My Personal Finance Blog

I'm not too impressed with the new site.
Pretty user unfriendly.

The personal loan is no more! In light of the fact that I will be dealing with a 25% pay cut, I paid it off. And good riddance!
Now I'm debt free except for the mortgage.
And it feels really good!

No-spend days : 21

February Eat-In : 26 points

$20 Challenge : $64

Sodas : 39

No-Spend Days = 10
February Challenge = 12 points
$20 Challenge = $44
Soda Consumption = 20

Just made another payment to the personal loan. The new balance is $3429! Yippee!

Well, I messed up and went out to lunch with a friend today. So , there's no way now that I'll win the Feb. challenge.
On the upside, I've had 2 NSDs this month.
Today, just wasn't one of them.

Went to the feed store today to get a bag of Strategy-GX for the boys. Got a five and 2 ones in my change.

February $20 Challenge = $7

A few posts back, I mentioned that I was putting together a collection of my favorite recipes to give to my nieces.
Frugalgal suggested that I post some of them.
Before we get to that, let me tell you a story.
Somewhere in New England there are two restaurants in close proximity to one another. One of them, a health food restaurant, put up a sign in front of their door. The sign read, "Eat here and live longer!"
The other restaurant, a barbecue joint, not to be outdone, put up a sign of their own.
It read,"Eat here and die happy!"

Just wanted to let you know, I'm with the barbecue joint.


This is a recipe that I found back in 1998 on a Newsgroup called rec.food.recipes.
African Chicken Stew
Yield: 4 servings
1 Tblsp Oil
1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts or thighs(I like to some of each)
1 1/2 C chopped onions
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 28 oz. can whole tomatoes,undrained, cut up
1/3 C creamy peanut butter
1/2 Tsp chili powder
1/2 Tsp salt
1/4 Tsp crushed red pepper flakes, or not
3 C cooked rice
1 C dry roasted peanuts

Heat oil in dutch oven or large saucepan over medium high heat until hot. Cut chicken into one inch pieces. Add chicken, onions and garlic; cook about 5 minutes or until chicken is browned and onions are tender.
Stir in tomatoes, peanut butter, chili powder, salt and red pepper flakes. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer 35 to 45 minutes.
Serve over rice and sprinkle with peanuts.

January's over. Yay!!!

So how did I do?

Sodas for the month = 53
That's fewer than 2/day

Purge 30 things in 30 days = 49
I completely forgot to keep track of the score.

20 Dollar Challenge = $244
Rebates, sale of CDs, 1 & 5 dollar bills that I try to never spend.

Family Cookbook - Got all my recipes into the Cookbook software. Next, I have to start formatting the "look" of the cookbook.
And I promise I'll post a few recipes in February.

Personal Loan - Paid $163 extra

Mortgage - Paid $100 extra

Groceries - $280 Guess I still need to work on this one.

Still too much snow and ice to be riding or driving my horse. Praying for an early Spring.

I recently stumbled across a website that is dedicated to money and debt quotes. There's a lot of food for thought there.

I think I've pretty much met my soda goal. Some days I have two, some days I only have one. Maybe I'll just give it up completely.
Nah, probably not. But it sure is nice not to feel completely addicted.

1 Coffee maker
1 too-big dog harness
1 stuffed animal
2 more dust catchers

All the above are destined for Goodwill.

30 Cds - sold!!

Off to the city, again. Gotta get those rebate checks to the bank. I'll be dropping off the purge items at Goodwill. Need feed for the horses, too. The good news, to me anyway, is that my friend is driving so I won't be burning the fuel today.

Let me try this again.

I had to make a run to the city today to run some errands. Stopped at the mailbox on my way home and found no one, but two rebate checks!

Both from HughesNet. One for $100 and one for $40. The big one gets added to my 20 Dollar Challenge and the little one will get Mountain Man and myself 2 tickets to the Draft Horse competition at the National Western Stock Show on the 23rd.
I'm stoked!

Brings Challenge to $115 for the month.

So far so good on the soda intake reduction.
It's not that I don't like water, tea, juice, etc. , it's mostly that I miss the fizz.

I made my monthly payment on The Loan today; sent an extra $165. I'm determined to be rid of that debt by the end of the year!

Still rummaging through my recipe box to see what will wind up in the cookbook.

Purge 30 in 30 Update:
5 knickknacks
2 pieces "junk jewelry"
5 T-shirts that I just don't like
1 wind spinner thingy
2 household items

All going to Goodwill - Points = 22.5

I've spent the last couple of days working on my cookbook. It's a collection of my favorite recipes that I plan to give to my niece and great-nieces for Christmas this year. A time-consuming project, to be sure, but it's fun to do.

I added $7 to my 20 dollar challenge today.
Brings my total for the month to $15.

It's snowing. We're only supposed to get a couple of inches, but tomorrow's high will be 17 degrees. A good excuse to stay in and not spend any money.

I've been busy today. Cleaned the corral, filled the trough, move 9 bales of hay(with MMs help), cleaned the house(definitely not thoroughly), and found 5 items for the 30 Day Challenge.

Also found a quarter when I went to the dump! WooHoo!

It's 3:33pm and I just opened my first soda of the day.

Today Mountain man and I spent the day at a friend's house and I learned how to play dominoes. Good friends, good times. Doesn't get much better than that.

Update on Soda reduction: Only 3 today! My goal is 2, but 3 is better than my previous habit. I'll try to do better tomorrow.

Thanks for the warm welcome to the group.
Y'all make me feel like this is a good place to be.

Today I start to work on my diet soda habit. My short-term goal is to drink only 2 cans per day(down from 7-9). I do believe I'll notice a reduction on my grocery bill.
Now, if I can just motivate myself to quit smoking...

Well, here it is. The last day of the year and the first day of my blog.

I'm hoping to help myself get on track (and, hopefully, stay there) to pay off a personal loan and accelerate my mortgage payments. And while doing that I am going to really get serious about saving money, too.

Right now my debts are:

Personal loan: $4344
Mortgage: $108251

My goals are to pay off the PL by December 31, 2010 and to put $100 extra towards the mortgage.