Hey, hey, guess what Green Card holder got an invitation to the Inauguration? Don't worry, rightwingers, I also got unsolicited mail from the Second Amendment Foundation. I try to be open-minded and open-hearted. I have to say though that James Madison ranks at the bottom of my list of U.S. Presidents.

I don't post this often most days. As you know I am looking for a laptop. I looked on Craigslist and my husband told me Dell had some good deals. He said some models were available...
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Last night I listed 26 DVDs for sale on craigslist at $3 each or 2/$5. I am meeting up with a woman tomorrow who is buying at least 2. I also listed the ones that are in great condition on half.com this morning and have already sold 2 of them. After those payments come in and I meet the woman tomorrow, it will give me about $14 to start my 2009 Ebay Challenge. Yay!

Tomorrow I am going to spend a couple hours listing stuff on ebay. I have so much to get rid of before we...
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Well, work has been a wee bit crazy.

New employee is nice, but not so nice for the 1/31 crunch (W-2s, 1099s and such). He needs to be learned. So I think things will be a bit crazy in January, but that Feb - April will be a little calmer than last year. Also, as expected, losing a few of our individual tax clients. Which is actually good. We don't want them. Kind of losing the trouble makers anyway, which is always nice. We are more business accountants who do the...
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I can only say this now, since there wasn't much damage done and there was no loss of life (as far as I know at least) but someone asked me in a previous blog entry if the Mobile Home was on a fault line.

Apparently the answer is, if it's not ON one, it is NEAR one!

I talked to my dad this afternoon, and he told me that they had experienced an earthquake on Thursday evening! It was only a 4.5 or so, but it's epicenter was in San Bernadino which is near Loma Linda.

Even...
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Opinionoutpost I am not liking so much ( I don't get a lot of surveys), but I love mysurvey!

I get 4 or 5 surveys a week from mysurvey and half the time the survey asks me if I want to continue and earn another 100-200 points.

I have cashed out twice and I am halfway to cashing out again. Yay!

I got some film developed today. Cost me about $1 because I only had a handful of photos from my digital camera that I wanted developed.

ETA: Quick question: My license expires...
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I posted a couch we want to get rid of on craigslist for $100. I've been trying off and on to get rid of it since last spring. Maybe I'll get someone to bite this time! Keep your fingers crossed.

I finished Suze Orman's new book. I basically skimmed it since many of the things did not apply to me. No credit card debt, no foreclosure, slim to zero chance of layoff. I'm not evening thinking of leaving the stock market. I don't think I'm her target audience!!

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To recap, I worried:

*About my mortgage falling through the cracks
*If I should buy twin sheets to fit a bed I have had in storage for years.
*If I could find the screws to put said bed together after it gets moved into new house.
*If I should re-use old bathmat and shower curtain in new house or buy new.
*how we were going to scrounge up some extra money to cover unexpected moving/closing expenses.

In the course of the day I have:

* no news yet on mortgage related...
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My last post expressed my frustration over not being able to snowball as much as we thought we could from the beginning of this year. Well, I decided tonight to run the numbers I am going to be able to apply toward our 2 debts and found out that we should still be out of debt (except the big mortgage) at the end of next year. That really encouraged me. That's not THAT far away!




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Here's what Mother Nature have wrought after Wednesday's ice storm.


And this...



(I'll be doing cleanup well into the summer, I'm sure. All i have is my trusty, well-used hand saw. I'm afraid of chain saws.)

I was luckily working at home that day. That morning, i got up from my desk to stretch my legs and looked out at the window at the coating of ice on everything outdoors. I saw, high in the branches of the row of white pines that borders the road, a fair amount...
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WOW... I paid my (share of the) rent today, and realized one thing:

If it weren't for the translations, I'd barely get by on my own salary....

Having said that... I also should be taking better care of where my translation money is going...

Why?...well, my monthly expeses are ~$1,036...my salary is $1,077...that is, of course, if I stay on budget with groceries and utilities (I tend to go over with groceries) AND, if I stopped paying Nanny every 15 days out of my salary,...
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Girlfriend, this Action Plan is divine overness. And refreshingly low in calories, don't you know. It's so simple.
I do get tempted to pay off the HELOC tout de suite, but rather, I should just build that emergency fund (pie!) higher. Build the pie higher!

Then when inflation strikes and the 3% HELOC escalates, the emergency fund can take care of at least some of it. In fact, perhaps my savings should be prioritized post-Japan as:

1. Emergency Fund
2. Prepay mortgage (hey,...
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Based on the exchange rate NT and I got on a small check the other day, I did a quick calculation of our debt and assets. Per my previous entry I am NOT changing my records to reflect this, since A) It would wipe out all meaningful signs of progress and B) The exchange rate could easily fluctuate that much again.

That said, I was really curious. I knew our net worth would go way down because NT is responsible for our having a positive net worth at all, and most of his assets...
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I'm going to start posting updates on when I accomplish anything from my 2009 goals. I'm hoping this will help me stay focused and maybe do better than planned.
Also it will help me keep track of what I'm doing.

Today was payday and I did some calculating so I completed the goal of paying myself back the $70 for a car battery.
I also paid myself back $80 from the other car repairs I had. So now I still owe myself $264 for that.

I also put some money from my check ($50)...
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Polaroid is coming out with a 'new' insta print camera.

It is $200 for grainy low res photos printed on special peper.

But it is as instant as the old kind. Except without the shaking. Now I know as well as you that shaking the Polaroid did nothing useful (and may have harmed the photo) but it felt good to do something while waiting for the magic picture to appear.

The new camera wont need shaking, and in fact from what I can tell you have to leave the whole camera...
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I've been thinking about this for a while, but it just recently hit home enough to blog about it: the pounds-to-dollars exchange rate. When I first started tracking all of our debts and assets--NT's UK stuff included--the exchange rate was something like 1 British pound = 2 U.S. dollars. It fluctuated a lot, but it stayed close enough to that, and that was a handy ratio to make calculations easy.

NT just deposited a check into our U.S. account from a UK CC company for GBP 5.26....
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I just received my $100.00 bonus in my Ameritrade "Suze Orman save yourself account"! I had to make 12 $50.00 deposits into my Ameritrade account this past year to receive the bonus!
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So, I just finished the first two chapters in Suze's new 2009 Action Plan book. She is explaining the whole mess of how the economy got where it is today. I sure couldn't agree more. It has been amazing to me for several years how banks could lend some people money to afford homes, that I never thought they could afford. These are people in my own extended family. They are struggling to meet payments on rising ARM's. They can't refinance. Uggh...just so frustrating.

I did watch...
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It's been all over the news that mortgage rates are dropping, and I've finally been motivated to check them out.

We're about 4 years into a 30 year fixed mortgage at 5.5%, but if I can go lower, I wouldn't mind at all.

Unfortunately, the decision is becoming much more complicated that I ever intended it to be.

We don't really want to go back to a 30 year term, so we've been looking at 15 year fixed mortgages. They seem to have the lowest rates. I've seen plenty...
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Well, I just put 10 books on half.com. We'll see how that goes. I tried it one time before I moved from TX and was disgusted by the low prices, then I sold all of those books to Half Price Books and only got $.25 each for 100 books (mostly only-read-once books). Barf. Now, I'm just giving them away on paperbackswap.com, so even $1 is better than that.

And remind me...next time I go to a bookstore...DO NOT BUY ANYTHING! Look for books you want and then buy them on half.com....
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Because I am so happy!!! Two weeks ago I gave each of my children (there all married) a copy of Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. My daughter in law is just blown over with it. She loved the book and is so excited about it. She has begun a "plan" and budget now!!! But get this, she is telling her mother, sisters, friends, etc...and now they are joing the bandwagon. Her mother is in her 50's and always had money problems. Daughter-in-law is helping her own mom learn to pay bills...
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