Lots of big changes at my house...
I got accepted to nursing school! I have 4 classes left and I will have completed my RN degree. I have a 4.0 and I am loving the program.
I am working full time as a 911 response EMT. They just made me a supervisor as well. I love my job!
Last summer my husband announced he was moving out. He stated he wasn't in love with me anymore. I now know he was talking to another woman for over a year. He has an apartment across town
Well, I'm back again. It's been about 3 years since I last visited here, but about 6 years since my last blog post apparently. What have we been doing since then?
A Recap since 2015 (please see also other two intros for more info about us):
Still married, celebrated 10 years of marriage Sept 2020
No kids yet but working on it currently
Just a cat as well, no other pets yet.
We are in a rental house right now, will start saving for a house next ye
I did it! Just transferred the money and I now officially have 3 months expenses in my emergency account. I chose 3 months because that’s the waiting period for LTD if I became unable to work. I have very stable employment (federal government employee in Canada) so its extremely unlikely that I would lose my job without a ton of notice, and I would have priority in hiring for other federal jobs in that case. I have healthcare, and I don’t have a house, car or kids, so that eliminates a lot of po
September was a good month, even though I spent a bit on new furniture and still haven’t gotten my desk, or the reimbursement for it. I need to get the desk and send my boss a picture before I can be reimbursed, and it was ordered (and paid for) in August but it’s shipping internationally and still hasn’t arrived!
But wow, it feels good to just be able to buy the thing with savings and not even have to worry about floating it on a card while I wait for reimbursement!
In happier news, i
I haven’t been as intense as I should be on BS3... I have been here for over a year and still don’t have a full FFEF. Lots of reasons, but I AM saving, and I am never going back into debt! My FFEF goal is 17,500, which would be 6 months of bare bones expenses. I want to reach 3 months, or 8,750 by the end of this year.
However, I hit a milestone this week: I have just over $5000 in my EF savings account! Whoo-hoo! And looking at my budget I have a total of over $10,000 in my “short ter
I'm working on the budget for next month and things are going to be tight but doable. I may have a yard sale at the beginning of the month. I need to do a big decluttering to see what we actually have, but I think I have enough stuff to put together a small one.
I got the first bill from my ER visit before I had to see the breast health doctors and made payment arrangements with them. $765! Then the other day I got the bill for the doctors, all the tests, etc. etc and it was over $1,000! I
There's a lot of reasons. A long string of bad luck, shame... My life has been an absolute whirlwind roller coaster since I posted back in 2016.
The man I was with then, known as DH even though we weren't married and were together 5 years, became verbally and mentally abusive so I kicked his sorry butt to the curb. That left us with only mom's income for a long time. My disability was denied multiple times, so I worked with my doctors and ended up on stronger pain medications, but it enable
this means other than going to out to get food, we need to stay at home. stay away from people. limit exposure to people. crazy. all non essential businesses closing today at 5pm.
I don't know about you, but I'm getting corona-weary. I never thought I'd experience something like this in my lifetime. Previous generations had wars and unrest and uncertainty. I know 9/11 changed so much about how we lived our lives, but this coronavirus feels like it is changing our society on a more personal level. I don't know how long it will be before it peaks in our country, but I do know that how people communicate and interact with each other, for business, leisure, well-being is c
Happy New Year, fellow LLNOE'ers. We hope you have a prosperous 2020 and meet the financial goals you've set for yourself.
It's hard to believe how much things have changed for us in the last year. As a recap, we inherited money from DH's father in 2018 but didn't make a decision about using it to pay off our debts until March 2019. We used some of the inheritance to clear us from BS2 and provide the balance necessary for BS3. I was able to increase my retirement contributions to meet B
going up $10. And I don't even care. Glad I'm debt free. I don't like that it's going up but I worried about it for about 1 minute. They did not even mail me the letter they left it outside my door. cheap skates did not want to spend money on 36 stamps. lol. I just got a small raise so the rent increase eats that up. Perfect timing! I pay $685 month (new rate) which includes water and electric. still not a bad deal for an apartment in my state/county. My apartment is 420 sq feet, an efficiency.
Just a warning, if you get used stuff at yard sales, garage sales, estate sales, etc. one thing you don't want to bring home is bed bugs. One way they travel is by hitching a ride on used furniture. We had bed bugs where I work, and after speaking with professional exterminators for many months, I learned way more about bed bugs than I wanted to know. I pretty much don't take any used furniture home after learning about these critters. Ive seen apartments where a few bed bugs turned into 600+ in
So there was a leak in the a/c for the vehicle to the tune of $875+. And our home a/c needed a relay replaced when we had its annual service, so that was $245 (inclusive of the annual service fee). We did get the new dishwasher but it is sitting in the garage until after our next payday. We are putting in the application for a $40 credit on our utility bill because of the new dishwasher. Everything was cash flowed and we were still able to add some to the savings, but not as much as we want
Murphy is trying to knock on the door. Our 21-yr old dishwasher is on its last legs; we've kept it going the last couple of months while finishing up what we owed other people, but now we need to figure out what to do. We switched to using a different cycle which seemed to help, so we think something is wrong with the sensors, but even on the shortest cycle, it's still not reliable. We have $750 in the "home appliance replacement" fund that we could put towards it; there are several places th
We've planned our first debt-free vacation! We're doing a weeklong cruise to Bermuda, paid for in cash. It will be later this year. This is the first vacation we've ever done that we haven't used a credit card to reserve / pay for. It's very cool to know that we aren't going to have to pay for it, because we've paid for it! Does that make sense? We budgeted for our onboard expenses and excursions, too, and have that set aside in a separate envelope. It feels a bit surreal to have a vacati
It's been a long time since I browsed the aisles at the grocery store. I shop with a list, with coupons, with the ad, with a relatively decent plan for what we're going to eat in the next week. I look for loss leaders, stock up where I can, etc. But today I took the time to actually look at the shelves and think about how we can add some variety to our "rice and beans" but still maintain an appropriate grocery budget. My "splurge" was a box of oven-ready gluten-free lasagna noodles that came
So we've closed the BS2 chapter. BS3 is done, too, thanks to the inheritance from DH's father. BS4 - made the changes this week to bump up my retirement contributions to 15%. BS5 - well, both our sons will be done soon - one later this year and one next spring. Between prepaid college and their scholarships and part-time job earnings, it's covered (with a little help to DS-away as he's finishing). Our mortgage has been paid for years. So that brings us to BS7. We're ready for you!
Da
I emailed my long time bank with a simple question. does my savings account that pays nothing have a min required balance (Im asking because I've been moving the money out). here is their reply. the rep referred to it as a "high yield" account? LOL. it pays 0.030%... nothing. that is why I've moved it. not sure what my bank staff is smoking, but it must be some good stuff.
I appreciate you contacting us to inquire about the eSavings account and I will be happy to provide you with m
the APY will be 2.25% for 12 months... and if I open a checking account before the 12 months is up and keep $2500 in checking (making no interest), the money marking savings account can stay at the higher rate without going down.
only took me two years to finally do this. better late than never I guess. for the year it will make about $675.... compare that to the $10 it made last year. A step in the right direction at least.
Hello friends, inspirations and financial confidants,
I was working through a pile of collections statements and plugging numbers into the Debt Snowball Spreadsheet when I decided to stop by LLNOE and see what was going on as of late. It's really incredible, I began this journey in 2011 and so much "life" has happened, ups and downs, stupid and wise decisions, career momentum - everything! And it is so funny, as I technically sit here in BS2 again, it does not upset me because I've been thr
Last time I poked into this LLNOE blog, it was April 2017. I was just beginning to dive into a divorce. Of course it wasn't what I wanted to have happen, and hindsight is 20/20.. If I could go back and change some decisions, I would possibly have chosen not to get married to him in the first place. (But then, would I be where I am now having learned the things I did through that marriage.. hrmmm.. head scratcher)
But now that it has been 8 months since that blog post, I can absolutely stat
WINDFALL BLISS!!!!!!!
We had a site-wide meeting today and they were giving out HUGE checks to the top performers!!!
I was not expecting to get called up to receive a check... but I did!!!!
They called me up for being a top performer for my metrics! That check was for an amazing $1,250!!!!
While I was standing in front of everyone with this huge check, trying not to cry, they called my name AGAIN for "Best Overall Quality in the Enterprise" WOW!!!!!
Tha
