Money, Love, and Change

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We’ve been putting aside $25 a month for Christmas.  I know that this doesn’t sound like a lot, but keep the following things in mind:

1.  My husband and I don’t buy each other gifts for Christmas.  Seriously.  If one of us wants or needs something, we discuss it and then plan appropriately.  Besides, with the birth of our son, we both get more joy watching him open presents.

2.  We don’t spend a lot on family.  In the past few years, we have sent framed pictures or photo books as gifts using gift certificates and other discounts.  I plan on using Boomertowne gift cards for family this year as well.

3.  My son (who this fund is primarily for) doesn’t need a lot of toys.  Last year, we spent $150 (toys and clothes) and he had a wonderful Christmas.  We figure that a similar amount will be good for this year, especially if we shop ahead of time (which we didn’t do last year).

Today we went shopping to get my husband the new Guitar Hero game (free after gift cards).  On the way home, we stopped at Toys R Us – I had heard that they were having a sale on Brio trains.  I was wrong – they were actually having a clearance sale!

For $60, we got our son a new train set with track, 2 extra sets of track, 2 stations (a conductor station and a repair shop), and 2 additional train cars.  This is going to be his “big gift” this year.  I’m really excited that we were able to get such a great deal, and we know that the kid loves trains already (he has a smaller Brio set).

The only thing I haven’t gotten ready is a good hiding spot for this year’s gifts!

Do you like Christmas shopping early?  Why or why not?

Warning:  Rant ahead…

I live in a smaller town.  There used to be an online mothers group, of which I was a member.  At some point, a bunch of the mothers decided to open another group in which you have to know another mom to get in.  The old group is now gone.

This is all fine with me.  I understand the safety issues involved with online forums, especially ones in which groups of children will be meeting together.  I know two of the mothers who are members of the new group, and I signed up for the new group at the end of March.

I am still not a member.  According to the site, you cannot access the forums until you attend one of their “events”.  Fine.  Whatever.  Tupperware and candle meetings are not my thing, but I figured that the kid and I could attend one of the kid events.

Here’s the catch:  You need to request a list of events.  I am not going to argue the point that e-mailing anyone who requests a list of events might not be the greatest idea in terms of safety.  However, a list of something should be sent upon request.  This is where my problem lies.  E-mails from three different accounts have not been acknowledged over the course of 3 months.

Keep in mind that all I want to do is enter the forums and ask for opinions on the local preschools.

What’s a mom to do?  I did google some of the area preschools to no avail.  Apparently the internets is still a big scary monster in this town.  There is one preschool that gets very high ratings online.  I recently happened to find out that there was a case of sexual abuse at this same preschool via an acquaintance.  Hmmmm…

Being that it is summertime, I don’t see the two moms that I do know on a regular basis.  Perhaps I need to hang out at the playgrounds in a creepy sort of way and try to find someone else I can use as a reference?

I have always stayed fairly well-networked on a professional level,  but this whole mom-networking thing makes me feel like I’m back in high school.  Until this point in time, I’ve been more closely associated with moms who are not in this area.  Perhaps I’ve missed out on the chance to join the local “exclusive” clique…

End of rant.  At this point, I’m just going to set up some appointments with the schools directly and go with my gut feeling.  It’s worked well so far!

One of my big goals (part of the change in money, love, and change) has been to simplify our life.  We’ve done quite a bit, but there is more that can be done.

My #1 pet peeve right now is my e-mail.  I have one central e-mail account that has incoming e-mails from school, the website, job opportunities, etc.  Right now, my inbox count is at 1366 messages (down from over 1700 this morning).

Frankly, I’m not that important.  My goal is to take eliminate 100 e-mails per day in addition to any e-mails I receive.  This means that in about 2 weeks my problem should be taken care of.

In addition, I’ve been making a point to switch most of our statements to paperless billing (with the exception of our checking accounts, since I like to have a paper statement for those).  In addition to being environmentally friendly, this should cut down on paper clutter in the house and will help simplify things a bit further.

Do you have this same problem?  Any advice?

Xerox is sponsoring a program called “Let’s Say Thanks”, which allows people to send free postcards designed by children to US military members who are stationed overseas.  It only takes a minute of your time to select a postcard and choose a message (or write one of your own).

If you’re a fellow blogger, you can even download a widget (like I did) to put in your sidebar.

I know that our lives our busy, but taking a minute or two to send a thoughtful message helps put things in perspective.  Have a wonderful week!

We took our 2-year-old to Sesame Place on Wednesday.  Sesame Street is the only television show he watches, and since Sesame Place is relatively close (within 3 hours), we thought it would be a nice family outing.

Overall, I think this is a great place to take your younger kids.  The park is not huge, and it has a lot of water attractions that are geared towards little ones.  Since we went on a Wednesday, it was not crowded at all.  Characters from Sesame Place are outside during different times of the day, and you can take pictures with them for free.

Here is a breakdown of our costs:

$126 – 3 tickets; these are 2-day passes, and we got a AAA discount.  We plan on going again in the fall.

$13 – general parking; there is preferred parking, but it is not worth it.  It took us about 3 minutes to get from the park entrance to our car.

$30 – food;  this is the one area where we did not plan well.  We were going to pack a picnic lunch, but we had a family crisis to deal with the night before and didn’t have time.  That being said, for $30 we got 2 chicken salads, a kid’s meal with a take-home Elmo container and souveneir cup, a fruit cup, a banana, and a soda for my husband and I.  I was pleased with the healthy selections, at least.

$30 – souveneirs;  I know, I know.  We went a little crazy here, but I have to say that the items in the gift shops were not too overpriced.  We got the kid a Cookie Monster ball (this kid loves balls!), a miniature basketball hoop, stickers (his other passion!), and a tub of popcorn (with souveneir bucket).  The basketball hoop is well-made (it doesn’t have suction cups, but has a clip that fits well on doors and drawers).  We’re going to start a reward chart for potty training, which is why I got the stickers – there are 550 of them, so if he’s not potty-trained by then, I’m not sure what I will do!

$30 – gas and tolls

Total: about $250, and we can go back again once more this season.

It wasn’t the cheapest trip, but we had budgeted $300 for a summer trip this year.  When we go again, we’ll definitely pack a lunch.    Have you been to Sesame Place?  What did you think?

I just wanted to write a quick post – my ISP has been having some issues, but things should be fixed by this afternoon.

I’ll post back as soon as things are fixed.  I also wanted to apologize to Entrecard droppers – things were just too slow over the past two days to keep up; I promise to make it up to you as soon as I have reliable and fast internet access again!

Take it easy

We had a blast today – my husband took the day off, and we took the kid to Sesame Place.  I’ll write more tomorrow, but I give this place three thumbs up if you have little ones!

We have a free subscription to Sports Illustrated.  Now that it is baseball season, neither my husband nor myself really read the issues.  We have dropped back issues off at various locations in the past – doctor’s offices, the gym, etc.  I was thinking about whether or not they could be put to better use.

After a little bit of searching on the internet, I found a site call Any Soldier.  Please visit the site – the general idea is that military members overseas notify the site of their needs.  Quite honestly, I was amazed at the simplicity of some of the requests.  If you have extra razors, hygiene or sanitary items, reading material, or prepackaged food, there is a soldier that would greatly appreciate them.

In addition, many of the troops are requesting toys to hand out to the children.  I think that this is a great opportunity to teach my son about giving to others – we’re going to pick out a couple of his smaller toys (so that the troops can carry them easily) to send over.

Without getting too political about my thoughts on the war, I can easily say that I support our troops and everything that they do for us.  I want to do more then just say that I support them.

What do you do?  What do you plan on doing?

For those of you that are wondering, Bonnaroo is a live music festival that features a variety of bands.  If you want to go, it’s a little late, since it’s occuring this weekend.  However, you can still watch certain acts live (for free) thanks to the AT&T blue room.

We watched the Raconteurs earlier today, and are currently watching Les Claypool.  Metallica is playing tonight, and there are other bands performing over the weekend (Ben Folds, Robert Randolph’s Revival, and Yonder Mountain String Band are just a few).

Have a great weekend everyone!  Watch some music!

**UPDATE:  I no longer recommend Boomertowne – they have not cashed in on gift cards since the early part of May, and are not communicating with their users.  Please see this post for more information.

At the end of January, I wrote a brief review about a site called Boomertowne.  I still visit this site daily, but a couple of things have changed since that post, so I thought I would write an update.

What has changed?

1.  An individual can earn up to 1500 points a day.  Depending on how focused I am, this can take me anywhere from 30 minutes to about an hour.

2.  If you sign up now, it takes twice as long to earn prizes (older members have a different points system).  A $25 gift card is 25,000 points for new members.  You have to figure out if it is worth your time.  As a new member, that would take about 17 days.  If you can earn your 1500 daily points in 30 minutes, that is a little less than $3/hour for your effort.

3.  Once you earn a total of 100,000 points, you become a Gold member and get an additional 10% in points for the activities you complete.  For example, I get an additional 150 points for every day that I earn 1500 points.  Once you earn a total of 300,000 points, you become a Platinum member and get an additional 25% in points your activities.

4.  They do have an affiliate program now.  If you are interested, leave a comment with your e-mail address and I will send you a link for signing up.  It only benefits me (I get extra points), but I would appreciate it!

This site is legitimate.  I have received multiple Best Buy, Target, and Visa gift cards from them.  I am saving the Best Buy and Target gift cards for Christmas gifts.  We’ve used a couple of the $50 Visa gift cards for landscaping and toys.  I am currently working on getting a Wii (more on that in another post!).  With any luck it will arrive before the bad weather hits!

Do you have any sites that you visit daily to earn some extra cash?