Give Away!

UPDATE: Comments are closed ... winner to be announced soon!

Okay, I have a give away to share with you all!
As I mentioned earlier this week, I'm giving away The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.




I want to add that when I read it, I loved it. I almost don't want to give it away actually LOL! But, I really do because I want someone else to read it and enjoy it as well (plus, we are currently clearing out the clutter from our home and this is part of my plan - so watch for more book giving away here!)
Anyway, if you want it, just leave me a comment and just make sure I have a way to get in touch with you if you happen to win. Feel free to tell others about it, but you don't need to link back here unless you want to.
I'll close comments on Friday, August 31.
Good luck everyone! =)

Howdy ...

Well I originally intended to sign on, add a few updates to yesterdays post and call it a day, but then I started typing and it turned into more than a few sentences. Hence, a new post today LOL!

Regarding yesterday:
I want to add thanks for the nice comments. I also want to say that I understand it would be better to save the entire amount I make for sitting. However, for the next month only 100 dollars is being used towards misc, entertainment, extra, bonus - whatever you want to call it. We are in general on a pretty tight budget and so I am making a conscious choice to not save a small part of it (1-2 yards of fabric worth) and then saving the rest.

I also want to add (and it's sort of a brag but really I'm saying it because I am excited) we will be debt free except the house in November! How awesome is that? We will have no cc debt, no car payments, not debt aside from the house. I can't tell you how food that will feel. So we will be on baby step 3 by Christmas! Yeah!!

UPDATED DECEMBER 2007 - I have NO clue why I thought we could do this - I believe I wasn't grasping the total amount of debt that we had. Although we are over half-way through paying our debt, we are certainly NOT debt free and it won't happen very quickly truthfully. I felt the need to come back and say this because 1) I was pretty cocky back then and I needed to come down from my high horse and 2) it certainly isn't nearly as easy as I thought it would be - it's hard work, but i promise, it certainly is worth it.

Although admittedly, debt is not our big issue at the present moment - learning to live within our means is the big lesson we need to learn. And we are both learning it, slowly by surely. And we also very committed to learning that lesson ASAP. We do not want to live paycheck to paycheck. We do not want to live worrying about all the bills that will be due soon. We want to enjoy life and to live and have fun. I think a good 8-10 years of hard work in order to get that and I think in the long run it will be worth it and feel so good!

I might also add - having the 2 little girls here today isn't all that bad (and hopefully I haven't jinxed myself just now LOL!). They are getting along well with my 3 and of course we've had a few moments of trying to figure out who can play with what toy (of course we have those moments every day LOL!), but overall, I have to say they are two very well-behaved girls. I imagine that tomorrow will go just as smoothly. I was even able to do a tiny bit of scrapbooking today - which is amazing LOL! =)

Now I just need to get some more knitting time to finish up a few projects. And one more book and I will have read my goals for the year =)

I have to admit that life is feeling pretty good right now, even if I am feeling a bit broke - I can say that I'm happy where we are at adn the places I think we are heading!

Better and best ...

Last night, while trying to fall asleep, I was struck with what I think will be a fabulous idea. I had some inspiration to make something for my girls based on FPU, something they already own and something I saw on etsy yesterday.
I just knew it was going to be a fabulous idea and a great thing to make.
Except, even with my large fabric stash, I don't have any fabric that is of the material that I need.
So I was kind of bummed because we did make our budget for the month, and there was not money in it for fabric. And we don't have room to play around with it either at this point. So I was thinking today I have this great idea and if I'm lucky I can whip it up in October and that's not too terribly far away. Not to mention that I am temporarily without embroidery capability - but that will be remedied soon - so even if I did go shopping today, I wouldn't have worked on it today anyway.

So yeah, I was resigned to the fact that it would have to wait, and that this was a good first test to see if I am disciplined enough to stick to the all-mighty Budget dh and I worked on. But I was a bit bummed. A month ago, I would have gone to the store, picked up the fabric I needed, picked up a few more that also looked cute, then maybe browsed the yarn and found some that I liked and then just for fun have thrown in a few other things that I didn't need. But nope, not today. I really am trying to stick to this whole budget thing, really!!

Anyway, fast forward a few hours - and the phone rings. And it's someone asking if by any chance I can babysit for 2 children (and I might add my girls have played with them before and really enjoyed it too!). So tomorrow and Friday I will have 2 extra friends in my house. Not only that, but that means there will be a bit of extra cash flow as well. And that my friends means that I can go shopping over the weekend to buy the 1-2 yards that I need and the rest can be put right into savings to help us reach our goal a little bit faster! Really, I am truly amazed at how that worked out and very grateful for how it all came together! Yeah!

So maybe next week I will have something really great to show everyone!

Favor ...

I have a favor to request of my readers - can you please visit my etsy shop and tell me what you HONESTLY think of it? Particularly, I need to know the bad ...
things like descriptions, picture quality, prices, feedback, too many items, too few items, etc, etc ... what would stop you from shopping there and what would keep you coming back. Leave it anonymously if it makes you feel better - but I really need to know!

Thank you so much to anyone who does this for me. It really does mean so much!

http://www.emmagailcreations.etsy.com

In an effort to get as many responses as possible, I'm going to leave this as a sticky post for a week!

*FPU Update

So last night dh and I put down our budget on paper. This was no easy task because a)I have a cold that makes everything seem pretty darn fuzzy and b)things are tight. I mean, really tight.

But, we did it. We successfully made a budget.

The bad points:
- there isn't much wiggle room in this plan - as in once all the had to be paid bills were paid, there was hardly anything left at all to even discuss
- I feel really poor today


The good points:
- we did not argue about the budget (you might assume that since all the money is spoken for, this doesn't matter, but I think it does)
- all the bills that need to be paid, will get paid
- Starting in October things will be looking much better
- October is a good month because we have bonus income coming in for both of us which will be nice.

We opened a second savings account last night as well. (The first one we have isn't actually for savings which would make complete sense if I typed up a 1000 word essay on it, but I will spare you the details and just ask that you trust me LOL!).
We figured out how much to save per month for the items that are paid only yearly (or twice yearly). We made a list of big purchases we would like to make at the moment and ranked them in order of importance. At the moment we don't have extra in the budget to start saving, but as soon as we hit baby step number 1 (saving 1,000) and are able to add to that on a monthly basis, we can start saving for them OR if we get some lump sum of some sort, it can go towards those items.

It feels good to have a plan. I just wish the amount of money we were basing that plan on would increase LOL! But we are getting there ... it may take us a while, but we can do it. I was thinking last night it would be so neat to look back in 3 years and sort of laugh about where we started today.













*FPU Stands for Financial Peace University. Click here for more info