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Home > Archive: August, 2011

Archive for August, 2011

Many Things

August 27th, 2011 at 02:44 am

There have been a lot of things to talk about financially, but I’ve been too tired to write about them the past several days. So here we go…

I’m not sure what I’m going to use the book income for. This round I just let it go into the joint fund so we could get school supplies. We’ll see when/if I sell the rest.

I asked for and got a credit limit increase on my credit card. Not as much as I wanted, but something is better than nothing. I won’t need it, but it’s good to have. They will be mailing me the reason why I can’t get the full increase I want.

I still haven’t moved my personal account yet. I haven’t had time yet and still aren’t sure where to put it. I like Wells online checking best out of the three I’ve had in the past. I need to check out the local credit union in town.

Husband’s last day of his part-time job was yesterday. He’s happy. And school starts Monday for him. He’s excited. I’m excited too, actually. Not as much as he, though.

We have financial aid worked out. Subsidized and unsubsidized loans cover tuition, fees, books, supplies, car loan for 4 months, and gas. It is more than we technically “need”, but this way we can have some wiggle room each month until we officially decide to sell car 2 or husband gets a part time job (we will decide on that in a few weeks). We can always pay it back if we don’t use it.

I’ve been asked by a state to file 2007 taxes… uh, I don’t owe that state taxes and I did file my 2007 taxes for the correct state. And even then I made around $10,000 that year… why would they come after me? It’s more annoying than anything.

We paid for what we hope will be the last of the vet bills this week. She was spayed and still seems like the giardia is gone. We’ve said that before, but I’m hoping it’s finally gone this time. I don’t want to add up how much we’ve spent at the vet since we’ve gotten her.

I’ve been asked a few times these last few weeks what my dream job would be or what I would go back to school if we could afford it. I don’t have an answer. We’ve been so focused on helping the family and my husband going for his dream job(s). We’ve been surviving and I’ve been taking it one day at a time. It’s hard to dream when my first priority is to get rid of debt and my second priority is to get our own place. I need to work on that.

I think that’s all. I’ve been anxiously waiting for more news from Scottishgirl all day: how her appt went and if her move to her mom’s went smoothly. :-)

Two sold and fees

August 17th, 2011 at 01:42 am

I posted four books on half.com and have sold two! I have mailed them and have $5.94 profit off the two despite they sold for $4 a piece. The $2.64/each shipping allowance covers the $2.41/each postage, But it doesn’t really cover the bubble envelope that I found at dollar general for $0.66/each. I need to find an envelope for 23 cents or less. Any ideas? The only thing I’ve found close was 35 cents but I had to buy 100 from uline.

I wouldn’t worry much if I had pricey books, but the out 41 books I looked at, only 4 of them could be sold for $1 or more. The rest were all $0.75 so far. If I can’t find packaging that would be less than 23 cents, I would really only get 21 cents profit. And what’s the point of that?

I got an email today from Wells Fargo. My personal checking that holds my weekly allowance is no longer going to be free. There will be a $7/month fee starting mid-September. Well, that is unless I direct deposit $500/month or keep $1500 in it… which is hard when I only have a $10/week allowance. Hah. So time to get a new checking account.

Although I’m half tempted to just make a “sub-account” in my joint checking instead and just use that to make my purchases. I don’t really want to open another account at this moment. What’s funny is my husband’s personal account isn’t changing, but it’s probably because he had gotten it as a student account initially. I used to like Wells, but I’m beginning to change my mind.

Also, it seems like Netflix has raised its prices, but is removing watch instantly shows – no more Up, District 9, Babylon 5… We were just going to downgrade to watch instantly only, but now we’re more than half-tempted to drop it all together. It was the one frivolous thing we were going to allow, but maybe not.

Selling Books

August 12th, 2011 at 02:21 am

I have a lot of books. Young Adult, Children, Adult, Classics College books… all sorts of books. When I unpacked them this year for the first time in a few years, I was so happy to have them. But now that I’ve looked at them for several weeks, I realized that I have favorites that I read on a yearly basis, but I have a lot of other ones that are just ok. I had kept them because at one point I had wanted to have a HUGE library where the room was 360 degrees of bookshelves overflowing with books. I don’t see that in my future anymore, so I think it’s time to part with some. Plus, I could use the extra personal funds.

I found that when I took them to half-priced books, I would get what seemed like pennies per book. I would like to try to sell them online, but I don’t know the best place to sell books. Is half.com decent? Do you have any suggestions on places or suggestions on how to sell them? I’m not interested in paperback swap, because I don’t read much these days nor do I typically find new stuff I like when I do borrow books.

Speaking of selling… I have some pretty nice dolls and Barbies that I’ve been thinking about selling. Where/how should I go about selling those?

Decision (long)

August 7th, 2011 at 02:57 am

We’ve finally made our decision.

It started with getting letters from the places that my husband interviewed at containing the multiple variations of “no”. Those were the last ones we were waiting on. His eligibility to get this type of job is up soon and since each application process takes 4 to 5 months, we’re pretty much to the limit of his ability to be hired. A year and a half he’s been applying, interviewing, getting to the top of the interview process, and then not getting hired.

So, he’s going to go back to school to get a second degree. His first degree is a liberal arts one that has no real job attached to it. It could be applied to many things, but it doesn’t help him with any specialized skills or job experience. So this one is more … specific, for a lack of better term, and has real job applications with potential for a nice salary.

It is a 4 year degree though, and the only thing his previous degree will help with is that he will most likely not have to do any gen eds or liberal arts electives. He is starting this fall with some of the basic classes at the local tech and will transfer into the university next fall. This will help keep the cost down.

He will be leaving the part-time job that he has the most hours with because they are not flexible with schedule at all. Unfortunately, that knocks our take-home pay in little more than half. He will be keeping his other part-time job, but that’s only one weekend per month without ability to pick up extra hours or shifts. He is planning on getting a student job or other part-time job in-between/after classes, but we don’t know when that will happen.

I have rearranged our budget to survive on my paycheck alone. We have already started this new tight budget for August even though he’s working through the end of it. I want to bank every penny we can before it actually happens. Once his current student loans go into deferment, we will have a little wiggle room, but not much. We will also need to take out more student loans since we don’t have anything saved up for it.

Also, we had the really tough conversation about selling Car 2. It’s his dream car and I love the freedom of having my own car. Yet, we could use the monthly payment for other things and the extra money from selling it could really be used in the EF. I don’t see us being able to put much into savings for the next 4 years. So we will be selling it. He sees the sale as an investment into his future. I see it as a necessity, even though I will end up being the one without a car again.

I have canceled my fall trip, because we no longer have much of a personal allowance or even much of a joint allowance. I know I will need clothes here for winter soon, so my money will be saved for when I feel like I can no longer stretch what little I have. My husband offered to help pay for it out of his personal, but he doesn’t have much saved up and he could use any cushion he has too. It was very sweet of him to offer to help, though.

Let’s see, what else is there to tell.

My husband is really excited about going back to school and the subject matter. It’s not his “dream job” anymore, but it’ll be interesting. Plus, he will have internships that could become a job once he graduates. He also is very happy he won’t have to stay at the part-time job as it can go nowhere promotion-wise, time-wise, benefit-wise, or even raise-wise.

I am growing a little excited. It’s change, even though it’s not much change for me. Plus, I tend to learn things when he’s learning. He loves coming home and telling me about class or what he read.

What I am not excited about is that we will be taking out more student loans. And there is no guarantee for a job at the end of this. And there is no chance for moving out; we won’t be able to afford it for the next four years or even for probably a year or two after that as we dig ourselves out of student loan debt. And we won’t be able to go to Russia for the Olympics; he’ll be full time at school then.

It seems kind of counter-intuitive to go into more debt in order to make money, but we don’t have many other options. Here’s to hoping that the economy gets better in the next 4 years so that when he completes the degree, there will be plenty jobs.