Creditcardfree's Personal Finance Blog

Geez. It starts with needing an oil change. Then noticing the vehicle states a code indicating tire rotation, and spark plugs need to be done. Then my husband reminds me the back rear window has been getting stuck and the motor is probably out. Yep, confirmed by the dealership. Oh and yes, you need new rear brakes!

It's all done. And the bill was $946 AFTER our 10% military discount.

We only budget $250 for this pay period towards the first three things. Clearly the other two were more expensive! I did find $100 in a buffer emergency account and $30 in home maintenance that can be applied. There is probably more. Luckily next pay period we should have some 'extra' cash to help get it paid off.

And yes, we have a healthy emergency fund...just trying not to see this as an emergency!

I must say this makes me so grateful for our Christmas fund. I've been saving $50 each month to accumulate $600 by the beginning of December. I have no worries with this big repair bill that our Christmas holiday would be impacted. I do only have eight people (including my husband and myself) that we are buying for this year. We have cut way back. In fact, I'm telling others to keep their money and spend it on their own holiday rather than on us. We don't need anything. And if we do we can buy it ourselves.

How much do you spend on vehicle maintenance each year? I actually have no clue. Time to dig out repair receipts for the last few years.

We have our van at the car dealership for maintenance today. We needed an oil change and tire rotation. We are also doing a tune up (spark plugs). These were all suggested by our vehicle's on board computer.

We decided to have them look at a rear window that hasn't been able to roll up and down properly. In fact we sort of stopped using it since we didn't want it to get stuck in the down position. It was $50 to diagnose which they apply to the repair. The repair is $400 because new parts are needed. I don't want to pay for it honestly. If it were just me, I simply not use it. But husband wants to take care of it while it is there. It's not in the current budget at all. We do have plenty of cash in the emergency fund. But this isn't an emergency is it?

We are also getting our rear brakes replaced. We knew these were coming up, but have not kept it on our minds since we moved. Now is the time. $270 to complete that maintenance work.

I guess this dealership provides a 10% discount for military, so that will help shave some money off the costs of the repairs.

Why is car maintenance so annoying?!

If you have read my other blog,

Your Organized Friend, in the last couple days you know I'm starting my Christmas planning. One thing I'm trying to decide on for simplicity sake is Christmas cards. I sent them last year. I probably spent $30 between photos and stamps for 35 cards. I bought the cards on clearance the year before, so that was the least expensive option.

This year I'm considering eCards. I can get a one month membership to American Greetings for $3.99 or Hallmark for $5. Each membership is unlimited cards for the period of the membership. I could also get longer memberships that would bring the per month cost down. Both sites allow the card to be sent to Facebook(and some other social media sites) and/or email. I would still have to mail one or two cards to a couple people who are not online (my mother in law, who is 80 is one).

I'm considering doing this to save time for me, the clutter for others, money for us and keep my stress level low. You can tell me if you think it's tacky, but I don't care entirely what others might think. I'm still making an effort to connect, just a different form. I could opt out of the Christmas card giving all together, but I don't think I'm ready for that.

What are your thoughts on eCards?

When doing our budget in YNAB we made sure to think of some extras we needed to account for this next pay period. Specifically, we need to take our van in for an oil change, spark plugs changed and to look at the motor that controls one of our windows. It is also my birthday month, so some cash is set aside for gifts. I don't really want or need anything, but the money is there for now. We will use a little bit of that gift money to buy our niece a birthday gift as well.

I allocated $375 towards our November trip. We have already charged our expenses, but we need to pay those before the end of the month.

YNAB says that when budgeting you should think 'What do I need the money to do before I get paid again?' I've always thought this just not in those same words.

Have you thought ahead to what you need to plan for until you get paid again?

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

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.

I'm making a double batch of chili this morning. I will keep half or at least four servings in the fridge for tonight (maybe tomorrow) and freeze the rest for next month. I have chili on the plan for November 12.

I'm in the beginning stages of thinking about Christmas baking. I'm sure that seems early, but my daughter and I do like to do this each year. I'm going to brain storm options, and then get her opinion. Once we know what we will make, I will decide how much and if we will double any recipes. If we make something in November we can freeze it for closer to the holiday. The next step would then to make the grocery list for those items. I like that if I start early I can find some coupons and sales on the ingredients and know exactly how much to purchase. I can also spread it out a bit so that it is hardly noticeable on the grocery bill.

What do you make in double or triple batches? Do you do this regularly or just once in awhile?

I stopped by Best Buy today and was able to get customer service to apply the 10% off coupon I tried to use at the time of purchase last week. Last week they refused because they had priced matched the item. This week item is on sale for same price as we priced matched for. I did make note that if I were to return item and purchase it today they would take coupon because they were not price matching. Woman seemed to get that and took care of it. $40.67 back in our pocket.

I proceeded to go buy fuel for my van. I did buy the premium since we seem to get better gas mileage. I spent $37.09. This leaves us with just under $16 in our fuel budget through Saturday.

I realized my daughter really wasn't wearing the second pair of khaki pants to school. I asked if they could be returned and she agreed. I have a credit balance of $18.19 on our Citi card now.

And finally it was time to shop for some warm weather gear. It shouldn't get that cold here where we live, but we are going back to the Midwest and will be seeing an outdoor football game in late November...to see my daughter play and march with the marching band. We need to be prepared for the cold. I purchased one pair of long underwear pants and lightweight down coat for my daughter. After $20 of Kohl's cash, a $10 coupon, and a 25% off coupon my total was $35.29 for items that would have been over $132 if they weren't on sale. I'm thinking my daughter could actually layer her coats. Not sure what she will think though

I ended up spending more than I returned or got back, but I'm still happy with the results. I wish I had thought to get gas after having the khaki's returned. I would have used that credit card! Oh, well there will be other spending at some point.

My information was stolen from the government along with my husband's and 21.5 MILLION other people this summer. Ironically just this week the Army posted reminders about how to avoid identity theft. As if we only need to do these things to avoid theft of identity. What about our own government keeping the information provided to them safe?

We have been given three years of credit monitoring including our daughter under 18. Not sure about our oldest daughter seems she should get it too. She may be notified separately. There is identity restoration service and $1 million worth of insurance attached to this as well in case our identities are stolen causing financial harm.

Ick. Sometimes I really do dislike the government!

Oh, and the insurance company for the moving company is offering us $1400 of the $2600 we claimed for the damage they did to our things. One of the items that is damaged the most is being denied! We can appeal. We are going to discuss tonight to determine if we will or not.

Everything that was moved was put on an inventory. The driver logs it along with current damage. He seems to have logged damage on an entertainment center that would match the area we are claiming, but I think his notes were for other damage in that same area...not the big damage we now have and didn't have before. It is really hard to prove this unless we had up close pics before, which we don't. Why would we take a close up of the corner of furniture when it wasn't damaged? It appears someone attempted to repair the area with wax, marker and spray stain. It looks awful. And I feel so mad when I think about it.

I'm working on calculating our net paychecks for next year. I won't really have all information until January, but I have the taxable portion so I should be able to roughly calculate taxes owed for 2016. I need to know this to figure the withholding necessary. I was way off this year since I hadn't figured out the tuition tax credits. The main reason I want to figure net pay is so I can determine if we can actually afford this Europe trip my daughter wants to take. It is a trip that will cost us close to $5K. It is definitely something to plan for and figure out.

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

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.

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 YNAB!

Thanks for reading my random post!

Last November, as a way to reduce holiday stress, I made a dinner meal plan for two weeks, and even went so far in December to meal plan for the entire month! It has made a big difference for our family. Primarily we have more variety in meals. If I plan moments before leaving for the grocery store, I simply think of the basic meals we like. And this is fine, except it gets boring and probably isn't as healthy as it could be.

Today I'm working on a November meal plan. I generally know what activities we have going on, so I can plan ahead for those nights where there is little time to cook. I will also skip planning for days I know we will be out of town. I've also found in the winter months, I can double up a soup at the beginning of the month, freeze the extra and have it again in the second half. Of course, there are many other dishes that can be doubled and frozen besides soups. Those are just the ones I tend to do.

Here is our plan for this week:
Baked chicken, stuffed mushrooms, side salad
Greek Quinoa Salad
Spaghetti, asparagus
Mushroom Risotto, side salad
Chicken Tortilla soup (from the freezer)
Chili (making a double batch and will freeze)

My husband has been dieting the last three weeks. He is eating less food, so I actually expect we will have leftovers of a few of those dishes. It may mean putting off the chili making a day or two until we eat all the leftovers.

I generally still grocery shop every 7-10 days. I've like having the meal plan ready to go when I make my grocery list. I can then consult the list to make my list of needed ingredients. Of course, I make sure to check the pantry, fridge and freezer for things we might have on hand or are about to run out of.

How far ahead do you do your meal planning?

We spent $22 to fill our van before our trip. I would guess we have the same amount of fuel we had before we left. Luckily that should get me through the week. It seems it is also time for an oil change and other routine maintenance on my van. Will get that done in early November.

Admission to the band competition was $10 each. So a crisp $20 bill out of the wallet. They did include a program which many other schools sell for $5.

We left after my daughter performed and before the awards to eat at Subway. We spent $14 there. This was basically lunch and dinner for us.

Our final expense for the day was a trip to Trader Joe's. We bought two canisters of coffee, two pumpkin bread mixes, crackers, a red pepper spread, pumpkin butter, two frozen stuffed mushroom appetizers a cheese cake and ginger cookies. The total bill was $50. These aren't exactly items we put on our every day list, but they are some treats we like to indulge in when we get to shop at Trader Joe's. I think it has been nearly three years since we shopped at one. We already made coffee this morning and my daughter opened the pumpkin butter. I'm incorporating one package of stuffed mushrooms into a meal later this week.

All of our spending has been recorded in YNAB. My husband noticed yesterday when he recorded our Subway expense that we went over our restaurant budget. Yep. I didn't expect we would go more than once. But I did budget eating out for band competitions into the entertainment category. So the beauty of YNAB is I can adjust where this expense actually falls. I can either increase restaurants by the amount we spent (and decrease it in the entertainment budget) or change the expense to the entertainment category rather than restaurants.

YNAB[/url=http://ynab.refr.cc/M52KHR8] refers to this as rol... working for you? Anyone about to start a trial or make a purchase?

Our daughter has a band competition out of town today. We were up early to get her ready. And that was after a late night of Friday night football. If the band does well today she won't be home until midnight! We sent her with $40 for food. Likely way more than she needs.

My husband and I will travel up to the competition. So we have the cost of fuel. And we will eat at least one meal out. I'm going to try to convince him to eat lunch before we go. Since we will be in the larger town we may stop at some stores we miss from our old town. Specifically Trader Joe's coffee is on the list.

Admission to the event is $10 per adult. So there goes a $20 bill out of our pocket! I just took $100 cash out yesterday and it feels like it is being spent fast. We did budget for this though.

Have a Super Weekend! If you are at home and looking for some decluttering or organizing ideas, read my 31 Days of Decluttering and Organizing posts

Your Organized Friend.

I donated the money in my PayPal account today. The money was from snowflakes: YNAB referral money and Pinecone survey rewards. I donated to Momastery(look for the page on Facebook). I was inspired to give the $21 I earned away. You can read more about it

here. Little amounts of money from many people add up. And this didn't even have to affect our budget! I was saving for something, but it can wait. I will earn more snowflakes.

I sold shares from my oldest daughters mutual fund today. The market was up just enough that I didn't want to miss out. If it goes up more great, I have more money I need to withdraw. I'm paying ourselves back for covering her first semester of tuition out of our savings. I withdrew $1718 worth of shares. I will need to do this at two more times before the end of the year. I figure if I dollar cost averaged purchases, I can dollar cost average sales, too.

Are you ever inspired to donate when you least expect it?

I redeemed

Bing points yesterday and immediately received a $5 Amazon gift card.

Today, I ordered a $25 Amazon gift card for 2200 Swagbucks. That, of course, has not yet arrived. I did get my 200 SwagUps for that redemption, so I'm already back to having over 200 SBs in my account.

I almost said no spending today. However, I dropped a package I paid shipping for online yesterday at the post office and they asked if I needed stamps. Yes, actually I do. So $9.80 for book of stamps.

I love snowflakes and low spend days!

I'm still writing my 31 Days of Decluttering and Organizing on my other blog, Your Organized Friend, if you are interested. Just ten days left!

I came up with that title because I wanted to share that my husband finally decided to buy his own coffee to take to work and make in a machine that makes one cup at a time. Work doesn't provide coffee like some places and he can't plug in his own coffee maker like he could at some other sites. He had been buying coffee at the shop in the building for a minimum of $2.32 per day. Some days he spend up to $4.54. So for about 20 work days a month he was spending $46.40 up to $90.80. He was good about putting the transactions into YNAB for the last month, too. I think that is what put him on this new path!

We bought a can of ground coffee that cost us about $7. I think one can could last him an entire month at least. But even if he needs twice the amount, we will be saving some cash.

Another thought I had on my title was regarding Halloween costumes. So many are store bought these days. And I did notice that Walmart has some VERY reasonable prices, but with a little creativity a costume can be made with items you already own, thus making the costume FREE!

I'm sure we could take this Don't Buy It, Make It title further. Do you have some thoughts on when it is cheaper to make something than buy it?

I received my first $6 referral for

YNAB in my PayPal account yesterday. Much faster than the 30 days they indicated. Effectively, YNAB was only $48 rather than the original price of $60. I just need four more people to buy the software under my referral and the software will be free for us.

The Best Buy gift cards we ordered from our Citi rewards arrived on Saturday. The gift cards amount to $200 and I will record them as a snowflake. We almost made our purchase Sunday, but realized we had a 10% off coupon at home that they said might work. It seems the item we want to buy went off sale, raising the price nearly 20%. They will however, price match with Amazon.com, who still has it at the price Best Buy had last week. Sales person wasn't sure if they could combine Price Match with 10% off coupon. I'm going to try though. I also remembered that I chose Electronics Stores for 5% cash back on my US Bank Visa for third quarter. That will amount to around $10 back when I use that credit card for this purchase. Specifically we are buying a sound bar for one of our televisions. It's for my husband's birthday.

Today I ordered the famous L.L. Bean boots for my daughter to tromp around campus with this winter. Those were $99 shipped. But like nearly all of their famous boots they appear to be on back order. Some said January 4th, but this pair said December 4. Hoping they fit and arrive just before the weather turns colder.

Oh, and I'm starting to follow Hip2Save again for the holiday season. I don't usually follow the other months of the year...I find I buy too much stuff I don't need!

Do you follow Hip2Save? Do you have L.L. Bean boots? A sound bar for your television? Let me know if you use my YNAB referral code so I can thank you!

Our water bill arrived yesterday. It's lower!! Last month it was $63. This month $37. That is a $25 savings. We have had the sprinkler system off for nearly three weeks, so I'm sure that helps.

After our first large bill of $76 two months ago we went looking for a leak. Turns out we turned on a sprinkler zone with a missing sprinkler head. Water was gushing out! Apparently owners knew this, but failed to tell us. If we had known we wouldn't have turned that zone on. The reason we did turn it on, was because there are shrubs in the zone. I figured those needed water. Well, until they have it repaired they won't be getting water.

I did get notified of a $6 reward from YNAB. Thanks for using my code Debt free by Thirty! I don't think it pays out for another month. But I'll look forward to it when it arrives.

The other good news financially is that I don't think we have a bill due to the university this month! Next month we probably need to put down a deposit for NEXT year's housing. I can't believe they have to work on that so early.

Our weekend is set to be low key. Apparently a perfect fall day today weather wise, so we should get out and enjoy it. There will be spending. Likely on new running shoes for my husband and groceries.

Enjoy your weekend!!

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!

Our electric bill is finally lower. Instead of $259.20 last month, it is $185.82. A difference of $73.38. I still think it may go lower next month. I believe this was a partial month where one of our two air conditioners wasn't working properly, causing one to work over time. At least we didn't have to pay for the repair, but we did have to pay for the energy used. Boo. The weather has cooled so I can imagine that will help for a month or two. Not sure when heat will be needed here in the southeast.

Next I want to see the water bill be lower. We haven't run the sprinkler system for close to three weeks, so I expect that will help a lot too.

Tomorrow is payday! Looking forward to getting our budget set up in YNAB tonight.

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.

I completed a Pinecone survey last week. I was credited today. And since I had 1500 points, I redeemed them for $15! I should have that money in my PayPal account soon. Yes, more snowflakes!!

I'm looking forward to Payday on Thursday. It seems our cash is running out. We should be fine and within budget until then. It's just time for more cash!

I'd like to get some items listed on eBay soon. I have items that should sell. I just need to get it together and done!!

Our moving company sent their insurance company over today to take picture of items damaged and broken during the move. Of course, we already took pictures, but they need their own. Now we wait to hear what they will offer us.

We had a $5,000 CD mature about three weeks ago with NFCU. It was earning nearly 5%. I can't seem to find that good of a rate, so I'm taking advantage of the next best thing. There is a 12 month CD special for 3% at NFCU. Our investment in this is $3,000 as that is the maximum allowed.

I'm just glad I didn't procrastinate getting the cash invested any longer. I kind of forgot about it and somehow it came to mind yesterday and I took care of it this morning online.

I did get my Checkout 51 $20 check in the mail yesterday. I wasted no time getting it deposited. And since it was extra money (snowflake) I added it to a Discover reward, and several Amazon gift cards and Swagbucks rewards to order a daybed quilt set I've been wanting to get. It was ordered from Amazon and will arrive tomorrow. We have an extra twin bed in our bonus room/family room that we used to just keep in basement storage. I never cared about the look of the bedding I would put on it as it was just for the occasional guest (usually a child). I now care because I see the bed EVERY time I'm in our family room. I want it to look more part of the decor of the room. With taxes is cost about $64, but non of that was out of income, just snowflakes!

Spending this weekend will be football and marching band competition admissions and a little food or drink at those events. We are going to window shop for speakers too. These are to be a birthday gift for my husband and hopefully paid in full with some credit card rewards. We have to find what we want to buy first. Once we know where and what the cost will be I will order the gift card that we will use to pay for it.

I have a ladder shelf on Amazon that I'm eyeing for either a birthday present (in November) or to use my future rewards for. It would probably be about $65 shipped.

Oh, and in other news. My daughter is likely skipping the band trip to Universal over spring break (which costs about $450). She gets that her Europe/WWII trip is much more costly and this money could help fund part of it (only 10%). We haven't signed up for the big trip yet, but can anytime. We will be talking about ways to get this funded with additional help from her. I think she has some cash she is hoarding that would be helpful.

I logged into the annual credit report site today to get one of our free credit reports. I like to check one of the three every four months. I'm way overdue for checking!

I chose TransUnion. I couldn't remember which one I checked last or when, so I just chose randomly. All looks good for both me and my husband. He knows I check and will look them over he is home.

I was prompted by a Facebook friend who indicated she found a problem on hers. Not sure what it was for her. But the discussion was simply a reminder to check. And that is why I'm sharing here, too!

Check your credit report! It's free at

annualcreditreport.com. More information on the site to look at as well about credit reporting.

I've had so many snowflakes(extra money) recently and I'm trying to track them, but I feel I may have lost track of some of them. The amount I recorded for September was $110. It may have been more. Or less, as I'm guessing on my eBay sales. I didn't do all the math, just going from memory.

I have $20 arriving by check from Checkout 51. It took me at least 1.5 years to accumulate that. Ugh. I have $25 from Swagbucks that I'm expecting in my PayPal account soon. I redeemed the available balance from

TopCashBack which was $6.56 for an Amazon gift card, which when I claimed they bumped up the amount to $6.72. I made a GNC purchase with them earlier this week to get 16% cash back. That is pending and should bring my earnings with them to over $10 and then make me eligible for the $10 bonus. That will mean another $13+ to redeem.

We got a check from our previous electric company in the mail for $16.02. The electric company is a co-op so they return 'capital credits' to you since you were a member. As long as we keep them notified of our address they will mail us check for the years we had service with them. This check is going to pay down the balance on the Citi card with is $650 before the payment which I'm going to round to $17.

I have $4.59 rewards on our Discover account. I had made a purchase at Amazon and used them, but then returned the item. As a result the rewards are back in the account.

Oh, and my husband bought a movie at the military Exchange store and received a $5 gift card. I'll probably use that today to buy something we need...toiletries or maybe some tea.

I'm going to keep looking and accumulating snowflakes! How about you? Where do you stand with snowflakes?

Remember I'm posting 31 Days of Decluttering and Organizing this month on my other blog

Text is Your Organized Friend and Link is http://yourorganizedfriend.blogspot.com/

Your Organized Friend.

I used starfishy's YNAB referral to get 10% or $6 off the purchase of the software. Our cost just $54. And my understanding is it is a one time cost, not annual like some things.

My referral is

here. I get $6 and you get $6 off your purchase.

I'm a bit behind entering transactions into YNAB. I was busy getting ready for company at the beginning of the month and then didn't keep up while they were here. Now I'm still a bit run down with my cold. My head is a bit foggy so I don't trust myself to get the numbers right!. Real soon, though.

Is anyone in the middle of a YNAB trial?

I think I mentioned in my last post we were to get swiped by Hurricane Joaquin. Since then it has changed paths. Of course, we are still getting a lot of rain. It has actually been raining here for 12 days. Yes. 12!!

The rain caused the home football game to be moved to Thursday night. My daughter and the band were to perform. It ended up raining so much that they let the band go after the first quarter of the game. Thank goodness. I was soaked.

The rain continued and caused the state to issue a State of Emergency. Unfortunately this cancelled the marching band competition my parents flew in to see. And to make matters worse, my Dad arrived with 'allergies' that we most of us caught. He thought it was allergies initially, but obviously a cold virus. It even caused my daughter to be sent home from school today. And she will miss tomorrow too because she had a fever.

So I sit here thankful for time with family and wishing to feel better soon! Oh, and we didn't lose power by the way either. More financial stuff later when I feel better.

We don't live on the coast but we can get to the beach in just under two hours, so close enough. It seems Joaquin won't make a direct hit here, but we are getting a ton of rain. Like 8 inches in the next couple days. And this is day 8 of rain here.

I'm heading out shortly to get fuel in my van. Cash for my wallet. And more non perishables and batteries if the power goes out. That is really the biggest danger we face. No power. The ground on the trees around here (and there are a lot of them) is saturated, so bring on the wind and power lines are likely to go down.

Oh, and we have company too! The plans we had for the weekend have all been cancelled, so we will likely just hunker down and wait for the storms to pass. A new game I ordered on Amazon should arrive today and help pass the time.

Stay safe if any of the rest of you are in the path of the storm!

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.

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

here to view.

I'm getting ready to write quite a few blog posts for

Organized Friends, my other blog. I'm using it as a lesson to keep writing more and to inspire others to declutter their excess stuff. It doesn't seem related to finances, but it is. Going through the process of decluttering really helps one realize how much excess we as Americans have. If you are the one tossing all the excess you generally find that next time you are in the store looking for that next 'thing' to purchase, you might actually stop and think will this become clutter or something I won't use in 6 months or a year?

Clutter and excess cost us time in acquiring the item, cleaning and maintaining the item, moving the item out of our way to find other things. The excess purchases cost us money too. We buy the item on credit and pay interest (maybe not all of us here, but it is common for many Americans). We later can't find the item lost in our other clutter so we buy another one. Some of us forget that we even bought an item. We fail to use the item that we found valuable enough to spend our hard earned money on. If we find it again in our closets, we learn that it has been damaged because we stuffed it with other things to put it out of the way for now.

I have plans to post inspiration for decluttering primarily for all 31 days of October. I may have a few organizing ideas tossed as well. I don't really expect that anyone will follow all the suggestions everyday, but I hope that by the end of the month those reading find they were inspired to declutter the excess in their homes. Those of us here might even find we spend a little less this month as a result.

We are about 85 days away from Christmas, a holiday that can be quite draining on the pocket book and full of excess. You might find the exercise in decluttering has some side benefits to your holiday as well. I will start posting on October 1! Please join me and pardon my plug if I link to the posts on my blog here.

$71.49. That's how much we have left of our spending budget for the next two days. The money is sitting in fuel, grocery and restaurant categories currently. I know I may need to buy another tomato for dinner tomorrow, and my husband will likely get gas in the next two days. Other than that nothing is planned to go out. We might end up with extra to throw at the Citi card!

We received a bill from our dentist in our old town. The girls and I had appointments in March. About six weeks ago the office our dentist merged with since then called asking about our insurance. Soon after there were a slew of insurance forms showing the insurance wanted additional information. Then this weekend we got a bill for $336! This got me to start investigating. Our insurance paid for all three of us in full about 8 days after our visit. A quick call today confirmed we didn't owe anything. I have no idea what that was all about other than probably getting record keeping straight on their end.

We sent a letter along with our membership cards to cancel our prepaid gym membership a couple weeks ago. They wouldn't cancel it unless we paid a maintenance fee of $29 each. This is a yearly fee they do charge normally and we have paid in the past. I first requested a refund, but was told no because you pay for first year and get a bonus year. Then my husband got a call from the gym asking why he hadn't been in lately...actually calling my husband 'big guy'! So now I was irritated. We moved. Halfway across the country for the military! We can't go to that local gym anymore.

Eventually things turned when I mentioned that our contract didn't indicate a bonus year, just a term of 18 months. And I asked about waiving the maintenance fee. And yes, I did mention that it is bad public relations to not waive a $29 fee for someone in the military. (I don't usually pull that card). In the end they cancelled the membership, so no more calls, but no refund because it was prepaid, and they waived the maintenance fee. What a mess. At least no additional money out of pocket!

It's been an interesting couple of days...thinking we might owe money to people. Glad we don't owe any more than we already know about.