My Debt Reduction Blog

So far I kind of like it. Looks nice, and has the simpleness aspect that I really like.

Sorry for this brief off-topic post, but I saw this on the morning local news and if your a Seinfeld fan, you might want one.

Turns out, a local company(Milwaukee, WI) actually manufacturers and sells a Festivus Pole. So if you’re on board with A Festivus For The Rest Of Us, maybe you should pick up one for the season.

Yesterday all over the blogosphere, the grand opening of mint.com made headlines galore. But at no point does it sound like something I would ever use. The first thing it asks for after you register is, bank account information and credit card information. That’s just not something I’m willing to hand over to a service I learned about only that day.

I’ve read lots of comments on the many blogs, and I’m clearly not alone. But while reading through comments, I’ve learned of another website called ClearCheckbook.com that allows you to track spending and other stuff without asking for any account numbers of your banks and credit cards. I just signed up for an account with them and will see what they’re all about.

Just a mini post. Our checking account is tapped, I don’t get paid until Friday, and we really need to do a grocery shop. The plumber bill really put a kink in the works this week. I’ve transfered $185(The total of the plumber bill) from ING, but it hasn’t posted yet. This is the tightest we’ve been in a long-long time. But in the past in a situation like this, I wouldn’t think twice about just using a credit card to go shopping. Now, I know I have to wait until Saturday to go grocery shopping, because that is when I will have cash.

A long time ago, I thought I downloaded the You Need A Budget spreadsheet for free. Today I went to see if I could get again, but see that it costs $19.95. Didn’t it use to be free?

Looks like for me they will pay interest around the 10th of every month. I still don’t know if I want to transfer the majority of savings from ING to HSBC for the gain of a few percent. I really don’t like the HSBC interface.

A couple of years ago, we gave up our satellite dish and went with basic cable in an effort to save money. For the most part it’s been a very easy choice, as we were never huge TV watchers to begin with. But there were some shows and channels that I always liked to watch. For example, as a semi-DIYer, I like watching those types of shows on HGTV.

This past weekend I went to the gym for the first time on a Saturday morning, and even though I’ve never watched the TV’s before while I was there, I saw one TV had on HGTV and it was a cool home remodel show. I unplugged from my music player and plugged in to the device that lets me listen to their TV’s and watched this show as I rode the bike. It made me realize that I do miss those type of shows. But I also thought about how I could schedule my time around some shows I might want to see.

This blog is far from popular, but I do get quite a few random hits from google for people searching for debt blog, so google has always been my top referrer. That is, until today when PFBlogs took over the top spot in my referrer logs.

If you have a personal finance blog(and I think they have a real estate category too), signing up with pfblogs.org is a must. The best part is that it’s free and actually brings a targeted audience to your site.

Yesterday our kitchen sink just stopped draining. When I got home from work I took apart the piping under the sink to see if it was something I could clear up. There was no issues with the easily accessible pipes so I tried using a plumbers snake to see if I could clear out the pipe going in to the wall. I was able to get about two feet before it would stop. I just couldn’t get to go any farther. I put all the pipes back together and tested and it still wouldn’t drain. I know the problem was beyond my tools. This morning before work I called a plumber and they were able to come out same day. They gave me a 2 hour window between 10 and 12, and they arrived at 10:38. Not bad. They were done shortly after 11 with the water draining better than it ever has.

The only difference between what they were doing and what I did, was they had a drill powered snake. And it was a bit more heavy duty than mine. I’m sure they had some skill in controlling it better also. But because they were able to get past the point I was, they were able to break through the years of sludge build up.

So there was an unexpected expense this month.

I went though all our spending from August and made a spread sheet of the totals. Some of the totals were a wee bit shocking. 19 trips to the grocery store for a total of almost $600(We need to work on reducing trips), and the other big shocker was over $1700 to the pre-school. That will return to normal($1300/month) this month. Everything else was fairly normal or even below normal.