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Archive for September, 2009

Talked to my brother today

September 30th, 2009 at 01:42 am

Ok, more like tossed quite a few text messages back and forth about the car. Hello? September ends tomorrow and with it, the car inspection!

It took a few messages before I was able to determine that 1) he was sorry he hadn't taken care of this sooner, 2) he's really stressed about life, and 3) he wants to fix this as cheap/fast as he can.
Oh boy... it sounds to me like he can't even come up with the $$ to get the car inspected. Well, since DH technically still owns the car, it falls on us to get it legal again. Brother is en route here now as I type this. I emailed my boss to say I'll be in late tomorrow. Not sure how involved I'll need to be. In all this, I didn't even THINK to ask if he has any reason to think it might not pass inspection!! At least we're taking it to a shop that has passed it many times before. I just worry because the exhaust is not "stock". It IS stock, just off a different model. Some places have given us crap for this.

Between my mother, my brother, and sometimes even my dad - could somebody please tell me exactly where *I* came from?!?!? Not this family. No way.

I feel really bad for my brother. I don't think the army was what he expected and now is just not the time to be trying to find a job. He jumped into home ownership while in the army and now what? Yeah, he didn't make all the right decisions - but he's my brother and I still feel REALLY bad for him. A troubled marriage isn't helping the situation.

Eh, on the bright side: the house is a little cleaner now! My inlaws were here a couple weeks ago, so I just needed to vac, change bed, etc.

In other news: I found $200 to send to Student Loan 1 this past week!! I think I'll have that knocked off in no time. Smile

I'll leave you with a pic of the other feline mutt in this house. Uh, I wasn't baiting her - honest!! Ha ha ha... She didn't know what to think and kept looking at me like "WOW, I didn't know we had THIS!"



Shopping this weekend

September 27th, 2009 at 08:01 pm

*Nascar side note* DH just dragged me upstairs because for some reason I needed to see Logano's wreck NOW. With the amount of yelling he was doing - I thought for sure someone was dead. The kid is fine, but how am I supposed to want my own husband to be a race car driver? That car flipped quite a few times. They're quite "safe", but still...

We did a little bit of shopping this weekend and they were successful trips.

Target:
DH found 2 pairs of shorts: 3.24 and 4.24 - good for working at the shop.
We bought 2 bags of Purina One Sensitive for 0.49 each. Stacked 3.50 give-a-bowl coupons with 2.00 Target coupons. I have two more sets of coupons for 0.49 bags and one set to get a 0.99 bag. These are for an elderly friend of ours whose cat only eats this food.

RiteAid:
I was afraid of running out of soap - the one in the dish was the last one! I prefer Irish Spring and RiteAid had 3-packs for 1.49 through yesterday. I picked up two along with a 4 oz box of Wheat Thins and a Clean & Clear face wash. The Wheat Thins were free and the face wash was a money maker with coupons. I only spent 2.63. Smile

Walgreens:
1 Fusion razor: 8.99 - 4.00 q
1 Herbal Essence shampoo: 2.99 - 1.00 q
1 Herbal Essence conditioner: 2.99 - 1.00 q
4 Dentek dental floss: 2.00 each = 8.00
3 Halls Refresh: 1.00 each = 3.00 - 1.00 q
2 Vaseline lotion: 6.99 each = 13.98 - 3.00 q
Total spent: 29.95 + 1.87 tax = 31.82 OOP
I got back 35.00 in register rewards.

I have a few things I'll need to buy in the next couple of weeks, boring personal care items that aren't normally free. Might as well get something for them. I already did a preliminary mapping of the sales and see some things I could use.

I talked with DH a little bit last night about ADHD. Boy, it's great that he seems so willing to openly discuss these things!! I'll take what I can get. I mentioned that I KNOW I'm lucky in some respects - he doesn't toss money around like a lot of folks with ADHD can be prone to doing. He admitted that he does have the temptation sometimes to say "Screw it, I'm buying myself something big". He also admitted to being able to see the "big picture". He wants to move to Indiana and he wants a race car. He really does understand that a big screen tv would slow this down. He said not spending/frugal spending is so ingrained in him now that he doesn't think he could ever go back. YAY!!!!! While he's not thrilled he doesn't have everything he wants - he still appreciates the way things are most of the time. We inadvertently made some right decisions along the way. Not sure how that happened!

Hey, I can't complain: he happily comes along on my coupon trips! He usually wanders aimlessly around the store while I hunt for the items. Then I go find him, hand him what he'll be buying along with the coupons, and off we go. He's not hard to find - he's the one happily singing along to whatever is playing on the music system. Big Grin

Updated finances

September 26th, 2009 at 06:45 pm

Er... tried to? The mutt was in a MOOD this morning. We had a lengthy discussion over other available sun spots in the house before I finally dragged her upstairs - to the full sun third floor.





When I finally got my desk back, I got caught up on the financials for the week. I have things running so smoothly that I can just do a quick update when I don't have a lot of time. That was last week when my inlaws were in town. This week I wanted to dive into things a little deeper now that DH's car is paid off.

Next up? Student Loan 1 and Citi BT!! Six months?? We'll see. I paid off DH's car in six months, but this is a little bit more to pay off. Well, I updated my sidebar and then scheduled another $125 to Student Loan 1. I still need to take a look at my other bank account and see how much "extra" is there. Smile

There is a down side to having DH's car paid off: he now thinks he can move on to his dream of driving a race car. *SIGH* Is it just me, or is it really more complicated than "buying a race car"? He KNOWS this too!! He volunteers on a pit crew for a Super Late Model car at a local track! To make matters worse: his parents will happily hand over $1000 for him to do this if we'll move back to Indiana. C'mon - who wants to scream with me?!?

Here's a little background: an untreated ADHD mind can destroy your life financially if you're not careful. He's diagnosed, textbook, and currently untreated. His mind isn't currently capable of seeing the impact his decisions can have in the long run. He wants a race car and he wants it NOW. I'm still trying to figure out how to get us working on the same page. He just sadly says our priorities are different.

Here are MY priorities, not quite finalized:
1. Pay off Student Loan 1
2. Pay off Citi BT
3. Build emergency fund - dollar amount TBD
4. Build "baby" fund

Then, I'm really not sure. You can absolutely count on #4 disappearing if we can't work out our differences on the race car issue. No way will I ever be able to explain the costs associated with medical bills, nevermind anything else.

Don't get me wrong: I WANT him to be able to race cars. I just don't see HOW we'll ever be able to afford it.

Well, those are the demons I'm battling today. And here I thought my biggest problem after the car payoff would be to talk him out of a big screen LCD TV...

Paid off DH's car today!

September 25th, 2009 at 01:05 am

So Lux is cleaning house?? Guilty. I'm one of the ones being beckoned back. I am here nearly every day reading and commenting, there's just a block when it comes to writing. I see I started an entry July 10th. I wanted to upload a pic and pics weren't working. Never came back to do that.

- How did Lux know?? Just this morning I transferred the money from savings, clicked a few buttons, and as of tomorrow - DH's car is paid off! This is at least three months earlier than anticipated - WITHOUT money from the sale of his old car. The savings account had been named "The XXXXX car payment fund". I transferred the money and renamed it "Yup, I stole it all..." DH hasn't noticed yet... hee hee...

- Paying off the car taught me a bit about the current state of our finances. I'm in REALLY good shape to tackle the next item: Student Loan 1. I need to update my sidebar - WAY out of date. It's nice though - I can see we've made some progress since I last updated it.

- My brother is HOME. Not overseas, not in the army, but HOME. For GOOD. He's actually the reason we never got any money for DH's old car. We had two people lined up to come see it the next day - one was a guaranteed sale. My brother sent me a text saying he needed a car. That was the end of that. We handed over the keys on a paid off, inspected, registered, insured vehicle and told him to figure his life out. Eh, he still hasn't. Inspection is up at the end of September. I told him at the time that I'd need the money by the end of the year to pay off DH's car. I'm glad I didn't immediately need that money and this is something we'll get worked out eventually. I'm just nervous since technically DH owns the car even though we haven't seen it for a couple months and the inspection is about up.

- My mother and I haven't spoken in two weeks due to a couple BAD (in my opinion) financial decisions she made. I'll save that for another entry. This is affecting my current mental state.

- I got a raise! Wow, that's great these days. It's about $20 net each week. Not too bad at all. It's effective 08/31/09, so I'll have to process 3 weeks of retro pay for myself. Yeah, tough being the payroll department.

- I am reading "More Attention, Less Deficit: Success Strategies For Adults with ADHD" by Ari Tuckman. I really like it... but hate it. It says in the intro that it's your book, do what you want, yell at it if you want. I'm more inclined to start beating myself over the head with it. DH is so textbook ADHD and the more I understand about it, the better. He is diagnosed, but currently untreated. I feel he can only pursue treatment if we fully understand what sort of treatment would benefit him. Me reading and understanding is the only way things will get better. It's just a SLOW process. I AM learning a lot though.

- My YTD coupon savings must be over $2500 by now! I'm about a week behind on updating that info in the spreadsheet. I think this has a lot to do with helping us get the car paid off. We hardly buy anything anymore.

- Work has been VERY stressful for me lately. I think this is compounded by the problems with my mother and the problems in my own mind I am trying to sort out. I'm only one person and I'm tired of having to solve the world's problems. Yeah, it probably doesn't help that my boss suspects he has ADHD, but has never pursued this. *sigh* I know from experience that my mind does, but does not, mesh well with the ADHD mind. I'm WORKING ON THAT!

- Since I'm trying so hard to change myself, I'm actually taking more time for myself these days. Well, trying to. No matter what - the household stuff still needs to be done somehow. I'm just trying not to kill myself over it and trying to relax sometimes too.

- I do NOT miss TV!!! I am absolutely loving music again. I'm listening to a station on last.fm right now and this song is good. By Ian McCulloch of Echo and The Bunnymen. I'm learning "new to me" stuff that I missed from years ago. Love it!!! I'll still watch a tv show here and there, but not much. I don't have it on as background noise anymore. DH was even nice enough to notice it has been bothering me and he went upstairs to watch tv tonight. That was a HUGE move for him! Smile

That's about all I can come up with for now. Just taking it easy this evening. MUCH needed these days!!