I would do so much better with a budget and an organization book. This morning I dutifully paid the Visa statement in full, apportioned my HELOC and savings account. I mailed a cheque for our motorcycle insurance, and another for our mortgage.

I hid behind a cabinet to work on my binder at a coffee shop but a darling friend popped in and we had a chat. I have some hours to myself today so I can work on the binder.

Shockingly, for the past eleven weeks, although we have always had a balance on our VISA, we have managed to pay off the statement balance, incurring no finance charges. Today I saw we had paid over $700 toward a $440 balance from the month before, but we've also paid for new glasses as well.

Another surprise: when I received our renewed credit cards, I checked the expiry date on my useless credit card that I never activated, and it is five months from now. But now that a billionaire has come to the rescue of the ailing issuer, I am sure the issuer has no reason to ask me how it can make the card more competitive so I will use it as much as if not more frequently than my preferred credit card.

One credit card is five months away from replacement, and its "remove this sticker/call this number to activate" sticker is still on. It hasn't been used.
It's not willpower stopping me: it's waiting for a reason to use the card. The card fit my needs when I just bought a house and needed a credit history in my own name. But the card issuer hasn't kept the original terms and conditions. The income the issuer garners from messing around with terms and conditions is much greater than what it would earn from the transaction fees from my credit card use. I get to keep the card as part of my credit history, and the credit card issuer gets to claim me as a cardholder who has never defaulted on a payment.

Catherine Austin Fitts stated in a podcast that over 90% of her audience at her speaking engagements claim to not watch or have a television.

My next job or vocation I feel is going to align with my commitment to making people richer, healthier, and/or more spiritually and intellectually aware. That's the closest I've come in a long time to recognizing my purpose, but I've been negative for a long time, because that was what seemed to be the accepted norm. If there is divine guidance I will be led to ways to build confidence, powers of persuasion and paths to partnerships with trusted and effective mentors.

For lengthy excursions up and down (I can't go too far west: four miles drops me into the Puget Sound!) and sometimes east, I bring the colossal Complete Tightwad Gazette to see how I can save $200-$400 a month.

I went to Costco for the first time since May. We ate down our pantry staples during our fiscal crisis and now I have to replenish the distilled water for our emergency kits and peanut butter. I will say that it feels really good to once again have a full freezer, and to be able to have enough meat for the next three weeks.

Did I learn how to save $200-$400 a month? No, but I learned how to save $100 a year. Baking one batch of bread a year and drying clothes without a dryer. I also learned that with some creative deprivation we could save close to $1000 a month, which I would apportion to paying down the home equity line of credit and buying silver, eventually upgrading to buying one half-ounce of gold. I have some gold already, and it is a comfort to me to see my net worth rise while I make lists on what to subsist on in the pantry. I have sold only a mangled mess of a gold chain my mom bequeathed me, and I didn't have that appraised, but it netted me $740 so that was nifty.

We have auto insurance plus a serpentine belt issue to pay for this month, so debt repayment is slow-going. The silver lining is that everyone in my debt group has gone backward: I'm the only one in my group who's maintaining some accountability and preparation right now. I bought a roof for the house, as the roof was probably put on during the Carter administration if not the Truman, and rougher windstorms had blown the shingles off.

Yesterday was our seventeenth wedding anniversary. We celebrated on Friday with a nice dinner out and some improv theater with a theme near and dear to my spouse's heart: sci-fi B-movies where aerosol-haloed women and crewcut Anglo-Saxon men battle monstrosities that would make Orkin men demand danger pay. On our actual anniversary my boy and man went to play Pokèmon, the joy of that being formal introduction to another Pokèmon dad who is a National Book Award winner. We shook hands and he said he'd seen me a few times inside the store, and I said my book club was reading one of his books (truth). "Oh really?" he smiled. Then my family went to the

http://www.skagitriverranch.com to buy some organic meat and excellent eggs. I will eventually buy bulk orders when the refund cheque arrives. Although Skagit River Ranch sells at local farmers' markets, I rarely have a meal plan for meats, and my bags fill fast with vegetables, and you know, those meats are not cheap! I will be eating more lamb and less pork. I have some recommendations for preparation of organ meats as well.

Anyway, even as the emergency fund is whittled down by home and auto repairs, we are reminded in now our eighteenth year of marriage that our simplest pleasures: New York Times Friday and Saturday crosswords, reading library books in bed, local walks, regional hikes, podcasts and massages are indeed some of the best.

We bought a Turkish coffee set and bakeware to replace our Mulroney-era baking pans and sheets. Planned spending today include replacement watch battery, and wardrobe adjustment/renewal for the young'un, and some sweaters/skirts to accommodate my new size.

Another thing we did was drop Sprint's family plan in favour of Virgin Mobile's $25/month for 300 minutes. we used two hours this past month, and we get unlimited web, which is cool when one's looking for fee-free ATMs in an unfamiliar area.

Painful last week of July. By painful I mean reducing meal portions because the freezer didn't have any protein in it and interrupted sleep due to hunger, check bounced, and scrounging coins around the house to put gas in the car.

At least we had vegetables, and the cats didn't nip at our ankles.

Why so bad? We scrounged $1649.55 of escrow deposit money for our new mortgage. We finally ditched our mortgagor of twelve years in favour of our preferred credit union, who lured us with a fee-free (no application fee and no appraisal fee, but conveyance fee, documentation fees: whyn't call it "fee-reduced" and be honest?) mortgage for twelve years at 3.75%. First payment is September, and we have three pay periods until then. Also the escrow balance of the old mortgage will come back to us.

For the bean-counters out there: "reduced" time period (the qualification to secure the 12-year means having fewer than 12 years left on the old mortgage, which if we had not prepaid by ten payments we would not have qualified for), reduced interest by an estimated $8700, reduced rate by 25%, and reduced interest&principal payment by 10%.

I thought I was going to blow wads o' dough @ Costco hours after the money came into the account but we've been visiting the closer discount groceries.

July was expensive: painted boy's room, framed a Matisse print, moto insurance, swimming lessons - chess membership, and caved into getting a RotoRooter dude over. After twelve years of managing a congested drain by ourselves. Now I know how to keep the drain decongested, and with us it requires more than baking soda, vinegar and hot water once a month.