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Home > Archive: June, 2011

Archive for June, 2011

I'm expecting...

June 27th, 2011 at 04:03 am

... hazelnuts that is. Visiting girlfriend asked to get a tour of the back yard, which is mostly fruit trees, and when I pointed out the lone hazelnut bush I saw strange growths on it. After further inspection I see it is finally producing nuts (its 6 years old). Woohoo, more food coming from the back yard - gotta like that.

Thats it, no more big expenses (I hope)

June 26th, 2011 at 02:35 am

Whew, it feels like I broke the bank. I went out to buy a used car this weekend, went to a number of places, and finally settled on one (2010 Hyundai Accent). Another 0% credit card check was used to pay (mostly) for it. Sorta hurts to see the credit card debt increase, but now I know I have no more large purchases until next year (and maybe not even then!), and almost no monthly bills any more (just CC's and utilities).

Hmmm, lets see, if I add in the CD maturing in August, I will have more than enough to pay everything off by December. I have a paid for one week vacation for November set up already, another 2 week one ready to go in July, and I have $10,000 in CDs maturing next January.

Yard sales were good today as well. The visiting girl friend spent most of the money, but she is psyched about her purchases. And she was a big help in getting the car (Can anyone say good cop / bad cop in car negotiations???) Not sure if we got the best price we could, but if not it was pretty close. Man, I'm so glad that's over with! Now just 10 days until vacation starts.

Now its paid off (honest) & this and that.

June 19th, 2011 at 02:27 am

I can go online now and see that as of Friday, the mortgage balance is now $0. For course they had to tack on some type of documentation fee of $65. Errrr, really??? Someone always has their hand grabbing for your money, don't they?

On my mystery medical bill, the doctor's billing person said it wasn't done right, and they will fix that, after I fax them the bill (which I did). Hmmmm, I suspect I'll have to contact them again - it never goes away that easy.

Today was nice weather, yet yard sales were sparse, to put it mildly. Is there a holiday I wasn't told about? I spent $2, yet I found a dollar bill near my car, so total outlay was $1. Yeah, I can afford that.

Went to the car dealership today, but they didn't have the cars they said they had in stock online. Almost felt like a bait & switch. Seriously, the lot out front looked half empty. I went to do a test drive on a used car, and as the saleman got the car to the side of the showroom for me to get in, another saleman comes out and says that car was just sold. WTF??!! Is this the new reality with car sales? BTW, this was a Hyundai dealership, so I'm not sure the Japanese problems should have any effect on them.

The $40 gas gift card arrived today. Unfortunately I needed gas yesterday (I was on fumes), so this will have to wait to be used for a week or two.

Oh well, if this is the worst of my complaints on life, I should be happy. Right?

Nice CVS score tonight

June 17th, 2011 at 03:43 am

CVS has not been the best place to get the super deals the past year or so, but every once in a while they come through. Today I spotted a $5 off coupon in the paper, and I was able to pick another one up off the recycling heap before leaving work, so I was ready to research the deals when I got home.

After some research, cutting out coupons, and making a quick trip, here was the haul using some strategic buying:

* 4 boxes Raisin Bran
* 3 Boxes Fiber One
* 6 2-Liter bottles of Diet Pepsi
* Hydro 5 Razor (Yard sale item)
* Motrin 20 Ct. (Maybe yard sale)
* Zyrtec 5 Ct. (Maybe yard sale)
* Bayer Advanced 20 Ct. (Maybe yard sale)
* Digiorno Pizza
* $10 Gas Gift card

All total it cost me $3 in cash back coupons and $12.15 cash. If you net out the gas gift card of $10, everything else cost me about $5. And the items I have marked as Yard Sale will probably sell for $7 total. Soooo... happy, happy days.

Yard sale-ing was different this week

June 5th, 2011 at 05:24 pm

... and not for what I found. This was the first time I had my girlfriend along, and she loves yard sale-ing like I do. I found very little for me (booo), but she found some nice items she had wanted, so that made up for me not getting very much. I did get a Pyrex cobalt blue pie plate and a Pyrex 1 quart measuring cup (all for $3). I had no idea measuring cups got that big.

After making me dinner, my girlfriend said how great that measuring/mixing cup was. She could measure and then mix in the same bowl. Very convenient.

On the finance front, I just got my first paycheck after (almost) paying off my mortgage. Its cool looking at the checking balance, and not wondering if I will have enough for my next payment. Of course now my retirement accounts dropped more than my paycheck - I guess I need to realize its just a temporary pullback.

Well, its done (sorta)

June 2nd, 2011 at 03:40 am

Well the mortgage has hit the dust (more or less). I left a few hundred in to pay this coming month, so I would have time to contact the credit union and get from them the list of what paperwork I should be able to expect from them, and to know if I need to go there in person to get anything. I figure that late payment will cost me less than $2, so I can live with that.

What to do with the excess funds? Next month (July) I have the half year property taxes due, which if they are similar to last year... will be about $1,500. But I get 3 paydays in July, so that should make up for that expense.

And other news...

Markets look to be going haywire today. Shame I don't have a ton of money to put into a Roth IRA today, although I guess it would be a day until the funds cleared, and who knows, the market may go flying back up tomorrow.

Looks like summer has finally hit in the past week. I've been feeling drained most days by the afternoon, I guess my body hasn't gotten used to the hotter temps yet.

And lastly I changed the contributions to my 457 plan. Since they now have the option to have a Roth 457, I have split my contributions 2/3 traditional, 1/3 Roth. I want to see how much of a tax hit that causes, then I will adjust until I hit a comfortable split between the two. I figure I'll probably do a 50/50 split when its all said and done, but for now this is an initial test.