I haven’t discussed Prosper.com much on this blog, but it is a peer-to-peer lending site that I have been thinking about getting involved with. I was looking into the tax implications of peer-to-peer lending before getting started, but I guess I don’t have to worry about that anymore. This morning, I got an e-mail from Prosper – basically, if you’re a resident of PA, you can no longer lend money out or sign up to be a lender. Seems kind of sudden, despite “ongoing discussions”. I would be pretty ticked if I were more involved in Prosper. Are you...
Personal Finance
Our temporary computer compromise
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...
Saving money on our natural gas bill
We all know about some of the ways to save on our energy costs – having good windows, sealing up leaks, insulation, etc. But once that is all said and done, how can we save money on our actual bill? Until now, we haven’t worried too much about our natural gas bill. We do what we can to save on heating costs, and have enrolled in our provider’s budget plan to make life easier. The budget plan is really nice – you pay a fixed amount 11/12 months out of the year, and then pay the remaining balance on...
We’re blessed
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...
Ding Dong, the Dell is dead
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...
The Money Case
If you’re looking for a free tool to help you at your first attempt at making a budget, I would recommend taking some time to check out The Money Case. After taking a couple of minutes to put your initial information in, you are given a breakdown of your budget by percentages. After taking the time to input your actual expenditures, you are able to compare them to your budget. Good stuff! This software is very visual, with graphs that make it easy to see where your money is going. I currently use Microsoft Money, and most of the...
Frugal idea – exchange services
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...
I got a hotel room for under $10
…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). ...
August Financial Challenge
Within the past couple of weeks, we encountered 2 financial bumps in the road totaling $600. This surely isn’t pocket change, and until tutoring starts up again, we really don’t have a lot of extra money. However, I am going to try to come up with $600 without dipping into our emergency fund or vacation fund. Here’s what happened: 1. New car tires – We weren’t really expecting this one, but when we got the car emissions and inspection done, we were told that new tires were in order pretty soon. We trust our auto mechanic – they have...
Back from camping
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...
