Two Miles of Walking and Yoga

Kyle and I walked at least two miles total!  Today is the first day of summer break for him.  We went for a walk around our apartment complex and I am guessing it was about a mile walk, although I could be wrong.  We went for a walk around 9:25am and then again at around 12:40pm or so.  It was overcast and not hot at all when we went for a walk the first time.  However, when we went for a walk in the afternoon, it was hot and humid!  

This morning, I also did 15 minutes of yoga!  

Shannon has been working non-stop since we moved.  So he’s been working just about every day for the last three weeks.  I think after this, he won’t be volunteering for this many days of work.  But then again, he knows we need the money.  He is trying to pay off his credit card, plus we have bills. 

I did manage to save us about $21 a month by switching our car and renter’s insurance.  I am very happy with the change.  I am also ecstatic about saving that much per month! 

Properous Month with my Blog

It is only the second day of April and it has been very prosperous for my blog!   The major portion of my earnings is from last month's work from one site.  I earned the other part from sponsored posts from two other sites.  I am transferring most of my earnings to our bank account.

Shannon hasn't been feeling well the last few days, so he was unable to work any extra hours.  My blog earnings are helping us through these times.  Hopefully he will get more hours soon.  He is feeling better today but no call to come in to work.

I spent the majority of today going through all of my book reviews to edit them to make the SEO (search engine optimization) friendly and also change/add my affiliate links.  I hope that all the time I am spending on editing my posts will help improve my page rank and traffic to my blog. 

Homemade Liquid Laundry Soap

This evening, I made homemade liquid laundry soap.  I already had my powdered homemade laundry soap, but I made a cup of it into two bottles of liquid laundry soap!  I am trying to stretch our laundry soap a little further. 

Rent Due

We needed to pay rent, so I wrote the check and turned it in to the rental office.  Since we didn't have enough in our main checking account, we had to go to Shannon's bank to pull out some cash to deposit into our account.  By the way, our banks are across the street from each other.  Anyway, after I deposited the cash into our account, I realized it wouldn't be enough to cover the rent, so we had to go back to his bank to pull out more.

That's when Shannon and I got into a disagreement over where our money is going.  He knows that I was sent money from my parents for Christmas/Kyle's birthday.  I bought a few things with the money, plus it's been helping to pay the bills for the last month.  Shannon was confused as to where the money went because he was under the impression that we should have at least $1400 in the account.  I told him that we do have utility bills, groceries to buy, etc.  He wanted to see the bank account for himself to know where the money went.

We logged on when we got home and he saw that the money went to the toys we bought for Kyle at Toys R Us for Christmas, bills, HIS cell phone belt clip thing, and other things.  All he seems to remember is the money going in and not the money going out...  He doesn't pay the bills, I do.  He said he had the same problem with his own account.  He received an alert that he only had X amount of dollars left in his account and he had to check his account to see where all the money went.  

Want to switch banks

We currently bank at Wells Fargo.  We ended up with them when Wachovia merged with Wells Fargo.  I recently found out that Shannon also hates Wells Fargo!  I dislike the bank because of the recent fees they've tacked on to our account. 

I've been wanting to switch to a credit union.  Now that Shannon has an employer, we qualify to join a credit union.  Hopefully we can switch to a credit union soon. 

Two days ago, we made a big deposit into our Wells Fargo account.  I checked our account online yesterday and it wasn't in our account.  Shannon called them to have them look into it.  They didn't see any pending deposits and told us they would look in to it.  We thought maybe Hurricane Sandy may have slowed down their servers/banking services. 

I checked our account this morning and the money is finally showing up.  It really drove me crazy because we have rent to pay and a few bills pending!

No good news

We still have not received any good news. We have about a month's worth of living costs in the bank right now. I told Shannon that now would be a great time to look for a job, since he's been putting it off for so long. He also agreed to turn to food banks again. We only went one time last month which was disappointing! I don't think he wants to realize how little money we have.

Tonight, he agreed that he should start looking for jobs, so we'll see how far that goes.

The money that is in the account will cover us if we continue to live the way we are. It is also disappointing that he continues to smoke and buy bottled water. He's too good for faucet water. That would be a great expense to cut down on...considering. It's too bad he continue to buy cigarettes every other day as well.

Netflix!

We've been talking about trying Netflix because of the savings and decided to really give it a try after receiving our cable bill yesterday. So, I signed up for Netflix this evening and we get a full month free as a trial.

Today, we went to Walmart while Kyle was still at school to buy MagicJack! We hope to set that up this weekend or so.

After trying Netflix for about a half hour, I'm ready to cancel our cable now! But Shannon says, "not yet." Kyle is playing with Netflix now and he's finding all of his favorite shows. He likes the beginning while they are singing and stops it after the song to find another show. I can also use Netflix on my iPad2!

One week of overlap

This week I have two classes that are overlapping.  I started a new class today (Tuesday) but I am on my last week of my current class!  It's a little stressful as I am trying to juggle the school work and making sure I don't miss a deadline!  My current class is pretty much done.  I have a few discussion posts to post and respond to and then I have to turn in my final paper (which is done). 

I've been keeping up with my workouts and doing pretty well!  I am proud of myself for sticking with the schedule.  I am trying to get into better shape since I want to take Kyle to our apartment complex pool this summer!  Kyle loves the water.  He loves taking a bath and I am pretty sure he would love the pool.  Although, I am going to have to get in the pool with him.  I may want to get arm floats for him to wear in the water, just in case.  He even loves putting on his swim trunks when he takes a bath. 

This morning, I gathered as much trash as I could.  I wanted to get rid of knick knacks, scraps of paper, old toys and junk that has been piling up.  I hope to do more trash gathering tomorrow.  I have to throw away things when Kyle is away from home, otherwise, he'll want to put everything back! 

We've been talking about canceling cable and switching over to Netflix.  However, I believe we need a special remote to use with the PS3.  We can still use and watch Netflix but having the remote would be much easier.  So we've been stalling on actually ordering Netflix.  I would also love to switch over to Magic Jack to save money on our phone service.  I'll have to discuss it with my husband and see what he thinks. 

Our bills

This weekend, I made the decision to call our cable/internet/phone provider and our auto/renter's insurance company about lowering our bills. 

I just got off the phone with our cable/internet/phone provider and they were able to lower our bill.  Our current bill is a little over $127 a month and they were able to lower it to $113 a month for the next 6 months.  He gave us free DVR service for 6 months as a special promotion (I think it's a great way to offer to their current customers to keep them as customers). 

I just have to call back in 6 months (May) to make sure we keep our DVR service on. 

I was going to call our auto/renter's insurance company but the cordless phone was low on battery.  I plan on calling tomorrow. 

Lucky Money

This morning, while waiting for the bus, our neighbors gave us "lucky chinese money."  He said that parents give that to their kids for Chinese New Year!  It's real currancy from China but I just looked up how much 10 Yuans is worth in US Dollars...  $1.59

I hope this is "lucky money" as I am saving it and keeping it above my desk. 

Back to Couponing

For awhile there, I stopped buying the Sunday paper for the coupon inserts since I had bought so much toilet paper, paper towels, shampoo and conditioner.  Now, I am trying to rebuild our little "stock" of things we use.  I am looking forward to trying to save with coupons again.  This week in the Walgreens ad, there are several things that I want to get! 

Do I see a flat screen in our future?

Earlier this week, Shannon and I read a news article called TV Prices Fall and we are optimistic!  Our current TV is a "flat screen" but it's not HDTV, LCD, or Plasma.  We bought our TV back in 2004 or 2005!  I am a fan of Clark Howard, he's a money saving guru on HLN.  About a month ago, he said that flat screens will go on sale for the holidays.  He gave examples such as, "32 inch screens will be $399, etc."  I am sure he did not predict that TV prices will lower even more! 

We are hopeful in the fact that TV's will drop so significantly that by the time we have money, we could buy one. 

Hoping to win something!

Lately, I've been entering as many blog giveaways as I can find!  Most of the giveaways I am entering are for gift cards, cash and other prizes!  I would love to win!  It would be nice to be able to get something special for my family! 

I am also making an effort to enter the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes on a daily basis.  I used to enter every time they sent me an email, but I am now going to enter daily.  

Too Dependent

If my in-laws hadn't moved out of their house, we would still be living there.  Shannon would have loved to live with them for years.  He seems to like to live/depend on his parents and also living off the money my mom who would send ME for MY birthday. 

We are still unemployed, but Shannon has had his surgery to where his hernia is no longer an issue (it's been fixed).  Before, his excuse for not looking for a job was his hernia.  Now that his hernia is fixed, his new excuse is that he's working on his case.  There are no issues with him finding a weekend job, or even an overnight job.

This past weekend, we went to Harrah's where he gambled away our little bit of savings egg, plus took out another $200 from our bank account to gamble with.  He decided we're going to Myrtle Beach this weekend since Kyle has a 4 day weekend from school.  He and his parents planned this without my knowledge.  I told him we need to cancel this trip because we can really afford to go.  Now he's saying that he'll need $200 to print stuff out for his case.  Obviously he wants to use MY SAVINGS BONDS to live off of and use to spend on his case.  It just makes me so mad that he doesn't even think about the future/bills/paying for things that come up!!!

Bits of good news!

We still haven't heard the news we were waiting for but we did receive three bits of good news! First, we found out that Obama signed a bill to extend unemployment benefits! Lucky for us, our state is included.

According to the article: The law provides another 14 weeks of benefits to all out-of-work people who have exhausted their benefits or will do so by the end of the year, estimated at nearly 2 million. Those in states where the jobless rate is 8.5 percent or above get an additional six weeks.

Our second bit of good news is that I received my employee discount card for Walmart today!! This is exciting since it will help us save a bit every time we shop there! Since I am married, Shannon also receives his own discount card to use!

The third bit of good news is that I received a check for $35+ from one of my money making sites! Every little bit helps!

Sleepy Giggles

I wasn't able to sleep that well, I ended up waking up when Shannon got home. I got up to talk with him for a bit and after that, I tried going back to sleep but wasn't able to. I ended up staying up for a few more hours.

When we both went to bed around 3:30am, Kyle suddenly started giggling in his sleep! It made us both laugh. He must have been dreaming!

I couldn't sleep because I am just stressed over everything. I wrote down our earnings versus what we are spending. This has also encouraged me even more to work more! I also asked Shannon if we should look at moving into a 2 bedroom apartment (instead of our 3 bedroom that we have). He said he was thinking about that too. I just checked around and found a community that I like. They even have some "paid utilities with rent." Unlike our current community, this place pays for water and sewer! So I sent them a request for more info on their current prices and availability!

Busy with new sites!

In the last week or so, I joined 8 new PTC (paid to click) sites! Seven of them are owned by one person and I know her through cafemom. With the addition to the newest 8 sites, they are taking up most of my time during the day. I am looking at joining few more sites too.

I also joined 2 new survey sites. I just started on them and so far so good.

I’ve been updating my other blog as much as I can, I update it when I join new sites or just to post proof of payments. These PTC sites also offer a free way for me to advertise my sites. So I am taking advantage of that feature.

One of my PTC Sites

I am doing very well on one of PTC (paid to click) sites. Over the holidays, I decided to upgrade to premium membership, as well as purchase 15 referrals. After that, there was a slight difference in my earnings. I am earning more per click and I am earning more from my referrals clicks.


Then about a week or two later, I bought 500 referrals. Since then, I have noticed a real big difference in my earnings. I was making about $45-$50 a day from my referrals as well as from my own clicks.

After I did make these purchases, initially, I decided not to tell my husband. But then after I saw my earnings increase to $45-$50 a day, I told him about a week later. He wasn't even upset like I thought he would be. He was surprised and happy! Now he's always asking me how much I am making or what I am up to (in my earnings).

I asked him if I should buy more referrals, since I really wanted his opinion first. If I were to buy more referrals, my earnings to increase to $95-$100 a day! So I ended up buying more referrals a few days ago and now making roughly $100 a day! Once I break even, which I should in a few days, I plan on cashing out and buying more referrals with my earnings.