Things to buy

If I could buy anything today I would probably make a Shutterfly album for myself.
Pretty small purchase but it would be nice to have. Too bad I have to spend all the time searching through the pictures to make it happen.

Items that can be sold or donated prior or after a Yard Sale

Books
-Donate to a library or sell to a used book store

Children's Clothes and Toys
-Donate or sell to a kid's store

Kitchen and Household items
-Donate (any other sale methods) -ebay

Yard Sale

Things to do before a Yard Sale

Any suggestions?

Decide on staging
Get or make signs
Have change
Don't bring unsold items back home

Memories of my Life

Through the looking glass...

2000's

Riding in my car, looking ahead, realizing that we are following the hearse that my beautiful infant son is in. It just seemed so wrong. I have always heard that burying a child is the hardest thing for a parent to do.

Looking out the windows of a fabulous boat on the Seine River seeing the magnificent Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris as the narrator sang Ava Maria in English and French.

Looking out the airport window at my friends as they boarded a plane to celebrate their wonderful honeymoon in Italy.

Looking up at Pope John Paul II at his window as he blesses the crowd gathered in St. Peter's Square.

1990's

Looking down at myself as if I was in a dream during my marriage proposal.

1980's

Riding in a limo after my father's funeral looking out and seeing a house that I always have loved. Telling my brother, who is an architect, about the house. My brother offering to design a house for me someday.

1970's
Looking out the window of my front door and seeing my good friend, Amy, getting on a bus that is taking her to Montessori school.

Thank you to KT for pointing out this wonderful post from Jen called seven windows of my soul.

"Credit Withdrawal"

There is a blog called www.creditwithdrawal.com.Just the name gives me an idea for a post. How much did we charge in 2007 on our credit card? 18% of our take home pay. And how about on our "2nd credit card"? 7% of our take home pay. A total of 25% of our take home pay went to our credit card companies. We really should be doing a better job on not relying on credit. The host of this week's Carnival of Debt Reduction,No Debt Plan, has a good approach for using last month's paychecks to pay for this month's expenses.
No Debt Plan's Life Changing Concept.

Car Shopping = More Debt!

Car shopping (see Car Woes post) has been on my mind for awhile. I decided to listen to some of the call-ins on Dave Ramsey's show regarding cars. I thought this call was pretty appropriate. Call into Dave Ramsey's show "Wanna get back into debt". Actual call.
Currently I have no car debt. Why get back into car debt? There was another call regarding paying a large amount of cash for a truck and draining savings.
Call into Dave Ramsey's show "Trashing the truck".
So why do so many people buy new cars? Status, keeping up with the Jones. What is the motivation? I have leased two cars, bought/ financed two cars and paid cash for one car. All of these were new cars. I wonder what the total $ outlay would be on all these cars?

Advice from Edmunds

Here is some advice from Edmunds regarding calculating lease payments.

Car Woes

So how expensive would it be to rent a car for a few months? The problem. Our plan was to lease a car for another three years. We did budget for the monthly payments of around $240 per month. What we did not budget for was the $3700 down that we paid last time. Opps!
Our options are lease something lease expensive or finance a used car.

Quotes to date for leases:
Minivan midlevel -$379 per month; plus inception fees (15K per year for 3 years)
Minivan base model -$259 per month (additonal $12 for 15K); plus $2400 down plus inception fees

Day before Tax Day

Funny how so many people wait until April 15 to get their money back. Everyone works with deadlines so this is not uncommon.
Credit Addict hosted this week's Carnival of Debt Reduction.
If time permits, please check out the great posts throughout the week.

Credit Card statement for March

Boy for someone who does not normally eat pizza I sure have been ordering alot of it in March. Our fast food bill for March was pretty high just over $110.
Here are our percentages for the month based on only our credit card spending.
Gifts 30%; Gas 21%; Holiday (Easter) 11.7% Groceries 11%; Scrapbooking 10%; Fast Food 8.6%; Stores 4.5% and Haircut 2.7%.

$6,000 per year to save

Can we save $6,000 per year extra to pay towards our mortgage? In April 2009, April 2010 and April 2011, I would like to have 6 grand set aside to pay down our mortgage. Can this be done or is it too hard of a concept to grasp? Certainly if I wait until April 09 I will not have the money saved. But if I break it down to a weekly amount of $115 per week I think it would be more doable. Yeah! Paying off the mortgage even faster would be exciting. $115 is really not a lot of money. If needed it could come from savings but better shopping practices, eating out less often etc. will help also. I easily paid off my car lease and car loan but the mortgage is a much longer and harder to stick with goal.
I currently have $250 per week being sent electronically to our mortgage company to pay down the principal. I could add the $115 per week to this or save it in a separate account. If I save it in a separate account I might decide to use the funds elsewhere. Not a good plan. The best way to handle it would be to use existing paychecks and pay it at the same time as the other principal payment.
Any ideas?

Movie Mania

Nim's Island is a worthwhile movie for families. Nim is growing up with her Dad on an island. Her Dad is unexpectedly delayed in his return. Nim turns to her favorite author to save the day.

Links from the Carnival

Wow. I have 10 links to the Carnival.
Thanks to everyone for the exposure into the PF world!
It was very fun doing the carnival.
Here is the carnival for this week hosted by RealWorldReally.com

This looks like a great post from
Finance Girl regarding snowflaking