This HELOC balance chokes my head and heart. I'm considering liquidating some certificates of deposit to rapidly reduce the balance.
Right now the HELOC usurps 17.173% of our available credit. It is our debt with the highest APR and the shortest payoff period.
If I wanted a car I could borrow up to 12% of our available credit. Weird that twelve years ago we were making less together than what the spouse makes now, paid 10% more for our mortgage. and had a car payment, and didn't see ourselves as suffering. See what fiscal responsibility conditioning can do to one?
The difficulty is working with my family. The boy and man seem to think that there's always money for afterschool activities, Pokemon booster decks and fantasy wargaming weekend tournaments. Meanwhile I have to wait eight weeks to replace my walking shoes and eleven weeks for a haircut. I desperately need some fall/winter skirts, tops, and boots. I buy at consignment stores and Value Village, except for the boots -- I always buy footwear new.
I saved some money yesterday: several years ago I bought some shabby chic style used bedside lamps. The paper lining in one of them disintegrated. I live close to a lampshade store that boasted 320 lampshades. I come in with my shade and am told that the style of my shade, specifically how the lightbulb is secured within the shade, is not one that is carried, and I'd be looking at $25 labour + $5 parts in addition to the purchase price of an equivalent lampshade. I look at the lamps available and they are priced from $95+. I go home, retrieve my SunUp daylight lamp, and secure it to the ceiling. Now I can program myself to wake up in the dark and have more space on my bedside table.
It saddens me that it is just one week away from the equinox and I have the daylight lamp operating. It also reminds me to take 2000 IU Vitamin D for every incremental hour of darkness. So in December I'd be taking 8000 IU of Vitamin D daily.
Snap into Savings Reality
September 14th, 2011 at 05:15 pm
September 14th, 2011 at 05:58 pm 1316023086
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September 14th, 2011 at 06:55 pm 1316026515
Time to whip those boys into shape, so you can your well-deserved walking shoes and spruce up your fall wardrobe!
September 14th, 2011 at 08:50 pm 1316033408
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September 14th, 2011 at 09:12 pm 1316034779
Vitamin D deficiency puts one at risk for osteomalacia, rickets, falls, tuberculosis, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, type-1 diabetes, high blood pressure, increased heart failure, myopathy, breast and other cancers. Breast cancer and multiple sclerosis are at near epidemic proportions in the city where I live. It is projected that the incidence of many of these diseases could be reduced by 20% to 50% or more, if the occurrence of vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency were eradicated by increasing vitamin D intakes through increased UVB exposure, fortified foods or supplements.
During the fall and winter months we do not receive adequate sunlight, so I supplement. I started taking 2000 IU of Vitamin D3 daily at the beginning of the month, in October I'll take 4000 IU,
November 5000 IU,
December and January 6000-8000 IU,
February 5000 IU,
March 4000 IU
April 3000 IU
May 2000 IU
and go without from June through August.
I took 2000 IU to 4000 IU for months prior to my Vitamin D3 blood draw, and saw I was slightly deficient (48.4 nMol/L). Thus I am taking more. The recommended daily limit for humans aged 19-70 years is 1500-2000 IU/day, Upper Limit of 10,000 IU/day. My mom died of breast cancer and I'm taking calcium & magnesium because my body isn't keen on nonfermented, pasteurized cow's milk, so I take more Vitamin D3.
September 14th, 2011 at 09:25 pm 1316035529
If you go to the grassrootshealth.com website, select the Documentation tab at the top column spanning banner, you'll find a page with a link to this presentation PDF: "How much Vitamin D3 do we really need?" It is longer than Miller's article, but shows charts of controlled studies. Carole Baggerly's "Breast Cancer and Vitamin D" is informative as well.
Daily intake in excess of 4000 IU does make a difference for me. The last winter I was vitamin D deficient I worked in an environment of severely stressed out people, and I caught pneumonia which took over five weeks to leave my body. Since then I make sure that during October to May I take at least 4000 IU daily. When I was in proximity to people with flu, I would recover within ten hours, whereas people who did not take Vitamin D would take two days to fight the flu.
Vitamin D is so much cheaper than a flu shot, and a flu shot can't reduce risk of cancer.
September 15th, 2011 at 05:04 am 1316063092
September 15th, 2011 at 05:39 am 1316065192
I've also put a link to my Vitamin D page, which is only a link to Miller's PowerPoint file on Vitamin D, Iodine and Selenium. Slide 15 you might find very useful, as it is a graph of Vitamin D stores among people living on the 48th parallel from August to August.
I like slides 20, 21, 65 and 69. Iodine... I gotta get some iodine. The spirulina isn't enough.