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I went to my grocery store last Tuesday to pick up a few things and to start taking advantage of my newly discovered 10% senior discount every Tuesday. They were also having a senior customer appreciation day, and every senior (60 years old or older who have the store club card) received a free bag full of products!  What a nice surprise. The bag itself is a very nice, very large reusable grocery bag. Inside I recieved these items:

1 pen 


1 roll of paper towels 


2...
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Well, it happened to me.  And I let it happen, which is the worst part, but at least not too much damage was done.
I'm talking about a computer scam.  I thought I was talking to a Microsoft rep, but no, of course I wasn't.  In the end, I had to freeze my bank account and open a new one, change all my passwords, get my computer cleaned, and update all my automatic payments/deposits.  A lot of work, which I'm still doing.  The only money I "lost" was purchasing...
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We are at a crossroads.  Unfortunately we are not able to control our crossroads.  What does that mean?  Well DH has been at a startup as you know.  We took a risk and it's paid off.  There is a serious offer on the table and it means quite a bit of money.  Life changing?  Yes.  We would have hit our FIRE number.  We would be completely able to Fat FIRE.  Combined with our current savings and we are looking at a 2x FIRE number. ...
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Apparently I'm one of the few people who still writes letters and sends cards through snail mail. I have a couple of older friends who I know enjoy it, and although the majority of the people I know have email or Facebook, I still will sit down and write a letter or send a card. 
As I look at some genealogy stuff, I think, we will have a generation of people who will not have those letters or cards to leave behind. My great aunt and her husband would write letters to each...
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My MRI was pretty awful.  I don't generally get claustraphobic, but I've never been in the smaller machine before, I've always been in the open one.  They put me in head first, but it hurt my shoulders so much (severe RA in them) that they pulled me out and turned me around and put me in feet first and I had to put my arms over my head, which was also uncomfortable, but was way better, plus I could see out of the machine a little bit and that calmed down the panic of...
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I am going to attempt to briefly touch on the big picture, but mostly just want to dive into the minutiae.
Yeesh, last week was some week from hell.  We've dived head first back into too many hospitalizations and disasters.  (If it's not infinite like it was before, I can deal with one bad week.  There are not enough hours in the day to get into it).  In addition, MH was out of town for two days (so I had to work and play Mrs. Mom, as opposed to Mr. Mom that...
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I've somehow got out of the habit of doing these frugal lists - partly because I am barely spending any money these days apart from just regular life expenses, so it is hard to come up with a list sometimes. At the moment, most of my frugalness comes from my garden. Anyway, here's my list from this week: (1) Bartering Galore: Spring and late summer are two of my barter-heavy periods. There is a thriving community of backyard farmers in my town who trade all kinds...
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My last post was how I decided it was easier to utilize credit card rewards than scholarships (in particular, really ridiculous applications for small dollar amounts).
Then, the in-laws came up yesterday to celebrate MM's Graduation.  So I have some numbers in hand.  They had brought up cards/gifts from that side of the family.
MH's Family:  $670
(Mostly from Grandparents; some from Great-Grandparents and a Great-Aunt)
My Family: $0  
(I will be shocked...
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 We paid off our house! It is a huge milestone and it reduces our expenses by nearly $1,300.00 every month. Our bare bones budget is $1,400.00 a month.
Note: A great portion of this mortgage pay off came from our savings. In essence, it took us about 4-5 years to be mortgage free.
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I realized I haven't made a post since I arrived in Florida. I did leave a week ago Tuesday and arrived Wednesday evening. I had a nice drive down and even got to detour in North Carolina to visit my cousins who just moved there a couple weeks earlier from Connecticut. I got to see their new house and have dinner with them.
Since arriving, I've been working every day to clean out the house. I've taken out 7 or 8 bags of trash, about 6 bins of paper for recycling, and packed 10...
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I notice that employers are trying hard to recruit employees. Costco upped their minimum wage to $16 & Wal-Mart has a minimum wage of $11. McDonald's is starting at $10 and is even advertising paying workers daily.  Last time I went to Wal-Mart there were signs advertising $13-21 for overnight stockers. These are really good wages for my area.
It seems employers are going to effectively raise the minimum wage even if the government can't seem to find consensus. And the...
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None of these suggestions are new, but with food, gas, and other consumer prices on the rise I decided to refocus on some of these:
I have been trying out more of my regular grocery store, store brand foods. Some of these have been a pleasant surprise. I tried a jar of store brand pasta sauce (24 oz) that was on sale for $1. It was delicious!  I also tried the hearty vegetable soup (low sodium) 18.8 oz for $1.29. Also very good. There was a sale on certain canned food items...
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Price creep on my haircut -- last time it was $70, this time it was $73.  Ridiculous to pay so much.  But I do like this stylist so much.  I also paid a $15 tip.
I also spent $29 on allergy nasal spray.  It's the generic for Flonase, and I got a twin-pack to get the best unit price.
Can't wait till the 11th when my Discover card cycle closes.  It will be huge, what with the down payment on the table, the rug cleaning, the haircut, and just the regular...
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Over the last few months with moving and couch surfing I really found budgeting hard, all our savings went into moving and we didn't have much left...all our other money went into our bond and rent (over $4000).
When we moved I was happy but bummed out and just thought do we just keep renting for the rest of our lives or stick to our budget and save what we can and just find what we can for the deposit we have....deposits over here are super expensive as you have around $25,000...
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We took the van in for a 5000 mile check up yesterday.  It was basically an oil change and fluid fill up and an inspection to see what else needed to be done now that the car has reached ten years of age.  They do have things they rec at either 10 years or 100,000 miles.  Well, we only have 51,000 miles, but we bought the van in June of 2021 so we are going with getting the work done that is recommended.  We paid $94.69 for that appointment.
Because we want...
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After the long, self-imposed self-isolation, I decided to "treat" myself to something that wasn't really a necessity...I saw a dermatologist about removing 2 things from my face.
Our face, after all, is the first thing most people see.
I had a small, discolored patch on my right cheek which I already knew was not cancerous, but unsightly to me. She froze that off but since it was entirely cosmetic, I had to pay $100 (in addition to the $60 copay for the office visit).
The 2nd...
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School has officially started, and while I'm really enjoying it so far, it's definitely a lot more work than I was anticipating.  In the past 2 days, I've put in probably about 6-8 hours of work so far.  The work itself is not difficult (which is a relief because these are fairly intro classes that I would hope I could handle at my age and at my life experience level lol), it just takes a lot of time.  I am hoping this is just me getting into the groove, and that...
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My rugs were picked up yesterday.  I needed to get new pads as well, so the total cost was a whopping $590.  Well, this won't happen again for a while.  The technician made a comment about doing this every year, but with my living alone, having only one cat who uses the litter box religiously, and having three flights of stairs upon which to deposit outside dirt -- I can go a lot longer than that.
Today I'm scheduled for a haircut.  The salon I go to now doesn't...
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Sold my bed today...love my bed but hubby can't use use it so had to get one like him to be able to sleep together...so another $300 to put into our house account...should be around $3900 saved for the house deposit..but they paid cash so have to go put it into the bank before can put it into the account....but every dollar counts.
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I took advantage of the new special enrollment period for my FSA plan in order to increase my contributions. I did not expect to be in physical therapy for months, have so many doctor visits, and need an MRI back in December. I have several claims that were approved, but not paid due to NSF. Now I'll be reimbursed for those expenses. Did you make any changes with your FSA plans?
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