Thrift-o-rama

I think I'm having a midlife glamour crisis. Is this normal? Until I had children at 33, I was tall, svelte, rock n roll and reasonably fashionable and on the go. Since kids, I've been a sports-bra wearing train wreck! (Although, I have gotten back to more of my normal self in the last year or so...)

Anyway, today I bought myself a watch and a dress. Both glamorous, both the style of my 'old self'. I'm wondering if this is part of a mid-life crisis or just a return to the old me? Any thoughts?

I was also wondering if glamour shopping online for myself is a reaction to our horrible spring break. Both of the kids are sick and have barfed all over the house. I've had no sleep and have had to clean up a lot of sick. Maybe that's made me pine for more glamorous days!

I'm also wondering how I can be glamorous and replace my old worn out duds while still on a budget!!

I finally finished and filed the taxes today.

I don't know how all you early worms do it. I never seem to have all of my forms until the end of February!

Anyway, we should be getting about $4,700 back between state and federal. (Minus whatever we have to pay in City tax. We'll see). Whatever is left is going directly to the mortgage balance.

Here's to a speedy refund!

The extra mortgage payment hit today, so I'm down to $9,422.72. Yay.

The regular mortgage payment will be made next Friday, and should bring that down to about $8,400.

I hope to work on and finish the taxes this week. If we get a refund, we will be putting that toward the balance as well. (Estimating $3500, which would equal $4,900 left!)

chip chip chip!

I live in Ohio, so I'm off to vote now. It's my first time in a primary. It's kind of exciting in a weird way.

I'm 41 today. Woot. I always get too philosophical on my birthday. It's kind of like my New Year, the day when I sit and reevaluate and try to parse out what is good and bad from life.

I shouldn't complain. I have a nice house in a good school district, two healthy kids, and a DH of 14 years. Money in the bank and a plan.

But some things are still out of control! Any ideas or helpful hints would be greatly appreciated.

1. The mess. I spend soooo much time cleaning up, and yet the house is never clean. Two little boys and a hub sure do make messes and destroy stuff. Is there a way to manage this? Is it possible to keep the house tidier without spending all my time behind a broom?

(I am in my second round of major decluttering. I figure less stuff= less to manage/clean, But I'm not sure it'll work that way)

I got angry about this yesterday. It was my first day working outside in the garden, and I realized the yard was a huge mess. Raccoons had knocked over an extra trash can--which I thought was empty because I never put anything in it. Well, hubby apparently put something in it this winter, because there was an old garbage bag of food strewn everywhere. There's a stack of wood in the driveway that hubby promised he'd chop 6 months ago, and it's still there.

Gah. I got angry because I felt like I am the only one who cares, and the only one who does the work. We have a house in a nice area, and because of stuff like this, it's the shabbiest house on the block. I want it to look nice!

I can't do it all alone. There is too much. Too many jobs, too much work, but DH doesn't seem to care, and the boys destroy destroy destroy...

2. Career. I have kind of always suspected that career was a hollow ambition. I'm thinking about this because the in-laws just left.

My inlaws were defined by their jobs, and worried constantly about career and doing 'what they were supposed to do' as far as the life script: moving up, up, up! they don't understand our casual approach to work, and my MIL is hand-wringing about my decision to let go of a lot of my freelance work. She's worried about my 'career'. She followed me around for 3 days nagging about it. Gah!

So... of course I am thinking. I have figured out a few things in the last year.

A. I don't want to work at a newspaper again. Journalism is no longer a field I want to be in.

B. I kind of want the next stage of my life/ career-wise to be a mix of fiction-writing and hobby farming. Okay okay. I know it sounds crazy. I am very realistic. It's not big money and it could flop. But I feel like I should try. It's now or never. And I don't expect to write a blockbuster, I'd be happy with eventually building up a small, but solid income from those sources.

3. Finally, I want more creation in my life. More creativity, more writing, more paintings. Now, time is the issue. The youngest isn't in school all day until fall. But I feel like my life and ambitions have been on hold for 8 years waiting for that to happen for two kids. I'm tired of being on hold. Is there a way to add more creativity into my daily life? I can't write when the kids are here. I've tried. They interrupt constantly. But maybe I could move some art supplies upstairs, so I could paint in the dining room while we're home together int he afternoons? Maybe they'd even join me.

So this is what I'm thinking about on my rainy 41st birthday. I'm not mental, I swear.

I paid $300 to the mortgage balance today. I had hoped to make it more, but for some reason DH went on a post Low Spend Month shopping spree. I'm not super happy about it. Maybe now that he has it out of his system he'll return to his pre- LSM low spending ways.

I could send more to the mortgage balance, but I want to keep a pad in the checking account just in case he goes on another spending spree! If we still have extra next payday, when the mortgage payment is due, I'll send it then.

Oh well. I can't complain about much. The CC is paid in full, the other bills are paid, and we still have money left in the bank. Good living, right?

Oh, and I am planning to file the taxes this week. I think I finally have all the forms. Any refund will go to the mortgage.

I'm jumping up and down. The payment hit, and the new mortgage balance is $9,722.72.

Sadly, though, I need to come up with a new payoff strategy. My wishful math projections were off by $3,000. I'm not finished with the taxes, but anticipate a refund of about $3,500 (probably more, but not much. I'm being conservative).

Once that is in and filed, that would bring the mortgage down to $6,222.72.

I'd hoped we could have it paid off by June using this strategy, plus making our normal monthly payments. $1,035 of each payment goes to principal. But now it looks like if I do that, it'll still be six months until it's gone.

I just want to be free!!

I'm trying to come up with a plan B. What strategies have all of you used to pay off a $10,000 debt as quickly as possible?

I thought maybe. Big maybe, if I tried to keep going on low spend month in March and April, I could free up maybe $1000 to $1500 extra to send to the principal.

But there are a lot of maybes. I think we can reign in all the little expenditures and wastes of money, but I also have to pay for DS2s next session in his fitness class ($155), the freezer is empty and I need to call the farm to stock up on more meat ($200). And, we've got five birthdays between March 11 and April 8.

Birthdays

I've told DS1, who is turning 8, that we were going to do a birthday party at the house this year.

It's at least $300 to have a party at a 'place.'
His laser tag party ended up costing an arm and a leg last year, once all the extras were in.

I sold him on the idea of having a video game party with pizza and cakes at our place. Boys love video games. I don't know why. We're going to borrow more game systems and screens from friends, and set up stations around the house with multiplayer sega, wii, and playstation games going.

I hope it will be cheap, fun, and give me the incentive to clear out the other section of the basement and turn it into a tween hangout spot. I've been eyeing it forever. Now I have a deadline!

Trips

We can't do low spend forever though. I'm spending a week in New Orleans in May to visit friends. And, we have to take a family trip to Arizona in June, for DH's parents 50th wedding anniversary. They wanted to do a trip, and it's going to cost us a fortune, but what can I do. It's planned mostly, and it's a family obligation. Argh.

DH got a bonus today. I'm super thankful.

I was able to send $11,766 to the mortgage (which is our regular payment plus $10,000). I'll update the balance tomorrow when it posts to our account. I'm estimating we'll be around $9,750.

Still, the bonus was about $3,000 less than my wishful math projections, but I'll still take it. I'll just have to rework the plan to see when we can get this house paid off!

Part one of the new plan is to stick with low spending into March. I feel like No Spend February was a great success, even though on paper it looked like a disaster. We had a budget of $150 a week for food, entertainment, etc. We actually stuck to that!

On paper, the month looks worse because DH and DS2 destroyed my $1500 mac laptop that I adored by spilling coffee on the keyboard. $800 to fix it, so I said no, and bought a $500 windows laptop, which I actually do not like, but hey, I can't rationalize spending a whole lot on another Mac in a house with two little boys and a clumsy DH. I can't skip the computer. I need it to work. (I will be deducting it as an expense on my taxes next year!) But that was still $500 cash out that wasn't expected.

Then, the electricity in the kitchen went out. All the outlets only. The circuit in the panel just got old and went bad. We paid our unemployed electrician friend $100 to come fix/replace it. Money out, but still cheaper than the service call alone for our normal electrical company. And obviously, it couldn't wait. As fun as it was to brew coffee on the floor in the dining room, and run an extension cord to the microwave...

Sigh. I'm still sad about the mortgage, but oh well. Part of it is our fault. The credit card spending got out of hand before and immediately after Christmas, and I had to send $2500 to the cc company today. (It would have been much worse if we hadn't done No Spend Month. We paid a huge chunk of it last payday.) I keep kicking myself, but it's done. It's like that every year. I'll try to do better next Christmas!

The good news is it's paid in full with a zero balance, all the other bills are paid in full too, and I have enough left in the bank to pay the next two weeks of expenses in cash. (Barring any more unforseen disasters!)

No Spend Month really helped me hit the reset button. I've had 3 NSD this week alone. I can't remember the last time I did that.

It also threw a light on my time poverty issue. I realize time management is key for me. I only have 2hours, 45 minutes alone every day to work, finish editing my first novel (so I can send it out for rejection. Yay!), and do anything I need to do but can't do with the kids around. So yes. Time is precious! With no spend month, I cut down extra trips and errands--to one a week-- and that did free up a little bit of time each week.

I told DH we're sticking with the cash in the envelope system we used for NSM. He seemed pouty, even after I told him the budget had gone up. I think he just doesn't like the idea of limits, even though he actually isn't a big spender.

Still, if we double the budget to $300 a week, we'd have plenty left each payday to throw at the mortgage. And really, after cutting back to $150 a week, $300 seems like a king's ransom!

No/low Spend Month was going great. We ended our first two weeks under budget, with $16 left over. I was feeling in control of life again and my urge to spend money was curbed. All was well.

Then, life happened. Dh and DS2 were watching videos of whales eating krill on my computer. Then they spilled a quart of hot coffee on the keyboard and immediately fried it. I hadn't backed up the data in two weeks (shame on me). So I lost two weeks of work on my novel and of freelance articles and interviews. The day before they were due. This was a beautiful Macbook air laptop that I adored. long battery life, quiet keyboard, no crapware. Alas, $2000 down the drain. The warranty doesn't cover spills. Despite my long-standing rules of no eating or drinking near my computer. Garrr...

I tried to disguise my sadness and anger. (You know how it is When you're a mom, you've got nothing for yourself. I just wanted one thing of mine to not be ruined, destroyed or messes with! No luck!). We took it to Microcenter. For $40 they did a diagnostic, to see what parts were damaged and if they could be replaced. The bad news: $800 to fix it. The good? The hard drive was fine. I paid $50 (!) for a 1 terrabyte external drive and they moved all my files to it. They saved it all! The guys at Microcenter were top notch. I'm a fan.

So...then I had to laptop shop. I decided I wasn't going to buy a new Macbook. I cant justify an expensive laptop. I have to think disposable, because I live in a house with three males, two of whom are 7 or under, and it's only a matter of time before one of them does something to the laptop that ISN'T covered by the warranty.

After much agonizing, I chose an Acer Aspire with an Intel 5 something or other and a 1 terrabyte HD . It had the longest battery life and the least clunky keyboard, and cost $479. More than I wanted to spend, but half the price of the cheapest macbook. But boy, let me tell you. I was spoiled. None of these windows machines are as quiet, long-batteried, or nice as macs!

The keyboard on this thing is still way too loud, which sounds crazy of me to mention, until I tell you I often have to work inside federal courtrooms, typing, and you can hear a pin drop in there--unless I'll be there typing!

So yes. Halfway through No Spend Month, and I'm it with nearly $600 out of pocket for a busted laptop. My heart is still sick over it, but there was no way around it.

*****In Other News******

On the bright side. I took my (single) sister to a movie for valentine's day. We saw Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies and you know what? It was way better than I thought it would be! The writers were very clever, and there were a lot of top-tier English actors/actresses in the cast. They did a nice job with what could have been a half-ass schlock movie.

As for the mortgage. In past posts, I've done some wishful math calculations in trying to figure out how to pay the mortgage off this spring, instead of in another 18 months as planned.

The great news is that DH is getting a bonus. It's $2000 less than last year, but that's okay. It'll be enough that we can make a huge dent in the mortgage balance. I won't know exactly how much until it's in the checking account.

I still haven't received two of my freelance 1099s, so I don't know exactly if and how much tax refund we will be receiving. I'm going to call the companies this week. Or company? One was bought out, and I don't think it exists anymore. Ugh. The headache! Anyway, the plan is to put the tax refund toward the mortgage as well. I'm estimating it'll be at least $3000. (Plus a possible state refund?)

In an ideal world, if the bonus and taxes work out, I maybe just maybe might be able to pay the house off by July without taking any money out of savings. Which is the huge part. When I came up with this crazy plan, I anticipated draining at least half the money out of the savings account, but it looks like it might not be necessary! Hazzah! Okay okay I'm getting ahead of myself! I already know how life throws curveballs. Let's hope for no more!

Here's a quick recap of the first few days of No Spend Month!

Monday
No spend Day, no car day for me, no spend day for DH. (He drives to the gym during lunch hour every day.)

House: I vacuumed and picked up the house. I also began the big job of sorting and organizing the library. We have a lot of books, and a lot of bookcases, but they are in disarray. I'm pulling books out, dusting the shelves, getting rid of some books, and then trying to organize the shelves. It's going to take a few days.

For dinner, we had grass fed ribs, roasted beets, and broccoli-cheese rice, ice cream with caramel sauce for dessert.

Tuesday
No spend day, no drive day for me,and for hubby

Hubby is moping about No Spend Month. He really wanted Mexican restaurant food for lunch. It's weird. He usually doesn't spend much or crave those sorts of things. He's probably thinking about it because he's been told he can't. Oh well. I told him I'd make mexican for dinner on Friday night.

House: I cleaned the microwave and the air hood filter (blech), and the fish tank. I made a batch of all-purpose cleaner (vinegar and seventh gen. dish detergent.) Also ran a cleaning cycle on the HE washing machine with vinegar.

Cool tip: use the dirty fish tank water to water houseplants. It's super good for them. Lots of nitrogen and nutrients in the fish poop!

For dinner, we had meatloaf, mashed potatoes, dinner rolls, and green beans.

Wednesday

Well, the spell is broken. I spent money today. And drove. We were out of milk, a staple for the boys, and needed a few other things from the grocery.

I spent $72.70.

$18.10 was at Aldi's, for cashews ($11), tortilla chips, sweet peppers for Friday's fajita dinner, and vanilla yogurt for DS2's breakfast.

The rest was at Kroger, 4 gallons of organic milk @$24, cat food @ $12, bubble bath and cheese curls, then all the valentines for both son's class exchange next week. (DS2 has a kid with severe allergies in the class, so I was limited in what I could pick), plus two fancy Godiva choco bars for each teacher @$3 each.

I drove 12 miles today, 7 of it taking DS2 to his morning gymnastics class. I tried to get a free vacuum for the car at the place next to the grocery store, but everyone else in town had the same idea, and there wasn't a free spot. Boo.

For dinner, we're having pork chops, sweet potatoes, home-canned apple sauce, and cauliflower. Strawberry jello for dessert.

DH is going to a movie with our friend tonight. (Spent $3 out of pocket because the old $25 gift card I found didn't cover two tickets!)

Thursday
Drove 15.1 miles, taking DS1 to swim classes. I knew it was far. I didn't know it was that far.

Spent : $10.49, Wendy's, usual once a week eat out after swim.
Junior frosty was free because we had a key tag.

We finished DS1's Pinewood derby car for Cub Scouts. It's our first time trying. It looks like something out of Mad Max but he did a huge chunk of the work, so I'm proud of him.

Dinner was creamy chicken soup with homemade drop dumplings and pumpkin muffins.

Random thoughts during No Spend Month

Doing more good in the world. I just realized DH's company matches 100 percent of charitable donations. That means we've left thousands of dollars on the table for orgs we care about these past years. Sigh. HIs homework this week is to find out how we can get the company to match our donations, so we can put more money into the organizations and causes we care about.

No Spend Month Budgeting.

I think the key to a successful No spend month is to spend as little as possible in the early days of the month, when the cupboards and the gas tanks are still full. I'd rather have money in the budget at the end of the month, when the reserves are gone and we're scraping by.

So, I'm doing wishful calculating, trying to figure out if we can pay off the house this spring. I know know know I shouldn't and can't count on anything until it's in the bank account, but I've been wishful math-ing.

First wish, that hubby gets a bonus this year, and it's close to what it was last year. Sigh. No word on that yet. Last year, it hit on the last paycheck in February. Fingers crossed we hear something soon.

Math wish. IF he gets a bonus and IF it's close to last year's amount, we can put $14,000 to the mortgage, leaving $6,000 to pay.

I'm working on the taxes. It is very frustrating because, although I try my best to keep our tax and financial lives simple, it takes forever to get all of our forms. I'm 1099, and I have gotten NO 1099s. And, one of the companies I work for was bought by another company in JUne, so that will likely slow things down even more. Ugh. So, I used placeholder estimates of my income, to at least see what maybe maybe we will get as a refund. So far, about $3500. Which would put the mortgage balance near $2500. We'd make two regular payments in between those big windfalls coming in, so we'd be at $500.

Which meant if my fondest math dreams came true we could PAY OFF THE HOUSE AND NOT TOUCH THE SAVINGS ACCOUNT. Which would make me die and go to heaven. But as I said, I'm counting my chickens. Fingers crossed.

Hopefully, we'll know something soon!

And I'm totally excited! I'm not dreading this no spend month at all. We have $700 in cash to last us the month, a freezer full of meat and a full gas tank. What more can a family need?

Of course, the prize is in sight, which makes No Spend Month easier: paying off the mortgage much much faster. And, I'm planning to spend more time cleaning,scrubbing and organizing. I'm looking forward to having a cleaner house (fingers crossed it works...)

My only worry: the kids! We have Cub Scout and other events this month that are the most likely to be the budget busters. I'm trying not to stress. I'm going to focus on having as many No Spend Days as possible, especially this first couple of weeks, and then hope that we have enough money left to pay for the kid stuff.

Let the adventure begin!

February is no (low) spend month. I'm setting the budget for groceries, gas, and all other spending at $700 for the month for the four of us. I'd like to skate by at $600, but the last time we did this, we only had one son and he was 6 months old, and we managed on $400 for the month. Now we have two, and they are 6 and 7, so they need things like food. They drink milk like we own a cow, so that's why the jump from $400 to $700. We'll see how it goes. If it goes well, we might do it again later this year for the same or lower budget.

We're hoping to free up cash to put toward the mortgage. I'm getting antsy and want to see if we can pay it off THIS year instead of next, with a combination of tax refunds (if we get one...) , cash and ef savings.

I'm excited about no spend month. I've lined up a bunch of cleaning and organizing projects around the house. (Hey, cleaning is free!) Hopefully, those will improve the look and function of our house, which always makes me feel better. I'm also kind of looking forward to being home more and being able to say no to things, as in, events and this or that. Every weekend, all we do is run around to this event or that. And granted, I love having friends and a busy social life. But it'll be nice to put that on hold so I can concentrate on all the stuff that gets pushed to the side when we're busy.

Yard Sale!
The kids want to have another yard sale, since they made about $40 on their cookie stand last year. If I can purge enough of their stuff and ours, I'll consider it. Yard sales are a lot of work, but we made more than $200 last year! I could use that!

But Before We Can Start...
Of course, this is a jam packed weekend ahead of no spend month. I'm throwing my sister a birthday party. She has severe anxiety about parties and having people over, but she wants to get over that, so as a gift, she asked me to help her throw a party at her house. This is HUGE for her.

So, I'm supplying the food and booze, music, etc. (This is where it will get spendy, although I think I can skate by for under $100.)

I think the party will be great. I want her to see that her home is her sanctuary from the rest of the world, and you should be able to share that with your friends without freaking out about it. Our bffs are at our house all the time, and it's great. I like that we can all stop by each others places and chat, or have a drink or a snack, and I want my sister to have that feeling too. It's life enhancing. And cheaper than always meeting them out somewhere!

Car Update!
Also, in my last post, DH's car wouldn't start and was kaput in the garage. Well, the darn thing only needed spark plugs. Can you believe it??? Darn thing needed a tune up. Honda knows how to make a car. He's had it since 1997, and all we've ever had to do to it was tires, oil changes and now spark plugs. The darn thing will never die.

DH's car won't start. It's got 250k miles on it. (a 1997 Honda). It cranks but won't turn over. Yay. I don't know how much it will be to get that fixed, but it's a big cloud of unknown in my already stretched budget. It serves me right. His dad and I were driving around in it at Xmas, telling DH he needed to fix all the things wrong with it. And here we are. Darn it. Stupid thing couldn't wait to break until after the house was paid for????

Anyway...

I'm trying really super duper hard not to spend money unnecessarily. This directly clashes with being stuck inside in winter, which is the season I want to do and complete house projects. So, I'm been looking for cheap and free home improvement projects that improve the look and function of our house. Thankfully, cleaning and organizing are mostly free.

This weekend, I redid the hall closet. It's tiny, with a tiny door, and the kids are still small, so they just throw their backpacks on the doorknob and their coats on the closet floor and call it a day. Um no... It was a mess, first thing you see in the door.

I hung a lower rod for the kids, so they can hang up their own coats. I installed a few hooks on the inside of the door for backpacks, and sorted all the hats, mittens and sunglasses into a shoe holder on the inside of the door. I also put extra backpacks, lunch bags, and scarves in bins on the top shelf.

It was a free project because I used things I already had around the house. I was already using the shoe holder in the closet. But half of it was empty, so I cut it in half and moved an underused hook from another closet onto the door for the backpacks. The lower rod used to be for the kids costumes in their closet, but they never hung them there, so it was unused. I already had the bins on the shelf. I just added a box from aldi to hold the lunch boxes. Voila. Free. And functional. I might spring for a nice basket for the bottom, though, to hold all the roller skates and winter boots.



My second free project was organizing my dresser. I wasn't planning to, but I saw a short video on apartment therapy about the virtues of storing your t-shirts and jeans vertically instead of in stacks in your drawers. Something about being able to see everything. I thought it was worth a try. Boy. So far so good! It's so easy to find what I'm looking for AND each drawer holds soooooooo many things. I used to have two drawers of pants. Now, everything fits in one! And... now I know I have too many pairs of black pants.

In other unfun house news, I spent the weekend bleaching mildew off of my bathroom walls (the last owner painted with oil-based paint, a big no no in a bathroom, so now it molds. Argh.).

I am feeling impatient and antsy. Normally, I'm pretty good about this, but right now I wish I could fast forward to the end of February.

Why? That's when we'll know if DH is getting a bonus and how much it will be, the taxes will be close to finished so I know if we're getting a refund and how much, and once I have all that I'D KNOW FOR SURE IF WE COULD PAY OFF THE HOUSE THIS YEAR.

I just want it done!! I'm so anxious! And excited.

But we have a lot to do between now and then. I've got to figure out how to pay off the Christmas bills without dipping into savings. I've got two birthdays to plan (DH and my sister), and February is a No Spend Month.
Gah! Still. I wish I had all the answers today so I could sleep at night!

Well, we survived.

The end of the year is always so busy. It's like I hit an oil slick at Halloween and then rush through New year's out of control.

House guests, parties, deadlines, gifts. It's always so crazy! And on top of it, we (meaning me) am the host for both Thanksgiving and Christmas (there's no one else to do it), and have to have houseguests staying with us (in-laws. Yay) during that time. It's very stressful.

This year, we added a 6 day trip to New Orleans to visit friends into the mix. I'm super glad we did, but boy , now that we're home I finally feel like I can breathe. It's nice to be back to real life, back to a schedule, kids in school.

Except...There's still so much to do!

It's January, so I have to wrangle the bills and the money and think about how we're going to get where we need to be financially for the year. I haven't been so good at that this year. Maybe because I'm waiting to see if the bonus and tax refunds materialize, and if they do, if we will be able to pay off the house. (Squee.)

So far, I did manage to take down most of the Xmas decorations, tackle the giant mound of holiday recycling, clear out the jillion shipping boxes, pay the car insurance and renew the plates for both cars. Fun, I know.

Now for the tikis....

Something weird always happens to me in winter. I guess it's because I'm stuck inside a lot more with the cold and snow. I always feel the urge to deep clean and redecorate the house. This year, that has meant finishing house and decorating projects I've been meaning to do forever and probably already have most of the supplies for. (I'm trying to look for cheap and free ways to improve the house).

I finally finally after four years of never getting around to it, finished one wall in the tiki den. I have lots of tiki/ Hawaii albums, so I framed a few of my favorites for an art accent wall. I've attached a pic below. I think it's cute! It was reasonably cheap, too. I had four frames, and when I went to Michael's to get more, they were 50 percent off. I paid about $3.25 each for really nice album frames with real glass. I've been picking up the albums at thrift stores and yard sales for 20 years now, so they were all 25 or 50 cent albums, and the total for framing was less than $40.

I also removed some clunky old shutters from the windows in the tiki den and replaced them with rice paper shades. I had one shade already, from our old house in New Orleans, and I had to buy one new one to match it. It lets in so much more light. I am planning to make curtains from some sort of tiki barkcloth fabric, but haven't gotten than far yet.

I also have some supplies for a few random repairs, like replacing the wonky dimmer switch in the dining room. Hopefully I'll be able to do them soon. Next week, it's time for my annual rug steam clean, so I'll have to rent a machine from the store.

I guess I'm winter nesting. Weird huh? It's garden in the summer and inside the house in the winter, I guess that's my seasonal schedule!



And, this one is for Laura, to get her thinking about using her tiki furniture! I took down some clunky old shutters and replaced them with rice paper blinds. I also stacked my tikis and hung shelves to display part of my tiki mug collection. (The shelves go all around the room.) Forgive me for posting a pic of a project that isn't done. We have yet to make tiki curtains for the windows!

It's that weird time of year where not much big is happening, but we're busy doing a ton of little, time-consuming things, like running pre-Christmas, pre-houseguest errands.

I feel like I'm on constant deadlines. Getting the ham for Xmas dinner, making sure we drop off all of the gifts for the families we adopted for Christmas on time, the giving trees, the school (needy family) donation drop offs, then making sure all the teacher gifts are made and delivered on time. Now, it's the last day of school before winter break, and it's time to get ready for another round of houseguests. (We host both Thanksgiving and Christmas, because hubby is an only child, my sister is single with no kids, and hubby's family is always coming to stay with us. ) It's exhausting!

Christmas and December seemed much more relaxing when I was a kid/ before I had kids. It's hard being Santa!

I haven't even thought about New Years' goals. I suppose it will be more of the same. Try to stick to a budget, try to pay off the house, save for retirement, save for college, etc. Same old same old!

We were talking about the mortgage though. If Hubby gets a bonus and we get a tax refund, we might consider draining the savings account just to pay off the balance and be done with it. Then, we'd just work hard to build up the savings account. There are a lot of ifs, but we'll see how it all plays out between now and April 15.

The last mortgage payment of the year has hit, and we now officially owe:
$23,570.13.

I'm so amped. Our goal was to get to $27,500 by the end of the year, but by some miracle, we managed to get below that.

The grand total paid off the balance this year was....$17,611.61

Hazzah! We really might get this place paid off in 2017!

My cupboards are bursting at the seams with weird odds and ends. I opened one today, and a box of crackers fell on my head, so that can only mean one thing: Time to eat down the pantry.

So... I'm going to focus on buying only milk and fresh fruits/veggies at the store this week. It'll help clear some room ahead of Thanksgiving. We are hosting at our house again this year, and having two houseguests staying with us for the week.

It should be a challenge to see what we can come up with for dinner this week!

Parent teacher conferences are today.

Report cards just came home, and I was shocked to see that my oldest son's behavior marks were abysmal. Apparently, he's yelling things out in class, using crass language, and being overall disruptive and strange. This is totally out of character for him at school. His last two years at this school, he's been great. He's been the 'good' kid.

I don't know if he's just going through a phase, or if it's developmental. (He's in second grade and will be 8 in April), but he's also been pretty terrible at home these last few months. Bullying his brother (who is 6) by saying mean things to him in order to manipulate him. He's disrespectful and talking back to us. He complains NON-STOP. I mean, the kid never shuts up, and all of it is whining.

I have tried to give him space when he gets home, and freedom, because the belief was as long as he was doing what needed to be done at school, and was meeting all of his obligations and doing well, I would give him a little more slack to let off steam at home. Now I find out He's NOT doing what he's supposed to at school, and well, now I have to figure out what to do with him.

He didn't used to be like this. I'm trying to figure out what to do and what changed. But as you know, nothing in parenting is ever clear.

I did notice that he suddenly has no social skills. I guess as relationships have gotten more complicated (sharing is no longer enough), he's being left behind. At school fun night, he sat alone under a table instead of running around and playing with other kids. It was only at the end where he ran around with some friends. Then, we took him to a cub scout meeting and instead of talking with the kids he knows, he was alone. He also would scream, then fall on the ground and roll around whenever something exciting happened. All the other kids looked at him like he was crazy. Not an appropriate reaction. I asked him about it later, and he said he didn't know why he did it, just that he was excited.

He has friends, but still. Ugh. Why is my kid so weird???

Anyway, there are a few financial bits in this, too. I swear.


$1200 more off the mortgage balance
- Dh took the kids to see his parents in Vermont. They had originally said they would pay for the plane tickets, but we ended up paying for them out of pocket. DH came home with a check from his parents for $1200 for the tickets. We'd already paid the bill, so we put it to the mortgage. It was nice to knock another $1200 off the balance.

Inch-worming to the IRA goal
-I got a check for $912 in freelance and I put all of that into the IRA for the year. At first, I was excited to see I'm over $4000 for the year, then I realized I STILL have to come up with $1200 to fully fund for the year. Gah!

I'm so happy I could tap dance. We exceeded our pay off goal for the mortgage for the year today, and it's only October. I'm going to get this darn house paid off if it's the last thing I do!

The goal for the year was to get the balance to 27,500. Today, we're at 26,854-- about 645 below our goal. If we keep it up to the end of the year, we'll be at around $23,500. It's so close I can taste it. (If we can keep up the same pay off rate next year, we'll be at less than $10k by next December. Wishful thinking!)

Other work news

I had a random freelance project this week that paid $!284 for three business days of work. It was very easy and it came along at just the right time.

I was very restless about my life and my career and every day being the same-- taking care of little kids, running them to activities, so it came along at just the right time. It gave me an outlet to use my brain and make me feel still relevant in my career field. And it was really nice to be out of the house in adult world for three days.

Also, I was lamenting the low balance of my IRA and wondering how I was going to drum up the money to max it out for the year. Once the last check arrives for this project, I will be much much closer. That's a relief. Win Win!

Well, it's been the month of everything breaking.

My car windshield has a crack in it, because a pebble flew out of a dump truck and hit it. It started as a tiny hole, but is now a crack covering half the windshield. Ugh!

The garbage disposal completely died. I mean completely. All the usual tricks didn't work. The the worst part is, the darn thing is only two years old. Gah!

The window crank on Hubby's 1997 Honda also decided to break off, so we'd need pliers to open the window! One thing after another.

There's a list of a million other things that need fixed, too, and I was freaking out a little bit about how much it would cost to take care of all this stuff. All of this while I'm trying really hard not to put anything on the credit card. (We've had a lot of big bills lately, some of which were a surprise, and I had to take money out of savings to cover them. I hate that.) I'm trying to pay cash and minimize spending so we can free up money to do some much needed home repairs.

Hubby is NOT handy. He always gives me this speech about how we live in a specialist economy and he specializes so he can pay money to other specialists to fix things. Read: He's too chicken to try to fix stuff, and that's his excuse. So if something is broken and I don't want to part with the money, it's my job, my project.

I'm just now starting to tackle this list, garbage disposal first. It costs at least $200 to get the plumber out here, and I was having dread thinking about spending that.

The good news is, I decided to save the money on the plumber and replace the garbage disposal myself. I watched a Youtube video, and then it only took me 30 minutes. And it works! It was easier than I thought it would be. I paid about $100 for the actual disposal, and zero for labor, other than anxiety about messing it up.

So, the plan is to use the $200 I would have spent on the garbage disposal to replace the windshield on the car. We have a local company that is affordable, and comes to your house and does the whole thing in your driveway.

As for Hubby's car. My dad was a mechanic and I half know my way around cars. I was thinking of trying to repair it myself, and if I can't just having a back-up plan of a place I can take it to.

I paid $6 for a Chilton's auto manual for the car at a second hand store the other day (since hubby loves this car and has no plans to part with it, I figure it would help to learn how to fix it...) I'll be shopping for the parts today, if I decide I'm going to be brave.

So yes, as my grandma used to say "you never know how strong the tea bag is until it hits hot water" I guess you never know how handy the Thriftorama can be until everything in her life breaks!

The mortgage payment hit this morning and we are officially under $30,000! I don't know why it feels so good to get just under one of those big numbers, but boy it sure does feel good!

If we keep up at this pace, we're on track to beat our pay down goal by at least $2,000. YAY!

Back to School?

It's business as usual at our house. I realized this is the first year I will have to buy new clothes and shoes for the boys for back to school. I've been lucky enough to get really nice used stuff from yard sales and resale shops until now. Plus, I was handing down a lot of things to the youngest.

All that is ruined! I can't hand down anything anymore because the little one is a totally different body type than the oldest and actually outweighs his big brother. I also hadn't had the time to scour yard sales this summer, and when I did, no one had anything good. I suppose it's hit or miss. And, I guess there aren't as many bigger used kid clothes out there. They don't outgrow them as fast as babies do!

So.... Mom gave me some Kohls cash and I have a Kohls gift card, so I might try to go spend those this afternoon. I just never liked going there because I think their mark down and sales tactics are kind of shady. Everything seems overpriced, then they mark it down 50 percent , but that really only makes it the same price as something in another store! Maybe I'm over thinking it!

Garden
We've had nothing but rain rain rain rain rain rain rain this summer. The garden is covered in weeds, and I'm worried some of my crops have been washed out. The cucumbers turned yellow from too much water. But, I am pulling tons of zucchini out. (I know, you're surprised.), and we harvested lots of lettuce, garlic, broccoli, and raspberries. I'm about to harvest potatoes, too. I hope the weather doesn't ruin my tomato and hot pepper harvests!

The bright spot in the garden is the bee garden out front. Its covered in bees! We all like to sit on the front porch and watch them buzzing from flower to flower. We have also attracted four different species of butterfly. This is the first year we've had any, so we must be doing something right! I'm planning to expand this section of the garden this weekend.

I finally got the photos of the 1960s table and chairs I splurged on to upload, so it's posted below. $500 well spent!

In other news, I got my last freelance check and I sent all of it to the IRA, so that's $390 closer to my goal.

The newspaper I work for was just sold to a huge media company. (It came out of nowhere). Of course, the new company has a reputation for gutting the papers they buy, so everyone is scared to death.

It seems a blessing that I let my weekly freelance gig go right before this happened, because I would not have wanted to deal with an extra layer of complication on top of the already ridiculous workload and tiny paycheck. I'm happy I'm not counting on that money, and that I did not commit to expensive summer childcare. Phew.

Still, I do write for other publications now owned by the new company, and now I'm wondering how this sale will impact the little bit of income I have left. Ugh.

This Friday is mortgage payment day. I always look forward to seeing the balance drop. Looks like we'll get below $31,000!

So much has happened since my last post. I'm just now getting caught up.

1. Yard sale!
First, I read that new organizing book, "The life-changing magic of tidying up." I didn't find it that compelling of a read, but reading it did make me want to clean up and clear out-- as in, significantly. I spent a week going through every closet, drawer, cabinet, bucket, etc, then we had a yard sale.

We actually made $200 and sold a bunch of stuff. The kids also made $40 selling old toys and $15 selling hot dogs and choco chip cookies. My friends came over and hung out with me, and we had fun. It was a success! At the end, I dropped everything at the goodwill--two full carloads, and I still have to make one or two more trips for odds and ends. Now I just have to put the house back together!

2. Gardens!

The garden is going gangbusters. Okay, at least the weeds and the lettuce are! We harvested at least 6 large gallon-plastic bag sizes of lettuce, 9 quarts of strawberries, and two heads of broccoli. (which is weird. We didn't get broccoli until July last year).

I'm mostly growing weeds at this point, though. My mom was gracious enough to work the weedwacker between the garden paths while I forked out this particularly voracious weed that seems to be taking over some of my beds. I don't know what it is. It's very spiky and has a root like a carrot, and some seeds must have blown in from somewhere last year because I'm up to my eyeballs in them and they are terrible!

So, I forked those out by the roots, everywhere they would hold still.

3. Friends/ Hurricane Katrina
We visited out of town friends over Memorial Day. They have major financial problems, and when we were off on our own (me with the other mom, DH with the fellow), they lamented about their issues to each of us. It's tough.

We're all from New Orleans. Their condo flooded during Katrina. The condo paid a contractor to fix it. Contractor left with the insurance money, after doing no work. short story: Disaster. Anyway, they had to take out a HELOC to do the hurricane repairs. Then, five years ago, they moved up north for work. They can't sell the condo. Even when renting it, they were losing $500 a month on it. They tried a short sale, no one bought it. Tried a loan modification, but the bank wouldn't do it. Now, they're letting it go into foreclosure. It's a heartbreak.

I straight out asked them if they would finally be in better financial shape once that condo is gone, and they said no. It shocked me. Hubby is convinced they'd need to make 30 percent more just to make ends meet. They already make about $140k a year.

The wife is in tears. The hub spends money. Lots of money. Toys, collectibles, DVDs, video games, iPhones, iPads, he has to have it all. He's been like that forever, the entire 15 plus years I've known him. They just don't see where they can cut. Of course, I walk in and can think immediately where they could cut: all the prepacked junk food, sodas, gatorades, ipad data plans, cable TV, etc. But they just "can't live without it."

Plus, they have CC debt. Things they've been paying on for more than a decade. I can't imagine still paying off things I bought 10 years ago. !

Ugh. I just don't think they have the motivation to cut where they need to to right their financial ship. So, The wife asked me for my advice, but I'm not sure I could give any they'd want to take.

4. Our life
In our life, things are trucking along financially. Last week, one of my vintage dreams came true. I FINALLY found the 1960s tulip table and chair set I've dreamed of for my dining room, and have been searching for at estate sales for years. And it was $500, about a third of what I expected to spend on it.

It was on craigslist, and the lady still had it, so I decided to go for it. Now that it's here, I don't regret it. I'm so happy. But I admit I did feel really bad spending the money. It's working out, though.

I've also started writing down every penny we spend each week. I was feeling a little out of control, like I just didn't know where the money was going, and this is helping. Hopefully in a month or two I'll have a better idea of if and where we can cut or rejigger things because we're spending too much.

And, as per your request, here is the table. The chairs are pulled away because I'm cleaning everything!

Sadly, I'm not trying to be funny with the title. The dad of one of our first grader's friends died from cancer yesterday. I'm trying to figure out how to handle it. We have casual conversations with the mom, but the parents were divorced and I'm not sure how often he saw the kids. But still, he was crying at school and the teachers and counselors talked to the whole class about death and cancer this morning. We were also invited to the memorial.

I really feel for the boy. First grade and losing your dad. Those are big feelings at that age. I had my son draw him a picture, and we were planning to drop off homemade cookies, drawings and cards for the boy and his older sister tomorrow after school. I also thought we should go to the memorial, so this little boy has at least one friend there if he needs it.

Do you think that is appropriate? I know the mom, who is the only parent I met, didn't have much nice to say about him, but you really only get one dad, and I'm sure the kid is upset. Ugh.With any other set of parents, I'd know what to do. Modern life is so complicated.

On the rebate side, we got a check today for $243 that we weren't expecting. The toilet in our hall bathroom was leaking, and we called the plumber so we could figure out exactly what , where and why it was leaking. It cost more than I wanted to pay: about $650. But, they did figure out there was a crack in the toilet base. They sent us a check today because they looked into it and the toilet company paid for the replacement toilet because the crack in the base made it defective, and it was still under warranty.

I'm impressed with the plumber' follow up. It was nice of them to check, and then to send us a check. We were pretty much resigned to not get a dime back.

The garden is all planted finally! I got all of the peppers, eggplants, tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, zucchini and other squash in yesterday and today. It's a rainy weekend, so I've saved some work because I don't have to water all of the plants in.

It was a lot of work, but this is my favorite weekend. I spend all winter planning a garden, months growing plants from seeds under lights indoors, and now it's time to put them out and cross my fingers.

Our potatoes, broccoli, brussel sprouts, onions, lettuce, garlic and cauliflower already seem to be doing well, so I'm hoping for a nice harvest this year.

Today was also the equivalent of Christmas morning for garden geeks. It was the annual plant swap. I love it and look forward to it every year. I take my extra seedlings and divisions of perennials. It's a round robin swap. Everyone lays out what they bring, by category, then the first round you get one plant, the second, you get 2 etc., until everything is gone.

It's a hoot. There is a potluck, and it's a great way to fill out your garden and try new plants for free.

I got 20 bearded iris of varying sizes, a few houseplants (dracaena, aloe, pothos, philodendron), and five echinacea, two red currant bushes, a raspberry bush, and some comfrey. All for free!

It's the best.

Two of my last three freelance checks have arrived. I put most of it, $700, into my IRA for 2015. I may put the rest, $200, in next week. I like to keep a little pad in my checking account, so this will be the pad.

Anyway, that brings my 2015 IRA contributions up to $2250. $3000 to go.

Pinch me. I actually managed to have a real no spend day yesterday. It never happens, despite my best laid plans!

The mortgage payment hit, and we are now down to $31,930.25. If we make our regular payments for the rest of the year (without sending any extra), I calculate that we will owe $25,930 at the end of the year.

That would be about $1500 less than our goal for the year. So it looks like we're on track!

Today is the first day of my new life.

My last articles for the newspaper were turned in last week and the last one runs tomorrow. I have a one small monthly assignment that I've held onto, just because it's easy and will disguise any gap in my resume when I want to go back to work. I also have the option to take stories when they're offered, if the timing or the mood strikes me.

It does feel weird. This morning, I dropped the kids at school and then my time was mine. It's never happened before!

While this move will pay off at tax time via a refund almost as large as the money I would have made working, and it will save us a huge chunk of money on childcare during summer break, in the meantime it will be a huge hit for the monthly cash flow. We'll get money at tax time, but that means we won't have that money month-in month out. I'm fine with this, because it's like a forced savings, and I like having those big chunks of money to dedicate to our big goals.

But in the absence of those dollars, I've been making plans --now that I am free, from work, so to speak-- to do as much as I can that is free.

I have a list of projects around the house and garden that don't cost anything. Some are cleaning and scrubbing, which will improve my mental health regarding the state of the house. Others are prep work for the garden or for room makeovers, etc.

I will also, of course, be working on my novels and other book projects, which cost time but not money, and will hopefully lay the groundwork for my new career. (Pipe dreams, anyone?)

Here's my list of free jobs:
[X]Hook up the rain barrels
[X]Weed the garden, to prep for planting
[]Hack down invasive honeysuckle
[]Scrape the peeling paint in the master bathroom
[]Clean our my basement office
[]Frame art and photos sitting in my office
[]Sew curtains for the boys' room
[]Sort through and clear out spent paint cans in the garage
[]Sweep/clean organize the garage. (we're getting free shelves from friends, and this will help)

Here's my list of jobs that raise a tiny bit of cash
[X] Recycle three bags of cans ($8.10)
[] Sort and clear for a yard sale in June

That's the starting list.

In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out how to productively structure my day so that I can take care of the kids, exercise, and work on my book for at least one to two hours. I've tried waiting until bedtime to work on the book, but I am mentally spent my then.

I have two weeks before they're on summer vacation. Once school is over, it will be crunch time.

We aren't going on any big vacations this year, but I have made a list of about a dozen day trips and cool activities I'm going to do with the boys this summer. I think it will be a good time.

I got a check for March freelance work today for $750. I put it all in the IRA for 2015. That feels good. I'm making a dedicated effort to put the last few checks into the retirement account. I have a $300 check coming tomorrow that I will also deposit, which will bring me to $1550 of my $5500 goal for the year.

I still plan to contribute to the IRA once I stop working, but would like to stash as much of this money as I can into that account, rather than fritter it away on this or that.