I went to realtor.com and found a house in our old subdivision that was the exact model we owned. I looked at all the interior pictures, and it all brought back so many memories. I felt very homesick for my house that we had to sell. Well, I guess that was a really dumb thing for me to do!

Some friends are selling their home here and moving to the Portland, OR area. We've already checked out a couple of areas in Oregon and might go up this summer to check out the Portland area as well. We keep talking about moving to a more affordable state, but it is a hard decision when we've lived here all our lives and all my family is here.

I took what was left of the house sale money and put it in an eloan.com savings account. It feels great to be earning interest rather than paying it. But I am very concerned about our savings getting drained because business has been slow, medical insurance premiums went up again, and other expenses have popped up.

When I no longer had a mortgage, the bank started charging my checking account $15/month because I no longer had bundled services with them. With other things going on, it took me two months of getting charged this fee before I did something about it. Now I have a $5/month basic checking account. So $120/year saved there.