Bloom Where You Are Planted

This month's mortgage chips were:
WF Visa $25.00
budgeted extra $13.62
wallet sweeps $10.00
Pine Cone $6.00
HauserNet $3.50

Chips for the month: $58.12

After making my regular payment, my mortgage balance is down to $175,577.08.

Chips to date: $389.94

Interest savings this month: $1.29

Interest savings to date: $5.83

Eventually, the interest savings on the chips I have already made will compound to $892.81, provided I own this house until the mortgage is paid in full.

Beginning Jan 1st, I intend to bump my automatic mortgage payment up another $5.

Cash is up.
Debt is down.
Investments are up.
Home value is up.

Yesterday I received $160 from my part-time job, which has gone off to E Fund. Inching ever closer to 2 months of take home pay.

My NFL rewards Visa statement closed yesterday. I had 10,550 rewards points available which I redeemed for a statement credit.

So, I had $1,408.15 sitting in checking with nothing due for the rest of the month. But, I have things going on. Namely, my new 6 month auto insurance premium (will be cancelling the old one with 3 months left, but still, that is 3 months out of pocket now), my new homeowner's insurance premium (will have to wait for refund from current company), the new vacuum cleaner I charged, the $75 gas cards charged at Staples (it will take up to 8 weeks to receive my $25 credit), and I am getting a 100k tune-up on the car today, which will be about $500. I don't have to cough up any of this money now, but it is only a matter of time.

Here is what I did:

$445.54 to NFL rewards Visa (balance less $105.50)
_280.44 to WF rewards Visa
__75.00 to American Express
___7.17 to CurveBall Fund

This left $600.00 in checking, so I am done.

Neither the WF nor AmEx statements have even closed yet, so the payments were VERY early.

Notice, I have ended up using my NFL rewards Visa sign-up bonus towards expenses instead of as a mortgage chip. I'm not thrilled about this, but keeping credit card debt out of my life is a higher priority.

Also, I have not sent much extra to CurveBall. But hopefully, I am making it possible to avoid dipping in next month.

I felt a bit of panic when CurveBall dipped down to $54 two months ago; it's offering more cushion now.

Yesterday I received $3 from PineCone and $3.50 from Hausernet, and have already applied those odd bits to my mortgage.

In recent expenditure news, I shelled out $165 plus tax for a new vacuum. It has 12 amps and seems to be doing a fine job. Also, I spent $50ish dollars to buy a mattress cover which protects the mattress from dust mites. My allergy doctor recommended it. After much mattress flipping and cover wriggling, MrsM180 and I successfully got the cover on my mattress.

Last week, I started allergy shots. I will be getting two a week for 10 weeks. After that, I will be getting one a week for some unspecified period of time, before I taper off further. I can't really tell a difference yet, but they said it would take awhile.

Tonight I made a trip to Staples to take advantage of that AmEx offer. I chose three $25 Shell gift cards, and expect a nice $25 statement credit. I was very tempted to get only two, and get a $25 Starbucks card as well. But, I didn't. I was strong.

An old, dear friend of mine from childhood e-mailed me yesterday. He attached some pics of the kids and I, taken 13 years ago when we were visiting him in Seattle. Oh, those sweet little faces, and arms still pudgy with baby fat. *sigh* Where did they go?

In Swagbucks news, I am really liking the new "first goals". It is much more achievable than the total goal. For me, anyway. I have hit it each day for the past 4 days. I'm going to try hard to hit it every day, for the winning streak bonus.

I thought I would start a running tab of my mortgage chips since my last refi in June 2012.

Chips to date: $331.82

Interest savings this month: $1.11

Interest savings to date: $4.54

Eventually, the interest savings on the chips I have already made will compound to $762.24. Assuming I own this house until the mortgage is paid in full, which I probably won't.

Not much progress yet, but increasing steadily.

Chip history details:

Feb 2013 - Wells Fargo Home Visa rewards, $25.00
March 2013 - WF Visa $25.00, budgeted extra $3.37
April 2013 - WF Visa $25.00, budgeted extra $3.37
May 2013 - budgeted extra $3.37
June 2013 - WF Visa $50.00, budgeted extra $3.37
July 2013 - WF Visa $50.00, ? $5.00, budgeted extra $3.37
Aug 2013 - WF Visa $25.00, budgeted extra $3.62
Sept 2013 - budgeted extra $13.62, Pine Cone $6.00, wallet sweep $4.00, HauserNet $1.50
Oct 2013 - InBox Dollars $41.53, budgeted extra $13.62, wallet sweep $8.00, wallet sweep $7.00, Dwolla $5.08, Pine Cone $3.00, HauserNet $3.00

Total: $331.82

Since my last post, I have received the written policy quote for my new homeowner's policy via e-mail. The company is Mercury Casualty Company. The quote is for $579, slightly higher than the $575 I reported earlier.

While she was at it, she went ahead ahead and quoted me auto from Mercury as well. The quote was for the same exact coverage I have now, and is $483.90 for 6 months. In August, I paid $532 to Allstate for 6 months. So I believe I will switch that to Mercury as well. Although, I do need to check if my Allstate policy uses straight-line or sum of the years digits when calculating refunds. If it uses SOTYD, it will cost more to cancel and start a new policy than it will to just let the current one run out, and switch at renewal.

I got paid yesterday, did my banking, did a wallet sweep and sent $4 off to my mortgage.

MrsM180 paid me $300 yesterday for November. I used the money to make an extra payment to my electric company. Because my electric usage has increased with 2 additional people in the house, I am expecting a large jump when my balanced-bill-pay plan is recalculated. Paying an extra $300 now means it will jump less. I plan to do this next month, too.

I used my Barclay's NFL rewards Visa to pay the additional $300, and that put my activity over $500. When I receive my first statement, I will have earned my $100 bonus. Now I just need to wait to be able to redeem my rewards, then I will close the account. Well, that and the small matter of paying them.

Yesterday I applied for a Citi Dividends Visa which offered me the same deal, spend $500 in the first 3 months, receive a $100 bonus. This card features rotating 5% bonus categories each quarter, just like Chase Freedom. If I am approved, I just may keep that card permanently, to take advantage of the 5%.

Why would I not be approved? Well, I was recently declined by the SwagBucks Visa. I could not believe it! It seems I have opened too many new accounts of late, and may need to wait for some of my hard pulls to drop off. I can't recall the last time I was declined for credit! I am certain it has been more than 20 years.

I still have a few November bills to pay, but it is looking as though my checking account sweep this month will be fat. I will leave $600 instead of my usual $500, since my 11/29 paycheck will be for 10 days instead of 11. Even so, I expect to have about $300 to sweep. It is nice to see my penny-pinching rewarded this way.

J is asking some girl to the winter formal today. He was so nervous this morning. He made a sign on poster board which reads "K, will you go to winter formal?", and he brought a rose and some chocolates. How sweet is that? How will the girl resist? I told MrsM180, I hope she says yes or he will be crushed. MrsM180 confided that the girl has hinted heavily she wants him to ask her, but he is nervous just the same. I've been working at my second job this week, so have been getting home late each night. I have missed the unfolding drama. Thank goodness MrsM180 keeps me in the loop.

Who was it who posted about the American Express offer to spend $75 at Staples and get a $25 account credit? I owe you a big "thank you"! I did not know about that link, and it certainly is helpful.

Today, I noticed I have an offer to spend $25 at Exxon and receive a $5 credit. There is a separate offer to spend $25 at BP and receive a $5 credit. I activated both offers. I know where my next two tanks of gas are coming from.

If you have an American Express card, check out that "my offers" link, pronto. Just log in to your account and look in the bottom right corner. Click on it, and view your offers. Activate any you would use and enjoy your savings.

Well, I am still waiting for a State Farm agent to contact me "shortly". So this morning, I called my current homeowner's insurance agent. She is an Allstate agent, but my policy is with another company which they also write. I told the office I had a better quote but wanted to give them a chance to keep me. They quoted me $575 for the same coverage I have now ($912), just with yet another company. This is $120 lower than the State Farm quote! I said yes, the price works for me.

Meanwhile, my mortgage servicer disbursed $912 on 11/6 to pay the premium on my current policy. I am proceeding anyway. It just means more hoops. I will have to pay the new policy, then wait for my current policy to refund $912 to my impound account, then ask to be personally refunded the $575 . For $337, I feel it is worth the hassle.

I will instruct them to keep the $337 in my impound account as I know my property taxes are about to take a big jump. In addition to the infamous Prop 13 here in California, we also have Prop 8. Prop 8 says when property values fall, property tax assessments must fall too. But when values rise, they can jump up fast to where they would have been had values not fallen.

In the last few days, I have seen some listings and sales in my subdivision which make me feel very confident my property value has risen sharply in the last 6 months. While this is good news, it means my property tax bill is also going up.

Yesterday was J's birthday, he turned 18!

On Saturday, he had 3 friends over to spend the night. All four boys seemed to have a good time. On Sunday, his dad picked them all up and they went paint-balling. I had told ex-h I would pay for it, but he reported back that all 3 guests had brought their own money, and that he would pay for J. So, that was a pleasant surprise.

For his birthday, I bought him a smartphone from Republic Wireless, and will be paying the monthly bill. The phone cost $116.55 with tax. My first bill (paid upfront) was $20.34. This is for unlimited talk, text, and data. I will be dropping him from Ting, so there is a savings there to help offset the cost.

I feel so fortunate that both of my children have enjoyed good health and reached adulthood. I know there are many parents who sadly cannot say the same. My life has not gone quite as I had planned, but this is one thing that makes me feel the universe has smiled with favor upon me.

I am home from my week long trek. We had a very nice time, seeing the sights and visiting family. I think my favorite part was the elephant seals lying on the beach near San Simeon. I have wanted to see them for a very long time, and finally had the chance.

I managed to scrape together an additional $81.23 for mortgage principal last month. Not bad.

Cash is up.
Debt is down.
Investments are up.
Home value is up.

This evening, I have an email that Swagbucks has deposited $5.00 into my Dwolla account. I logged in, requested a transfer to my bank account, and was advised the transfer will take 2-3 business days.

Since October is waning, I logged in to WF and transferred $5.08 to my mortgage. (Dwolla gave me eight whole cents during the verification process. So generous!)

Swagbucks just got a whole lot more fun for me. Currently, I have enough to redeem for another $5 Dwolla gift card. That will make a fine little mortgage chip in a week or so.

Tomorrow morning my mom and I are driving north to Redding to visit my niece. She lives in Tacoma, WA but is in Redding for a week or so. We will spend the night and drive home Sunday. Should be a fun weekend.

...I will have a lower home insurance bill. Yay!

I received my renewal a week or so ago. As always, the new premium crept up a bit from last time. The bill is $912.

This morning, after reading Monkey Mama's latest blog post, I pulled out my renewal, went to State Farm's website, and submitted a request for a rate quote. I can get the exact same coverage for $695, saving me $217.00

Since I have an impound account for property taxes and homeowner's insurance, I will not see any monthly savings now. But, when my account is analyzed and adjusted next year, I will enjoy some combination of lower monthly payments and/or a refund.

Today, my health insurance provider gave me a call to see if I would like to sign up to receive my prescriptions in the mail.

OK, this was low-hanging fruit. I should have done this YEARS ago. And I think I meant to, but just never did get around to making those phone calls.

I take 4 prescriptions. I make a trip to the pharmacy once per month to pick them up. My co-pay is $10 each, or $40 per month.

With the mail order service, I will receive 90 day supplies for $30 every three months. Yes, that's right, $30. One Rx is completely free of charge if I order it 90 days at a time. They even pay shipping.

Obviously, this must be saving my health insurance money too, or they wouldn't be calling me to ask if I want to switch.

In mortgage chip news, I received a $3 payment from Hausernet for April, which I have turned into a mortgage chip.

I received my check for $41.53 from Inbox Dollars, and it has been applied to my mortgage principal.

October bills are all paid, except for the bug man who has not shown up yet. I left $562 in checking, and swept the rest to CurveBall. The sweep amounted to $102.86, so that is helpful.

I've been doing Swagbucks for a few months now. (CreditCardFree's tutorial from last May is very helpful). So far, I have purchased 1 $5 Amazon gift card for 450 Swagbucks. What I would really like though, is to redeem for cash.

Today I noticed there is a gift card for a vendor called Dwolla. Dwolla seems to be very similar to Paypal. Dwolla does charge a $.25 fee for transactions over $10.

Currently, $5 Dwolla gift cards are on sale for 400 Swagbucks. I bought one. It will take a few days for Dwolla to verify my bank account info, and a few days for my gift card to be available.

Hopefully, one day soon I will have $5 cash in my checking account, courtesy of Swagbucks and Dwolla. It will make a lovely mortgage chip.

Last night, I met a girlfriend I hadn't seen in about 6 months for drinks, dinner, and giggles. I offered to pay. I spent $30 including a generous tip. (The place we like to go has awesome margaritas for $2. Also, the best chips and salsa I have ever had). We had a great time.

Today I am planning to drive up to Davis to see BF. I will spend the night and come home tomorrow afternoon.

Looking at my YTD on my paystub from yesterday, and looking ahead on the calendar, I see I am on track to gross $51,102.25 this year. This includes my seasonal OT and tax season bonus. It does not include my Christmas bonus, child support, or my PT job income.

If I want to continue socking away 15% of my gross pay towards retirement, I need to save $7,665.34. By the time the year ends, I will have contributed $2,550 into my Simple IRA and $3,000 into my Roth. I will receive $1,533.07 in matching funds from my employer. That leaves an additional $582.27 still to be coughed up, we can just call it $600.

(I made a 1k contribution to my traditional IRA in February, but that was for 2012).

I believe I can easily contribute $600 from my Christmas bonus, and I believe I will. I will also need to pay for gifts for my kiddos, and hope to make a mortgage chip and stash a bit into savings. We will just have to wait and see how good I have been this year. Perhaps I was more naughty than nice and can only look forward to coal.

This morning I received $3 from PineCone, which I have made into a mortgage chip.

That's it. Life is pretty exciting around here, isn't it?

Today was payday, so it was time for a wallet sweep. I had $8 to apply to my mortgage, bringing the balance down to only $176,247.01. (Yup, that was tongue-in-cheek).

Automatic savings transfers happen tomorrow, so I just went ahead and updated my sidebar totals. It is nice to have a little something in CurveBall again. If I finish October bill paying with more than $500 in checking, I will sweep any excess into CurveBall too. It needs all the help it can get.

It took about a year this time, I think.

But I have $41.53 on the way, which will make a nice mortgage chip.

I overspent $1617 for the month. My security cameras were $1590, so I am not displeased with my spending for the month. I also paid $330 to have all of the embroidering done on J's letterman jacket. If not for that, I would have come in under budget. But, it is always something, right?

Just after the 1st, my daughter paid $300 towards household expenses, which is what we have agreed. Yesterday, I received a check in the mail for $200 from my part-time job. With this recent infusion of $500, I was able to pay Visa for my security cameras without dipping into Vacation Fund. CurveBall is impoverished once again. But, everything is paid in full.

Oh, and utilities are so low because last month I ended up paying my water, sewer, garbage bill twice. So this month, I only owed $3.89.

Cash is down.
Debt is down.
Investments are up.
Home value is up.




According to Trulia today, my home value is 179k right now! I hope that is true, but I am skeptical. If it were true, I wouldn't be upside down very much (factoring in selling costs, still a bit upside down). But Redfin and Zillow are both up, too. So, the trend is exciting. Once again, I am using the average of the three values in my NW statement.

Today being payday, I did a wallet sweep when I went to do my banking, and deposited $4. It has already been transferred to the mortgage.

That makes 4 little chips for September, for a grand total of $15.12.

In the next week or two, I will have to wipe out CurveBall and dip into Vacation to pay for my security cameras.

My next check from my part-time job will be going to CurveBall, as I begin re-building it yet again. I have billed $200 for the work I did in September.

Beginning in October, my automatic transfer into CurveBall will be $400 (from $375). This was made possible by the cut to my cash allowance (also bumping up Simple IRA contributions a bit with the same cut).

I did much better this past pay period with my cash. I started with $20, paid $15 for a haircut including tip, and had $4 left for the mortgage.

I've been daydreaming lately, looking at nice little condos in various locations online. I've been calculating the size of my nest egg under different scenarios. The more I contemplate my situation, the more I think that the biggest obstacle to my dreams is my negative home equity.

I've decided to increase my Simple IRA contributions to $250 per month, which is 3k per year. My employer's contribution will be another 1.5k. Together, that is approximately 9% of my annual gross (my gross including overtime and bonus).

I will continue my automatic monthly Roth contribution of $150 per month (1.8k per year), which is a bit more than 3% of my annual gross.

If I were to continue along at that rate until age 65, and assuming I enjoy 5% annual growth, I would end up with enough to live comfortably (though frugally) in my little condo, even with a small mortgage. If I enjoy a return greater than 5%, the picture only gets brighter.

So for now, that is all I will contribute. When I receive my annual overtime, tax season bonus, and Christmas bonus, none of it will go to retirement savings. Instead, I will focus on cash savings and my mortgage. I want to be in a position where I can sell my house whenever I decide the time seems right (without touching retirement savings). I have a long, long way to go to be in that position. So, wish me luck.

I have also recently decided to trim my cash allowance from $60 per pay period to $20. Too much of that money was being spent grabbing a sandwich or a latte. It wasn't good for my bottom line or my waistline. So, I have gotten back in the habit of keeping lunch foods at work.

I received $1.50 from Hausernet yesterday, and have already turned it into a mortgage chip.

My daughter and son-in-law are going to be featured on Mr. Money Mustache!

My daughter started reading Mr. Money Mustache a few months ago, and she and SIL decided to make some big changes. She e-mailed MMM just to let him know, he responded and asked if she would be interested in being "interviewed" for a new feature on his blog, "Mustachian 180s". They have exchanged a few emails since.

No word yet on when exactly it will appear.

Isn't that cool? I know there are some MMM fans here on Saving Advice.

Tonight while I was clicking through my Inbox Dollars emails, I came across an offer for an NFL rewards Visa. The Visa card is offering a $100 bonus if you spend $500 in the first 3 months, plus 1% cash back on purchases (so $105). There is no annual fee. The card is issued by Barclays.

In addition, if you apply through the Inbox Dollars link, Inbox Dollars will pay you $15.

I plan to collect my $120, then cancel the card.

I received $6 from PineCone and have already applied it to my mortgage. I find it so handy to have my mortgage and checking account at the same bank.

Also, I have decided to bump my mortgage payment up by $10 each month. I have already changed my automatic transfer.

Not as exciting as the snowflakes some of you have been accumulating lately, but I am happy to collect whatever flakes the wind blows my way.

I decided not to file the restraining order. This decision upset my mother, and I think she may rescind her offer to pay for the security cameras. If so, that is how it goes. I love her just the same.

Cash is down.
Debt is down.
Investments are down.
Home value is up.



This month my home value is an average of the values given by Redfin, Trulia, and Zillow.

I was not able to get an estimate of my car value from kbb.com. The site has changed a bit and it seems now you must register first. I didn't want to register, so I just wrote the value down $100 and called it good.