These are always disjointed.

I came with my net worth statement, our spending for the month, and some savings goals.

Home value dropped by 2% since last month.
Fortunately, our equity hit a peak.

Thanks to my weakness of eating out, and for including Nov/Dec utility bills as spending for one month, and the state self-employment taxes, and the purchase of the gold coin (really just a currency trade), we came just under 25% of saving our net income.

I challenged myself to save more money this next month, and that should be a cinch, considering there are fewer days and I won't be paying state self-employment taxes.

We are going to aim for saving 25% of our net income for: a car, the Roth IRAs, leaving $3200 for... uh, college? gold? emergency fund? home improvement?

Hubby would like to be the one this year to maximize his Roth IRA contributions, as he doesn't care for his new company's 401(k) plan. If I should continue on with my contract agency, or net a full-time permanent job, I'd be okay with putting 13-17% pretax contribution into a defined contribution plan. My company's plan improved greatly six weeks into my participation.

I am suspecting now that not all middle-income American parents of children under 10 are able to put 16% of their money in retirement, pay for childcare, buy cars in cash, set up and fund their kids' college funds, prepay their mortgages, and maximize their Roth IRA contributions. I tell myself this so I can be okay with my 25% savings. However, are all of those strategies expected to be doable? I'd be sure to take notes if someone with 2/3rds of our income in our neighbourhood and our family situation can tell me how they do it, without "oh my daddy gave me a house. My parents weren't poor uneducated renters for most of their lives. My grandfather wrote the screenplay to 'Casablanca' so I have this big trust fund" exceptions.

So $21,000 is my minimum goal for savings for the year: $8000 maximum for hubby's Roth IRA contributions for this year and last; $8000 for a car; $5000 for my own Roth IRA contribution. This does not help me with the savings, home improvement, garden/landscaping, and emergency fund.

Again: how do families with children do this?

If I'm feeling flush, I may look into paying for disability insurance. I read a neat post on an investments community about the hidden, major investments we can make in our health and protection of our assets.

I looked at the Federal Reserve Board's most recent consumer credit release, and it doesn't indicate indebted Americans are successfully reducing their burdens.

Average American, in November 2007, bought a car at 95% loan-to-value, for a term a little over 60 months, at a cost (including taxes, I surmise) of $29419, at an APR of 4.2%. I guess somebody has to: where else are the frugal going to get used cars?

What are scary are the consumer credit amounts outstanding from commercial banks, financial companies, and credit unions, especially tracked from 2002.

For laffs, I looked at the County Records for liens and Notice of Trustee Sales over the three-month period 11/1/200x - 1/31/200x+1 for the last eight years. My county has hit a peak of 3959 liens, and 1090 Notices of Trustee Sales (NoTS). The record prior to that was in 2004, with 3815 liens and 1035 NoTS. 2002 had 4097 liens. Liens have, with the freak exception of 2005, numbered over 3600.

I don't feel so bad now about sluggishly paying down my mortgage. The spouse had a false notion we were aggressively paying it down now that we were out of childcare obligations. I should probably share this blog's url with him to let him know where the money is earmarked. I do want to pay a little more, but that depends on my hormonal level, our liquid assets, and my confidence about the sufficiency of our retirement contributions.

I'm waiting until April 16 to open a money market account. I don't yet know how much extra I'll owe for taxes, but am hoping the extra is under $6K. I don't want to open a money market account now and find that I have to close it eleven weeks later.

What I need right now are a bunch of little health, wealth, family and spiritual victories, confidence boosts to tell me I'm on the right paths.

I need to resist the urge to kick myself for following common advice to allocate my investments to indexed mutual funds, and finding the DJIA has returned a little less than a negative 2% return over the past eight years.

And to be kind to myself for underestimating, yet again, how much taxes we'll be owing. I withheld a little extra, and set a double-digit pre-tax contribution for my 401(k)s, and itemized, but I still have this knot in my stomach telling me to prepare to pay $8,000 extra.

I will make some calculations to determine at what price point it makes sense to buy a hybrid or alternative fuel vehicle over continuing to use gas-powered vehicles. It amazed me to learn that a multimillionaire didn't pay over $10,000 at any time in his life for a new car. Will the payback period for buying a hybrid next year be within five years? How long do I expect to own the car?

I feel that, bit by bit, truth is coming to me from all sides, and believe that if I make gradual changes in habits and master renunciation of ego and materialist promptings of my weak flesh, I'll get to where I want to be, where I should be.

I'd like to graph, month to month, the increase in satisfaction for dollars spent, as in Your Money or Your Life. I'd like to notice more how not refinancing my house, how not using the car so often, are saving me money. I'd like to remind myself in the evenings that I could be stretching, meditating, exercising with the tot, looking through seed catalogues, reading Gardening in Tough Times, cleaning my house, writing letters, supplementing my son's education.

Whenever you spend money on something optional - not the mortgage, but a mocha grande, say -- do the math. Annualize it.

It’s not a $4.50 coffee, it’s a $2,000 coffee because you go for these about five times a week = $25 with the tip times 52 weeks = $1,300 which is all you net, after deductions, from a $2,000 paycheck.

It’s not a $125 massage, it’s a $9,000 massage, because you get one almost every week = $6,000 which is what you have left after earning $9,000.

This is not to say you shouldn’t have the mocha grande or the massage; it’s just to give you the big picture, which might make you want to not have it, and to bring a thermos of coffee from home, or take a really nice hot bubble bath, instead.

Link to original content.

...I found the two cafes I went to have "winter hours" posted on their windows, "winter hours" being a euphemism for reduced hours. Where do the university students go to earn tuition/living expenses when the nearby cafes are closed? Where do the cheapskates like me go for warmth and free wi-fi access to freelance instead of keeping the house at a comfortable temperature? I should mention that snow is an infrequent event where I live, and 99.97% of the time our roads don't have black ice, and very often the dusting of snow is gone by the next day.

Actually the first cafe I went to today was closed, although its hours sign indicated it was supposed to be open. This is the fourth time I've arrived during normal business hours to find it closed. Thee other times I've shown up only to find it changed its hours to later. And the owner wonders why he doesn't see me anymore.

Maybe I read too much into this. Then again I recall January 3, 9 am, when I showed up for my hair colour, and the colourist said I was his first appointment of the year and I was doing him a favour, helping him out with his rent money.

I should have accounted for my first installment of car insurance, my annual membership renewal for a public radio station here, and for my business taxes, and don't know how to categorize the ounce of gold purchase, but already, and the month's not over, I've spent over $5000, with no Roth IRA contributions.

There are no "typical" or "average" months in my household when it comes to spending.

If we do get a rebate, I think I'd like some Sol Hoopii CDs, and some Rita Bingham books on Survivalist Eating. And because the money's all to be spent, I might even *gasp* buy a lottery ticket. I guess I don't accept the claim that people have been buying pricey entertainment doodads and "look at me" vehicles with credit -- when I read the online forums I am the only one who admittedly will consider something silly/useless with the money. I treat myself more rarely than you think. Everyone else is "I'm going to buy food/pay my past-notice bills/repair a leaky roof/buy clothes for my mother on Social Assistance."

What has happened to movie critic Rex Reed? His nose is red and bulbous, and he's become corpulent.

Best celebrity barb of the week, about the Baldwin brothers: "Is there a Shemp Baldwin? If not, there should be."
update: baselle,

My 1099 form from last year was mailed to me, one week away from the state sales tax deadline. I underestimated my earnings by $2100. I spent most of the remainder of my evening redoing my taxes, and gathering forms for the energy efficiency credit. Weirdly, I overpaid my city business license tax. I have to explain the situation before the 31st of January -- I am confident that I will not be assessed a penalty for the city tax, as I paid ten times more than I should have. But I do need to explain to them my over and underpayment predicament tout de suite.

I am so relieved to have an accountant this year to help me. Even if it means having to be organized and making copies of my forms. The extra expense of having a competent, clear, objective calculator can be budgeted under "Peace of Mind." I try to do my taxes but it seems to be trickier every year -- education credits, energy credits, home business deductions, dependent care credits, blah de blah de blah. It was more fun to do taxes when it was just the 1040EZ and we'd have a bag of potato chips, some fizzy Aqua Libra, and some 80s synthopop music to help the time pass. Now I can't get ten minutes to myself to do any calculation and the house is littered with papers "yet to be filed": how can I get forty-five minutes to myself to work through the taxes for a first draft, and then for a second draft in which I seem to owe more money, and then the third draft which is typically and foolishly attempted under the influence of a martini, because the amount owing has been incremented from three digits to four?

I am cowardly, yes. I'm all about preservation. I think it's easier for people who've started from a point of strength, rather than weakness, to take risks when everything appears hazardous. With people dying in bicycle and pedestrian accidents, I sometimes wonder if drivers where I am are passive-aggressive ("I hate it when people save money, so I'm going to put on my iPod or play with my PDA or talk on the phone and pretend to be shocked and remorseful when I hear a bump.").

I thought of refinancing. I did so once in 2003, and I am not even sure now that was the right thing to do. The way I saw it then was "gee, mortgage rates will not be this low for another 40 years" and "6.625 * 30 is almost twice as much as 5 * 20" and "we'll be paying a smaller mortgage amount and finish six years earlier." We haven't yet reached our "breakeven point" for the costs we paid to refinance -- that comes in another three years.

I looked at 15 or 10 year rates, and my income isn't so fixed and secure. The real estate equity drop just started around August/September 2007. There's no clear winner, because I don't know what goal would be met by refinancing. "I want to minimize my pain/exposure to inflation." Well, there's the house -- that's supposed to be a help. The payments are fixed. It's more telling of my state of mind that we got over the sting of changing our $535 monthly payment for shelter for $1490 a month, even when I had a car loan on top of that, but I balk at the idea of paying another few hundred dollars to be free and clear at fifty. We're at $1436 PITI now, with a 200% runup in real estate taxes over nine years. I want to pay less, and I want my mortgage over with faster. I can't achieve both right now. I can prepay, and then I'd be paying less in interest. 3.5% with 0 points at 15 years isn't going to happen. I'd have to cross over to the credit union to get 10 year rates, and then we'd have much more of our pay going to mortgage...

I have thought about cutting back on the organic food, or at least the vitamins, but not both. Eating out I have cut back on. Confound it, I want easy and simple ways to save, and easy and simple ways to beat inflation, and the ways I know involve time commitments beyond five minutes, except for flossing the teeth. I need to break out of the "bad stuff always happens to me, so I have to be prepared and aware and never risk anything" mindtrap. If only I knew for sure my peers weren't counting on their parents (and their dwindling retirement assets) to bail them out in hard times... I have considered remodeling the home to accommodate the in-laws as an enticement to get them to move over here. I guess the hubby and I would sleep downstairs.

How do I know when I have enough?

I really need to get out more. Perhaps because I've been preoccupied or do not visit stores other than supermarkets or fish shops unless I really have to, but I never hear conversations like this in real life. I hear the "yeah, I bought a thousand shares of Google at its IPO" or "yeah, took my family on a three-week vacation in Thailand, six months after the Italy jaunt" conversations. Me, I had my first real vacation in three years last year, partly to celebrate from getting out from under daycare tuition.

These snippets accentuate the psychic distance between my city and the rest (excepting L.A., Fort Lauderdale, Litchfield County of Connecticut, N.Y.C., and the Bay Area) of the country. How can people be in foreclosure when my coworkers own lakefront property? How can people be in five-year-car-loan debt when I see Lexuses and H2s on the road? How can people be foreclosing on properties valued less than what my property is worth? Me, I am on neither extreme end of the spectrum. 12-year-old car, live in old house with 19% net income going to accelerated mortgage, bus to work, shop for used clothing, wearing sweaters in the house, renting more DVDs from the library these days. Probably poor compared to my coworkers. However, I am likely to keep my house over the next four years.

Where do I have to go, other than Debtors Anonymous meetings and visiting this forum, to witness in person someone talking about their debt? The next job I take, I hope to take where there are "normal people" whose conversations don't depress me. I'd like to be among people who say "debtfree and with a good emergency fund and ample retirement is a good enough place to aim for." And if you're strolling by looking for some Schadenfreude, you won't get much of a fix here -- I've been debt-free more or less, aside from a 2.9% 12-month vehicle loan and a 6-week HELOC, for six years.

If I knew for certain that I would get a job with a salary 25% greater than what I'm earning now if I went to a career counselor, I would go to the career counselor. That might be easier than knocking 25% off my expenditures this year...

A friend of mine suggests I should save up some money to work on my house: finish the basement, remodel the kitchen, work on the bathroom, but get an interior designer to draw up plans. Maybe I'd have a five-year-plan to fix up the house. He thinks I would have $100,000 over these five years to spend on the house. Hahahahaha.

I'm tempted to increase the home equity line of credit from the 5% of house value to 10% of house value to do this, especially if an interest rate cut is coming, because if the interest rate is below the inflation rate, I might, although I'd be in heavier debt for the short term, be ahead in the long term.

Should I cut back on my expenses by about 8% to save up for these house improvements? Should I not hang on to this magic ideal of 55% equity in the house?

The bill was still over $130, but under $132. It was a degree lower outside, and we had one more day in our billing period than last year, and yet we used slightly fewer therms year over year, so yay. We really did reduce our usage. I think I paid close to $150 last year.

I am uncertain that I'll be brought back to finish my contract. I'll search for some Canada positions, and some US permanent jobs for about 20% less than what my spouse makes. As long as they're within one half-hour for a commute.

Tomorrow I buy some more gold, one ounce for every 300 points the Dow dropped...

I can't ignore the Tapeworm Economy any longer.

I'm confused about this capitalism thing. It seems that the markets and economy have been tinkered with by government to protect large corporations. If capitalism was the best, why would it need tinkering? What would life look like in America if government and corporations were not so cuddly with each other, if corporations didn't set government policy and governments didn't get the citizens in bigger trouble by incompetently messing around? Did Adam Smith think the private and public sectors must intertwine? Was life really so ugly for the bottom 80% when the very rich and companies were paying over 50% in income taxes?

I'm okay with free markets. I'm okay with socialist policy that benefits the majority. I'm not okay with socialist policy that benefits the minority, or people who don't really need the benefits.

Some government entities have taken to fining corporations for monopolistic practices. Perhaps these same government entities would garner greater revenue by taxing corporations for environmental disaster and usurious practices?

How long does it take for supply-side or trickle-up economics to work for everyone? How awful would Congress look and act if it were supported by individuals and constituents only?

Lots have seen their retirement accounts wounded, me included. I'm not an economist by any means -- I only know that after a tech bubble and a housing bubble the devil would collect its due, and if letting the economic cycle go where it would naturally would mean a not-so-bad or a short-term low, I wouldn't tinker with it. It's too bad for me that only one or two candidates are willing to talk about what's facing us, economically, but it's probably also too bad for me that I don't have high enough a net worth or liquid assets where I can comfortably turn my attention to higher-profile, more beloved, better funded candidates who are not paying attention to what's facing us economically.
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In the smells like foreclosure spirit department...
Notice of Trustee Sales in my County for period January 1 - January 15
Year 2002: 132 (dotbomb era)
Year 2003: 159 (dotbomb era)
Year 2007: 124
Year 2008: 215

Apparently a roof doesn't have to be replaced every ten years. Twenty years is more reasonable an interval. I am shifting some of the roof savings to: gold/silver, emergency fund, garden and home improvement.

I have paid $417 in taxes.

I've shifted paying 18% of our net to mortgage to paying 23% as of February. I'll be taking unpaid time to complete some projects for healing my habitat, preferably three weeks, before, I pray, taking a three-month contract to last me until school is out.

business taxes
$338.26 - state taxes
$80.41 - city taxes

The biggie, federal tax, is looming... I am thankful I had the foresight to save some money for that.

allowance for him and her
I included an allowance for the young one, who hardly ever asks for it. I had the money in my pocket but the father and I spent it on hot chocolate and cappuccinos. Call Child Protective Services. On the other hand, I've included my kid in the "profit-sharing plan" of a budget surplus.

donations
So many worthy causes, so few dollars.

I've been reading elsewhere about people considering replacing their mid1990s vehicles. I've been considering replacing ours. I'm angsty about the complexity of scope and enormity of costs for updating our home and the looming car replacement. I might get into consumer debt again, but I plan the maximum amount of debt to be $16700 at a time.

Okay, so from the intertwining of post topics and shared reading over the past few days, it looks like my brain has entered an intentional community with that of lux living frugalis. I'm glad my brain can do one good thing on occasion.

A follow-up on "I Ask Myself, How Much Do You Commit Yourself" and my Insurance Bill musings, especially after V's comment about targeting and planning charitable giving: I am reading The Better World Handbook and on page 266 is the suggestion of setting up a giving budget.

"On January 1, make up a list of your values. Then find organizations that are working to make those values real in the world. Don't let your giving be dictated by who sends you a request in the mail[, or who makes unsolicited fund-raising calls]. Do some research to find the best organizations and the ones that best represent your ideals. The last step is to set up dates and the dollar amounts that you plan to send to those organizations. A giving budget keeps your charitable giving at the forefront of your mind throughout the year so that it doesn't take a back seat to all of the other ways you want to spend your money."

I like this because it seems to me that groups will try more than annually to get additional contributions. This way I can record my contributions, collect receipts, keep records, and say to those who have their hands out for more: "sorry, my funds have been allotted for other organizations at least as fabulous as yours."

Consider also that charity begins at home: national and global organizations like Unicef and Doctors Without Borders do good, yet making additional room in your giving budget for donating to local non-profit organizations has the added benefit of local community improvement, a difference you can see.

Not only that, but making a list of one's values can be wonderfully focusing for how one chooses to budget time and money for maximum impact. We budget for what's important for us. Time is also valuable -- we should budget time to allow us to accomplish what we want.

GuideStar - Non-profits and charities search
Charity Navigator -- how effectively do organizations put ra...

Last year: $491.00
This year: $546.00

I shall surf for better car/home insurance packages -- if I can get a $60 discount for having both auto and home insurance with one insurance agency that will offset my donation to the "ProjectShare" program my utility offers for low-income people behind on their bills.

Everything is going up, sigh. I wonder how people on fixed incomes are managing...

Typical 2007 Residential Bill per month where I live:

Water: 22.97
Sewer 38.74
Drainage: 11.83
Solid Waste: 21.55
--------------------
$95.09/month

Last bill for prior two months was $157.57, so using 17% less water. Rates are increasing so the typical residential bill would be $203.32. A 7% increase. I wonder if that's the inflation rate. Can you see now why I'm more into cutting costs? I must find a sure investment that is higher than inflation...

Our water bill is lower than it was last year, by about 11%.

A question on another forum is: "What are you willing to sacrifice for financial security?" At this point I would not sacrifice my good, real friends, nor my health. I don't know that I'd sacrifice something that took 2% of my budget, like education or car insurance. I would sacrifice my animals, but the spouse wouldn't go for that. We turn down the heat, the animals come onto the bed. I'd sacrifice fifteen-twenty minutes of my day for some spiritual peace of mind, and sacrifice an additional twenty minutes getting exercise. It's true I'm not willing to make any further cuts in my lifestyle to reduce my expenditures. I might seek alternate actions to paying retail/full-price for necessities all the time, but that's it. Maybe sacrifice an hour a week in some simplicity circle.

Maybe the question isn't worded appropriately. Here's what I would do to create more time for myself, time invested in improving my quality of life.

• Do a time budget.
• Study who and what you are investing your time in.
• Identify who and what wastes your time.
• Look for opportunities to achieve more energy for yourself with your time.
• Look for opportunities in collaboration with other members of your immediate family.

I read Carolina Bound's entry today and used my search engine of choice to find this article about Jeff Yeager and his suggestions for a financial detox. Refraining from eating out is something we're gently working into. We haven't gone to a "cloth napkins and tablecloth" restaurant for two weeks -- that's notable for us.

It was unintentional, but I had one.
I didn't appreciate "no spend days." I figured, well, someone would just buy the next day. Someone doesn't have to fill up the car with gasoline every day, nor buy clothes, nor buy food and medicine on a daily basis. Work made the "no spend day" easy: I had a noon-hour appointment, and my lunch bunch went without me, thinking I'd blown them off. I wasn't, but I was a little hungry, so I had free teas, juices, water, vitamins and coffee, and the employer-provided bus pass took me to and from work.

Unsure whether I should fill it out or not. It'd be shredded if not for the Rewards program eligibility. Maybe I'll fill it out anyway -- if it's that great a card I'll know what shape my credit report is in by acceptance/refusal.

Can any credit card cheerleader convince me that a 20-day grace period benefits consumers more than a 25-day grace period would?

From reading a local blog, I found out about a "phantom" candidate running for President -- not a hoax/joke, but for real, the candidate had several hundred votes in New Hampshire in an early poll return before being categorized as "Other". If you've been following FOX, ABC, NPR, CNN for American election primary news you would not have heard of this person. As I'm not endorsing this candidate I'm not listing the name, but I do like this bit I found on the candidate's website:

"Every day I hear people complaining about what they don't like about our government and media, but not one of them are willing to put forth an effort to try and change it, especially when it comes to their personal lives. We are as much a slave on a personal level, as our government is to the international bankers. We keep right on using the tool they put out here to control us, credit cards, and we are imprisoned by it. We are no longer willing to save up to buy something, we have to have it right now, so the Government has made it easy to have what you want without the having to save for it, (CREDIT). Don't you think it funny that in a land with so much wealth, only 2 PERCENT of the people own their homes? (CREDIT). Do you know 60 PERCENT of Americans have at least 3 Credit cards used to its maximum? (CREDIT). Do you know that only 1 PERCENT of the people have their car paid for? (CREDIT). To be free, you must throw away your credit cards, and NEVER buy anything that you cannot afford at the moment of purchase. We will never be a free people until we rid ourselves of the burden placed here to control us, and when we stop renting from the powers, the power will cease to exist."

12,277 lbs per year carbon emissions from our household is not terrible when the Average (more than two persons) American household emits 41,500. Replacing the refrigerator would reduce our carbon emissions by 577 pounds of carbon monoxide per year.

We can cut our pre-tax retirement contributions a bit: in retirement we hope not to have a mortgage, and won't be contributing to retirement programs.

So there are two pats on the back. It is hoped that the increase in disposable income will accelerate achievement of the goals in the Savings Tracks.

On the other hand, I'm not happy that in the first week of recording outgo, we're already up to $644, $944 if we count the last Roth IRA contribution for 2007.

A third pat on the back: I've lost three pounds.

So the flagging mortgage powerhouse that is somewhat local to my locale has sponsored a children's museum exhibit: Moneyville. I itched for months to take the wee one there, and finally he acquiesced!

boy did we have fun! My husband shielded me from the stock trading exhibit for a while. My kid had fun with the Free Trade exhibit, dumping all the exports into Canada's ocean freighter (!). Most impressively, he agreed to visit the computerized "this is what life is like when you move out of your parents' home" exhibit, in which he made some financial goals: get a promotion, save up $2000 in one year. I helped a little bit: "Hey son, do you want to start out the way Mommy did?" and set him up to share an apartment and have a video game designer job with a university degree. He actually accomplished his goals, choosing overtime and education opportunities the way Mom does, with largely his own decision making, passing up some weekend getaways, CDs, and other hitech doodads. I did encourage him to buy new furniture, attend a concert and a family reunion his "sister" organized. There were bumps along the way, smoothed with the use of a credit card. Sadly, he did carry a balance, but he judiciously paid the card (with 18% APR) off the next statement. Life is not all ramen and Value Village. I'm so proud of my kindergartner!

We also made our own currency, learned how to identify counterfeit money, and saw what part of the world made the largest amount of shirts for export to the U.S. It wasn't Bangladesh, where his shirt was made, and it wasn't Finland/Europe, where my Marimekko shirt came from.

Newspaper article about the notion of wealth. Good to have some validation about unhappiness -- I'm supposedly stressed because of juggling children and career.

My next car will emit fewer than 6.8 tons of carbon monoxide annually. It will get better than 25 - 31 mpg, which is different from the numbers on a manufacturer's official EPA MPG claim sticker, and it will have at least a four-star safety rating from SaferCar.gov

It's funny that the car I'm driving now, which is scratched and probably worth $1500 at best, is decently safe and has better mileage than popular automobiles made ten years later. It will be larger than the car I'm driving now, as I will probably be hearing "Mom can you drive us to..." by then. I've had it for 114,000 miles and will probably have it for 57,000 more or until some distracted-by-tech-gizmo egomaniac driver plows into me on a crowded highway.

The Nissan Altima 2007 looks good, as do the Toyota Camry 2007 and the new Nissan Versa 2008 (should check safety ratings).

FuelEconomy.gov

Mostly I babysat my kid, but I did make it to work to log in my hours for the week. I also made my final Roth IRA contribution for 2007, and spent money on a radiator flush.
$32.46 gas fill-up
$76.22 radiator flush
$300.00 Roth IRA 2007 contribution

Mathematically, my son and I counted "for sale" signs throughout the day. We stopped at twenty.

Hubby didn't get much money over the holidays. I won't get much money next week.

Found twenty-two cents around the house. I must collect tax statements and documents for the CPA.

I printed some recipes for the week: beef stew, meatless dish of delicata squash, broiled salmon with roasted tomatoes and basil, bacon-spinach pasta.

I was dopey-morose reading the Refrigerator forum threads... last month we went to a warehouse sale for refrigerators and did not find an EnergyStar refrigerator that was short enough to fit beneath our 1940s-era built-in cabinets. I refrained from making snarky comments on the forum about remodeling a kitchen for $30,000 so I could buy a larger, energy-efficient refrigerator -- for frugality. I am glad that I refrained, for now I have found one:
GTH16BBSLWW. I'll probably end up paying $700 for it, but running it will take $3/month. Our current 1980s-era fridge is a little off with the cooling: freezing some areas and wilting some vegetables. The gasket seal leaks cold air. In a month I will have the money for replacing the fridge (from the home improvement budget).

Also, a link to an interview with Benjamin R. Barber, whose book Consumed I am, uh, consuming...

Today I visited the credit union with my boy. We used CoinStar (I know, I know about the surcharge) and deposited about $10 in change to his account. He wanted me to take out $3 so we could go to the movies. He is very retro: his fave movies were made in the 1920s and 1930s. I told him he was living in the wrong decade for us to go to the movies for $3. We can't even rent at Scarecrow Video for three dollars unless it's "Second Take" or, fudging slightly, we use 2-for-1 Wednesdays. I took him to the library where he could rent DVDs.

I also, finally, applied for a userid for my online banking -- I used what I thought was a joint account, but I "failed" a security check even though I had the answers correct because it wasn't MY userid I was calling about, but rather my spouse's, which I had used for three years. Also my credit card and debit card have materialized, which is good.

We waited for CoinStar in front of a man who had deposited, I kid you not, over $400 in coins. With the surcharge from CoinStar he could have purchased a coin sorter. In fact, I think I'll add that to the purchases I will make as I reward myself for clearing out ten books:
1. bread slicer
2. coin sorter
3. juicer that's easy to clean

If I don't get too giddy, I might even sign up for a Treasury Direct account and fill out my 2007 tax application forms for my CPA.
--------------------------
I've been feeling nutty this morning. Not in a good way. Taxable accounts are very small, and now I have $300 remaining for Roth IRA 2007 contributions and $5000 remaining for Roth IRA 2008. And what am I going to do tomorrow instead? Get my hair coloured. I'll be starting to interview for new jobs in February, so might as well start the preening, right?

I'm in for the $20 challenge. Yesterday I looked for some coins to put in a jar. I've counted, with my boy, $5.47. Also have $32.95 interest for the month from savings and checking...

We spent $7.99 on espresso and hot chocolate prior to a leisurely stroll through the Olympic Sculpture Park and Myrtle Edwards park. I saw some high-tech company buildings I might send my resume to. As long as it means commuting in less than an hour.

Also used some electrical outlet sealers on the outlets on the outer walls. Here's hoping my heat bills come down by a dollar.