Sunday, July 31, 2005

Amazon.com Associates Program

I knew Amazon.com had this set up, but never took advantage of it before. If you go to their main page (http://www.amazon.com) and go all the way down the left side until you see a link for "Associates", you can set up a little shop on your web page with your favorite books, movies, etc.

You do, of course, get a certain percentage if a person actually buys from your page. Always a plus. :)

So I went through and found some of my favorite personal finance books. If you haven't read them, amazon has some good deals on some of them (especially the used ones). They're on the side. I also posted some of what I'm reading right now. It's summer - I have an excuse for frivolous reading material.

Saturday, July 30, 2005

Women's Finance (http://www.womens-finance.com) has put on some quizzes! :)



Financial Diva in Training!
Financial Diva in Training
You try your hardest to save money and get ahead in your expenses, but sometimes new trendy clothes or your daily Venti Frappuccino habit seems to get in the way of becoming that Ultimate Financial Diva. While you might not always have extra spending money everyday, you splurge when you deserve it ...and who doesn't deserve it every once in a while!
Find out what kind of financial diva you are! at Womens-Finance.com

Friday, July 29, 2005

Library

I think the library is one of the best inventions ever. We go every week. Sadly, it is our Friday date. :)

I have been able to check out more books than I could ever afford to buy. One of the best parts is that I can glance at a book, say, "hey, that sounds interesting", grab it and take it home to browse through for three weeks - then take it back. If it sucks, I never have to worry about it - or dust it. If I love it - really love it - I could go and buy it. We have a couple on our half.com "wish list". If it goes down to a really good price, we'll grab them.

We've also checked out hundreds - literally - of DVD's. It saves money from even renting them at Blockbuster or Netflix. You may have to wait awhile...I just decided last week that I wanted to see "Finding Neverland". Well, I'm 13 out of 15 people on the waiting list - that means a minimum of 13 weeks before I'll get it, if they only have one copy. But...if you get there first...I'm first on the list to get the first season of "Quantum Leap". :) Love that!

That's where I get most of my finance books. Maybe I'll put a few that I really like over on the side. Dave Ramsey is good, for those of you who have never read him. I really like his "Total Money Makeover".

I'm off to look for money-making things...maybe pics for ebay. ;)

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Paying off Stuff...

I'm sooo good at titles...

Anyway. Today was the end of summer school and the receipt of a big fat check. Along with another check we had, it came to about $2700. We actually sat down and wrote down everything we wanted to pay off. We marked down to the penny where that money was going.

This is new to us, because in the past, we would have spent and spent and then I would have bitched and moaned about the fact that it was all gone and we had nothing to send to the bills.

BUT ...I updated Quicken, figured out where everything was going. Awesome!
Approximately:
$530 to the new cc (to pay it off)
$400 to the Best Buy cc (1/2 of the fridge)
$300 to the big evil cc
$200 to get money put aside for bills we don't pay monthly (like AAA and the truck registration)
$300 set aside for xmas so we don't use the cc like we have every other year
$200 that we owe my mom
$250 for our visit with in-laws in KY next month
$100 for the state fair next week
$200 to the Vets Admin for medical bills
...
I know there's more, I just can't think of it at the moment and my list is in the other room. We also moved $100 from paypal to the ING account, so our savings (emergency fund) is up to just under $300. When paypal gets back up to $100 again, I'll move it to our credit union savings. I'm pushing for $500 to make me feel okay. Just in case.

Yay us! I was really proud that we did this all upfront and right away. So - that's about $1700 that goes towards bills. It feels so good.

Makin' money!

I haven't had as much time as I like to update in here. It's just been a really busy/bad week.

Monday, we lost power - for 11 hours! Tuesday - my husband swallowed a piece of steak wrong and we spent 5 hours in the emergency room. Crazy!

Today is the last day of summer school, and I get my big check. I will then be able to pay off two of the cc's and send a nice chunk to the Big One. Also, we will set money aside for the holidays (so we don't end up using the cc like with every single other holiday for years), and put a few hundred in savings. That'll about do it for that check, but it will feel really good to have some of those paid off.

Things I have been trying to do to get a little extra money to send off to the cc's: selling on ebay is prosperous (our ID is markkris if you feel like bidding on some of our "treasures"...), and like I mentioned before, I signed up for some of those "take this survey and get money" sites. We'll see how those go. ksfinancialprogressreport.blogspot.com has a ton of sites on reading email for money, etc. I'll have to check those out. If you haven't been to her blog yet, check it out - she has a ton of great stuff.

I'm also working on getting a crafty-business going. Nothing totally serious - I'm not doing craft shows, but maybe using some spare time this winter to try to make some stuff to sell online or something. I have a good idea (that I'm not ready to write here yet). We'll see how it goes.

We used to sell Watkins products, and I've been thinking about Avon, only because I can't find an Avon lady around here and I love their products. I've heard it's only $10 to sign up. Maybe.

so...lots of ideas floating around in my head. Too many!

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Mystery shopping/online surveys

Anyone ever done these?

Just curious - I signed up for some online survey stuff today.

More later - but I went here:

http://www.surveyclub.com

Monday, July 25, 2005

Changed Stuff Around...

Well, I think I got things set up a little better. I can link now over there --> That's cool. I also changed things so that the title and stuff more closely shows what I'm going to use this for.

Our debt feels crushing at times. We have about $10,000 in credit cards, which is really our main goal at this time. We also have a little under $90,000 on the house and about $60,000 in student loans. We will probably work on paying off the house before the student loans because of the lower interest rate on the student consolidation loan.

I struggle with compulsive spending. Completely my own fault, but it is almost a daily struggle. Even just last month - dh updated Quicken and told me that we had spent just over $90 on eating out since June 20th. Say what? All of that "burger here" and "soda there" add up. How depressing.

Not much else I'm going to say today. I teach summer school and get paid this Thursday, when I'll be able to make a nice payment to two of the credit cards - and get them paid off. Then I'll be concentrating on the big cc.

More later -

Friday, July 22, 2005

Newbie to blogging

I'll admit it - I use opendiary regularly. I'm so confused by some of the stuff here, because I'm so used to the ease of use with opendiary.

How can I "bookmark" different blogs here so I can go back to read them at times? I have some people I'd like to revisit without having to remember the site name...

Thx. :)

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Money

Sometimes I think that money is just a necessary evil...I've been a naughty girl.

We bought a new refrigerator. It's beautiful. I used to make fun of people who got excited about home appliances... Those were the days.

We bought an mp3 player. It's beautiful, too.

We bought a pressure washer. Although not beautiful, it will help make our house beautiful. We have wide eaves and the house never gets rain on it directly. That's a good thing for leaving the windows open during rainstorms. It's a bad thing for getting air moving through the house and the damn dirt on the siding (cedar, not vinyl).

Although I get a nice fat check for teaching summer school, it's all spoken for - paying off the above, giving some to medical bills, going to KY to see my in-laws, setting aside some for xmas, and the rest to the big cc. Not a terrible thing, but it was supposed to all go to the big cc so we could get it paid down.

I have my student loans in forebearance with the hopes that we'd use that extra $185/month to send to the big cc. It hasn't really happened that way. I'm getting better, though, and I'm bound and determined to get that money out of the checking account and to the cc. See...if it's there...we spend it.

The last three months I've also been good about getting budgeting money out in cash and keeping it in the safe. Things like the water bill, which we only pay every three months. If it stays in the checking account, we spend it - then suffer when we have to pay the water bill. So - that's been working well. So far. I want to get a second checking account (no ATM card) for that stuff, that we can just transfer the money between accounts at the bank. Every time we go there, though, they're always stinking busy. We need to try again.

I may also have another rummage sale this summer. My mom is cleaning out the basement, and she sends things to us for that - she doesn't want the money, she just wants it out of the house. She does that a lot. We got a ton of glassware from her doing that, too.

Ebay - well, it's been going well. We've been keeping things on there pretty steadily, and making some money. Slowly but surely...I'm going to set paypal up to pay the cc directly. We pay ourselves back the shipping costs, which can get pretty hefty sometimes. I set up a great area in my basement where I have a table, shipping stuff, etc., plus a bookshelf with all the stuff to sell on ebay right next to it. It's great. It's been really nice to have it all in one spot.

I don't think I'm ready to post how much we owe as of yet. That's still private. But - I'll post one of them - the Best Buy card (for the fridge) has a little over $800 on it. That will be gone after next week. :)

I guess that's it for now. I'm going to save this blog for money and teaching stuff. How exciting! lol

Monday, July 04, 2005

Dang...it's been too long...

I forgot how to post on this site. How lame am I? I do most of my online writing at opendiary (no, I'm not 12, but it's easy to use), so this confused me. Never realize that I'm a high school teacher with a master's degree, hey?

The idea of summer school is idiotic. Force students to take makeup classes in the summer (well, they're not forced, but ...), and then, make it so that the classes can't really be taught in a linear fashion (I have two sections, and both sections have first and second semester students in them, so I can't teach one course). It's like having two different courses to teach to groups of students in the same time period.

I never would have made it as a one-room schoolteacher.

Graduation is over, thank God, and another group of seniors will soon enter my classroom. This years' seniors were freshmen when I started at this school. I can't believe that I've been here three years already! They've been good - and they've gone by fast.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Home stuff - still in debt, still too much to do on the house and not enough time or money to do it, etc. We've been selling lots of stuff on ebay to go to the bills. Summer school helps, too. That's a one-month paycheck for 6 weeks of 4 hour days, 4 days a week.

I'm also going to apply for a banquetting job tomorrow. Easy work, limited hours, no orders to take, no money to handle...I like that.

Not much else - we'll see what happens.