Family and Finances

The Frugalest Strawberries Ever!

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:59:00 +0000

Two nights ago, at about 9:45pm, my husband and I were in the kitchen, just about ready to head to bed. Suddenly, our doorbell rings. Very odd. My husband goes to the door and there stands our elderly neighbor with a box of fresh strawberries!

Our neighbor's name is Dot and she's a real sweetheart. She explains that her daughter is visiting from out of state and they went strawberry picking that day. They picked more strawberries than they could handle, so they dropped the extras off with us! So thoughtful!

The coolest part of the story is that I was just telling my husband last weekend that I wanted to go strawberry picking so I could freeze some fresh strawberries. I thought it might be cheaper than buying frozen bagged strawberries at the store. Instead, free strawberries showed up at our doorstep :)

Here's a picture of the strawberries I froze:

I re-used two frozen strawberry bags I had kept in the freezer after using them up. They are crammed full, with the extras going into a Ziploc bag.

This is what I make with my frozen strawberries:

Yummy!

Part Time Has Begun!

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:00:00 +0000

I am in the middle of my first week of working part time! A young woman who has done some temp work in my company was interested in the position and she started on Monday! She will be working Mondays and Tuesdays and I'll be working Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I am really excited!

I am going to be training with her a little bit this month. My boss doesn't want to have to pay either of us overtime, so I went in for one hour on Monday and one hour yesterday. Then, she went home an hour early on Monday and I'll go home an hour early on Friday to make up for it. Not ideal, but we're working with it.

I can already tell that I am not going to have any problems filling up my two days off. I'm pretty happy with what I accomplished this week. I think my biggest challenge is going to be to not waste too much time on the Internet :)

Financially, I should be getting a lump sum payout of my unused vacation time in with my next paycheck. I plan to use that to top off our emergency fund, which will then be at our goal amount! Anything left over will probably be split between the car fund and the home improvement fund.

I'm a little nervous about the large decrease in my paycheck. We've never relied on it for living expenses (it's all gone into savings funds), but I've become really accustomed to growing our savings accounts fairly quickly. We have a lot to save yet before we'll be ready to replace our old vehicles, and that's going to go a lot more slowly now. I know I just need to have faith, though, because I'm really sure that this is where God wants me.

I'm looking forward to a productive summer!

Part Time Update and More Free Stuff!

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Tue, 05 May 2009 11:00:00 +0000

First, an update on my hopeful move to part time work from full time work. The job share position is now officially on my company's website as an open position. According to my boss, the hr department has already received 24 applications. They found four that they phone interviewed and only one was interested in the small number of hours we're looking to fill (16/hrs a week). We'll see what happens!

Also, I received more free stuff in the mail! Check it out:

I got this sweet box of stuff from a community that I am a part of called BzzAgent. I haven't been very active in the community, so this is the first thing I've gotten. I might have to get more involved :)

It's Official - I Am No Longer Cool

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:00:00 +0000

I know, you hadn't even realized I was cool before. Well, I was. For my eight years as the owner of a Ford Mustang. As of Tuesday, that time is over. We sold the Mustang for about Blue Book value.

I lowered the price on Monday, and that seemed to do the trick. I had three people contact me (two through Craigslist and one through Carsoup), and one of the Craigslist guys drove up from southern Wisconsin on Tuesday night and bought it!

About half of the money went back into our emergency fund, which is how we paid for the Mazda. The other half went into our New Car Fund for our next vehicle(s)!

To put salt in the wound, the wonderful state of Wisconsin sent me new license plates for the Mazda, which showed up yesterday. I was really fond of my old plates, which had been on my Mustang and we transferred to the Mazda. You see, Wisconsin license plates used to be three letters, a dash, and then three numbers. The three letters on my old plates were "RBL", which I took to mean "Rebel"!

A couple of years ago, they changed the plates to read three numbers, a dash, and then three letters. They are slowly moving all of the old plates over to the new system.

The letters on my new plates? "PUY"

Not cool.

Car Selling Tips?

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:37:00 +0000

As I mentioned a few months ago, my husband and I bought a new (used) car last winter and were waiting until spring to sell my really sweet Mustang. Well, spring has arrived and the Mustang is up for sale. We put it on Craigslist last Sunday (speaking of which, I should re-post it today) and have also put it on CarSoup.

So far, I've only had one reply, and that was from a kid who wanted to trade it for his 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse (umm, no thanks!).

We have some wiggle room in the price, so we'll probably drop it down soon. I priced it above Kelly Blue Book, but way below anything else comparable on CarSoup.

I'm beginning to wonder if we should also list the car on Cars.com??? I know our local newspaper links to Cars.com and so does Yahoo!, so the traffic is probably a lot heavier.

Anyone have any advice? Are people even buying cars right now? Should we list it on Cars.com? Any thoughts are appreciated!

A Little Update

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Is anyone still out there? I wouldn't blame you for leaving me, I haven't been very faithful around here!

I haven't had much to post about lately since life is still kind of in limbo. I'm hoping to scale back from working fulltime to working parttime and still don't know if/how that's going to work out.

I've had it in the back of my mind since last summer that I wanted to cut back my hours and spend more time being a homemaker. I was originally planning on doing it as soon as possible after the first of the year (I'm covered under my husband's health insurance plan now). Then the economy went haywire, and I was uncertain as to what I should do. I've decided to go ahead with my plans, and I've talked to my boss. Now we just need to find someone to job share with me! I'm hoping to be working parttime by June. We'll see how it goes!

An Ambassador? Sure!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Sorry to post two articles in a row about things I received in the mail, but this is too cool to not post about. Check out what was in the box I received in the mail the other day:

The box contained a full-size bottle of Jergens Naturals lotion, plus ten sample packs and ten coupons! Jergens included a letter asking me to be their ambassador by handing out the samples and coupons to my friends. How fun is that!?! I think I received this because of a survey I filled out awhile back, but I don't remember exactly.

Anyway, I'll try to post something more substantial on here soon :)

Fun Mail Day

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:00:00 +0000

I received a ton of fun stuff in the mail today!

Here is what I got:
- Two $2.00 Purina coupons that I received after emailing Purina and letting them know how much my cats love their food!
- Two Home Made Simple coupon books. I'm not sure how I got two of them, but I'm not complaining!
- Nexxus shampoo and conditioner samples - but no coupons :(
- Two samples of Pamprin and coupon. Only one of the samples is in the picture because I used the other one already - how's that for perfect timing!
- $5 off any purchase at Famous Footwear coupon
- the best of all: three coupons for free items!!! I got these from a Kraft sweepstakes. It includes a coupon for a free Nabisco Cracker item, a free Planter's Peanut item, and a free Kraft Cheese item.

I love awesome mail days like this :)

A New (To Us) Car

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0000

Ok, before you get excited, I'll be straight with you - the new car is actually a downgrade.

If you've read this blog for awhile, you know that one of our 2008 financial goals was saving in our "New Car Fund". My husband and I have been discussing our car situation for quite awhile now, and here's what we've come up with.

My husband doesn't like driving my Mustang (I know, isn't he crazy?!?), but since he works so close to home, he ends up driving it a lot in the winter. Also, we won't know what kind of vehicle I will want to drive next until after we have kids (if we have kids). If/When the little one arrives, I'd like to try using a four-door car first and only buy a minivan/SUV if the car doesn't work well. But, I don't want to buy a newer four-door car only to sell it again a few months later.

The answer we came up with was to buy a cheap car to replace the Mustang. Then, once we know what we want to upgrade to, it will be pretty easy (and inexpensive) to sell the cheap car.

Our original thought was to sell the Mustang and buy the cheap car next summer/fall. My sister-in-law just had a baby, though, and bought an SUV to replace her 1998 Mazda Protege. She bought the Mazda new and has taken great care of it. We couldn't pass it up!

So, we are now the proud (sort of!) owners of a 1998 Mazda - paid cash, of course!

Since winter is not the prime time to sell a rear-wheel drive Mustang, we're going to park it out at my parents' house until spring (thanks, Dad and Mom!). We should get more for the Mustang than what we paid for the Mazda, so hopefully we'll be able to make a nice boost to our car fund at that time.

Below is a picture I found online of a similar-year Mazda Protege. This isn't the actual car, though our car is blue (darker than the one in the picture, though).

As you might guess, I am pretty sad at the thought of selling the Mustang. I've owned it for 9 years and loved every minute of it! I always knew, though, that someday I'd want to have kids and that the Mustang just wasn't going to fit in with that lifestyle. *sigh* I'm going to miss you, Eleanor!

The One Where a Bonus Saves the Day

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:00:00 +0000

In my last post, I mentioned that my husband and I were going to try to max out our Roth IRA's at $5,000 each by April 15th. Well, my husband received a nice bonus and we decided to put it all toward our Roths, so we will be maxed out by December 22nd! I'm really happy about that.

My plan is to take some time before the first of the year and discuss Financial Goals 2009 with my husband. I thought I'd be throwing any extra money for the first couple of months toward the Roths, but that's obviously changed :)

Some options will be: getting a jump start on 2009 Roth contributions, beefing up the emergency fund, putting extra money towards the mortgage, and/or working on the car fund. I'll let you know what we decide!

Financial Goals 2008: Where Did the Year Go?

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:00:00 +0000

I can't believe how quickly 2008 slipped by me! Less than two months left! I am way overdue for an update on our financial goals.

1. ROTH IRA's. My goal for 2008 was to contribute $4,000 into both my husband's and my Roth IRA. We are currently at $7,050 contributed. We've been putting most of our "extra" money toward this goal, so it's growing quickly. My husband and I have also decided that we're going to put emphasis on this goal and try to get to $5,000 in each Roth by the deadline on April 15th.

2. New Car Fund. I don't even want to look at the balance in this account! It's invested in the stock market, so I'm sure you can guess what that means. Yuck! We have been continuing to put money in this fund, so at least we are now buying low (I hope!). We've hit our goal of adding $3,900 to this account. We have actually added $4,025 so far this year. I doubt we'll meet our stretch goal of $4,500, though, since we're really concentrating on the Roth's right now.

3. Emergency Fund. Our goal for this fund was to increase it by $2,600 this year. This goal has been met and then some! We have currently added $2,900 to our emergency fund this year! So far, $500 of this has been moved to a cd. I'm going to continue to do this in $500 increments about every other month (called a cd ladder) since we should never need all of this money all at once. At least some of it can earn a little bit more interest!

4. New Siding Fund. This is another completed goal... sort of. My husband and I ended up hiring to have the house painted instead of getting new siding. It turned out fairly well, but I'm guessing we'll go with vinyl siding next time. At any rate, the paint job should last 5-10 years and we can make a decision at that time. Hubby recently informed me that new shingles will be next on the list!

I'm pretty happy with the progress we've made this year. We will have met all of our 2008 goals and some of the stretch goals! I'm thinking of making some income-related changes next year (more on that later!), so I'm glad we've been able to accomplish a lot this year. Pretty soon I'll start working on some 2009 goals!

Favorite Blog Posts: 11/21/2008

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:18:00 +0000

I haven't done a "favorite blog posts" article in awhile, but I came across some stories recently that I really liked.

Glblguy over at Gather Little By Little shared a thought-provoking tax story he received in an email. Interesting way to look at things!

I recently started reading a cute, fun blog written by Big Mama. She just came back from a trip to the Dominican Republic with Compassion International and had one last story to share. This one is a real tear-jerker!

Lastly, Rocket Finance is starting a new series on Finances and Freedom. He leans right, so you may or may not want to keep up with this one ;) I'm really enjoying it so far.

Have a great weekend!

Recipe Websites and 100th Post!

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:00:00 +0000

I'm a picky eater and usually just buy the same couple of things to eat for dinner all the time (namely, potatoes!). My husband, on the other hand, likes everything (except beets and sauerkraut). I have been spending some time over this past year and four months of marriage locating recipes that are easy to make and that my husband will love. I've found quite a few winners. The problem is that a lot of recipes call for just a little bit of a fresh produce or dairy item that I buy and then most of it goes to waste.

I'm going to try to get better at locating different recipes that use some of the same vegetables. For example, last week I made a chicken rice casserole dish for my husband that called for fresh celery and onions. Of course, I had to buy a whole bunch of celery even though I only needed 1/4 cup of it!

Determined to not let all of that celery go to waste, on Sunday night I went internet searching for an easy recipe that had celery as an ingredient. I ended up at All Recipes, which seems to be one of the largest databases of free recipes out there (this is not a paid advertisement, by the way!). I was able to do a search by ingredient. I found another casserole dish that looked easy, but it also had chicken in it, so I thought it might be too much like the original dish I had made.

Searching around some more, I came across this Golden Potato Soup recipe. It looked pretty easy, and I definitely already had the potatoes on hand ;) It even calls for onion, so I was able to use more of that up!

I made it tonight, and it was a definite hit. From now on, whenever I make the chicken rice casserole, my husband will know that potato soup will be for dinner a few nights later :)

I really love the idea of grouping recipes together to keep food (and money!) from going to waste. The next time I make a dish that calls for a produce or dairy item that we won't use up, I'm going to go looking for a matching recipe to make later the same week.

Does anyone else do this? Do you have some favorite recipes that you like to "lump" together? I'd love to hear about them (with links if they're online!!!).

ps- Wow! This is my 100th post on Family and Finances. Craziness :)

Best Financial Advice I've Received

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Peter at Bible Money Matters posted on Friday about the best financial advice he's received. Peter says:

So the advice I got from my parents by observing them growing up:

Be content in life by focusing on important things like faith and family.
Live frugally, spend less than you earn and pay cash.

I thought I'd share the best financial advice that I've received!

When I was in high school, I took an accounting class. In it, the teacher taught a little about IRA's and other retirement accounts. I don't remember any of the details, but I do remember coming away from that class knowing that you should start investing when you're young and compound interest will work in your favor.

Because of this lesson, when I turned 18, I decided to put a little bit of money in an IRA. I didn't know anything about investing, so I just went to my credit union. Here's some advice for you: credit unions are not the best place to go for investing advice!

The woman I spoke with didn't tell me the difference between a Roth and a Traditional IRA, she didn't mention anything about mutual funds, she seemed to have no opinion at all. She just took my money and put it in a cd in a Traditional IRA. Looking back, this was about the dumbest thing she could have done. I was 18! I belonged in a good growth mutual fund in a Roth IRA! *sigh* (ps- that IRA has since been moved out of the credit union. I love banking with credit unions, but I don't keep my investments there!)

A few years later, I was working in an insurance office in the same building as an Edward Jones office. My bosses were friends with the Edward Jones adviser, so he'd come over and chat with me sometimes. He kept telling me that I should start doing a monthly investment, no matter how small, into a Roth IRA. He said that since I was young, time and compounding would work in my favor (hmmm, starting to sound familiar!). I eventually headed his advice and opened up a Roth, putting in just $25 a month, which was all I could afford at the time.

Fast forward another year or so, and I came across the book "Smart Women Finish Rich" by David Bach. In it, there is a really neat graph showing how investing when you're young pays off.

The message has stuck, and it's one I've passed onto my brothers and anyone else who will listen: Start investing when you're young because time and compound interest will work in your favor!

What's the best financial advice you've ever received?

Hope Chest Legacy

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 21:56:00 +0000

Just a quick note:

I just read a post on MoneySavingMom's website today about Hope Chest Legacy. There are a group of women collecting items right now to send to orphans in the Ukraine. Items are due by October 15th to be included in the shipment going to the Urkaine. If anyone who knows me personally would like to send something, I'm planning on mailing a box out early next week. There is a page discussing the clothing needs and a page discussing the medical needs.

Remember the New Balance shoes I won? Well, I don't really care for how they fit, so I'm going to donate them! Fun!!!

A Little Bit Mad At Myself

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:27:00 +0000

I rear-ended a lady in an SUV on Monday. I feel pretty stupid because it's a weird intersection and I've almost done that exact same thing once before. *sigh*

Luckily, it was at a very low speed, so there definitely wasn't any damage to her SUV, and there wasn't even any damage to my puny Mustang! We pulled into a nearby parking lot and exchanged names. The lady said she didn't think she got whiplash, but that she'd see how she felt in the morning.

This is where I got worried. You see, I've worked in the auto insurance industry, and I know how people love to go to the doctor or chiropracter right after an auto accident. Any excuse for a free back adjustment, right? It happened all the time. So far, I haven't heard from her. I'm hoping I won't!

My husband and I have really cheap auto insurance right now. We've both been accident- and claim-free for over 5 years, so we get some pretty good discounts. I'd hate to lose that!

Anybody have a funny/interesting/frustrating auto accident story? Share in the comments!

Did You Vote?

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Yesterday was the Fall Primary Elections. Did you know that? Did you vote?

I walked down to the neighborhood school where I vote after work yesterday. I entered the gym, and the ladies in charge looked surprised! They said I was the first person there to vote in an hour and a half. They then told me that I was only the 88th person in to vote ALL DAY!

I told the ladies that I didn't think the elections were very well "advertised" and they agreed. In fact, I just went on my local newspaper's website to see if they had any results, and there was absolutely NO information on the home page. How weird is that? Primary elections aren't news?

As I think about this some more, I'm realizing that, of all 46 blogs that I subscribe to, not a single one mentioned voting today. I wish I had thought of it earlier - I would have reminded you!

As I left the gym last night, one of the elderly ladies said to me, "Don't forget to come back in November!" I thought that was funny. If I can remember this election, I'm pretty sure I won't forget the November one :)

Meeting Davy Jones

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Pete at BibleMoneyMatters recently posted about his opportunity to meet Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty. He stated that the governor seemed really nice and asked if anyone else had met someone famous and what their opinion of the famous person was.

I thought for awhile and then smiled, remembering the time that I met Davy Jones (of the Monkees). It's kind of a fun story, so I thought I'd share!

I think it was in 2002 that two of my best friends and I decided to go to Kentucky on vacation. One of the girls and I had gone the summer before and had so much fun that we talked our other friend into joining us on a second trip. You hadn't realized Kentucky was such a fun place, had you?!?

Anyway, I think we were in Lexington when we decided to stop at a mall. I don't remember why we stopped, maybe one of us had forgotten something? At any rate, we were walking through the mall and, coming to the center, saw a huge line of people. Wondering what was going on, we looked around and eventually saw a sign stating that Davy Jones was going to be making an appearance to sign autographs and do the picture thing with fans.

My girlfriends and I didn't really have an agenda for the vacation, so we decided to get in line! Once we got to the front, we realized that Davy Jones is a pretty short guy! I'm 5', so I was shorter than him, but I was the only one. :) We got our picture taken and cracked a few jokes. It was fun listening to his British accent (whenever I say the name Davy Jones, I have to say it with a British accent!). He was a very nice guy, and I'm really glad we decided to hop into that line. Pretty crazy, huh?!

How about you? Have you met anyone famous? What were they like?

ps - The picture of Davy Jones above is the one that was taken with my girlfriends and me. I cut us out to protect the guilty!

$72 Saved On Our Mortgage

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:00:00 +0000

About a year ago, I created an Excel spreadsheet that I enter our mortgage payments into every month. I used directions in this post from Trent at The Simple Dollar to create the spreadsheet. There are instructions in the comments on adding an "Additional Principal" column, which I also did.

I have really enjoyed using this spreadsheet over the past year. My husband and I round up when we pay our mortgage each month, and I get immense satisfaction in putting that $7.xx in the "Additional Principal" column (I know, I'm a geek!). The spreadsheet automatically adjusts our final payment (which is about 10 years from now) with each additional $7 I enter.

Since my husband and I both get paid bi-weekly, we end up with two months each year that contain an "extra" paycheck. This month happens to be one of those months, so we decided to apply an additional $100 to our September 1st mortgage payment, just for fun.

I went into my spreadsheet the other night and typed $107.xx into the "Additional Principal" column. I then checked our final payment to see how much it was affected. Our final payment went down by $179.xx! How fun is that?!?

That, my friends, is $72 our mortgage company will never see. :)

*sigh* It's the small things in life!

I Love Fresh Tomatoes!

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:00:00 +0000

I grew up out in the country, and we always had a large garden in the summer. I have now lived in town for five years, and I sure miss that monstrous country garden!

Though I will probably never have a garden as big as the ones I had growing up, I am growing edibles at my house. A very nice raspberry patch came with our house when my husband bought it three years ago:

The raspberries have just finished up, but it's an ever-bearing raspberry patch, so we should have more berries this fall. Mmmm, mmmm!

This spring, I planted two "large tomato" plants and one "cherry tomato" plant. I love cherry tomatoes and have been enjoying them for about two weeks now.

My husband really likes the larger tomatoes. We just took the first two off the plant last weekend (in the picture below) and my husband had them in tacos. He was very happy.

At my first "city" house, I tried cucumber plants, which are another of my favorites. Between the deer and the rabbits (I had a wooded ravine in my backyard, so I had deer in the middle of the city), I could NOT keep the cucumber plants alive. I haven't tried them at my new house, but I think I'll give it another go next spring. We don't have deer here, just the rascally rabbits. I plan on having my husband build a wire mesh cage around the plants to protect them from the rabbits. I have no idea if that will work. Any tips?

New Countertops Equal Happy???

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:00:00 +0000

I drive past a cabinet and countertop store on my way home from work every day. They have an electronic billboard out front that they seem to like to change regularly. It's very nice of them to change it up often, but I found their last two messages to be fairly annoying.

A couple of weeks ago, the billboard proclaimed "Be The Joneses". Oh, brother. Give me a break! Does anyone really fall for that? Check this article out before you run out for new cabinets if you fight with wanting to "be the Joneses".

This past week, the store had a new message for commuters. "New Countertops Equal Happy" the sign declared when I drove past on my way home last night. Are you serious? Do they really expect me to believe that? An inspiring article I read this week demonstrates that there are those out there that really know what does equal happiness.

Have you read any billboards lately that made you roll your eyes? I'd love to hear about them in the comments!

Favorite Blog Post: 8/1/08

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:27:00 +0000

I was going through my Google reader today and came across this post over at Gather Little By Little.

Glblguy is letting his readers know about bump keys. Bump keys are a special key readily available on the internet that allows anyone to open just about any lock, including the one on your front door. Pretty scary. Check out Glblguy's post and the link to a website that would like to ban the sale of these "skeleton" keys.

Have a great weekend!

My Gold's Gym Fiasco

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 11:00:00 +0000

This past spring, my husband and I decided that we didn't like the long drive to get to our local Gold's Gym, where we were members. Our town's YMCA is much closer, plus they have a lot more basketball options, which is VERY important to my husband.

Knowing that gyms tend to be a little ridiculous in their cancellation policies, we went into our Gold's over two months before our renewal dates to find out what we needed to do to cancel our memberships. We were handed a form to sign and mail to their corporate headquarters.

Fast forward to the beginning of June this year. My renewal date was June 1st, so I should have been done with my membership. On June 5th, I noticed my credit card had been charged for my monthly gym membership fee. What? I called my local gym and was told I had to call their billing company, ABC Financial. I called ABC Financial four times in June trying to straighten things out. Let's just say that I will never again do business with any company that uses ABC Financial for their billing.

I thought everything was straightened out when on July 1st I get billed yet again! Completely fed up, I finally managed to talk to a supervisor at ABC Financial who is semi-helpful. At the same time, I left messages at my local gym, trying to get a solution from both ends. After being told by multiple people that I couldn't have the phone number to the Gold's Gym corporate office (since my request supposedly never got to ABC Financial, I figured it must have gotten lost between corporate and ABC), someone at my local gym relented and handed the phone number over (it's 540-825-5994 if anyone else wants to know!).

I called Gold's Gym corporate and spoke with a super-nice lady named Donna. Donna looked through all of the computer files and couldn't find my cancellation request. Finally, she said, "Well, we had a new person start about the time you sent your form. Let me check our paper files in case the paperwork got filed without being processed."

A minute later, Donna got back on the phone, "You're in luck!" she said, "I found it!"

So that's my Gold's Gym fiasco. My cancellation was back-dated to my renewal date like it should have been. It only took me about TEN phone calls to about FOUR different phone numbers to get things straightened out. Even though things turned out in the end, both Gold's Gym and ABC Financial have lost my business for life because of their poor handling of my situation.

Some Lessons Learned
1. Always mail cancellation requests via certified mail. I was asked on at least five occasions if I had mailed my request by certified mail. Each time I had to answer, "No. I wish someone had TOLD me it needed to be mailed by certified mail."

2. Always make a follow up call making sure your cancellation request was received. I was mad at myself for waiting until I got billed to realize that my request never got processed.

3. Check companies out on the Better Business Bureau's website BEFORE doing business with them! This really wouldn't have helped me since I signed up when my Gold's was brand new, but I'm not surprised that they've had over 100 complaints even though they've only been open for one year!

4. Be wary of gyms. So many people have had problems with gym memberships. I've realized you have to be very diligent in making sure things get handled properly. Avoid letting them charge your credit card monthly if you can. Be prepared to spend hours on the phone once you need to cancel!

Does anyone have a YMCA membership? Anything I should know about dealing with them?!?

And the Winner Is...

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 02:12:00 +0000

Sphinx63!

Congrats! I sent you an email to verify you want the codes. Reply back and they are all yours! Thanks, everyone, for entering. :)

ps- I picked the winner by assigning all of the commentors a number and then using random.org to generate a winning number.

Coke Rewards Giveaway!

noreply@blogger.com (Becky) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:00:00 +0000

I'm giving away two Coke Rewards codes!

I'm a Mountain Dew girl myself. My mom drinks Pepsi and saves her codes for me for the Pepsi Stuff rewards program. My husband and I are working are way through Season 3 of House thanks to my mom's Pepsi addiction ;)

Anyway, my boss occasionally brings 12-packs of Coke into the office. He doesn't use the codes, so I swiped them off of the last 2 cases of soda he brought in. Since I don't drink Coca-Cola products, I'm going to give the codes away!

To enter, just leave a comment with your email address. It is a really good idea to "munge" your email address so that it doesn't get harvested by spammers. For example, you might write, "janedoe at gmail dot com". The giveaway ends on Monday, July 21st at 4pm CST. I will then randomly pick a winner and email you the codes! Sounds like fun, yes?!?