Yep, I'm kicking the home equity loan with another $12.00. This is interest from our money market account for this month. Can't wait until rates go back up!!

I also sent away for another $10 mysurvey check. It will be here in a few weeks. It will also go to the loan payoff.

My daughter turns 8 on Saturday. This means a $1 increase to her monthly allowance. The girls receive $1 for every year old they are. So, starting this month I pay out $19.00 instead of $18.00! I should teach them to save their increases...hmm, I wonder if that would go over?

Airfare: $0
Gas: $60.00
Tickets for 4: $120.00
Food: unknown
Lodging: free

Total cost to enjoy the Olympic spirit:
$180 plus food

I've loved the Olympics ever since I went as a kid. I went when they were held in Los Angelos in 1984. It was so fun. You could just feel the competitive, yet unifying, spirit in the air.

All four of us get to see the U.S. swimming trials next week. We don't know which events or which swimmers we will see, but we sure hope to see someone advance to the final team!

This is held here in the US, not Beijing! Hence, the reason we are able to go so inexpensively!!

I did go to Aldi for my first time yesterday. I took my girls. They loved that you had to put a quarter in to get a cart. We didn't actually get a cart, but the liked the idea. My daughter even brought her own quarter to use!

We picked up 3 things. Baby carrots, bag of red onions and ice cream bars for the girls. My total was $4.29. The woman ahead of me had a cart full of groceries. Her total was $79! I was very impressed with many of the prices. I'm sure I will be back.

This morning we traveled to our downtown farmers market. We bought 1 quart of strawberries for $5, a quart of sugar snap peas for $4 (later saw these for $2 at another stand), a dutch letter for the girls to share for $1.50, and romaine lettuce for $2. Parking was free as was the poetry reading, the music, the view of the river that is finally beginning to recede but is still higher than normal. We saw a three month old puppy, cool art, and many pretty flowers.

I really would love to make this a regular Saturday event for my family. It is just a good time. I think I need to go just a bit earlier next time, so that it is cooler and the crowd is not as thick.

We received $25 rewards from my debit card the other day. This is the extra money that I sent off to the home equity loan payoff. I expect to get a little interest on our money market account and some funds from ebay sales...all will go the home equity payoff.

Today was the sign up for dance and tumbling classes. I paid for the year in full in cash...$730. One daughter decided not to take dance because we expect she might be a bit busier in middle school with homework. This saved me from spending another $300. Love that!! I will hold on to it, in case we did to make a payment towards braces.

I reworked out escrow account today, too. I decided to start saving for dance classes for next year. Turns out instead of my previous monthly amount of $124, the new amount will be $200. I will split this evenly between the two checks we receive each month.

It was a good money day. Tomorrow I must grocery shop because my dearest soldier husband is coming home from three weeks of training. Can't wait to see him.!!

If you don't know what ETE is...read my post from yesterday. I did great with it today!

At Christmas time, I made some peanut butter candies that required whipping cream. I was unable to find the small container I needed, so ended up with a larger container and more than I needed.

I froze the remainder. I recently realized that this could be used to make homemade butter. So, I set it in the fridge to thaw for a couple of days.

Today, the girls and I shook that whipping cream for about 20 minutes. Eventually, it turned clumpy and we drained off the buttermilk. We added a little salt for taste. What do you know? It did taste like the butter I love!

It feels great to have found something unique for my girls to do, as well as, having found a use for the extra whipping cream!

I hope I can find a few more things for them to do this summer that are just laying around our house ready to be discovered!! Any thoughts or ideas?

to my sister. She's a year younger and married. Her husband recently changed jobs and their term insurance was up. So they scheduled an appointment with a friend of a friend.

Long story short the agent tried to sell them a variable annuity for her DH to roll his 401k into. The fund had an expense ratio of 1.75%!! He also suggested whole life insurance again.

She called me before and after the meeting. I gave her some questions to ask. Turns out based on my advise she was ticked at the agent for seeming to not take their best interests to heart.

My suggestion was for her husband to simply roll the 401k over to Fidelity IRA where she currently has hers. The expense ratios are significantly less and there are no surrender charges. The don't need the death benefit that the annuity provides because they have term insurance and no kids.

So for now they are leaving their term the same and rolling the 401k to Fidelity. She really wants to start learning more about basic investing decisions. She joked that she should check out some kind of book for dummies. So, today I picked up Personal Finance for Dummies at the library to see what I think about it's basic information.

It's nice that she feels comfortable enough to call me. I do have more experience since I worked at a mutual fund company for a time and was registered with my series 6 license.

How many of you use a professional advisor?

My oldest daughter's mouse, named Melody, died last night. We knew this was coming. The mouse had been having trouble breathing...or so it looked. About a month ago, I even took it to the vet for $25! He said it didn't look good without doing invasive procedures. He gave an antibiotic which was included. It didn't seem to help.

Last night after our tornado warning here...we discovered she had passed on. We will bury her in our back yard later today. Daughter said she was said, but that she was ready to accept it.

So, today we are off to purchase another mouse to give Harmony, the remaining mouse, some company. The new mouse is to be named Poppy. The mouse will cost us less than $3.00. The enjoyment will be priceless.

Thanks for the memories, Melody.

P.S. All is fine from the storm, no tornado touched down.

I painted our daughter's bathroom this past Tuesday. It was about the only room in the house we had not painted since moving in over a year ago.

All the funds came from the garage sale we had about a month ago. It was their motivation to declutter their stuff...so they could get a bathroom makeover.

The makeover included paint, shower curtain, bath mats, toilet cover and new towels. I think our total was less than $100 for the whole thing. I bought everything at Bed Bath & Beyond and used coupons for every item. The paint was from Lowe's. I had a $5 coupon and the paint qualified for a $5 rebate this past weekend as well.

It looks much more like a girls bathroom than before and they are thrilled with the results.

It feels great to have sold many things we no longer needed and to have a new bathroom at the same time. It really was just a matter of priority for me, as well as the girls. Which did we want more, stuff we don't use or a redone bathroom?

My daughter will be in 6th grade at a middle school next year. I'm already paying!! We have registration in April. They collect many fees at that time.

I paid fees for books & materials, a planner, gym uniform, and a yearbook. A total of $101! On top of that, I bought her a one-piece Speedo swimsuit. They have a wonderful pool there that they will use multiple times next year. The one piece part is required for girls.

Today the 5th graders are going for a visit. They also get to try out the pool. It's a wonderful school and I'm very excited for her. I just hope that the costs don't get too out of hand.

It sure would be nice if schools could give you a list of expected expenses, such as for field trips, pictures, fund raisers, dances, ect. Who knows what else there might be!!

I know all schools are different, but can anyone think of expenses that are different in high school/middle school compared to elementary?

We just came back from my DD's 5th grade band concert. This was her first year playing the flute. All those kids did just wonderful. My DD was part of a flute trio, because she was doing so well. Nice to just hear flutes, since they can be hard to hear at times!

We had a dessert potluck after, with parents donating dessert or drinks. It was a fun way to celebrate a successful year of band.

My daughter will continue to play band into 6th grade. She's even crying tonight that she will miss band!! She's worried she will forget to practice over the summer. It will be a good excuse to get her some new music and have some band friends over to play together.

I've been renting to own the flute, which is a great deal when you don't know if your child will continue in band for more than a year. If she didn't like it after two months, then we could have returned the flute and owed nothing more than the months we had already paid for.

Now that she's made it through one year, I should see if I can pay it off early for less. I feel pretty confident that she will continue.

...is just around the corner. He seems like the hardest person to shop for. Is it because I don't know him well enough? Or maybe he just doesn't seem to have a lot of wants and needs. It seems like I feel this way every year.

We will be traveling to his town for a couple days next weekend. I think he is looking forward to having my family visit. It has been awhile since we've been in their next of the woods.

It seems harder, too, that his birthday is followed so closely by Father's Day! Yikes...two gifts to buy in a row.

Last year we bought him golf shirts, the wicking kind. He really liked those. He had bought himself new golf clubs, so it seem to fit with what he was doing at the time.

I hope I can think of something soon...

take piano lessons. Unfortunately, we don't have a piano. I could get one from my sister...she lives three hours away. But my sister was looking forward to having it.

I'll have to look into renting or finding a give away piano. I don't even know what the least expensive type costs.

She took dance lessons this year and has decided she doesn't want to continue. I had no idea she had an interest in piano! I could have been saving for this.

Interesting how children's interests change! How does one plan for that. Of course, if it turns out we can't afford it then it won't be an option and she'll have to find something else.

I'm off to look at craigslist!

I think of my ebay sales as a online garage sale. I'm not trying to get much more than I would at a garage sale...okay maybe I am!!

Turns out from last weeks sales of 12 items I netted $74.16! That's an average of $6.18 per listing. Definitely nothing to sneeze at.

The nice thing about a online garage sale is that you can have them any time of year. Right now it is cold and rainy here. I'd much rather be inside by my fireplace making sales than in my cold garage.

Now I will be having a garage sale in a couple of weeks and I will enjoy that too. For now, I'm just pleased to be getting rid of some of our stuff. It's all apart of our spring cleaning.

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On another note, my DH and I will be celebrating our 12th anniversary tomorrow on April 12th. We have never had a honeymoon, so we feel lucky to get to go out of town for one night and spend some time alone together. My sister is coming to stay with the girls.

Yes, it won't be our most frugal anniversary. We have had plenty of those. I'm sure this won't even happen every year. So, I'm really going to enjoy this one!!

is the total cost for all Liberty's vet visits! I am so not used to this as an expense. We do have some slush money and our emergency fund to cover things. It was money well spent to get her feeling better. I wish we could have avoided x-rays...$95!!

She has finally started eating, just not large amounts yet. She's being treated with another antibiotic and gets to stay home now. The vet's best guess with out charging me more for blood work is that she got toxoplasmosis...most likely from our newly adopted cat. She was also on antibiotics recently...so now they should both feel great!

Here are the offenders...Liberty on the left and Riley on the right!



Thanks again for all the well wishes!

Liberty is our oldest cat. We have had her for 3 years as of tomorrow. She's 3.5 years old. A dark gray tabby. She was our only cat until about 6 weeks ago when we adopted Riley from the animal shelter. Riley is a light gray tabby about a 1 year old. They have become good friends...lots of playtime together that's fun to watch.



Now Liberty is sick. We aren't sure what it is yet...maybe just a hairball or something more. She's been to the vet for a couple shots. She won't eat or drink. Vet doesn't want her to until tonight anyway. So, since Sunday night she just sleeps and gets sick. I feel so sad for her. It would be great if any of you could send us healing energy for Liberty.

The vet visit was $75. I'm just guessing there may be another visit ahead. Sometimes life and all that goes with it doesn't follow our plans or expectations. I don't escrow vet visits because with cats they are so rare. I suppose as they get older it will be more important to have a vet fund.

Update: She's back at the vet. She had xrays...nothing shows up! Now they are keeping her overnight for observation and to give her fluids. Thanks for all the warm wishes.

I'm married to a man who is half Irish, so I have a Irish last name. Am I Irish?

I like to think that I am. I can't say that we have maintained any traditions. I do wear green, but we don't attend parades, or eat any special meals. I've recently learned that cornbeef and cabbage is more of an American tradition.

At any rate, Irish or not, I want to share one of my favorite Irish blessings:

May love and laughter light your days,
and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all life's passing seasons
bring the best to you and yours!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!