My lucky streak continues, first I won a book, then a bag, and now…500 smackers!!!!

My boss called me up yesterday to tell me that I was selected by my peers for this month’s Teamwork Award.  Basically, we have this program which is a lot like an Employee of the Month thing.  It was definitely nice to see my hard work get noticed and rewarded.

The award showed up on today’s paycheck.  After taxes, I pocketed $285 more than a usual check.  This will certainly help offset some of these recent car repairs, although, since we have a car fund for things like that…let’s do something fun with it and drop it in the travel fund for Greece!

Back in May I wrote about our travel plans for the next year.  We want it to be a full year with lots of traveling before we settle down into a life of responsibility hopefully to include a dog and maybe some kids eventually.  I mentioned in that post that all plans were subject to change and here is the first revision already.

7/10 – Chicago long weekend for a friend’s wedding Done
7/10 – Added a fishing trip to the cabin! Yes!
8/10 – Fishing trip at the cabin
9/10 – LONDON! Bird’s 30th b-day/our first anniversary
9/10 – North Carolina (Bird’s homecoming)
10/10 – Going to Greece instead of London
11/10 – Long weekend up North
2/11 – Myrtle Beach to visit Bird’s grandparents
3/11 – Spring Break – Maybe Florida?
4/11 – We got invited to a wedding out in LA
5/11 – NYC for my 30th birthday

During the last week in July, Bird has a week-long MFA class/workshop where she will be out of town, so rather than sit at home alone and play on Twitter, I’m heading up the cabin with my Dad for a long weekend of fishing.

On the seven hour drive to Chicago, the decision was made to hit up the Greek Islands rather than London this fall.  You may recall that we almost went to Greece for our honeymoon.  Our anniversary is just as good of a reason to go.  Much more on this to come.

And we also got a save the date for a wedding in April 2010.  This is a college friend of Bird’s and traditionally the girls in this group do not bring their husbands to these weddings, but I’m trying to buck that tradition!  I really want to see LA!

The dealership called this afternoon with two words regarding Bird’s car.

fuel.  pump.

That’s all he had to say and my heart sank and hundred dollar bills started figuratively flying out of my heart.

The estimate:  $650

And just to make matters worse, they don’t have any fuel pumps in stock and one won’t arrive until Monday.  So I guess I’ll be driving the minivan through the weekend.  And on top of all that, the tow from Monday showed up on my credit card statement today: $115.

All this led me to transfer $750 out of our Car Fund at ING dropping it to $2,150.  Long ways to go until we can get a new car!

The good news is my lucky streak has continued and I won a little duffel bag at work today.  Woot!  Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket.

Last night I was folding laundry and I noticed something unusual.  There was some blue marks/stains on some clothes that were not previous blue.

The victims:  1 pair of khaki cargo shorts, 1 polo shirt and 1 of Bird’s cream-colored tops

The culprit:  Bird thinks it was one of her blue skirts that has never been washed before

I, of course, didn’t know that when I threw everything in the wash.  I washed it all on cold (which I thought was the thing to do for multiple colors – but what do I know about laundry?)  

I guess I’m just practicing the One-in, One-out method since I bought all those clothes last week.  Although technically, I bought 4 shirts and now I’m out a pair of shorts and a shirt, so maybe I should go through my closet and purge some more.  The shorts I don’t really care about (they kind of looked like Punch Debt’s) but the shirt was one I really liked.

The financial twist:  It seems like such a trivial thing, but I just ruined at least $50 worth of clothing.  That just sucks.

Lesson learned:  Bird should do all the laundry.

In early 2008, I jumped on the peer-to-peer lending bandwagon and started making loans on Prosper.  I made 34 loans that year and continued to make more loans with the money that was coming in every month.  Seven more loans in 2009 and 4 more this year for a total of 45 loans worth approximately $2,000.  My projected average return was 14.85%

But through 2008, I had 8 defaults and I was instantly in the hole.  On top of the defaults, 7 people paid off their loans early so I didn’t make much interest off of them.

Two and a half years later and I just logged in to Prosper and saw a profit for the very first time! I’m now up $20.65 with 27 active loans remaining (though one of those is over 30 days late and will probably default).  Still, with over a year to go on most of these loans, that profit should continue to creep up.

Overall, I don’t consider it the greatest investment I’ve ever made because it’s been hard to have that money tied up for three years at a time.  And I wasn’t happy with all the defaults, but we were going through a really tough time economically so maybe it wasn’t the best time to be loaning out money to strangers

I’m happy to be turning a profit no matter how small, but I won’t be putting any more money into Prosper at this time.  There are just too many things that Bird and I are saving for, so I will continue to withdraw the payoff money as it comes in and transfer it to our various savings accounts.

I was getting my oil changed a few weeks ago in preparation for our 1,000 mile drive to Chicago and the service guy mentioned that the tread on my tires was pretty low and that I should probably look into getting new tires sooner than later.  Since I was planning on driving all the way to Chicago and I had only gotten two new tires back in 2007, I figured it was probably time for two more.

I shopped around a little bit, but I knew I was going to use Discount Tire since that’s what I used last time and was happy with them.  Plus, there’s a shop right down the street from my house.  I made my appointment online and the next day I had two fresh tires and a bill for $171.48.

Then we went to Chicago.

When we got home from Chicago, Bird’s car wouldn’t start.  Doh! We had just put $300 into back in June.

Thankfully, my folks have an extra vehicle so we borrowed that and Bird took my car to work.  Yesterday, her little Jetta got towed to the dealership and they said they would run tests on it today.  I have no idea what’s wrong with and no idea how much it will cost, but I usually estimate a minimum of $200 when a car has to go in to the shop and probably at least another $100 for the tow.  Woof!!!

So we’re probably looking at dropping at least a grand on our cars in the last 2 months.

I’ll let you know when I hear something from the mechanics, but for now, fingers crossed that it’s a cheap fix!  Until then, I’m the guy driving the pale blue minivan to work

We arrived at Bird’s grandparent’s place around 10 pm on Wednesday night after driving through a wicked thunderstorm near La Crosse.  Nice to be safe and sound in bed while the thunder and lightning lit up the room and shook the house.  It was quite a storm, dropping 4.5 inches of rain overnight.

Total spent on Wednesday:  $25.45 on gas before we left and $10.82 at McDonald’s along the way.

Grandma made us a great breakfast Thursday morning and then we were off to Wisconsin Dells.  I haven’t been there since I was a little kid and it has changed a lot.  Bird’s grandparents used their pull to land the four of us free tickets on a Wisconsin Dells Boat Tour.  We tipped the guide $5.

Standing Rock

This dog jumps from rock to rock.  It’s awesome.

After the 2 hour boat tour (gorgeous weather by the way), we had lunch and then headed off to play mini-golf.  I lost to Gramps by 3 strokes but beat Bird by 1 stroke!   So far no money spent on Thursday.  Grandparents spoil us.

After golf we stopped by the outlet mall and things got a little crazy at the Banana Republic outlet.  Between Bird and I we ended up spending $174.04 but we got a lot of clothes (I got 4 shirts and a new wallet) and we ended up saving $165 off the original prices.

We stopped at the grocery store for dinner supplies and we paid $1.06 for the Redbox movie while Grandma bought groceries.  We got When in Rome which was pretty terrible.

Thursday night was a great night full of lasagna, learning new card games (hand & foot) and watching the movie.

On Friday morning, we walked the dog together and grabbed breakfast at a little deli in town.  Again, Grandma’s treat.  Then it was time to continue on to Chicago for the 4 pm wedding.

We left with plenty of time but by the time we hit Chicago traffic (way outside of Chicago), we were getting a little nervous.  Check in at the hotel was 3 pm and we arrived around 2 but the hotel didn’t have any rooms ready, so off to Jimmy Johns for lunch $17.21.  By the time we finished our late lunch, the hotel had our room ready and we got prepped and headed off to the wedding.

No air conditioning in the church, but other than that, a great wedding and a great night of fun.

Total spent on Friday: $29.40 at the gas station (gas/snacks), about $5 on tolls, $17.21 for lunch and $50 for a wedding gift

With the wedding festivities over on Friday, we planned on spending Saturday in downtown Chicago.  We hit Dunkin Donuts in the morning (I know, we ate great didn’t we?) for about $10.  Then train tickets to downtown ($4.50 each way so $9 total).  Plus $4 for parking at the train station.

We got downtown and it was HOT!!!  Such a hot day…long story short…we spent most of the day trying to keep cool or complaining about the heat.  I don’t know what else we could have done, but we were ill-prepared.

They were shooting Transformers 3 downtown, so that was kind of fun.  We didn’t see anyone famous, but we did see some guys running around by some cameras.

Spoiler alert: At some point in the movie, there is an upside down city bus.

We ended up going on an Architectural Boat Tour which was pretty cool.  A friend came with us and we paid for her, so the boat tour was $91.56 for the three of us.  Every time we went under a bridge, the shade was like heaven.

After the tour we headed to Navy Pier for air conditioning and lunch.  $26.98. Then we walked to Millenium Park and took pictures with the bean.

Cloud Gate (the bean)

We spent the afternoon wandering the stores on Michigan Avenue to cool off and then we split with our friend at dinner time.  Bird and I had reservations at Bin 36.  I had the swordfish.  It was delicious.  Unfortunately, I think the heat put a crimp in our day and dinner was probably less enjoyable than it could have been although because we were so exhausted but it was still fun.  $114 for dinner and wine and cheese flights.

Grabbed the train back to the hotel and crashed with what was probably heat exhaustion.

Sunday morning we packed our bags and headed home.  $13.42 on breakfast, $30 on gas, $5 on tolls again, $2 for ice cream at McDonald’s.

Two nights at the hotel was $230 after using the name your own price feature on Priceline.  I used credit card miles to pay for it, effectively canceling out the largest expense of the trip.

In conclusion, it turns out Wisconsin Dells was more fun than Chicago which isn’t what we were expecting but it was a pleasant surprise!  So good to spend some time with Bird’s grandparents…and there will be future trips to Chicago I am sure.

Total spent:  $628 but $175 of that was on clothes and $50 was for the wedding gift.  So really only about $400 of it is going to come out of our Travel Fund which is important because I have a travel update coming up in a future post.

Hitting the road in about 20 minutes.  We’ll be staying the night at Bird’s grandparent’s near Wisconsin Dells.  Spending the day with them tomorrow and continuing on to the city Friday.

Wedding is Friday night and then we have all weekend to explore.

As of right now the only plans we have are an architectural boat tour and dinner reservations on Saturday night.

Full recap upon our return.

Have a great weekend everyone!

I don’t know if anyone else likes to do this, but when I travel to a place, I like to read a book set in that place.

For example, on our honeymoon in San Francisco and Sonoma, I read The Maltese Falcon and East of Eden.

This weekend, Bird and I are heading to Chicago for a Friday night wedding but then we have Saturday and Sunday to explore the city.  I recommended Devil in the White City for Bird and she is about halfway through.

I’m still working on Moby Dick, but I am on the lookout for books set in London (there are just a few of them out there *sarcasm*).

The other day I used an Amazon gift card I earned through Swagbucks to pick up Imagined London by Anna Quinden.  I plan on reading that in August to get me in the mood for our trip to Europe in September.

Also on the topic of books and traveling…Bird and I are driving to Chicago and it’s approximately a 7 or 8 hour drive from Minneapolis so we are thinking about getting an audiobook or two to pass the time.

Does anyone have any good recommendations?

Is there somewhere online to get audiobooks for free?  I think we will check out the library to get some books on CD but it’d be convenient to just load up the ipod.

A week late, but here’s a snapshot of our finances as of July 1, 2010.

SAVINGS (Checking, ING Savings) -$1,043 to $40,257

Savings took a hit this month, even though we put over a grand into it.  We had car repairs, plane tickets and grad school tuition (which I forgot to blog about) to pay for and it all added up.

INVESTMENTS (Fidelity,  Zecco, Edward Jones, Prosper and ESPP) -$321 to $12,797

Stock market losses, again.  Thankfully, not down quite as much as last month.

RETIREMENT (Roth IRA, Current 401k, Former 401k, Bird’s Former 401k, Bird’s Current 401k) -$1,545 to $56,356

More stock market losses.

STUDENT LOANS  +$228 to $26,378

Overall, our net worth dropped another 3% to $83,302.

Still moving in the wrong direction…eternally optimistic that we can turn that around in July!