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I'm pausing now as I get ready to travel tomorrow for our family get-together in Michigan. I have promised to bring green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, and a dump cake. This morning as I assembled my ingredients, I realized that I forgot to buy the yellow cake mix for the dump cake, so it's back to the store. Yesterday I spent $44 for ingredients. I logged that expenditure in Gifts/Charity. As it is a gift to the family, similar to hosting, just not at my house.
Since my last...
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It’s been so long since I’ve written a blog post but a lot has happened this year. 
 
In January we changed around our mortgage payment for our house we’re living in to monthly payments instead of weekly and were able to clearly see just how much the mortgage payments for two properties had become and realised that we could not afford to pay for a large mortgage on our house and the balance of the mortgage payment for our rental property (our old house)...
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It was a very productive day here. It was also the likely last day it hit 61 degrees for quite some time, so I decided in advance to get as much outdoor work done as possible. I wound up:
* Mowing front and back, not completely, but the parts where the grass has gotten long since my mower's last mowing, which I guess was in October. In the process, I chopped up a bunch of leaves with my mulching blade.
* I also blew clean all the leaves on the driveway; they tend to get trapped...
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This debt update is based on our most recent credit card statement which posted on 11/16/23. I do these mid-month because our credit card closes on teh 15th. I can't wait until we are credit card debt free!
As always, we are not paying off our debt as fast as I would like, but I am happy to say that our debt decreased! It actually went down by a pretty good chunk, and by more than I was expecting this month!
Here is our current credit card debt totals:
     ...
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Hello, everyone!
I feel so jazzed about meeting my 2023 Goals that I decided to make new goals for 2024.
1. Keep cc paid off.
2. Keep emergency savings at a comfortable level.
3. Contribute $25 per payday to IRA.
 
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My goal for November is to pay at least $500 towards my student loan principal.
Wednesday I made a payment of $300, of that about $92 went towards the interest.  As of yesterday my new balance is $30,501.74, of that, $5.74 is interest. 
I'm estimating by the time I make my next payment, of about $500 on the 30th, the interest accumulated would be about $86.10. With every payment I do see a slight decrease in interest. It's just frustrating, because I will come in just...
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Hello, everyone!
I think for the first time ever in my history on this blog site, I have actually met my goals before the end of the year. I managed to replenish my savings depleted after my accident. I also opened an IRA and paid off my credit card.
 
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So I have started doing quite a bit around here, I have gone through 2 sheds and tidied them up and now have a big rubbish pile and stuff to sell....we have done 4 car loads from storage shed to our home....so we are trying to do 1-2 a day until we get to the bigger stuff like shelving and wood then we will just get a truck for the day...will be more expensive but can't move them in our car...will hopefully be done by end of year with everything....this weekend I will take photos...
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I'd used my Home Depot card to pay for a few items when I redid the kitchen. The zero interest was scheduled to expire on 1/6, so I paid it off today with my bonus. Yeah I had a few months to but I'd rather pay it off while I have the money. 
I also used my travel card to pay for my birthday celebration. This is zero interest until the end of the year in 2024, so I'll take my time with this. Tomorrow I'll be throwing $300 on the student loans 
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In our fast paced, crazy, celebrity driven world, money is seen as the be all and end all and we lose sight of the fact that money is just a tool. We can use the tool the right way or we can use the tool the wrong way. That’s completely up to us, but it’s still just a tool.
For many years, my husband and I used the tool not only the wrong way, but on the “wrong” things”. We were very irresponsible with our money and that lasted for about 20 years!...
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Since my last post a couple weeks ago, I got strep throat again! My immune system is so bad.
 I ended up going ahead and pulling the money from savings to pay for the surgery and get the discount, BUT in a sad turn of events the Dr. decided the day before with all the recent illnesses that I wasn’t healthy enough for anesthesia and cancelled it.
 I was absolutely devastated and bawled and begged but they would not give in. I think that is so dumb since the entire...
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So my hubby and daughter have a lot of "hobbies", they are both very creative people and always have been they redo furniture, sewing, leatherwork, gardening, jewellery (making/selling), camping and metal detecting...thats between the 2 of them...a couple they do together so we have a lot of stuff and since we moved into this house 2.5 years ago we have had a storage shed with all our "excess" stuff....I told them by end of year I want the storage shed gone as it costs money we...
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So my hubby and daughter have a lot of "hobbies", they are both very creative people and always have been they redo furniture, sewing, leatherwork, gardening, jewellery (making/selling), camping and metal detecting...thats between the 2 of them...a couple they do together so we have a lot of stuff and since we moved into this house 2.5 years ago we have had a storage shed with all our "excess" stuff....I told them by end of year I want the storage shed gone as it costs money we...
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So my hubby and daughter have a lot of "hobbies", they are both very creative people and always have been they redo furniture, sewing, leatherwork, gardening, jewellery (making/selling), camping and metal detecting...thats between the 2 of them...a couple they do together so we have a lot of stuff and since we moved into this house 2.5 years ago we have had a storage shed with all our "excess" stuff....I told them by end of year I want the storage shed gone as it costs money we...
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I've had a busy week. I drove down to Indiana to attend a birthday dinner for BFF, then spent another day and a half there. My costs for that little trip were $41 for gas and food. I also had to replenish my tollway pass ($40) and then my AARP subscription renewed ($16). While in Indiana, I went shopping with BFF at Goodwill, where I bought two pairs of jeans and some gift wrap for $18. After coming home, I sent $250 to my Oregon son for my granddaughter's birthday and college...
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We picked up Hulu as a cable replacement when we cut the cable cord in 2012.  
It was a nice alternative because at the time Hulu had current shows and we paid the premium for no commercials.  We were paying $8.55/month.
For the most part, money is no object when it comes to streaming services.  It's MH's thing.  It's the one thing he will want to spend money on (TV and movies).  But on the flip side of the coin, we have always been wary of signing...
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The last few weeks have been crazy.
Thankfully, there has been some good crazy!  It's a nice change.  A mix of good and bad.  It beats just constant bad news.
The worst news is that MM(20)'s girlfriend has been very ill and she dropped out for the rest of this quarter.  The quarters go so fast and missing 2-3 weeks was just too much for her to catch up.  I feel so bad for her parents. They've been going through this with her sister the last 2 years. ...
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Actually, the furnace isn't performing any antics, but we had the furnace guy out today to do the yearly maintenance check up.  He said it is running at 93% which is pretty close to optimal, but we need to clean the clutter from around the vents and that will go up.  The furnace is 16 years old and he said it should last another 5 years, possibly more as far as he can see.  New ones for a house this size are running between $8000 and $10,000.
Hearing those numbers,...
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Don't you just hate it when you pay money on to a debt and it takes a couple days to process it...like I want to see the progress now....and does anyone else who has a CC charge you to make payments?? Ours does we have to pay .95c everytime we make a payment....but we are getting rid of this CC slowly but surely!!
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As a public school teacher, there aren’t a ton of ways to earn extra money at my job. (I could make extra money tutoring or creating pages for Teachers Pay Teachers, but I mean actually at my job.) One way I can make a little extra money is for class coverage. If a teacher is out and we don’t get a sub, the students still have to go somewhere. We call that class coverage. Up until last year, if I covered a class for a teacher, we received pennies on the dollar of subs...
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