Compulsive Debtor's Finance Blog

Today is a free day at our local nature and science museum. I had planned on taking the Midge, but after spending yesterday driving 50 miles to the hairdresser's, tennis, the store, etc., I decided the round-trip to the museum (about 30 miles) is just too far to venture out for when you consider the cost of gas. Instead, after the Midge's art class, which is about 1 mile away from our house, we're headed to the pool (another mile from our house) and then karate lessons this afternoon (less than a mile from our house).

The high-cost of gas is definitely making me rethink our daily outings....

In the rush to get bills paid and get out of town last month, I forgot to record a couple debt payments. When we got home, I put some more money toward one particular debt and was anticipating having to put a big chunk of change toward it to pay it off this month. However, it occurred to me a couple weeks ago that something was amiss so I started re-tracing my steps and thought that maybe I had paid the debt off early. I wasn't sure, though, so I waited until all the payments from the last month posted and checked the account yesterday. The balance owed is down to $10.90. I don't think this will be a problem to pay off....

I finally eeked out a no-spend day. With my daughter out of school, it seems like I'm always on the go and at some point handing over money for some activity or another.

Since we had money leftover from our vacation a few weeks ago, my husband and I bought a tandem bicycle over the weekend from a couple who had bought it a few years ago and rode it all of 70 miles. (Not kidding.... The bike's computer still has details of their one and only ride.....)

The bike is in perfect condition (looks brand new) and we paid $650 for it (the original cost was close to $2,000). My husband's an avid cyclist so he's excited that I'm going to join him.

The tandem couple also sold us a year-old tagalong bike for $75. We have another tagalong, but the new one has gears and is perfect for my daughter to learn how to shift. Since we were given the first tagalong for free by some friends whose son had outgrown it, we're going to give it away to the family behind us.

The same family is also in the market for a Burley to haul their daughter in. We have one of those too and I think we're going to sell it to them for $75, which will cover the cost of the new tagalong.

Tomorrow is going to be a spendy day since both my daughter and I have hair appointments, plus I need to pick up some dog food and a few other things. Doubt I'll be seeing another no-spend day this week.....

A check for the booming business came in. After I socked some away off the top for taxes, I have $538 to add to the challenge, which brings my new total to $10,918.61.

Since I spent most of yesterday being Cinderella with ratty clothes and a broom, I ended up with a no-drive day. The Midget and I did ride our bikes to the nearby McDonald's for lunch, though, so it wasn't a no-spend day as well.

The Midget still requires training wheels on her own personal bike, but she is very comfortable on the tagalong bike so I pulled her up the hill and around the golf course yesterday on it. Trying to control my bike and the tagalong was treacherous. I'm sure the neighbors thought at least one of us was under the influence as we swerved all over the road.

I figure a few more tagalong outings with me leading the way will inspire the Midget to ditch the training wheels on her big-girl bike....

Some of you may recall that back when I was working the "office" job and building up the booming side business I had the good fortune of employing Hazel the Housekeeper for biweekly visits.

Now that I'm only working on the booming business -- and I'm technically "home" all day -- I feel like I should be able to clean my own house again. So today is the first day that I will attempt to pick up where Hazel left off. I am enlisting the help of the Midget to help with at least cleaning her room, but I'm back to "doing it myself" for the most part.

Did I mention that I hate cleaning the house?

OK, maybe not the whole house, but I do hate cleaning the bathrooms. And the windows. And the floors.

But, I don't mind saving the money I would have paid Hazel to clean my house for me. $180 a month buys a lot of lattes....

I'm going to keep telling myself this as I go to scrub the toilets now.

Now that my daughter is home all day -- and I'm officially working full time on the booming business -- I've had to juggle some things around and my routines are a bit off. I'm slowly getting the hang of this full-time mommy/full-time business owner gig, but things are definitely slipping through the cracks here (i.e. I still have luggage to unpack from our vacation....).

One thing I do want to try to get done this week, which seems to keep getting pushed to the bottom of my to-do list each day, is to post more items on eBay. I was on a roll there for a while, but took most of May off from selling because I was sick and too busy with end-of-school/end-of-job/pre-vacation stuff. However, I have a nice pile of stuff lined up in the basement all ready to go.

We're also cleaning our garage out this weekend, so who knows what treasures I'll find in there to unload....

I managed to spend nothing today -- our first real day of summer vacation at home.

We made use of our pool and ate lunch at home.

I also waded through all the mail from the last two weeks and found some checks for the booming business. After I made my spending plan minimums on payroll and taxes, I had $77.58 left to put toward the challenge, so the new total is $10,380.61.

Also in the mail was the statement from my one and only personal credit card. I was thrilled to see the balance was 0. I don't think it's ever been 0. I might just have to frame the statement for future inspiration.

Despite all attempts to stay at the beach, I have returned.

We had a lovely time here:



We did a lot of this:



And saw a lot of these:



And ate a lot of these:



And I am proud to say the trip was paid for entirely in cash and I actually came home with money leftover, which I put back into our vacation fund for our next adventure.

After watching water boil -- and my old junker laptop do nothing -- for 24 hours, I went to the boss lady and said, "Quit being cheap and invest a little in your company so it can grow."

Boss lady stewed about it for a while, but then gave in and said I could spend $1,100 out of the business accounts on a new laptop if the computer repair guys said it would cost more than $300 to fix the old junker.

They did, so I did and now have mobility again.

Boss lady, which just happens to also be me, is back to stewing.

Thankfully, I go on vacation in 48 hours....

As of today, the "office" job will be officially over (dancing a little jig here....).

Summer vacation starts Friday for Mini, though, so there won't be much sitting around at home working on the booming business for me (so much for those no drive days....)

This poses a little problem since I do have work that I need to get done and my laptop blew up last year. (I usually work on a desktop.)

Thankfully, I was able to resurrect an old laptop from the junk heap known as my office closet, and I'm sloooowwwwwly getting it up and running.

Slooooowwwwwly as in watching water boil slooooowwwwwly....

Part of the problem is that it wasn't mean to run anything above Windows 2000 and it's now running Vista.

I don't know enough about computers to know what -- if anything -- I can do to speed it up (or if it's worth it cost wise). But I do know summer will be over by the time this thing gets done processing one request.....

I've decided to keep track of my no drive days, one of which I had yesterday. We rode our bikes everywhere we went and saw some beautiful sites, including this:

clipping coupons....

It's sad really. Other people go to church or take the opportunity to sleep in. But, not me.

No, I get up at 6 a.m. every Sunday to clip coupons in anticipation of Gil the Grocer making his weekly delivery to my house later in the day.

I do manage to get some work done for the booming side business while clipping coupons, though, so it does make for a productive morning. I call it multi-tasking while my husband calls it insane....

So someone (I'm not saying it was me) forgot to take into account the time it will take to get through customs on our return from our upcoming vacation and booked the second leg of our flight home a little too close for comfort.

Oh, and that second flight is the last flight out of Dodge for the day. So, if we happen to miss it because we're standing in line in customs for longer than the 1 hour and 7 minutes that certain someone allowed between flights, we'll be spending the night in the Lone Star State.

Anyone in Houston got a couch we can crash on?

I went on the airline website to see what it would cost to fix this little boo boo and found out it will cost a whopping $300 to change all three tickets.

Uh, no thanks.

I'll just take my chances; and if we do miss the flight home, I'll be playing dumb at the airline counter and hope all I have to pay for is a really cheap hotel room for the night.

Hey, but good news: I had another no spend day yesterday.....

Yesterday turned out to be a no-spend day even though I did leave the house to go into the "office" job.

I'm hoping I have another one today.

Think I can do it?

Just for fun, last night I used one of those online debt snowball calculators to figure out when my whopping debt will be paid off.

In the past, I just didn't want to project that far because I knew it was going to be a looooonnnnngggg, slooooooowwwwww process. But now that I have my personal credit card paid off and have more money to put toward the other debts, I was curious to see what would happen as my payments increased drastically.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that within this decade I'll have everything but the mortgage paid off.

"Within this decade" may seem like a long time for most of you, but considering the original amount of my debt I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Of course, this is all based on my current payments. My plan is to make even larger payments as our income increases and as we have extra money available from windfalls, so the time to pay it off will shorten drastically with any luck.

Because I only fill my car up every two weeks, I rarely notice the increase in gas prices. However, yesterday I filled it up and it took $60 in gas where just two months ago I remember it taking $40 in gas.

Thankfully, I rarely drive that far and quitting the "office" job means even less driving. Plus, my husband is taking the bus and train to work on a regular basis, so that's helping as well.

I just can't imagine paying that much for gas every week, which would be the case if I were working full time somewhere other than my home office....

I had a couple freelance checks come in today, so after setting some aside for taxes I'm putting $330 toward the challenge. My new total is $10,303.03.

I've been off nursing a nasty flu that I've had for the last two and a half weeks and trying to wrap up work at the "office" job, which is officially over on May 21. Thus, I haven't had much time to focus on financial matters.

One thing I did manage to accomplish, though, was setting up a Roth IRA with Fidelity. This was all part of paying off my one-and-only personal credit card using some of my savings. I arranged to have the Roth funded with automatic deposits from checking each month, so it should be easy on my part from here on out.

I'm off to lay down down and hopefully build up enough energy to plow through some jobs for the booming side business later today....

Another freelance check arrived for $690. After I meet my minimum spending plan requirement for the month, I have $247.73 to put toward the challenge. The new challenge total is $9,973.03.

Last week I got a letter from the administrator of my daughter's 529 plan that said a hard drive with client information was missing and I was among those whose vital records were on it.
The administrator included a number of options to "safeguard" clients like myself against identity theft. Among them was signing up for a service that would alert me to anything changing on my credit report.

Today, I signed up for this and in the process was given my current credit score. I was surprised to find that it's still in the excellent range -- despite all my debt. Now, I'm thinking WTF?!?!?!?!?!

I mean, come on, aside from my booming side business, I have very little reportable income. And, as you can all see, my debt is HUMONGOUS!!!! (Plus, there was that unfortunate incident last year when I was more than 30 days late on my credit card.....)

So someone tell me, just what are these credit folks thinking rating my credit score as excellent????

I'm no financial genius (obviously), but I think it's safe to say my credit score should be around the "sucks to downright stinks" rating.

Another freelance check came in the mail today. After putting $262.50 into my tax fund, I'm putting the remaining $787.50 into the challenge. That brings the total to $9,725.30.

I also got the rest of my payout from my savings to put toward paying off my credit card debt so I've adjusted the savings and debt figures over there on the left.

I made all of $2.97 from an eBay sale so I'm adding that to the challenge. The new total is $8,937.80.

I'm having one of those weeks....

The other day -- the day I called in sick with vertigo -- my husband's car broke down in the middle of a major intersection near our house. He had Mini Me in the car with him so I ran over and got her and then we went to the nearby garage to wait for the tow truck to show up with my husband's car. A while later, in drives my husband. Apparently the car decided to start again -- but it would only run if my husband kept his finger on the ignition switch.

The mechanic looked at it and said the ignition switch or some do-hickey had to be replaced -- for $600 (thank you, car repair fund....).

Also that night, I realized our rice cooker, which I had dropped a few days ago, was broken. It still will cook the rice, but the plastic is cracked, there are all these wires sticking out of it and one of the legs is broken so I have to stick a plate under one side if I want it to be level. (Did I mention it bounced a few times when I dropped it?) So that'll need replacing sometime soon.

Then, yesterday, I realized why I had vertigo -- it's because my husband has shared his nasty cold with me and my ears, head, sinuses, chest, whole body are a mess now. But, like an idiot, I went to work at the "office" job anyway (since the full cold hadn't hit yet and I was at the moment feeling OK). Work itself wouldn't have been so bad if some crazy lady hadn't gone ballistic in the middle of the "office" right before I was scheduled to leave.

Said Crazy Lady has done this numerous times over the last few weeks, but never to this extent. My response is to let the person in charge deal with her, because I'm sorry but I'm not making enough money to deal with crazy people.

So, while I was calling the person in charge (who just happens to be a control freak), Crazy Lady got right in a coworker's face in a very confrontational, threatening manner. Coworker told her to back off or she was calling the cops. Crazy Lady didn't, so Coworker did and in the course of all this Control-Freak-Person-in-Charge shows up.

I then went about my business (figuring one more crazy lady/control freak wasn't going to help matters), but while standing there counting down the minutes until I was off Control-Freak-Person-in-Charge came over and whispered to me "I really think the person in charge should deal with this and I hope nobody calls the police."

I point out that Coworker is still on the phone with the police, who appear to be on their way. And then Control-Freak-Person-in-Charge whispered to me: "That's not the procedure...."

At this point, I almost went crazy-lady ballistic as well, but instead I ever so nicely told her to shove the procedure up her you-know-what and that if anyone feels threatened it is fully within their rights to call the police if they so please. Then I walked off to count my blessings that I'll soon be rid of the "office" job.

I thought that would be the end of it, but after four policemen hauled Crazy Lady out, Control-Freak-Person-in-Charge came over to me and said "I'm not second guessing anyone." To which I replied that she was doing just that the second she whispered her little procedure comment to me and shame on her for putting someone's safety before procedure.

She said she didn't know what to say to me and I said "What about 'sorry'?" She then looked at me all befundled and wandered off to dwell on how to control the rotation of the Earth on its axis.

I'm still waiting for an apology. I figure I won't get one. But I do figure I'll be hearing from Control-Freak-Person-in-Charge and the real freaks in charge at the "office" job about this little incident sometime between now and the end of my tenure there.

As far as I'm concerned, the only thing that should have been said to any of us worker bees by Control-Freak-Person-in-Charge was: "Is everyone OK?"

That's my story and I'm sticking to it and I dare one of those "office" bosses to question me on this one!

(And this is why I am the best CEO of ME!!!!)

Sold something on eBay yesterday, so I'm adding $5.50 to the challenge. The new total is $8,934.83.

I got $3 for doing a survey, so I'm putting that toward the challenge. The new total is $8,929.33.

My husband's car died on the way home tonight. He thinks it's something to do with the electrical system and is an "easy" fix (i.e. cheap). I hope he's right because shopping for a car right now sounds about as appealing as getting a root canal.....

I called in sick to the "office" job today. I'm down to my last 30 days there and the motivation is just not there most days. I woke up dizzy -- seriously -- so I decided it was grounds enough to stay home. That means I won't get paid, but it also means I'm not leaving the house and won't spend money. I haven't had a no-spend day in a few weeks, so it'll be good for me.

By the way, did I mention that I really AM dizzy? I'm not sure what it is. I have no other symptoms, but every now and then a severe wave of vertigo hits. Probably a good thing I'm not driving today....

Mr. Postman delivered a nice freelance check to me this afternoon to the tune of $900. Since I've already met the minimum income requirements for this month, it's all going into the challenge, which makes the new total $8,926.33.

I got the first of my two savings payouts to put toward my debt, so I've updated my totals over there on the left. On one hand, it hurts to see my savings take a nosedive, but I won't miss those monthly payments to Chase.

I made $14.77 on eBay today (after shipping) so the new challenge total is $8,026.33.