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Archive for September, 2008

US Bank

September 30th, 2008 at 07:47 pm

Put a 5 day hold on our opening deposit. I called and talked to the 800 line and the representative said they would hold all checks for 5 days for the first 30 days and then overnight after that.

DH called the local branch and they removed the 5 day hold for 30 days. I am very used to at WAMU making a deposit and having the entire amount available so this will take some getting used to.

DH made some chili verde too hot me a month or so ago. He made a 9 x 13 pan of pasta, chicken and the usual ziti type stuff with veges and we ate that Sunday and last night. I sent home 2 meals worth with my mother who stopped by to pay us for going to the dump for her (pay for the dump fee actually and she added $10.00 to it).

So tonight DH is eating some of the too hot chili verde and I am eating more of the Sunday casserole for dinner. I do not mind eating something yummy 3 nights in a row, DH does, 2 nights in a row is his limit. The rest will be frozen in a container or containers for lunch for me.

Unfortunately I have to run by the library and pay my $37.00 fine for forgetting to take my books back before my trip to NC. I also am stopping by Costco to get a couple of prescriptions.

I cleaned our 2 bathrooms and cleaned out the refrigerator. The dogs are fed and my payroll work is done for the day.



I checked flights for November and they are running around $450.00 round trip which is cheap. YD and SIL have a special formal party they want me to babysit for. Hey I figure I'd better go visit whenever they ask me and I will stay longer than one night of course! They are not coming home for either holiday, so I am going to try to go. Seriously how can I resist seeing that sweet baby.

Beautiful sunny fall day here in No Ca. Time to run errands.

I Just Gotta tell my Wamu story! Sorry DH!

September 28th, 2008 at 05:34 am

Okay so we have our IRAs at Scottrade, I have 2, (SEP and ROTH), DH has 1 (ROTH) and 401K at work.

So Thursday morning he gets up and I am in at my computer preparing for my work day in my usual sweats and T-shirt. He comes in and says, "How much trade money do I have available". I look it up and tell him....

"Buy me 200, no make it 250 shares of Wamu". I execute the trade and go about my day. Go to bed peacefully that night. DH comes stomping down the hall at 6:00 a.m. (he slept on the couch like he normally does, is right now as a matter of fact) and tells me, "It's on the news Wamu failed last night".

I told him from now on when he tells me to buy him some stock, my response will be "wamu". Of course I immediately started saying "wamu" to him the rest of the morning before he left for work. He thought it was funny the first 2 times, then started to get mad. Ha haha, I can't help but snicker even as I type this.

So anyway, that IS where we have banked for several years, but we opened an account yesterday at US Bank where my daughters bank. I stop by there anyway to deposit their checks for them (we both contract with the same hospital and they live in Reno so I pick up all our checks and take them to the bank). DH also used to do his business banking there and knows most of the women bankers, so it seemed a natural fit. They have a free checking/money market/bill paying account so it will do just fine.

It will take a while to change over everything since my Ameritrade comes out automatically and my ING accounts are connected to Wamu.

So tonight at dinner DH and I went over our spending plan to live on his salary, use mine for savings, home improvement, retirement, and our beach house rental next year (I hope!).

My work contract has been slow in paying for about the last 6 months, so it is imperative we become more disciplined with our budget.

We were doing very well until the whole NC/granddaughter thing happened, but it is going to be back to our $100.00 allowance each a month and careful spending.

I want to quit using our AMEX card at Costco, but DH is just totally hung up on the rebate, so we compromised by keeping a running total and paying weekly instead of monthly. I frequently now make more than one payment a month, but now he is on board with the idea too.

Also DH has had a separate "grocery" account, then we charge on AMEX at Costco for things that should come out of that account, but I end up paying the AMEX out of the bill paying account, so we have to figure out something for that.

Also my check is going to be 100% transferred to ING so it is not so easy to transfer into the bill paying account to cover mindless spending (AMEX again). Then when quarterly taxes are due, I will transfer the appropriate amount back into the new "bill account". Still need to open DH's new "grocery account", but I wanted to hammer out our plan first.

What to do about the Costco/Amex/grocery dilemma..... hmmm....it's late, it will come to me tomorrow.

Where is Contrary??

September 24th, 2008 at 08:17 pm

Anyone know? I still have her frugal gardening site in my favorites, but there has been nothing since October 2007 posted and nothing here.

Settling back into life. Made a huge casserole (will we ever be able to NOT make a huge casserole) with pasta, the last of the homemade tomato sauce from FIL's garden last year, nonfat ricotta and low fat mozzareela and some leftover roasted veges along with turkey italian sausage. I ended up giving a bunch to my mother. So it ended up being two dinners for DH and I and 2 lunches for me.

Today I am making a crockpot dish from the crockpot365.blogspot site. Mongolian beef. I am using the linked recipe since I did have Hoison sauce in the frig.

DH is being very cooperative with my frugal/healthy cooking (well okay healthy for us). I am making a brown rice pilaf to go with the beef and steamed cauliflower. I made nonfat milk instant choco pudding last night so we will have that for dessert.

I cut up a small watermelon for snacking, but need to run to the store today to get lunch meat for DH's lunch. He normally eats out lunch every day so this is a huge change for him. Safeway is running their deli meat in California for $4.99 a pounds, well a few of them anyway including turkey, which is what I will be purchasing.

Payroll work is finished for the day, the front is watered, dinner is in the crockpot, time to get back up and start cleaning. Being gone for 6 weeks means dusting and mopping are needed desperately even though DH did pretty good on keeping up with house pick up and sweeping doggy hair.

Beautiful sunny Northern Coastal California day!

Back to Real Life

September 21st, 2008 at 02:16 am

Okay one of the biggest events of life has happened, we enjoyed it (probably a little too much) and it's time to get back to financial reality.

I spent 6 weeks in North Carolina enjoying my new granddaughter and spending way too much money (rented a house on the sound side and another on the beach side of the outer banks, rented a car, tried to economize on food, but did eat out some.


The sunsets in North Carolina were beautiful.


DH flew out twice because he was convinved the baby was going to come early so he had to fly home and then back a week later. Okay he didn't HAVE to, but how could he miss the birth of his first grandchild?



Our older daughters came to. It was wonderful. Yes it's true, this 6 day old baby girl smiled responsively.



The first thing I did when I got home was download and balance our checking accounts and AMEX account. I paid all our bills on line. DH would call and tell me what had come in the mail. He is worthless on a computer, so that was the easiest.

Next thing... clean the master bathroom. Nothing further needs to be said. Luckily DH is deer hunting so I have 5 days to reoriente myself to Pacific Standard Time. I woke up the at 4:30 this morning, which was better than the 3:30 a.m. the day before. Trying to stay up past 8:00 p.m. is tonight's challenge.

So for the rest of the year... no spending, well except for Walgreen's for photos. If you order online by tonight and put "half" in the coupon code box, your photos are half price, but you must spend at least $10.00. I had over 200 photos to print.