All Entries

Income Total: $1353.66


      $1000 Recurring monthly retirement account distribution  


      $300 Swagbucks and My Points earnings (cash out to PayPal)
      $53.66 Credit Card Cash Back Rewards


       


Total Spending: $1282.67
 
Total Savings: $70.99


 Fixed Expenses: Verizon (cable): $104.72
Verizon...
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August has been an expensive month for car repairs! For reference, I drive a 20 year old car that has been “new to me” for about 10 years. It was purchased in cash for somewhere around $7-8000 at that time.  With inflation, an online calculator says 8K would be around $10,400 today (which is crazy!). This has been a very reliable car which now has about 180,000 miles on it. I have not had to put much into the car over the years beyond routine maintenance.
 
This...
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Wow I did not realize I have not posted since April.
Just plugging along paying down debt and saving for retirement.
My car is paid off.  Just had the brakes fixed.  So happy I was able to cover the amount with my car repair/replacement fund.  
Going to have a short stacation in September  It will just be nice to have a few days away from work.
 
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Murphy decided to pay us a visit. UGH!
We are strongly considering moving (I will do a full post on that eventually), and during the course of packing some stuff up, I walked across an area of carpet and it felt a little damp. I thought I was imagining things and I didn’t really think much of it. About 10 minutes later, I walked across the area again and it again felt damp to me. Just slightly damp, but damp. This time, I had my husband come check if it felt damp to him…...
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In February, inspired by another blog I read, I decided to start saving all my $1 for an emergency fund. The blog I was influenced by saves all of her $5 bills, but I don’t feel like we are in a financial position to take so much out of our daily budgets right now, but maybe someday.
As we primarily use cash, a fair amount of $1 bills go through our hands. We take them and put them in a separate envelope marked “emergency”. Each time we get to $100 in singles,...
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Debts
Mortgage -$113,890.54 (-$238.56)Land Loan -$9,353.60 (-$189.99)Hospital Bill -$741.41 (-$75)
Savings
Roth IRAs +$26,908 (-$984)401K +$53,076 (-$1,235)Emergency Fund +$6,498 (+$413)Animal Fund +$772 (+$503)Car Fund +$20 (-$0)HSA +$303 (-$181)
Overall: -$980.45
Overall down from the market. But this was actually a great month for us. Besides adding to the above funds I paid for a $600 medical bill, $800 lodging for a future vacation, have the loan payment for next month...
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Not much to say about the stock market. I hit my high July 31st & it's been down since then. Oh well.
Looks like my cash surplus will be double what it was at the end of last year so I'm starting to think what I should do with it. Fully fund my IRA in January or pad my home down payment? I could do both actually.
I am looking forward to Napa Valley & Lake Tahoe. Flights & hotel have been booked. I booked the rental car yesterday. Now just to reserve the wine train.
For...
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MH is working on a very low budget horror film.  
I have to back up and say that I don't think we saw a low budget movie short (at the festivals) made for less than $50K.  For a 10 minute movie.   For a full length movie with a lot of effects, this movie needs a $50K minimum budget.  This is extremely low budget in the grand scheme of things.  The stretch goal is a $90K budget.  Which would mean bigger actors and more effects.
MH met the...
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Just when I need to conserve cash, here comes the wheel tax. I had to pay it; it's due September 1, and I had forgotten about it. I thought I had paid it when I got the new car in February, but apparently I just transferred the information and didn't pay anything. Well, now it's done. Only $45, thanks to my senior benefit.
Wheel tax is like a resident sticker. It allows me to park on the street without getting ticketed.
That leaves me with only $14 for the rest of the month!...
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Each day, each week, is a bit different than the last...love that! Variety is the spice of life and all that.
Today I totally procrastinated about getting started on my next story assignment.
Earlier this summer, I acquired a pair of old garden urns from my Buy Nothing group.

I imagined I might not get around to rejuvenating them til next spring, but somehow I found some spare time and wound up having a great experience repainting them using some very inexpensive acrylic paint...
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It's been a long time since I’ve written about it, but we use the Dave Ramsey envelope method for budgeting. We don’t follow Dave religiously, but we do like the envelope method for our sinking funds and it seems to work pretty well for us. Twice a month I go to the bank and take out anywhere from $800 - $1500 to fill our envelopes. This works for us and helps us to keep from charging on our credit cards and increasing our debt.
We have several different envelopes,...
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I bought a few groceries, which brought my spendable moolah down to $61. Variables are at 92%.
Today I'm driving an hour away to get a diagnostic test. Doctor's orders, I must do it. Driving to this faraway location was the only way I could get an appointment quickly. I am not sure how well insurance will cover this; I may have some out-of-pocket expense. This won't affect my variables; it will be a "big ticket" item for sure.
It's very, very hot today, and I regret having to...
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Although I've been busy, I really haven't had anything of consequence to actually report. It has been a bit expensive lately. 
We recently went for our dental check ups. DH had a tooth extracted and I had a crown as well as another tooth having a filling replaced. We have no dental insurance so it was all out of pocket expenses. Ouch. But any of the dental insurance available to us isn't really cost effective and we like our dentist and don't want to change.
My laptop was...
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The last couple of years have been very expensive for us and made it difficult to pay down our debt by much. I’m not complaining, just explaining. We didn’t decrease our debt by much and we were able to cashflow a lot of expenses! Going forward, things should change.
We have had two “senior years” in a row. Our son graduated in 2022 and our daughter graduated in 2023. Senior year is expensive. There are all the normal school expenses that everybody has:...
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Received $122 bank interest 
Received $240 I Bond interest 
 
Snowflakes to Investments:
--Redeemed $30 credit card rewards (cash back) from our grocery card 
--Redeemed $75 cash back on Citi card
--Redeemed $7 cash back on dining out/gas card 
 
Other Snowflakes to Investments:
+ $8 Savings from Target Red Card (grocery purchases)
 
TOTAL: $120 Snowflakes to Investments
 
401k Contributions/Match:
+$795
 
Snowball to...
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We've been going through a round of 'weird Murphy'.  Just dumb little stuff.  Which I appreciate, versus the big expensive stuff.  But man, what a pain.
The door handles are breaking off of the kids' car.  Someone on SA has a 2-year newer car (same model) and had mentioned.  I vaguely recalled some weird repair and looked it up when the first door handle broke.  Yes, it was the door handle.  Not just one, but all 4!  I told this to MM and...
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Have only 1 debt which is the dreaded CC...my plan is to pay it off by the end of year so we can start 2024 debt free..I have currently paid off $500 this month with 1 more payday to go..so on track right now..fingers crossed it stays that way
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I had some surprise company -- friends who took the train into Chicago and needed a place to crash before they continued their trip. A sleeper couch and the floor were not the best accomodations, but they didn't complain. Before they left we had the chance to visit and shop and eat out a few times.
I have spent 90% of my month's variables budget! I can't blame it all on the company. I also bought a new jacket for $38. Unexpected spending, but I'm chalking it up as a late birthday...
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Hi there… I know it’s been a while, but like happens to everybody, life got busy. My daughter was a senior and graduated last year plus it was her last year of dance, so we had a lot to do. I am also a teacher and the summers are always busy… but in the best possible way!
I am back to work now, so in some ways our life is going to slow down.
The last time I posted our debt we had $19,167.74 in debt. It has decreased, but not by as much as I would have liked....
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Anyone else here line dry their clothes? I was doing this and stopped, but decided to get back at it. I'm not sure how much I  would be saving on my electric bill by doing this though. 
I hung my clothes out to dry and they dried in about a hour. It probably was shorter than that, I was on a work call and forgot about them. 
For those of you who line dry your clothes, is it worth it? And how do you get the outdoor smell out of your clothes ? 
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