Some updates for blogland...

We had our taxes done today. We went to H&R Block...and I know what everyone is thinking, "Why would you do that? They are so easy to do yourself...what a waste of money..." (I know because I got the earful from my father). But every time I have done taxes I have made mistakes and ended up owing myself or ended up making my spouse owe money. It's just not something I'm doing myself anymore.

Anyways...We got the return it's being distributed in this way:

We paid this months (and a little of next months) Hydro Bill. That was quite nice as it was large because of the dreadfully cold winter we've had. We each are getting $100 for spending money (clothes, Wii Games, lunches out, beer, that kind of thing), we threw $100 onto the LOC, and added $20 to our EF. I will also be paying for the mistake that I made last years taxes when we did them on our own (about $260 bucks). Anyways...taxes always stress me out and I'm glad that this years are done.

Adding the $20 bucks onto the EF today brings it to the grand total of.......(drum roll)....$473.05!!!! that is sweet! I am so pleased with our progress. :) We are 47% to our first goal of $1000 dollars! Our camping trip fund currently has $43 in it or 14.3% of our (liberal) $300 goal. I have plans to start saving for a general house fund too in the next few weeks. Starting small again and building slowly.

I have started participating in a Frugal Village Challenge. It's a spare change/penny challenge. So far I have $9.11 in my spare change jar. The money I save in this jar is going to go to wards Christmas Presents. I started taking part in this challenge about 2 weeks ago. Normally I used to scrounge all our change to pay for Tim Hortons...so I'm hoping this challenge helps me to curb the Timmies addiction.

Today is my 3rd week of being a smoke free human being. I am feeling very proud of myself for not smoking for 3 whole weeks. It hasn't been as hard as I imagined it would be. I've slowly eliminated the places I smoke at and the less I've smoked the more I've noticed how gross it really smells. I've stopped smoking before for months at a time...but I've always restarted. The key for this time is to recognize situations that would make me start again and find some kind of alternative to smoking.

On the weekend I did bake. I made mini-muffins & granola bars! I was quite the Martha Stewart on Saturday afternoon. The muffins are great (they are organic oatmeal with banana).
The granola bars were yummy...although they did not stick together. I don't know what I did but I ended up with granola instead of bars. That was OK though because they were heavenly! I loved them. S gobbled them all up on Sunday night. Andrew, however, would not eat them because he 'only likes granola bars with marshmallows and chocolate in them'. Spoiled little bugger. :P So, I did achieve one goal! The other goal...has not happened yet. I've got the mailer, the items, and labels all lined up...I just haven't found her address and mailed it. I'm getting there...slowly but surely. lol.

Tomorrow we are recommitting to doing the Money Jars. We are going to do CASH ONLY for 1 month and then re-evaluate. It should be interesting. I hope we don't crash and burn like we did last time.

The big thing I have to decide now is...what to spend my money on!

I have not mailed J's item (although I did bring home a used mailer that i rescued from the recycling bin from work) and I have not baked anything. I was thinking of baking tomorrow afternoon. We have lots of frozen bananas in the freezer so I could make banana bread. Or I was thinking of making granola bars after being inspired by Saver Queens post about them. The last time I made banana bread Andrew didn't really like it but S sure did! Andrew LOVES granola bars though. He loves them and could eat them 3 or 4 times a day if I'd let him. Although he often cons us into getting them multiple times in a day. He can be quite crafty when he wants to be.

Oh decisions, decisions, decisions.

We went to the lawyers this morning and signed the paperwork to refinance the mortgage this morning. We were in and out in less then half an hour. I was quite impressed. Our lawyer is this funny old man that looks stuck in 1982. He has book cases upon book case of the old fashioned seals for businesses. He's got binders on shelves that are covered in dust and have probably been there since 1982. He still has ashtrays and smokes in his office! Anyways...I am so excited to have taken this step and I can't wait for the money to be paid out and the bills. The lenders requested that our lawyer pay out the car loan, small cc debt and of course the mortgage. After those are paid out there will be a cheque for us for the remainder of the monies (about 10K). Out of that we'll pay the mortgage penalty and the lawyers fees. The remainder will go towards our Consolidation Loan and hopefully slash it in half. By snowballing our payments onto the Consolidation loan it looks like we could easily be free of this debt in 10 months! I am going to do further figuring on all this once I know exactly how much we will be able to put on the Loan, but I'm excited!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Our EF is currently sitting at $432.05 (43% of our first goal of 1K). I upped our weekly contribution by $1 to $21 a week. I know it's not much, but it's something and every little bit counts, right? $1 a week is $52 in a year. We're going to do $21 a week for 10 weeks and then re-evaluate.

My pay was also adjusted to match the new pay scale (finally!) and so I get a bit more on each cheque now. Because of this I've upped our "Planned Spending" contribution as well from $10 a week to $18. We are still continuing with the $15 that gets deducted right off my paycheck and goes into a Payroll Savings Bond. Right now this account is for saving for our camping trip in May. After the camping trip goal is reached we will begin saving for a trip to England in 2010. S's friend is getting married and he wants to be there....so we are going to try to get all 3 of us there. This savings account is moving from the original idea of saving for house/car/stuff and is soley becoming the HOLIDAY fund.

The next step in the savings plan is to open a savings account for house repair/maintenance, car repair/maintenance and miscellaneous items that might need purchasing that are 'big' ticket items. Like all things we do, we are going to start small and then slowly increase the amount every 10 weeks. We seem to have the most success this way. Start small, watch it grow, then make it a little more as the weeks and months go by. Hopefully we will make it to a PC pavilion this Saturday morning and we will be able to set a savings account up to get started.

I've gotten rid of all the Goals I had lined up in the side bars.

It was too much and it was hard to keep up with...so instead of trying harder...it just made me stop trying altogether. I make goals that are too big and too abstract and then I can't follow them and I get confused and I will forget about 1 and then it just all falls apart. It also get's impossible because every time I post about new goals I make them bigger and better and shinier and more impossibler for me.

I'm going to start small (for real). & I'm going to keep them small (for real) and manageable (for real). I'm also going to keep them for short time frames (for real) and extend as necessary (for real).

This weeks goals (March 10 to 14) -
1. Mail item for J
2. Bake something this week (maybe banana muffins? or banana bread?)

My mind gets muddled very easily and I get discouraged very easily. Sometimes I need to see success everywhere I turn or else the things I fail at overwhelm me and throw me into a state of non-action/spending/binging/feeling sad/feeling anxious/bitching/whatevers.

After a silly series of mishaps I got my back pay cheque last Thursday. It was for just under one thousand dollars. I was quite excited to get it and dpeosit into my bank account. I'm proud to say that we paid of our Hydro Bill which had a balance of $575 on it and we put $160 onto credit cards, we each got $60 bucks for play money and we ordered in wonderful chinese food.

It is such a relief knowing that the hydro bill is sitting at ZERO now. Such a big relief.

What I did with my $60 -

Went for lunch on Friday to Subway with co-workers ($9), bought wallet ($4), purse ($5), crochet magazine ($1) and storage jar ($2) from Value Village, bought nice Spring Jacket ($21) from Value Village as well, and took Andrew, my mom and myself out to McDonalds Sunday afternoon for lunch ($16) and I still have a toonie sitting in my wallet for whatever tickles my fancy!

We also should be getting a lump sum payment before 31 March that is a result of our union settling the contract. The money we get from that will be going towards S's British Loan and paying all that off. Another relief!

This morning we made coffee. Our own coffee in our own coffee maker for the first time EVER. We got the coffee maker as a shower gift when we got married 4 years ago and we have never used it. The only people who ever used it before were S's parents when they were visiting here last year. Otherwise it just sat in the basement....looking all sad.

Last night I programmed it and put the coffee in the filter and the water in the holder and BANG the coffee started making itself at 6:40 this morning and was ready for us to take in the car this morning. It was wonderful...and best of all we did not stop at Tim Hortons and spend $4 to $10.

We're gonna load it up and make coffee again tomorrow. :)

I love camping. I grew up doing it and I can't imagine a summer without camping. S didn't grow up with and doesn't always see the beauty and splendor of camping but will usually humor me enough to go camping two weekends of the year. It's a good, fun, and cheap way to get away from the city and the busy-ness.

In the past we have never planned for our camping trips. They have mostly been spur of the moment activities or if they were scheduled in advance we never saved up for the trip. We always just went and took the money out of our normal budget or put the rest on the charge card.

Since the Gimli trip I've learned that part of what made that holiday so good and relaxing was knowing that it was money that WE HAD and that WE HAD SAVED for and that it wasn't going onto a credit card with no plan on how to pay it off. Spending your own money is way better then spending someone else's money who is going to charge you 23% interest every month.

We have made tentative plans plans to go camping with friends of ours in May. Even if they don't go, we'll still go on our own. I did some preliminary calculating and a pretty liberal budget for 2 nights camping is $300. There are lots of variables that I just don't know yet like:

• It would be less if we go with friends--splitting the camp spot and food
• Not sure where we would go so gas could be more or less
• Is firewood free where we go? Something else to factor in
• Depending what kind of camp spot we get the prices are different (electrical, non-electrical, yurt, rustic cabin)

So, these are the deets of the weekend in Gimli:

Friday - We got gas (20 voucher!) and then dropped Andrew off at Grandma and Grandpa's around 1 PM. We got to Gimli at about 2 PM and checked in. They were running a special where you got a suite, breakfast for 2 and supper for 2 for 120 bucks a night so we immediately jumped on that idea ($266 for the 2 nights). We went up to the room and relaxed. We both had showers and watched TV. S went to the beer vendor to pick up some beers for himself ($21) and got some snacks for the two of us ($7). We went for supper at 6 PM and S had chicken curry and I had the beef tenderloin. We had some drinks at supper too ($25) and then went back to the room. The hotel had free movies you could rent so we started to watch "No Country For Old Men". We both fell asleep before it ended. lol. We're old!

Saturday - We went for a late breakfast @ 10:30 ($7) and then went for a walk around town. We went to the used store (which is my favorite used store ever) and S bought 2 winter coats ($4.50 because they were 50% off). We stopped at the local coffee shop/lounge and S had a latte and I had an Apple Cider (~$5). We went to the liquor mart and i got some wine and S got a couple bottles of beer ($21). I got wine in cans and suprisingly it was quite good! We stopped at the pharmacy because I needed razor blades and shaving foam and we got a paper ($9). We watched the last Indiana Jones movie (which I thought was hella lame) and then we had an earliesh supper (we both had the beef tenderloin) and had some drinks ($20). We were going to go back to the coffee shop/lounge for bevvies but it was closed so we just hung out in the hotel lounge and had more drinks and snacks (about $30, I think). Eventually we got bored and went back to our room.

Sunday - We woke up and lazed around watching tv and checked out. we went for a late breakfast ($10) and then headed home at about 12:30 PM. We picked up Andrew and then came home.

So, the approximate total of the weekend was $420 dollars! That's $47 dollars under what we had planned to spend!!!! We rock. We used the leftover money to order chinese food on Sunday night because neither of us wanted to cook and we still wanted to have the holiday feel. lol.

We really like Gimli and threw around the idea of even moving there sometime in the future. I wish we had remembered to bring the camera because I would have loved to show you guys pictures of our experience. All in all we ate too much and drank too much and i think i gained 5 pounds while we were away...but it was all worth it.

Cheers!

I want to start a small garden this year. I'm thinking a cucumber plant, some lettuce, and maybe something else. Simple stuff. Our yard has never had a garden before. It doesn't even have flower beds. Just grass everywhere. When the snow melts I'm going to work on turning the soil in one of the flowerbeds and see how far I get.

I've never really gardened before, but I have recently kept a plant alive in my house for 2 years now so I figure I'm ready for planting veggies.

In brief...

We went to Gimli. We had a smashing good and relaxing time. We saved money because the hotel offered a kick ass deal. We came back. It was hard to do. I'll post more details about the trip another day.

I have started taking the new medication at bedtime so the sleepiness isn't as bad. The meds work wonderfully to help with my anxiety/ocd issues and I want to post more about that another day too.

The refinancing is still not complete. I'm getting ticked about how long everything seems to be taking. *sigh*

I've heard a rumor that my 1.5 years of back pay should be on this week pay cheque. I'm hoping it's true. I've got some things lined up for it, including:

1. Pay a big chunk onto our Hydro bill. I hate Hydro and $290 a month bill in the winter.
2. Pay off the Leonard Cohen tickets (yes that's right I've got Leonard Cohen tickets!!!)
3. Go out for a kick ass nice dinner (because I can)
4. Pay the remainder onto our LOC

I promise to post more on the Blog. I lose focus in life when I stop posting. It makes me sad to lose focus.