There’s an article by Smartmoney.com on Yahoo Finance about people who are burying their cash. One man from Alabama admits to burying $8,000 somewhere on his 300 acre property.

Personally, I do not like cash. I don’t like how easily it can be lost. Even having a stash in our house gives me pause. In the even of a fire or theft - it could be lost. I like having my money in the bank where it is presumably safer.

With doing that, we are placing a lot of trust in banks and in the FDIC (who insures our money). Trust isn’t a bad thing, but neither is having a back-up plan. We should probably have some cash funds available regardless of the economy right now. After all, if a natural disaster strikes, there’s a good chance or debit or credit cards wouldn’t be accepted. Who knows if checks would either. Cash, on the other hand, is almost always accepted.

So I have thought about having a little stash in the house and then maybe burying some money. I wouldn’t do it in our backyard (too small and too many curious neighbors). But there are other places I know of where we could do it. GPS technology could make it pretty easy to find again. I thought I was going a little overboard with my thoughts, but maybe I wasn’t. It turns out I’m not the only one who has thought about it.

I probably won’t do it because we have long, cold winters here. It would be tough to dig up anything we bury if we needed it during the winter. So I think we’ll keep with the small stash in our house for now.

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I found this interesting. Dr Pepper made a promise that if Guns N’ Roses released their “Chinese Democracy” album in 2008, they would give everyone in America a Dr Pepper. Well, the album release is only a few days away and Dr Pepper is honoring their promise.

That’s a lot of Dr Pepper!

For more info, visit this Yahoo News article. According to their story, Sunday (11/23/08) is the day to get the coupon from Dr Pepper’s website.

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I guess it was bound to happen. Our area usually isn’t too affected by downturns and upturns in the economy, but we are finally starting to see the effects of the economy rippling down. The news is starting to report on more businesses closing their doors for good or shutting down for a while. Most of it sounds like a cash flow problem, since demand and consumer spending is low.

Looking in the paper, I noticed that there are less job opportunities - about a 2/3 reduction. Some of that could be due to it being winter. But it’s still lower than normal.

We probably aren’t helping things much at all - we aren’t spending that much money right now. Our favorite restaurant no longer has its flair because we figured out how to duplicate our favorite items from it at home. Even McDonalds isn’t as special since we have made our own modified Big Macs successfully (thanks to Top Secret Recipes).

Plus it’s winter! Right now it feels like 7 degrees out with the wind. BRR. I’m content with sitting on the couch snug with a blanket. There’s no desire to go to any store to go shopping LOL.

There is an article at the MSN Smart Spending blog that asked if frugal people are ruining the economy. Tough question. While I definitely don’t believe frugal people are to blame for the current economic condition, I know that our family is affecting local businesses if we no longer spend money there. It’s a small impact, but if there are more people out there like us - it turns into a big impact.

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We have an old house. It’s either 100 years old or very close to it. The last few winters, it has done very well with keeping in the heat. It always amazed me how well insulated the house was. This year is different and I’m not sure why. I don’t have any bills yet to back this up, but I can tell things are different this year with how often the heat turns on and how quickly the temperature drops when the heat turns off. It also feels drafty.

The main thing that we do every year is put plastic on certain windows. That’s basically it because our home already has blown-in insulation and we have a few trees that are nice windbreakers.

Wait a minute. Our neighbor cut down some trees this summer. Could that be affecting us even though the trees were a distance from our house?

According to the USDA:

The reduction in wind speed behind a windbreak modifies the environmental conditions in this sheltered zone. The sheltered zone extends as far as ten to fifteen times the height of the windbreak downwind from the windbreak.

Wow. Those trees were close enough and they were in the right position to block the wind. I was sad to see them go to begin with (there was an owl that liked to hang out on the top of one of them), but now it could be related to our home not being able to fight the winter winds like it used to. I guess we were spoiled and we didn’t even realize it.

I have a few ideas of things we could try to help combat the extra wind this winter. One is to create a small windbreak using snow. That’ll be some good exercise for me and a fun project for me and my son. Doing that should help to at least keep the basement warmer. Then I am going to borrow a trick from a commenter at Lifehacker. To find drafts in your home, burn a stick of incense and take it around your doors and windows. The smoke will change directions when you go by a draft. I can definitely feel them - it’s time to find them and seal them up!

For our future dream home, we are definitely going to incorporate a windbreak.

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Take that big bad credit card debt! We finally reached a big milestone. Two years and 9 months after starting our debt reduction journey - we have paid off over $30,000 of our debt.

That brings us to a debt total of $7,299. I’m thinking we may be able to get under the $7K mark by the end of this month. We do have some bills that can arrive at any time (medical-related). If we have extra money and those haven’t come yet, that extra money is going towards our debt. We have our savings account to pull from if needed to pay those bills when they finally arrive.

I do still have weaknesses in spending and one of them is Christmas. I love giving gifts and buying for Toys for Tots. We have a budget in place, but if they money isn’t in our account - there is no way I can spend it. That’s my safety net during Christmas.

I’m not sure what the next milestone will be. Maybe it’ll be when it’s completely paid off

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I have to thank Frugal Babe for this awesome tip on how you can help a school and it doesn’t cost you any extra.

Since we have a son in school, we are familiar with the Box Tops for Education program. You clip the coupons from products that have them. Give them to your school and then they will receive 10 cents for each one submitted. We have collected some for the school, but we mostly make things from scratch now and we rarely come across the box tops. But there is another we can help.

If you go to BoxTops4Education.com, you can sign up and then shop at their marketplace. A portion of your purchase will go towards the school of your choice. There are many retailers in their marketplace - maybe one of the places you like to shop online is listed.

If you were going to shop there anyway, it’s an easy way to help a school.

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If I was more creative, I would try right now to make a poem about how I love the internet. I’ll spare you. Instead, I’ll just share some thoughts I have had lately about the internet.

Sometimes I am very thankful we have come so far technology-wise to have the internet. There is so much information at your fingertips. You think back to the time depicted on Little House on the Prairie (one of my favorite shows) and if something went wrong and you didn’t have a solution, you had to ask around town to see if anyone else knew. If you didn’t have luck there, you could try the next town which could take a while to do. With the internet, you do a search and chances are good that you can find something regarding what you are looking for within a few minutes.

For instance, we had a bad smell in our basement. I did a search on Google and came across a few home repair sites that said the smell was likely due to the water evaporating in our open drain (normally there is a layer of water in it to keep the gases below from escaping into the basement). Just pour some water down there to replenish the layer. Viola - problem fixed and no calls to a plumber.

I started thinking about it some more, and we have saved quite a bit of money by trying to find solutions from the internet. Word of caution, though. Sometimes it can cost you. We had to pay money because we followed some advice about a water heater that was knocking. It ended up being bad advice and we could have really broken our heater. But we lucked out and only had to replace one part that ran about $15. I’m really cautious now and do not stop searching with the solution I first come across. I check multiple sites.

For learning about things, books from the library are great. But the internet has some great resources that combine videos and written instruction. My son and I are learning American Sign Language and we came across this awesome site: Michigan State University ASL Browser. For more structured lessons, we found the ASL University.

To help our son with his learning, I am thankful there are sites out there with printable worksheets. Here’s a few of my favorite sites for free ones:
TLSBooks.com
SchoolExpress.com
Teachnology.com

Oh, and the recipe sites! Or Google Books! It has been suggested in the past that we cut our internet out of the budget to save money. We couldn’t do it because my employment depends on it. But even if we could cancel internet we wouldn’t. Now that I am really thinking about it, it has saved us more money than we have paid for it ($25/month).

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When it comes to our holiday finances, we like to have a budget in mind. That’s why we set a budget of $150 for this year. I had to say it was tentative to allow for other things that could pop up.

One such thing would be being approached by other relatives to split the cost for a big gift for another relative. Since we live far away, the gift is already determined by the time we are contacted. Same goes with the price. In the past, we haven’t had a say in the gift selection and are only contacted to contribute money.

It’s a very awkward position to be in. If we contribute, we spend a lot more than we wanted to spend and it doesn’t leave anything for getting gifts we may have had in mind. If we don’t contribute, then we get a bad rap because the others have to pay more since we didn’t contribute (it is often worded that we all have to contribute a fair share to make it work).

We haven’t heard about anything happening for Christmas this year. Usually we hear sometime after Thanksgiving. It is tough being a frugal family when others are not as frugal. I know there are a lot of frugal readers out there that may find themselves in a similar situation. How do you handle it? Do you contribute to keep the peace or do you have a good response to decline participation?

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This year, we are scaling back our Christmas spending. In the past, we’d have a general budget in mind and if we found some great deals that just meant that we could buy more gifts. Not this year. We will still have a budget in mind but if we get some great deals, we will take the money saved and put it towards our debt or stash it in our savings account.

Our overall philosophy is that gifts need to be useful and have a good lifespan to them. So many times we have purchased things for our son that were only played with a few times and then forgotten. But there have been successful purchases (mega bloks purchased years ago are still used at least every other day by our son). We will take more time to think through every purchase.

Our tentative budget? $150. I say tentative because other things may pop up. More about that tomorrow. This budget does not include purchases for Toys for Tots or anything like that. It is only for gifts for our family and friends.

It will be tight, but I think it can definitely be done. What about you? Are you scaling back holiday spending this year?

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I don’t know how many times I’ve called my credit card companies and asked them to quit sending me junk mail about new cards and offers. It’s a waste of paper and it’s a waste of electricity to shred them all. I also get tons of new credit card offers in the mail, thanks to our new business.

This article from MSN made me smile:

Expect Less Junk Mail as Marketers Cut Back

Not only are credit card companies scaling back, so are some other companies that send out catalogs. That makes me happy because so many catalogs received just go in the trash upon arrival without even looking through them. We’re in debt - we don’t need to look at them! Especially those catalogs with neat doohickeys that look so cool but would probably only be used a few times and then collect dust.

Although I love getting mail every day, we were getting way too much junk in our mail. It was becoming too wasteful and getting off their lists was sometimes impossible.

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Not too long ago, I mentioned using istockphoto.com to earn a few extra bucks. After that article was published, I was tipped off to another site where filmakers can make some extra money.

Whether you are an amateur or professional videographer, the site’s premise looks very interesting. You shoot the video they need, get paid, and then the company assembles a finished product for the project they are working on.

Here’s the site: Elasticlab.com

They do have some requirements regarding equipment, so make sure you read through the fine print. This would have been perfect for us since at one time we had the equipment to do it. Alas, the equipment was sold to pay off debt or we would have jumped on this one

Since I cannot verify the site and use it, I found one blogger who wrote about earning money with them.

Charlie Hoehn

Anyone reading have experience with Elastic Lab?

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I came across an article on Yahoo Finance that was interesting. There are many sites out there that will offer cash for your old gadgets:

Yahoo Finance Article

I checked a few gadgets I am familiar with. We recently sold our Playstation 2 so I plugged that into Gazelle.com. Their offer to buy? $23. Yikes. Pretty low. We ended up selling it to someone direct for $75.

Out of curiosity, I checked how much you could get for selling a Wii to them. From what I’ve read, they are still in high demand. Their offer? $130. Again, it’s pretty low considering a friend of ours sold his used console with one game for basically the new price.

We do have a couple other older gadgets around that we might try to sell. I’ll probably check a few of the sites in that article first to see what they offer. That could be used as the lowest possible price to sell something at if a potential buyer tries to lower your asking price. It could also be a last resort if a buyer cannot be found.

On another note, some will even take gadgets to recycle which is nice if you cannot find a buyer and you don’t have good recycling facilities locally. That’s probably what we will end up using sites like these for since the buying prices seem really low.

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Every now and then, I am asked how we managed to reduce our finance charges. Right now we pay $0.00/month, but back when we had over $37,000 in credit card debt we were paying over $400/month.

In order to pay off our debt as quickly as possible, we had to slash those finance charges and have more of our payments go toward the principal and not interest. In five months, we reduced our finance charges from $400 to around $100. Sixteen months after that, we were able to reduce our finance charges to $0/month. That’s where they sit right now and I love it! Every dime we pay towards our credit cards is now going towards the principal balance and not interest.

It took some work and it took some time. Here’s how we did it.

1.) Called our credit cards to see if they would lower the interest rate

This is the one piece of advice that you hear over and over again - call all of your credit cards and ask them for a lower interest rate. I did that a few times. Did it work every time? No. But did it work at least once? Yes. For a few minutes of your time, it’s worth a shot. If it doesn’t work the first time, try again a few months later.

2.) Attacked our credit card debt

Being $37,000 in the hole didn’t make us very “good”� customers. Our cards were almost maxed out and we were only making the minimum payment. To show our credit card companies that we were serious, we had to attack our credit card debt. We worked overtime. We sold stuff. We lived frugally. If we had extra money, it went towards our credit card debt. We attacked our debt.

3.) Worked to increase our credit scores

Increasing your credit score can sometimes turn into a hot topic. Some people think that your credit score isn’t important. I think it is, especially since we needed a great credit score because we may be looking for a new mortgage in a few years. There isn’t much that we did here except pay bills on time and pay off as much of our debt as possible. Reducing our debt decreased our credit utilization ratio which increased our credit score. Since February of 2006, my credit score has increased from 711 to 763 (although it was 800 at one point - more about that later).

4.) Transferred balances

I started reading through every balance transfer offer we received instead of shredding them without a second glance. I was looking for a great balance transfer rate with no balance transfer fee. We were able to use a free balance transfer when one of our cards raised their interest rate. Recently, a 0% offer that we obtained expired and I wasn’t watching those offers as much as I should have. By looking at available offers online, I was able to see that one of our cards did have a great balance transfer rate (0%) with a 3% balance transfer fee. After running numbers, it was a good deal for us even with the fee.

5.) Obtained a loan from Prosper.com

Prosper.com is becoming well-known as a place to go to try to consolidate your debt on your own terms. Everyday people go there to lend and borrow money. When I first heard of it, Prosper was fairly new but I decided to give it a shot to try to reduce our interest rates. It worked. Thirteen lenders bid on my $3,500 loan request and they reduced my interest rate from 13% to 9.9%. Another note about Prosper loans - they have a fixed interest rate! No more worrying about that interest rate magically increasing.

6.) Used our cards strategically

I have my own credit cards and my husband has his. We used this to our advantage. For a while, all of our debt was split evenly between our cards. We had a goal of getting a 0% credit card offer, so as soon as we could we shifted all of the credit card debt to my husband’s cards. My credit score shot up to 800 and I was easily able to get a 0% offer because our credit card debt was no longer attached to my name. I should have checked to see what it did to my husband’s score, but I didn’t think about it at the time. I’m sure it took a temporary nose dive.

7.) Applied for a new credit card with a 0% balance transfer offer

Once all of our debt was on my husband’s credit cards, I found a good no annual fee 0% balance transfer offer and applied for it. I was only given a $4,000 credit line, but as luck would have it, the card I applied for had the same parent company as one of my other cards. I was able to transfer some of the credit line from the old card to the new card and voila! All of our credit card debt was now at 0%. From what I’ve heard, not all companies will shift credit limits around so some good fortune did help us out with getting all of our credit card debt at 0%.

We were were able to pay off $29,000 of our credit card debt so far thanks to some slashed finance charges. If all goes well we will be credit card debt free next year. Reducing our finance charges took some time but it was worth it.

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Wow. It didn’t take long for my husband to be bumped up to full time at his new job. While we originally weren’t thinking of him working full-time - we’ll take it! With him working full-time and me working more part-time than I was originally thinking, we will actually be making more money for a while. It’s weird how that worked out.

It is different having him working outside of the home since we both were working from home before. Now we have to coordinate schedules. Our trusty wall calendar is back and notes are constantly being written in it. Already we’ve come across a minor conflict and we’ll have to bring a bike out of winter storage (it always happens - it gets colder so we put everything away - then we have a beautiful warm spell). But I am thankful for having a bike and thankful we both are in good enough health to be able to ride one.

I need to be more thankful for the positive things we have. Sometimes it is so easy to forget about that and concentrate on what we don’t have. Or maybe think too much about something negative we have too much of (like debt). After two and a half years at this, I still need to remind myself of that every now and then.

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Wow. These credit card debt updates seem to be few and far between lately. I really like throwing big chunks of money towards our debt, but that is getting tougher to do. So, we are going to throw money when we can. It doesn’t matter if it’s $25 or $200. We need to pick away at this debt faster than we have been.

Our car decided to have issues again to the tune of a $300 repair. That was a bit unexpected so it was a bummer to start off November. But, I turned around and sold a few more things to make close to $200. Following the new method, that money was then put towards our debt and I added a little bit more to it to make it an even $200. It’s sad to see it go so quickly, but it’s for a very good cause.

That brings out debt to $7,799. I’m getting the taste of being under $7K in my mouth so I think I will be pressing hard in the next few weeks to sell a few more bigger ticket items that we haven’t sold yet.

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There has been something else going on that was helping to drive the cutting of my hours. I have debated discussing it on here because it involves our son. I try to respect privacy as much as I can so that’s why I don’t write about neighbors or my siblings. Discussing my son is tough. I don’t want him to grow up and be mad that I discussed him. But I would welcome some public comment on it so I am treading lightly with it and keeping out some of the details.

Let’s just say that another reason I wanted to cut my hours was so I had more time to work with my son with school-related items. Even with some extra assistance at school, my son is struggling. He’s a bright kid, but he needs extra guidance that a teacher with 24 kids in the class cannot give. For example, he brought home a worksheet that was littered with wrong marks. I sat down, explained it to him and he was able to complete it just fine.

When I was working full-time, he wasn’t very receptive to doing more work by the time I got off work. He was already in “winding down” time and even reading was met with frustration. Since cutting my hours, I have been able to work with him about an hour a day shortly after he gets home from school. Then he starts shutting down. I can’t say I blame him. After 8 hours of work I don’t really want to go back to work either. So I have been trying to have some structured work with him and then I sneak things in here and there.

In the back of my mind, I am wondering if homeschooling would be the best option. Homeschooling isn’t cheap, though. While you can do it frugally by finding used material or by using some of the great free information on the internet, there is also the lost income of the parent that is teaching to take into consideration. That is the part I am really having a hard time with right now. Then again, I asked him the other day if he likes school. For the first time since preschool, he said he didn’t like it. He is even concerned with his performance and frustration is setting in. I can sense that his attitude towards learning is turning sour and that really concerns me.

Even if all of our debt was paid off (mortgage and school loans included), homeschooling would still be rough on our finances. It is a tough decision to make for more than just the financial implications, but that is a big one for us to overcome at this point. I’m wondering if any of you reading out there has been in a situation like ours and would be willing to offer some insight.

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I look forward to Halloween every year. It’s the one day that I have an excuse to dress up and for a little bit be another character that isn’t “me.” Don’t get me wrong, I like being me, but an escape from reality is nice every now and then.

Our son was so excited to go trick-or-treating, but he soon got tired of his costume. I think his full costume lasted about 30 minutes before he started getting annoyed with parts of it. By the end of our trip, he no longer looked like he had a costume on at all. Mom started to feel funny when because she was dressed up more than her son LOL.

He surprised me a little bit when we got home. There was still about twenty minutes left for trick-or-treating and he said he wanted to give out candy. I told him that we didn’t have any to hand out and he suggested using the candy he just got. We flipped on our porch light and I fired up our pumpkin and waited. No one came. He was a little bummed.

I asked him if he wanted to stay home next year and give out candy. He surprised me again when he said that he would like to give out candy rather than get it. That made me a little proud, since I’ve been trying to show him that it’s not always about what you get…but what you give. I have a feeling we will have a great time this year shopping for Toys for Tots

I hope all of you had a wonderful night!

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I am happy to report that my husband got a part-time job! It was the one that I mentioned he had a good lead on. It took a while to go through all of the pre-employment steps. For a minimum wage retail job, the process surprised us. But now it is a done deal and we’ll have some more income to help support us until our business kicks into gear.

About the business, I haven’t had much time to work on it lately since I am working more hours at work than originally thought. At least I know that if I want to go back to full time I can. The work is there. So that is comforting.

On the other hand, I’ve already dropped one pant size since cutting my hours. That is not due to formal exercising because I haven’t been doing any. I believe it is due to the fact that I am no longer sitting for so many hours a day. It probably also helps that I haven’t been grabbing as many “comfort foods” since my stress level has decreased.

I have to say thank you to those who mentioned SwapTree in the comments in my post about public libraries. I checked it out and plan to give it a try. I’m already gathering some books and games that didn’t sell at our garage sales to see if I can swap for some books I am looking for.

Lastly, Ray came back to “ER” tonight! Yay! Neela - why did you let him go!!! Why? Why?? As a Neela-Ray fan, I am bummed.

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I have had a title for a post sitting in my draft folder for a while. I was going to tackle a question that comes up every now and then…can money buy happiness? I mulled it over and thought I had an answer. I opened up the computer to write my thoughts down, then I’d think of another point that countered what I was thinking. I can’t make heads or tails with my thoughts.

Instead of letting the idea get deleted since I can’t seem to form a solid opinion one way or the other, I thought I would ask all of you what you think. It could lead to some interesting discussion.

What do you think? Can Money Buy Happiness?

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Our family has discovered one of the best free places out there - the public library. Many of you probably know about this. It’s not anything new and public libraries are talked about often when it comes to saving money. My work schedule used to overlap the library’s open hours so we never checked it out.

My hours are a lot more flexible now so I was able to stop in the library one morning while out and about running errands. It had been a while since I stepped foot into a library. Boy, have they progressed with the times. I couldn’t believe the vast amount of videos and dvds available at my fingertips. I saw many of the movies we have rented in the past at the video store.

A little sad, I know. We weren’t practicing one of the biggest tips in frugality - use the public library! Oh, the money we could have saved! They even had Star Wars on DVD. You should have seen the smile on my son’s face when he saw that they were there and they were free to borrow. He knows that means no more paying to rent them from the video store and he was really excited.

In the past, I headed to Amazon.com or eBay when there was a book I wanted to read. Lately I’ve been doing some research on learning styles. Our library is a small one and didn’t have a book I was interested in. I requested an interlibrary loan and in a few days I received a call that the book was in. That was faster than an order from Amazon with free shipping. And the price was unbeatable.

I feel silly mentioning this, but maybe there are others out there who haven’t yet checked out their public library. Even if you happen to work during the library’s open hours (like I did), maybe you can stop by during a lunch break. I should have done that and I regret not making the time to at least stop by for a few minutes to check it out. Our public library really is a treasure. I feel like we hit the “saving money” jackpot.

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There is a great bonus at ING Direct where you can earn $25 for opening up a new ING Orange Savings account with at least $250. To get that bonus, you need to use someone’s referring link.

I have enough links for now! Thanks!

I have been out of my links for a while, so I host ING Orange Savings referral links for others on my referral page. Every now and then I ask for more referrals on here so I can keep up the supply. The last time I did it was in August.

Very important - please do not send me ING links now and do not post them in the comments.

If you are interesting in having me host some ING links for you, please leave a comment below saying “I’m interested”. Once I get a good list going, I will close off this post to new comments and that will be all until next time when I need more. Just a note - it will be a short list this time around.

As I need to refill my links, I will go through the comments on this post and will contact you when it is your turn (I’ve been asking for three links each). I will note my progress along the way so you will know when your turn is approaching in case you want to keep track, or if you are curious when I will be asking for more again.

For the specifics here, the owners of the links receive $10 from ING when their link is used and I do not receive any of that. I do this to give back since I have been fortunate to have mine used thanks to my blog. I cannot guarantee that your link will be used before it expires and I cannot guarantee that your link will be used correctly. I am agreeing to post your link on my referrals page and while I hope someone uses them correctly so you earn the bonus - I cannot guarantee it.

As a reminder, please do not post referral links in the comments! I will contact you when it is your turn to send me some.

Please just leave a comment saying you are interested. If for some reason you submit a comment and don’t see it right away - please contact me and I’ll fish it out of my spam filter (it gets a bit hungry sometimes).

Thanks!

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I usually have a few links for Friday, but today I am singling out a link that Beverly alerted me to. It is a letter a father wrote to his daughter. He shared some parting financial wisdom with her since she was heading off to college. I thought it was so touching and informative. I’m a softie and I found my eyes swelling up even before I finished reading it.

I have a letter similar to that from my mom. It wasn’t related to finance but it was related to being a responsible adult. I still have that letter today, and every now and then I take it out and read it. It means a lot to me and you can bet that when my son is old enough he will get a similar letter from me.

A Letter to My College-Bound Daughter

Thank you Beverly for the tip and thank you mom for the letter you wrote me way back when

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We moved everything out of our living room so I could clean the carpet. Before we put everything back in, my husband and I discussed the layout of the living room. We had the perfect opportunity to change things around a bit.

We could put one couch there, the other one there, the wood chest there and the TV stand there. It finally hit me. After all of our garage sales and selling individual things - we only had four pieces of furniture left in our living room! Oh my…did we ever downsize!

Even more amusing was how we organized the room. We put the two couches together like a sectional which made the room smaller (by partitioning it off and creating a little walkway). We both love it - it feels cozier. I thought our son would protest since he doesn’t have as much floor real estate to play on, but he was pretty happy with it. He likes playing with his matchbox cars on the top of the couch that isn’t up against a wall.

At some point, we would like to retire our couches and find a decent sectional. The free couch we picked up a year or so ago broke and cannot be repaired without professional help. You sit in the middle and it goes “clunk” and your butt sags LOL. Our other couch was purchased at a garage sale for $50 six years ago. It was white and in okay shape. White couch + young child + pets = gray ugly couch that is fraying badly. Slip covers don’t work well (it’s a little smaller than a couch but bigger than a loveseat) so I rigged up some solid color sheets as a work-around to make it more presentable.

The price for a new couch or sectional is scary. We found a cute sectional, but it was $1,400 (including tax). I still shake my head thinking about it. There’s no way we’re spending that kind of money anytime soon. At least now we have a better idea of the cost for when the time comes to get something different. That’ll probably be with our next home and we’ll save up for it. No more credit cards

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Back in December, I was debating whether we should purchase a steam cleaner or rent one. I was leaning towards buying a model that was around $150 but I still didn’t want to spend that much. I also didn’t want to rent one. So I put off the decision for a while

Not too long ago I came across a “budget” carpet extractor that was getting some great reviews. It had a smaller profile than a vacuum cleaner, it was lightweight, it did a good job and it left carpets fairly dry. It was on sale at our local store so I took a deep breath and bought it. It cost $79 and came with some free cleaner.

It didn’t take long before I put it to work. Today I completed the third room, and all I can say that the darn thing is AMAZING. It’s a Bissell QuickSteamer. Now, it doesn’t actually steam the carpet - you just put hot water in it. It has brushes on it, but they do not rotate like the brushes on more expensive models. So it is a budget machine. But that thing worked like a charm.

For really bad spots, they recommend pre-treating. I had to do that in my son’s room because of some marker stains. Everything came up except for a red marker stain that has probably been there for a long time (it was hidden). I got it to turn a light pink color but that’s it. The rest of the floor looks wonderful. I couldn’t believe how black the dirty water was. All that gunk was in our carpet - yuk!

There is still one room left and I’ll probably tackle it early next week. Going forward, that thing is so easy to use that I am marking the calendar to do it every three months (at least) on the high traffic areas to keep our carpet looking great. It is also going to be a wonderful “accident” cleaner-upper for us since we have a child and pets. You just put some solution and hot water in the clean water bottle and you are ready to go!

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Finally, another small milestone reached! We barely managed to squeeze it out. As of today our credit card debt is at $7,999.00.

September was not a good month. It normally is a rough one so it was expected. I thought October was going to be better and it started off that way. Then the medical bills started coming in. Words cannot express how much I dislike the health care system. More specifically, the health care system where I live. You can go in there and ask what you owe. They tell you nothing. A month later a bill shows up in the mailbox for something they forgot to bill six months ago. So very frustrating.

I keep telling myself to relax and breathe. It’s not the end of the world and never will be. It’s just money. We’ll make it through this and every other bill that will pop up unexpectedly in our mailbox since I know there will be more. Of course, this happened after my hours were reduced at work and before my husband got a part-time job (he took a pre-employment test today so things are still looking good there). But I still wonder how this all is going to turn out and I do feel some uneasiness right now.

On the other hand, I have been in such a good mood. I’m spending more time with our son. I’m getting some projects done around the house. I’m working on our new business. I’m even getting back into doing volunteer work. My health is improving and my wedding ring is no longer snug on my finger. As for the rest of the family, my son is happier and my husband is happier as well with this new arrangement.

All we need to do now is smooth out our income since cutting my hours shook things up a bit.

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As I mentioned Friday, I was looking into a possible new way to bring in some extra income. I forget how I came across this article, but the first thing I thought was - SCAM!

How I Make $2,000 Every Year Without Doing Very Much.

Upon reading the article, my mind was put at ease and I was a little inspired.

The author of the article discussed how they have a few illustrations listed at iStockPhoto.com. People looking for illustrations go to the site and purchase what they need. They also have photos, sound and video that you can sell or purchase.

We have experimented with photography and have some pictures sitting around that could qualify for this site. The downfall is that you only get 20% commission for each sale. That’s pretty low. But you can get volume/exposure if your work is good enough - a lot of people go to iStockphoto to purchase pictures. There are some photographers on there that make six figures a year. Then there are some that probably only make a few bucks a month (if that). I like the fact that we could possibly make some money for photos that were just going to be for personal use.

So I went through the application process this weekend (which included reading some material, taking a quiz and uploading three sample photos) and am waiting to see if my application will be approved. They really want to keep the quality of the site really high, so they check every picture/illustration/sound/video that comes in. Sort of nerve wracking, but I thought it was worth a shot. Even a few bucks a month is better than nothing and once you upload your photo and it is accepted - there isn’t much more work on your part.

If you happen to be into photography and can create some business related photos (especially with people in a business setting), they are selling like hotcakes. Some of the people who make the most money on the site have business photos on there. There are categories of pictures they are not accepting right now. One good example is trees. They have enough of them right now.

In a few weeks I should receive a reply on whether I was accepted or not. We don’t plan to pursue this heavily, but it could be a way to make some extra money with a hobby both my husband and I share and hope to get back into at a later date.

Here are a few articles I came across that were interesting to read about selling on iStockphoto.com:

Selling Photos on iStockphoto
Freelancer Sellings 500,000 Photos on iStockphoto.com
iStock Earnings

Thought I would share in case there are any hobby photographers out there

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I got totally distracted tonight. For some reason, my mind is always on the lookout for ways to make a few extra bucks. I am especially keeping my eyes open for sources of income that are more passive in nature, or involve some time to set-up but then you forget about it and get commission checks. I came across something promising that may be of interest to a few of you here. I’ll be writing more about it within the next few days.

I did manage to take a stroll through some of the blogs in my blogroll and found a few articles to share this week:

Another day shared some commercials from the 80s. Those commercials are classic!

I’m a few days late, but I have to send Matt some congratulations - it’s a girl!

Jonathan spreads the news that Quicken Online is now free. I haven’t tried it yet, but I may in the upcoming months.He also gives a head’s up that Quicken has a free deal on business cards right now.

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I had on of those “wait a minute…” thoughts today about our bank. A few weeks ago, they called me to try to see if I was interested in opening a savings account. The woman was very pushy about it too - she even tried to do it over the phone. Last week, my husband made a deposit and again they asked about opening a savings account. For some reason today, I started wondering if that was related to the current economic situation.

I was able to find financial information about our bank online and what I saw concerned me. Their financial reports looked very bleak and they have been posting significant losses for 2008. I decided to dig deeper to see if there is a rating system to find out how banks are doing. It turns out that Bankrate.com has such a site:

Safe & Sound

They rate banks from 5 stars (best) to 1 star (worst). A rating of 1 star doesn’t necessarily mean that a bank is going under. It just means that they have below average performance. I had a feeling our bank would rank low after seeing their financial reports and I was right. They are a one star bank.

Our bank is FDIC insured so we would receive our money back if the bank did fail (we are well under the limit). That does ease my mind some. But how long does it take to get your money in such a failure? I had no clue. So I went right to the FDIC for the answer.

According to the FDIC website:

Federal law requires the FDIC to make payment as soon as possible. Historically, the FDIC pays insurance within a few days after a bank closing either by establishing an account at another insured bank or by providing a check.

I have to be honest…I am uneasy that the FDIC says that they historically pay within “a few days.” That is very vague to me. But they are right. Historically a failed FDIC insured bank’s deposits are moved to another bank. You can see a list of failed banks since October 1, 2000 here and read what happened to the accounts. You’ll also see that many have failed so far this year. Who knows if that trend could increase and how busy the FDIC could be. For us, if our money was tied up, that could be very bad - especially right now. We need that money to pull from to make ends meet for a while.

In light of all this, we might open up a new account this weekend. We wouldn’t close our account at our current bank, but we would remove some of the funds so we are better diversified with our banking accounts. That way, if one bank does go under we would still have quick access to our other accounts if we need it.

I feel bad for our bank in a way. I’m probably not the only one who has been looking at their financials and wondering about their stability. But I get the feeling that this is probably a good move for our family at this point - putting your eggs in more than one basket is usually a good thing to do.

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CNN has a story about clipping coupons. Big box retailers are showing a 14% rise in their use.

CNN Story

Except for a stray coupon here and there, I really don’t use coupons. I find that it is often cheaper to go with a generic brand versus a name brand with a coupon. Of course, there are exceptions. The coupons I like to use are the ones for cereal. I only use them when a store has the cereal on sale - which brings the price below that of the generic variety. That’s when we stock up on cereal.

There was a finance blogger that did an article that examined the use of coupons and if it was worth it time-wise. I wish I could remember who that was (if someone knows - feel free to mention in the comments!). I thought his/her look at the time factor was very interesting. Right after our son was born, we were spending about $25 a week on groceries for my husband and I. That was a result of a lot of planning and scanning through grocery sale flyers. We could probably drastically reduce our grocery spending if I spent that time again planning.

What about you? Do coupons play a large role in your financial life?

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We went out yet again this weekend looking at the fall colors. I really wanted to post another fall picture since a lot of you seemed to enjoy the last one. My photo program isn’t cooperating at the moment. I think I need to reinstall it.

[EDIT - I got it to work this morning ]

But I do have an in interesting financial tidbit to share from our fall color tour. We came across a few gift shops that were gearing down for the end of the season. That meant some very nice sales of 25-50% off. I was able to find a hat and t-shirt for $10 and my son was able to pick out a few Christmas gifts for grandma and grandpa for a nice price. We sometimes stop at gift shops to buy gifts for relatives, but it has been during the busy season. We need to start hitting them at the end of the season for the deals!

The downfall is that the selection is limited. You can only buy so many “My Town” shirts LOL. It’s a nice change from the plain shirts we often buy for the low price.

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