the end of the month. Here we go:

Income:

1330 IRS
1000 Rent
3434 Weekday Job
3000 Weekend Job

Total: $8764

Expenses:

200 Mrs. Student Loans
110 Mr. Student Loans
1130 Mortgage
161 Natural Gas
50 Water
41 AT&T
120 Electric
200 Car Gas
200 Toiletries & Groceries
55 Cell Phone
95 Life Insurance
200 Our Fun Money

Total: $2562

Debt Snowball: $6202

Menards: Start settlement of $640 per month for 3 months.

Capital One: I would have started this one this month, but $1500 was delayed coming from my weekend job, so it's coming in May instead. I'm going to see about settling with them for $1000/week for 4 weeks.

Padding: $1562 as padding into savings.

In June we'll be starting to tackle our smaller debts (those under $1K). Those are the debts listed as Other on our NetworthIQ profile. What do you think?

Bank Fees This Month

2008-04-25T04:13:00.000-07:00

These past 2 weeks have not been good on the amount of money we have in the bank. With problems at the post office of returning checks and miscommunication between my wife and I, we have had a NSF charge on 2 bank accounts. We're going to have to probably increase our cushion (this month there was almost none) to prevent problems like this. We also resolved the communication problems, I had been keeping a fair amount in our primary account, so my wife assumed it was OK for her to charge the things in our budget on the debit card.

Garden Update

2008-04-23T06:30:00.000-07:00

Here's where we're at:

Sq Feet with plants: 157
Sq Feet prepared for plants: 63
Sq Feet to prepare and plant: 566

What's Planted: Strawberries, Lettuce, Spinach, Peas, Onions, Chives, Leeks, Asparagus, Peppers, Garlic, Green Beans, Cilantro, 4 Tomato plants in pots

Planting This Week: Peppers, Onions, Brussels Sprouts, Broccoli, Tomatoes, Dill, Flowers

Planting Later: Carrots/Radishes, Eggplant, Celery, Basil, Kohlrabi, Cucumbers, Flowers, Cantalope, Tomatoes

What's Growing: Peas have sprouted up, spinach took very well to the ground, lettuce is taking root, chives and leeks made it through transplanting.

Decisions to make: It's been hard to find time to meet with the guy from church that has the tiller, my schedule is packed (even on Saturday). I'm thinking of using a shovel for the front 90 sq feet remaining to tear up and then just laying down landscaping fabric in the back.

Money spent: We're back to spending, purchased fencing to enclose areas from neighborhood animals (and kids). Spotted a possum checking out my strawberry bed on Saturday morning. Also purchased landscaping fabric for the back.

Item Missing: Wedding ring is in the dirt, small area we were working in last night, going to contact friend that has high-end metal detector for their help. Always remember to work with gloves or take any rings off.

I'm waiting for next year's garden, it will be a whole lot easier!

New Work, New Decisions

2008-04-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

It appears that my temporary work from a week ago is going to be regular work. They just received major funding to continue on the current project and another big project, so they're going to need someone and are liking my work. I'm planning on doing it every Saturday for 8-10 hours and then during the week for emergency fixes only.

The reason why the new work is causing new decisions is because of the pay. It is more than double my normal day pay (and when we worked late this past Sunday night, it was 4x my normal day pay). That is where the new decisions come in...

When you are able to bring in $65-100/hour, is it worth it every week to spend 3-4 hours cleaning the house yourself? You could have hired someone to do the house work while you worked 1 hour. What about ordering that $5 pizza so that you or your wife don't need to work in the kitchen every so often?

We decided on the following:

- No more chicken stock making: It has become time consuming saving up bits of chicken, keeping them organized, then making stock out of it. In the end it probably doesn't save much either.

- Housecleaning: My wonderful wife some days tries to be superwoman and get more done than her body can physically. She has bad feet, a bad back and a pacemaker, so it's not a pretty sight to see when she has pushed herself. We have decided for now it is worthwhile to hire someone to do some of the heavy cleaning once a week (vacuum the house, wash the linoleum floors, scrub the tub and toilet). Most of these have been my responsibility, but with the second/third jobs I've had in the past, it's been hard to get them done.

- Ignore price on fresh fruits & vegetables: My wife has been working at losing weight, but the challenge has been getting fruits & veggies that she likes being on sale. My view on it is that one of our priorities should be our health, so if something is 2x the normal sale price, get it if it will help you.

We know this is a season of our lives and that the increase in pay should not cause us to spend more. If spending a little bit more though will truly increase the opportunity for us to spend time together and doing the work God has put us here to do, I'm willing to consider spending a little more. It though is something to always keep an eye on.

Garden Update

2008-04-16T02:51:00.000-07:00

Today's the day for lots of planting (for my wife). My work is taking me away for this beautiful day, but I've given my wife a list of plants and where she can plant them. She also spent several hours yesterday moving rocks out of a bed next to the house (sitting most of the time).

Planting Today: Spinach, Lettuce, Leeks, Chives, Peas, Thyme

Planting This Weekend: Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, Kohlrabi, Peppers, Eggplant, Onions, Tomatoes, Dill, Asparagus, and possibly others

Work This Weekend: Hopefully the guy I know that has a tiller will be free to come over soon (and that we'll have enough dry time to do the tilling). Otherwise I'll have to look into doing it with the shovel and pitchfork, which will not be fun (did about 50 sq feet a week ago).

Problems: Some of the pepper plant leaves started getting mushy, I think it is because they are on the edge of the lighting and we've been watering them too much. I'm hoping that getting them outdoors will help them. I'm also having troubles figuring out who are Brussels Sprouts and who are Kohlrabi. The problem is they are both cabbage-like and I've planted so much. Same situation with the leeks & chives. Next year each tray will get 2 labels (#R, #L) and all info will be put into a spreadsheet.

Successes: It appears that the plants are growing very slowly, but it helps when I'm not paying attention to them every day. Our leeks & chives are over 6 inches tall and an inch away from the lights. The Roma tomato plants we started early have many leaves.

Financial: I'm deciding now whether to sell some of our plants or not. I'm thinking of try to plant everything we can with the space we have, then selling the excess. I have been good staying away from looking at more plants, since I've got so many already.

Weekend of Work Blessing

2008-04-15T04:02:00.000-07:00

Last week in the back of my mind I had been mulling over our car purchase and how I would be able to settle with Capital One. Friday morning I looked at the numbers hard and it didn't look like I was going to be able to give them much this month unless some cash appeared out of nowhere. I logged into my local Craigslist site and searched for some computer gigs, found one that needed help for this past weekend and applied.

They accepted me, 22 and 1/2 hours worth of work over 2 days will bring us around a net of $1400 by the end of this week. Once the check is received I will be calling the Capital One creditor to settle with them. I consider this a blessing from God and has helped me even more to trust in Him for all my needs.

My Ethical Viewpoint

2008-04-15T03:55:00.000-07:00

A reader recently questioned indirectly my ethics, especially due to me making choices recently to tackle other items ahead of debt payments. Here's the points in no particular order:

- Tree removal versus Debt

Yes, for most situations removing trees in your property are luxuries. Here's our reasons besides the "nice to have done" point:

1. Safety: We had 2 trees that were within 15 feet of our house (and our neighbor's house). Like clockwork every July we have had huge limbs come off the trees (20+ feet). They had missed the houses in the past, but the only ones really left were aimed for the houses. I don't need a 5-10K repair bill because I wanted to stay focus on our debt obligations.

2. Timing: The better times to cut down trees is when there are no leaves on them. It speeds up the process, less brush, etc. That prevents us from paying more money.

3. Time of year discount: During the summer months, tree cutters are a lot more busy because that's when everyone thinks of their outside projects. By doing it now instead of right before the storm, it prevented us from paying more money later.

- Replacement car versus Debt

Yes, we are a 2 car family even though I'm the only one that goes to a job during the week. Here's the main reason we decided to replace my car instead of paying more to debt: My wife's emotional well-being. I know my wife, we have fought a couple rounds of depression together. I know that when she does not have a car at the house, she fights loneliness, feeling trapped, unable to get together with others. Say what you will, but my wife comes before any debt.

- Fun money versus Debt

Theoretically, our fun money should be at $0 since we made prior obligations to our creditors. It's a great idea, but in real life it doesn't work too well.

1. We need to keep running the race. I tried the $0 fun money, it was not worth it. I'd much rather work an extra hour or two than be in that situation.

2. Our "free" entertainment items break down sometimes. My wife has her sewing machine that has brought her many days of entertainment, I have my computer. In the past couple of months we have had a power supply need to be replaced on my computer and some parts replaced on her sewing machine. The money came from our fun money.

- Debt settlement

I view it ethically ok to make settlement offers. Here's when:

1. When the alternative is bankruptcy. Almost 2 years ago I lost my full-time job and started working at Taco Bell. They don't pay much, but we had a whole lot of debt. Everyone was saying I should file for bankruptcy since I was unable to pay. I'd much rather give them something than nothing.

2. The debt has become "old". During that rough period of time when we couldn't pay, most of our creditors ended up selling our debt to collectors. The collectors paid pennies on the dollar in the hopes of collecting something more in the future.

3. They are offering settlements or are willing to listen to one.

4. Bringing the account "current" would be equal to the settlement amount. Because of the many months we could not pay anything, the amount to become current kept growing. At this point in time, if I asked them how much to be current, they would pretty much say as much as the settlement amount.

5. You don't have the money in the bank to pay them everything they want.

- Not making monthly payments on all debts

1. To be current is impossible: We went through a time where we could barely pay the mortgage, let alone any debts. Because we couldn't make payments back then, the amount to bring these accounts current is astronomical.

2. What we could give them would not be enough: This goes back to #1 regarding being current. I've only had 1 creditor be reasonable regarding paying them something monthly until we could do more, which we have done fairly consistently the whole time I've had this blog (except for 1 month, which was really tight).

PS: I've been mulling this post over for over a week, there's probably more I could have put in, but I'm wanting to get this up.

Garden Update

2008-04-06T05:56:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit reluctant to post about my garden, since things have been going VERY slow with it (my sprouts have seemed to stop growing). Here's the updates:

Planted Recently: 2 types of cucumber seeds last weekend indoors.

Failures: My sprouts seem to have decided to stop growing. The only item I can think is that the bay window I have them on is not warm enough, while having them above the vents and in the laundry room was. We have been now putting a small amount of fertilizer on them. The parsley did not sprout (learned I had to put boiling water on them to crack the seeds, will do so when I plant outside). I also attempted pansies, but they failed big time (had little sprouts and then they wilted). My peas were a bit old, so I only had 8 out of 130 sprout. I also tried cumin, but did not sprout at all (from my kitchen).

Successes: Last year I had a hard time with cilantro, until I read you need to crush the seeds in order to make them grow. Did that this year and they have grown great. My oregano that I started around Christmas time is a huge bush about a foot tall and a foot wide. The only problem with that success is that it thinks it's fall/winter, so it keeps flowering.

Outside: We planted tulips last fall and they are starting to come up. It was a pleasant surprise when my indoor stuff is just standing still.

This weekend: We are still working on the tree situation, I had them leave the brush in order to save money on them chipping it as well as to have wood chips for our garden. My father is over for the weekend and we're about done with that. Afterwards, we will be tilling the ground so that I can start planting some stuff outside (additional peas that I bought this year, spinach, some tomato plants, lettuce, carrots, onions, strawberries, asparagus). My wife has been picking up the trash and moving rocks out of last year's garden bed.

Bought: I'm still in crazy buying mode, bought strawberry plants, asparagus, cucumber, and peas. The only items left to really buy this year is tomato support which I plan to do at the end of the month.

Sister's & My Car Situation

2008-04-03T11:34:00.000-07:00

I knew this would happen again, but didn't know when. My family has problems with cars, they buy too expensive of cars, they buy ones that they crash in a matter of months, or they buy ones when they don't even have a driver's license.

I called my sister yesterday since my dad had said she was not doing too well with her new position regarding pay (became a hair stylist at an upscale shop, was an assistant before). When I got her on the phone, she let me know her car was gone. I thought it first was stolen, but she explained that she was negotiating a payment plan since she was behind on the payments, had made a plan and was paying, but they came and took the car anyways. She owes about $8K on the car, it's worth about $3K and was starting to have problems.

I wish there was some magic smart pill I could give my family, but there is not (yet at least). Here's the advice I gave her:

- Buy a beater of a car for $500 (all she has in the bank).
- Save $200/month for 6 months. By that time the beater will be dead.
- Buy a better beater of a car for $1200 (from savings).
- Keep up the $200/month savings for a year, repeat cycle in a year for a $3000 car (from savings and selling the previous car).

I doubt she'll listen, but I tried all I could.

Regarding my beater, it is dead. The brakes are shot and it's not worth pumping more money into this thing. We haven't made a decision yet, but I'm leaning towards us holding off Capital One a bit longer and us buying a $2K car with 75-100K miles on it. For now, I'm driving my wife's car to work and back, while she stays at home.

Surprized Bank Teller & Local Crown Seminar

2008-04-02T11:19:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday when I stopped at the bank to make a deposit and withdraw some cash, the teller looked at the check I was depositing several times. It was a $750 check from some programming work I had done. I had held onto it for a few weeks since I had not had a chance to stop at the bank.

She commented about the check being a month old based on the date on the check, a little surprised. I responded back that I hadn't needed the money and I had stopped living paycheck to paycheck. That response surprised her even more and the tone in her voice was a little wishful to be in that place. She ended up mustering a "Well, that's a good thing."

It's still a little weird not being in that situation of living paycheck to paycheck. On April 12th I'll be helping fellow members of my church (Harvest Bible Chapel of New Lenox) through a 1 day seminar with Crown Financial Ministries to learn about God's way of handling money. If you know anyone in the southern suburbs of Chicago that would benefit from it, I am willing to pay for 3 people to go ($20/person includes lunch).

April Budget & March Net Worth +$6

2008-03-29T01:38:00.000-07:00

We are just squeaking by with $6 positive growth. There are several reasons to that...The tree removal ended up being higher than budget for 1 ($1500 total after including $200 to have someone else cut up the wood to smaller pieces). My wife's sewing machine needed some long-needed repair, so we got that taken care of this month as well. I also have only been working 1 (one) job. You heard that right folks, I brought myself down to 1 job.

April Income:

$2150 Bank Accounts
$1000 Rent (2 roommates at $350/month, 1 at $300/month)
$3434 Day Job

April Expenses:

Mrs. Student Loans 200
Car Gas 200
Mrs. Fun Money 100
Mr. Fun Money 100
Toiletries & Groceries 190
Natural Gas 77
Cell Phone 55
Mortgage 1130
Water 60
Home Depot 1180
Capital One 2500
Mr. Student Loans 110
Electric 105
Life Ins 95
Wood Chipper 200
Vet Visit 150

This month will be the last payment for Home Depot. Woohoo!

We'll be starting on making a major payment to Capital One as well this month. I'm going to call them on Monday to negotiate a settlement probably around $5K, where we'll do half in April and half in May. It's pretty nice to be able to live off our savings and rental income, therefore send all my paychecks towards the debt.

I'm bouncing around regarding chipping the brush from the trees taken down last month. The tree folks of course were willing to cut all the brush up and haul it away, but I was wanting to keep it so I could have chips/mulch for my garden this year. I'm going to go look at a used chipper this weekend as well as price around renting one.

The vet visit is new this month as well. For a couple of weeks we had a cat hanging around our house because the kids in the neighborhood were feeding him. It was snowing last Saturday morning and I couldn't leave him out there in the cold. He was someone's pet at one time I suspect. We decided to keep him (even though I'm allergic), so we need to take him to the vet to get checked out.

Home Depot wants me back...

2008-03-18T05:02:00.000-07:00

And they're itching for my current e-mail address. They sent the account to collections and we are about 2/3 of the way paying them off (next month is the last 1/3). I received in the mail over the weekend a short letter from them saying that they want to e-mail me, but the address they have on file is not valid. No description of what was in the e-mail, just asking me to spend my time logging into their site so I can update it and they can probably start sending me junk.

Just what I want!

At the end of next month, I'll be calling them up to make sure they cancel my account. Seems like even if you stop paying them, they will want you back once your current.

A Few Paths To Choose

2008-03-16T04:19:00.000-07:00

With this year pretty much on auto-pilot for our finances (know the order debts are being paid off and when, income set for the rest of the year unless we add a new revenue stream), I've been thinking big time what is the path we go on after these CC and misc debts are paid off and we have $9K in our emergency fund. It's still a year away, but I figure now is the time to start planning. Here's the paths I see available:

- Pay down student loan and mortgage debt: This has a guaranteed return on investment of 6% overall. I know I really want to get our mortgage under 80% to get rid of the $71/month PMI, which will take $10K

- Invest in the stock market (eg: S&P 500): I forget the exact long-term average for S&P 500, but it's like 10% in the long-term.

- Build a business: We've got several ideas floating around over here that would require some, but not much money to get started. The chance for losses and gain are large.

- As my wife describes it, go back to our old ways and splurge. This has a guaranteed return on investment of 0% to -30%.

It's probably going to end up being a mix of the first 3, just finding the right balance will be the hard item. Our goal is retirement at 42, though theoretically I'll be halfway to retirement in a year (currently living off 50% of my day-job income, the other 50% is going to those debts right now).

Garden Update

2008-03-09T06:49:00.000-07:00

Lots going on over here since my last garden update, here's the latest:

3 trees brought down: We have a huge pile of brush for me to work on next weekend with a wood chipper and the pieces need to be cut into smaller pieces for our fireplace this coming winter, but they are now on the ground. Total cost to bring them down: $1300. It was a tough choice to do while we are trying to be gazelle intense about our debts, but if our garden in the back yard is going to go well this year, we needed them cleared out. This will help accelerate my plans in starting a garden business.

Planted Indoors: We planted the cilantro, cumin, and lettuce we had decided before. We also planted several varieties of tomatoes for us to try to sell in 6-8 weeks (250 plants).

Transplanted: Finished most of the transplanting, the only ones left to transplant are the lettuce from last week. Once they have sprouted, I'm stopping with transplanting. It takes too much work starting seeds in one container to move them to another container for not much benefit.

Looking Ahead: The next few weeks are going to be yard cleanup, most of the plants we can start indoors have been started. The rest we either need warm weather outside or plant directly in the ground. We should be getting some nice weather after today (40's and 50's).

Down to 3 Roommates

2008-03-07T04:25:00.000-08:00

This week has been a busy week for me with a new job (and I'm enjoying it a lot). We had decided a couple weeks back that a couple that has been living with us had to leave and they left at the beginning of this week with almost no warning. They didn't leave in the best of ways, but we are done with that chapter.

We also decided we are going to stay at 3 roommates only. This is a bit sooner than I was hoping for (June was my personal goal), but after this bad experience, we're going to limit to 3 roommates. This will allow us to have our daughter out of our bedroom and into her own room (she's almost 10 months old).

Last of all, one of our other roommates is moving out today, but we already have a semi-permanent replacement moving in on Monday. After she moves in, it's looking like we won't be changing roommates for another year. This will help with the sanity of the house. Our total rental income will be $1000/month ($350/m from 2, $300/m from 1).

Garden Update

2008-02-29T17:05:00.000-08:00

Last weekend was pretty busy for the garden, here's where we're at:

Planted Indoors: 131 Bush Peas, 5 Lettuce, 20 Leek, 20 Sweet Peppers, 20 Basil, 20 Brussel Sprouts, 20 Spinach, 20 Basil, 20 Dill, 20 Chives

Sprouted This Week: Spinach, Brussel Sprouts, Chives, Sweet Peppers

Purchased: I picked up some more seeds (it's an addiction I tell you), some seed sprouting mix, 4 more trays for the tomato plants I'll be selling.

Outside: We've had a lot of snow come down this week, hopefully we had the last of it. We're supposed to get warmer this weekend and melt it.

Transplanted: 19 lettuce plants transplanted successfully, already have 2 true leaves on them. Hope I can plant outside in three weeks with shelter.

Looking Ahead: Planting indoors 10 cilantro, 10 cumin, 5 lettuce seeds. Removing trees this week from our back yard.

March Budget & February Net Worth +$2,465

2008-02-29T05:23:00.000-08:00

February's net worth was lower than I anticipated. The item that reduced it was I worked less for a client than anticipated. In the coming months though it will grow even better with the new job I start on Monday.

March Budget:

I'm not going to list income here, because a problem we've got is that it is pretty unknown what it's going to be. we've got the last check with vacation time coming from my current job, we've got my next check from my new employer but don't know when that's coming, we've got 2 roommates moving out next month (we've got one possible replacement coming tonight to check out the place). All of those variables make the income situation uncertain. I know enough will come in the month to cover the expenses with enough time for them to cover it, so I'm not concerned.

Expenses:

Mrs. Student Loans 200
Car Gas 200
Mrs. Fun Money 100
Mr. Fun Money 100
Toiletries & Groceries 190
Natural Gas 77
Tree Removal 1300
Cell Phone 55
Mortgage 1130
Car Insurance 200
Water 60
Home Depot 1180
Capital One 100
Mr. Student Loans 110
Electric 150
Life Ins 95

The tree removal is new this month, we have 3 trees in our back yard that are a danger to our house and our neighbor's house. With spring coming, I'm wanting to do some more planting out back, but the trees need to go in order for us to do that.

Our fun money has been bumped up to $100/person, due to me spending more for garden-related items and my wife is wanting to purchase tickets for her parents to come visit at Mother's Day. We are very close to the prize of getting rid of this credit card debt and it's been hard on $30/month for entertainment. We did get rid of the dining out, which is now included in our fun money.

Our car insurance comes due this month, so it is included as well. It was $200 before, I suspect it will be either that much or lower. That is for 2 cars for 6 months, the best I have been able to find.

My student loans are going into repayment now, so they are included as well. I'm planning in July to lock their rate to a lower rate, saving us some on the interest.

Getting Tired of Other's Money Complaints

2008-02-27T04:58:00.000-08:00

I'm talking about "I can't afford..." or "Things keep getting more expensive..."

The first one, I can't afford, we hear from one of our roommates. Something my wife has taught me is that the word "can't" causes it to be true. You don't look for ways it can be done. As an example, my roommate was needing to get her prescription checked out and probably get it changed, but she only had enough for the week for food and rent. I offered to her that she could get the prescription done free if she did a mystery shop and she could get glasses online for pretty cheap. Her response: I want to keep my frame. She never asked me about the mystery shop and I don't believe she has gone yet because of the money issue.

The other one, things keep getting more expensive, I hear from many people. I'm sad to say it, but it's just like saying that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. When the SOP (standard operating procedure) is inflation, things cost more and more every year. You can choose to either complain about it or find a way to work around it. For example, food has gone up considerably. My solution: Grow a garden. Next, gas prices keep going up. My solution: Invest in the oil & gas industry, drive a car that is not a gas guzzler, reduce your driving, find alternative ways to get places.

The best solution I have for anyone complaining about any money issue: Be creative and make more money or cut your expenses. I went from working at Taco Bell to making $50K/yr in a year in my day job (yes, I had a degree that helped). At the same time, we have been working on multiple income streams over here (rental income, selling garden plants, mystery shopping, sewing services, custom programming, medical billing, etc). We've also looked at our expenses and cut them down dramatically.

If your able to do those two things, everything else in personal finance is easy from there.

4 Tree Quotes

2008-02-25T12:34:00.000-08:00

Here's the 4 tree quotes we have received to take down 3 trees in our back yard:

* $2700 turned to $2600: This was the first quote, the guy was originally starting at $2700 to take the brush but leave the wood, $2600 to leave everything. I told him for $100, just leave it. He offered then to take it away for the $2600. Was not very professional.

* $2400: This was the second quote we received, much more professional, though they would have cost more for them to leave the wood (they make money by chipping the wood and selling it).

* $1300: This one I talked with the owner of the business (he owns several businesses) in person on Saturday, we've been trying for a week to get his tree person to come out but the guy has been really sick. The $1300 is them just bringing it down to the ground, leaving it for me to cut up (or hire someone else to cut it up).

* $1900: This would be taking it all away.

I'm thinking of going with the $1300 route for getting it down to the ground (my main concern) and then I can probably hire someone for $10-20/hr to cut it all up and pile it alongside the house. For the stumps I'll rent a stump grinder for $100/day and take care of 5 stumps I have in the back yard (3 from these trees, 2 from trees I took down last year). In all, I think we can do this all for under $1700.

The removal of the trees will allow me to expand our garden plans to be around 800-1000 sq feet and get rid of some dangerous trees close to our house (and our neighbor's house).

25% Raise This Week

2008-02-22T18:57:00.000-08:00

I am scheduled to end my current day job next Friday, though my current boss talked to me and wanted to keep me on as a independent consultant for at least until they get my replacement, helping from home a couple of hours a week. My current pay there is $20/hr and when we first talked, that was the rate he was going to pay me as a consultant. I did some thinking on it and decided to be bold and talked to him today about wanting more money since my new employer will be paying me around $24/hr before benefits. We settled on my consulting rate of $25/hr. I know that's low for an independent consultant, but it was hard enough to get up from my existing wage of $20. If I had come in from no-where, I would have charged him at least $30/hr.

Here's to me still working 3 jobs, no one wants to get rid of me...