Day 69 and Easter Eggs and Homework

My day has been pretty much filled with Easter eggs and homework. The Pond Creek community Easter egg hunt was today, so that's over for another year. I have tons of homework due tomorrow and I'm still not done with it. One teacher has said he is flexible if you don't get stuff turned in on time, the other docks a letter grade for each day it's late. Guess which one I'm focused on getting done first? LOL. Hope all of my friends and family have a happy Easter!

Day 68 and the Roof

Well, the first roofer guy I called (the one the insurance agent gave me) never called back. I called a child care friend who's husband is a roofer and he was going to come out tomorrow and look at it. She called me this afternoon and he could come today. I was in Enid, so I went ahead and did my grocery shopping and came on home. He was able to seal the spots that were leaking and only charged us $55!!! The timing was pretty good because since he's Catholic, he's had mass everyday this week, so instead of working on big jobs that he might get stuck late at, he's been going around doing patching. I've got a guy from church who will come look at the inside and give us an idea of what it will cost to fix the damage inside. But I feel a lot better knowing that the leaks should be stopped now.

Updated debt list:

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)
Dr. Office: $79.20-Paid!
ER Doctor: $97
dentist: $120-paid $27, balance $100
Auto parts store: $100.00-paid $25.00, balance $75
Josten's-PAID!
Second half 2007 real estate taxes: $148.64-PAID!
Hospital: $261.16
Credit card #1: $2970
Credit card #2: $1104
Credit card #3: $990
Credit card #4: $899
Credit card #5: $908
Credit card #6: $2509
Car loan: Balance: $2815
My student loan: $12, 913
DH student loan: $53, 248
House: paid $670.12

As of March 21^st: $2228.52 in debt paid off!

You may have noticed that the dentist bill went up a little bit. That is because Tom had a $27 charge that wasn't covered by the insurance from December so we had to add it. I also added our real estate taxes since we hadn't paid the second half of them yet.

Some really incredible things happened today. I paid our cell phone bill a full week early! I sent in the second half of our real estate taxes 10 days before they were actually due. I went to the Dr. this morning for my sinuses and instead of just paying the 20% co-pay, I paid $50 of the $72. I didn't pay more than that because our health insurance always writes some off and then it's heck trying to get an overpaid amount back from the Dr office. When we get the insurance forms, I can pay the difference. It just felt so good to be able to do that!

Day 67 and Bargains

The FPU lesson that we had a few weeks ago on bargain shopping has really had me thinking lately about the bargains we have found. For example, last summer, we needed new knobs in our kitchen. A bunch of the porcelain cabinet and drawer knobs were broken and/or lost. We went garage saleing one Saturday. We didn't find anything at all that we were interested in except a box of goldish colored cabinet knobs at one garage sale for about $2 (if I remember right, I know they weren't more than that). So Tom went through and was able to replace all the knobs with the new to us ones. Out of curiosity, I just went online to Lowe's to check out how much new knobs were. The ones that I found similar to our "new" ones were about $5 each, there were others as much as $7-8 each (and probably more). There are at least 35 (if I counted right) knobs in the kitchen. That find saved us about $173! Best of all, they look really nice and they fit the screws that were already in there so Tom was able to just put them on without any trouble. It just makes me smile to see them there and know that we got a bargain. What have been some of your favorite bargain stories?

I haven't heard back from the roofer guy that I called yesterday, I'll keep you posted. Tomorrow I will be updating the debt list with a few more paid bills.

I have lots of homework to finish by Sunday so be praying for me. There's no such thing as holidays and spring breaks in my online classes.

Day 66 and REWARD

Today I got my REWARD check. After I tithe from it, order some of Josh's sr pics, and get Serenity's birthday present, it should still make a pretty good bump on the baby EF. I'll keep you posted! The REWARD check is something that the state of Oklahoma started doing a few years ago to reward providers who stay in business (or employment).

The insurance adjuster for the roof came today. Turns out our roof is fine, it's the flashing around the chimney, one of the upstairs rooms, and the back room that is causing the leaks. She will write up an estimate and call me back, then issue us a check. I've got a call in to the roofer that our agent suggested to me and we'll go from there. So hopefully that will be fixed soon without too big of a dent to our EF (we'll have our deductible of course). Oh, and I did call the roofer that did the roof and ask if they would honor the warranty since it wasn't the shingles. He said they didn't do the flashing, they just did an overlay so they are not responsible for that either. I wasn't surprised that he said that, but I thought I'd try. Of course, for $150, he'd be glad to make a service call. I said um...no thanks. Frankly if I'm going to have to give my money to anyone, I'd rather give it to just about anyone than them.

The sun is out here today! The two little ones that I have this week took the stroller and went out for a walk this morning. It was a bit chilly, but it felt great to be out and about.

Day 65 and Fighting a Losing Battle

I swear I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle with this sinus stuff. It has just hung on and on for weeks. As soon as I think I'm getting over it, it kicks my tail again. I spent 3 hours stuffing eggs for the Easter egg hunt on Saturday, and we'll be stuffing again tonight. For some reason, something about the way I sit when I do that just makes my back ache so bad. Anyway, enough whining for now.

Naturally, since it is spring break this week, our weather has got chilly again. I sure hope we can get some decent weather for the egg hunt on Saturday.

I started working on my menus for the next couple of weeks since this weekend is my grocery shopping weekend. I am getting a bit discouraged because it seems like no matter what I cook, someone in my family doesn't like it. How in the world did I raise such picky children? Sadly, I think they're too old to change them very much right now.

I was able to add $25 to the EF yesterday, so it is back up to $300. I've been doing these toy reviews every few months where they send you a bunch of toys and you and the kids play with them and then you write about what you think of them. You get to keep the toys and they pay you $25. It's really cool and I've got some neat stuff doing it. I opted out of the next one because I just have too much going on right now and although it's fun, it is a lot of work too.

Day 64 and Quack, Quack, Quack!

My goodness, it is a rainy day out there! I went out when it quit raining to hang up signs about the Easter egg hunt on Saturday. It started raining when I was about halfway done and I got soaked. I also had to run to Medford and so I went by my insurance office to talk about the roof. He gave me the number of a guy to call and come look at it and then we'll go from there.

Now I'm going to do some housework and then some homework. I got our taxes done and filed this weekend. I am going to do better keeping up my paperwork this year. I say that every year and I do a bit better every year. Maybe eventually I will truly be good at it.

Day 63 and "Only" $65,000

Today ends our 9th week of this latest Financial Peace University journey. We had a lesson on investing tonight, which was pretty interesting, but seems so far off to us. One interesting thing, actually it was more annoying, was when a man who was talking at the beginning mentioned that he hadn't made very much money when he was working, "only $65,000". Frankly, that sounds like a phenomenal amount of money to me right now. That is almost double what we made this past year (I just finished our taxes). Of course, I realize that we live in a fairly low cost of living area, but with the price of gas the way it is, I think that eats up a lot of what we save because we have to drive to get anywhere. I even tried to buy my Easter candy for my child care party here in town so I wouldn't have to drive to Enid but the stores didn't have any wrapped Easter candy. Anyway, we can only do what we can do with what we have. I can't let myself get wrapped up in what others have. So here's to praying for being content with what I have!