Finance Gets Personal

for a Garage Sale!

As you might have guessed by the lack of posts this week, I have not worked on the office for Week 5 of The Cure. Instead, I’ve been busy getting ready for our garage sale on Saturday.

Last year we made about $240 in our garage sale, and this time (with the help of my CVS/Walgreens stockpile) I’m hoping to crack $500, which will go toward this home theatre system for the basement.

I cleaned out what was left of my old bedroom at my parents’ house, and also have a bunch of stuff to sell that was moved out of the basement when my husband started finishing it. Now I just need to finish labeling a couple boxes of stuff, make signs, find my banker’s bag, ice up some drinks and set everything up in the garage so it’s ready to go Saturday morning! Oh, and hope that it doesn’t rain…

Note to Self: In the future, it would be much easier to put things in a big “garage sale” bin as you clean the house and price them right then and there.

Since my house is now once again a disaster (I’ve really been trying to keep the rooms I’ve done so far clean, though) I’m eager to get back to the cure after this weekend is over.

I’m currently working on Apartment Therapy’s Eight-Step Spring Cure, which is an eight week process for making your home more organized, beautiful and healthy. I’ve been apprehensive about how much “curing” is going to cost, so I’m sharing my progress on trying to cure on a budget.

I am sweating my butt off thanks to extensive vacuuming combined with our refusal to turn on the A/C until it reaches 80 degrees outside. But, the living room is clean!

These are the assignments for Week 4:

• Clean up living room and related closets
• Repairs are being taken care of this week
• Declutter all books and media
• Cancel 75 percent of catalogs you receive
• Empty Outbox this week
• Confirm what you need to increase or decrease color in each room
• Identify what you need to increase or decrease softness in each room
• Cook three meals at home this week
• Send out your invitations

Somehow, our living room is the dirtiest room in the house. I suppose it’s because we spend the most time there, my husband eats his lunch on the couch when he works from home and because the doggie door leads into that room. It took a long time, but I washed the walls, cleaned the baseboards, vacuumed the couches, cleaned the fan blades and even fixed the massive tangle of cords behind the TV. I bought the following: Cord organizer ties (3 packages at $3.19 each at Target), a bamboo box to store PS3 games ($12.99 at Target) and a fabric-covered box to store PS3 cords and controllers (on clearance for $11.94 at Target).

I honestly haven’t made much progress on the repairs this week. Theoretically, I would be having someone “take care” of them this week and next week, but I can’t afford it without using some of my extra debt payment. I did replace another light bulb though

Decluttering books and media is a daunting task. I like the idea of getting rid of my CD collection and keeping them all on my hard drive/iPod, but my electronic organization system is chaos right now (for example, I’ve never even backed up this blog, nor do I really know how). My iPod is set up for a Mac, but I use a PC now (the Mac with all the music saved on it is in my stepson’s room). Once my husband gets his new computer, I plan on consolidating all my files there. As far as DVDs go, I am not allowed to get rid of any. My books are already heavily pared down from last year’s garage sale, and I don’t tend to be much of a book collector anyway. I do plan on going through these three categories for obvious “duds” sometime before our garage sale on the 16th.

Canceling 75% of catalogs you receive is something I may do in the future, but don’t have time for right now. In fact, I’ve done little besides clean the living room this week since I’ve been helping my husband plan the details of the basement layout (he took off work this week to do the framing). Trust me though, I’d rather be cleaning and organizing than drawing a bathroom and its fixtures to scale.

I’ll be emptying the outbox next weekend at my garage sale. I’m going to start pricing and organizing my items for the garage sale this week, and list some of the more expensive items on craigslist and eBay.

I’ve thought a little about color, but I haven’t spent any money in this category. Most of my rooms need a little more color.

“Softness” is added to rooms through things like curtains, rugs and pillows. My rooms are currently too “hard” since I don’t have any area rugs or drapes (most of our windows just have cheap white vinyl blinds - yuck!).

Of course, cooking at home was the easiest part of the week. I even did one myself! If sloppy joes count as a meal, that is…

I have no invitations to mail since I haven’t really planned a party. I think when I get finished I’ll start planning the cheesy board game night. I’ve just got way too much on my plate right now.

While some of my enthusiasm has waned, I’m halfway done, and things are looking great! This week I spent a total of $40.

On to Week 5, which focuses on the office. My main goal is to organize all the paperwork I have flying about the room, without much concern for aesthetics since we’ll be moving the office to the basement this fall (and getting real furniture instead of card tables and folding chairs - yay!).

Photo Credit: Kelley+Interior+Design,+rose+living+room by sarahleeab, used under Creative Commons Licensing.

I’m currently working on Apartment Therapy’s Eight-Step Spring Cure, which is an eight week process for making your home more organized, beautiful and healthy. I’ve been apprehensive about how much “curing” is going to cost, so I’m sharing my progress on trying to cure on a budget.

Well, I’m a few days late in finishing up week 3, but this one was much less intense than the kitchen last week! And in case you’re wondering why I’m three weeks behind the Apartment Therapy Spring Cure group, I didn’t discover it until after this session had already started (I’m not that slow, thank you very much!)

These are the assignments for Week 3:

• Vacuum, dust and mop (wet or dry) throughout your home
• Clean your entrance and any related closets
• Arrange to have all repairs taken care of in the next three weeks
• Declutter your entrance
• Move all old mail, catalogs and magazines to the outbox
• Look into what you would need to create a landing strip
• Cancel any unused subscriptions
• Identify cool rooms and warm rooms
• Apply the 80/20 color rule
• Cook two meals at home this week
• Design an invitation for your housewarming

Vacuuming and mopping again so soon? Argh. It really needed it though. I wonder how often I typically vacuum - once a month? Whenever company is coming over?

Because my entrance opens up into the formal living room, I cleaned that and the little walkway to the side of it. Pretty easy, considering the only things in the room are a piano, couch, chair and mirror.

As far as “arranging” to have all repairs taken care of in the next three weeks, I’m pretty much ignoring that assignment. I’ll be doing what I can, when I can - myself.

Decluttering was also simple, with most of my “clutter” coming from the entry closet. However, this is the one closet I actually organized when we moved in, so there wasn’t a lot of random stuff in there. While organizing the closet, instead of buying more containers from Target, I decided to wrap some of my shoe boxes in pretty wrapping paper to hold things like cleaning supplies, dog brushes/shampoo and lightbulbs/flashlights. It worked out well, and I didn’t spend any money!

I don’t really have a problem with old mail and magazines (I go through the mail immediately when I get home, and recycle old magazines as soon as the new one arrives), so I didn’t have any mail to move to the outbox.

I bought a new doormat at Target for $19.99, but I challenged myself to create a landing strip using only items I already own. My landing strip is now a little silver serving table with a blue beaded bowl on it, a magazine holder on the floor and a coat closet. I hang my purse on the closet knob. What really made a difference in my little living room was rearranging the furniture! My couch and recliner are really too big for the small space now that a baby grand piano has been added to the mix, but rearranging the furniture has really improved things. It’s kind of odd because now you see the back of the couch as you enter, but it closes the space off just enough to make it feel like its own room (that hopefully we’ll actually use now!).

I also have a pile of subscriptions to cancel, identified my warm and cool rooms, learned about the 80/20 rule for color (80% neutral, 20% strong colors) and cooked two meals at home (OK, so my husband cooked two meals at home). I haven’t designed an invitation for my cheesy board game night yet… I’m not sure if I want to have such a formally organized event so soon after hosting the Oscar party. But the party will still happen - just don’t expect a Scrabble-esque invitation in the mail…

And that concludes week 3. I only spent $20!!!! (Well, I guess I also spent $5 on flowers)

On to Week 4, which focuses on the living room and editing book/CD/DVD collections (uh oh).

Photo Credit: The Entryway (Landing Strip) by foreverfrida, used under Creative Commons licensing.

I’m currently working on Apartment Therapy’s Eight-Step Spring Cure, which is an eight week process for making your home more organized, beautiful and healthy. I’ve been apprehensive about how much “curing” is going to cost, so I’m sharing my progress on trying to cure on a budget.

Whew. I just finished my assignments for Week 2. (I gave myself an extra weekend since we were out of town last weekend for Easter.)

These are the assignments for Week 2:

• Fix one thing in your apartment yourself
• Clean your kitchen from top to bottom and throw away old food
• Buy a water filter and use it
• Run your hands over every wall in your apartment (to feel which walls are cold or warm)
• Clear space for an Outbox
• Clear one surface and use the outbox
• Buy fresh flowers
• Determine your style
• Find a new recipe and cook one meal at home
• Choose the date for your housewarming

The first assignment was probably the easiest: I had a list of 71 repairs to choose from. Because I’m trying to do this on a budget, most of the repairs will be DIY (and some of the expensive repairs, like repairing the wooden floors, might be postponed). Because this week focused on the kitchen, I started with some easy repairs there: replacing the burnt out oven light bulbs, buying new energy-efficient bulbs for the fixture that my husband had to stand on top of a ladder to reach, touching up missing paint/rust on/in the stove/sink/dishwasher with appliance repair paint (Rustoleum), buying new tile to replace the missing ones above the sink, tightening the hinges on the cabinets, tightening the loose sink sprayer, and semi-fixing the stove drawer that keeps coming off the tracks (apparently the permanent fix would be to replace the stove). While this was a lot more than one repair, I’ll need to increase this pace if everything is going to be fixed at the end of eight weeks.

Cleaning and organizing the kitchen was the real bitch of this week. I worked on it all weekend, as well as three nights after work last week. I now have sparkling clean appliances, organized cabinets and a lot less stuff (though I did have to endure some screaming about what the hell I did with all the plastic cups/wooden spoons/second ice cream scoop). And my refrigerator is probably thrilled that I finally figured out where those coils that I’ve supposed to have been vacuuming for the past four years are (that was gross). I spent quite a bit of money this week on cleaning and organizing supplies: a new spice rack ($40 at Crate & Barrel), drawer organizers ($15 at TJ Maxx), canisters for the pantry ($20 at TJ Maxx), new drip pans ($13 at Target), dish soap dispenser ($13 at Target), penny jar to hold dog treats ($5 at Target), new salt and pepper shakers ($12 at Target), light bulbs ($27 at Lowes), oven cleaner ($5 at Lowes) and paper towels ($5 at Lowes).

My refrigerator already has a water filter, however, we’ve been ignoring the little red replacement light for at least six months. So we bought a PUR replacement filter from Amazon for $25. In the past, I’ve bought these from the Whirlpool website and they’ve run almost $35, so it was nice to find one that’s a little less costly.

My Outbox, i.e., crap I’m considering getting rid of, is growing daily. This is good, since our garage sale is less than a month away. I’m going to try selling some of our more valuable/specialized items on eBay/Craigslist over the next few weeks to make money for more curing (Hard Rock Cafe shot glass collection, anyone?).

My fresh flowers came from the grocery store again this week. White hydrangeas for $5.99. I’m starting to think grocery store flowers aren’t the freshest, because mine start dying in less than a week, but…whatever.

The fun part of the week was determining my style! After repeating the style quiz at Sproost about 10 times, I determined my style is closest to Vintage Modern (um, isn’t that an oxymoron?). It seems to fit though. So now, when I see something I would consider buying, I ask myself, “Would this fit in with my (imaginary) Vintage Modern home?” and if the answer is no, I skip it.

Finding a new recipe and cooking one meal at home was incredibly easy. I think Apartment Therapy assumes most of their audience are city apartment dwellers who eat takeout every night.

As far as the housewarming party thing goes, I’d like to have a low-key cheesy board game night with a small group of friends. But because six-seven weeks from now is Memorial Day weekend, maybe we should do a barbecue instead (or in combination with board game night)? Of course, we go out of town sometimes on Memorial Day weekend, so I guess I should check on that before I start making any definite plans.

OK, so that was Week 2. A lot of work and a lot of expenses (though most were somewhat optional). I was hoping to combine the dining room with the kitchen since there isn’t a dining room week, but that didn’t go as planned. That room mainly just needs to be cleaned though.

On to Week 3, which focuses on the entryway, entry closet and making a “landing strip” (AT’s term, not mine).

Photo Credit: Apartment Therapy

My finances seem to be on autopilot lately, so I’m working on improving some other areas of my life as well. Supposedly this is what happens when you start getting one thing under control - the rest follow (finances—>health—>not living in squalor).

So, for my not living in squalor phase, I’ve joined Apartment Therapy’s Eight-Step Spring Cure. The “Cure” is a eight-week process for making your home more organized, beautiful and healthy. There is a corresponding book with detailed instructions for each week.

I’m doing the deep treatment (as opposed to focusing on one room), which means that my assignments for Week 1 are as follows:

• Make a complete list of home repairs and solutions
• Vacuum and mop the floors
• Buy fresh flowers
• Sit for ten minutes in a part of your home that you never sit in
• Look into earth-friendly cleaning products

Sounds reasonable, right?

The problem is my “repair” list is pages long, and some items are expensive: damaged exterior doors that need replacing, stained carpet that needs replacing (or at least a professional cleaning), cracking and splintering wood floors, etc. The “cure” also calls for arranging to have all your repairs taken care of within the next 3-4 weeks, which basically assumes you’re going to hire someone to do most of the work. My plan is to start with the easiest, least expensive repairs first, and temporarily fix or postpone the most expensive repairs.

The assignment I find a little indulgent, but am in love with, is buying fresh flowers for your home every week. It’s ironic, because this item is also on my “life list.” So I guess I’m killing two birds with one stone. This week, I bought some gerbera daisies at the grocery store for $5. They look quite lovely on my dining room table.

As for the earth-friendly cleaning products, well… You know I have a hard time spending more than a dollar on cleaning products, and am certainly not one to buy $10 floor cleaner or anything. After my dog spent a good 20 minutes yesterday licking my newly cleaned floor, I almost reconsidered. Eh, he’ll be alright.

Have you ever tackled the cure? What kind of budget were you working with? I can see this getting progressively more expensive as the weeks go on, but I’m going to do my best to keep it frugal and share my progress.

There’s been a lot of stuff going on in Finance Gets Personal land, so much so that there hasn’t been much time to write!

So, let’s get caught up, shall we?

The Vacuum
While on the hunt for a cheap vacuum, we managed to break the vacuum we’d been borrowing from my in-laws. Can you freaking believe that?!?! We think we may have figured out why we are the vacuum serial killers though.

My stepson has a lot of Webkinz, which are little stuffed animals that you can also play with online (or something - I’m too old to understand this crap). Sometimes, our dog kidnaps one and it becomes his new toy. AND, since our dog destroys all his toys, we’ve discovered that Webkinz have a little packet of tiny plastic balls inside of their stuffing. The packet gets chewed open, and tiny plastic balls are lodged in the carpet throughout the house. We think that when the vacuum sucks these up, they melt and cause major problems!

So, no more Webkinz for the dog!

We went to Target to buy the in-laws one of the vacuums that was on clearance there for $65, but when we called to see which one they wanted, they insisted that they don’t need one. They’ve been replacing all their carpet with hardwood, and only their bedroom is left. They’re planning on replacing that within the next month, so I guess we got lucky!

So, back to our vacuum. While I last wrote that we were going to buy a cheap one and use the American Express in order to extend the warranty, we ended up getting the Dyson Animal I wanted through Frys. It’s refurbished, and I’m not sure if the warranty extends beyond six months, but it was only $206 (including taxes and shipping), included all the attachments and arrived just like new. I LOVE it so far!

My Sister’s Financial Peace University Classes
I’m really not sure how this is going because we haven’t talked about it since the first class. But I’m going to be seeing her tomorrow and hopefully will find out more then. As I reported earlier, her husband is going with her and they are at least halfway through baby step 1 ($1,000 emergency fund).

Layoffs at My Husband’s Company
While the layoffs were originally scheduled for March 12, that date was moved up to March 6 (today). But they found out yesterday that his group was not affected by the layoffs at all! So that is wonderful news!

Meanwhile, my company announced that we probably won’t be having quarterly bonuses this year and were getting 3% raises across the board (we wouldn’t have gotten anything, but they felt bad about not giving people raises last year either). However, we are currently SWAMPED with new projects, and should be until at least June.

So, it looks like the ramen noodle budget will not be necessary. We’ll probably be moving most of the money we have in savings (beyond the $1,000 emergency fund) to the second mortgage balance in the next week or two.

Taxes
By stalking SlickDeals.net, I found a free download of H&R Block Tax Cut with free e-filing and used it to prepare our federal taxes. We’ve already received our $635 refund and can now submit our state return, which will swallow that $635 plus another $55. Did I mention we have to file two state returns? I’ll be doing the second one on paper so we don’t have to pay to download an additional state (not sure how we’ll come out on that one, though last year we got back $130 or so).

I guess I should get on that, so things don’t turn out like last year.

What I’ve Been Doing for the Past Month (i.e., Spending Money)
I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I have a “life list” of things to do before I die. Some of them (play blackjack in a casino) are easier and less expensive than others (own a photography studio). One of the items on my list is to have an Oscar party. So, I did!

Of course, being the freak I am, everything had to be on theme. I had food and drinks for each movie, a ballot contest with prizes, a red carpet and decorations, gift bags (hello, drugstore stockpile!), paparazzi, etc. It was fun, but expensive (for example, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button featured caviar with creme fraiche on toast points and vodka shots)!

Then, I had a business trip (love getting mileage reimbursement for traveling to the airport, by the way) and party-planning for my stepson’s upcoming birthday (they’re going to a movie theater to see “Mall Cop” and play laser tag).

So, things have been busy! But I think we’re all caught up now, and I look forward to posting more soon.

As 2008 comes to a close, I’d like to share the progress we’ve made on our goals to get out of debt and change careers.

We started the year with $3,479 in low-interest credit card debt, $6,623 in car loans, $14,401 in student loans, $35,179 on our second mortgage and $139,604 on our first mortgage. Our goal was to pay off everything but the first and second mortgages, and we did! In total, we paid off $26,951 in debt this year with an income of approximately $105,000 before taxes. In 2007, we paid off $22,100 in debt, so that’s a slight increase.

I feel we could have done even better had we not had a multitude of home repairs throughout the year (sump pump replacement: $172, heat pump replacement: $3,467, hot water heater replacement: $647, exterior house painting: $2,992, termite treatment: $650).

Our goal for 2009 is to pay off our second mortgage, which currently has a balance of $34,806. We’re already $1,812 closer to that goal due to the remainder of my $5,000 Christmas bonus that is currently sitting in our emergency fund. Since there’s a possibility my husband will be laid off in the first quarter, we’ll be directing our extra debt payments into savings until the layoffs occur, then transfer that money to our second mortgage once we’re (hopefully) in the clear. While my husband would like a new career, we’d prefer to wait until after our debt is paid off (note to husband’s company: could you please pencil in some fat voluntary separation packages for 2012?)!

We’re also trying to get pregnant this year and limit our baby expenses to what’s available in our current budget. Additionally, my husband has the goal of finishing our basement himself for $3,000-$4,000, which we are budgeting $150 per paycheck toward beginning in January.

On a personal note, I’d like to thank everyone for reading this blog. When I started writing in February, I wasn’t sure anyone would be interested in the thoughts of an anonymous office drone with big dreams, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised.

Happy New Year.

When I hear people talk about treating their house for termites, I’ve always assumed the cost was somewhere in the $2,000-$3,000 range.

Happily, it’s not!

We had a company my co-worker recommended out to the house today and they are going to treat the entire perimeter and interior of the garage with holes drilled and filled with Termidor for $650. Then, we’ll pay $70 a year to have it checked and retreated for free if termites are found anytime in the next 10 years (we’re not obligated to have them come every year - but we will!).

Needless to say, I’m relieved.

And, we discovered the termites before they had a chance to do any damage or spread to other parts of the house, so that’s good news too.

The sad part is, I know my parents have had termite problems for at least the past 5-10 years, but have never treated it (to my knowledge). I don’t understand their priorities, which allow them to take yearly vacations to places like Hawaii and Mexico, while not keeping their own house from falling apart.

I know they are aware of the problem, because I’ve heard my dad say things like “the termites ate up that step.” I’m worried they have major structural problems since the termites have been allowed to stay that long, but I’m not sure how to bring it up to them. Maybe if they knew the cost of getting rid of them was so low, that would at least be a start (and prevent any further damage)?

I really dislike having to parent my parents.

Photo Credit: Termite Building by Zapgun, used under Creative Commons licensing.

One of the things that sold me on our house was the windows.

The dining room has floor-to-ceiling windows - well, very long windows with smaller windows on top of them. Ten windows in all. They overlook the backyard, and are beautiful.

The problem is, at night, the windows give half the neighborhood and anyone driving down the street parallel to ours a great view of the entire house. So we mostly keep the cheap, yellowed, falling-apart blinds that came with the house closed.

I’ve been wanting to replace the blinds with wooden blinds ever since we moved in. Faux wood, at least. Hell…I’d settle for bamboo at this point. But at a price of $100+ per window, it’s something that will have to wait.

Recently, the strings in one of the blinds snapped. Well - not so recently - I tied the string in a knot and the blinds have been hanging haphazardly half-open, half-closed at a diagonal for at least the past six months.

This drove me crazy. And today, I decided to do something about it: visit Lowe’s.

Did I break down and buy the $100 blinds for all 10 windows?

No, I special-ordered white vinyl blinds to replace the one that broke (and the side-window blind that broke and was taken down three years ago).

I felt like I was giving up on ever having nice blinds.

Which is irrational.

But it was still hard.

Photo Credit: After: Dining Room by srbyug, used under Creative Commons licensing.

Yes, that’s right, everyone. I have something special to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, and it ain’t turkey.

It’s termites.

No!!!!!

Monday night, my husband and I went to the Smashing Pumpkins concert. On our way out, we ran into a friend he used to work with. So, we joined the friend and his girlfriend at the bar next door for a drink. Only they knew the bartender…and people kept handing me free drinks…so pretty soon I was trashed.

It was not pretty. Since I have no alcohol tolerance anymore and since I’m on medication that I technically shouldn’t be drinking with, I proceeded to throw up in the passenger’s seat of my car on the way home. And again in my bed. And in the earshot of my father, who was babysitting for us. Again, it was not pretty, and I’m extremely embarrassed about the whole thing.

My husband cleaned out the car as best he could that night, but I needed to give it a more thorough cleaning. So after work tonight, I went to the car wash with the free vacuum cleaners, and took one of each type of cleaning supply I own. My stepson was dying to get out of the house, so I took him with me.

Of course, after going through the car wash and vacuuming, my stepson was about ready to pee his pants and there was no bathroom there. So, we headed home.

Of course (again), it’s dark, cold and my side of the garage still has a lot of leftover crap from our June garage sale in it (Yes, June. Have you seen the Oprah episode about the Messy House Tour? I’m totally working on that now). So, in order to have enough light to clean up my crusty car, I needed to make room for my crusty car in the garage.

One hour into cleaning the garage, I discovered intruders…termite tunnels running up the side of the garage foundation behind some ladders.

This is horrible! Horrible, horrible, horrible! And what timing!

But I don’t think they’ve been there long since we just reorganized the garage in the Spring, and I’m sure I would have noticed the tunnels then (there are just three of them).

So, I guess you could almost argue that getting so drunk that I puked in my car and called in sick to work the next day might have actually saved me a lot of money.

We shall see.

Photo Credit: angel by ilselieve, used under Creative Commons licensing.