I'm hemorrhaging money!

The countertops were installed today. I knew the cost, but I wasn't expecting so many extras. We paid:

$3883.03 - approx 60sf of granite countertops & backsplashes
$300 - new granite sink
$150 - plumber to reconnect sink, disposal, and dishwasher (DH and I are double plus unhandy)
$60 - tip to installing crew

Plus, yesterday my car battery decided to die. So that cost $75 for the tow, and $150 for the diagnostic and battery (I had it towed to our local shop since we thought it as the alternator or starter). The tow won't be reimbursed by my car warranty since there was no warrantable repair. I'm thinking maybe DH and I should look into AAA service.

To cap it all off, we can't use the kitchen for 24 hours. So we have to eat dinner out tonight. I'm not quite as broken up about this one. :-)

DH and I had talked about going to see Invincible at the theater this week. Our local theater offers $5 tickets to all movies that start before 12:00pm on the weekends.

Unfortunately, DH slept in and we missed the early show. I figured it would be OK to go to a regular matinee because I had a reward pass for a free ticket.

However, when we got to the theater they wouldn't honor my reward pass for a movie in its first week. There wasn't anything else I wanted to see.

I wanted to just forget the movie and try again next week. DH wanted to just cough up the extra money and stay.

I'm really trying to stick to my frugal guns, and it chaps me a bit to pay twice as much for a movie I could just see next weekend.

DH was excited to see the movie and just wanted to go ahead with it since we were already at theater.

So how did it get resolved? DH decided that he wanted to use his pocket money to buy the tickets for us. How he decides to spend his pocket money is none of my business, so I thanked him for the ticket and we saw the movie.

It was a lovely film. And it would have been just as lovely next week at half the cost!

Ah marriage...

Well, I finally got my report back from ChexSystems. It was showing a report for "Account Abuse" from NetBank.

I have a vague recollection of opening a NetBank account in 2002. What I think happened is that either the terms of the account changed or there was a "catch" we discovered, and we never wound up funding the account.

I called NetBank and they researched it. They found that our account was charged off with a $20 balance back in 2002. They think it was some kind of inactivity fee associated with us never funding the account. They seemed kind of mystified that it had been reported, since it's under their normal threshold for reporting to ChexSystems.

The gentleman I talked to said they had filed a deletion request with ChexSystems to have the report removed, which I thought was very nice. It's supposed to take up to a month, so I guess I'll double check with them in a month.

A constant problem for DH and I is boredom. It's just the two of us, and sometimes there isn't much to do. We moved out to the far West suburbs of Chicago, so getting into the city is not always practical or pleasant. There are some fun things to do around here, but many of them are more family-focused.

Anyway, we get sick of movies and book stores, so we occasionally try to branch out into something new.

I had seen a few months ago that the Boston Pops were coming to Ravinia, which is a summer concert venue on the North Shore. I figured, what the heck? Let's do something different. So I went ahead and bought pavillion seats to the show.

It cost a fortune! In total, we spent:

Show tickets and processing fee: $67
Gas from Montgomery to Highland Park: $20
Parking: $10
Dinner at Mirabelle--Ravinia's ridculously over priced but very good restaurant: $85
Umbrella (surprise monsoon): $18
2 Waters for DH: $6

Total for 1 evening: $206!!!!!

Of course, there were ways this could have been cheaper. We could have gotten lawn tickets for $27 (though with the rain I'm glad we didn't). We could have had a picnic instead of Mirabelle (though again with the rain I'm glad we didn't). We could have used offsite parking and the shuttle (yet again, with the rain I'm glad we didn't). Still, I feel kind of sick adding it all up!

...That was my fortune from lunch today.

What the heck is that supposed to mean?!?

We're having a strange week at my house, and I realized I won't be cooking a traditional dinner anywhere this week.

Last night DH had to work late, and I was out and about, so I picked up a salad on the way home.

Tonight DH will be home, but he won a drawing for a free pizza and appetizer from Lou Malnati's and it expires tomorrow, so we're having pizza tonight.

Tomorrow I'm meeting with my friend. I'm sure we'll grab dinner at the mall (out of my pocket money) and DH will either work late or fix himself something.

Thursday he's got a business dinner, so I'm on my own again. I'm sure I'll just have leftover pizza or something else at home.

Friday night we're going to see the Boston Pops at Ravinia, so we'll eat there. Right now I'm thinking of packing us a picnic to enjoy on the lawn before the show.

I can't believe I'm not cooking for a whole week! At least my grocery bill will be cheap next week.

Well, I got out for about $76 today, which isn't bad, but isn't what I was hoping for either.

There were a few budget busters in the mix, including $2 for 1 whole cup of chopped pecans and drink mix that was $2.39 a package. On the whole, though, I think I got a lot for my money.

I really need to start pushing water as our main drink. DH can put away a lot of soda or Crystal Light without even really realizing it. I think what I'm going to do is start bringing a pitcher of ice water to the table with dinner. I bet he'll drink it if I put it in front of him, which will save me tons of soda & drink mix!

One habit that I noticed and will now start trying to break is automatically grabbing 2 of something off the shelf, even though I only really need one and they're not on sale.

I also picked up a frozen pizza this time. DH and I like to order pizza, and I'm wondering if this might be an acceptable substitute. At $5 it's sure cheaper than the $15 - $20 we wind up spending for delivery and it's got less calories. Hopefully it does the trick.

We got away really cheap this weekend, partially due to circumstance and partially due to frugal choices.

Friday was $22 for sandwiches and ice cream.

Saturday we didn't spend a thing. I had to work for the whole day, then we babysat some neighbor kids. They fed us, and the mom even slipped me a $20, which was nice but unnecessary.

Today we had Panera for $20, emergency drinks from the local gas station (mom dropped by and I had not been grocery shopping) for $11 and pizza for $20.

So, total for the weekend was $73, $53 if you count the $20 from Saturday. For us, not bad!

The one thing that keeps coming up is that DH used his pocket money to pay for the sandwiches on Friday and everything today. I know the "rules" of pocket money are that we can spend it on anything we want, no questions asked. Still, I worry about him being too profligate with his spending money and them coming up short on something he wants. Or worse, coming up short and deciding to charge it. I'm really not sure how to handle this one.

I thought I'd get all ambitious today and open an HSBC.com savings account to use for our emergency fund since they've been strongly outperforming ING.

I was merrily filling out my information, only to be declined for the account! The reason given was based on a CheckSys report and had something to do with my "personal banking history".

So I call HSBC, and all the guy can tell me is that they have the name NetBank and something about account abuse!!!

So I call this NetBank, and they have no record of me. I ordered my report form the CheckSys people, and until I get that there's really not much I can do.

My mind is swirling with all sorts of unsavory possibilties. Identity theft? Some kind of unholy clerical error that's going to take weeks and hours of phone calls to straigten out?

What a bummer...

I'm pinch hitting on a work project this weekend, so that's going to keep me busy for at least today, and maybe some of tomorrow. Oh well...

We went out last night for dinner. It was so great to get away from my laptop to relax! We spent $22 for sandwiches and then ridiculously over priced ice cream at Cold Stone. (Yum!)

I'll be spending the whole day in today, so I don't think we'll be spending anything. We're watching a neighbor's kids tonight, so we won't be going out. Today should be a cheap day!

We might get out Sunday depending on how much I get done today. There's a little local festival going on. Our town is too small for it to get crazy-expensive yet, so it might be a nice time without having to spend too much money. Other than that I'm sure we'll get lunch somewhere, and maybe dinner. Not sure yet. I usually don't mind cooking Sunday dinner in.

I need to get to the store very soon! The fridge is nearly empty. Not much you can fix with Bisquick, condiments, and pudding cups!

OK, I'm dating myself here, but does anyone remember that Blind Melon video for "No Rain" with the little girl in the bee costume wandering around, and fitting in nowhere? And then at the end she finds all of her other bee people and she can finally be herself?

I feel that way here, like I've finally found my people!

I made my WalMart run today. I didn't do too badly. I got the requisite TP, plus dish soap (I forgot about that. Consumer Reports rated WalMart's powder very highly, so I wanted to try it out) tissues, a vegetable steamer basket (that I've been wanting for a while), a silicone pastry brush (paid for with my pocket money), and a very cool microfiber cloth made by Orange Glo. It's basically like a reusable Swiffer cloth. They made it to go with the Orange Glo system, but it fit on my Swiffer just fine. Now I don't have to buy replacement pads anymore! You just throw the cloth in the wash! I was stoked! All in all, I got away for $30, which is pretty good for a Wally World run.

I also got to go 10 rounds with my bank today. I've decided that since my grocery store (Woodman's) only takes debit cards, I should just switch to a cash envelope for groceries. So I went to the ATM today to take out our monthly grocery money and our weekly spending money, and it was over my transaction limit!

So, I went in and spoke with the teller. She gave me all kinds of runaround as to why they couldn't change it, why I shouldn't change it, etc. Then, a manager happened to be walking by. I asked, and it took him 2 seconds to approve it! Why couldn't we have just done that at the beginning--for heaven's sake I was only asking for a $100 change! I've banked there for years and always have more than enough in my account to cover it. Why all the rigamarole?

I've just got to say how much I like this community. I belong to another large message board, and they have a sub-forum for people interested in finances. I feel like I always have to censor myself there. There's a vocal, whiny contingent that consider any acknowledgement that someone might have more money than them to be "holier than thou" bragging. They're kind of foul-weather friends. It's OK to be down in the dumps, but it's not OK to share even a modicum of success. It's just no fun to be there--I was so glad when I stumbled into this site!

It's so great to be able to speak freely here! I'm so interested in this and it just feels so great to be in a like-minded community.

And people are so friendly here! They seem to go out of their way to pat each other on the back. This is just a very nice place to be!

Yesterday was an OK day. I got a call from DH that afternoon saying he wanted to go play poker with some buddies, which was fine by me. Since I was on my own for dinner I got myself Chinese food. Yum!

I think I need to make a Wal-Mart run as we're dangerously low on TP (other things I can made do without, this, not so much!) I really don't need anything else that I can think of, so my goal is to get out of there with ONLY TP. Let's see how well that works...

I also think I'm going to take myself out for lunch today with the last of my pocket money. I'm jonesing on a hamburger!

I fixed dinner in last night, and the evening went off without a hitch. Plus, my work situation is getting better, so it's nice to have that stress gone.

I've got dinner planned for tonight and tomorrow night as well. I'm trying not to have to go to the grocery store this week, so I've got to be a bit strategic about how I use everything.

Tomorrow is payday, which I always enjoy. I think I'm going to have enough to cover the countertops without having to dip into savings, which is great! Also, we did pretty well in Vegas last month and came in under budget. I was grateful for that as well.

The other thing I'm working on at the moment is trying to keep costs for our upcoming LA trip under control. I figure there's plenty of sight-seeing I can do pretty cheaply while DH is in sessions. We're making a side trip to Disneyland. We've used our timeshare points for the room, so that's covered. I have one park ticket for free from Hilton Hhonors, so I just need to make up the other one. Right now I'm thinking I'm going to use the reward points from my Disney Visa. I think that should just about cover it. I had hoped to use that money for meals, but I still have a $100 gift card, and the rest I'll just pay out of pocket I guess. I think I can make it work!

Well, we ordered in sandwiches, because after an unexpectedly horrid day of work I just couldn't make myself cook. Plus I still had to keep working all evening.

On the plus side, I used my pocket money to pay for them, and I still fixed the beans as a side dish, which means I had enough left over for me to eat today. So it wasn't a total disaster, I suppose.

New money challenge to deal with. We own Disney's timeshare - Disney Vacation Club. We've been very happy with it, and find it quite cost effective for what we want out of our trips.

There has long been a rumor that they were going to be building a new resort at the Contemporary hotel, and it's starting to look very strongly like that's coming to fruition.

I would LOVE to buy some points there. I haven't seen a point chart yet, but I'm guessing around 75 or 100. I'm sure this property will be extremely popular, which would make it a challenge to get in there if you're not an owner. Also, given it's popularity, I'm sure it's not going to be cheap!

I'm guessing the new point cost will be over $100 a point, and I doubt DH and I will want to buy enough to qualify for an incentive. So, we're looking at a $7,500 - $10,000 purchase price. Yikes!

We have a small add-on contract that we would likely sell off if we bought at the Contemporary. I'm guessing we would probably net about $4,000 from that sale. Luckily small contracts seem to be selling quickly and for good prices.

Sooo, we would need to make up anywhere from $3,500 to $7,000. Time to start brainstorming for ideas!

Did you ever notice the Google ads on top of the page? They crack me up! I love the way they attempt to relate to our content.

So today's frugal goal is just to cook dinner in--no spending on takeout or delivery. I'm fixing franks & beans w/mini corn muffins (DH's choice). I've got a fresh pineapple I'll cut up to go along with it--that and a veggie should be a good meal.

In anti-frugal news, I think DH and I are going to go ahead with the lawn fertilizing company we had come out last week. For approx $250 a year they'll do all the fertilizing, weed control, lawn insect control, and aerating. The fertilzer and aerating alone would cost about $170 for us to get them ourselves. Plus, we just both hate lawn care!

I wonder if I could talk DH into trying to recoup some of the money. If we ate dinner in on Saturday night about 8 times and put that money toward the lawn service, we could offset the costs. Interesting idea--I'll have to talk to him about it.

Yesterday was not an inexpensive day!

I made brunch at home to try to keep costs down, but we wound up going out for a late lunch. We got away for $26, which I guess isn't too bad, but I wish I'd been able to convince DH to do something cheaper like a sandwich shop. I'll have to try harder next time.

For entertainment during the day, we did an AM Feature of Talledega Nights at our local theater (Which I enjoyed quite a bit more than I was expecting. I went mostly to make DH happy.) All weekend movies starting before noon are $5. I can't believe I only just discovered this! It makes the movie issue much easier--DH loves going to the movies, but I'm usually not willing to spend the money. This is a nice compromise.

We also went to the library, where I checked out a copy of The Tightwad Gazette to look through. I'm not a complete devotee, but I've gotten some good ideas from her.

We came home in the early evening, and wound up ordering Giordano's (expensive Chicago-style pizza) for dinner. So there's another $30 gone. Next time I'm going to push harder for us not to order soda--DH likes having it with his pizza, but I would do better planning ahead and buying it on sale or convincing him to drink iced tea or lemonade. Not ordering the soda would have saved about $5.

Is anyone else seeing a theme here? Sometimes it really feels like a battle to get DH on board for the little things. There's a good reason I handle our money! He means well, he's just much more apt to spend at will than I am. I have to work hard to balance what we both want out of life. Honestly, sometimes it does wear on me, because I feel like I'm doing all of the work. But I guess no marriage is perfect. We'll keep working on it.

The other thing we bought yesterday is a new sink for our kitchen. The countertop company is coming in to do the templates for our new granite countertops on Wednesday, and they needed the sink so they can cut the holes for it. We wound up getting a granite sink, which I think will be durable and attractive. It should last us a long time.

Looking forward to the week ahead, my goal is to have us eat in Monday - Thursday. I bought a lot of groceries last week, so I should be able to skip this week's trip to the store. I need to update the "menu"--I keep a list of all of the possible entrees I can make with what I've got on hand posted to the refrigerator door. DH gets to pick what he wants for dinner the next night, subject to my approval. (Do I have a spoiled DH or what! LOL!)

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Updated for today. We spent $17 on some bad takeout. We've ordered from this place before, and this is the first time they've let us down. Can't say we'll be rushing back.

I made up the menu, and DH picked dinner for tomorrow night, so I think we're on track there.

In other news, we saved ourselves $150 today by realizing that while it's not perfect, there's really nothing wrong with our kitchen faucet and there's no reason to go out and buy a new one.

Salacious title, but that's how I feel sometimes.

While I'm interested in living frugally, I'm not always as disciplined as I would like. I'm very grateful that DH is as sucessful as he is, because I wonder how well I'd do if I were actually pinching to make ends meet.

I really want to get to a point where I'm spending more mindfully. I have some bad habits I'd really like to curtail.

1.) Eating Out. This is probably our biggest budget-buster. I have no problem with us eating out in moderation, but we've exceeded our budget more than we've made it. Ideally, I'd like to have us eat in during the week and save our money for the weekend.

2.) Want It, Grab It syndrome. I'm getting much better at this, but I still have a habit of grabbing things that I want, but could easily live without. I used to have a policy called "cart purge" where I would stop right before the checkout and remove at least one thing from my cart--usually more. I need to reinstate that.

3.) The Most Popular Girl in the World. Otherwise knows as generous to a fault. Sometimes I get carried away and I give more than I should to people. Sometimes it's motivated out of a sincere desire to make someone happy. Other times my motivations are tinged by old insecurities--I'm sure if I spend hundreds of dollars on a party for them they'll like me, right?

4.) Financial Bulimia. I have a tendency to get ultra frugal, and then snap and do something like book a last minute weekend getaway--to the tune of $3,000! I would like to get on a more even, moderate keel.