I thought I was prepared for winter. I took some steps to winterize my house, we’ve added insulated curtains, and have been wearing our smart wool socks we got for Christmas. But now I hear that according to Punxsutawney Phil, we’ll have 6 more weeks of winter. Thank goodness! I can’t wait for Spring to get here. I’ve already mentioned how my back is tired from all the shoveling, now my wallet is ailing from the high electric bills. I don’t know what the first thing you would do if you got a $485 electric bill, but the first thing I [...]
Read MoreEnergy
On the heels of Debt Defier’s commitment to attempt a cash only month I have a food related experiment that I am doing for September. Hopefully, the Debt Defier has better luck with cash only spending than I did. I will be attempting to buy only ingredients for the whole month of September. I know that might sound a little vague, but here is the idea…buy only items that are naturally occurring and can be used to make meals. The goal is to cut out things like crackers, chips, expensive veggie burgers, and ice cream to increase my intake of [...]
Read MoreI have admitted it before, The Rockette have never lived on a formal budget. The closest we come to real budgeting is what I label retroactive budgeting. This is when you come up with reasonable spending amount for the different categories like groceries, clothing, entertainment, etc. Then at the end the month you compare the actual totals to your suggested limits. When we were in the midst of shedding our 70k in debt, we did this almost every month. As the debt shrunk, so did frequency of our retroactive budgeting. I have been trying to decide whether this is a [...]
Read MoreConsider two similar working mothers: one who wants to get out of debt because a few of her friends starting getting our of debt. The other woman decides to get out of debt, so that she can provide a more secure environment for her children by quitting her job to pursue a life goal of staying at home full time. If you had to bet on which one will succeed at becoming debt free, which one would it be? Maybe the example is too simplistic, but I hope the point is clear. Having goals is very helpful, but having purpose [...]
Read MoreA funny thing happened as I was about to get in the shower this morning, I noticed that there was a little definition to my upper abs. I am not talking about a Muscle and Fitness 6-pack here, but maybe a 1-2 pack developing! You’re thinking “big deal”………the trick is that I haven’t worked out in months. How did I do it? With the ingenious invention of rubber and air shown on the left. That’s right, I started sitting on a plain exercise ball at work(not the odd contraption to the right). The transition started when I got tired of [...]
Read More
