National Day of Giving

Today, in addition to being Martin Luther King, Jr Day, is also National Day of Service.

I think that is fabulous and really great. Despite that, I am not doing anything special or out of the ordinary today. Mostly because I had my head in a cave and was unaware of this day until, well, a few hours ago.

My contribution today is going to list a few ways that we can all help out - year round and not just on one day. I think if today you start thinking about ways you can help out that is a good step for National Day of Service. So here are ways you and I can give back:

• Give food to local food pantry
• Volunteer a few hours at food pantry
• Volunteer at a soup kitchen
• Bring a few dinners to a family you know is struggling
• Bring food to an elderly neighbor (or shovel their driveway, mow their lawn, help them plant flowers, etc)
• Call the local school and see where they need help.
• Call your town - can you help fix up a bad lot, help clean up parks/playgrounds, pick up trash at the local forest preserve, etc.
• Call a local animal shelter and see if they need any supplies or if you can help out for a few hours taking care of animals.
• Call your local library and see if they take book donations or need help reshelving or if they need help with story hour or anything like that
• See if Habitat for Humanities is doing any projects in your area and help out there.
• Do you have a hobby that you can use to give back. If you are a photography, offer to take pictures of kids with Santa at a community Christmas party. If you are a knitter, make hats and scarves to be passed out to those who need them.
• Most place run school supply drives in the fall - watch for school supplies to go on sale and bulk up then with the intent to give them.
• Do you own a business? Run a food drive - give customers a discount on services if they bring in food (or coats or shoes or toys or whatever the need is in your community)
• Start a Dining For Women Group
• Start a book club and every time you meet, members bring a book that you donate to a place in need in your area
• Offer to babysit for the single mom who never gets a break for free.
• Play Bunco with the girls? Next time ask people to bring canned goods with them.
• Visit Volunteer Match and see what they recommend for you
• Knitters can find ways to give back with their knitting here and here
• Here is a great page with ideas for crafters who want to give back.
• Make some items or donate supples to The Preemie Project
• Here is a page with patterns for chemohats
• If you are a photographer, sign up with Flashes of Hope
• See if you can help out Project Linus
• Help Soldier Wishes out
• Soldier Angel has many ways you can help out
• Mark Eat So They Can on your calendar now so when October rolls around, you can be ready!
• Host a Bead Party
• Go check out Random Acts of Kindness foundation and get some great ideas!

There are a TON of ways you can give back to with your time and talent. This list is not complete in any way, shape, or form. But hopefully it is a list that will get you thinking about ways you can help out.

And please, leave comments on other ways to help out (I'll add any ideas to this list)- and if you are doing something today or what you plan to do this year in order to give back.

What I've been doing ...

I've been busy lately - just not here LOL!

I've been working on my resolutions, trying to keep up with housework (instead of trying to always catch up), knitting - but I can't show pictures because it's a gift, reading to the kids, playing with the kids, playing games on the computer (so bad, but I LOVE it LOL!), and thanks to our recent netflix subscription, I've watched the the first three seasons of The Office and the first season of Weeds.

I have definitely been on the computer less though - which probably isn't a bad thing! Anyway, soon, I should have pictures to share some things. But everything I want to talk about are gifts and I can't show those here. Bummer.

More on Resolutions

One of my resolutions this year is for our family to pay off all our debt. I talked more about my debt over here. So when I came across Angie's Debt Buster Club, I knew I had to join!

All of our debt is one credit card. Most of it is debt from when dh started up his side business. The business has been unable to repay us what we loaned to it, and so we have been unable to pay off this debt (I want to chime in here and say though, the business has saved us much more than this amount and so I don't regret dh starting it. BUT we will never do that again unless we can do it without taking on debt)

Here is the info:
Debt: 14,624.22
interest: 303.47 is at a HUGE 11.15 APR and the rest 14,495.09 is at 6.11 APR (total of 83.15 in December)
Minimum payment: 229.19

I believe last year we paid off 6000 of this debt. Also, they are only applying our payments to the 6.11% APR. Blech.

We have already mailed the January payment of 300. We have it set up in our bank account to auto pay citibank 300 every month. Last year, when we had extra we sent it in. I believe last Jan, the min payment was 290 and we could only scrounge up 10 dollars extra to pay that month! (but hey, still, paying over the min - no matter how small helps so we tried to not get too depressed about it LOL).

So this year we need to find 14,624.22 + interest to them. 9,000 more than last year!

Where will the money come from?
Good question. One we haven't entirely worked out. We know where some will come from:

• Cut back on spending. pull a few areas of the budget back as far as possible.
• I have already told where I worked last summer, that I am willing to work again this year.
• grow more food this summer to lower food costs
• Cut way back on savings
• Mortgage payment is dropping this year. The bummer - we don't know by how much. We can shift the difference to the credit card. (and no, not because it's an ARM - we have a standard 30 year loan. However, our mortgage companies pays our real estate taxes. Taxes didn't go up as expected last year so we have enough in our escrow that they are lowering our contribution. We fully expect to go under the required amount this year and for it to increase next year - which is what happened in 2008 LOL)

Aside from that, it will mostly be giving up things. I wanted to attend blogher. That is now out of the question. I turn 30 this year. We talked about having a nice party for it. We are giving that up. The kids will have no birthday parties this year - which is fine. We keep it to every other year anyway, and they all had them last year. I had planned on taking some sewing classes - again, they will all have to wait. Gas has dropped - so we plan to pay less this year for that than last year - which will be good! We don't have much we can sell around here - but I am planning on putting a few things on craigslist. Also, we need to declutter the house, so maybe we'll find a few more things to sell? I think, though, most of it will be small and will probably just go to the goodwill! I might reopen my etsy store - with completely different products though! We'll see. I'm not completely sold it will be worth it.

The good news is that we have a bit of savings set aside. Although we are following Dave Ramsey's baby steps, we decided given the current climate right now, we needed to have more than 1,000 in savings even though debt is paid off. Because dh works with advertising and he's watching competitors go out of business more often than we feel comfortable with, we built up some savings at the end of last year - enough for 2 months of expenses. We are hoping the economy turns around and that if we get debt down low enough, we can just pull out the money from savings. We don't have saved what we owe, but we could pull out 5,000 and pay off any remaining debt if we feel dh's job is secure!

At this point though, we know that we probably won't make much of a dent into savings until the second half of the year. Medical deductibles reset in January. Also, life insurance is due. And car insurance. And our dentist appointments are all in January. The only thing we won't be worrying about in January? Christmas expenses because we save a bit for those all year and had the money we needed in December. ::phew:: But most of "extra" income comes in September and October - my dh works a second job and his business operates then (so I guess really he works 2 extra jobs on top of regular day job) and I also make some extra money then as well. But, every month, anything we can pay on top of that minimum balance is good I think!

Pretty things

Tonight I was lucky enough to get lots of pretty things. The knitting group I'm in had our holiday party tonight. This is my first holiday celebration with the gals ... and it was even more fun that I expected. And also, a TON more food than I expected. Next year, I will not eat dinner before I go. The food - so yummy!!

Anyway, onto the pretties!





Seriously, how lucky am I? I didn't even know I was going to come home with all these goodies. I knew about the grab bag, but a few members went above and beyond and passed out gifts for everyone.

I am SO glad I stumbled upon this group (even if the first night I showed up was the one night they met in a different place LOL!). Seriously, I found out about them through the library craft night, which I showed up to in June I think after having a horrible, awful, terrible day with the kids. I HAD to leave the house and that was going on so I went. And there I found out about the knitting group. I admit, I was nervous to go at first (because I'm a nerd like that) but now, now, I look forward to knitting night with much anticipation and my only complaint - that it's not weekly LOL! =)

Happy New Year!

Hope 2009 is a great year for everyone =)