Where's Wendy?

It's been awhile since I've posted. Where the heck have I been?

Work is finally settling into it's fall pattern which is nice. I've been working on ChaCha almost nightly now and really having a good time doing that. I'm a late night beast anyway - and there's good money to be made at night.

Budget is still working fine. We've done a little cheating this month - using envelope money for things it wasn't quite intended, however it's still CASH and the we haven't gone over in the budget so all is good!

I have to say the economy is really scaring me lately. Not that I didn't have fair warning about it. Trying to be a forever optimist is the name of the game in my eyes. Yes, the dh is still putting in mad amount of overtime, but with the new car payment and the oral surgery bill - mad amounts of debt aren't dropping as a result of the overtime. Nobody's fault but my own - I'm the one who bought the car. I know.

Time to tighten the bootstraps even more and hope we come out of this okay. I don't recommend anyone who would like to stay optimistic to listen to Glenn Beck. What a depressing human to listen to!

September Updates:

September Budget
Sha-pow! Look at the debt total grow! Adding on the new car payment and DS's wisdom teeth bill to this total, plus new tires for the DH's car.

We had to dump some more money into the vet bill fund for the winter. We're still struggling with health issues of our older cat - and we are coming up to allergy season for our younger cat. If you haven't been reading for long, we had to bring our younger cat to the Vet ER for what turned out to be an asthma attack! It was scary stuff!!


Grocery Store Victory
My stockpile is growing by leaps, bounds and mountains! I've been very fortunate to be able to save the kind of money I've been saving. Coupons, sales, rebates have been a true blessing getting groceries and stockpiles for next to nothing.

If you haven't checked out HOT COUPON WORLD, I strongly suggest that you do. The scenarios they come up with are beyond amazing!!!

Appreciation Speaks Volumes
What motivates you? Are you a self motivator? What does it mean when someone tells you that they really appreciate what you do?

I'm a self starter at work. I know what I need to do and that's what I do. Every week, I make a list of what I want to/have to accomplish and I cross things off as I go. Sometimes I think the boss has no idea what I do because I just get things done.

This weekend, the managers were brought into the office one and a time the boss talked to us. Don't get me wrong, my boss OFTEN says "Thank you." and "Great Job." but you never know if he from the heart means it or not. This talk you knew without a shadow of a doubt that he meant it. I felt like a kid showing his prized art piece to his mother and the elatedness when she said it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen! It was an amazing feeling to know that even the little extra things I do - he notices and APPRECIATES.

Christmas Shopping
This is the best time to start grocery shopping. I don't care what kind of sales they have after Thanksgiving - if you compared them to the everyday prices now - you won't find much of a difference. What you will find are less people, less traffic and less aggravation. So the answer is "YES". I have started my Christmas shopping. 2 gifts down and several more to go! I'm keeping my eyes peeled for deals and my earned gift cards from places like MyPoints.com, ChaCha and our phone rebate to help pay for it all! Let the fun begin!

Updates of sorts ... aka ramblings.

We're plugging away. The husband's overtime while a hinderance to our play time, has been very important in our quest to pay down things and keep afloat.

Winter is only a few months away
I just read the latest from the Farmers Almanac and have hit up the Craigslist looking for a snowblower on the cheap. They are predicting over average snowfall for the Great Lakes/Midwest and if it's going to be MORE than last year - we are going to need the help of a machine!

On the Workfront
My busy season at work should be ending by mid-September. We have one more training class starting in a couple weeks so that gives me a little boost in the overtime department. I don't know what it is but my paychecks have been lower than they have been in years. Worse yet, that's even with me not allocating any part of my paycheck to my 401k. CRAZY!

Budgets
The good news is that budget is working for us! We have stayed on course with that for 13 months. We did wind up putting DS's wisdom tooth surgery on the Care Credit and that's the first and only "card" usage we've had in that time too. Not that I'm proud of it - but that price tag hit me for more than I had in the "Medical Fund" envelope.

Working for ChaCha is Working for Me!
They've made some changes over the past month but things are working smoothly! The money I've been making by doing ChaCha will go to help pay for gift shopping this Christmas and through out the year. If you are remotely curious about what ChaCha is you can revisit a previous post about ChaCha ---> HERE <--- If you are interested in joining ChaCha I would LOVE if you would use my email address as a referral. So far I have three gals on my team and there is room for many more!!

If Wisdom Teeth were so Wise ...

Wouldn't they know we didn't need them??

Welp, I had to know they were coming sometime. Our DS had his wisdom teeth taken out today. And wouldn't you know it - our medical insurance wouldn't cover it. Not even a dime. Add to our debt total another $2600.00.

Is that my kharma biting me back for buying the car? Yeah, probably.

Another bite to the budget happens next month in the tune of new tires for the dh's car. He's been driving on baldies since last winter. He'll need them before the Ice Capades of Wisconsin driving season starts again.

Things happens in threes? My Cahoots's final vet bill, Tires & Wisdom teeth out. Thank goodness the dh is on overtime pay still!

August Budget

Welcome August - hope I prepared enough for this!

School Registration:
Registration is later this month for my ds's junior year of high school. Nice thing about high school is the school supply list is pretty basic and simple. Paper, Notebooks, Pens, Pencils, Folders, Binders. We don't need 4 glue sticks, 3 packs of crayons, 2 boxes of tissues and what ever else is on those lists that really doesn't NEED to available on the first day of school. (if at all, but I don't want to get in an argument about that) I've been buying supplies on sale with left over grocery money. NICE!

So simple school shopping, a few new pairs of jeans, shoes, funding his lunch account and paying for his woods class projects. That should cover the costs.

Insurance:
You're going to notice some screwy rises in my car insurance. We bought a new car so now we have 3 cars and 3 drivers - so my ds's insurance will go up up up as a full time driver of my old car. So next month you will also see a new car payment in my debt category also.

Out of Debt Date Changes:
So, of course - this is my blog telling my story about how I'm getting out of debt. See how easy it is - even Wendy can do it. Truth is, we threw ourselves a bit deeper into debt by getting the Mazda3 that I have posted previously about. When it comes to the blog, I feel I should be ashamed because 1) I didn't pay cash for it and 2) I didn't wait until I had my credit card debt paid for. However, in the scheme of things in my real life - it was something I felt justified doing. I keep cars for a long time. My last car (which ds will take over on until it's last sputter) I drove for 10 years. 6 of those years with no payments.

Okay, long story short - you will see car payments starting next month.