Blah blah blah

Last night I introduced Joe to the joys of tofu.

He remains unimpressed.

Okay, he did eat a few bites of it. Next time I try serving him tofu I will (a) press it for longer so it will have a more firm consistency; (b) not tell him there’s tofu in it, although I couldn’t have gotten around it last night, because the only thing in the refrigerator besides two things of yogurt and some juice were the veggies and tofu; (c) cut it into smaller pieces so it mixes in better with the veggies and noodles.

Last night’s dinner was veggie-tofu stirfry over noodles, another no-brainer. I used half a package of extra-firm tofu (froze the rest–I heard that changes the texture in a pleasant way), chopped it into about 1″ squares, and marinated it in some garlic-sesame sauce and pressed it while I was doing the other prep work. Got the noodles cooking (the rest of the angel hair pasta box from Sunday). Sauteed onion & garlic in sesame oil; added the carrots & broccoli and cooked until those were as tender as I like. Then I took them out of the pan, put in the tofu, and sauteed until it was sizzling hot. I put the veggies back in the pan with the tofu and added the rest of the veggies (snow peas, sugar snap peas, squash) and sauteed a few minutes. Then I added some more garlic-sesame sauce and kept cooking it. I wanted a slightly sweeter sauce, so I put a little agave nectar in, and that perked it up beautifully. I’m eating the leftovers for lunch today. And Joe did eat two plates of it last night, so he didn’t hate it all; he just wasn’t crazy about the tofu.

I’m in rather a bad mood today. The car still wasn’t ready yesterday, and the $800 in repairs has shot up to $1K. So Jehara graciously said she’d pick me up from work at 4 today and take me over to pick up the Rodeo. I was planning to take her to dinner afterwards to thank her for her kindness–and we will still do dinner–however, Joe called me totally pissed off this morning when he got to Dallas.

I have to backtrack for a moment here. When we first got the Chevy, our gas mileage was just abysmal. Joe was convinced that someone in our neighborhood was siphoning gas; I thought we just got bad gas mileage. But he insisted on putting a locking gas cap on, and when our gas mileage continued to be abysmal, he finally conceded that we’ve just got a bit of a lemony car here. One of the keys to the gas cap went missing, so I put the other on my keychain so it wouldn’t get lost as well. Now fast forward back to Joe’s phone call.

He’s out of gas. He had enough to get to the school this morning, but not enough to get back home tonight. Where’s the key to the gas cap? On my keychain. Here. So now instead of having a nice relaxing evening with Jehara and the incomparable Izzybella after I pick up the Rodeo, we’re taking Jehara’s car back to Izzy’s house and leaving it there, and I’m taking the two of them out to Dallas with me so we can drop off the gas key for Joe (who has decided that we’ll just put a non-locking gas cap back on. Good idea, in my not-so-humble opinion.). And we’ll get something to eat out there. I’m thinking Cosmic Cafe, since I had to miss it AND Regina Spektor (mumble-grumble inaudible swear words) thanks to the stoopid strep throat.

Thank heavens that we’d built up a bit of a contingency fund over the last couple of years, because this last 30 days or so has completely used it up. If we didn’t have it, we’d be using credit right now, which would be a very bad thing. We had to buy the refrigerator last month (I forget right now, but seems like it was around $600), plane tickets for 2 to Buffalo ($1000), and now $1000 to replace the clutch in one of our vehicles.  It’s not that bad, though, because Joe will be in Hollywood for 6 months for work. That means our living expenses go back down; I spend a lot less on groceries, gasoline, etc. when he’s not home. So we’ll have that contingency fund built back up again pretty soon.

We still haven’t closed on the sale of part of our property to the state; I contacted the person who was working with us to find out what the hold-up is. He said they’re awaiting the partial release of lien from our mortgage-holder, after which we’ll close. I still don’t know if the cash will come to us or to our mortgage-holder. I hope it will come to us. We have pretty much decided to funnel it back into the house and get some truly necessary repairs and improvements done. That will include–I hope–replacing the furnace, replacing the outside doors (we’ve bought one, but will buy the other and hire someone to hang them both), painting the trim on the outside of the house, and redoing our kitchen including cabinets, floor, range, dishwasher, etc.  I don’t know how tightly we can squeeze this money to get all that accomplished, but it will definitely improve the quality of our lives and the value of our house.  We agreed that getting a fixer-upper when we’re not particularly interested in performing the fixing-up ourselves wasn’t the wisest course of action. The next house will not, I repeat, NOT be a fixer-upper.

Speaking of money, I have to take a moment to brag on myself.  I got a catalog in the mail, a new one, one I’d never seen before in my life and have no earthly idea how I got onto their mailing list. It’s got all kinds of Victorian-style tchochkes, clothing, housewares, etc., and I was drooling over it. I have a little extra cash, since I have spent less than half my allowance for the past pay period, so thought I might go ahead and get myself a few things. I decided on an absolutely darling hat, a box with 3 or 4 bottles of ink and 2 blown-glass dippable pens, and a Christmas card assortment. I figured out how much everything would cost, including shipping and the $5 discount on orders of $35 or more if I ordered it online. $71 plus some change. And I sat there and looked at it. Okay, the hat was absolutely adorable, but realistically, how often would I wear it? I don’t know. And do I *really* need that cool ink and glass pen assortment? No, not really. I want it, still do, but cannot even claim to needing that. And Christmas cards, well, I can get equally cute Christmas cards for the same cost or less without having to pay shipping. So I threw the catalog and order form in the trash. Go me!  And since I’m taking credit for being financially virtuous, I’ll go ahead and point out that I’ve brought leftovers for lunch every day this week. (Yeah, I don’t have a car at work this week. What’s your point?)

I did get caught up at work yesterday. It’s amazing how being out for a day and 2 hours can get me so far behind, but it happens. Fortunately, with my having been dependent upon Joe for transportation, I was at work for an extra 2 hours both days. Yesterday I broke my own personal record for the number of credit bureau reports pulled in one day. Pretty impressive, although it’s not going to get me any extra money or anything. Being the one person in this department who’s not eligible for performance bonuses or anything truly sucks. I know I could apply to transfer over and be a collector, thus becoming eligible for bonuses as well as guaranteed overtime, and possibly make more money, but I don’t know if I’d be any good at it. And being not good at that job means one doesn’t last long, nor does one get those bonuses. Of course, the overtime’s still there, but when things are crazy busy for me I can get 3-4 hours of OT a week as it is.

The incomparable Izzybella has the blues today as well. Why don’t you stop by and tell her hi, okay? Thanks.

Financial Progress

Tags

Books

Just FYI, prepare to hear a lot about this topic, as it’s in the forefront of my mind.

Yesterday I made a series of amortization charts showing how much money we could save in interest by paying various amounts extra on our principal each month. It’s absolutely staggering. Of course, we have an ARM, which is hellish, so my charts will change twice a year. But Joe and I agreed that at a minimum we’ll put an extra $100 to principal each month.

And as part of my goal to reduce my personal spending (ahem, books & eating out), I got a library card from the library by my office. Texas has a lovely program where you can get a library card anywhere as long as you’re a Texas resident. So even though I’m not a resident of this particular city, I can still get a library card here.  This library works better than my own city’s library because it’s more convenient; I can zip over there during my lunch break, which (a) removes the temptation to go out to eat at lunch just to have something to do that gets me out of the office and (b) makes it a little easier for me to get the books back on time, thus having no excuse for paying late fees.  They also have a program called Library Elf, where you can get either e-mailed or text messages sent to you to remind you when your media are coming up due, so you can make sure to get them in on time. Pretty cool, huh? 

So here’s what I accomplished today:

• Updated my financial register
• Deposited a check from my personal account into our family account
• Wrote a check for my tithing
• Got my library card and checked out 3 books (they only let you check out 3 items the first time, after that you can have up to 50 items out at a time, but I’m planning on taking fewer items out at a time and going more often to fulfill the purpose of having a place to go at lunch time that isn’t a restaurant or fast food place or Half Price Books)
• Checked the balance of my 401(k)
• Checked the balance of my ING account (and noticed that the interest rate has gone down again, dangit) and verified that my auto transfer into the account is still scheduled for tomorrow and saw that I earned 6 cents in interest last month
• Had a delicious cup of instant Fantastic World Foods vegetarian Southwest Tortilla Bean soup for lunch. Okay, delicious is overstating it a little bit. But it came out of our grocery budget, not out of my personal allowance. So that makes it delicious by default.

Thinking Aloud

Well, not really aloud, per se, but sort of, I guess. This counts as aloud as far as I’m concerned. Thinking for an audience. Whatever.

Before I talk about what I came here to talk about, I have to tell you that I got lunch at Pei Wei today. Soleil told me they have incredible tofu. She was right. Wowza! Yummy! And they also have brown or white rice, and they also indicate which items on their menu are vegetarian if you get them with veggies & tofu. So I got honey-glazed veggies & tofu with brown rice for lunch.  I wasn’t really planning to eat out today, but (a) I left my leftovers at home and (b) my boss ordered in pizza and I don’t really care for pizza. Also, I was looking for a book and the Half-Price Books by my office didn’t have it, and I went to the one in Arlington to see if they had it; there was a Pei Wei along the way and I’ve been craving tofu. So it all kind of worked in this cosmically karmic way and I got my tofu. Didn’t get the book I was looking for, but I found another one and had a 30% off coupon, so all was well.

And yum. Tofu.

Okay. Here’s what I wanted to talk about.

I’ve been mega hyper focused on our finances lately. Ever since I read that Bach book on Smart Women Finish Rich, I’ve been thinking, planning, acting, and reading. I’ve since read a couple of other books, and a heckuva lot of blogs. I find that reading other people’s blogs helps me stay focused.  I also find some good ideas that way.

So here’s what’s improved since then:

• I know where my money (personal allowance) has gone since then. I’ve still wasted too much of it, but I know what I’ve wasted it on.
• I have $110 in a higher interest savings account. That it’s $110 is due in part to my awesome husband who, when I boasted that I had $55 and had set up an auto transfer of $50 every payday, he told me to write myself a check for another $55. So yay to him! I think it’s paying 4.30% interest right now, which is substantially higher than the piddling interest my regular bank pays. 
• I get paid Friday, and I haven’t run my personal allowance account down to zero–I have a little cash left, and I have $14 left in my checking account.
• I canceled Netflix, which will save me about $19 a month.
• When the catalogs come in the mail, instead of looking at them first and then putting them into the recycle bin, I don’t even bring them into the house. I immediately put them into the recycle bin.
• I took 4 bags of books to Half Price Books last weekend and sold them, thus clearing some space in the house as well as getting a little extra cash. The piddling amount of money I got compared to the amount I paid for those books will, I hope, be some incentive in helping me be a bit more cautious about buying more books.
• Last night instead of automatically going out to dinner, I stuck a frozen lasagna into the oven while Joe and I started clearing out one of our most cluttered rooms.
• I have registers in Excel for my 401(k), my cash, my checking account, and my savings accounts, and I update them daily so I always know how much money I have.

There is definitely a correlation between the debt and the clutter. How many times have I bought things that I didn’t need, to cheer myself up, or because I thought I deserved it, or for whatever tomfool reason I came up with? I couldn’t even begin to tell you. And how much of the clutter in our house is due to those types of purchases? And then we can’t find things we genuinely need, so we end up buying another one, or two, or three. Joe has gone from adamantly refusing to throw anything away “because we might need it someday” to realizing that we’ve got way more than we’ll ever need and than we can possibly use and than we have room for, and he was really helpful last night. We got a good 3 or 4 bags of rubbish out of the house last night. We didn’t finish getting that room cleared out, but we made a good start. I think we might have finished it up, but he got distracted and went to play guitar for a while. And I don’t want to push him too much. I think maybe we can finish it tonight while we’re waiting for goblins and princesses and spidermen to come knock on the door for treats.

And once we’ve got that room cleared out, it will make it so much easier for me to keep the kitchen cleaned. And then we can actually cook at home, and eat in the — gasp — dining room! Wow! I’ve found that if Joe will let me plan the meals, without him getting all freaked out about having to have meat substitutes, vegetarian cooking is a lot cheaper and more healthful than the meat eating that we used to do. If we can get that dang grocery budget down, we could put that money on snowballing the credit card debt.

This month things went askew also, because we had to buy a new refrigerator ($500) and had to get plane tickets and a rental car for a trip to Buffalo ($1000). But the refrigerator had to be replaced, and Joe’s mother doesn’t turn 80 every year. It’ll be the first time all her kids and their spouses have been together since 2004, I think. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone.

So when I get paid on Friday I’ll transfer another $50 over to my savings account. I’ll get my allowance. And I’ll put the rest into our family account to pay bills with.

I’m hoping to only spend half my allowance this time. When I record anything I spend in my register, I’ll note whether it was a want or a need with the goal being to cut way back on the wants.

Because my biggest want is to get out of debt and get my finances in shape for the things I truly want to do in life. And they don’t include nickeling and diming myself to death. We got out of debt once before, before almost immediately getting right back into debt, and far deeper. But my focus now isn’t only on getting out of debt. I have a long-term focus on being truly financially free to be able to take care of ourselves, and help our family and friends. We can’t do that when we’re ensnared in debt.

Tightening the Belt!

Budgetarily, I mean. Joe and I sat down last night and worked out our budget. For at least the next year, we’re going to have to really trim the fat so we can get rid of the credit cards. They really suck the life out of you, don’t they? So good-bye to Netflix, good-bye to eating out two or more times a week, good-bye to my cell phone (which I actually won’t miss all that much), good-bye to my wasteful ways. Good-bye to my plans of going to Salt Lake in the autumn.

Don’t take that as a complaint. Because, hello–good-bye to Direct Merchant’s Bank, good-bye to Capitol One, good-bye to high interest rates, good-bye to interest that keeps accruing 24/7/365! And once those cards are gone, hello to the good life!

Okay, I also got to tighten the belt literally as well. This morning I tried on a pair of pants that I bought in late November and they were too small. And they fit. I did the Snoopy dance before I took them off because even though they fit, they only fit when I was standing up. When I sat down, too much tummy smooshed out over the top and looked really ugly. But the free 8-week pass to Bally’s starts on Saturday, and I will be going every day except Sunday to exercise, so I’m feeling confident of getting rid of some of that tummy (and butt and thighs and arms).

I Need Your Money!

Since shameless begging worked so well for Chicory, I figured I’d try using this forum for some more shameless begging.

My good friend Krista was recently diagnosed with cancer. She has an extremely severe form of cancer, glioblastoma multiforme. She is managing to keep her spirits up through everything, and I have been so impressed with her. She is one of the most amazing people I have ever met in my entire life. After struggling with infertility and a miscarriage, she selflessly started a very supportive e-mail group for others who were coping with infertility. It is in that context that I met her. When my IVF failed and I was grieving over the loss of Tad and Ellie, I was searching everywhere to find comfort and consolation. I found it in her group, and in my friendship with her and her husband. I also met another best friend through that group, Michele. I’m fortunate enough to live somewhat close to Krista, but I even got to meet Michele one summer when Joe and I headed to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown NY.

Anyway, just as she turned her trials of infertility into a way to help others, she is turning her energies to helping others now. She has started a group for the Plano Relay for Life that is taking place on May 5th and 6th. From 7 p.m. until 7 a.m., a member of the team has to be on the track, running or walking–cancer does not take a break, and neither can our team. My husband and I have both signed up to participate, and we will be walking along with her family and other friends that are there to support her.

And here’s where the shameless begging comes in. There is always a great need for money to fund cancer research. If you click on the link of the title to this post, you will be taken to my website for Relay for Life. Click on “make a donation,” and you can support a truly worthy cause.