Day 111 and the baby EF

Well, the baby EF is back up to $1000 thanks to Uncle Sam and the stimulus rebate! Thank you! I used $125 of it to pay off the Urgent Care/Dr's office bills, we are giving away part of it, and we have about $250 left. We had planned to save that in case we needed it over the summer, but yesterday I kept feeling prodded by God to put it towards one of the credit cards and trust in Him to take care of our needs throughout the summer. Tom & I discussed it last night and prayed about it and decided that is the right thing to do. So I will be sending that amount towards one of the credit cards in the next few days. I also listed and sold both of my humanities books within 24 hours! When that money gets deposited (later in May), I will have about $90 to put towards a credit card. Just think, if we do well with our garage sale next weekend, we might almost have one of those credit cards completely paid off by the end of this month! Wouldn't that be amazing?

So today (on a Saturday of course!) I got the bills for mine & Tasha's Dr. visits in March. Mine was correct, showing the payment that I had made and that I owed $10.50. Tasha's was not. Hers had the shot they gave her ($40) and the fee for injecting it ($20!!!!), but didn't have the visit fee listed nor the $50 payment I made listed. So guess who I get to call again Monday morning? I'm going to be praying for patience and kindness between now and then because otherwise I'm probably going to be really rude and hateful. I'm sure as many statements as they have to send out a month, it's inevitable that they will make mistakes.

Today Tom & I are going to start going through stuff and pricing it for the garage sale. I also have 17 pounds of hamburger meat that I need to get browned up. Going to be a busy day, but did you notice that the words homework were not included in those sentences at all???? LOL!

We have a riding lawnmower that we are thinking of selling. We need some advice on what to sell it for. Any thoughts?

Day 110 and Taking a Deep Breath!

I just submitted my last homework assignment for this semester. Phew! That feels great to have that done and off my plate! YAY!

Here's something funny. We've had a loan through American General Finance in Enid for literally years. I'm guessing 10-12 years, at least. Anytime we'd get anywhere close to paying it off, we'd refinance it and start all over. We are now down to less than a year on it and I think they're getting nervous. We keep getting these letters in the mail: "You are eligible to borrow $ with no increase in payment, call today". Then yesterday, they called and told us that we had $1500 available to us. LOL. I said "thanks, but no".

On to the debt list. First of all, I called the billing office for the Dr. bills this morning because I'd never heard back from them or got the printout they were supposed to be sending. It was a very frustrating call and I was almost in tears at one point. She informed me that the Urgent Care bill is going to go to collections within the next week. I pointed out that wasn't really fair since I'd paid it and THEY had credited it to the wrong account. She blamed it on me using the online bill pay service through the bank and said that both accounts have the same account number. I looked later and realized they do not. At any rate, I'm going to pay off the rest of the 2006 bill and send the money for the current Urgent Care bills and those will be caught up. We will be getting a bill from the Dr's office from Tasha & I's visits in March but I'll have to take care of those on the next payday. I'm not very happy with the whole situation, but I don't know what to do besides pay the bills and go on. If we hadn't been in such denial about our bills then we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. Life goes on...just gotta learn from it and move on.

So that being said, here's the updated bill list. As of May 2^nd: $4356.35 in debt paid off!

DLO: $14.40-PAID!
DLO: $34.11-PAID!
Radiology: $37-PAID!
Urgent care clinic: $46.15 (August 2007)-PAID!
Urgent care clinic: $40.55 (November 2007) PAID!
Urgent care clinic: $21.50 (February 2008) PAID!
Dr. Office: $79.20-PAID!
Dr. Office (June 2006) $105.02-PAID!
ER Doctor: $93.54-PAID!
dentist: PAID!!!
Auto parts store: $161.73-PAID!
Josten's-PAID!
Second half 2007 real estate taxes: $148.64-PAID!
Hospital: $261.16-PAID!
Car loan: Balance: $2303
House: paid $1340.24
Credit card #1: $2970-paid $75
Credit card #2: $1104-paid $25
Credit card #3: $990-paid $25
Credit card #4: $899-paid $25
Credit card #5: $908-paid $25
Credit card #6: $2509-paid $75
My student loan: $12, 913 (in deferment due to my full time student status)
DH student loan: $53, 248(in forbearance)

Day 109 and I'm almost done!

Well, tomorrow my last assignment for this semester is due. I've got all of my other assignments turned in, and even know my grade in my humanities class, an A!!!! Then I get a break from school, but of course there are a zillion other things calling my name. A garage sale to get ready for, Josh's graduation and party to get ready for (especially cleaning the house), etc. However, it will be nice to give my brain a bit of a break from school. Hopefully I'll be refreshed and ready to start back up in August. I'm already very excited about it!

Speaking of school, Serenity is getting ready for Finals week next week, so keep her in your prayers!

Tom gets paid tomorrow and our tax rebate shows as pending so I'll be posting some debt updates. I think we'll pass the $4000 mark tomorrow. We get $900 on our rebate. We'll give part of it away, put $410 in the baby EF to bring it up to $1000 again (and hopefully it will stay that way longer this time!), and save the rest to help with the work we're getting done on the house or in case we need it this summer. Even though I'll be pretty full most of the time, my income will still drop a bit during the summer.

Day 108 and Life is too short

This morning I read an article online in the Enid newspaper about a bicyclist getting hit and being injured, then later read an update that he had died. It did not click with me that I knew him until I started reading the comments. He had worked at the Medford Dr's office, and now worked at Urgent Care in Enid. He was the PA that I saw when I went in the last couple of times. My heart just aches for his family. Please keep them in your prayers.

Since I found out, I've been thinking about how much we take advantage of life, thinking that we will have another chance to tell the people that we care about how we feel. Whether that feeling is that we love them, that we're sorry for something we said or did, or that we just wish we'd spent more time with them. Hug your families and your friends and let them know you care. You may not have tomorrow.

Day 107 and I keep forgetting!

I keep forgetting to mention that I sold some more child care curriculum books and our baby EF is back up to $590!

Day 107 and David & Goliath

One of the wonderful things about going to church and revival services is that it always seems that I get just the right message exactly when I need it. Last night's message was on the story of David & Goliath. The Israelites forgot that God was on their side, and I keep forgetting that God is on my side. I do not have to face this all by myself, I have God (and all my friends and family) there with me! So, like David, I need to remember that God is on my side and even if I can't do this, HE can!

Day 106 and Frustrating Day

So when I got the mail on Friday, I had a "nasty-gram" from the urgent care clinic in Enid saying that I owed them money. Well, I knew I had sent a payment back at the end of March, but it was too late to do anything about it Friday. So I called the bank this morning because I had done it as an online bill pay where they send the payment, just to make sure that the payment had cleared and was not lost in the mail or something. It had cleared the bank on April 4th. So I called the billing office, thinking it will be no big deal, and it will be taken care of. Well, turns out they credited it to another doctor's office account from June of 06 and they don't think they can move it to the right one. They also say that I still owe $64.xx to this other Dr. office. The weird thing is, I had just paid off the bill that I had from them too, and it had only been $79.20. I never did really get a straight answer out of anyone. But the bottom line is, that now I still owe Urgent Care $60ish and probably owe the other Dr's office $64ish. It was very upsetting and frustrating. The lady I spoke to said that if the earlier account had gone into collection, it would have been taken off the statement? That does not make any sense to me. Plus I never got a collection letter about it.

Then to top my morning off, one of the credit card companies for one of Tom's credit cards calls. He says they got the payment and wants to know what our "intentions" are. I said that our intentions were outlined in the letter that came with the payment. Big surprise, they have no record of any correspondence with the payment. Yeah right. Anyway, the least they will accept is $100 a month and only if we set it up on auto-draft. I have to talk it over with Tom. Dave Ramsey says to never give a collector access to your account.

So I'm feeling a little down and frustrated and sorry for myself today.

Day 105 and Giving Myself a Break

I realized this morning that I had not done either of the goals I had for myself, such as adding up eating out and Sonic or starting to get ready for the garage sale. But in an effort to not be so hard on myself, I'm going to forgive myself and let it go. I will set a new goal of next Sunday for those. It's going to be a busy week and I still have quite a bit of homework to do so I don't need to freak myself out over that. Right? LOL!

We have started revival at our church. Our speaker is Dr. Ernie Perkins (www.ernieperkins.org) and he's a great speaker. We meet tonight at 6:00, and the next 3 nights at 7:00. Everyone's invited!