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Recycling Income

May 16th, 2007 at 12:25 am

Turned in some plastic recyclables today and got $3.70. They wouldn't pay me for the glass, even though their web site said they would pay by the pound. The guy said they only pay for glass that shows a redemption value. Oh well. Getting $3.70 back is much better than having our garbage service pick up the stuff and getting nothing back. So I think I will keep it up. The recycle place is right next to the grocery store where I sometimes shop, so I don't waste any money in gas either.

$726 for 20 Seconds of Work

April 25th, 2007 at 08:21 pm

Medical bills once again......

My son fell and got a small bump on his forehead that was some blood vessel thingy (forgot the medical term) that would not go away. I took him to the dermatologist who explained what it was. He then numbed it (a few seconds), snipped it off (one second), cauterized it (one second), and slapped a bandaid on it (two seconds). Total bill: $726.00. My insurance reduced it by $260.77, leaving my portion to pay at $465.23. Plus add another $35 co-pay for the first visit to the family doctor who sent us to the dermatologist. My total out-of-pocket expense is $500.23.

My husband and I are self-employed so I know all about overhead expenses, but come on.....I am just disgusted and really bummed out.

Holding Steady

April 18th, 2007 at 02:59 am

This month is a tough month. The semi-annual worker compensation insurance premium was due. It was about $500 less than I had earlier estimated, which I was happy about, but we still had to pay quite a chunk. Estimated quarterly taxes were due. And it was also time to buy more homeschooling curriculum, which ended up being more costly than usual. Also, I received our first garbage bill at our new residence. The garbage bill is for this past quarter plus the next quarter in advance, and it is about $300. That's almost four times more than the garbage rate in our previous town. Yikes.

The good news is that I haven't had to pull out any money from the savings account to pay for anything so far. I wish we could add to the savings, but that probably won't happen in the near future as we need to get some dental work done.

Why did I do it?

March 27th, 2007 at 02:21 am

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.

New Experience--Earning Interest

March 10th, 2007 at 05:51 pm

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.

Another First Entry

February 19th, 2007 at 06:16 am

Thought I'd attempt blogging here again. Some time back I had deleted all my entries after getting too discouraged and overwhelmed about the bad state (mostly due to medical expenses) of our finances. We have since sold our home and have been in the process of making final payments for our various debts. We also now have some savings in the bank too. I do miss my little home and wish we could have kept it, but it is much nicer to have the heavy weight of debt off our shoulders. Barring some huge, unexpected windfall, we will likely never be able to afford to own a home in this state. We are now renting a 2BR/1BA place, which will be fine once we finally get settled in. Still have boxes stacked all over the place.

After the house sold, we tossed our belongings into the rental and then took off on a month-long vacation out of state to visit my in-laws and my stepdaughter and her family. We sure needed to get away and relax after all the pressures that had been going on. And it was a frugal trip as far as not having to pay for lodging or food while staying with the in-laws. We did splurge at the stores a bit for the kids and ourselves, but it was considered to be Christmas spending as we didn't spend at Christmas time since the house sale hadn't quite closed yet. (The older child living at home understood, and the younger one didn't know the difference.)

Anyway, on to a fresh start....


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