Your experience with restaurants is why Kris and tend to stick to specific favorites. I know that the Chinese place up the street has excellent service, decent food, and low prices. The place a few doors down offers a big buffet, but its food is nasty. Basically, we have a pool of about a dozen restaurants we like, and we draw on them at varying intervals. (The Chinese place, we eat at often. Caprials, we eat at maybe once a year.)

JD: I think my tastebuds have changed a bit eating only homemade food as well. The thought of fried foods makes me kind of queasy now and here in florida it seems like every restaurant deep fries half their menu.

But I came in here to post that the hold music at the IRS is The Nutcracker Suite.

I've been on hold with them for 19 minutes now and I'm starting to wonder about their choice of music.

It is a sign?

Are they going to break me?

It is their fault though. They never came for their money on the 15th. Granted it was a Saturday but by now it should be out. I spoke with someone who said they are in "transition" there and it wasn't processed but will now be expedited.

What?

If I had used that line I'd be in jail right now and last I checked my whole life was in transition in March of this year.

That is the problem with debt. You are not the customer. You are the debtor. The debtor is never right.

The customer is someone who hasn't spent their money yet and that is why a customer is always right.
Because your money is still in your pocket. Having spent it, I've lost all my power.

sigh.

I am a nut.

It's kind of funny how we lower our expectations when we eat out. I think if you cook good food regularly, you begin to take it for granted. There have been many times when my wife and I have prepared something and said "This is okay, but we won't make it again. If we were at a restraunt, I wouldn't feel like I didn't get my money's worth, but it's really not that great."

Hey, Cady -- I'm going to post your Amazon advice this Sunday, I think.

Cool! Thanks for the heads up JD.

The IRS called me on thursday. I hung up smiling. Has that ever happened before in the history of the IRS?

I dunno but they said that they'd incorrectly coded my payments and that is why they never came for their money on the 15th of Sept. They said don't worry about it. No penalty. It was their fault. No need to make a september payment. It'll begin working properly on 10/15.

One more time for good measure. The IRS called me and told me they'd made a mistake.

WOW.

I think I messed them up by being prompt. The very first note they sent I paid all of the fees and installment plan setup costs. So 3 months later when they finally handed it all over to the direct debit department, the paid fees were lost in the payment history.

Whatever. There is this month's windfall. $110 back into my ledger.

I wrote a few posts back that it is the little windfalls that are going to make this plan work for me.



Next hurdle is collapsing my last little card balance into my consolidator. I bought the house 3 years into my 4 year get out of debt plan. I have that last loose end to tie up. I want all my lines at only my banks, (Wachovia and SunTrust,) and American Express. The last step in that puzzle was paying off my BOA credit card. But instead I've now decided to transfer the balance to an AMEX blue with a lifetime 4.99% on the balance transfer. The BOA is at 8.99%

They won't allow me to do the balance transfer during the first 30 days though. So next monday when that is handled I'll be back on the track I was on before the house plopped into my lap.

Oh and my new net worth is $17,450 according to Quicken. Partly from my investment accounts doing well, partly from paying down debt and partly from the house value going up.

I believe back when I started this journal it was a $3400.

Me! Mending!!

I feel like I just received my yellow belt in frugality.

So I've been eyeing my tank bag on my motorcycle for several months now. It is beginning to show the effects of the Florida sun. Although I keep it in the garage at home, I commute 5 days a week on it so it is parked in the parking lot at work day in and day out. The stitches are starting to fray and the material is bleached pale gray from its original black. The zipper gets caught in the frayed ends of the stitching and the webbing that holds it in place has stretched so that it sways when I go around corners.

BUT I spent months back in late Y2K selecting just the right tank bag for me. As a female I needed one small enough to see over and reach around but big enough to hold rain gear, d-lock, pressure gauge, towel, side-stand rest and spare bungees. That's a tall order for a small bag. I found the perfect one in a 10 liter Marsee. When I went to price out a new one it was $108 before tax and shipping. So I cancelled my other birthday present to myself and decided to get that instead. But now I need to buy a toilet for my back bathroom. hmmmmm.

Enter my sewing machine.

With some clever snipping and some patient back and forthing and some realigning of seams I have made it work (tho not look,) like new again. I pulled all the webbing off and resized it all and it looks like that will hold it tightly for a little while longer.

All that to say: I need to do that more often. Fix something. I tend to simply do without instead of repairing something.

Sheesh. Even the good companies you have to watch.

Amex: I transferred a balance to them from my last credit card left over from my marriage. I was assured no fees and 4.99% for the life of the balance. What do I see when I log in just now? A $99.00 balance transfer fee. I LOVE Amex. They are one of the few companies I find to be utterly on my side and they have lived up to their reputation with me. A five minute phone call and "poof!" gone. BUT.... what if I hadn't gone to check?

This is just a reminder to watch all your accounts. Look at all charges. And make the phone call. It matters.

Come on Feds!!! gimme a quarter gimme it wheres my quarter point. you can do it come on feds!
Gimme an F Gimme an E Gimme an D Gimme an S What's that spell???
A lower interest rate on my HELOC YAY RAH YAY

Ahem. Ok.

Let's see. To catch this journal up a bit.

November is my scary month. Ever since April I've been watching 11/1 approach in my Bill Wizard. It is the lowest point in my buffer. After this, thanks to a 5 friday month in Nov. and a tuition reimbursement from my job, I'm over the worst of it.

The buffer was extra-low though because of a few things. A surprisingly high water and electric bill (electric up by $37, water up $30.) And I offered to send my parents $200 to come visit me over the holidays. I'm still going to save money because going to them requires me renting a car during the most expensive time of the year to do it. The flights might only be $300 but the rental car was going to run me $500. I also convinced them that traveling after the holidays was better all around. They are both in their mid-80s and still do very well but why be in the middle of all that if you don't have to. That in turn decreased my rental car costs on this end. I then used some Amex rewards to get a $100 voucher towards the car so $144 will be my rental car costs for 1/2-1/6. Yay.

But back to the $200 I sent them. I hadn't budgeted for that. Whooops. The spontaneous gesture I made sent my finances into a speed bump. Which led me to my motto for the last week. "Shut up!"

I'm discovering I end up spending money because I open my big trap and say things like: "y'all want to get together at my house for that?" no! no! Cady shut up! let someone else offer. sigh.....

What else.

Yesterday meals:
Breakfast (9:30am) was oatmeal, healthy heart serving! $0.12 a serving when you add in my syrup.

Lunch 1 (1:30pm) was a ziploc round of brown rice stir-fried with eggs, scallions, and a steak I found on sale in the bottom of the meat freezer for $1.71. Total perhaps $1 (I got 3 servings from it.)

Lunch 2 (4:30pm) small ziploc round container of black eyed peas and rice with ham chunks. $0.47 a serving since I get about 10 portions from the giant pot I made.

Supper (7pm) was the same sized container of my home made chicken soup. That batch was probably $0.77 a serving since I used one of those sale chickens I'd gotten for $0.39 a pound back in July. (Speaking of which I found whole fresh chickens on sale again yesterday at Sweetbay for $0.69 a pound. Bought two: 1 cost $2.84 and the other $2.99 that's a great price on something that is the cornerstone of 15 lunches for me.)

And a late night snack (9:30pm) was 1 rib, a dry salad ( I know I know but I don't really like salad dressing,) and 1 potato smashed with garlic. (This was free food since my honey was over and he was making dinner with stuff he picked up at the store on the way over.)

So I ate yesterday for $2.36 about. I'll round up to $2.50 since I ate some Mr Salty pretzels ($1.49 for a giant box and they last forever,) at my desk and drank iced tea I'd made at home and brought to work. Not bad and on track for a $30 food week.

What else. Did I already mention my windfall for October was that my car insurance was $110 cheaper since the Florida legislature let PIP lapse? It'll be required again in January but I'll have more money for it then. Odd how every month I've managed to get about a $100 windfall.

The BOA to AmexBlue balance transfer went through and my monthly payment on that balance dropped from $124 paying BOA their 8.99 interest to $95 paying Blue 4.99 for the life of the balance. I was sending BOA $150 and I'll send Blue $125 but it is nice to have the sort of optional $55 difference in my budget. Gives me more flexibility.

And finally I put my zero balance cards and the new Amex Blue and my only other credit card in my safety deposit box. Far away from me and any temptation.

Ok. Back to sending warm loving thoughts to the Feds.

A friend of mine said it sounded cruel to make my parents come to me...

So I thought I would add that they go to the gym for an hour every morning. They lift weights, swim laps and walk.
They went on a 10 day trip to Lake Louise and Vancouver in September. They are spry and in great shape.

Plus they live in icy cold massachusetts and I live in sunny florida. It wasn't too hard to convince them to visit me.

I hope I hit 87 as healthy and strong as my Dad. My mom is 86 and she is in better shape than he is.

there... y'all feel better???

And thank you Feds. Thank you thank you.... I got my HELOC at 9.5 and it is now 8.75. Yay!!!

Well here's my next windfall: $532 overpaid in my escrow. January 15th I ought to get that check. And then after the escrow analysis in January my mortgage payment ought to drop by $56 per month. Although I have suspicions that there is something I'm not understanding about the proposed changes on the table. Florida is overhauling its property tax system. But I do know that my taxable value for 2008 does *not* have my homestead exemption applied yet so my escrow portion of my mortgage payment might go down $81. Anyway I turn it I'll be paying slightly less per month and will get a refund. Whew!

My december windfall is my tuition reimbursement of $230.

The tuition I'm going to put in my buffer in my primary account. But the escrow refund I think I'm going to send to my HELOC unless I can find a compelling reason to put it towards one of my other debts.

Now hopefully the month of November is feeling inadequate in the windfall department and is cooking up something juicy for me.

Man I love those 5 minute phone calls that save you money!

Back in July Sprint sent out a flyer saying that you would save 10% off your basic bill if you reupped for 2 more years. In my case that is $34.99 for 400 minutes so I'd get $3.49 deducted. I called in several times and finally got some jimoke who'd heard of the offer and agreed to extend it for me. He told me it might take 3 months to appear on my bill.

Last month a random $3.25 was taken off my bill and I assumed that was it. This month though nothing was taken off so I called on a lark just to see what they'd say. Turned out the jimoke never did anything with my form. Last month was truly just a random deduction that no one understands. So a Little Miss Chirpy just now apologized and proceeded to apply a 10% discount off all my recurring charges. So now instead of the original $3.49 I was supposed to have taken off I'm going to get 10% off my entire bill every month. That is $6.10. I know. That ain't a lot. But over the course of 12 months it amounts to a more than 1 free month of cell service. That also brings my cell phone bill down to $55 a month plus change. That's not bad for 400 minutes, unlimited web surfing, nights that start at 7pm and free sprint to sprint talking.

Watch the pennies, the dollars will take care of themselves...

wheeee! November must have read my 11/12 posting here. The windfall arrived in two parts.


1. I replied to a survey that said 10 lucky responders would get a Amazon gift certificate. (Yeah right.)
NO really! I won today. $20 down $80 to go...

2. A letter was waiting for me today when I got home from work. Addressed to me with my maiden name. I got married in 1998... It was a check from class action lawsuit I'd joined 8 years ago! $77. 04

Git outta here! November's $100 windfall. I'll let the $2. 96 slide. I've probably found that much under my car seats since last April.

Now back to pondering "lifestyle creep." That phrase has been in my head since I read JD's post about it. It is awfully hard to maintain my lowest spending level for very long.

(Curiosity got the better of me. I went to see what class action I was involved in:

United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois

This is the official Court website for the Carnegie v. Household International, Inc. class action lawsuit. If you received a refund anticipation loan from Beneficial National Bank through any H&R Block office between April 8, 1994 and December 31, 1996, you could get a payment from a class action settlement of this lawsuit.

Update: The Administrator mailed checks in November 2007. If you have not received your check by December 1, 2007, please send your name, the last four digits of your Social Security Number and your current mailing address to the Administrator at:
RAL Settlement
PO Box 3656
Portland, OR 97208-3656

Sheeeit... $77.04 is probably all that IRS refund WAS in those years for me...)

I'm in the process of re-evaulating my current set up. Most of the things I set in place last spring have worked out wonderfully and two things I'm failing miserably at.

Financial Goals accomplished this year:
Closed the last hold-over credit card and finish consolidating at my banks and Amex.
Set up auto- or bill- pay system for all my utilities in my suntrust checking.
Lowered utility costs.
Stopped spending so emotionally mindlessly.
Put my credit cards in the safety deposit box.
Used mainly cash for all purchases.
Made ends meet after buying my house out of the blue.
Increased my knowledge of finance in general and PF specifically.

Things I've failed at:

Sending $500 a month pre-payment to my HELOC, ($125 pre-payment is already built into their auto-deduction. This was an additional sum I was trying to send.)

Sticking to a $30 a week food budget.

The HELOC failure has been mainly due to internal pouting at excessive frugality. When the date would draw near to pull it from my deep savings and deposit it to my checking account, my unintentional spending would ramp up. By the time the $500 was in my checking account to send to the HELOC I had already used a few hundred dollars for other things. And then I'd say to myself well $200 won't make that big a difference against this debt so lets leave it in the checking for a mini-buffer. And voila, I'd nickel & dime it until I was back to where I was before in my buffer but without any payment being made to the HELOC.

The food failure was not calculating for the surprise middle of the week cravings I'd get at work. I've convinced myself that eating out and walking over to the supermarket at lunch to grab a quick something are not the same thing. They are. Even if it is way way cheaper going to the deli counter and having them cut 3 slices of meat and 3 slices of cheese and then walking over to the bakery and buying just one roll. That $3 here and there added up. I also failed to budget my desk food. I'd assume I'd be happy eating dinner leftovers every single day and boy somedays that congealed ravioli just didn't go down the hatch.

So... I'm going to spend the next few weeks pondering how I'm going to do the food thing differently. I'm not off by that much but it is worth revisiting. I also failed to account for the things at work that require money, (so and so is retiring... birthday lunches.... want to donate to a kidney replacement fund for.... my kid is selling cookies...) I'm now going to keep some cash in my desk drawer at work and just reach for that instead of having to run to the bank and withdraw a $20 then go somewhere to break the $20 in order to gift a $5. In fact work in general is an area I never dealt with in my budgeting.

But my HELOC pre-paying I'd decided to do something different with it. $500 every 4 weeks accumulates in my deep savings.

Side note: I have a working checking acct, a utilities checking acct, a buffer savings acct, and a deep savings acct and investments. The deep savings account has no ATM card. I have to walk into the branch during business hours and get a check and then go deposit it in a checking account and wait a day for it to clear. I have money automatically deposited to the 2 checking and deep savings from my paycheck every friday. I put $100 into the utilities account, $125 a week into the deep savings and the rest gets dumped into my working checking at Wachovia. I keep a $1500 buffer in the deep savings that I do not allow it to go below. It used to be $2000 but I had that computer I had to buy and I never let it replenish.

So in fact that is the first thing I'm going to do. Build the balance back up to 2K.

Then I've decided I'm going to rotate where I send the money. I want to start making some headway against my credit debt. I've been treading water on them while dealing with the new house debt. So I'm going to sit down and make up a chart of who gets what each month. I think I'll be more inspired to do it if I can see the balances going down more obviously. For example. One of my balances is $7290. I really want that below $5K by the end of 2008 so that will be my first payment. (That is a 0% interest card btw. Which is why I'm so lazy about paying it down.)

I'll set a goal for each of my debts and then shoot for that.

Thanks for posting your year end review. I find it so helpful to hear others who have the same issues (for me eating 'out' at work is habit I find hard to break). I'm working on my 2008 budget and doring the same type of review, I'll post it soon.

Keep up the good work!