Money, Love, and Change

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Everything seems to be in the crapper.  With election politics heating up (and not necessarily in a good way), an economic bailout that I am pretty sure no one has a real clue about, and the American dream becoming less achievable for many, things seem to be “not so great”.

Or is it?  I think that perhaps we’re really at a turning point — a sort of reality check where those that have not been realistic about what they cannot afford need to come to terms with the consequences.  While this is happening at a personal level, I am not really sure that it is happening on Wall Street and in the government.

I know that for us, things are a lot more tight financially because we are trying to rebuild our emergency fund quickly after some major truck repairs.  But we’re really coming together as a family, mostly because I am working evenings to generate additional income to rebuild our fund.  This is an added responsibility for my husband, since he has to come home from work and take over childcare duties.

Although initially it took some getting used to, I think that this is also a great opportunity for us to really evaluate what is important in life.  I think it has helped us develop a better appreciation for what the other person is doing, since now we are both working, and both taking care of the kid alone.

We’re also very thankful that we are frugal, and can currently handle our financial situation.  I don’t need to run out and make the big $$$, but can stay at home with the kid during the day.  At the same time, it has strengthened our resolve to get out of debt, and I am working harder to generate additional income streams.

How about you?  Are you keeping your head up in today’s economy?  Why or why not?

With the holidays approaching, I’ve been on the prowl for some good deals.  Although I try to make most of my purchases with gift cards, I do like using ShopDiscover (when you make the purchase with your Discover Card, you get cash back), UPromise, and Ebates.  The basic idea with all of these sites is that you shop online through their affiliate link and earn money back.  It’s great when you’re making a large purchase, and even small purchases add up over time.

Anyhow, I just received an e-mail from Ebates - if you use this link you can get $10 when you sign up (without the affiliate link, you get $5).  I also get $10, so be sure that if you do sign up that you get your own affiliate link to share (you can also send e-mails to friends and family if you don’t have a blog).  If you sign up 2 people, you get $30 instead of $20 - this could really help out when doing holiday shopping!

One thing to keep in mind that you won’t be able to cash in your $10 until you earn at least $5 cash back from purchases.  It’s not too hard to earn the $5; for example, I earned $1.43 when I spent $13 at Dale and Thomas for a gift, and $1.14 from a $38 purchase at Lands’ End.

Between the 3 programs, I can sometimes get more money back using ShopDiscover, and I have found that Ebates usually reaps the same benefits as UPromise.  ShopDiscover doesn’t have as many stores, though.  Also, if you don’t use a Discover Card, you won’t get cash back.

The $10 deal lasts until October 31st.  Enjoy!

I have been a tutor with Tutor.com for a couple of years now - they have programs through local libraries so that students can obtain tutoring using their local library website as a portal. They also provide tutoring packages for individual users; you buy the minutes that you need, and they are good for up to 6 months. As an individual user, you can access tutors 24/7, which is a nice feature if you’re a late-night person. Each online session is as short or long as kids need and is recorded in case parents or kids want to review sessions later.

From working with Tutor.com, I can say that there is an emphasis on helping the students actually understand the material. If this is the kind of service you may be looking for, either for yourself or your child, please take advantage of the promotion code I have. When you go to the website, you can scroll down the right-hand side to the purple box that asks if you have a card or promo code. Enter the code ABISR50M in the box, and you will get 50 minutes for $1 instead of the 25 minutes for $1 advertised on the website.

Hope this helps someone out!

Edit: You can also get 25 Minutes of Free Online Tutoring in 4th - 12th grade Math, Science, English and Social Studies.  You will need a cell phone or credit card to receive the activation code, however.

Well, our Dell is still dead.  Because we had to deplete our emergency fund to pay for truck repairs, we’re not comfortable with buying a new computer before restoring our savings.  In addition, there is a good chance that we are going to have to make a trip home this month for family reasons, and we haven’t saved up for that yet.

However, we do have some data that we need to get off the old computer, and we currently don’t have the required hard drive space on the Mac.  So we decided to compromise.  We purchased an external hard drive that is both Mac and PC compatible for $95 (we will get 5% cash back, but we’re not counting that right now).  We also used an Amazon gift certificate to get the cable ($20) needed to connect our laptop hard drives to our current computer via a USB port.  I was thinking of an external hard drive enclosure, but we have two different hard drives that are two different sizes.  In addition, if we sell the laptop at a later time, the hard drive enclosure wouldn’t be worth the cost.

The external hard drive will be useful to us even after purchasing a new computer.  I think that it’s a good temporary solution until we get back on our feet financially.

Would you have done the same thing?  Why or why not?

It was an interesting weekend, to say the least…

On Friday evening, our tv and light started turning on and off on their own, as if possessed.  Upon investigation, we found that a switch that is used to turn on that particular outlet was extremely hot and making popping noises.  This didn’t seem good.  After cutting the circuit and letting things cool down,  we took the switch out of the wall.  It looked like it was from 1950 (when the house was built) and smelled awful.  Ironically, we smelled this earlier in the week, but thought it was the computer that had just died.

After avoiding an electrical fire on Friday, we hit the road early Saturday morning to look for a new computer (and stop at Lowe’s for a new switch).  We carried the cell phone with us, since we were hoping to pick up my husband’s truck on the way back - it was in the shop for an oil change and to have the brakes looked at (it started shimmying when going down hills this week, so we wanted to have it checked on right away).

On the way to the store, we got a call about the truck.  I knew the news could not be that good, as my husband used words such as “Really?”, “Wow”, and “Sure, Monday would be fine…” when he was on the phone with the mechanic.

“So, what’s the damage?”  I asked, after he got off the phone.

Basically, the tie rods were about to come off - the mechanic said he was surprised that my husband had not been in an accident - they were that bad.  We were also going to need new rotors, as the old ones had been machined a couple of times already.  Coupled with the annual inspection and emission test, along with a radiator flush, I knew things weren’t looking too sunny. The price tag?  Close to $1000.

My husband cringed as he broke the news - I think he was waiting for the four-letter words to start flowing, which is rare now that we have a kid.  But in old times this situation might have warranted at least a couple of them.

I kept silent for a minute, and then asked him if he thought they would let me use my $30 off $300 coupon.  We both burst out laughing.  Even the kid started laughing from his car seat, as if the idea was hilarious.

The way I see it (and my husband agrees), we are very lucky.  Our house didn’t burn down, and I much rather pay $1000 in car repair bills than have a husband in a car wreck.  We’re thankful that we have the emergency fund - a couple of years ago, this would have been a pretty big financial hurdle.  Now it’s just a bump in the road.

We’ll still put the bill on the credit card (to get the rewards), but will pay it off in the same day.  Needless to say, we’re going to put off purchasing another computer for a couple of weeks (at the very least).  I know that we still have a lot of debt, and are not close to true financial freedom yet, but it’s so nice to be able to laugh at things like this and easily see the bigger picture.

What about you?  Could you laugh this off?  Or would it have been a string of expletives?

It’s almost official.

We decided not to extend our warranty on our Dell Inspiron 9100 (from 4 years to 5 years) because of the cost. It would have been about $350, and we had just gotten a new hard drive, DVD drive, and motherboard while it was still under the 4-year warranty. What could possibly go wrong?

Maybe the CPU could die?

That’s a possibility. At least, that’s what the error code said yesterday. I reseated the CPU in a lame attempt that it might have been knocked loose. This process took a little over an hour and countless numbers of tiny screws, but I still got the same error message after putting it all back together (hey, at least I didn’t break anything in the process).

So here’s the question: Should I purchase a refurbished CPU for about $120 and hope that this is what is wrong? It could also be memory, but I reseated both individually to no avail, and I doubt that both of them went bad at the same time. It could also be the motherboard, which isn’t even worth replacing (in terms of cost). From what I can find online, if purchasing a CPU doesn’t work, I would have to pay the shipping to send it back as well as a 20-25% restocking fee.

We could also start looking for another computer. This behemoth of a laptop is almost 5 years old, and my husband hates it (he’s the one that is the primary user). Ideally, I would like to find a new computer, and then try to repair the Dell and sell it online.

I want to be frugal, but at the same time I don’t want to pay money to temporarily revive a dying horse. What would you do?

I am really happy - I just got myself some “free” babysitting!  I have a neighbor who is studying for a math exam she needs to pass for teaching, and I offered to tutor her.  She’s got the concepts down, but just needs some help with test-taking strategies and finding some ways to solve the problems a little faster.

For me, it’s been some time since I have tutored math, and I have forgotten how much I enjoy it.  When my neighbor insisted on paying me, I felt that it wasn’t fair to charge an hourly rate, since we discussed our kids and other topics between math problems.  So we worked out a deal where she will watch the kid (she also has a son who is close in age to mine, and the kids play well together) in exchange for my services.

This is so great for my husband and I - we really can’t justify paying for a babysitter since money is tight, but we haven’t been out on our own in a really long time (I can’t remember the last time… definitely not in 2008!) since we don’t have family in the area.

Have you ever exchanged services?  Has it worked out well?

…and it’s for a whole night!  Wisebread posted about the Super 8 promotion, where you can book a room for $8.88 if you’re one of the first 800 people to make a reservation after 8PM EST.  This promotion lasts through August 15th, and I can verify firsthand that it works.

We were able to book a room for our Arizona trip - we’ll be staying in Sedona for one night, and had budgeted $70 for a hotel room (rooms in Sedona go for anywhere between $100 - $150, and we were going to split the cost with our friends).  Since we’re just looking for a place to sleep, Super 8 will be just fine for our needs.  After taxes, the room came to $9.97 (regular price $150).

This is so great, because I’m going to take the other $60 and put it towards the car rental (see my post here on the August financial challenge).  I owe a big thanks to Wisebread for saving me quite a few bucks!

We’re back from a weekend camping trip. It was a lot of fun, even though we got rained on for a whole night and part of a day. Trying to keep a 2-year-old contained in a tent while waiting for a storm to pass was challenging, but somewhat manageable. I have made a mental note to bring more books/toys in the event of rain (we try to keep it simple, but in this case having more than a dump truck and 2 books would have made life better)!

In general, I love camping because it is so simple, and there is a lot of time for reflection. One of the things I spent a lot of time thinking about is that we’ve actually done a good job over the past couple of years making life less complicated. Now when we’re camping, it’s nice to get away from the computer and phone for awhile, and cooking over an open fire, and sleeping on the ground. Other than that, camping is really not as different from home as it used to be.  My husband and I get to spend more quality time together now, and we’ve prioritized things so that we both spend a lot of time with the kid.

Camping this weekend did strengthen my resolve to working harder to become debt free. I would love to have freedom to camp and travel more often, but with my husbands limited vacation time, that’s not possible. We’ll see what happens…

What about you? Do you like camping? Why or why not?

I was on Slickdeals.net this weekend, and came across this offer.  Basically, through 7/28, if you have never signed up for Amazon Prime before, you can use this link to get $10 off your next Amazon order when you sign up for a free one month trial of Amazon Prime.  Amazon Prime allows for unlimited two-day free shipping and no minimum order size.

This is a good deal because you can use your $10 credit and still get free shipping (usually you need $25 to qualify for free super-saver shipping).  Cancelling Amazon Prime before the free month is up is very easy as well - you can do it through your account settings online without any hassle.

The original post from Slickdeals is here if you want to check it out.  I got my son a book and Hot Wheels toy car holder for $4 out of pocket.  We’ll be saving both of these for Christmas.  If you take advantage of this, what are you going to get?