Just doing a little housekeeping here and letting everyone know that I’m getting organized again and plan on doing regular postings and updates soon.  Next week will be a quick series on what I’ve been up to the last five months as well as where we’re at financially now-a-days.  Here’s my first journal post of the 2nd year, exactly 366 days after the very first one. 

Look forward to getting into the routine again!

I’ve had a very hard time getting sleep lately and have been burning the candle at both ends for quite some time.  Things finally had to give this last couple weeks when having to put in far more hours in at the office than usual along with the upstart of sports seasons and Spring cleaning activities.  So, all side projects got postponed for awhile including this site.  In fact, I haven’t even been reading much either other than skimming a few sites.  I suppose everyone has this happen eventually when they’re taking on way too much.

As I realized it was the end of the month already, I figured I better hop on and get caught up with things, or everything will end up slipping yet another month.  Luckily, I’ll be taking some time away from work the next week and will be able to do some writing and get caught up with paperwork.  Both are things I’ll find relaxing compared to the scatter-brained chaos I’ve been going through the last month.  There’s been an awful lot of things that have come up that I can’t wait to write about though.  From an awesome garage sale, to the run-away trampoline…things have been crazy.  Stay tuned and we’ll get caught up this next week. 

Tricia over at BloggingAwayDebt posted a guest post from me today!  It’s called When You Run Out Of Money and was inspired by some of the difficult moments my family and I endured before being forced to turn our lives around.

BloggingAwayDebt is actually one of the very first personal finance blogs I stumbled onto before deciding to make one myself.  I’ve been a regular reader ever since and highly recommend you all subscribe to her feed.

And a huge WELCOME to all the BloggingAwayDebt readers stopping by for the first time!  Feel free to check out my about pages and popular posts in the sidebar to get started.  Also keep informed of my progress and listen to my family’s discoveries along the way by subscribing to my feed in the sidebar!

Just a heads up, I’m doing some semi-experimental updates to the site and the RSS feed(s) this evening.  I apologize if the site shows up broken for a few minutes, but I’ll have it back to normal shortly if things don’t work out right away. 

Update:  Current phase of changes are finished.  You should now notice that the daily journal has been separated from the main feed into a separate feed.  This is something I actually wanted to do from the beginning, but didn’t want to slow down blog & budget progress in order to do so.

So now there’s a couple of the most recent titles from the daily journal available in the header as well as a new feed available in the sidebar for just the daily journal entries.

If anyone really wants to subscribe to both with a single feed, let me know.  I can always generate a one-feed-to-rule-them-all-and-in-the-darkness-bind-them link for anyone really interested.

Thanks for being a reader, and I look forward to bringing more great changes and features in the near future!

I’ve been burning the candle at both ends pretty hard lately.  I simply haven’t had time to sit down without my eyes burning for sleep in quite a few days.  It’s just been a rough week at work, which happens from time to time, but the light is at the end of the tunnel!  The wife has also been putting in more hours, which makes things even more exhausting…but at least we’ll have more income from her than usual!

I have a lot to write about, because I got my tax refunds back from state and federal and I’ve been putting that money to work!  So hang on tight, I should be caught up with things by the weekend.

On a side note, I’ve been getting into using StumbleUpon some the last couple weeks and really have started liking it.  Feel free to check out my user account and add me as a friend if you check it out and give it a go!  Userid: Mrdb.

Photo by Susan

Hey everyone, remember me?  :)  The last couple of months have been a roller-coaster of emotions, setbacks, and newfound inspiration. 

I actually just wrote this entire article, had it polished and was seconds from publishing…only to lose it in a small power outage that turned out being my cat stepping on the power strip button.  However, I liked it so much that I’m going to try a measly attempt at doing it again.  No promises on how good this will be, but at least my auto-save feature is now turned on!  LOL.

So, I’m going to attempt to summarize the last couple months in a few simple bullets that will set the stage for myself going forward.  I’ll try to be concise here, but you know me. 

• I’ve been pretty much inactive for the last couple of months.  I can’t promise this won’t ever happen again, but I can assure you that it had such a negative impact on my financial status that I’m going to make every effort possible to do this on a daily basis going forward with very few exceptions.  (Yeah, just when you thought it couldn’t get worse…)
• I’ve had to clean up some other areas of my life.  Our diet and exercise habits aren’t exactly the best.  After my grandpa went into the hospital, it became a very good time for everyone to do some reflecting.  The wife and I have since been very good about eating a healthy diet and being more active with an exercise routine.  You could call it a new-year’s resolution if you wanted, but being a new year was simply a coincidence.  Now I’m feeling better, have more energy, and am actually losing weight.  (Yay!)
• So, now that we’ve got some good habits forming for about a month now, it’s time to expand efforts to other areas of our life.  Between time management (which is crucial and near impossible with a family of 8 sometimes) and finances, I’d say we’ve got our work cut out for us.  I’ve recently been reading up on how some of the other PF bloggers out there have been doing.  (CleverDude, FinanceAndFat, BloggingAwayDebt, PaidTwice, etc.)  It’s definitely motivated and inspired me again.
• All of my side projects have been on hold the last couple of months.  This has impacted my "web" income a little bit, but we had to prioritize our efforts and focus on things one at a time in order to do this right.  Health, family, job, etc. all came first…then the extra projects come along once those are in order.  I’m going to start considering this blog more than a "web project" though from this point forward, because of how closely tied it is to my actual finances.  However, that means it’s also time to monetize this place a little so it will at least pay for itself while I get things in order and get my other projects in line to help me get out of debt.

So, with this newfound energy and motivation…I’m excited to begin a regular posting schedule again as well as keeping tabs on some of your sites!  Definitely drop a line if you stop by so I can check out your site as well.  I also want to thank those of you who dropped a line with both encouragement and condolences the last couple of months.  It’s been very helpful knowing you were still thinking of us when it looked like I wasn’t also thinking of you.

With that, I’m off to polish the draft of the post inspired by memories and conversations with my grandpa before he died.  We’ll cya soon! 

-Mr Debtbeater