My DH and I went to the Marriott last night for our free night. It was a very nice hotel with lots of granite, plushy king bed and lots of amenities. The wonderful buffet breakfast they serve was $15 each so we decided to skip that as we had succumbed to an in-room movie which was $14.95!! We went home and I made avacado, cream cheese and sprout sandwiches and a salad...to me anything with avacados is a treat!
RENTAL HOUSE PROGRESS. We have decided AGAINST the expensive rental house as everyone we talked with wondered about our getting $1,800 a month rent here in Kansas. That is a very high dollar house for this part of the country. We may lose the $1K we put down as earnest money...hope not, but that would be better than getting in over our heads. At noon today we went with our realtor to see two other repos that cost about $75K each with other houses in the neighborhood on the market for $125K. Either would rent for around $1,000 a month so either of these would probably better meet our needs for income in retirement. I hope we don't lose the $1,000...ouch!!!! Again, we had to make the decision to purchase quickly since we discovered the house on the last day of the bids. I am learning that making FAST financial decisions can be costly...S-L-O-W DOWN QUEEN!!!
MAIDS CAME! Our "Maids" came today. That's my term I use for when DH and I clean the house. Pretty much everyone I know in my neighborhood has a cleaning lady and I did for a few months about six months ago, but I never could see spending $100 every two weeks for something we could so easily do ourselves so I gave her up. We pretty much keep things picked up so when we are ready to clean we set the timer for 30 minutes. He vacuums and I do everything else. In that amount of time (total one hour between us), we can clean our entire first floor which is mostly where we live. Later this week I will set the timer for 20 minutes and we'll clean the basement. We never use the second floor unless the boys are coming home. When the boys lived here, with all four of us, in half hour we could pretty much clean the entire house.
STILL COUNTING! I am still writing down my numbers...all income and everything we spend in a little memo pad I carry in my purse. It is AMAZING the difference this makes. We have only been on this new financial way of life for one month but we have MUCH more money at the end of the month then we usually do. I am also tracking things in MINT.COM.
I get nervous wondering if I can keep this up, but then I remember my DA program teaches me to do the right thing, JUST FOR TODAY. When you live right one day at a time, the tomorrows take care of themselves.
Thanks also for everyone in this blogging community. Reading your stories gives me good ideas and also ammo against our consumption-oriented society.
The Maids Just Came...
January 31st, 2011 at 12:49 am
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