Credit Card Debt: $8,732
Savings Account: $3,644

It is very tempting to “borrow” some of that savings account money to pay off more of our debt. There is another big milestone looming - paying off $30,000 worth of credit card debt. We’d only have to “borrow” $1,118 to do it. You can see how tempted I am because I ran the numbers LOL. For now, though, I really want to get our savings account to $4,000.

Once our savings account hits that balance, then it will be time to start kicking some debt booty again

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Chris sent me an interesting article that suggests that you let your kids make money mistakes. It’s definitely something to keep in mind as our son gets older:

A $5 or $50 misstep as a kid or teenager may prevent a $500 or $5,000 mistake as a college student or a young adult.

The key: you can’t bail the kid out. As difficult as it is for you, the child must live with the bad decision – even if it crimps other activities.

[Via Minianville.com]

Boy, it will be difficult to let our son make mistakes. I will want to intervene before they happen. But the article has a great point about letting kids learn from their mistakes when they are young - and the stakes aren’t so high.

Thanks Chris for the link!

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One of my hobbies is to watch real estate in the area. Rarely do I see a home that is under 1,000 sq. feet. The average around here is probably around 1,600 sq. ft. The newer the home, the higher the square feet, it seems.

It looks like it will be difficult to find the smaller home we desire so we may be looking into building our next home. I’ve checked out places like Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. Their homes are tiny, but they are too small for our family of three. Then I had an idea - why not search cabins! Cabins are traditionally for recreation, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t live in one year round.

Then I found it. I think this is almost the perfect size and layout for us.

Betony Cabin (720 sq ft)

There are two layouts on the page, and I am leaning towards the one with the bath tub (Floor Plan A). I love that the layout is one floor and has a huge porch. One of our dreams has been to have a large porch with a hanging porch swing. I can see my husband and I relaxing on our swing on the porch while my son is playing in front of us catching as many insects as he can for close observation. In the distance, I see a few deer feeding along the tree line and I can hear a woodpecker foraging for food.

*happy sigh*

That does it. When I’m feeling down about our financial situation I need to recreate that scene in my head. It is something to keep shooting for.

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We were a little concerned about the possibility of the show selling out because it is opening weekend and because the movie was getting such great reviews. So we planned on getting there 1/2 hour early, which was when the previous show was getting out. We only saw a few people leaving from the main entrance. The rest must have left through the other exits, I thought.

We went in as soon as they let us in and found a seat. I couldn’t help but notice that there weren’t many people there. The previews started rolling and the attendance didn’t change all that much. I’d guess that the theater was probably less than 1/10th of capacity.

I couldn’t help but wonder if the economy had something to do with it. I have seen people lined up down the street for this theater years ago. But not this time. Who knows? Maybe everyone decided to do something else or maybe they don’t like the theater. After all, the projection was a little off and the sound was way too “hot” (yeah, I’m a pretty picky movie watcher when it comes to the total experience).

Anyways, my son was happy to see the movie and even got a little Wall-E promo watch with his ticket. Mom and Dad were happy to see the movie, too, because it was really good. I didn’t think I would cry, but the softie in me let it out when, well…I can’t say because I don’t want to spoil anything

We are looking forward to when it comes out on DVD so we can see it again and pick up on the things that we didn’t catch the first time when we saw it. Cars (also by Pixar) was the first movie we saw in a theater with our son and we didn’t really like it in the theater. Since renting it, we love that movie. There was so much that we didn’t pick up on the first time around. Wall-E, well, we really liked it in the theater so we will probably really love it once we view it at home.

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Kevin is now mortgage free. Congrats!

Ms Broke argues that keeping cash on you is a bad idea. I follow her reasoning and we barely have cash on us. We end up spending it too easily. But everyone is different.

Twiggers shares a cautionary article about spending $10 today, be out $100K tomorrow. Very interesting.

Things have finally caught up to JW. Paying off debt is important, but it’s not the most important thing in the world. JW, we wish you a very speedy recovery!

Arduous has spent nine months not buying new stuff. Congrats!

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A download of Suze Orman’s Women & Money is available TODAY (June 27, 2008) until 7pm CST.

Here’s the link to Oprah’s page - scroll down and you’ll see the little pdf icon.

I know some of you missed it last time (including me - I opened the download but didn’t save it to my computer!).

Thanks, Oprah and Suze…and thank you so much to Beverly for the email about this!!

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Mr. Mailman didn’t disappoint me today. I finally received the payment I was owed from an advertiser. It was postmarked a week ago so it was definitely sent late. I haven’t received a reply to my emails, so I have no idea if they just sent it late or if they ended up sending a new check. I guess I’ll have to keep an eye out for next month.

With that check, we are definitely okay this month. While our spending freeze has been nice, I am pretty glad the money came in. Quite a few months ago, I told my son we would go see Pixar’s Wall-E (which opens tomorrow) in the movie theater as a special treat. He’s at that age where he 1.) Remembers everything we say and 2.) Really understands ads that state when a movie is opening. So deep down I was hoping our financial situation improved so we could partially lift our spending freeze so we could go see the movie. I’m not sure if we’ll see it this weekend, but at least I can set the money aside now.

I should have done that when I first told him we could go see it but I am still trying to adjust to the “setting money aside thing” for occasional treats like entertainment. If I was really on the ball, I should have set up a jar to place money in every week as we saved up to go see the movie (for the three of us, a matinee will cost $17). We tell him all the time at the store that he needs to save his money to get the toys that he wants. But seeing mom and dad actually saving money will have a lasting impression on him, I think.

We really need to be doing more to help our son learn the financial habits that we are learning as adults. I think that as a family we should determine our next “treat” and save up for it. I think it will be a nice and rewarding experience for all of us.

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It felt so weird to do that. We should have a cart full of stuff we are pushing out the door. I felt like an oddball walking out of the store without a bag in my hand. At the same time, though, I felt pretty darn good.

For example, I didn’t decide to buy some clothes for next season on clearance. Normally, that would be a great thing to do. But not right now. We don’t have money so we don’t need to be spending money. That was a big problem that I had in the past. I’d often buy things on sale and make frugal purchases - but I put it on credit! I wonder if there is a word out there to describe that behavior. In my mind I was being a great shopper.

Probably tomorrow I will dig into our Quicken file again since some income has come in. I will have a better idea of where we stand and hopefully we can replenish our savings account some. I do think this spending freeze is helping.

We should do them more often

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EDIT: Thanks! I have enough links for right now. I will be updating this post as I work through the links so you can keep an eye on it to know when I’ll be asking for more.

I have been out of my links for a while, so I host ING Orange Savings referral links for others on my referral page. Every now and then I ask for more referrals on here so I can keep up the supply. The last time I did it was in April.

Please just leave a comment saying you are interested. If for some reason you submit a comment and don’t see it right away - please contact me and I’ll fish it out of my spam filter (it gets a bit hungry sometimes).

Thanks!

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I feel a little helpless at the moment, and I haven’t felt like this in quite a while. I look at our Quicken file and I can’t do anything. Our account is dangerously close to being in the red at the end of this month. Right now I am preparing myself mentally because we may have to pull more money from our savings account. While we have our emergency fund there to help when we need it, that doesn’t make it any easier to have to use it.

As some of you noticed, I took a break from blogging. Part of it was technical (I changed all of my passwords after my blog was hacked and I misplaced the one sheet I wrote all of them down on - doh!). But part of it was the fact I have been debt-depressed. The series of events so far in June brought my mood down. It didn’t bug me too much when I wrote about it, but the next day when I said I was going to dig into our Quicken file to see how much we could put towards savings (but couldn’t) - that was the kicker.

We have also been anxiously waiting for some medical test results for my husband. They called today and all is well. Whew. That weighed very heavily on my mind. I feel bad about not blogging about it, but sometimes I have to step away from things and get my head back on straight.

I’m still not all that happy about our financial situation right now but I do feel better overall. It’s just one of those lows on the debt reduction roller coaster. I hope that means we are going to kick some debt booty once July rolls around. By then we should have some reimbursements for medical expenses we paid out of pocket and hopefully I will have the one payment an advertiser owes me. I was informed Friday that they had email problems and they are responding to emails sent the last few weeks as quickly as they can. So we’ll see how that plays out.

I do feel silly for letting things like this get to me. Things could be so much worse. I really should be thankful for what we have and not dwelling on what we don’t have. If there is one lesson that really needs to sink into my head during this journey - I think it’s that one right there.

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I also found out that the original online bill payment that my bank sent did make it to Blue Cross and it was cashed on the 12th. I really goofed with how I handled everything, because now that check will bounce on them since we put a stop on it. That could result in a fee. I tried asking the customer service rep about it and he didn’t know. I guess we’ll see.

What I should have done was let that first check go for a while longer and then cut a check from my checkbook. I got really flustered, though, during this whole thing and didn’t think too clearly. I also seem to forget that I have a savings account I can pull from. You live…you learn.

With all of the information that I have, I believe my bank did its job and sent out the payment as they should have. I believe that the delay with everything lies with Blue Cross and I will confirm that when I call next week to find out when they cashed the second bill pay check from my bank. I believe that they are a company that is not equipped to handle online bill payments. Even though all of the necessary account information is included on the check, they delay the payment processing unless you have the voucher from your bill with the payment.

Now that this is somewhat resolved, I can dig into our finances and see if we can squeeze out some money to our savings account. I still would like to get that balance increased to $4,000.

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My eyes scanned that bill as quickly as it could to figure out what the hey was going on. I am supposed to be billed $400/month (roughly). Ah, I found it. I was being charged for three months. Three months! Due by July! Are they wanting me to need the health insurance?

The initial shock wore off quickly and I went straight to the phone. It turns out that their system had a glitch and “randomly sent out three month invoices to some customers.” The customer service rep went on to assure me that the only amount that will be due is a one month payment.

That seals the deal. I will never, ever, give my health insurance company my banking information to automatically withdraw payments. I am also not paying them through my bank’s online bill pay since it didn’t work too well. I am going back to doing things the old fashioned way with writing my own check, paying for a stamp and sending it off in the mail.

As for continuing to use online bill pay for everything else? I’m still on the fence with that. We only send out a few checks a month and I’m thinking of going back to the old fashioned way for all of them. I liked the convenience of online bill pay, but I really miss knowing that my checks cleared the bank. The other option is to get a new bank with a better online bill pay system. I still have to think about it some more.

What an interesting June so far. I guess it’s keeping me on my toes!

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First of all, our health insurance company didn’t receive our bill payment from our bank. It is no where to be found. Our bank was nice when they called me about what to do. We issued a stop payment on that check and the money was refunded into our account. They told me they would issue another check on Friday.

Friday came and went and I didn’t see a check going out. I thought maybe it was just a delay with showing online. I checked Monday…nothing. Then Tuesday…nothing. Today, I sent out a check myself. A little bit later, I see that the bank sent out a payment today. I knew the double payment could happen but my husband needs to go back to the doctors shortly. We need our insurance reinstated.

Secondly, there are the medical bills and prescriptions that we had to pay out of pocket because our insurance has been cancelled due to non-payment. That was a little unexpected, but we had enough around to cover that.

Lastly, a trusted advertiser on here has not paid me and they are not answering my emails. If you notice an advertiser on here disappear shortly - you’ll know why. I understand if my check was lost in the mail - it happens. I don’t understand why my emails have not been replied to. That concerns me.

That brings me to our savings account. Thank goodness it is there. I pulled out $500 to cover the double insurance payment and to help cover any future medical bills until our health insurance is reinstated. I didn’t really want to touch it, but there isn’t much else we can do at this point.

It will be very interesting to see how June plays out.

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I think 99% of gadget-type purchases can be eliminated. No one needs a slicer when a plain old knife will do just fine for sandwich meat.

I think MeganM is absolutely right. I’m mentally going through my kitchen right now and we have a cute little frog cheese slicer. I remember buying that on clearance because I thought it was cute. Too bad it’s so small that it isn’t big enough to slice most blocks of cheese. Then there’s the chicken egg slicer. It was cute, and I thought we needed an egg slicer. I use it a few times a year, but a fork worked well in the past. We didn’t really need it.

Let’s not even start talking about gadget appliances. We have a waffle maker. I think we’ve used it twice in the three years we’ve had it. Oh, and the sandwich maker? We barely use that thing as well. I could go on for a while with the other things we have purchased throughout our life that could be considered gadgets.

We didn’t really need them. We barely use them!

It’s funny…at the time, we thought these gadgets would be great things to have. We’ll use them all the time! You can do so much with them! They’ll make life so much easier! Not really. They just ended up costing us money that we really didn’t need to spend.

At our last garage sale, I tried to get rid of a few of the gadgets we had and they didn’t sell even though the price was dirt cheap. I guess that should say something LOL

What about you? Have any gadgets that are collecting dust?

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With my husband going to the doctors and being told to change his diet (less sodium), I overreacted a bit. I see that now in hindsight. We hopped in the car and headed to Walmart. The main goal of the trip was to purchase healthier food. We went up and down the aisles, looking at the nutrition labels. Both my husband and I couldn’t believe how much sodium was in many of the foods that we regularly eat. Polish kielbasa? I don’t even remember what it said. All I know is that I dropped it out of my hand so fast you would have thought it was on fire.

I had a similar reaction to quite a few products. We love sandwiches and when we made it to the lunch meat section I was shocked. I think I looked at every brand they had and all of them were loaded with sodium. Then the light bulb went off in my head. We’ll cook our own meat and slice it. That will definitely be healthier for us than the processed meat.

After we finished in the grocery section, we headed over to the kitchen appliance section and looked for a slicer. No such luck. I did end up finding a small tool that claimed to slice things as well as create wonderful french fries (a slicer/dicer). I plopped it into our cart and we headed to the checkout.

Our cashier was friendly and started ringing up our groceries. She picked up the slicer/dicer tool and looked me straight in the eyes. She paused just a bit before speaking.

“I have to be honest with you,” she said. “This is a horrible product. It says it makes fries but it makes mush. I used to have one and it was awful.”

I thanked the cashier for giving me her opinion and I asked her to set the slicer/dicer aside. I was so very close to impulse buying that slicer/dicer. We can do without one for now. When things are looking better financially we may buy one. In the meantime, we’ll rig up something.

Thank you Walmart cashier for giving a helping hand during a time of weakness for me

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It’s been tough. We’ve hit some roadblocks along the way but we managed to get by them. It did set us back time-wise so we are working extra hard to meet our deadline. Lately I have been so pumped about working on it that I have been skipping my normal weekend routine of sleeping in. That is very unusual for me. I usually look forward to the weekend because I get to sleep in. Now I look forward to it because I can work on the business.

Of course, if we can launch before the end of June that would be great. The sooner it launches, the sooner the business can start making money

Ok, now on to some articles that caught my eye this week:

JW’s family is fed up with frugal living. I feel for JW with having older kids in the home. With our son, it’s fairly easy to live frugally since he’s so young and doesn’t have a lot of peer pressure yet. He’s quite content with going out of the house with ripped, dirty jeans. He groans when mom tells him to change.

Jeremy has a guest article on his site about the connection between your brain and credit card debt.

Shana is wondering what is your threshold is for paying to drive. When I read this article I remembered a little news piece (I think it was from Wisconsin) where they showed people’s reactions when gas prices hit $2.00/gallon. Almost everyone they interviewed said they would start biking and walking more. I wonder how many of them did it. What do they think now that gas is $4.00/gallon?

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I also caught up on our finances since they were set on the back burner the past few days. I was hoping we could put some money towards our savings, but we can’t. It’s a bit frustrating. We were doing great for a while there and around this time of the month we usually had extra money to put towards our debt or savings. Not this month.

Looking ahead, we may be able to contribute to our savings by the end of the month. It really depends on how the whole health insurance thing goes. My husband is due to go back to the doctor next week and I need to keep money in our account to pay for that just in case our insurance situation isn’t cleared up. I haven’t heard back from my bank yet about the claim I made. I plan on calling Blue Cross tomorrow to see if our insurance has been reinstated. I will be looking into automatic payments because I don’t want this to happen again.

On an unrelated note, since this post is mostly a catch-up post, how many of you are using sites like Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, etc.? Is there one that you would recommend over another? I haven’t joined any yet, but have been tempted to try one.

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Income for May was awesome. Our economic stimulus payment is in there and it gave us a welcome boost in income. Unfortunately, we didn’t use it like the government wanted us to use it. It went towards our debt

For clothing in May, I went on a little shopping spree. I hit Walmart (by myself) and bought some new T-shirts for summer. I don’t have many T-shirts and the ones I did have were pretty old. It was time to retire them. I scoured the clearance racks and found five shirts at $3/each. I also picked up a new pair of shoes for our son for less than $10 on clearance.

Entertainment was high in May. We splurged again and purchased another video game. We are done with purchasing new video games for quite a while.

Food is way too high! Gosh it all adds up. We did have to replenish some things once our fridge was back up and running. But the spending is still too high here. Now that we have to purchase healthier foods, it will be interesting to see how our spending is affected. The more I think about it, buying healthier foods may not be as expensive as I once thought. It all depends on how you do it. More on that later, as I figure it out

Household spending for May was quite a bit less than April’s spending. Here’s how it breaks down:

We spent some money to get our garden ready for the summer. It’s time to start planting and I’m debating on whether we should get some plants that are already started or plant directly from seed. It’s tough where we live because we do have a short growing season. My dream is to have an indoor greenhouse in our future house.

Recreation included our spending for fishing this year. I don’t anticipate any more spending for fishing this season unless we keep losing bobbers at record speed. During our last fishing trip, we lost three of them. Thank goodness bobbers are fairly inexpensive (around $2 for a package of them).

May’s gas bill almost made me faint. Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit. But it did surprise me. I knew we had a cold spring, but I didn’t think it was that bad. Thank goodness the weather has warmed up for June.

Overall, May wasn’t too bad. Like April, there is room for improvement. We have been somewhat consistent, though. If you look at April, our total expenses were $1,900. For May, they were $2,301. The big difference was our health insurance paid in May ($400).

We’ll see how June pans out. So far, our spending has been fairly low (not including the health spending due to problems with our health insurance). Income has been lower too. I feel like we should be contributing to our savings account but we haven’t been able to yet. Hopefully we can soon. After this past weekend, I could use a little “boost.”

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First up, my husband is sick again. He called me from the doctors office, “They are saying our insurance is cancelled so I had to pay for the full cost of the visit.”

Crap. It shouldn’t be cancelled. We paid it! I called Blue Cross and they said that they didn’t receive payment. I paid this bill via online bill pay, so I called my bank to see if it cleared. According to them, it didn’t clear but it should have been received by Blue Cross.

A claim has been filed and it is put on the top of the list since it is for our health insurance. I have no idea how everything is going to pan out. I’m only a few months into using online bill pay and now I guess I get to really test out the system. I sure hope things are resolved soon before more medical bills come in. The money we already paid has depleted the little buffer I had in our checking account.

Secondly, like many bloggers out there, my blog was hacked. It wasn’t a huge hack (it redirected search traffic) and everything is still here. That’s a good thing. But I feel pretty violated over the whole thing. I spent hours trying to fix everything and in the back of my mind I couldn’t help but wonder why. Why do people feel the need to do things like that? It makes me very sad.

Lastly, my husband needs to change his diet for health reasons. Overall, that is a good thing because all of us will be eating healthier. But after shopping today, it is clear that our new diet is going to increase our grocery costs. We have to say bye-bye to the cheap processed foods that we buy. We should have done that a long time ago, though.

Nothing really major. They are all things that can be fixed or we can work through them. I didn’t get our May spending report finished, so expect to see that tomorrow night.

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Matt at One Million and Beyond is having some troubles sticking to his budget. To help motivate himself to meet his goals, he is putting his money where his mouth is. If he doesn’t meet his weekly budget, he’s giving away a $25 Amazon gift certificate. Check out this post for the specifics.

Next up is FNBO Direct. They are having a Pay Yourself First Challenge.

Create a one-minute video about what you’re saving for. Maybe you’re a savings superstar — or a little savings challenged. Be compelling, original and creative — and you may be selected as a challenger in the FNBO Direct Pay Yourself First Challenge!

Check out their site for the specifics. The grand prize is a getaway (or $7,500 cash). I’d love to enter, but I have a little problem with doing that. Remember that piece of equipment my husband sold a while ago? It was our video camera I’ll have to see if I can get my hands on one.

Good luck!!

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I’ll probably be posting our May spending this weekend and we’ll review more things that enabled us to increase our net worth last month. I can tell you right now that our income was a big help. It was higher than normal again in May.

To see our complete net worth, you can always check out our NetWorthIQ.com profile.

This month will probably be a little interesting. I believe there will be an increase in our net worth but not as much as the last two months because our income will be more “normal.” The plan for June is to continue beefing up our savings account balance. Our debt reduction will stall for a little bit, but that’s okay. We’re still on track for meeting our debt-payoff goal date (May of 2009).

Speaking of goals, back at the end of 2007 I listed a few an update a little while ago. As of today, we have paid off $8,100! Woohoo! We are way ahead of schedule

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Uh, oh. I remember what happened that year. Although I don’t have the records to back this up, I’m pretty sure we were actually in a better financial position than we are now. That’s the year my husband received a $40,000 inheritance.

Did we save any of it? Nope.

Did we pay off some credit card debt? Actually, yes.

Did we pay off some student loan debt? Sort of. My husband gave his mom $10k so she could pay off loans she took out for my husband’s education. None of the money went towards student loans in our names, though.

Talk about blowing money. Seriously, I have no idea where $10k of that money went. While I used Quicken on my Performa computer to track things back then, I no longer have the file to access. I wish I did. I’d probably want to ground myself.

A running joke between my husband and I is that we should have invested all of that money in Apple. At the time, Apple was still way behind in the computer market. Both my husband and I loved them and I even studied Steve Jobs for an entire class on leadership. If we had invested that inheritance in Apple stock, our finances today would have been a lot different.

Just take a look at this APPL chart from AOL Finance:

Realistically, we could have invested it all and lost it all in the stock market. Apple would have been our pick and it turns out that it would have been one heck of a pick to make back then.

But it didn’t happen. We spent the money. I know for a fact it was gone at least by mid 1999. After that, it was back to buying stuff on credit and living beyond our means. An embarrassing story, but we have learned so much since way back when.

I doubt we’ll have another windfall, but if we did I can guarantee that we will not have a repeat of 1998. What a difference 10 years can make.

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Kelsey Malecha is only 23-years old and she is going around to schools in her free time and teaching financial literacy to students. My reaction? I think what she is doing is absolutely awesome!

To top it off, she’s competing in the Miss Minnesota pageant (she’s the current Miss Midwest-Minnesota) and using financial literacy as her platform. What a great way to put the issue of teaching personal finance to students in the spotlight.

She can speak to the students from experience. She overcame poor spending habits in college that left her in debt:

I had about $5,000, which to me was a lot because having debt in my household is something that’s frowned upon. I didn’t tell my parents until this last year. I paid it off with my internship and after working with this appraisal firm. I was so embarrassed about it that I didn’t tell anyone.

Via [StarTribune.com]

She has spoken to 42 schools so far and her audiences have ranged from first graders to high schoolers. Just think, if only one parent from each school volunteered to speak to students about personal finance…it could make a very big difference. Once our credit card debt is paid off, perhaps I will look into speaking at our schools.

Kelsey…I wish you the best during the pageant and I hope the Miss America competition is in your future. I think what you are doing is awesome!

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Anyways, here’s how much we made and here’s where it went. Before you go too much further, you may want to check out a little FAQ that I did about these reports since I switched things up a bit.

First things first. It was an awesome income month for April (note - this is net income). I received a new advertiser on here and my husband sold a $900 piece of equipment. I also worked some overtime. That’s why we were able to pay off $2,300 of our credit card debt last month.

Now onto the spending…

Our automobile costs are pretty steady. During the summer I expect our gas spending go to up since we will be going out more for drives and such. Our insurance cost should go down because I plan on removing the full insurance coverage from our car sometime soon.

Cigarettes. There isn’t much I can say here except that it is higher than normal this month (which seems to be the case when I work overtime). But the spending should be zero!

Entertainment was high for April. It includes a trip to a gaming place with my son as well as the purchase of a video game and a few DVD rentals. I did splurge here.

April was a horrible month for groceries. When our fridge broke, we ended up using the freezer filled with ice and then a cooler for things that needed to be kept cold. You can only fit so much in there. We ended up making way too many trips to the grocery store. We also spent a bit with going out to eat.

There was a bit of spending in our household category. Here’s the breakdown:

I bought a little cycler for using under my desk while working. I have been having horrible knee problems from sitting most of the day and I thought it might help. My desk doesn’t have enough clearance to use it which is a bummer. I sometimes use it while watching TV.

Our office spending included a new chair for my husband’s desk. After a few Walmart cheap versions that broke, I finally talked my husband into getting a new chair (he was using a broken chair for a few months). We headed out to Office Max and bought a nice chair on clearance. Don’t buy office chairs from Walmart.

The interest paid category includes the interest for our non-credit card debt (mortgage and student loans). I don’t like that number, but there isn’t much we can do about it at this point. I’ve tried refinancing our home mortgage through our current mortgage holder but my request was denied.

Our internet bill recently went up. It was at $25/month but AT&T decided to raise it. I have to have high speed and that’s the lowest price available. The same thing goes for telephone. I have to have a certain plan for work so I have to live with the price. On a personal level, we rarely ever use the phone. I checked, and we made less than 10 local calls. Long distance is a different story since our families live far away. I’m a chatty Cathy when I get on the phone with my mom. If we ever don’t need our current plan, I will definitely check out something like Skype.

I am looking forward to summer utilities. That gas bill will go way down and so will our electric. We have also been talking about canceling cable, but I’m not sure if I can do that yet. Without cable, we do not get any channels. I would miss the local news and the major networks.

Overall, April was an awesome month. There is definitely some fat that can be cut so it’s a good thing I’m back to posting these. It forces me to take a look. For a while there, as long as we were paying extra toward debt, we were doing fine. The numbers don’t lie. We need to slash some of our spending.

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It’s funny how sometimes you end up trying to recreate some aspects of your youth. Anyways, back to the story on hand.

I wasn’t aware that there was a movement going on where individuals are learning to live off their land. This particular movement is mostly driven by fear of uncertain times ahead.

Convinced the planet’s oil supply is dwindling and the world’s economies are heading for a crash, some people around the country are moving onto homesteads, learning to live off their land, conserving fuel and, in some cases, stocking up on guns they expect to use to defend themselves and their supplies from desperate crowds of people who didn’t prepare.The exact number of people taking such steps is impossible to determine, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the movement has been gaining momentum in the last few years.

[Via Yahoo.com]

For my husband and I, our desire to live a more sustainable life boils down to family and finances. You can save a lot of money by doing what these survivalists are doing (except for stocking up on guns - that could probably get pretty expensive). We can also have more quality family time since less time needs to be spent pursuing more money.

My husband has met a family that is trying to live “off the grid.” They purchased something from us that we basically thought was junk but they are going to reuse it to meet their needs. From what my husband told me, they are trying to do it just to see if they could do it and to save money. I wish I was there for that part of the conversation because I would have asked a few questions. I arrived a little late for it. I do have their contact info so I may ask them for an interview if I can muster up the courage.

While we won’t go as far as some of the survivalists in the Yahoo story, we will try to incorporate sustainability as much as we can, when we can. First step? Planting an awesome garden this year!

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All of our credit card debt is at 0% right now, and one missed payment would have been a disaster. Who knows how high our interest rate would have shot up. The payment wasn’t due until early June, but I wasn’t about to take any chances. I sent out a payment for $134 and our credit card debt now stands at $8,864.

What a difference a few years can make. I was able to find our minimum credit card payment from May of 2006…$743. Wow. No wonder we can breathe easier now!

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The sun was shining, temps were in the low 60s, you could hear herons, ducks and frogs singing, we caught some deer frolicking at the lake edge, the wind was blowing enough to keep the bugs at bay, and the fish were biting.

Sigh. It doesn’t get much better than that. Wait, we have to add in my son’s screams of joy when he caught his first fish of the season. It was a four-inch sunfish, but I think it delighted him as much as if he caught a 25-inch walleye.

I couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful day. Thank you mother nature. We needed that. It did cost some money because we needed two new reels for our fishing poles and we didn’t have any worms ready so we had to buy some. We also had to buy fishing licenses for the year. Of course, there’s the cost for the gas to drive out to the lake…

In all it probably cost about $50 to be set to fish for the year (except for future gas costs). It is our goal to go out fishing more this summer, and eating our catch since we normally catch and release.

Will we catch $50 worth of fish to eat this summer? It’s hard to tell. I sure hope we do because I love perch dinners! Even if we don’t, the family time together is priceless.

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Here are a few links I found interesting this week:

Jesse is dealing with a wrecked car. He gives some tips that I sure could have used when I had a car accident.

Glblguy talks about using constant reminders to help you keep focused. I have a few of them. My desk is surrounded by pictures of my family and I have a excerpt from a book that I always have in my wallet.

Lastly, this has absolutely nothing to do with personal finance. But it sure made me smile last night when I saw it on TV so I thought I would share: YouTube Video of Robert Muraine. A-ma-zing.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

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…Also, you used to post your monthly Quicken spending and income reports, did you stop posting those? I found those to be very interesting and revealing for a person trying to escape debt myself.

Ever since m