We are getting our new tires on Friday. We are going to apply for the Goodyear Credit Card to double our rebate. The rebate is $80 for four tires, but doubles on the credit card to $160! Plus no interest if paid in 6 months. I'll likely just pay it off and then close it.

Goodyear is also running a $10 rebate for each tire for military. Thus our entire rebate will total $200. That will more than cover one and part of another for the tires we are choosing.

And, get this, the shop we are getting tires from is having their "Turkey Sale", so we will get a voucher for a local grocery store to pick up a 12-14 pound turkey. I'm not having Thanksgiving, but I'm sure I can find ways to use up a free bird!

It snowed here last night after the temperature dropped and turned the rain to snow. At least two inches of very heavy wet snow. Ugh. That means labor intensive shoveling!

I looked up the 40 minutes of snow shoveling at My Fitness Pal to learn that I burned 306 calories. I'm calling that my exercise for today, since my neighbor did the same thing. (We ususally hit the gym together)We are going to the mall later for smoothies with a buy one get one free coupon. We will probably walk around while we drink...so more exercise there. I should remember to bring my pedometer.

We are need of tires for the van. I think we are going to get a set of Goodyear tires. They have a rebate offer right now, which will help bring the price down. I'm now looking at three different quotes for three different tires. Decisions. Decisions.

Ahh...very low spending this weekend. It makes me happy!

I spent about $10 on Friday for Pizza Hut. Not good for my diet (although I was in my calorie range) or the checkbook.

Saturday I mowed up leaves in the yard. We visited the library. We stuck close to home and relaxed.

Today my parents visited. They brought homemade mushroom soup (vegan variety), salad and bread. Yummy! We visited our art museum which always has free admission. We learned (relearned) how to play our backgammon game. Watched a short Netflix show. And my parents took us to a noodle restaurant for dinner. Their treat!

In three days time only $10 spent. Gotta love it! How was your weekend spending? Anyone spend less than I did?

My youngest daughter decided she would be a Hufflepuff witch from Harry Potter. She owns a wand and she just wanted a scarf made in the black and gold colors of the House of Hufflepuff to wear with her 'muggle' clothes. Sure. Seems easy.

I made my way to the fabric store and purchased a 1/4 yard of fleece (her preferred fabric) which was on sale for $5.99 a yard. Thus $3 out of pocket with the two colors.

I eventually sat down and cut the fleece for the block pattern she desired. Cutting whet smooth with my rotary blade.

Next I set up my machine, ready to sew with gold top thread and black bottom thread. I also ran a test stitch. And I had a problem. Lots of stitch skipping. Big amounts of stitch stitching.

I went into detective mode and started making adjustments to fix the problem. Needle bent? Tension checks...mutliple times. I even dusted and oiled the machine per the manual. It did need it anyway! Still was having a problem.

At this point, I'm starting to look into the cost of repair. It's a Kenmore machine, so I checked into Sears repair online. Flat fee of $62.99 plus any necessary parts. More than I want to spend, but was definitely considering it as a possibility. It wasn't just the scarf I wanted to sew. I have holiday gift ideas!!

I tried a few more things. Looked at the needle again. Swapped it out. And realized my needle was in backwards!! I have no idea when that happened.

Finally, the machine was working like it was suppose to. Maybe even better than the last time I used it since it had now been oiled and dusted. It's like a whole new machine.

And of course, I was able to complete the $3 Halloween costume. Here's a picture:

Are your Halloween costumes homemade or store bought? We've done both, but I'd love to hear your take.

The paycheck is pending, but there is some extra cash in the checking account, so I paid the bills.

The big one was for DH's rent. So wish we didn't have to pay that!

I also renewed the registration on our van. That money had already been saved up for. We do that on a monthly basis. I believe there is a link on the sidebar about how we do that.

Otherwise it was a few smaller bills to record for when they automatically come out of our checking account. One of those is the truck payment that will post on Monday or Tuesday. Which will mean a lower balance!!

In other income news, I received the refund check from the dance studio. I haven't deposited it yet. I'm thinking about where to allocate the funds.

Random thoughts by creditcardfree:

My husband was home for the extended weekend. Loved having him around. We did do some spending. A few take out meals, wine and new running shoes for DH. We spent less than last time he was home, so that is a good thing.

Running two households is expensive, but we are still handling it all with cash. No extra debt has been incurred. Our savings seems to be staying intact, too.

I might be getting new tires for the van soon. Three are still very good, one is showing more wear. The current ones are only rated for another 9K miles. I think the van was out of alignment early on and wore down then. It has since been aligned a couple times. We priced tires at the dealer and a national chain. The national tire chain was nearly $300 less for a better tire (65K miles v. 50K miles)!! I just need to decide when to get that done.

My brain is starting to think about Christmas. Part of me wishes to skip all the gift giving, part of me wants to make all homemade gifts and the other part wants to shop!! I do think there will be some homemade gifts involved this year. Maybe biscotti or beer bread. I might even sew some drink coasters and cosmetic bags. I should get this clear in my head soon and start sewing!

I'm participating in a garage sale this Thursday and Friday with my neighbors. It was a little up in the air if we were going to follow through. But we are!

I have all but a small bin of items already priced and ready to move down the street tomorrow. I'm donating a couple tables and putting up the signs. Of course, I will be there to staff the sale, too.

I'm REALLY looking forward to moving these items on. If they don't sell, I expect most of them to be donated to Goodwill. A few items might be held back to sell on ebay.

Today I need to wrap up some errands around town. The cats need food and I have batteries and CD's to recycle. I think Best Buy has a drop box for those.

And if you were at all wondering: I did get all my windows and blinds cleaned last week! They look fabulous.

This week has seen very little spending. Can you say $5 for concessions for DD to attend a school social and $4 for a few loaves of bread? I expect some of that concession money back, too!

I know you want to know the big secret of staying out of the stores. Right?

Cleaning windows and blinds. Yep, that is the secret. I'm spending a majority of my free time this week cleaning each and every slat on our blinds. I'm also cleaning the windows inside and out. On many windows this involves removing the window and cleaning the track they slide on, too. It is a dirty job. But one that must be done...especially if the house is to go on the market soon.

Nope. Still don't know where we are going. We hope to be moving in January. Not that I like the idea of moving during the winter. At all. Unless I'm moving somewhere warmer!!

My advice this week: stay home, clean something, and save some money!!

We will likely have spent the most ever for airline tickets this year. DH has traveled roundtrip two times already and we are expecting at least three more trips before the end of the year.

We have purchased a ticket for a trip in October. Paid about $345 for that one.

Right now we are looking into tickets for two trips home in November. Specifically Thanksgiving. Yesterday when I looked the tickets were going for over $600! Today, they have come back down.

Got a call from DH while I was writing this post. Officially, two trips in November are booked. Total $733 for 8 nights at home. It's worth it, but hard to choke down the cost!

The news from here...money keeps flowing out. Luckily it is still flowing in, too.

DH prepaid rent for October. The office receptionist thought it odd to pay so far in advance! She even offered to hold it until the first. He declined. Just take our money please! We sure don't want any crazy late fees that we had in August.

I paid our real estate taxes online today in the amount of $1471. Up from last year. Of course! I used the checking account and was only charged $0.40 for the service. That's cheaper than mailing them a check. It would have been about $30 or more to use a credit card. No way would I pay that kind of fee.

DH booked another airline ticket to come home for a four day weekend in October. We got a better deal than his last trip. We saved nearly $100!

We are going to be billed for auto and homeowner's insurance early next month. And our car registration will be due in October, too. October is always our biggest month for cash flowing out.

Do you also have one month a year that is the biggest flow of money out? Which month is it and why?

I bought my daughter's school pictures. Spent $31.50. The pictures arrived this week. Enclosed is a Shutterfly code to redeem for $20 worth of merchandise on their website. It doesn't have to be a picture of my daughter.

I'm thinking a Christmas gift, a calendar or even Christmas cards would be nice. It doesn't expire until the end of January, so I have plenty of time to think about my options.

Wow! It has been gorgeous here the last few days. Highs in the low 70's. No humidity. The air conditioning hasn't run for about four days now. I have even slept with the window open since it isn't getting too cold at night yet. Nice to think we are saving a bit of cash and energy in the meantime.

Yesterday I purchased a gallon of stain at Home Depot. Turns out there was a $5 rebate on it! And we qualified for the military discount. That gallon of stain will only cost about $24, rather than over $32. I bought the stain for our deck. I completed the floor of our deck today and it looks much much better. I will find another day to do the railings. But in the meantime, I'm just happy this update didn't cost too much.

We had a spendy weekend. By choice. Since DH was home for a long weekend visit, we treated our time together a bit like a staycation. Primarily this meant we ate out much more often than we usually do. It was enjoyable not to cook and to eat some yummy food. We did make dinner together at home one night and that was fun, too. I hope to try that more next time he is home.

We enjoyed our time together. It was worth every penny!

I received the yearly notice about our property taxes yesterday in the mail. Our taxes increased from $2,820 to $2,942. That is an increase of $122 per year or 4.3%. Most of the increase is to our city and the school district, so I won't complain too much. They seem to do a good job with the resources they are given.

I recently received our homeowner's insurance bill, too. It also increased.

I save monthly for these expenses. With the increases, I am short. I will make up the difference out of the regular paycheck and then increase monthly savings with the hope of being on target next year. Although...next year we might have sold the house and be renting.

I cancelled our newspaper subscription last month. We have missed it. Today, I ventured out to fill our gas tank with fuel and buy a paper.

Turns out my newspaper was free with the purchase of fuel!! Yipee.

This might be my new Sunday routine.

I tried to write this post yesterday. I lost it and gave up.

I have been starting to do some small home repairs and maintenence on our house in preparation for selling or renting. Our move is coming we just don't know when or where yet.

Over the weekend, I recaulked two sinks and a shower. I throughly cleaned our storm door glass and front window. This included taking a razor blade to them to remove small splatters of paint from when we had the house painted last year. They look much better.

I also began making some drywall repairs. Very minor. Just filling in with spackling, sanding and repainting. Yesterday, I opened four different colors of paint to complete the job. I feathered out the paint and it seems to blend pretty well.

Today was basic mowing of the lawn. It needs to be watered more and fertilized. I took down the garden about two weeks ago...we planted too late, thus no produce. Oh well, for the best likely. That area now needs to be reseeded. Need to borrow a rake to flatten the area out.

So far I've used spackling, caulk and paint that we have on hand. I'll need to buy the fertilizer and grass seed. I'll probably head out to do that today.

And the list goes on...there is more to do. Including making a decision on replacing some vinyl in the laundry room. It has chips in it...just like it was when we bought it. We probably need to price it to decide.

I'm starting to work on small repairs around the house. The kind you put off, or just get used to living with.

In the last couple of days, I have repaired some minor dents in the drywall with spackling, sand paper and paint. Turns out I had all the items needed on hand. I just opened the old cans of paint, stirred well and dipped the small roller in! Easy. And free.

We bought caulk for the bathrooms a couple months ago. This weekend I finally took care of updating the caulk by the sinks and our shower. I still need caulk by the tub in the girl's bathroom, around all the toilets and a section near the kitchen sink. All the tools are here, I just need to commit the time to it.

I also cleaned the front window and storm door using a razor blade to clean up very minor paint splatters that were made when the house was painted last year. I suppose I need to clean all the windows inside and out, and dust the blinds.

A few other items I'll be working on in the coming weeks: staining the deck, moving dirt in the back yard, planting the grass seed and watering the yard a bit more regularly.

Cleaning and repairs that need to be done and if I tackle a little bit everyday it will eventually get done! Luckily many of the items can be done for very little, if any, money. Yipee!!

Eye appointments were yesterday. My oldest daughter wanted to get the same frame as last year, so we headed to Target Optical. I was expecting to pay around $180. Instead I got away with paying only $26.50 (includes tax) for a whole new pair!!

Last year I bought the worry free guarantee for $25. Which would replace the glasses if there was a prescription change or damage to the lenses. It is valid for 15 months.

For a $25 copay, we are getting the same frames and lenses with her new updated precription. All we have to do is give them the old pair when the new pair arrives.

She won't have a recent back up pair, but at 14 we rarely have issues with lost or damaged glasses. And we can get glasses made in an hour if really desperate. I actually could have her pick out a inexpensive back up pair at Walmart. Hmmm...something to think about.

Just thrilled with getting two new pairs of glasses for a combined total of $126.44. Average price: $63.22. For a years worth of vision it feel nearly priceless!!

My daughters are back to school. We kept spending on clothes to a minimum with needs only. Unfortunately, for one daughter that meant new capris since she put holes in each pair she owned over the summer. We bought the basic supplies and supplemented some with used items from last year.

Today the girls visited the eye doctor. Eye exams were covered by our insurance. Only have purchased one pair so far...at JCPenny's for about $99. The other pair is likely to be purchased from Target. They have a sale...so maybe that pair won't be too much more. Finger's crossed.

School pictures are coming up. Getting ready to dole out some money for those. These are really the only professional photographs I have of my kids, so I try to keep the cost in perspective and buy a pretty basic package each year. I think the pictures turn out pretty good.

My ice maker part is not yet in, or I haven't been called yet at least. Since the leaking part outside of the refrigerator seems to have stopped, I'm not so worried about how quickly I get the repair for the ice maker done. I should just go to making my own cubes. I did order the part, or authorized it, so I feel obligated to follow through. I'm just second guessing my need for the part, if I can just make my own cubes.

That's the financial news from here. Just trying to keep spending to a minimum. And it is working pretty well.

Well, no charge for today's service call, since I have a part on order now. The service man was not entirely sure what was causing the frost build up. Maybe opening the freezer too often? We are just going to watch that one for the next few days. It actually wasn't leaking in the last 36 hours. So maybe nothing!

The ice maker has been making too few and hollow cubes for some time. It does appear that it is dripping and freezing. Athough very little water. Thus a possible leak, but with too few cubes, it also isn't filling right. The water fill valve is cheaper, so we are starting there. That is the part on order and with the service charge, part and labor it will still cost me $150. Luckily, only once service charge for the two visits.

If I end up having to replace the ice maker it will be $125 additional. If I was really short on funds, I would just turn off the water to the ice maker and use basic ice cube trays. Of course, I'd rather not spend the money, but I do have it.

Stay tuned. I'm sure there will be more to this ice cube saga.

I made an appointment for a service person to look at the freezer portion of my refrigerator. They can't come until Friday afternoon.

It seems that ice from the ice maker is clumping up in the bin. I also noticed that frost is forming on the lower portion of the inside door. And then, I think it's melting, causing some water to first pool on top of the fridge door, and some then drips to the floor.

For now a towel will mop up the water. Luckily it isn't a huge amount. If it gets worse, I may need to call another company. I used this company last year for my gas stove and they did a great job.

I've done quite a bit of online looking and my guess is that it is the defrost timer that needs to be replaced. I think it is defrosting too frequently for the fan to keep up. It could be a bad seal on the door, too, but it looks okay to me. I'll let you know how it works out.

My husband left school early, with permission, to get a money order to pay the late rent and outrageous late fee. He drove over an hour round trip to the management office. I thought it was closer. Guess not.

He is paid up for August and wrote a personal check for September's rent. He received receipts for both payments.

All very irritating. Caused my husband to lose sleep over it. Since the company still didn't have the check, all we can think, was the postal service didn't do their job. Lost in the mail literally.

We did put a stop on the original check and the rental company was informed of this. Nice thing is our bank didn't charge for this service. Maybe most banks don't. First time we ever stopped a check.

I have reworked our budget to handle paying the rent at mid month. We did stop college contributions for the remainder of the year. I'm also stopping our automatic Roth contributions for a time being. I expect, we will still make all of our contributions, but it helps to not have that money flowing out when things are a bit unstable with two households. Besides, I have until April 15th to make sure I get those contributions in.

We are still waiting on a payment from the government for my husband doing his own move. It should arrive in the next two weeks and equal over $1100. I'm looking forward to that.

Ugh. My husband mailed his rent check to the address as instructed. He mailed it on Saturday, July 30. It was due by Friday, August 5th. It apparently has not arrived, even though it's destination is a 20 minute drive north.

He arrived home today to a late notice. He has to pay a 10% late fee, plus some other concessions that generally are waived if payment is due on time. Total late fee is over $185!!!

My husband was warned by front office of his apartment complex when he moved in that they are very strict on late payments and even went as far as to suggest he drive a check to the office each month. Their office hours are 8-4:30pm Monday thru Friday. Guess when my husband has class? Right during those times.

DH is quite upset. I'm upset, but know that we simply learned a lesson about the type of company we are dealing with or the postal service. Not sure which. We will pay the fee, of course. And we are even going so far as to pay September's rent now. DH will call the company in the morning to clarify that they have not received the check and then leave school early to drive there and make the rent payment, late fee, and next month's rent. Oh, and we might just put a stop on that check that was mailed. We'll decide that tomorrow after speaking to them.

Frustrating at the very least. We tried to pay on time, but it just didn't seem to work out. New plan of attack is for DH to pay the rent in person out of our mid month pay. And get a receipt!!

One weeks worth of groceries for three came to $71.41. Actually, it may be eight days worth of meals.

Pasta x2 with sauce
Baked chicken, corn on the cob
Soup and Salad
Breakfast (eggs or pancakes)
Tacos (have frozen beans and meat in freezer)
Micro meals x3
Homemade pizza

We supplement our meals with fresh fruits and veggies. We have grapes, strawberries, apples, carrots, cucumber and corn on the cob. Yum!!

We also bought basics like bread, butter, skim milk, almond milk, eggs, two boxes of cereal and granola bars. And I bought the very bad for you diet pepsi and ice cream. The girls indulged in the ice cream. The pop was mine. I'm trying to cut back!

In other news, we sold three books on half.com. It was one buyer, so we made a little extra with the shipping for a total of $3.90 profit. My daughter will receive $2 and I will retain the remainder. Fun to get a surprise sale here and there.

My husband and I are contemplating a temporary stop to the college fund investments. Right now we fund each daughter's ESA account with $2,000 per year, which is $167 per month. Each month that is $334 allocated from our budget.

While running two households our expenses are tight. We are not yet clear what all the new expenses will be, as some utilities bills have not arrived. Gas usage is still up in the air. I'm on the low side right now, since school and activities are not in session. DH seems to be using more money on food than I expected. He is working on it though. I think some of it comes from boredom.

If I showed you a proposed budget with our investments and required expenses and cash we have budgeted for groceries and fuel, we would have about $330 extra, which is an average of $165 per pay period. It feels really tight.

I'm aware of upcoming expenses that I'm just not sure where the money would come from except from the emergency fund, if we don't stop the college investments. Examples: at least airline tickets for return visits and eye glasses for two.

I'm not decided yet. But it seems that if we stop the contributions we could set that money aside for these bigger expenses on the horizon with out dipping into our emergency fund. Now, if at the end of the year, we have some of that money left we could still make a lump sum contribution.

One idea would be to simply reduce the amount of contribution to $50 each. And make up the difference later.

I actually thought of reducing retirement, but changed my mind when I remembered we can't borrow for retirement! We can borrow for college if needed. Although, we think we will have access to GI Bill funds for our kids, scholarships, and more income at the time they attend where we could cash flow some expenses. We also aren't against them working during college, too!

Some expenses have already been reduced around here: cancelled the newspaper (but miss it), gym membership is going down by about $25 since DH isn't using it. I'm also considering cancelling the netflix discs that come to our house and just go with streaming.

Any thoughts? Would you stop college investments temporarily to keep from raiding your emergency fund, knowing that the reason you are running two households is for the stability of the kids?

I have 10 items listed on ebay. Four have bids, another 4 or 5 have people watching the item. The auctions end tomorrow night. And those last seconds are when most of the activitiy occurs! Fingers crossed for high bids.

We have learned in the last week that our housing allowance will go down, since my husband is now stationed in another state. It will go down from $1521 per month to $1422, a drop in our income of $99 per month, or about $50 per pay period.

I did decide to cancel the newspaper subscription. It became effective this week. We are very aware that it is missing. It is one expense we got a fair amount of enjoyment out of. But, it's a trial for now. The cancellation saves us $17.39 per month.

We have $100 worth of rewards from our debit card that can be redeemed. I'm resisting at the moment since it seems it could be worth more as we get closer to the holidays and that money will come in handy.

I was invoiced this week for our sliding door, siding repair and painting. Total outflow for those expenses was $3,209.45. It was a necessary expense that will help avoid issues when we go to sell. I do really like the new sliding door. It works so well!!

With the repair and recent expense for my husband's move we have nearly depleted the extra $7000 that we saved last year. That is really hard to watch, but I know without saving that money it would have been far worse! The good news is that we will receive money from the Army for the move. Right now, I'm estimating we will receive about $4100. Not bad, huh?

In other good money news, DH's paycheck will be about $225 more than usual next week. This is a result of taking vacation or leave that he earned in a combat zone. Those days were non taxable earnings, thus less money was taken out for tax withholding.

It seems most of these updates are good. I'm starting to feel much better about our cash situation. It is all going to work out! Whew.

The Army finally paid my husbands travel voucher for deployment. We were expecting around $1200, but it was for $1631.50! Over $400 more than expected.

We have been waiting for this to be paid since my husbands return. He initially mailed his travel voucher the day after he returned. It was rejected weeks later. We mailed it again. Rejected a second time. Then it was faxed and emailed. Apparently never received. And finally about 10 days ago it was faxed again. Success!! It was paid.

Friday was pay day, so it is definitely time to start working on paying ourselves back for some of the expenses that have been incurred due to the move. We can't pay them all back...there are more payments we are due from the Army due to the move. Fingers crossed those arrive quicker than this last one!

Netflix prices are increasing per the email I received today. Specifically for the service we use, unlimited streaming and unlimited mailed dvd (two at a time) it is increasing by about $4.

It seems everything is increasing these days. My life insurance went up. Food prices are increasing. And of course, fuel is higher than last year or even earlier this year.

In light of the Netflix increase, I may cut back to one video out at a time...or cut it out all together. I've noticed we have rented at Redbox recently when the movie wasn't available right away through Netflix.

I've also thought about cancelling our newspaper subscription. We definitely get a lot of use out of it. Or most days. We receive it everyday and pay almost $18 a month. It doesn't save much just to go to weekends or Sundays since most of the cost is the Sunday paper, which come with coupons. However, I think I could get the coupons online for most things I use them for. The girls would miss reading the comic strips.

It's small amounts of money, but we all know those add up pretty quickly. Are you canceling or changing services as fees increase?

My husband leaves today for school. We are sad here. He's leaving too soon after returning from overseas. However, it has been in the cards for awhile.

I came across a form he filled out requesting a Do It Yourself Move (DITY). He estimated he would move 1000 pounds. The estimated payment for that amount is $1141.68.

Yesterday he weighed the truck and trailer, empty and then full. The packed amount weighed 980 pounds. Of course, in the meantime, he's packed a vacuum, winter coats and his final suitcase. Thus more weight. I guess he should have waited to weigh it right before leaving.

So those 980 pounds are very close to the estimate, and I now feel confident we will make some money off the move. He already spent $396 for the trailer rental, a dolly rental, purchased a hitch, a couple of boxes and minimal insurance on the trailer. It also cost $10.50 to weigh the truck and trailer twice.

Although the estimate is for just a little over the amount we packed, I expect the amount to be very close to the estimate. So maybe we'll make $600-$700 that will be taxable. It depends on a few other expenses that will occur on the way.

In other news, I bought a tv from Goodwill. We have a plasma tv in our living room and one tv in our bedroom, that we turn on for weather information. Yesterday, my husband packed that bedroom one up. On a whim, I decided to check Goodwill and found a 20 inch tv for $7.99. We hooked it up to our antenna and digital converter and it works great. DH should not need the converter or antenna as the apartment complex he is moving to provides cable free of charge.

Right now all our money is pooled in one account and we both spend out of it. I handle the paying of bills and recording spending. His part in our finances is earning and spending. Don't get me wrong. We do talk about these things, but often in an abstract way.

Later this month, we are going back to the allowance method for his spending. He will write the check on the first of the month for his rent and another check for utilities when they are due. This will come out of our regular account. Each pay period, I will transfer money to our second checking account for his fuel, food and miscellaneous expenses. The beginning plan is $340 per pay period. This is his to manage and track. And, if he needs more, we'll talk about it. It is a very rough estimate to start with.

We think this is the best way to handling our spending since we are in different cities. It worked pretty well to give him an allowance while he was deployed. Of course, he didn't have too many needs for spending.

I personally like this way, so that I don't have to nag. I know the amount per pay period that is his and I don't need to worry about recording it, or even judge what he spends his money on. I also think it holds him a little more accountable with the money he has available. Right now, because I record everything, I notice how quickly the money dwindles. I don't think he sees that.

We will both still have access to both of our accounts, but the second one will be set aside for his spending only.