I was pretty busy this last week, but a lot has happened around me too.  I actually submitted to a couple of carnivals this last week so want to share some of the highlights of each.  Some pretty good stuff to read this week.  I actually found a lot more articles of interest and spent a lot more time reading than writing.  Great job people!

Here’s the list for the first week of March:

Carnival of Personal Finance #142 - hosted by The Baglady

Carnival of Financial Goals IV - hosted by The Dividend Guy

So there you go.  Hope those were enjoyable, and we’ll likely see some more carnival action next week!

A couple weeks ago, I decided to go try moving a large credit card balance to a 0% interest credit card offer to try to save myself some unnecessary interest payments.  Well, things appear to have gone very well with this transaction so far.  I now have my almost $6000 balance that was running at an interest rate near 30% completely transferred to a 0% interest card.  This one single move is going to save me nearly $150 a month in interest.

I want to again remind everyone that has credit cards to check the interest rates on them at least once a month to make sure you don’t get hit with a huge rate hike like I did.

So here’s a small screenshot of the summary page on my new card:

And here’s the balance summary of the card it all came from:

I plan on paying my first payment of 128.05 (I just like round numbers…I know it’s weird) and then set up a monthly payment from my bank to send $100 every month for payments.

One very important thing to keep in mind:  I’ll need to either completely pay off this card before 12 months go by, or transfer it to yet another card.  If I don’t, all of the interest avoided during the 0% promotional period will be added to the account balance.

So, I’m setting up a reminder for myself to have that thing paid off by this time next year, or be prepared to move a $5000 balance to another card.

So, now that this has worked out for me, I think it’s time to go look for another offer and float my next card to it!  However, I REALLY can’t wait until I don’t have to do this crap at all.  I hate using credit cards for anything anymore.  Once I get all these dumb things paid off…that’s it for me!

Today’s post is a rather amusing one I thought I’d share amongst all the number games.  It’s just amazing what kids will do sometimes that will end up costing you something.  Luckily, I think I can cover this one for under $10. 

The Plot Builds

Photo by Asurroca

So, my 6-yr old daughter decides she’s going to do mommy a big favor and clean the bathroom.  This is the bathroom that would normally get used by anyone visiting, but is also the one the little kids use most of the time as well since it’s the most convenient to the rest of the house.  Keep in mind that the bathroom is already pretty clean before any of this happens…because mommy JUST CLEANED IT.

Well, it just so happened that mommy left the bottle of whatever spray-bleach she’d been using on the counter.  So, my daughter just grabbed it and started spraying away…tub, sink, toilet, floor…

"Oh no, I used a lot…" thought my daughter.  "I better wipe all that up now and dry it all off."

Painful and Funny

So she grabs the nice DARK GREEN guest towels off the towel rack and uses it to "dry up" all the bleach-filled cleaning agent.  After she was done, she hung it right back up on the towel rack.

"Good as new!" she thought.  So she ran off to find mommy, but got sidetracked and ended up playing or something for awhile.  Maybe an hour later, she remembers and runs to the bathroom while mommy was in the hallway.  "Look mommy, I cleaned the bathroom for you!"

Then a look of horror struck mommy’s face as she noticed her nice not-quite green towel hanging on the wall.

Still keeping her half-smiling composure, mommy explained what happens to colors when mixed with "cleaning stuff".

Lesson Learned

Clean bathroom, 10 minutes.  Supplies used, $0.50.  Replacing a high-quality towel, $8.00.  Having to explain what bleach does to color with your children…priceless.

I’ll bet from now on, mommy and daddy make extra efforts to actually follow the "KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN" warnings on the labels. 

Enjoy this?  Have any mishaps from your children that cost you a little?  I’d like a good laugh if you have a similar story.  Share with a comment or post on your own and send me a link!

Photo by jtyerse

It’s been a super-exciting few weeks for me after having filled out our tax returns and getting everything rolling early again this year.  (We always get our taxes done in February right after all the W2s come in the mail. 

Now, before I go rattling off how much money we got back from the government, I’d like to let everyone know that this year’s withholdings were WAY off for the majority of last year.  I’ve since adjusted my W4 and am paying a lot less in federal taxes every paycheck.  I’m still doubtful that I’ll get less than $2-3000 back for next year’s refund even after recalculating, but I’ll eventually get where I should be with that.

So, what’s the magic number?  Brace yourself… almost $7000 for federal and state combined.  Crazy huh?  I was only expecting to get about 4-5 thousand, but 7 will do.  :)  About $5500 of that was federal, and $1500 from state.  Needless to say, we couldn’t wait to get that money to work for us.

What’d we do with all that cash?  Well here’s the list:

1. Got caught up with bills.  We were borderline behind on everything.  It was nice to be able to pay a lot of things off just barely in time right before payday hit.  It almost served as a bridge loan for a week.
2. Filled up our $2000 emergency fund.  I know, it’s only supposed to be ONE thousand.  Well, I have practically 3 families worth of kids, so I’m doubling it.  That’s just what makes me feel comfortable, and I’m not going to feel bad about letting that extra $1000 sit there and do nothing but bail me out when I need it for an emergency.
3. Paid off a $2500 credit card!  Heck yeah!  Gooood bye 28% interest store card!  I will never miss you or use you again.
4. Started our envelope budgeting system.  I like to fill the envelopes for the next month before next month even gets here.  Having a good chunk of money in the bank made this really easy to do…having the cash to put in the envelopes right before the next month actually started.
5. Took advantage of some serious sales.  One expense that just doesn’t ever seem to have enough money behind it is clothes.  With our super-large family, we just
   

   Photo by GigHarborUndressed

   always need new jeans or something for one of us.  Well, we actually were able to take advantage of a clearance sale and managed to get all of next year’s winter school clothes for the ones in school for under $250.  That sounds like a lot, but we’re talking 4 kids having 3-5 outfits a piece.  The younger ones get some hand-me-downs, but the oldest always needs a lot of new stuff because of how fast he outgrows things.  It was so nice to have money during the sale rather than having to find him half as many clothes when they’re in season.

6. Finally, my wife and I went out on a date!  :)  That’s actually a very rare thing, so I don’t feel bad about being able to do this at all.  We needed a night out.

So there you have it.  My refund money applied in a nutshell.  We’ve still got a little bit of that in the bank account, but I think it’ll just have to sit tight until we can figure out where we want to start applying our additional funds every week.

So what kind of refund numbers are you guys getting out there?  Anyone beat my $7K?  I’ve got a friend that went over $10K, but they do it on purpose.  (Like I used to.)  No thanks, not into doing that any more…

I’ve got a number of things that I’d like to accomplish.  This is my first attempt at actually trying to set some goals and see where I measure up over time.

As much as I’d love to just make my only criteria numbers and dollars, there’s a few other things that I want to measure in order to make sure I’m successful this month.  I’ll include some of the dollar amounts too, just because they are important, but they’re all based on what I have in my budget.

1. Reduce overall debt by $2000.  (I’m already $3000 BELOW WHERE I STARTED on my debt scale.  That’s HORRIBLE and we’re gonna try to fix it ASAP.)   Half of this is medical bills that I’ll be reimbursed for from my flex account, but I’ll take it. 
2. Follow the envelope budgeting system we’ve created and use automatic payments for all bills using our web bill pay.  This includes modifying the amounts and categories as needed to gradually reflect our actual needs.
3. Complete the separation of my daily journal from the main blog and their respective feeds.
4. Finish my debt scales page that shows the breakdown of individual debt progress, not just the overall on the header.
5. Follow a new schedule that I’ve created for myself on running this blog.

I think if I can just focus on those key things, the rest of the goals that I also want to accomplish will fall into place.  I need to learn to just pace myself, and so far I’m not doing so hot.  Soooo, we’ll actually create some measurable goals and see how things go from there. 

This was a really tough couple of weeks.  Between the wife and I working lots of extra hours, having a lot to do around the house, and just keeping up with daily duties…we just haven’t had any time for any fun let alone sleep.  This weekend was good though.  I didn’t have any major projects to take up my time, so on and off throughout the weekend I’ve managed to get caught up to where I can actually do some writing. 

I’m in the middle of writing my post discussing all the tax refund information with updates on where we are with respect to all of our debts after getting it.  Something else I enjoy pointing out is that my annual increase has finally kicked in.  It certainly wasn’t as much as I was hoping for, but I can’t really complain about it.  The only way I could really get more would be to uproot everyone and move.  We’ve decided to stick it out some more and continue to make things work.

For one thing, we’ve started using the envelopes system.  I just finished stuffing them full of cash and we’re not going to use any more plastic unless something unexpected comes up.  (even debit cards unless we have to)  I’ve put a few of our bills on automatic withdrawal.  That was kinda neat to watch happen a few times with the money already in there.

I drained my surplus of posts while I was away, so I’ve been building up some more this weekend.  I don’t like being without at least a week’s worth.

I’m going to hold off on putting a "Today’s Progress" summary up, because I’m going to update the budget page tonight and we’ll start with a clean slate tomorrow evening now that I’ve got all my envelopes filled with cash.