Thursday, January 31, 2008

That movie...

So yesterday Kyle from IT was at my desk to help with some computer issues I was having. He said, " You know that movie with Meg Gibson and the field with alliens and then water with cups all over." I said, " Yeah." Not sure the name of this movie, but I knew what he was talking about.
Look at your desk. Wow! I had styrofoam cups filled with water everywhere. I probably had about 9 cups total. What a waste!!
These are cups that are placed by our water cooler for you to use. They are just so darn handy. I didn't always use them. I previously have a plastic glass I drank water from, but it busted. So for about 6 months I have been using the stryrofroam. Until today.... I am happy to say I brought in another glass and will be using that from here on out.

Organic Housekeeping

So I was just on one of my favorite sites http://www.thenest.com/ Money Matters board and was recommended this book:
Organic Housekeeping: In Which the Non-Toxic Avenger Shows You How to Improve Your Health and That of Your Family, While You Save Time, Money, and, Perhaps, Your Sanity (Hardcover) by Ellen Sandbeck (Author)

So I just made an online purchase for this at http://www.amazon.com/. I could of probably purchased this at a store, but I have to say I love online shopping. I never usually pay for shipping and one less trip for a busy mom is totally worth it! Plus a shopping trip to purchase a book eventually leads to purchasing several unnecessary items.

Another book that seemed to be interesting was Organic Body Care Recipes by Stephanie Tourles, so I decided to pick that up as well. I'll post reviews of the two after receiving and review each for a period of time.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Just opened an ING orange savings account

I just opened an ING savings account a week ago and have to say the interest rates beats all the brick and mortar banks in my area. I have been looking into ING for awhile now and decided to go for it. I wasn't sure about the whole online only, but so far so good. It's super easy to navigate the site and set up automatice transfers.

I opened the account with a referral and as long as I deposited $250 upon opening. ING gave me a $25 referral bonus.

I have had to call Customer Service once to get something updated and it was great service. You can e-mail me at ikenik8@aol.com if you need a referral!

We plan on using this savings account for specifically vacation money and you can't find that interest rate at most banks.

Our Money Mistake

One thing that I totally regret is that we ended up selling our first home.
We put a lot of heart into that house and I believe it would of been a better decide to keep it and rent it out then to have sold it.

The area where the house is located is on another busy street and is oh so changing. There are new business going in and the downtown area expanding north. If I could go back I would still own it, but at the same time it was nice to have some extra cash to refurnish our new home.

So owners of the Charming Yellow House with much character, let me know when you are ready to move!!

First step to Green living

A few months ago we switch out most of our light bulbs to the energy efficient compact fluorescent. They use less energy and are suppose to last 7 times as long. (One of these bulbs burnt out within a month. We'll just call that a defective bulb for now.)
I'm happy to say we did notice about a $15 difference in our electric bill. I'm not sure if the light bulbs were the only fact or if other things came into play also.

Although this is only one thing at least it's a start and we hope to add more to this overtime.

Coupon Clipping

Like I stated earlier I was never one to shop around or coupon clip.

Over the last year I have really gotten into this. I think it all started with our New Parenting classes that we took at the hospital before we had our first child. We received so many free samples along with coupons. We were told how expensive it was to have a child. I cut every coupon and placed them in an envelop. I would check to see once a week what these coupons expiration dates were and use them before they had expired. I had quit a stock of diapers, misc. baby toiletries, and food before our daughter Bailey arrived.
I continued to do this with everything I bought. We received the daily newspaper, which I would look in Sunday's and clip the items I needed.
Before you knew it I was saving a $1 here and $2 there.

I then added on online coupons. Some sites I love are:

http://www.afullcup.com/upload/cmps_index.php?page=coupon_generator

http://www.redplum.com/

http://www.everydaysaver.com/?gclid=CLj0lcyg2YwCFQKsIgodZlNzEA

One of the best deals I have received:
Target at one time had a coupon $1 off the purchase of two Gerber items. I was able to purchase baby food for as little as $.02 a container. Yes, that's right $.02. I totally stocked up on as many as I could for that price. Now that is saving money!!

Welcome Landlords!

So being a Landlord is not easy. Initially there was a lot of cleaning, painting, a few minor updates to both homes regarding furnace and electrical.
The hardest part of the whole rentals in my opinion initially was going to be getting them rented and then screening your renters.
#1 SCREEN YOUR RENTERS

After placing signs 4 rent in each yard we were flooded with phone calls as many as 7 or more calls a day. The homes are on busy streets within our town, which was a great bonus. There were so many calls, so frequent that we just could not keep up. I'm sure we missed calling some potential callers, but we were doing the best we could. We received calls from all ages, with and without jobs, and one person wanted to rent the house and run a fortune telling business out of it. Within 2 weeks both units were rented with full security deposits and each with a 1 year lease signed.
We didn't have to pay a single mortgage payment out of our pockets which was great, but we had instant cash flow with both units. Our mortgage lender said, " You will cash flow instantly, let me know if you back out of purchasing."

Even though I was not on board at first this was one of the first great money decisions we have made.

Rentals

Having rental property is something we both wanted to be a part of. Our long time goal was to overtime establish a good set of properties so that I could manage them and not have a full-time job after we decided to have children.

The summer of 2004 we purchased two homes. The first was a 2 bedroom 1 bath home with a side yard. The second was a 3 bedroom 1 bath home with pretty much no yard. It does have a small shed on the lot for storage.

Upon walking into the rentals I was so grossed out I wanted to run out the door! The small home had been vacant for 1 year. There was Chinese lady bugs covering the sides of all rooms. There was bugs and dust everywhere. It was a smaller home with potential, although I did not see this, luckily my Isaac did. The larger of the two homes was rented by a family of 5. The showing was on a hot summer afternoon. The family was at the house at the time of our showing. They had no window's open, sheets covering the windows, and almost seemed as if they were hibernating during winter time. There was food pieces all over the kitchen, dirty dishes on the stove and sink, and junk everywhere. I remember one memeber of the family wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up! I thought I was going to die in shorts and a tank top. Isaac and I decided to talk after we seperated from the realator. I said, "Noway, would I ever buy those." He was in the total oposite mindset. I was in complete shocked. After a week I said, "What the heck to we have to loose and was up for the challenge, but said we'll buy one of them."

The houses were owned by the same person and they both shared the same lot. They gave us an offer we could not refuse for both houses.

Welcome to the Landlord world!

Buying our First Home

In 2004 we decided renting was not the way to go. It was just like throwing money away and never getting anything in return. We decided to purchase a home that I had previously rented and had lived in for 5 plus years. The mortgage combined was less then what we both were previously paying for rent. So we were saving money monthly, plus eventually our money would come back to us.
Our goal for this property was to fix it up slowly while living there and eventually rent it out or try selling for a profit.
In a 3 year time frame we had redone almost everything.
Refinished the original hardwood flooring.
New flooring throughout.
We gutted out the kitchen and did a total makeover.
Repainted every room.
Put new sidewalk in the backyard along with a new fence.
Reseeded the grass.
It was a lot of work, but it was also fun at the same time.

I'm hoping to be a future flipper some day!!

Why I decided to jump on the blog bandwagon?

Everyone is blogging these days... except me! Well that's not quit it, but it feels like it.

I have decided to concentrate and share some of my money saving secrets and my families mission to start living a more Green lifestyle.

I have not always been a person to save money, cut coupons, or even try to find the best deal. It all started a few years ago. My then boyfriend, now husband, Isaac and I decided to start an add-on CD together. We opened with $100, which eventually grew to thousands within a few years time frame. Saving money to us started to become somewhat of a game. Our whole goal was/is to be very comfortable when we retire and we have been working towards this goal every since.