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Today is a federal holiday so I have the day off. I worked a 12 hour shift at the hospital. When I got home last night my mom called to tell me that my dad had been in bed all day because he couldn’t move his right arm. That caused alarm bells to go off immediately in my head. I then spoke to my dad & he explained that it was bursitis that he’s experienced before. That calmed me down a little. He has an appointment this afternoon with his doctor. He tried to tell me that he...
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I have always loved to sing. When I was in eighth grade, I was asked to join the church's adult choir. I was beside myself with joy. Usually that was only for people starting high school and beyond. I didn't realize it then, but I learned some valuable life lessons.

1. The choir is made up of different talents and personalities. Hopefully they all add something to the music.

2. There is one goal -- to make beautiful music.

3. Teamwork is important. There's at time and...
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We harvested two more rows of potatoes and got 22.6 pounds of mostly gold potatoes. Organic gold potatoes go for $1.79 a pound right now, so that is $39.38 worth of potatoes. Two rows took 9 seed potatoes cut in thirds. There were about five reds in there. The golds were a lot bigger than the reds were last harvest.

We have 7 more rows to do and I am hoping we will be able to get a couple more rows dug tomorrow. It depends on the weather. It takes 15 pounds to do a canner...
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Hurricane Delta has passed & I am relatively unscathed. I lost power for 9 hours & still have no internet, but other than that and the now dry closet leak, all is well. The weather is sunny & dry this morning.

Yesterday was my sister’s birthday & I called to send her my best wishes. I got to speak to my niece & nephew as well. They’re growing up so fast! I can’t wait to spend time with them during the holidays. I still hope that they will be able to travel home for Christmas.🎄...
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Hi everyone. I am turning 50 on the 15th. big milestone.

I am still working hard paying down my 'house fix up debt'. My goal was to pay it all off by year end. I am likely to have less than $20k left. House is very nice and in a great location. I thought of selling it as it is huge for just me but felt the stress of moving was too much for me (after doing house construction for a year and a half and the chaos and virus right now in the World). I am staying here at least for...
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I think it looks like we will be going to buy a house around jan/feb 2022....if we have to move in feb 21 then we will end up with a 12 month lease...it is expensive to get out of a lease here so we will...just wait and keep saving for those 16 months...I'm sure that time will be here in no time...will also get more of a deposit so that will be nice
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I haven't been paying much attention to the retirement accounts. I don't think I checked since the end of August. Mostly because everything was pretty volatile. But I checked today and we are up $877.45 since 8/26. $660 of that was contributions. I am happy that it was ahead even a little bit.

It would be ahead a lot more if the company hadn't stopped contributing in July due to CoVid. They said they'd contribute at the end of the year, but I don't know if that will be...
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My plan for the weekend is to get the rest of the potatoes dug, so I can get them curing for 3 weeks so we can bag them up and store them in the basement. We also need to move the piano from the great room to the living room. My sister will be moving into the great room soon. She's not going to have an easy time of living here. There won't be any privacy for her and Mom is already making things difficult, not wanting to give up an inch more of space than she has to. She's...
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Hi all! NPR is working on a project on American families living paycheck-to-paycheck. Does that describe your household, before and after the pandemic? NPR correspondent Alina Selyukh would love to hear from you!

In an email to Alina, please describe a little bit about yourself and your situation. Her inbox: [aselyukh@npr.org](mailto:aselyukh@npr.org).

Feel free to copy and paste to repost.
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Was able to put another $2000 into our house account today due to some extra money...so it is getting there..

Also have done a bit more christmas shopping just to get it out of the way...also ordered a couple things for the house that we needed.

not much else to say hopefully next week (its pay week) I can put some money into our ice account!!
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It’s 1 a.m. in the morning & I’m up listening to the rain. I have a leak in my closet that I’ll have them look at after the storm passes. The repairs will be covered by the association. Our clinic decided to close tomorrow so we won’t have to brave the weather. I’m grateful for that. Hurricane season can’t be over soon enough!

I ordered another Clever Fox budget planner for next year & I love the updates! It makes me excited to start tracking my 2021 goals.

My...
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We continue to tackle our mortgage hoping to pay it off soon. We are now a little under $95K from $247K. It is hard to stay focus since we recast our loan and the payment is very low now. I'm seriously considering working until June and stepping down from my position. I left in 2019 to a lesser paying position (about 70% less). My life that year was so nice. I was then offered a teaching job for 2020-2021 and I accepted to give it one last shot. It's not working out for me; still...
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We have a lot of debt. We have a mortgage, a 401K loan, a solar loan, and one ginormous credit card.

The credit card is the one that stresses me out the most and keeps me up at night. We have been credit card debt free only two times in our adult life and both times we paid off our debt with an unexpected windfall and both times we vowed never to go back into credit card debt. Yet, here we are.

We took out a 401K loan to help us buy a house about 3 1/2 years ago. It is a...
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I have been reading blogs here for several years and finally decided to start my own!

I don't know that I have a particularly interesting story or much to say, but I think this would be a great place to keep a financial journal just for me.

Where to start... I am married to the man of my dreams, my high school sweetheart, and we have been together for over 25 years. We have two teenaged children that are pretty awesome. We live in California where the cost of living is ridiculous!...
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In preparation for our trip tomorrow, I started packing yesterday. Since we are still changing seasons here and we are heading to a colder climate for our trip, I needed to go through the dark recesses of the closet to get to the warmer clothes. Since I was pulling so much out, I went ahead and started piles to donate and toss to continue with the minimalist efforts. I ended up with a bag FULL of clothes to donate. (Some I sadly never wore, and never will- online shopping is...
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I've been in the habit of posting every day. For many years, it has helped me stay on track with my spending. Just knowing I would have to 'fess up has kept me from doing things I shouldn't do.

But lately I find I am struggling to find something to say. My life has narrowed considerably with the advent of the coronavirus, and there is a sameness to my days that doesn't translate well to the written page. My finances are mostly on autopilot and I have few decisions to make.

So...
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Well we still haven't heard about the taxes...so I'm thinking why bother doing them at all...sure we pay taxes and usually get a small refund but is it worth the hassle...we don't know if they even have them, we can't contact people over there...seriously how much trouble will we get in for not doing them..its only federal taxes and we will most likely save them money as they won't have to give us a refund...I'm kind of over the US tax system...I know they have been shut down and...
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Today on the way home from work I was tired and tempted to get takeout, but it seemed daunting to order online ahead of time from my phone and I didn't really want to wait around a bunch of people.

Came home instead and ended up making a quick, comforting (and frugal!) grilled cheese with veggies inside and a cheesy French toast to use up a leftover slice of slightly stale bread.

This is why I usually save takeout for specific cravings or social occasions...can usually make...
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I transferred our savings account to Discover at the end of the year last year because it was paying 1% and my credit union was only paying .05%. I was excited for the little increase the $ would be making....

Since then, it seems like each time I log in, it has dropped... .90, .80. 70 and today it was .60% Its still multiple times what I would make at the credit union, but c'mon!

I remember when I started in banking, checking accounts paid 5% and regular savings paid 7%!!...
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Lost another friend to COVID. She contracted from a rehab facility that had a high number of cases, well at least that is what is suspected.

This is the fifth person I know to die from this virus. I really wish people would take it seriously. I got a little lax over the weekend but will be more conscious going forward.

Stay safe everyone
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