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8 Years of Blogging!

March 12th, 2016 at 05:03 pm

I've been blogging here at SA for 8 years! I was reading for a couple years prior. I'm definitely glad I started. I know that blogging helps me focus on our financial goals with much more clarity than if I didn't. And the encouragement from others helps tremendously too!

Since we are now renters, we have zero debt. I'm sure we will own a home again once my husband retires. Our retirement accounts are just a little more than four times the balance they were in 2008 (of course, the market was way down then).

The next several years will be about handling college tuition and housing. After one full year, we can say we have met that obligation without debt. And we are thankful for the scholarships and our savings for making that happen.

A lot can happen in eight years! Let's see if we can do just as good in the next eight. Smile

American Express Premier

January 16th, 2016 at 02:15 pm

My husband received a credit card offer in the mail from American Express. Apply for their Premier card, spend $1000 and earn 50,000 membership points, which can be redeemed for travel or gift cards. Worth $500.

We have to apply before month end, but we would sure have no trouble spending $1000 within three months. Likely it would only take a month for us.

It does have an annual fee of $195, but it is waived for the first year. The card also provides a $100 credit each year towards travel incidentals (such as baggage fees).

I think this may be the year we jump back into applying for cards. We have received some pretty good offers in the mail. One expired before we responded to it. And with more air travel in our budget it could really help!

Anyone else have the American Express Premier or receive an offer from them?

Paid and Paid

January 15th, 2016 at 07:04 pm

It's pay day! Everyone likes those right?

My husband is home today, so we did the budget together. We added money to our vacation fund, emergency fund, and some of our other short term accounts (Christmas, birthday, and car repairs).

And because most of our spending is done on credit cards for the rewards, I also went online and paid off all of our balances. No interest paid, as usual. It's always nice to see those zero balances.

Now to get through until the end of January on the money we budgeted. It seems possible, especially if I do the meal planning right.

End of Month Budget

October 31st, 2015 at 02:42 pm

We have $231 left in our everyday budget categories on this last day of October. My husband is going to get gas today. And after that I really don't expect any spending today. We have $35 in our wallets that should cover the admission to the final band competition this evening.

I would guess YNAB users would be encouraged to roll those numbers into the next month. I think this is how living on last months income is suppose to be built up. However, I'm playing a little catch up with some recent spending for airline and college football tickets. I'm going to move the rest into the Vacation Fund which is where I put those expenses. As a result the vacation category is negative right now. I think I can get most of it funded by the time the charge for airline tickets is due in late November.

I can at least make payments on all the other cards we have been spending money on because the money is already there in the budget to pay them. I love it! So easy to know we haven't overspent on those.

No spending on Halloween Candy this year. Or costumes. The owner of this house we are renting said to expect 200 trick or treaters! I guess since it is a nicer neighborhood people bring their kids here to get candy. I'm actually glad we have somewhere else to be!

Today is the last day of my 31 Days of Decluttering and Organizing on

Text is Your Organized Friend and Link is http://yourorganizedfriend.blogspot.com/
Your Organized Friend. If you are looking for some ideas to tackle while you hand out candy tonight be sure to check out the entire series. Starting tomorrow I'm going to write about Christmas planning.

Bits and Pieces

October 27th, 2015 at 02:29 pm

After making the meal plan yesterday, I need to start working on the grocery list. I will start with ingredients needed for the meals and add on other items we need closer to my actual shopping trip.

My daughter lost the end cap to her flute head joint at the football game on Friday night. We looked it for it, but she was all over the school grounds that night. I found one on Amazon for this specific brand of flute. It is $8.98 with shipping. I had Citi Thank You Reward points and a gift card from Bing Rewards that I applied to it to make it zero out of pocket.

My husband received $100 from my parents for his birthday. He's applying those funds to his birthday gift(a sound bar) purchase which was over $200 after we used gift cards. My parents didn't send cash last year, so I thought they were done after sending us cash for many, many years. I need to go back to Best Buy and see if I can get them to apply a 10% off coupon. I tried when we bought it, but because they were price matching they wouldn't accept it. Now the item is on sale on their website for that amount we price matched for. So if I bought it this, we should be able to use the coupon. That coupon amounts to $37 and worth the effort I think! I let you know how that goes.

We currently have $20 worth of Kohl's cash because my husband and I bought running shoes earlier this month. A pair of jeans were also purchased. So now I need to decided how to spend our Kohl's cash. I even have a 25% off coupon and another $10 off a $10 purchase coupon I should be able to stack with the Kohl's cash. Right now I'm think of practical items: gloves, long underwear, shirts for my daughter. It seems I could get a couple of those for free or very little out of pocket.

I ordered an item from Amazon last week only to realize a day later we didn't need it. So I wrote refused on the package. Amazon has it and after I emailed said they would credit our credit card. It's only about $6, but I can put that back in the budget!

I was happy to learn from my daughter we don't owe any money to the University for this billing period. I do know she needs to put down $200 for her sophomore housing contract sometime in November.

I've already started talking to my kids about what they want for Christmas. Luckily they both have ideas! This helped me so much last year with shopping to ask early and get it done early! I'll be sharing a lot of my Christmas planning in November and December on

Text is Your Organized Friend and Link is http://yourorganizedfriend.blogspot.com/
Your Organized Friend. You might want to follow along for ideas if you want to get a head start on your holiday list.

We also made a purchase of college football tickets for the three of us. We want to see our daughter's marching band performance. And we do like the games, too. Other family members are going also. Tickets cost us $255! I charged them to our Discover card. The most recent statement closed just prior so we have quite awhile before we would actually HAVE to pay the balance. I noticed there is just over $9 in rewards I can use towards the balance, too. Smile

I took two library books my daughter checked out. We kind of think they may be overdue. Library wasn't open when I dropped off. Usually we would get an email reminder. Not sure if it went to spam or what. And we are having issues logging into her library account to check. So I'm planning we owe a few dollars to the library.

I'm excited about the end of the month. We get to budget again...and pay off all these cards we have been making purchases on. The cool thing is the money is already set aside! I love
Text is YNAB and Link is http://ynab.refr.cc/M52KHR8
YNAB!

Thanks for reading my random post!

PayDay

October 15th, 2015 at 03:47 pm

My husband and I sat down and did our budget last night in YNAB. This is our third budget of income and it seems like it is getting easier. I expect it will keep getting better too.

One neat thing about YNAB is that you can click on a category and see the transactions that flowed out of it. For example in our Household category we had spent about $122 during the first two weeks of the October. We talked about doubling it, but then when we looked at the transactions we recorded there we realized that $42 was an Amazon purchase that I had but actually had snowflakes that covered it and the YNAB cost of $54 was in that category. These were unique expenses that we don't need to be part our budget for the remainder of the month. So we simply added $35 to cover the remainder of October.

We paid off all transaction that occurred on credit cards since the beginning of the month. And I paid off the Citi Thank You card IN FULL that I mentioned needed to paid by the end of the month to avoid interest!! That feels so much better to have that off our plate.

The next 'bill' we need to be aware of and budget in is our airline tickets we purchased earlier this month for Thanksgiving. I believe this is due in the last part of November. The charges were $882. I already found about $25 to apply to it. If we can stay under budget this month then I will send the extra in to start working on that charge.

Moving right along!

Credit Card Rewards = Snowflakes

October 13th, 2015 at 09:46 pm

I redeemed some credit card rewards today for cash! I had $20.47 from our Chase Freedom card. And found out that our USAA Rewards has changed to redeem for cash in $1 increments. I've avoided using this card for sometime because of other rewards and how long it seemed to take to accumulate. I had $18 worth of points to redeem!

I'd really like to save these for my next Amazon 'want' which is a book shelf at the right price and style. However, we do have a lot of expenses coming up and I want to pay off the Citi card by the end of the month or at least by the early November due date. If I don't pay in full by then we will be charged interest. I can't let that happen!

The current Citi balance is $633 before these rewards. A majority of the payment will easily be paid off on payday in two days. Basically we are going to budget for as much as we can predict for the rest of the month, and then send the rest to the card. If not paid in full by month end we will finish on November 1.

We do have plenty of cash in savings, but I know this was accumulated from the extra spending. We need to tighten our belts and make it happen with current income if we can. And that will include the rewards for this month.

Random Stuff

October 1st, 2015 at 03:33 pm

I feel so far behind here on this blog!

I have paid off all of the transactions we put on credit cards in the last two weeks off. It's so nice how YNAB just keeps setting that money aside and the money is there to pay it. I'm going to continue paying credit cards every pay day. I don't wait for due dates usually. Oh, and I will need to buy YNAB in the next two days. I did put the cost in the budget, of course.

I was able to make a $336 payment to our Citi card that we've had a monthly balance on, but no interest. The new balance is $650. I'm pretty sure I need to pay this by the end of the month so I'm not charged any interest! I think that will be no problem. We have over 20K points that we need to redeem too. Probably for gift cards. Once that is all complete I think I'm closing this one. Along with a few others that really aren't being used.

I accumulated quite a few snowflakes. I was hoarding Amazon gift cards in hopes of buying something I wanted. I did get there, but now the item is back ordered and won't arrive for a few weeks. Today I used $30 worth of gift cards to buy Tenzi, a dice game my daughter wanted. I paid extra to make sure it arrived tomorrow. We have company coming and may get stuck in the house while Joaquin goes by our area later this weekend. So my earnings for my want became earnings for my daughter's want. Smile

We have made airline reservations for the Thanksgiving holiday. I paid $882.18 for three of us to fly. The deal wouldn't have been as great if it weren't for that Southwest Companion Pass that my daughter has through the end of the year. So far we have only used it twice, but it sure has been a bonus! We also used hotel reward points to secure a hotel before and after the flights because one is super early and the other arrives pretty late in the evening and we have a drive to get back home since this airport isn't in our town.

I made sure to make a payment to ourselves for the tuition we covered from our savings account. This extra is really coming from the savings in changing our W2 withholding. It sure helps to have a plan!

In other expense news, my youngest daughter has been invited to go on a trip to Europe the summer of 2017. We have to pay for it, as it is two teachers going that are getting the tour together. It is definitely educational in nature. My daughter wants to go and other than the cost there is no reason she shouldn't go. The cost is $4345 for 14 days. We don't have to sign up yet...the latest we can decide is February 2016. Decisions, decisions.

I'll try to get a tally of my snowflakes posted in the next few days.

My 31 Days of Decluttering and Organizing has begun today. Go

Text is here and Link is http://yourorganizedfriend.blogspot.com/2015/10/31-days-purses-and-wallets.html
here to view.

More Debt Paid and YNAB Update

September 25th, 2015 at 02:08 am

Sooo...we have been tracking all of our expenses on YNAB. My husband seems to have more transactions than I do! His are smaller though usually. We didn't actually budget categories until tonight. Yep. About nine days after pay day. But this was good for us, because we could see how much we had already spent in the categories and were able to determine/guess how much we would need for the remainder of the month.

As a result of us finally getting our budget in YNAB we decided we did have plenty to put towards our Citi credit card balance which I mentioned yesterday. After making a $1084 payment yesterday and then a $1432 payment tonight, our new Citi balance is $986.75. Ah, so much better to get that paid down to a much more reasonable level.

I also did a little tweak to our normally scheduled payments. I usually charge our Verizon bill to our US Bank Visa at this time of the month and then pay it in full with our paycheck on the first of the month. I decided to change that to the 15 of the month paycheck, since the US Bank Visa bill isn't due until the 7th of the following month (or in the case of the current bill, Nov 7). Making this change allowed me to change when I will pay our electric bill. I was going to pay it now with current funds, but realized it isn't due until Oct 10 and if I moved the Verizon payment I could pay it with our paycheck on the 1st of Oct. This freed up nearly $260, which I promptly sent to the Citi card. I like it when I can find extra cash.

We technically have $409 budgeted that we have not spent yet. And there are just six days left to go in the month. It feels we have finally turned a corner. It is possible some of it could be related to YNAB, but I think primarily it is just that our spending has come to more reasonable levels again after the move and college beginning. Whew! Feels so much better to have things under control.

I will add a little caveat...more spending is coming. We will be taking at least one trip by airplane this fall, maybe two. And then there is still a possibility of some new furniture. It does help to be caught up...or close to it at least. It helps make the trip(s) and furniture seem possible without pulling from the savings we have worked hard for.

I need to remember to budget to pay for YNAB next pay period. Smile

Debt Paid and Bills

September 24th, 2015 at 03:18 am

The balance on our Citi credit card is just over $3K. Today, I made a payment of $1084 to cover the treadmill purchase earlier this month as well as travel expenses my husband made on the card. I probably have another $1,200 to put on it leaving us with about $1200 left to pay. I think I'm finally seeing the end of the tunnel on this most recent debt accumulation!

I do have some more items I could list on eBay to bring in some cash. It's a matter of getting the time to get the items listed. Maybe Sunday this week would be best...before company arrives the first weekend in October. The cash from these sales would definitely go to pay down the last of the Citi card.

I did get paid from the eBay buyer that was having problems. I sent that item in the mail today. The item being returned should arrive tomorrow. If it looks in good order I will refund that buyer. I think I may just donate this item since I don't have any way to check if it is really faulty or not. Last I knew, just weeks ago, it was working. It is very possible it just didn't work with the buyers version.

We have another bill from the University. The expenses are primarily due to marching band. We needed to purchase shirt, shoes, gloves and a few other items for a total of $114. She moved in five days early (not included in main housing contract) for $160, but a $40 credit was given to those members that were selected. And then there was another $73 and change from book purchases. Our next bill of $307 is due Oct 12. I do have money set aside at least.

I did get paid from the eBay buyer that was having problems. I sent that item in the mail today. The item being returned should arrive tomorrow. If it looks in good order I will refund that buyer. I think I may just donate this item since I don't have any way to check if it is really faulty or not. Last I knew, just weeks ago, it was working. It is very possible it just didn't work with the buyers version.

Still going along well with YNAB. Pointed out to my husband that he recorded one of his expenses on a credit card that I know he didn't have in his wallet! He made the changes.

I still have not purchased sheets. I decided to buy myself new workout pants, as one of the three pair I own also decided to get a hole in them. I decided working out and not having to do laundry as frequently was more desirable then having matching sheets for the moment. I'm guessing I'll be spending nearly $50+ on sheets when the time comes. I think it just may go in the budget for next month! Smile

University Bill & YNAB

September 9th, 2015 at 10:55 pm

I paid the big fat University bill today in full. I had the money in savings. It was $7,198.55. I have not yet pulled any money from her ESA, since the market is down. It was looking good for a very little while this morning. Not that I planned to make a sell order today. We have time. Smile

You will be glad to hear that I did some entering of things into YNAB. I watched another tutorial which was helpful. I entered in all the credit cards we use regularly, with their current (PreYNAB balances). I entered only the $X I set aside at the beginning of this month to spend on the irregular purchases of the first half of the month. I budgeted that money into categories...starting with guesses really. Got to start somewhere though!

After that I went back and recorded actual purchases, most of which were on one credit card. There were a couple others on the Discover card and one in cash. I did have to adjust the budget. Originally I had no money for car repairs, but we did have a $129 expense for car maintenance. I had at least two other categories like this as well. The budget still shows $325 left, but I see it is assuming I want to pay all the card balances with this current income, which isn't exactly what I normally do. So, when I have a little more time I will look at that closer.

I'm feel better than I'm working on it. It does take time, but I do hope the investment is more clarity in how we spend some of our money.

August Snowflakes

September 3rd, 2015 at 01:57 am

August went super fast! But the snowflakes rolled in despite the business. I can thank credit card rewards for many of the snowflakes. All of them have gone to debt on the credit cards. It all helps!

Total was $183.62, which was far better than July when I only pulled in $29.17!

I will attempt to add a picture of my spreadsheet below, but just in case here is where the snowflakes came from:



Interest & Rebates $14.72
Pinecone Surveys $15.00
US Bank Visa Rewards $145.13
Discover Cash Back $8.77

How did you do collecting extra funds in August? What did you do with yours?

In September, I have some snowflakes I plan to put towards some purchases that would be considered wants over needs. I also plan use some for debt and a little for a gift for my college daughter. Do you have a plan for this month?

Paid Off More Debt

September 1st, 2015 at 04:56 pm

It's payday so I paid off more debt that has been sitting on credit cards (no interest is being charged). I feel better than it is starting to dwindle down. Smile

Specifically paid:
$704.38 American Express (Orlando trip expenses)
$3.20 American Express (movie rental)
$360.44 Target Red Card (dorm & school expenses)
$166.58 Discover (online school expenses)

We still have just over $2,184.79 on credit cards. Considering it was over $3K when my husband and I were discussing things a few nights ago we have made some progress. The goal will be to keep spending as low as possible to try to use some extra income toward expenses.

At the same time we are working on debt, we are discussing flying to see family and college daughter at Thanksgiving. I have a Companion Pass earned with Southwest that lets my youngest daughter fly for free with me through the end of the year. This means we only need to pay for two tickets. One scenario has our flights costing $911. Which when you divide by three people flying is pretty good!! I really dislike the idea of flying during the holiday simply because it is so busy, but that is when most of us have time off work and school.

Paid More Debt

August 19th, 2015 at 03:41 am

We use our credit cards all the time and then pay balances off in full if on a interest bearing card. We have been rolling some over lately on a 0% card. I made some more payments and feeling much more current than I did last week.

Last week our balance was over $4K. Tonight after more payments were made we are down to $2,942.25. So progress! Found $14.11 in snowflakes to apply to debt in the process.

I have cash set aside to pay another $1,383 on the credit cards, but I'm waiting for a couple statements to close. There may be rewards I can apply, so I'm waiting for now. It does seem the revolving balance I don't seem to get paid off is about $1600! Ugh. Of course, I won't let them charge me a penny of interest. I will have to pay it in full by the end of October. Or the statement due date right after. I need to look back at my notes on that one.

In other news, I've lost about 6 pounds in the last two weeks. I'm watching my calories as best I can, cut back on diet soda (only one or none). I did a ton of campus walking this weekend in addition to all that walking while we were in Orlando earlier in the month. I still need to get into some sort of fitness routine. We are actually considering a treadmill...but I need this debt paid off first.

Do you own an exercise machine? Do you use it?

Due Dates

August 12th, 2015 at 01:50 pm

We have quite a few credit cards that we now use for various types of rewards. Specifically I have balances on ten, ranging from $13.43 to $1,549.07. The total balance of those ten all together is $4,155.65. These are all current and not charging us any interest. And you might notice that is less than the last time I reported our total. Smile

Today I made a list of the balances of each card in order of due date. I usually don't pay much attention because I just pay off the balances when we get paid. If you are paying on current charges twice a month you are always ahead of the statement closing. That's why I haven't paid attention.

As I said in the other post about our credit card debt, I plan to pay all of these off without any interest. But I also want to keep as much in savings as I can. So I'm going to aware of the due date so I'm paying the debts due first FIRST with current paycheck money rather than those due a month out or the next paycheck.

This probably isn't a big relation to anyone, or me for that matter, but I'm just taking a different approach for a bit. A little more awareness to get on an even footing again and hopefully with a nice healthy savings account.

Of course, there is the college expenses. I'm going to try to cash flow as much as I can. However, whatever I can't can be paid with funds saved for college. At least for this year. We have tuition mostly covered, but the dorm will be our biggest expense. Along with some miscellaneous band expenses which seems to be extra time in the dorm and food before the housing contract starts. Next year, I will plan to save up for this little extra cost.

Are you aware of your debt due dates, or do you pay more attention to which paycheck you pay your debt from?

Credit Card Balances

August 4th, 2015 at 08:32 pm

So for full disclosure I'm putting how much we have currently on credit cards. A whopping $5,161.22! I know. That is a lot. None of it has been charged any interest. We have either paid the balance in full before the due date or let the balance roll over on the one 0% interest card we have, Citi Thank You Premiere. And yes, that card does have the largest balance at $2,585.67.

The good news is I have $3,441 that I have decided I can pull out of savings and start paying these balances down/off. I also have a $100+ reward from US Bank to apply to a balance as well. That leaves $1,620.22 to pay off. Some of that will come from current money in our checking account to cover purchases included in the total that are current purchases and bills. That accounts for at least $300, maybe a little more.

I'm pretty sure I can get the remaining carryover balance paid off in the next month, by the September 1 paycheck. Of course, I could pay the whole thing off and just pay ourselves back too. I am considering that also.

And yes, a big chunk of that balance is our trip. I said I would use some extra Army funds and house proceeds and that's what I'm doing. Off to pay off some more debt! Smile

Temporary Lodging Paid

July 24th, 2015 at 02:18 pm

We received a payment for our temporary lodging expenses yesterday. The amount was $1550.50. This is less than the rent we actually paid for 30 days. But the Army made this payment based on their calculation for 10 days worth of lodging and meals. Works for me!

I can now make the final payment on our Citi Premiere card, which is under $800. That will make the balance zero. It should remain that way and we will get it closed in the near future.

I still have a running balance on our Citi Preferred card, maybe about $3K. This card has 0% interest, so I have been just paying what I can from paychecks. I will need to dip into savings soon to get it all paid off, which is fine. I haven't even used all the money the Army has sent yet. Smile

I expect I can put at least $1500 on it today, and have another $500 available on pay day. Of course, we have our trip expenses, but some of that Army money is covering the trip. I'm finally feeling a little more in control of the cash inflows and outflows again.

It will be interesting to see how college and making payments feels in the next couple months! It's coming up fast. Smile

June Snowflake Totals

June 30th, 2015 at 02:33 pm

June was the least productive month for accumulating snowflakes so far this year. I'm not complaining. I will take any snowflakes I can get!

I'm pretty happy about earning those Ooma referrals since they make up the majority of the June snowflakes. I haven't actually used those yet, but I will! All other snowflakes went to pay down the credit cards.



I'm hoping soon I can start saving the snowflake money to help out with college expenses. I'm sure there will be some that will be a bit unexpected!

Did you total up your snowflakes or extra money found for June? What did you do with yours?

Paid Miscellaneous Bills

June 29th, 2015 at 03:56 pm

I paid some miscellaneous charges on different credit cards this weekend. No interest was charged on any of these...because I don't EVER pay interest on credit cards. Smile

Kohl's $44.48
Chase $8.54
US Bank $47.34
Target $305.25
Citi Govt $22.23

I also used snowflakes to pay $24.88 on our Citi Thank You card. I have around $560 left in our checking account to apply to recent purchases on both Citi cards. Once I figure which amounts should go to which card I will make those payments. Paying off current charges or any debt for that matter feels good!

We went grocery shopping at the commissary on post this weekend. I will say it seems prices are better there. I wouldn't have believed it after seeing prices at the Post Exchange which I think are inflated. For example a tub of butter I had been buying back home for $5.69 was $4! I bought turkey bacon (Oscar Meyer brand) for $1.50 that I would have easily paid $2.25 for previously. The commissary does add a 5% surcharge to help pay for future buildings and locations. We also need to tip the baggers (hate this part). Our tip was $3. Despite these extra fees, the total bill seems significantly less. I love that!

We are really close to post right now, but it will be a 20-25 minute drive from our rental home. Of course, my husband is on post every work day. I can get him to pick things up. I expect though we may shop here for most things if we can. I just need to have a lot of $1 bills on hand for tips, as well as plan well for our needs so I don't have to be making a lot of trips.

Still waiting on the reimbursement from the Army. I do hope the money arrives this week!

Vague Specifics

June 28th, 2015 at 03:28 pm

Yes, I do get the title is one of those oxymorons! I need to get some thoughts on paper about our savings and credit card debt. We are still waiting on reimbursement from the Army that will cover some of our credit card debt.

Currently, we have about $5500 on two credit cards. We just surpassed $3K on our newest card, Citi Prestige. We will get 50,000 Citi Thank You points that we can redeem for about $500 in gift cards. The rest of the debt is on our other Citi Thank You card.

We will need to pay the Citi Prestige in full when the statement closes. I think we have until very August to pay it, which I don't expect to be a problem. The Citi Thank You card is still on 0% interest through September. We will also pay it in full before any interest is charged. You won't see me paying ANY interest.

The cash we are expecting from the Army is about $5500. How good is that? There may be more if we can get our apartment complex to give us a daily itemized receipt for the first 10 days of our stay. I'm not sure it is going to happen, but we will keep trying.

I also went back to see how much money we took from savings during this process of selling and moving. Approximately $4800! Nearly $2900 was for a deposit on our rental home and rent for the first month. I have to keep reminding myself of that because it seems like so much money! I will be paying ourselves back for all this cash outflow as soon as possible. If I don't repay the actual deposit I'm not too upset on that since I expect we are good renters and able to get most of that back when we move on.

Oh and we are still expecting just over $2K from our escrow account. That should help get us back to where we were several months ago. Smile

I seem to just need to keep convincing myself it is all okay. It' a little nerve racking to know we have $5500 on credit cards and are down $4800 in our savings. I suppose technically our savings is up because of our house proceeds, but I kind of think of that as separate. I wasn't borrowing cash from our home equity when we owned the house, I don't want to be borrowing from it now either.

Specific enough, or still vague?

Mortgage Paid In Full

June 23rd, 2015 at 12:37 pm

I logged on to our mortgage account this morning. It's Paid In Full! In fact, I get a little interest back of $15.94. No mortgage debt for the near future seems pretty nice for now. We'll see what I think after living in a rental home for couple months!

I did check with our mortgage company and they said it will be two weeks before they start processing the escrow refund, which takes three days, and then 7-10 days to receive the check in the mail. So easily three weeks from now before we get the check. The full amount I'm expecting is $2054.93. I'm sure I can find something to do with that money!

Waiting on Reimbursement

June 22nd, 2015 at 02:25 pm

My husband filed our travel voucher for our trip to our new town on Friday. We will get 23 cents per mile for our just over 1000 mile trip. This covers fuel.

We will get a per diem (a flat fee) for hotel and food expenses. My research says this will be about $875, but my husband things slightly more.

We should also get funds to cover moving about 1100 pounds of household goods in our van. My guess is that is around $1000 right there.

The military doesn't pay for selling a home like corporations sometimes do. Everyone always seems surprised by this. The military doesn't really support purchasing a home simply because moves are so frequent. The military does provide a Dislocation Allowance (DLA) and it is based on rank and if you have dependents. Our allowance will be $3,453.76. Crazy odd number huh? Not sure where they get these numbers!

There is a potential that we could get some funds to cover a portion of our rental apartment. This is called Temporary Lodging Expense and covers up to ten days. We aren't sure if it is only for hotels though. I'm also not sure if my husband has submitted this request for funds yet. And I don't know if the amount will just be ten days of our actual cost or more based on some predetermined amount. It could range from around $700 to $2900 if we are even eligible being in this apartment. Fingers crossed we could get a little bit as it would sure help!

Much of this money will pay off current credit card charges incurred during our move. This will leave us debt free. I'm also hoping there are enough extra funds to pay ourselves back for cash we used to make our rental home deposit, airline tickets and even that big repair bill on the house!

I'll report back once the funds are received and let you know the totals and how I used those funds. I'm hoping it's by the end of the week!

Heads Up on Chase Bonus Offers and Approval

June 20th, 2015 at 08:35 pm

I read on Million Mile Secrets that Chase is changing their rules in regards to being approved for new cards. This means you might not be able to get some of their fantastic bonus offers again...or at least for awhile.

Text is Here's and Link is http://millionmilesecrets.com/2015/06/18/new-rules-for-chase-credit-card-approvals-what-to-do-about-it/
Here's the article, so you can read the details for yourself.

Closed on the House!

June 19th, 2015 at 10:21 pm

The closing on the house went just fine, other than a call from my realtor that the bank was asking for my account number again for the wire. So I sent her the information since the person who I sent it to before wasn't working today. Maybe that was the problem?

The wire came through not too long after closing. All funds as expected and I'm super glad I changed it to a wire rather than a check. Well worth the $20!

This afternoon I called to cancel our homeowners insurance. We will get a $21.98 refund. I guess by state law it needs to go back to the escrow account at our mortgage company. Then the mortgage company will mail us a check. Our current escrow is sitting at $2,017.01. I'm going to use some of this money to cover the renter insurance policy that is now due. It's only around $300 if I remember. We might get a little interest back too depending on which day the loan is actually paid.

It feels good to have that transaction done!! It feels odd to not own a home, but once we are in our rental house I may not care since we will at least be in a home. Smile

The Big Repair

June 18th, 2015 at 10:31 pm

I've mentioned we had a big repair to do on our home before we could close. The buyer found mold growing on the ceiling of our unfinished basement storage room on the same day they saw our home and made their offer. Once we accepted the offer they told us about the mold they saw and wanted to make sure we would remedy it. Sure no problem. If we had been aware we would have taken care of it prior to putting it on the market.

It seems the consensus is it resulted from construction materials that were likely left out in the rain too many times before being put on. One board would have it but the next one would not. It was a bit odd really.

The problems really started when the buyer requested to bring his mold guy in to look at. The buyer, mold guy, my agent and I all met just under a week after the offer. The mold guy talked about his method to mitigate which was to test the type of mold, to use a mold killing agent, a white paint to seal the wood. The mold guy also suggested drilling into the ceilings of our finished basement to see if the mold continued. The buyers biggest issue was to make sure the mold was mitigated before they occupied the space and that they wouldn't need to disclose it to their buyer when they sell.

The bid came in and was a bit vague about costs, particularly those that had to do with investigating further into the finished areas. We didn't want to go that far as it seemed unnecessary and over the top to be drilling for mold that wasn't likely there. If the buyers wanted that work then we suggested they pay for it, and could even witness and control how far they went and it could be done before we closed.

Let's just say our negotiations at some point came to a standstill. We couldn't get them to agree to anything we threw at them. Their agent wasn't communicating with our agent or the buyers. We were technically out of contract at one point because they didn't sign in time. We were out of contract for SIX days!!

What fixed everything was that we decided to call another mitigation company, Service Master. We knew we would need to get the work done if we were going to put it back on the market, which is where it seemed we were headed. We got someone to come out and bid the job the same day we called(a Friday). The price was within the limits we were willing to pay, in fact slightly less. The work could start on the following Tuesday be done on Wednesday. Then an air quality test was done on Friday. We had our results on Tuesday and the air quality was passing!

I guess I should back up a bit. Service Master's bid was to use a mold killer (hydrogen peroxide), then seal with a clear coat, steam clean the room, run air cleaning fans and run an air quality test. No drilling of holes in our drywall! Service Master was very confident in their method and felt it would pass the air test the first time. So we sent yet another proposal, that we would treat the mold per SM recommendations and provide a passing air quality test as soon as available. The buyers wanted us to state we would cover any additional treatments necessary. We agreed to state that because we felt so confident the first fix was all that was needed. And it was!

Looking back, the real problem was that the buyer seemed to want their hands in picking the mold person, although he did tell me any mold remediation company would be fine. I did at one point call to get other estimates including Service Master who said there would be a $250 fee. I thought at the time, I'm not paying more when I have one bid for free. The fee would have been taken off if we had the work done by them. The mold guy the buyer chose was nice, but wishy washy in his bid, his time frame and at one point seemed to indicate he couldn't even get to the work in time for closing. It just got bad in so many ways!

Really, if we are paying for any work on our home before closing we should also get to choose who we are having do the work. The first mold guy should never have come out and I think things could have gone a lot better. We did offer cash to have the buyers do the work, but of course that was a no because they didn't want the work done while they owned the home because they would have to disclose. Ethically, since they know about the mold I feel they should still have to disclose. My agent says no.

I also found out our state has no laws regarding how mold should be remediated, no air quality standards, and even the health department indicated black mold (which this was not) wasn't any big deal and could just be cleaned up with bleach! So interesting.

There are way more details and drama I could tell, but it's too exhausting. We did take care of the mold it was handled by a professional and it was done in time for our originally closing date last Friday.

Our cost for the mold remediation: $2,854.72. Yep, that's one big repair bill! We put it on our Citi card to earn the rewards. Today, I paid nearly all of it off, I sent in $2,714.14, which was the amount I saved up for the repair. I was just a little short. I will likely pay the rest tomorrow with the house proceeds. Smile

And the mold was the reason I left the AC running and set for 80 degrees when we left. I couldn't chance that the home would be getting too humid and cause another issue with mold. The cost has to have been minimal as the temperatures have been cooler there in the last week. The buyers did their walk through last night, and I haven't heard that anything was wrong so I expect closing to go super smooth tomorrow. Smile

Requesting a Wire

June 18th, 2015 at 01:14 am

I decided today that the proceeds from our home sale needed to come by wire rather than an overnighted check. We're in an apartment temporarily and I figured FedEx would probably drop it at the office and then I would try to have to catch someone working to get the package. Too much to worry about. I also didn't like the idea of depositing such a large check into an ATM, or mailing the check to a branch since that is really our only option. Well, there is UPS deposit, but it isn't clear if there is a limit on the amount of the deposit. And I can't mobile deposit since the limit is $10K.

Turns out it should only be $20 to wire the funds and they will be in our account on Friday! That is less than having it overnighted by Fedex to our current location (at least that is what the realty company would charge). I was able to get the wire instructions right off the bank website and sent to the escrow service.

The escrow service also asked for our forwarding address to provide to our mortgage company. They will need it to send the excess of our escrow account and possibly any overage of interest paid. I'm looking forward to getting all this cash!

We will be debt free after I get the current credit card charges paid off...hopefully by the end of the month. Maybe before. I need to do some calculations so I'm clear where all the money is coming from and where it is going. I don't want to fritter away this equity money on things that weren't house related. Of course, I'll tell you all about that later!

We should also be getting reimbursed for our moving expenses. My husband is back to work, but hasn't had time yet to submit our travel expenses. That should be a chunk of change too. Smile

Closing News

June 16th, 2015 at 02:39 am

We have already left our home and are now parked in a furnished rental apartment in our new southeastern town. Can I say it is terribly hot here? It is hot!!

We just heard that our house sale will close on Friday! This is just one week after our original planned date. Not too bad considering how late the buyer's lender received the purchase agreement and got started on their loan.

I'll update more later...just wanted to share the good news!

Appraisal Was Cancelled

June 5th, 2015 at 02:23 pm

I mentioned Monday that we were having an appraisal done...finally! Unfortunately, we cleaned the house and were ready at the appointed one hour window. And a half hour after that window past I called to tell my realtor no one showed up. Our realtor discovered the buyers lender cancelled it. The lender needed someone to pay the expedited fee of $75. The buyer refused feeling it was their agents fault for not providing a purchase agreement in a timely manner. Then the lender couldn't get in touch with their agent to agree to the fee. So they cancelled it without notifying our agent. She knew nothing until I texted her about the no show on the appraiser.

Long story short (new phrase picked up from my agent), the appraisal is now this coming Monday! Three days AFTER the original agreement to have firm loan approval. Our original purchase contract was agreed on April 29!! We did all have a hard time coming to an agreement on repairs, so we were delayed for awhile there. In the end we needed to hire another company to do the work, which has been to our benefit so far as they were super prompt about doing the work and were more in line with the approach we wanted...thus we didn't have buyers doing excessive stuff we wouldn't agree to.

Other than the delayed loan everything is on track on our end. We have held up our end of the agreement. We will end up leaving way ahead of closing now as it was already scheduled with movers, my husband has to get back to work and we want to get our daughter to her first band practice! There may be documents ready to sign before we leave, but if not ready they will need to be mailed over night to us. Irritating, but not the end of the world.

Does anyone else have a story about a mortgage loan being delayed in the past? I know it happens. I would just love to hear one so I know I'm not the only one! Smile

New Citi Thank You Card

June 4th, 2015 at 09:12 pm

My husband's new Citi Thank You Premier card arrived in the mail today. What a package it comes in! I've included pictures, because my description would fail. It seemed to take forever for it to arrive. He applied on May 21.





A pretty large box! Those aren't our cards in there, but that is where they were. Smile

We plan to use the card to pay for our hotel, food and gas on our move east. These costs will be reimbursed, but it's nice to earn rewards on those costs. Our first living space is a furnished rental apartment for 30 days. We can pay for our rent on a credit card! This portion is not reimbursed(although I write that and think maybe 10 days is covered...need to check), but the reward of $500 after spending $3,000 will help reduce that initial housing cost.

We also have a rather large repair bill on this home that we will need to pay very soon. It may go on this card, too. I do have the cash, but some rewards along the way don't hurt. This card doesn't have the 0%, so putting the charges on this card will force me to use the cash I do have to pay it.

Onward...more things to do to get ready for the packers on Tuesday!

More Principal Than Interest

June 2nd, 2015 at 01:32 pm

Our (hopefully) final mortgage payment on this home posted yesterday. After almost three years, our interest was less than the principal portion of the payment! A low interest rate (2.75%) and making extra principal payments has helped get us there.

Specifically the interest portion was $485.96, but the principal portion was $487.70. A difference of just $1.74, but I'm celebrating this fun milestone regardless!

Do you have a mortgage where the interest portion of your payment is less than the principal portion?

The reason I mentioned this should be our last payment on the mortgage is that we are nearly 100% sure we are delayed on closing by a week. All due to the incompetence of the buyer's agent.


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