Losing a Roommate

Well, yesterday we received a call from one of our roommates that was visiting family for the week that she will be moving out on Monday. It was nothing wrong with our place or anything (right before she left she had paid 2 months worth of rent to be 1 month ahead), but the situation her grandkids were in was appalling to say the least. The parents were both working and didn't have enough money to send their 3 kids to a babysitter, so they put the 7 year old in charge of the 1 & 2 year old. I feel so blessed that my wife can stay at home with our daughter and not have to work. The roommate is going to move to a place close to them, found a different job, and is going to be watching the kids like a hawk to make sure they are taken care of.

We've posted on Craigslist a room for rent for $350/month, hopefully we will get some taker soon. The plan I have for the roommate leaving is that we are going to pay her back the $350 she pre-paid for August, but the remaining portion of July we will hold onto until we find a replacement for the room. If we find someone quick, she will get back an amount equal to the remainder of her month lease. If we don't find anyone within the next 2 weeks (her rent was due on the 7th of the month), she at least gets her $350 back. We figure this is a very fair arrangement since our agreement is month-to-month and we were given 48 hour notice of moving out.

Cleaned out the basement

This past week we cleaned out the basement and had a huge "free sale" in our front yard. We told people that everything was free, but if they saw something of value to give us what they thought it was worth. We ended up with a bit over $30, though I know if I had worked at selling some of the items one by one, I would have received a whole lot more. Many of these items though were things I would call "dead weight".

Here's a list of the types of things we got rid of:

• Half-finished projects
• Items we tried once (eg: unicycle) and were not as interested in it afterwards
• Items being kept for projects for several years and never getting to them
• Items from others that they gave to us to store and never picked up
• Books & movies that either do not coincide with our moral beliefs or were good once but never going back to again for a second time.
• Items that we had not used in the past year and doubt we're going to in the coming year.
  

The value of getting rid of that stuff is priceless, it feels like a dead weight has been removed off of our shoulders and I'm not so reluctant to go down into the basement anymore for items. The time spent trying to get rid of them one by one is time I could instead be with my family, working on growing my freelance business (at $30-40/hour), or helping others around me.

$700 Bank Error In Your Favor

I remember playing the game of Monopoly and loving that card that would give you extra money due to a bank error in your favor. I never thought about the poor cashier that made the mistake, the trouble they probably would get in for making such an error, and all the repercussions of that bank error. It's probably because it's just a game and no one is really hurt from that bank error. Maybe the card should have had everyone pay a higher interest due to the bank error.

Well, one of our roommates experienced a bank error this past week and it wasn't a small amount. She was cashing her check at a currency exchange and requested a money order for $700 at the same time. Well, the cashier was pregnant and had what we call at our house "baby brain" and gave our roommate the money order as well as the full amount of her check. Our roommate before meeting us would have kept the money and left, but the mix of seeing the girl pregnant probably reminded my roommate of my wife that recently had a baby and the troubles that girl would have because of the mistake. Maybe it was due to the positive morals we encourage in our home. I don't know the exact answer, but I do know that my roommate said to my wife that before moving in with us, she would have kept it.

I'm glad she didn't because I would suspect for such a large amount of money one of two things would have gone on. They would have either A. Fired the girl for stealing the money. or B. Put the $700 money order and check together (with our roommates name on it) and sought to locate our roommate, demanding the money back.

Rain Damage

This week we had a really strong rainstorm, which exposed some problems with our house. It first started in our sun room, where the ceiling started leaking. It was a good thing we were up late that night watching a movie and that it was hitting some hard plastic. It was sounding so loud when it was dripping that I had to investigate. The problem was that it was very windy and it must have lifted up some of our shingles, getting water under them. Tomorrow I'll be getting on the roof with some tar and sealing those babies up.

The other "fun" rain damage was in our basement. I replaced the water line in January (not fun) and the soil hasn't settled fully yet, so the rain soaked through the ground and went into the basement. Our house doesn't have the downspout extenders, which I'll be picking up as well to move the water away from the house. I also have some more topsoil to put down there to give it more absorption abilities. The large river of water didn't damage anything of importance (we store in the plastic bins anything important) and the basement is unfinished so it's not a problem.

This shouldn't put us too far back financially, but it's just another part of our adventurous life.

I've Been Gone...

Hello all out there, I've been gone and not wanting to face you all. A couple of weeks ago we did something we thought was wise and it ended up costing us $500. The idea was to use the newer battery from one vehicle that we are getting rid of in a vehicle that the warranty is expiring. The issue being that newer battery has needed to get replaced (not holding a charge) but we never got around to doing it. The towing place was coming to pick up the bad vehicle, so we quickly swapped the batteries early in the morning. Big mistake.

We didn't know it at the time, but we damaged the alternator by hooking the battery up backwards. We thought we had just blown a fuse, but didn't look into it. The battery died in the end with us on the road. We had it replaced the next day but with a brand new battery (had receipt, was free) but then a couple days later it died again because of the alternator. When it died, my wife was driving in a storm, couldn't see, hit a curb and got a flat tire.

I went and tried to change the tire, but broke the jack and got it stuck under the vehicle. We have towing insurance on our cell phone plan, so the towing to a shop we trust and they kept it for a week and we got it back after $500.

Lessons learned again:

• Procrastination costs big time and money!
• Trying to save a few bucks can be costly too!
• Don't be afraid to post on your blog =)
  

Watching our expenses too much!

I've decided my wife and I our watching our expenses too much, ignoring the other half of the equation, which is my salary income. I'm making a nice $36K/yr, but am underpaid for the type of work I am doing (was hired to do computer maintenance, been doing mainly programming). I have checked the rates for programmers on a variety of salary sites as well as job postings. Here's my initial brainstorming session:

1. My 6 month review comes up in 2 months, which at that time I'll be requesting for a large raise (bring my salary up to $42K/yr).
2. Over the next two months, send my resume out for feelers on the job market for programmers. That way when my review comes up and they fight the large raise, I have something possibly to fall back on.
   
3. Spend 2 nights a week working on improving my programming skills.
4. Search out contract work to be done night/weekends in the programming realm at the $40/hr range.
   

I am no longer satisfied with $10/hour pay when with the right promoting of oneself I could be bringing in $30-40/hour. That way we can also say goodbye to our debts even sooner!

$60 Thrown Away

I've been trying to be good with our finances, and then I have slip-ups here and there and everywhere. This past Sunday my wife had a baby shower and I was hoping I could just sit there, relax, and let the ladies have their fun. They decided that a couple of the husbands were going to take me out instead. We couldn't decide, so we went to a computer store nearby.

On the way back, I and another guy were thirsty, so we stopped at Speedway and I used my gift card that I had $60 on to pay for both of our drinks. I was getting tired then and I was so certain I put the cards back into my wallet or at least my pocket. Tuesday rolls around and I'm looking to put some gas into my car and it's not in my wallet. Yesterday, I looked in all the clothes that are dirty, cleaned up the bedroom, checked the vehicle I was in from top to bottom, etc.

I'm classifying it into the "missing in action" category and I'm concerned I threw it away when I threw away the receipt for the drink. That's the only other explanation I have for it. The only positive thing out of the situation is that I talked to one of the guys and he is in need of someone to dig out his crawl space so that he can expand his basement, so I'll have a job to get the money back.