Creditcardfree's Personal Finance Blog

I kind of knew I had a couple of gift cards in my purse, but today I found them and they surprised me! One is for Old Navy for $5.83 and the other to Scheel's (a sporting goods company) $12.71. Both cards were from returning merchandise.

I will keep the cards to put towards the 2012 Christmas Fund. If I end up making a purchase at either store prior to Christmas shopping, I will simply reimburse the fund in cash. I want to be able to shop where I need, rather than only where I have gift cards.

After English Castle mentioned her daughter's lunch account, I remembered that one of my daughter's has a $4 balance in her account. And it's been that way for over a year, since she always takes her lunch from home. The other daughter does the same. I sent an email to the nutrition department asking for the return of the funds. Once received I'll put those towards the 2012 Christmas Fund as well.

Last I heard, small amounts add up!!

I received that $20 Mastercard Debit card for the online promotion they had back in December. I'm pretty sure that our phone bill helped us reach the $200 online purchase threshold, because I probably only made $40 in online purchases during the promotion.

I noticed the debit card expires in June of this year. Thus, I can't literally save it for Christmas spending. However, I'll use it soon and pay the Christmas fund back in cash. It works out the same. I'm glad I noticed because it would have been diappointing to lose out!

We sold a book on half.com yesterday. Profit of just over $2. It's all ready to be mailed today.

I will redeem more Swagbucks today for another 2 $5 Amazon.com gift cards. That's $20 that I will have to spend with them. I'd love to rack that much up each month!! We'll see.

And I am tracking my Christmas fund money in a spreadsheet, but I don't like how I have it organized yet. I also have unredeemed money in MySurvey and my Paypal account. I have a personal threshold I put in place for each. Once I meet those, I will redeem/withdraw for cash.

Did anyone else get the Mastercard $20 deal? Make sure you check your expiration date!!

I sold one item on ebay last night. I think my profit is about $8. The other item has at least five people watching it. I started it at $0.99 which would be like stealing it from me, but I expect the price to rise. I added a Buy It Now option, too. It's possible it could sell before next Sunday.

I redeemed points for 2 $5 Amazon.com gift cards from Swagbucks today. I have enough for two more. I just forgot that you can't redeem more than two things per day! I will redeem the other two tomorrow.

The gift cards and ebay profit money will go towards 2012 Free Christmas Challenge. At some point, I will get a tracking system set up for all to see.

I listed two items on ebay this afternoon and three books on half.com. As usual, I would prefer they sell fast!

I will add this money to the 2012 Free Christmas Challenge.

Anyone else selling on ebay or somewhere else right now?

Members of the military are getting a raise this year. A raise of 1.6%. For my husband that is an net increase of $47.08 per pay period. Or $1129.92 for the year.

I need to make a plan for this money!! It would help if I was clear on our goals.

I could set aside each month to put into our emergency fund. Or use it to fund more college expenses. I could also increase his TSP investment amount and call it retirement savings.

Obviously...we have a decision to make! Any other ideas on what I could do with it?

I received a rebate check in the mail for the Armor All products I bought my brother in law for Christmas in the amount of $8.99. It will deposit to our online bank today with our scanner. I really love that feature. I will add this money to my Christmas 2012 fund. I will need to make a page or spreadsheet to start tracking those funds.

I found $0.26 on the floor in front of the ticket counter where we purchased movie tickets to see War Horse this morning. It was a pretty good movie considering it did contain war scenes.

We are still waiting for a call about our flooring estimate. I need to see that one before I can make decisions on the other repair estimates we received.

Whoa! This morning was hopping busy here at our house. I had my medical exam for the life insurance application. Amazingly, I weighed about two pounds less than I do on my own scale. I gave over a couple vivals of bodily fluids. It all went fine.

Soon after, we get a call from a man to measure our floors for new vinyl. He arrived between the two companies that came over to measure a window pane we need replaced because it is beginning to accumulate condensation between the panes. The price for the new window pane is $232 or $272. Yep, we'll pick the company with the lower price. They had much better service anyway.

We hope to hear back on the vinyl estimate today or tomorrow. The price will be much more than we thought originally, for two reasons. We thought the price per square foot was $0.99 but it is actually $1.79. Also, we have three rooms with toilets that need to be removed during the process at $150 a piece!! Yikes, that is $450 alone. We could do it ourselves, but I would prefer DH be home if we choose that route. Which mean installing in the next week....not sure if that is an option or not. More clear decisions once we see the actual estimate.

Did I mention we got an estimate to have some concrete raised in our driveway yesterday? Yep, it's estimate city here. There is one piece of concrete that is a big trip hazard. It will need to be leveled. There are a few other pieces that should be done, but aren't as big of an issue. Estimate for the required piece is $195. Too add in the other pieces just another $205 more if done at the same time. This seems very reasonable, but we need to think through about whether to spend the minimum or go for the full amount.

We also went furniture shopping/looking today. This is really not something we should be doing, but we are looking into getting a new chair to coordinate with our living room couch or even a dining table for our kitchen. Just looking for now...I think!!

Oh, and I found $0.12 on the ground while we were out! Have you been this busy, too?

We decided to get our oldest daughter a prepaid Debit card. It arrived in the mail yesterday preloaded with her first deposit of $14. The $14 is her monthly allowance based on her age.

After school today, we are going to set up and log into her online account. She will have her own log in for this account, and DH and I will also be able to see it from our own bank account log in.

She can use the card for purchases and ATM withdrawals. We can transfer money to and from it at anytime. We will definitely pay her allowance in this form now.

We are using USAA bank and the card was free. There are no monthly or annual fees or charges to use the card. We are excited to give her this option for handling her money. She has done a great job saving for things she wants and handling and even tracking her cash balance in the last year or so. We expect thing will go well with the prepaid card as well. She's most excited not to be fumbling with her wallet and cash when she makes a purchase!! Cute.

Anyone else give their child(ren) a prepaid card? How did it work out?

Back in November we bought new Goodyear tires for the van. We opened a credit card with them in order to qualify for a few rebates. The first one, for military personnel, arrived today in the amount of $40. We are still waiting for $160 check to arrive. I think I submitted it a week later, so maybe it will be here shortly.

The Goodyear credit card is interest free for 6 months. I have made one $100 payment. Today I made another. I sent the $40 rebate, plus $10 and change that we didn't have to spend on our water bill this month. A fifty dollar and some change payment in total.

Our balance is now an even $600. I could pay it now, but since it is zero interest, I'm just taking my time. I might pay it all off once we get the final rebate check. And then, of course, cancel the card.

I'm still in the processing portion of changing my life insurance. Thursday morning they come to my home for a simple medical exam. I fainted the last time I did one of these. I will definitely lay down this time!! I have to fast for 4-6 hours prior to the 9:30 am appointment. I think I can do that, especially since they want me to drink plenty of water.

We went looking for vinyl flooring yesterday. Our kitchen, two upstairs bathrooms, two entry ways and a laundry bathroom combination all have vinyl floors. They are three different patterns/colors of vinyl on the main level alone. The bathroom floors have stains and the laundry room has some major chips/dings in the vinyl (which I believe the previous owners caused when they moved their washer upon moving out).

We are interested in replacing all of it to match and create a bit of an upgrade and selling point for the house. Right now, using our basic measuring and math skills we are looking at $785. We expect the estimate to go up especially since three toilets will need to come out and then be replaced. We are willing to do a little work to prep ahead of time to save costs if needed.

We did get quotes on carpet, but feel that is more than we want to spend right out of the gate. Our carpet is light in color, but with carpet cleaning it seems to come back to life pretty nice. We will clean and put down plastic in high traffic areas at the time of listing.

Right now we are definitely leaning towards selling rather than renting, thus the new get ready to sell expenses. We can't be landlords from miles away and paying someone to do it isn't appealing either.

I'm still thinking through 2012 goals and will post once I'm done. Part of me wants to skip them for the time being, but it is a fact that a goal gets results.

I'm sure the goals will include college, retirement, savings, and debt. I think I might include a goal for a free 2012 Christmas as well as a side income goal.

I might even go as far as to say one of our goals will be to be mortgage free. I'm sure that got your attention!

I know some of you have posted your goals. Are some of you struggling to come up with goals? What problems are you running into?

Here's a snapshot of our financial year:

We earned more interest than ever because we invested in the Savings Deposit Program (SDP) available to deployed military members. We earned 10%!!

Here's the interest breakdown: SDP $583.33, Money Market $106.48, USAA $1.97. Total interest was $691.78.

Our emergency fund took a small hit, and is down $737 from last year at this time. I feel okay about that considering we have had additional expenses running two households and buying new siding and a sliding glass door for our home, all of which were much more than $737!

We were debt free except for our mortgage in mid January 2011 until May when we purchased a new to us truck. We paid part of the purchase ($12,000) in cash which was a first for us. The remainder was taken out in a loan in the amount of $14,776.68. Our remaining debt on this loan stands at $12,412.06. We are simply making regular payments until we are back to one household. That loan will become priority number one once we do.

We did contribute some to our girls college educations this year, but not the full $4,000 we planned. We stopped contributions when we split to two households. Their accounts are each up about $1100 each for the year.

We also stopped making Roth IRA contributions in August. We are currently short of our 2011 goal to max out our Roth IRA's by $4,166.67. We expect to make this up with our tax refund. Thus meeting our goal, but later than normal. We did contribute $5072.76 to the TSP and $5,833.34 to our Roth's in 2011, which is $10,906.10.

I compared this years retirement totals to last year and we are only up $11,028.72. At one point we were up over $18K. But you know how the market is!

Since our goal was to primarily keep the status quo, I think we did pretty good. Yes, we took on more debt, but this vehicle will be one we keep for the long term. We feel good about the purchase.

It has been disappointing to cut back on investments, but it needed to be done temporarily to keep from getting into more debt while running two households. We really are cash flowing this adventure and all that comes with it and it feels good.

How was your financial year? Negative, neutral or positive?

I received an email from Groupon today offering $5 off any purchase. I didn't exactly need to buy anything, but it was worth a look.

I chose to buy the TCBY (frozen yogurt) offer which provides $10 worth of yogurt for $5. After the $5 off a Groupon purchase, I received that $10 Groupon for free.

Free frozen yogurt here we come!

Are you a Groupon user? What is your best deal? If not, you can click

I did receive my $20 Serve check in the mail. It's now in the bank. Right now the plan is to save it for Christmas 2012.

It did seem to take awhile to get the check. But it did arrive. Is everyone else getting their check?

Yesterday, I received notice in the mail that my life insurance premium is increasing again this year. I have had term insurance, but the term ended last year and the premium increased from $295/year to $675. Ouch. Last year I paid it and planned to change policy holders for new term insurance. However, I totally forgot about it until the notice arrived.

The premium for the next year on my current policy is going up to $720 for the year. Don't like that one bit. I have already filled out an online application with USAA and hope to have this new policy in place before the next policy is due at the end of February. The current estimate for similar coverage is $280 per year!! It may go up once they complete the medical portion, but fingers crossed it won't go up too much.

I have just about saved the $675 for the upcoming premium. It will be nice to have a little extra cash saved for something else.

On my side of the family we agreed not to exchange adult gifts since my brother in law is currently unemployed. It worked well for us; saved money and time. Turns out my parents decided to keep on giving! We received stocking stuffers with chocolate, smart wool socks, coffee, and vitamin C packets. And then a card with a $100 check. We were definitely not expecting that!

On my husband's side of the family we gave to our neices and nephews, his mother and exchanged gifts with two adults. Perfect. Except his sister was put on house arrest for a DUI and unable to attend our gathering.

My mother in law decided we should take up a collection, since SIL is unable to work, thus pay her rent and so forth. MIL started the envelope with $20. She asked if we would have cash to donate. Normally we don't have any cash on us. We use our debit card all the time. But I did have cash. So with mixed feelings we donated $25 to SIL.

We have mixed feelings because we feel this is an area of personal responsibility. SIL chose to drink and drive on more than one occassion, was caught, went to court and in house arrest and all that comes with it (unable to work) is the penalty. And if she can't pay rent, then that is part of the penalty too. Not our problem.

I'm sure our $25 and whatever amount was collected won't amount to making a huge difference. DH also doesn't think she will appreciate the thought in anyway. Or that we will ever hear a thank you. But giving $25 won't hurt us a bit either. It is what it is.

What would you do?

I opened a Sharebuilder account today. I heard of an offer to earn $75 by just opening an account with $100. It does seem the $75 takes a few weeks to show up and must remain in the account for around 120 days, but it seems like a great rate of return on such a small sum of cash. No need to make any trades, either.

I learned about the offer from

Merry Christmas! Happy holidays to my Saving Advice readers and friends. I hope you can feel peace today.

I'm especially happy to have my husband at home for Christmas. Last year he was on the other side of the globe.

What are you grateful for this season?

We had our power steering pump replaced on our Honda Odyssey this spring. It was covered under our Honda Care Plan...well the pump was, but not the replacement fluid and labor. We were just glad to have it fixed.

About a month ago or more we were notified by Honda that power steering pumps would be covered under warranty longer on certain Odyssey's, including ours. I decided to fill out the claim form and send in documentation of our repair. I asked them to reimburse the labor and fluid. I believe I asked for about $98.

Yesterday, a check for $116.92 arrived from Honda. Just the check. No explanation letter. Fine by me. I deposit the check.

Earlier in the week, we had our van in for an oil change and replaced our battery as well. Our charge for the day was around $123. It feel nice knowing that the reimbursement on the power steering pump just about covered our most recent expense.

I finally totalled up my receipts for Christmas spending. Not bad and definitely less than last year.

Total spent on gifts and miscellaneous related items was $611.68. This total already includes some gift cards and store coupons that were offered. That amount equalled about $144.54!! So I guess closer to $750 in gifts purchased.

We also accumulated cash from craigslist and the fall garage sale in the amount of $211. We sold on ebay, too. Funds from surveys added to a Paypal redemption of $74.32. One item had a rebate for $8.99. We accumulated another $95 in Target gift cards. We redeemed debit card rewards for $25. And I have to add in the $100 cash my MIL gave towards gifts, since those gift totals are included above.

The total above is $514.31!!

Soooo....Christmas was nearly free at a cost of $97.37. We paid just under 13% of the total cost of gifts out of our own funds. Amazing!

And I have to laugh a little because my first run through with the numbers led me to believe Christmas was free. I forgot to include the cash we are giving to nieces and nephews which equalled $105! Darn kids. Just kidding!!

So for those of you doing the Free Christmas 2012 Holiday Challenge, I definitely think it can be done. And I'm in for next year, too.

I've been wanting to tally my actual net Christmas spending, but I have to say it has been a bit daunting to try to go through all those receipts!

I used so many coupons, cash and gift cards to make purchases in stores and online that it is hard to back track and come up with a total. I know I did get some good deals and some of them are on my blog earlier in the month.

It seems like I spent quite a bit less. Especially since I bought for fewer people. I didn't buy for teachers, my sister and her husband, my parents, or my two neighbors. I did sew something for my neighbors but just from my stash. I also didn't buy or send Christmas cards.

I might still get around to getting a total together. If I do, I'll be sure to let you know.

Do you know what your Christmas spending was? Was it more or less than last year?

Looks like a little more money is flowing in:

We just sold a new in package camping air mattress for $25 to a man who saw our ad on craigslist.

I received notification that Pinecone deposited $3 into my Paypal account.

I also was notified that the Mastercard (debit) account we registered met the online threshold for the $20 Mastercard gift card. That will arrive in 1-2 weeks. I believe we met the $200 minimum once our phonebill was posted for payment. Cool! Otherwise I didn't nearly spend that much online.

Now...if only that Serve check or any of the rebate checks I'm waiting for would arrive!

Our automatic payment on the truck loan posted. We paid $35.45 in interest last month, but a whopping $293.68 to principal.

The new principal balance is $12,412.06. It looks like another two months before we will drop below the $12K mark.

I will actually look forward to the day the principal portion is over $300 each month. I should figure out when that might occur.

Less debt. Always feels good!

I did sign up for my Serve.com account last week and received my ATM card today. I'm still waiting for the check to arrive in the amount of $20

I don't have any particular plans for it. I guess that means it should be saved. Although that would be just enough to cover our outing today. DH and I went to see Sherlock Holmes matinee. Not too bad. He purchased a large soda, while I brought my soda can in my purse. I would have carried one in for him, but he declined and spent $5.

I've been earning quite a few swagbucks by watching videos while I'm doing other things online. I'm here anyway, might as well earn some points.

I even had a search yesterday that earned me 25 points. Tomorrow, MegaMonday, is suppose to be a great earning day on Swagbucks. Which means now would be a great time to sign up!

If you use my

DH graduated from his first course today!! He's on his way home. He will only be home for a month and has to go back and finish another 4.5 month class.

His January rent is paid. His utility bills are recently paid and most things unplugged at the apartment. The airline ticket is paid. We will combine our flexible spending/allowance money for the next month for groceries and fuel. We will only drive one vehicle, since the other is parked out of state!! Maybe we can save a little by being in one household for a little while.

I'm done Christmas shopping. Sure, I could probably pick up a few more things to stuff the stocking. But really, the girls have enough. They are blessed with many people who will be giving them gifts. I don't see how one or two more things in their stocking will improve their holiday.

All that is left to do is wrap their gifts and, of course, stuff their stockings. I could wrap today and be done in 30 minutes or less, but I do want DH to see what I've bought. He will arriving home in the next couple days for a month long break!!

Today, I'll sit back and enjoy the peace of the season. Are you done shopping or are you still out there braving the stores?

I'm not sure if you remember but this past year wage earners had a decrease in payroll tax of 2%. Instead of paying 6.2% in social security tax withholdings, the rate was cut to 4.2%.

This is set to expire at the end of 2011. Congress is attempting to extend this cut. As of yesterday, the bill has passed in the House, but is not likely (per media reports) to pass in the Senate. Feel free to Google your preferred media source for more information.

This is just my heads up to those of you looking at how your net income might look in 2012. Remember to add in an extra 2% in payroll tax witholding as one scenario.

I was at Target. Again. Picking up a few grocery items. I spent about $20. I received a $5 Catalina coupon off my next purchase of $50 or more.

You can bet I can make use of that coupon!!

I wonder if Target will do another Facebook deal this week for the $10 gift cards? Any guesses?

I've started wrapping gifts. Most things are going in gift bags. Gift bags I never bought. I've just accumulated quite a few over the years from other people.

It looks like I can get everything wrapped with gift bags and wrapping paper on hand. It seems I even have two rolls of NEW wrapping paper!

This actually might be the second year in a row that I have not bought gift wrap. I think this has to do with stocking up a little too much on paper one year!

How do you handle gift wrap?