A Savings Visual Aid

I've heard it said that the number one thing that couples fight over is money, followed closely by lack of communication.  So I guess we could logically conclude that lack of communication about money would be up there on that highly-argued-about list.

That is not the case for Tim and I.  We talk money a lot.  And being the engineering nerds wonderful people that we are, our discussions usually end in a spreadsheet being formed.  Yup.  Good 'ole Microsoft Excel, or, more recently, Google Docs.  We even have a brand-new spreadsheet we created called "What to do with any extra money."

As geeky as it may sound, this spreadsheet is great.  When any extra money comes in - tax refund, bonus, money found in a pair of pants - we look at our handy-dandy spreadsheet and decide which of those line items to spend our money on that day.  It keeps our goals in front of us - both long-term and short-term - and stops us from just blowing our money on the first cool thing we see.  Also, having this list shared in Google Docs means we can both view it at any time as well as add to it as new things come up.

Some of the things on the list are short-term:
- Special Date night
- Weekend trip with family
- Increase Emergency fund

Some are just cool wants (that we would save for and pay with cash, of course):
- ipad
- New tile backsplash in kitchen
- Mantle for our fireplace

And some are much longer-term:
- Save for a "new" car (new-to-us anyway)
- Fund our Roth IRA's
- Put extra money towards the principal of our mortgage

As hard as it is to do some of these, the hardest for me to put my money towards is the mortgage.

In one of our many discussions about our finances, I made the comment that when we put extra money towards the house, it feels like we're throwing it in a black hole.  Even though, theoretically, I know it's better off pay off the house early, most of the time it seems like we aren't even making a dent.

So my brilliant husband came up with the idea of a visual aid for us.  That way we can see that little dent that we are making and see our house getting paid off.

SO.....this is what we came up with (now remember, we are engineering nerds, not artists):

See all my little boxes on there.  Each one represents $100.  Each month after we pay our mortgage payment, we can go color in the number of boxes for the part of the payment that went towards the principle.  I even made the windows, door, toilet, bed, fan, etc. into boxes to color in.  Then came the fun part - filling in the boxes for the amount we've paid so far.

Then I put it in its permanent home - the back of our bedroom door.

So there you have it.  We now own half of the bottom floor of the house in our little visual aid.  I love it so much that we are thinking about making a similar picture to show how much we have saved towards a new car.

What about you?  What encourages you to save?

February Goal Checkup

Remember those New Year's Goals we made?  We started working on them in January.  Now it's time for our February checkup.

Personal Growth
Spiritual - After reading about this idea on several of my favorite blogger's sites, I decided to try an email accountability group.  Two other wonderful, Christian women and myself are now electronically accountable to each other.  The first one of us to do our quiet time emails the other two.  Then when the others finish, they just "reply to all" to that message.  It's working out very well.  We are able to encourage each other, tell each other some new insights we are learning as well as the main goal - to remind each other to do our quiet time.  So, with this new method in place (and God's guidance leading me to it), I'm able to say I have been very consistent with my quiet time over the last 2 weeks.

Blog - I have kept up with my blog schedule for the most part.  I have also been learning a lot about monetizing a blog (and have been sharing it with you).  I'm starting to implement some things I've learned but it is coming slowly.  I have also been trying to blog on the weekends and schedule my posts ahead.  Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

Mommy jobs - I'm coming up with a chore chart.  I haven't got it all worked out yet.  I'll let you know when I do.

Physical Health
Exercise - I'm 3 weeks into my 8 week challenge for the art of weightlifting website.  I'm eating much better, thanks to Taylor's guidance.  I've also gone 3 weeks doing 3 weight workouts a week (biggie for me).  Only 5 weeks to go!!

Food - We still haven't added a new veggie. According to our goals, we have until the end of Feb to do this.  Any suggestions??

Marriage and Family Life
Marriage - We did not have a date night this month, so we are overdue.  However, we did have 2 date lunches and my wonderful hubby took today off to be with me at a doctor's appointment.  So we did get to spend some good time together.

Family - We are still having our nightly Bible readings with our kids as well as devotionals in the mornings before school.  We had one family night in January where we watched the Lion King.  Our poor, deprived kids had never seen it. (I'm trying to show them all the good classic Disney movies before our big trip to Orlando in May.)  We also had our monthly dates with the kids.  Tim and Julie had a date sponsored by the letter M: Mexican, milkshakes and movie.  David and I weren't so alliterate, but more economical: pizza, ice cream (free with coupon), games at home.  For Feb, I'll be taking Julie out and Tim will get David.

Children
We are still working eating more veggies.  David is doing pretty well with reading. He reads us 3-4 stories a week.  We'd like to get this up to 1 story a day, just so he feels more confident in his reading. Julie has been much better behavior-wise, whether that is just because we are phenomenal parents or because it was a phase that has passed, I don't know.  I just hope it doesn't come back.

Financial
- Fully save for Disney trip - DONE!!!
- Begin saving for Disney cruise - We're on our way and the first $200 has been saved! Yay!
- Fully fund our Roth IRA - We've calculated out how much we need to save from each paycheck (every 2 weeks) to fully fund our accounts.  So far, we've been able to save that amount every time but once.  I feel confident we can "recover" that amount we missed and get them funded by the end of the year.
- Up our amount in our Emergency Fund - Well...unfortunately with a refrigerator repair, and a plumbing repair, we did have to spend some out of our Fund.  But we have already reimbursed it.  And we have a plan for adding the rest of the amount we need.  That should be complete by the end of March.
- Give to missions through our church - This is ongoing.  We are taking up a special offering on Sunday and we plan on giving to that.

Thanks for listening.  And, please, if you have any great veggie recipes that you'd like to share, I'm all ears!!

Review: Sunbeam Electric Blanket

My husband is convinced that there is no blood flow in my hands or feet.  I assure him that this is genetic.  My dad has complained about the same thing concerning my mom for 39 years.  No matter how I got my cold hands and feet, the real issue is that its hard to warm them up.  Why Tim doesn't like my solution of putting my cold feet on him, I don't know. Nevertheless, we had to come up with another one. 

Our choice - a Sunbeam electric blanket with duel controllers.  In choosing a blanket, there were a lot of options to decide. One that was a no-brainer for us - duel controllers.  I start out cold at night but wake up hot.  Tim is opposite.  This way we can keep our own sides the temperature that we like.

Of course, we wanted a blanket big enough for our bed (smaller heated throws are also available).  And I chose a hunter green to match our bedding colors.  Sunbeam blankets had the best reviews online so we felt safe going with their brand. 

So now we are snug as a bug in a rug, or something like that.

I received no compensation or free stuff for the writing of this post.  I really wish I had because I paid $70 for my blanket at Walmart :).  I just like the product and wanted to share with all of you!

What I Learned Wednesday: Networking

OK, this post took longer to write because I got so caught up in the new websites I found.  Beware, they can be addicting. 

What I learned last week was that bloggers use a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" philosophy when it comes to comments.  Comment more on others posts and they will return the favor to you.  More comments = more readers, i.e. more website traffic.

This week I explored the reciprocal relationship a little further by finding some blog networking sites.

And let me tell you

There.
Are.
A.
LOT!!

Basically you register your blog on the networking site, join communities of similar bloggers within the site, and get your name out there! 

Once again the blogging reciprocal relationship applies - you visit their blog and follow it, they will visit your blog and follow it.  More followers means more chances for advertisers and companies giving out free products to notice your little site.  Then, hopefully, your little site becomes your growing bigger site.  And that's always good :).

Several of the networking sites also provide a bridge to those companies looking for places to advertise or for people to review their products.

How do you find a good networking site (or two, or ten)?  The method I used was to visit the blogs that you admire, or that have similar content to yours and look on their sidebar.  Most authors post buttons from their networking sites somewhere on their blog.  Then comes the time-consuming part.  Start visiting the sites.  Poke around at all the tabs and buttons and find out if it seems like a good fit for you.  If it is, sign up. 

Once you do, it will take a while to figure everything out, but just allow yourself lots of time and start playing.

Here are just a few of the sites I really liked:

BlogFrog

Social Moms - all about connecting your blog using Facebook and Twitter

Mom Bloggers Club

BlogHer - HUGE networking site.  I haven't done much exploring on this one, but I know lots of bloggers are members here and attend BlogHer conferences.

One2One Network

Feel free to explore these networking sites or find some of your own.  The most important thing is to get your name out there!

How about you?  Do you have a favorite networking site that I didn't mention?  I'd love to find some new ones.

All About Me: My health

Alright, today is the day for gripes.

I didn't gripe when I told you about my best feature or when I told you about my hobbies.

So now it's my time to gripe.

Overall I'm very fit and healthy.  I work out 4 or 5 days a week doing both cardio and weights.  I try to eat well - not too many sugary drinks, mostly whole grains, not many desserts.  I'm at a healthy weight and a healthy body fat.  Yet, I still seem to have lots of ailments, most of which, apparently, I was born with.

I have had allergies and asthma pretty much ever since I was born - started taking allergy shots at age 3.  In my adult life, I was diagnosed with arthritis (yes! Arthritis at age 30 - pretty sad) and endometriosis.  Hmm, seems like I only get ailments that start with vowels.  Oh, wait, I knew there was a consonant in there - fibrocystic breast tissue - the fun one that causes painful breast lumps.

Daily, I take an inhaler for asthma; nasal spray, an antihistamine, and vitamin C for allergies; vitamin E and Evening Primrose Oil to try to prevent breast lumps; birth control pills to control the endometriosis; and calcium to combat the arthritis. Wow!  That's a lot.  And there's really no cure for any of these.

So no matter how hard I exercise or how well I eat, I will have all of these for the rest of my life.

But you know what?  No matter how annoying they are, I can still count my blessings.  I don't have cancer.  I have a healthy heart.  I can walk, talk, see, hear and breathe.  I'm not bound to a wheelchair or confined to my bed.  I am so blessed to be able to go about my day doing the things I want to do and on most days, forget I have those ailments above.  Do they bother me at times?  Yes.  Do they have the potential to get worse?  Yes.  Will I always remember that I am blessed and that there are others out there worse off than me?  I hope so.  I pray so.

BookSneeze: The Power Based Life

Read all my BookSneeze reviews here:

 
The Power Based Life by Mike Flynt

I was pleasantly surprised by this book.  I expected it to be a boring, self-help book with a lot of mumbo-jumbo about how you can attain any goal by just thinking about it.  But it wasn't!

It is an engaging read, full of real-life examples.  It's well written and keeps your attention.  The book is subtitled: Realize your life's goals and dreams by strengthening your body, mind and spirit.  Mike Flynt knows a lot about realizing life goals.  At age 59, he went back to play his senior year of football at his collegiate alma mater.  Almost 40 years before he had been expelled from the very same school for fighting and never got to complete his football career there.  Now he has.  It took a lot of power - mentally, physically and spiritually for him to go back and fulfill his dream.  He tells about the process in this book.

The book starts out talking about using your power bases - your strengths.  He says "you should celebrate the thing you do well and stop worrying about the way God didn't make you."  Once you find what you do well, there are 11 things you do to grow.  Master the basics - "Find out the most basic things you're supposed to do; then do them over and over and over until you do them perfectly."  Change your attitude by changing your perspective.  Visualize your goals.  Defy your skeptics and believe in yourself - "You have to wonder how much greatness is lying hidden in our society today simply because these men and women of future greatness are surrounded by the negativism of this world."  Be ready to commit to your goal - "Commitment is a lifelong discipline of giving away all that you have for the sake of one awe-inspiring goal."  Know the team you are playing for.  Be yourself and be transparent with others.  Turn your adversities into your advantages.  Be compassionate and merciful with others. Maximize the time that God gave you instead of focusing on the urgent.  Keep your body healthy for a long life.

Each of these power bases is covered in an easy-to-read chapter full of stories and applications.  I would say this is a great book to read for anyone considering a life change or anyone who is ready to follow their dreams.

All quotes came from The Power Based Life by Mike Flynt.

She knows the truth

My 7-year-old daughter has just passed a huge milestone.

She now KNOWS.

Why?  Because 7-year-olds talk at school. Then they come home and ask their mommies if what their friends say is true.  And then their mommies have to figure out on the spot how to respond to their questions.

No, no, we didn't talk about THAT.  Hopefully I have a few years before THAT talk.

We talked about HIM - the SOS - the Secret of Santa - of more accurately the Secret of No Santa.

Julie's belief in Santa is pretty interesting to me.  We never pushed it much when she was little.  She really didn't wholeheartedly believe until she started Kindergarten.  Then, presumably because every other 5-year-old in class believed, she came home a full believer.  Even up to this year, she truly believed.  She got the email from Santa (that mommy set up via a website), she wrote Santa a letter and got one back (also a product of mommy's imagination), she saw all 3 Santa Clause movies - and through it all fully believed that the man in red was bringing her her heart's desire.

All it took was one friend telling her on Friday that Santa wasn't real to plant that doubt in her mind. 

You see, I'm fine with her knowing the truth about Santa, but I don't want the same thoughts to cross her mind about God.  I have been careful over the years not to equate Santa with God.  I've made sure not to tell her that Santa is always watching her.  Only God has that capability.  We've made sure she knew Santa cannot be more than one place at a time (he's just really fast).  Only God has that capability.

Because if she learns that Santa isn't real and he has characteristics of God, will she equate those two in her mind and think that God isn't real?  I don't know. 

Knowing the truth about Santa is actually pretty liberating for me.  I can talk to her more openly about why other kids get bigger and "better" presents for Christmas.  I can tell her about the great deals I got on her gifts (surprisingly, she is very excited about good deals - my child all the way). 

The truth is we had a really good conversation about it.  My goal was to make her come to her own conclusion about the subject and she did.  Her biggest concern was whether she would still get what she asked for.  After assuring her that we had always gotten her the gift she wanted in the past, and that was not likely to change, she seemed fine with the knowledge.  We also discussed how David still believed and how we would keep playing the game for him, and not stop his fantasy until he's ready to.

What about you?  Do your children still believe?  What age did you learn the truth about Santa?