Hello Winter

Hey Everyone,

Sorry for the eight day break. Yikes. Managing chronic pain can really take a chunk out of your day.

Since we talked last we've had a big snowy blizzard. The boys were ecstatic!

I'm blogging the intro to my four part series about Day of the Dead HERE. Check it out :-) I know I've mentioned it before but in case you missed it, I blog at Gauche Alchemy on Mondays and Fridays so if you're missing me *grin* you can scamper over there.

What's new... we're paying our mortgage again. Bah humbug! That two month break was awesome and we scrimped, sold and squeezed hard enough that our three years of remaining car payments will disappear mid-month. THAT"S IN TWO WEEKS!!!!! YES, I'M YELLING - WITH JOY!!!! It's insane to comprehend that we paid off twelve thousand dollars in debt in two months. Especially when three months ago we were going from paycheck to paycheck plus wracking up the visa.

*Happy Dance*

Some little tricks:

1. No one needs free access to milk etc. Seriously. We buy a reasonable amount for the week and when it's gone, it's gone. Our grandmother's didn't let their kids stand at the fridge drinking milk every time they're thirsty and neither do I. Nutritionally, a glass or two plus water the rest of the day is just fine.

2. Coffee. I always made a full pot and threw out a half to a third of it at night. Now I make a half pot and about once a week make a second half pot. We are using half as much coffee and I'm drinking just as much. That is close to $20 a month in savings.

3. When you run out of something, if you are also out of money then you just have to go without. How did we not know this before? I think us children of the 80s missed that memo and our debt loads reflect that oversight. I ran out of rice this week after two failed attempts. So we're not having curried lentils on rice or cabbage rolls until payday on Monday. Such is life. Will we die without curried lentils for five days? Probably not.

4. When you run out of money, stay home. Obvious right? Not hardly. When you leave the house there are so many temptations - Starbucks, groceries, card stock. Even a drive burns gas. Gas costs money. At the end of the month, go for a walk, play a board game, watch one of the dozen DVDs you own.

5. The library is an amazing resource. I go online and reserve all movies, books etc. I want and then every Saturday morning we go and make an event of hanging out at the library. Because we go every Saturday morning we never have to worry about late fees or making special trips to drop off overdue books. We also have a shelf dedicated to library books/movies so they don't end up all over the house. Once the book is read, we move it to the tote for easy returns.