Officially an investor

So, I am officially an investor. After the discussions on my posts about my money mistakes and my decision on whether or not to pay off my car loan, I’m sure you can all tell that this idea makes me a little nervous. While on our vacation, though, my husband and I met with a family member who is a financial professional and he convinced us to take the chunk of extra money we had (from a windfall, not our summer savings cushion), as well as a small monthly deposit, and to invest in a good value fund. He suggested we do this outside of a retirement account, while at the same time maximizing the match on my 403(b).

The reasoning was pretty simple: I could put money in my ING account and it would be better than paying extra on my car loan at less than 2%. Even factoring in the risk of having to replace the car, paying down the car is not a great financial decision. The student loan, on the other hand, is something I’m less sure of. It’s a HUGE loan, and the interest rate is 7% on a big chunk of it (the average rate is probably closer to 6). Even factoring in tax deductions, it’s hard to make enough to cover that, and while I can’t possibly total my masters degree (it’s done and in the books, thank goodness), debt still incurs with it some degree of risk. What scares me even more is that we were told that we should keep the investments out of a retirement account so we have the money when we want to buy a house. Aren’t we planning to buy a house in 3-5 years? Doesn’t that make this a terrible place to put our down payment money? I don’t like to repeat my mistakes?.

But, the idea of investing got my husband really reved up. He was excited about it, and numerically it was a pretty sound decision. In fact, he was so psyched that he seemed more willing than I’ve ever seen him to start making and sticking to a budget, so as to allow that contribution to steadily increase as our income does. Since it is “found money,” and a small amount per month, since we have an emergency fund, and since we can probably afford to do it while still paying a little extra on the debt or socking money away in money market accounts, I decided I was willing to try it. And since I can do math too and given our ages, I see the potential growth of this, I am starting to get excited too.

Carnivals this week

This week, I had posts in two different carnivals.

The Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted by Broke Ass Student included my post on Food, Money, and Love. I also enjoyed

The account of the relationship between dieting and money at Living behind the curve.

Mr. Credit Card's question of whether we are spending too much time on personal finance

and The Financial Philosopher's take on enough.

I also took part in the Festival of Frugality, hosted most charmingly by Mr. Credit Card.

Some posts to check out:

Reduce Air conditioning Costs

Personal Finance Garbage

Enjoy!

Clean your whole kitchen with baking soda and vinegar

One way to save money and help the environment is to use less toxic alternatives for cleaning. I find the best cleaners to be baking soda and vinegar, which can do an amazing number of different cleaning tasks around the house. To help you discover their true power, I drafted this how to plan for cleaning your entire kitchen using only baking soda and vinegar. This is a pretty intense kitchen cleaning, and not everyone will need every step every night. Order is somewhat important here, so read the whole thing before you start so you know what steps to skip.

Before you start, make yourself a spray bottle with a mix of vinegar and water. Proportions are not exact: my rule is a little vinegar to a lot of water. :) Keep this handy.

After dinner:
1. Put a pan of vinegar in the oven and turn it on to 200 degrees fahreneheit.

2. If you have any very dirty pots and pans, particularly any with crusts on them or food stuck to them, put a little baking soda in the bottom and cover with water. Put the pots back on the stove and turn on your burners to bring the water to a boil.

3. While the water is boiling, wash the rest of your dishes. I confess that I use a dishwasher for my tableware even though I know it's a hot water hog (you could, by the way run this with baking soda for detergent and vinegar for rinse aid - but I don't). The dishwasher saves my sanity. Anything that isn't going in the dishwasher, wash in the sink. . . Again you could use baking soda for this - but I don't.

4. When the water in your pot is boiling (probably halfway through your dish washing), turn it off and let it cool. Scrape the bottom a bit with a plastic spatula to make sure the crustiness came off. Once it's cool, wash the pot in the sink with a sponge or rag, it should be very easy.

5. Put a bowl of vinegar and water in the microwave and heat it for 90 seconds.

6. While the vinegar is heating, sprinkle osme baking soda in your sink and scrub it a bit with a sponge or rag. Don't rinse it down the drain yet.

7. With your spray bottle, quickly wipe down the counter with a rag or towel. I use yesterday's dish towel and take out a clean one for the dishes every day.

8. The vinegar should be heated. Remove it from the microwave (if you are congested or have a headache, give the hot vinegar a sniff. Woo!). There should be vinegar and water droplets on the walls of your microwave. Use your towel to wipe it down.

9. Pour the vinegar into the sink, using it to wash the baking soda down the drain. It may foam up in your sink, which will help clean, and the baking soda and hot vinegar will keep your drain clear. Rinse the sink with hot water and dry it with your towel.

10. Drop the (increasingly dirty) towel on the floor. Spritz the floor with your vinegar solution and move the towel around with your foot to polish the floor. Give any incredibly dirty spots and extra spritz and come back to them. Now put the towel in the wash because it's probably pretty gross. I find that if I do this quick clean a few days a week, I very rarely need to do a serious mop, which I consider a serious pain (and for which, by the way, I do use vinegar).

11. Turn off your oven. Leave the vinegar tray in there; it will continue to evaporate. In a few hours when the oven has cooled, wipe down the vinegar droplets as you did your microwave.


Voila! A clean and healthy kitchen.

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Popular Searches

I thought I'd respond to some of the most popular searches that bring people to my site. I wholeheartedly admit that I stole this idea from Dawn at Frugal For Life

"I am grateful for all the money in my life."

I just want to say how awesome this is. It goes along with the concept of having enough. I do believe, with all my heart, that when we acknowledge the abundance in our lives instead of complaining about things, that more good will come into our lives. This is something I need to work on too, and may well write about more in the next couple of days.

"How much money Associated Content"

The short answer is, not much. I'm not sure if they changed their pay structure or if my writing got worse, but I was making about $13 per article last summer, and now I get about $5 per exclusive article I submit. I tend to submit non-exclusive content, namely my favorite blog articles, and for those the pay is usually closer to $3.

"Savon new prescription gift card offer" and "Pharmacy Coupons New Transferred Prescriptions"

To find these, I must refer you to a good couponing forum. I use a Hot Coupon World, but there are certainly other popular ones.

"24 and $100,000 in debt"

I hear you. I'm a couple years your senior and just about there. My only advice is to spend less than you earn and to constantly put extra money toward your debt. Just keep plugging at it, and stick around.

"I hate debt"

Ah, now there's someone after my own heart.

And the most popular search that brings people to my site:

"Chocolate croissant"

Hmmm. I really can't help you, as I usually splurge and buy mine. You could try All Recipes or the Food Network's websites. My favorite croissant recipe is from Tawra at Living on a Dime

Break Even success! Week 5 Update

I finally did it!! Not by much, but I did it! Last week I came really close, but this week, for the first time, I finally broke even and am even ever so slightly chipping away at the negatives that I've built up.

Honestly, I didn't do very much this week other than work. The tutoring picked up, and I went from 6 hours to 17 hours. Some of those hours were proctoring a test, so I just got to sit and read and write, and some of those hours were trainings and update, so they weren't all high paying hours, but I definitely did better for having worked.

We were underbudget on the groceries this week by about $15. It's not as much as I would have hoped, given last week's extensive buying, but at least we are under budget. We were also underbudget on our eating out, but only because of my rule that gift cards were to count as neither earnings nor spending. We had a restaurant gift card that we'd been sitting on for a few months (it was an end of the year gift from a student), and we hadn't used it because it was for a place that wasn't part of our ordinary routine. We used it on Saturday for a nice "date," and then went out on Wednesday to our favorite buffet with b1g1 coupons, spending a grand total of $8. Yay!

The "extra" money making activities fizzled this week. I'm going to try to get back on the ball with that this week, even as I increase my hours a little bit more at the tutoring job.
420
-8.10 Associated Content articles
-1 Survey
-392 Teaching
-12.50 Ebay
-10.81 half.com sales
-17 Under Budget restaurant
-15 Groceries

$36 Profit

Yay!!

Total for summer 763 deficit.

Hmmm....