Bloom Where You Are Planted

I had a plumber visit on Thursday to fix my garbage disposal. He will bill me, so I don't know what it cost yet. I have used him before, he is an honest man so I am confident the bill will be fair.

Friday was payday. I sent $820 off to CurveBall! My budgeted $420 plus $400 from my bonus. I did a wallet sweep and sent $10 to E Fund.

We are half-way through the month, and my spending is all on track.

In non-financial news, our receptionist/secretary's mother died last week. The funeral was yesterday. Tomorrow would have been her 50th birthday. She'd been fighting cancer for 3.5 years.

I saw this reference to a dull blog on another blog I read. I thought "oh gosh, I hope he isn't talking about me".

This is so funny, I thought I would share.

www.dullestblog.com

Look over to the left on my sidebar. What do you see? Well, you don't see any credit card debt, because I logged on to bill pay and sent Citi MC $1,400.00.

It's been about 2.5 years I think, but I am consumer debt free once again! No credit card debt, no car loans, no student loans, NADA. Yay!!

Now the hard part: staying that way.

Next I need to rebuild my cash savings. This will be my focus as we move into the new year.

Last night when I saw my mom, she gave me a check for $72. This pays for her cell bill for 1 year. I would pay for her cell anyway, but I appreciate the money. I tucked it into E Fund.

We had a nice dinner.

We had our company Christmas dinner last night. Along with a nice meal and a fun time, I received a check for 2k.

What will I do with these riches? The first 1.3k is going to Citi MC. Along with my budgeted $100 December payment, that is the end of my credit card debt! Yay!! I will give $150 to each of my kiddos, and the final $400 will go to savings.

Tomorrow is my mom's 80th birthday. One of my nieces came to visit for a few days, along with her husband and 2 small children. I went to my mom's Friday night to visit. My brother showed up yesterday morning, so back I went to mom's. We had a cake and sang happy bday. Tomorrow night on her actual birthday, I will pick mom up and take her to her favorite restaurant, The Elephant Bar.

My brother has a timeshare, and plans to go to Mexico next summer. My mother wants to go. This means she wants me to go. I don't know that I can swing it. But I want to go, I don't want to be her excuse for not going. My brother says we can rent a 2 bedroom condo for 2 weeks for $773. That is inexpensive, but of course there is still airfare, meals, and a rental car. I told mom I will see what I can do, but that I don't know. I have always wanted to see some Mayan or Aztec ruins in Mexico. I also have nothing against the beach.

BF has been working with a realtor towards getting his mom's house sold. They plan to list in the spring.

We don't do a lot of gift giving in my family amongst adults. Now that both of my kids are pretty much grown, they aren't into the "magic" of wrapped presents under the tree.

So, I will give each of my kids $150. I will fill stockings with candy for my kids and my son-in-law too. I picked up a small gift for my daughter the other day, 2 pair of cute slipper-type socks with cats on them. (She loves cats). I may or may not buy similar small gifts for my son and son-in-law. BF and I have agreed to not exchange gifts.

A few months ago, son and I heard some reference to "It's a Wonderful Life" and it went right over son's head. It was then I realized, he has never seen it! Our local old-timey independent movie theatre and live event venue will be showing the film on Dec 22nd. I think that will be an awesome way for son to see this classic for the first time.

My daughter and son-in-law will spend the night here on Christmas Eve. My son will be with his Dad most of the day (since Christmas falls on a Tuesday), but will be here Christmas night. I think I will make my "chicken and italian beans" recipe which is an old favorite. (Chicken breasts cooked with italian beans, tomatoes, and garlic). I usually serve it with ranch mashed potatoes and french bread.

The newest movie version of Les Miserables will be in theatres Christmas day. The previews look fabulous! I intend to treat everyone to that, but possibly not on Christmas day. Les Miserables is one of the plays I have taken my daughter to see in San Francisco during her teen years. We were both completely "wowed" by the production. I can hardly wait to see this movie.

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

So here is how my month went.



I came in under budget on groceries, gasoline, and utilities. I "overspent" on savings and credit card debt.

"Everything Else" this month included $400 for my new fence, $31 for my new sheets, $80 for J's birthday gift, $73 dining out, and $50 to the American Red Cross.

So I am pleased with how I did. Having a nice low Visa bill was awesome! It will be low next month as well, so I should be able to "overspend" on savings again. And, fingers crossed, hopefully next month I will be able to kill my credit card debt. Our Christmas dinner is on Dec. 8th, so then I will know.

ETA: And I nearly forgot! As today was payday, I did a wallet sweep and sent off $11.00 to E fund.

...and I am doing OK with the old budget.

I did send a bit extra off to Citi MC, an extra $30.20 to be exact. This whittled the balance down to $1,400.00.

I estimated my 2012 income tax returns, and it looks as though I will net about $500. So, I did OK with my tax planning too.

I stopped at the grocery store tonight and whipped out my AmEx card for the very first time. I learned that they don't take AmEx! This particular grocery store is conveniently located, just a few subdivision blocks away. It has low prices. I do most of my grocery shopping there. So, I don't know if I will apply for that Preferred Blue AmEx card or not, the one Monkey Mama mentioned (and I think I read that CeeJay has that one, too) which gives 6% back on groceries but charges a $75 annual fee. I am going to try using the one I have (Blue) for a few months and see how much I can use an AmEx without changing my shopping habits.

I have been working on switching automatic payments to my WF Home Rebate Visa. If something falls into the "and 1% on everything else" category, I prefer to earn a principal reduction to my mortgage.

I have also been working on getting payees set up on bill pay, for those vendors who will not accept a credit card as payment, or who do but charge a fee.

I'm looking forward to whittling down the number of open credit cards I have. I want to get down to just AmEx, Chase Freedom, and WF Home Rebate Visa. I will keep my Kohl's store card open too, but that is the only store card for which I have any use. I think I am only one month away from being able to make that happen.

I do very little on-line shopping. (Heck, by most standards, I do very little shopping period.) But today I saw an advertised deal on NoMoreRack and I had to bite.

Right now, I have only 1 set of sheets for my bed. I have been wanting to pick up a second set. NoMoreRack is selling 4 piece sets of 1600 thread count sheets for $29 today! Shipping and handling is an additional $2. There are 15 colors available. I've never owned 1600 thread count sheets, so I am looking forward to sleeping on them.

On Thanksgiving, I went to my mom's house with J (son), S (daughter), A (son-in-law) and BF. My nephew was there too. We had a very nice, low-key day. We had decided to do a small dinner and spend the afternoon playing cards instead of cooking and cleaning up.

Yesterday, 2 of J's friends came over to spend a few nights, and the boys are having a good time playing videogames and D&D. In between, they "cut up" and act silly. It is nice having them and I am glad they are enjoying themselves.

I think today I may put up my artificial tree. Or maybe not, maybe that's too ambitious.

I'm trying to get smarter about both of these things.

Quite some time ago, I wrote about trying to pay utilities with rewards cards to earn more points. At the time, I was under the impression I couldn't pay either my local electric or water, sewer, garbage bill with a credit card without being charged a fee. Since then, I have learned the trick for both is to register as a user on their respective websites. I have registered with both now, and will be using rewards cards in the future.

Lately I have been using my Well Fargo Home Rewards Visa for things such as groceries. I use it instead of my checking account debit card, then within a day or two, log on and transfer money from checking to the Visa. This particular rewards card will only redeem in increments of $25, and I had $7 or so in rewards already, so I wanted to get to $25 and redeem. I'm still working on it, but I think when I get to $25 I will stop using it. The reward is 1% on everything, and redemption is a principal reduction on my WF mortgage. I will not close this Visa.

I have also been using my Chase Sapphire some lately, as I had $15 or so in rewards, and need to get to $20 to cash them in. Once I do, I will close this Visa. I opened it last year for the sweet 50k rewards pts bonus. However, this card has an annual fee of $95. They waived the fee the first time, but it has to be coming up and I am not interested in paying it.

My main "go to" rewards card is my Chase Freedom. I will not close this Visa either, but believe I am going to stop using it in favor of....

My American Express rewards card. I've had it for more than a year, and haven't even activated it yet. (!) The rewards are 3% on groceries, 2% on gasoline, 1% on everything else. That's a pretty good deal, so why aren't I taking advantage? Must be inertia.

I will still use Chase Freedom on occasion, such as when the 5% rotating bonus applies to gasoline, etc.

And I heard the other day that stamps are going up yet again. I don't have a whole lot of bills to pay by check, but I am about to have none. I am hanging up my checkbook. From now on, I will use bill-pay for all of my bills. I will still need to write the occasional check, but those will be few and far between. Most importantly, they will not be mailed.

I mentioned that the house next door to me recently sold. Zillow says it is worth 106k. It just sold for 120k. This seems like good news to me.

The man who bought the house is an investor who owns several rental homes in the area already. He seems rather astute.

The family who had owned the house previously had 4 young children. The house is a 3/2 with 1296 sq. ft. The family had made an extra room out of the garage. They had walled off, so that the garage door was no longer an entrance into the home, but the garage door was still in place. In other words, you couldn't tell from the outside that the garage was no longer a garage, yet the family had some additional living space. They did this without any permits. So the buyer knew he would have the expense of converting that extra room back to a garage. He was still willing to pay 120k.

So, I am hopeful that my home value may not be quite as bad as Zillow says. It doesn't really change anything, but does make me feel better.

My house is a 4/2 with 1441 sq. ft.

Thursday was payday. I had $28 in bills plus a full coin purse left from my allowance. I deposited $25 and sent it off to E Fund.

I paid all of the bills I have received, subtracted my automatic payments (life insurance and Roth IRA) and sent $420 to Curveball. As always, I am still waiting to receive my Citi MC statement. I had too much left in checking! I love it when I have that problem. To solve it, I sent an extra $216.17 off to CurveBall. I may send a bit extra to Citi MC too, but will have to buy groceries before I decide on that.

CurveBall's balance didn't advance too much as I pulled out money for my new fence. The new fence is in and looks great. My cost ended up being $400, not $350 as I posted earlier. I had forgotten that I have an extra section of fence which I do not share with the neighbor. The neighbor called and said he had not counted that part, but said they would go ahead and replace that too while they were at it for an extra $50. I agreed as I felt that was fair.

So far this month, I am doing fine on my budget.

When Lucky Robin asked for an update, I realized one was overdue.

I sued the neighbors over the fence. (There is a law in California that both owners are responsible for shared fences.) I lost. The commissioner (no judge in small claims) said that law could not be used to force someone to pay for a fence. This is not what I have heard elsewhere, and have had quite a few legal type people express surprise. Nonetheless, that is what happened in court. There is no appeal from small claims.

I have decided not to pursue suing for the vet bill.

As expected, they were nasty and accusatory in court. They even claimed I had trained the dogs to attack them. (A ridiculous claim.) The commissioner would not listen and instead only wanted to discuss the fence.

Since then, they have not bothered me or our dogs.

In other fence news, the new owner on the other side and I have agreed I will pay $350 towards our new fence. I am quite happy with this arrangement.

Today I discovered that if I register my MID account on their site and log-in, I can pay my bill with a credit card without incurring a fee. So, I whipped out my WF Mortgage Rebate Visa and did just that. I'm going to do it this way every month from now on.

I received a check in the mail yesterday for the Allstate Class Action lawsuit in the amount of $10.26. This amount is going straight to E Fund.

The house next door to me recently sold (unfortunately, not the dog poisoner) to an investor who intends to use the house as a rental. He has been doing work at the house, and yesterday came over and spoke to BF about replacing our shared fence. BF took his name and number and I called him back this morning. He wants to replace the fence while he has hired help on site. I said yes, I am all for it. He says he has most of the lumber we would need, can provide the labor, and has a concrete guy coming out today anyway who could also do the fence holes. He said he will call me back later today with an estimate, but he thinks we could do it for $400 - $500. So, I'm excited at the prospect of that. I share my back yard fence with 4 different neighbors, and this section is now the oldest.

My decoy mail volume is steadily increasing. I receive mail more days than not, usually 2 - 3 pieces at a time. Yesterday, I had 6 pieces.

Last night I bought J a video game he has been wanting. It is his birthday present, he turns 17 on Saturday. My baby. Where has the time gone? Hug your little ones while you can.

When I went to see the lung doctor, he did a throat swab and prescribed a cough suppressant (Benzonatate). He stated he suspects I have pertussis (whooping cough). Later I thought, but that is contagious. I have been coughing for months and I have not infected anyone. I go back in December for a breathing test, then a second time for the results. Meanwhile, the Rx is greatly reducing the coughing so that is great. The co-pay for a specialist is $40 per office visit.

I did some poking around on MID's website and I learned that Balanced Bill Pay amounts are adjusted every February. So, I will be paying $238 per month until then. I expect to have quite a large credit by then, so it should adjust down substantially at that time.

I did not make my budgeted savings contribution, using the money to cover October's Visa bill.

I'm quite pleased with how my spending went. In November, my Visa bill is going to be less than $300. I will have no trouble whatsoever with paying it in full and making my budgeted savings deposit.

My utilites were under $500! I now have credit balances on both my PG & E (gas) and MID (electric) accounts. PG & E just adjusted my balanced bill pay amount from $62 to $43. November will be the first month I pay $43. I have received my MID bill for November too, and my balanced bill pay has not adjusted yet. I currently have a credit balance of $100 odd dollars and I must pay another $238. Since we are going into winter when the bill is much lower I've been expecting it to adjust down. My Ting bill was $35.27 in October. I am loving Ting.

I ended the pay period with $16 plus coins in my wallet. I withdrew my cash allowance of $60 for the next pay period, then sent $20 off to E Fund.

Debt is up.
Cash is up.
Investments are up.
Home Zestimate is up.

So far this month my spending is in check. My mom surprised me with a $300 check towards Nala's emergency vet bill. That was so nice!

Last Saturday I took my son and daughter and we took a little road trip over to Half Moon Bay for the day. It had been a while since just the 3 of us had done anything. We really had a nice time, talking and laughing and just enjoying each other's company.

I have been coughing my deep, dry, hacking cough for about 7 weeks now. Went to my GP right away, yet another Rx which did not help at all. I called back and said I want to see an allergist, please refer me to one. My GP said she would prefer I see a pulmonologist. So I am seeing one on Monday. Do you notice how she has never referred me to anyone at all, and it is only when I ask that she recommends a pulmonologist? Sometimes, I get the feeling that it is just fine with her if I cough for months on end.

This is the second time this year I have coughed like this. I did it last fall, too. I am so tired of it.

Well, that is one little goal accomplished.

Recent deposits have included $23.50 from HauserNet, $33.59 from InBox Dollars, and $22.12 from a wallet sweep.

I even overshot $500 by $10.61, so that got sent off to E Fund.

I'm really late this month, but here it is:

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

I received $44.91 today in my Paypal account, for secret shops I did 2 months ago. I have already transferred it to Mini E-Fund. I have not received any repayment from daughter this month, nor any reimbursement from ex-h for J's summer camp last July.

I decided not to completely drain CurveBall in order to pay Chase Freedom in full. Instead, I drew it down to 1k, then did a balance transfer from Citi MC for the rest. The terms of this most recent transfer are 0% with a 3% balance transfer fee. This will increase my Citi MC balance up to approximately 1.7k, 1.6k after I send them their $100 payment.

In each of the past 2 years, I have received a Christmas bonus of $1,750. If that happens again this year, I will pay Citi MC in full and end the year with my savings too low, but no credit card debt. I will have an additional $100 per month to use towards re-building my cash accounts. It also means I will not hit my 3k Roth goal for 2012. I will have contributed 2.1k to Roth and nothing to traditional. But, I am ready to be D-O-N-E with credit card debt.

Fastforwarding to next April 15th, between overtime and my tax season bonus, I should net 4k and change. I guesstimate my income tax returns to total a 1k refund. The first $3,200 will go to my traditional and Roth IRAs. Along with my $150 per month automatic transfer to Roth, that will max them for 2013. The rest of the tax season money will go to savings.

Right now, when I buy groceries, I swipe my debit card. I also have in my wallet a Wells Fargo credit card which earns a 1% rebate towards my mortgage. I think I am going to switch to swiping the credit card instead, then transfer funds when I get home. By adding the extra step of transferring funds, I can accumulate points towards a $25 mortgage chip. I should average two such chips a year. I am online checking my balance all the time anyway, so it is not much effort to transfer funds from checking to my linked credit card. And mortgage chips do not hurt my feelings.

It is just me again at work today. The senior partner does not work on Fridays. Our receptionist is still out, and the temporary one we had over the summer went back to school a month ago. The other staff accountant is part-time. She was been coming in every day to help (she and I have to absorb the receptionist's duties) but had no work at all today to do. Fridays are slow, so it seemed silly for her to come in just to answer a phone call every hour or two. Plus, while I do have work to do, I am pretty current on everything, so nothing is pressing. I told her I could manage fine, there was no need for her to come in too. Well, the junior partner cracked his tooth last night. He came in at 8, called his dentist, and the dentist said come on down. So, he left and doesn't think he will be back today. He told me to close at noon if I wanted. That sounds like a plan to me.

I am paid by the hour, kind of. I am paid for 8 hours per day. I am not paid extra when I work more than 8 hours (except during tax season), and I am not docked when I work less than 8 hours (including our half-day Fridays all summer long.)

Most pay periods are for 11 work days. There is the occasional 12 day (hoorah!) and 10 day (boo!) pay period.

I budget based on 11 day pay periods. So if there is extra pay or less pay, it impacts my checking account cushion, but not my budget.

I have recently enjoyed a 12 day paycheck. However, I am about to experience three 10 day paychecks, in a row. This is unprecedented in my little world. And more to the point, this shortfall is going to have to come from somewhere.

I have just received my Visa bill, ridiculously large this month (car insurance, emergency vet bill, and new lap top in addition to regular charges). I had been thinking I would pull from CurveBall to cover it. Along with my budgeted $420 CurveBall deposit in September plus the $400 + utilities I would normally pay that would just about cover it. But wait, this assumes I receive the income I have budgeted, and I am not going to receive the full amount of income.

Bleah! I do not want to transfer a single additional cent to Citi MC, but this is what I am facing.

So it's going OK without Mint. I am finding Wells Fargo's budgeting tool to be less than ideal. It has preset categories, and you cannot edit them or add new ones. You cannot split a single transaction into more than one category. And you cannot import any transactions from any account which is not a Wells Fargo account. So I'm not going to be using it. Instead, I just used Excel and entered all of my cleared transactions into my spreadsheet (I summed them in the column to the right of what you see here). I had to do this for both my checking account and my Chase Freedom Visa.

I changed my "Visa Allowance/Everything Else" combo to "Gasoline/Everything Else". They still total $600.

August was so ugly. "Everything Else" includes $623 for the emergency vet bill, $558 for my car insurance, $406 for my new laptop, $110 for J's yearbook, student ID card, & gym clothes, $71 to file my small claims suit and have the defendent served, and $47 in medical copays.

I am starting September with an almost full tank of gas.

My office was closed yesterday too, so I am enjoying a nice 4 day weekend.

Yesterday I went to get my eyebrows done. It had been 2 months and it was time. I have a girlfriend who has 2 small children and we just don't get together like we used to before she had children. We go together to be threaded and use the time to catch up. She reminded me that the last time we went, she didn't have any cash and so I paid for both of us. I had forgotten that. So, she paid for me yesterday. So far, my cash allowance which must last until next payday 9/14 is still untouched.

On Friday, my paycheck was for 12 days. I was pleased, until I looked at the calendar and saw both of my next paychecks will be for 10 days.

Also on Friday, I did a wallet sweep and added $15 to Mini E-Fund.

My daughter texted me yesterday saying money will be tight this month, so was it OK if she repaid me another $120 instead of the remaining $240. I agreed. That will go into Mini E-Fund and then it will be back to $500. I believe I will begin adding my small deposits to E Fund.

Tuesday is my daughter's 22nd birthday. I will be taking her out to lunch on Monday to a mid-Eastern restaurant. They serve the most delicious sun-dried tomato hummus, as well as a chicken dish made with saffron and grilled veggies. That is what I will be having.

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

Firstly, Nala is doing very well. Here is a pic taken this morning:



And just for good measure, here is a pic of Bree, taken one day when BF had left his laptop on the couch. I guess she was checking her Facebook page.




I have decided to sue the mother (homeowner) for the fence and the son for the vet bill. I don't expect to win on the vet bill, but I am going to sue anyway. While the burden of proof in criminal court is "beyond a reasonable doubt", civil court is "preponderance of the evidence". Hopefully he will realize that if he is accused a second time, there is even more circumstantial evidence against him. I want this incident to be well documented, in the hopes there will be no further incidents.

Mini E-Fund is coming along. Recent additions include $14.25 from a wallet sweep, $11.20 from a secret shop, and $7 from Beezag.

I bought myself a new laptop last week. My old one was failing regularly, requiring trouble shooting and restarts. It was getting to be an every single time I turned it on thing. I bought a fairly nice Gateway laptop for $406 including tax.

I played around with Future Advisor some more, then decided to ignore their advice. I still like the tool, I just prefer the excellent investment advice available on The Bogleheads Index Forum! I did alter my target allocation slightly. Here it is:

25% Total Stock Market Index
10% Small Value Index
10% REIT Index

20% Total International Index
5% Small International Index

15% Total Bond Market Index
15% TIPS

And lastly, Bobbie Bushman is no longer blogging! She wrote a final entry, basically stating she no longer had the time to keep up her blog. I will miss Bobbie's entries. For now at least, the blog can still be read.

Yesterday as I was getting ready to leave work about 5:15, BF called and said "Where is your vet's office? We need to meet there." Nala (my nephew's beautiful yellow lab) was vomiting and seemed to be dizzy. She was slobbering and wheezing. Her head was soaking wet with some sort of chemical (BF thought it was pesticide, the vet said it was gasoline). Here is the thing: this happened to her in our yard. There are no chemicals, no pesticides, no gasoline in our yard. She went out the pet door the picture of health and was back inside 5 minutes later, vomiting and in obvious distress.

The good news is, she is doing much better now and it seems she will make a full recovery.

The bad news is, the vet bill was $624.53. They washed her eyes with a rinse, put her on an IV, and did some blood work. They kept her about 6 hours, then said she was OK to go home. They gave me some meds to keep her tummy settled so she doesn't vomit.

My conclusion is, the charming gentleman next door has made good on his threat to poison her. This is also eerily similar to the poisoning and death of my daughter's cat, which happened just a few days after said neighbor threatened Nala. I called the police and two officers came to the house. They took our statement, then called in to get a report number. Then they went next door to speak to the neighbor. I don't know how that went, but I suspect he simply didn't answer the door. He wouldn't answer the door to speak to the two officers who came out when he called to report my nephew was playing his music too loud, so I don't think he would answer the door when I called the police on him.

I am so disgusted. What a revolting human being he is.

I am definately suing his mother now, for her half of the cost of the replacement fence on our property line. The dollar amount she owes me is $630.

In other news, I read recently on the Boglehead's Index Forum that if you log in to your Vanguard account from a third party site (such as Mint or Future Advisor) and your account is hacked as a result, it is your problem. This caused me some concern, so I have deleted my Mint account. Wells Fargo has a budgeting tool on their site. It is inferior to Mint, but I am going to figure out how to make it work for me. As far as Future Advisor, I deleted the link to my accounts and then just plugged in my holdings manually. I will have to update it myself, but it will still analyze my holdings for me.

I need to post pics of Nala, Buster, and Bree, our canine tribe. Nala is beautiful, Buster and Bree are mutts, but so loyal and sweet-natured.

I stumbled upon this free planning tool recently:

https://www.futureadvisor.com/signin

and wanted to share in case anyone here is interested in giving it a whirl.

You link to your retirement account(s), kind of like Mint, or you can manually enter your holdings. You enter how old you are, how much you are saving annually, how much you earn, and how much income you want to have during retirement. It calculates your odds of success and makes recommendations. It is similar to Financial Engines.

I have played around with it a little. I wouldn't consider all of the recommendations, but I did consider and decide to implement some of them.

Note that Future Advisor is a fan of low-cost index ETFs (also available as funds). I am also a fan, so this is a good fit for me.

Some of its recommendations:

-Have 9% of portolio in REITs, an additional 9% in foreign REITs, for a total of 18%! I think that is too much, and I don't want to invest in foreign REITs. I did however buy some VNQ, Vanguard REIT Index. I am passing on VNQI, the foreign REIT index.

-Buy some ETFs in my Simple IRA. Um, I'm not able to buy any ETFs in my Simple IRA. I don't see anyplace where I can input this information, so I can't get any recommendations which are actually possible. If I bought the fund version, I would be paying additional fees since the amounts in each recommendation would be much less than 10k. Also, I have to pay an annual custodial fee per fund, so I prefer to have just 1 fund. I did sell Target Retirement 2030 in favor of Total Stock Market. This was a good idea. TR 2030 is composed of 3 index funds. To rebalance, I needed to know the percentage of each. By holding only 1 index fund, I have eliminated this step. I should have done it this way from the start.

-Sell my VXUS (Vanuard Total International) in favor of VEA (Vanguard Tax Managed International). A tax managed investment inside a tax advantaged account? This perplexed me for a while until I noticed that the expense ratio of VEA is slightly lower. A-ha! They are trying to save me a litte money. I haven't done it, though. VXUS has a bit of mid and small, VEA doesn't.

-Add some emerging markets. At first I rejected this idea as I know my VXUS holds some emerging markets. I examined its holdings and saw that it has only 5% in emerging markets. I had thought it was more than that. Since it has only 5%, that means about 1.25% of my entire portfolio is in emerging markets. That did seem too low, so I added some, although less than the recommendation.

-Sell small cap value in favor of small cap. Hmmm. Maybe. I haven't done this.

-Add a large value and an international large value. I did add a bit of each.

-Reduce bonds. This is probably the recommendation with the most impact. I considered for a few days, then I did it. The tipping point for me was looking at the amount of bonds in TR 2030. It is less than the amount of bonds I had.

So that is how I spent my Happy Friday afternoon this week.

Would you consider it? If so, what countries would you consider, and why?

According to International Living, there are places where an income of $800 per month will provide a comfortable lifestyle. If the area is scenic and local infrastructure is in place, yes, I would consider it. Especially if my income is such that I could afford to travel back home to visit every few years.

So this is something to keep in mind as I plan future vacation travels. Two countries which I think I might want to investigate are Uruguay and Ecuador. A conversational Spanish class might be a good idea.

Last week, I did 3 more secret shops. These required an initial cash outlay, but I will be reimbursed plus paid $5 each. All 3 were for the same fast food chain. There are more of these shops available, but I am done eating their food for now. The free (after reimbursement) meal is part of what makes the shops worthwhile.

My daughter has repaid $260 of the $500 I lent her. As you can see on my sidebar, Mini E Fund is looking a little more healthy these days.

Beezag is in some sort of transition. There are no new videos available. I received an e-mail about this and was asked to cash in my points. I had 7,226 pts, and was able to redeem 7,000 of them for $7.00. I hope that the other 226 follow me to their new site, but who knows what will happen? The e-mail was rather vague.

My son J started his Sophomore year today. Last Thursday at orientation, I shelled out $110 for his student ID card, his yearbook, and a new set of gym clothes. Today I sent him off with a $40 check for his lunch account, and $5 in case he needed to ride the city bus home, or buy a cold drink if he decided to walk to a friend's house. (Neither of these things would cost $5, but J will only spend what he needs to spend.) His best friend from last year is going to a different high school this year. Last year they would walk to the friend's house and I would pick J up after work. In return, I would pick up the friend in the mornings and drive him to school.

And it was a welcome surprise, too. It is not a large raise, it equates to an additional $60 per month in take home pay. It is going into savings.

In other good news, I was able to buy my replacement car remote battery for $1.38. Thanks, Lucky Robin! That was a great tip.

I have been thinking about my circumstances, and I have decided to make no mortgage chips whatsoever at this time. Instead, I will focus on increasing my cash accounts and my Roth. Now, paying my mortgage online makes it difficult to resist rounding up a bit. To avoid this temptation, I set up an automatic transfer for my mortgage payments. They will be paid on the 5th of each month, without a single extra cent.

So here is my budget for August and going forward:

Utilities are over again. I expected this as the charge for my early termination fee posted. I expect it next month too, because this month I switched from AT & T internet to Comcast internet, and they will bill me $120 for a modem. Why would I do this? Well, even though I am paying $48 some months and $58 other months for high-speed internet, that isn't what the test says. The test says I am getting less than 1 mbps. Less than 1! No, thanks. My new Comcast internet is much faster (haven't tested it, but it is a noticeable difference) and I will be paying $33 per month, but plus taxes I think. So I will save the cost of the modem in 6 or 8 months, and then be ahead. And much better service all the while.

Still need to improve on groceries, or admit that I can't and budget accordingly.

Everything else this month is just 2 items, my car registration ($138) and my garage door repair ($168). I needed a new spring. I could have replaced only the broken spring for $116, but it seemed smarter to replace its twin at the same time. I went over, but I did not pull from CurveBall to cover either of these.