Have you seen this one?

http://htaindex.cnt.org/map_tool

Maps of metropolitan statistical areas that track Housing and Transportation Costs as Percent of Income. Blue areas indicate areas that do not meet affordability standards (housing + transportation greater than or equal to 45% of median income). Cream areas meet affordability standards.

I'm surprised to learn that my area is among the unaffordable. We have postwar houses, trucks, RVs. Not really manicured lawns, few luxury SUVs, no homeowner association - subdivisions. The new Priuses and the Subaru wagons with the Thules and the Coexist bumper stickers are in the even less affordable areas south of us. On the other hand, the affordable areas in our city are the ones with the highest crime rates (burglary, gang violence, car theft).

Then again, I can also understand why the payday lending places are nearby. It's cheaper to rent where I live than to own.

Note to DH, who's reading this: your parents live in one of the few "blue" areas of your hometown. It's a small area, but over a mile away from any other blue area so it's easy to identify.

or is it lacking payment stamina? These past two weeks have been the fiscal equivalent of having three pints of blood withdrawn.

We made our last payment for childcare. I signed up for some community education courses: Japanese, Yoga, decluttering and kitchen remodeling.

Mailed the cheques out to the contractor, although he's on vacation.

I showered in our new bathroom. I love the light in it. Everything gleams so brightly, I suddenly note the rust on our shower rod. Guessing $3300 addition to the house value. Bathtub may need a new enamel job: its beige tint doesn't go well with the bright white gleam.

Considering a dawn simulator for the fall and autumn months. I had pondered a big full-spectrum therapy light box but they're expensive, and I haven't had a proper diagnosis of Seasonal Affective Disorder. The dawn simulator would help us both. I should start on the St. Johns Wort now, I reckon.

A new Yamaha battery would set me back a mere $70 on eBay. Considering... one thing I really like about my city is that there are many scooter and motorcycle riders who are generous with their advice. If I get the job in the city 20 miles north I'll lean on the spouse to sell one of our scooters, and consider blowing my car fund. Or -- gasp! -- lease a car. If I knew for certain I'd be back in the home country for keeps within 24 months, I would lease. Ideally, he'd get a ZipCar membership for taking the kid to appointments.

$5000 away from having 67% equity in the house. Watch this happen five years from now.
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Link du Jour: Home Equity Frenzy Was a Bank Ad Come True -- "The Debt Trap" series by the New York Times: banks' advertising campaigns to promote home equity loans and home equity lines of credit.

Americans are beginning to reduce their debt exposure - as seen in the savings rate, which rose from 0.3pc to 2.6pc in the last three months, the third steepest quarterly increase since the Second World War.

Before the US economy can truly begin to expand again, Rosenberg believes the savings rate must rise to pre-bubble levels of 8pc, that the US housing stocks must fall to below eight months' supply, and that the household interest coverage ratio must fall from 14pc to 10.5pc.

"It's important to note what sort of surgery that is going to require. We will probably have to eliminate $2 trillion of household debt to get there," he predicts, saying this will happen either through debt being written off, as major financial institutions continue to do, or for consumers themselves to shrink their own "balance sheets".

My family's share of household debt to pay off: $19354.84. Could be house renovations, could be the mortgage. But there's a goal: $1612.91/month to divide between the mortgage and the home renovations, maybe even a car. I'd looked at CarTalk.com and MotherProof for car recommendations and reviews. Still liking the Nissan Altima Hybrid, or honda Accord, or Toyota Prius, although the Nissan Versa is a consideration too now.

But hey, way to crank up that savings rate, America! If you can nontuple your savings, why can't I?

Scheduling to tackle the $19354.84 after March 2009, when the bathroom is done, and I've returned from Japan.

I freaked a little yesterday when I read my utility needed to raise its water service charges by 40% over the next three years. So, because I am stoopid, I Googled the following links:

Save Water 49 Ways

How to conserve water in your home and yard

How to conserve water

Questions and answers for the three people who read this:

1. What personal finance podcasts do you listen to?
I don't have any money podcasts I can use RSS or subscription methods for. I know of Financial Sense but never have the time to listen to it. I have started to listen to Michelle Singletary on NPR. I have a bookmark for Gerri Detweiler's ARCHIVED podcast too.

2. If you have a del.icio.us account, what bookmarks do you have for 'frugality', 'budgeting' or 'saving'? Bonus points for 'housekeeping' or 'home organization'

Some of mine are: http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/10/02/the-one-hour-project-thirty-ways-to-use-one-hour-to-improve-your-finances-and-open-the-door-to-more-riches/

http://www.frugalfun.com/frugal.html

Most of my del.icio.us links are added on this page as links in a side column

What is frugality? Is it living below your means? Is it living on one person's income and saving the other's, when the income division is close to 50-50? Is it saving 10% of your gross income?


None of the above. Frugality is the practice of acquiring goods and services in a restrained manner, and resourcefully using already owned economic goods and services to achieve a longer term goal.

Yes, I ripped most of the above paragraph and everything below from Wikipedia's frugality entry.

Common strategies of frugality include:
• the reduction of waste,
• the curbing of costly habits,
• suppression of instant gratification by means of fiscal self-restraint,
• the search for efficiency,
• traps avoidance,
• defiance of expensive social norms,
• embrace of free (as in gratis) options, using barter, and staying well-informed about local circumstances and both market and product/service realities.

I don't know what means 'traps avoidance' but the first thing that comes to my head is cell phone plans. I'll be working on the first four strategies. I feel I have near-mastery of defiance of expensive social norms: our mortgage plus tax plus insurance plus utilities plus maintenance is still less than what we'd be paying as renters in our area.

As we can't be bothered to check the phone for voice mail on a regular basis, I'm going to get rid of voice mail. It's a waste. I also want one scooter gone. Somehow we will meet Jean Chatzky's '$10 a day' challenge. Even if it means me preparing lunches in the evening for the next day, or soaking beans (hey, what about those soaked lentils in the fridge?) learning to love eggs and cheese as cheaper protein alternatives to fish, fowl, and meat.

Link du Jour: Frugality tips from Pinchtown (why do I have the Steve Miller Band in my head?)
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Another Link du Jour: Interesting Web Interactive Applications served up by the New York Times in its July 20 Debt and Credit feature.

How I stack up or suck:
2004 the average debt on a home by 35-44 year olds was $108062. Ours was $170000 (we were not yet 35).
2004 the average house price was $264,000. Ours was about $296500. Then again, 52% of families aged 35-44 had $100K - $320K in mortgage debt back then.

I like how the 1941-1946 period is the one period over 88 years where savings outnumbered debt.

Link du Jour: 3000 miles debunked

My auto manufacturer still recommends 3000 miles as the appropriate interval for oil changes, but it's good to know that of the cars I am most likely to purchase in the next two years I can postpone the Grease Monkey trip.
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from the etc. bin: I am so tantalizingly close to completing two savings goals! When I can deposit two cheques into the accounts I can consider #2 (bathroom) and #6 (garage door) complete! Maybe I should start #1, #4, #5, and #7 in earnest on 7/25 to keep things quarterly.

If you're in debt, and it's a taboo subject to bring up, do you suppose everyone else is in debt too, or do you suffer silently convinced you are the only one?

This is of course the wrong question to ask on a Savings blog: the readers are money-conscious and goal-oriented. But before you got here, if you were in debt, which did you believe? Were you better off thinking you were the only one, or that consumer debt would always be a fact of life?

I still have a hard time believing so many other people are in debt: they have higher retirement accounts, bigger houses, newer cars, mommy and daddy to leech from. A quarter of the houses on my street are paid-in-full. I never see a trace of worry on their faces. I tend to think people pay in cash for vehicles and home renovations, because we ought to. And I think the taboo custom here is what reinforces my belief. My friend has no problem getting people to confide they owe money -- me, I do not give off those vibes at all. I only give off the vibes of being approachable for money, despite how ill-fitting, wrinkled, or old my clothes are. Yet when I ask my self-employed friends with their $600K+ houses how they set up their Keoghs or SEP-IRAs they don't respond. Is that a taboo, or are they too cashpoor?

What would the nation look like if people were open about how much they owed? Would people get out any faster? Would they be in peer collectives sharing their strategies as middle-income households rather than heeding a milionaire talking head or a spoken voice over a mass medium?

Ka-ching! Consumers spend more on credit cards

Credit card debt more taboo than sex** I was banned from commenting on this one, due to the IP address I was using (shared by 60,000+ other people) so I am commenting on it here. I see the Consumer Smarts blogger hasn't mentioned whether she is debt-free or has consumer debt.

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/devouringseattle/archives...

Not meant to be advertisement for personal gain.