All Entries

 
begin - beginning checking account balance
pr - my net payroll check
SB - my contribution towards our joint living expenses
cash - My budgeted amount is $260, but I only needed $220.  I forgot to adjust before I made my House DP transfer, so I ended up with an extra $40 in checking.  I just left it there, because I will have a big expense to pay beginning with the next paycheck.  More on that below.
sf - automatic sinking funds transfer which will happen...
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Yesterday I met BFF in the middle city for our monthly lunch/gabfest. I spent $44 for gas and food. Then I spent another $70 for new walking shoes. That was unexpected, and it put me over on variables (105%), but I really did need walking shoes, as my current pair is literally falling apart. The bad news is, I began to question the fit last night and took them back to my DSW this morning, only to learn that I couldn't exchange them because I had walked outside. Well, that makes...
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My daughter has been having chronic headache issues for about 16 months. We have seen doctors and specialists, had MRI's, tried prescription medications and vitamin regiments... nothing has worked. As a last resort, her neurologist suggested therapy. She said sometimes our bodies will do anything to not deal with painful things.
Finally in January, we were able to find a therapist that would see a minor. Very few we talked to would see minor's and even fewer still woudl accept...
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MM(19) sorted out his housing, as I expected he probably would.  He was just being a little too *chill* for my liking.  While I worked on the backup plans for the backup plans.  But he had a few irons in the fire and I was giving it some time before I dove in too deep.  So it ended up taking very little time or mental energy on my part.
He found this rental the day after the RA position news.  But then he hit a red tape brick wall with the management company. ...
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I just checked Capital One's 360 performance savings went up 0.10%. I think it was 3.20% when I first opened my account then it went to 3.30%. So far it's just been very small incremental rates increases. I also noticed that their CD rates have not gone back up to 5.00%. I was worried when I opened my two accounts, after listening to Suze Orman speak, that they would have big rates increases right after I opened my accounts. The term was only 11 months, so it's not like I'm locked...
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It's been some time since I've blogged. I guess it is because I haven't had anything to really say. Just working around here trying to keep things going as well as working on the church mortgage reduction opportunity. Since we started in January, we have paid down $44K already saving us $18K in interest. So, that's good news. It isn't sustainable because this came from some larger gifts, but figure whatever we do pay down is that much more than what we had.  I continue to...
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Look at this little house, isn't it cute? 
Carbondale, IL Real Estate - Carbondale Homes for Sale | realtor.com®
And what do you know?  It just happens to be located in the same town where my very favorite 2 people in the whole world live.  What a coincidence.
Almost a year ago now, I re-named my "hobbies" sinking fund "house down payment".  I have been adding small bits of money here and there.  Well, I am ready to get serious about this sinking...
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I had a week off work with absolutely nothing planned.  My expectations were pretty low (that it would be peaceful).  It ended up being a mix of some peaceful days and some challenging days.  & a bomb was dropped on me re: work.  Ugh.  Another post for another day.
I did make it to my other happy place (above).  This was a neighborhood in San Francisco, where my friend lived during our college years.  Another little slice of paradise. 
I...
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Can anyone tell me if there is somewhere that I can find how much we need to put away for taxes...we never owe and the last 2 years (which has just been completed) we have owed on both of them and it looks like from last year to this year our taxes that we owed doubled...but I would like to make sure we don't owe again but not sure what to put away...is it going to go up another $1000 plus again this year...have tried irs but couldn't find it...anyone have any ideas...our income...
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I recently applied for the senior benefit access through the Illinois Council on Aging -- a renewal, actually. I've been receiving the benefit since I retired, but it has run out. To my surprise, I was denied because my income was too large! I checked my figures, and yes, I exceeded the threshhold by less than $500. It was that slight raise to Social Security last year that did it. Not the larger one this year.
Without the senior benefit, I have to pay the full price for my license...
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I have been working really hard to pay down debt and have not felt like we have made any progress, but over the last couple of weeks, we have had little bits of money come in (some bigger than others) and I have applied all of those towards our debt.
My son received a tuition reimbursement for his junior college. That was a $690 drop in the bucket! And so unexpected!
 The Husband also received a raise of just over 4% and that has made up a small shortfall we were going to...
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I had fallen behind on keeping track of fuel costs in Quicken.  So I finally went back and got that (2022) all cleaned up.  Which wasn't a big chore because I have done a good job keeping track in my blog.  But I wanted to re-calculate monthly numbers in terms of how the electric bill sorted out every month.  Like my monthly blog estimates, it's all just a rough estimate.  But I keep track of car fuel costs versus home electricity costs.
I realized that...
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I was so pleasantly surprised how low overall our taxes were last year (with MH working full year, with my raise and bonus, etc.) that I never noticed that we had graduated out of the 12% tax rate.  😵  Which also means...  No more 0% tax on investments.
Which means...  I need some time wrap my brain around that and actually think about taxes when it comes to investments.  We've been spoiled for so long.
I went back and looked more closely because I...
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begin - beginning checking account balance
pr - net payroll check
SB - my contribution towards our joint living expenses
cash - cash for expenses over the next 2 weeks
sf - automatic sinking funds transfers
roth - contribution to my Roth IRA
Citi MC - my Verizon cell phone bill and monthly Netflix subscription
CarMax - my latest attack on my car loan.  The new balance is $22,270.24
house DP - a tiny contribution towards my house down payment fund
Broad - a loan...
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I finally filed my taxes.  I am such a procrastinator.  
Just working on paying down debt and saving for retirement.
 
 
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Waiting, waiting, waiting...  Feels like absolutely anything and everything is delayed.  RA decisions were delayed, because of course.  All of these film festivals keep delaying...  & then I was thinking that I hope financial aid isn't delayed for several months again, this year.   Last year MM's internship took forever to sort out.  I am stressed about college housing (the longer we delay the harder it will be) and it would be nice to have...
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Well I did get a paycheck from my PRN job, but there was a snafu at work with processing time cards so I didn't get paid at my full-time job. No biggie. I'm actually carrying a little extra cash at the moment as I've been receiving reimbursements for planning work events. And since I got out of debt in 2021, I've kept a good amount of cash on hand.
I'll get a double paycheck on the next paycheck. I'm most concerned that they get my match on my retirement contributions correct...
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Received $116 bank interest 
Received $246 I Bond interest 
 
Snowflakes to Investments:
--Redeemed $49 credit card rewards (cash back) from our grocery card 
--Redeemed $68 cash back on Citi card
--Redeemed $3 cash back on dining out/gas card 
 
Other Snowflakes to Investments:
+ $6 Savings from Target Red Card (grocery purchases)
 
TOTAL: $126 Snowflakes to Investments
 
401k Contributions/Match:
+$955
 
Snowball to...
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So after 2 months of waiting to hear from the IRS we finally got a letter in and apparently we owe taxes for 2021 and 2022....they are also charging us as they say we never sent them in last year (which we did and we have told them this and called many times about the taxes so they can see that we called and should have notes on  the file)...it states that they need to be paid by end of march and we will be charged $45pd that they aren't paid and we had to also do an amendment...
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I'm so happy to hear that the Supreme Court has allowed the $6 billion student loan debt settlement. There's still another case pending but this is good news. 
I've been privileged enough to knock my debt down from $80k+ to just over $30k during the freeze on interest. I also consolidated my loan. I'll continue to pay and if I'm granted a forgiveness, I'll be thankful and if I don't I'll still be thankful because over the last two and a half years I accumulated no interest. 
I...
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