Interesting article, wanted to share.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SavingandDebt/LearnToBudget/how-much-should-you-spend-on.aspx

I'm not sure if many of you have heard of Scensty or not but if not check out my site. This would be a great addition to your home or a gift to a college student!!

http://annjames.scentsy.us/

The site is similar to Groupon where you get great discounts. Check out today’s deal!

https://livingsocial.com/deals/21336?ref=personalized-link-box-3864868&rpi=3864868

As of today I have $51 and it doesn't include any change I've saved either. Who would have thought just by saving my one dollar bills that I would have $50 saved in a month's time. I will definitely be repeating this in Jan. Anyone care to join me?

As a way to get rid of of clothes I've made a conscious effort that if I buy something new, then I donate something as well. For instance, I went shopping today and got 4 clothing items, I immediately removed 4 clothing items from my closet. I did this for my daughther as well. She recieved quite a bit of clothes for Christmas. For every piece we put in the closet, a piece was put in the donation bag.

I've read on a couple blogs about a $20 challenge. Can someone please explain the concept. Do yuou actually take the money and put it in a savings account or what? Thanks in advance!

Total so far is $25..this challenge has definitely made me think before I spend. Who knows this may just become a habit!!(Saving my $1 bills that is)

I just got my dream ideal side job!! A friend of mine passed along my resume to his boss for a part-time teaching job on Fort Jackson. He's leaving next month so they called me today and offered me the job. Basically I will be employed through San Diego City College teaching Army soldiers going through training Personal Finance. The program is sponsored by the Army Personal Financial Management Program and it basically teaches them how to budget, balance checkbooks, create spending plan, read credit reports, etc.. At a minimum I can work one Saturday a month like me friend or I could work every Saturday(but I know I won't do that). He showed me his pay stub and basically he made $200 for one 8 hour day a month. And the lady told me they have a mandatory retirement plan where they take 3.5% of your pay and matches it by the same amount.

I'm sooooooooooooo excited becuase this allows me to do 2 things that I love: teach and talk about money. As you know I will be retiring from the Air Force in 18 months and this provides me the experience that I need for the Certification Financial Planning Program I'm currently enrolled in as well. I can't beleive that I will be earning snowflakes doing something that I love to do. Now that's Financial Peace!!!

Up to $7..decide not to count the change because I keep it seperate. At the end of the month I will include saved changed as well in the totals.

I had a no spend day today so as of yesterday my total is $3.95(decided to add spare change as well. Slowly but surely, it will be nice to see how much I've saved by 31 Dec.

I read about this challenge on another blog I visit and I think I will try it for the month of December. I already save my coins but now I will save all $1 bills for the month as well. Just curious to see how much I can save up doing this over the next month.

Anyone want to join me?

http://www.gailvazoxlade.com/resources/own_up_to_debt_worksheet.html

Someone started this conversation on the Dave Ramsey website so I thought I would start it here. Do you have any financial goals that you would like to set for 11/11/11 since it's such a unique date?

Me personally, I'm going to try and pay off my rental property. What are your goals?

and listed a few things on ebay yesterday. I already have one bid with 5 more days to go.

I saw the below statement and wanted to share. Pretty much says it all.


Jesus paid my debts - why tally up more?

A few days ago I posted that I had completed my first pre-retirement task of creating a binder that holds all of my military documents. Well on Monday a friend of mine told be about a possibly teaching position coming open. Basically he's paid as a independent contractor to teach soldiers about Personal Financial Mgmt.

He knows that I would love to get my foot in the door on something like this so he asked me for my resume. It was one of my goals to complete this month but I didn't realize I would need it much sooner. He wants to be able to give it to the guy that does the hiring of Saturday.

Needless to say, between Monday and today I have that resume done. I don't think I would have been able to get it done so quickly if I didn't have all of my documents in one centralized location.

Well as I posted yesterday, my friend and I completed our first task. Our next task will be to create a Legacy Drawer. For those of you that follow Dave Ramsey,this is a conecpt where you have all of your important documents in a drawer or location where your family can get to in case anything happens to you. This includes things like creating a financial account log, password log, insurance policies, wills, power of attornies, etc..

I already started on this by creating a financial account log. It's a excel spreadsheet that has all of my accounts, bank addresses, phone #, website, etc.. Just by doing this first exercise, I've realized I have way too many accounts and will look at closing/combining as many as possible.

Once again I think the biggest benefit of this task is to have everything in one centralized location that your family is aware of. We all hope that we will live to see another day but nothing is promised to us, so why not prepare for it! Are all of you prepared? Would your loved ones know where to look or who to contact?

In a previous post, I stated that I had a light bulb moment and realized that I was only 18 months out from retiring from the military. A friend and I decided to create a checklist list of things that we wanted to accomplish over the next 18 months. I'm happy to report that our first task is completed. Today was our suspense date but we had our "staff meeting" via phone last night and discovered we were both done.

We created a binder that had all of our performance reports, awards/decorations, certificates and transcripts. It's sure nice to have everything in a centralized location.

We've already set our November task but I'll post about that 2morrow. This is such an exciting time for us!!

I had heard alot about Groupon and how you can get great deals from local businesses. Well they finally added my city to their list and I joined yesterday(which is completely free). I just bought the deal of the day which was $35 for a manicure and pedicure at a very nice spa in the area. I looked on the website and the normal cost is $70 so I'm getting it for 50% off. To make it even sweeter, it allows you to purchase more than one, so I bought one for my mom as a Christmas gift.

All of this is just in time for my birthday next week

Check it Out
http://www.groupon.com/r/uu8897444

Although I realized that I would be retiring from the military in 2012, it just hit me last night that I only have a year and half to go! That's nothing in the big scheme on things. I really need to get my stuff together so that when the time comes, I'm not wasting my vacation time trying to finish up.

What me and my good friend discussed tonight was to start brainstorming a list of things we need to do then set them up as quarterly goals. We would even have a monthly "staff meeting" with each other to make sure we are on track. I love this idea and the countdown has begun!!!

Well the today was the official kick-off of Pounds for Pantry. This is a program that's offered by the university I work at where you sign up to lose a certain amount of weight from 1 Oct thru 2 Dec. For the total pounds lost by everyone, they donate the same dollar amount to a local food bank. I thought that was such a great idea so I joined in. I set a realistic goal of 5 pounds but I could stand to lose a little more. I have to remember that I'm pretty tall so I don't want to get too skinny. I like have curves

Currently I try to work out at least 3 times a week. Starting Monday I will bump that up to 5. Even if I'm just walking those days, it's better than nothing. I will keep you posted.

Ok my fellow bloggers, I need your opinions. I have a rental that has a balance of $84.1K that I could pay by Dec 2011. Below are my thoughts:

1. While deployed to Iraq, I put $10K away in SDP which I can withdraw now. I was going to just add it to my Retirement Home Down Payment Sinking fund which currently has a balance of $51K. However, I could put that towards the current mortgage instead.

2. I currently have $14K in my Car Replacement Fund. I'm not planning on buying a new car until the summer of 2012..that's when I'm retiring from the military. I could take that $14k and put in towards the mortgage as well.

3. I'm currently throwing an additional $2500 monthly towards the mortage. If I was to take the 9K and 14K and bump the snowball up to $3000K in Jan 2011(which I should be able to do without a problem with my raise,I'm in the military), I would pay off the mortage in Dec 2011.

4. Then I could take my snowball of $3000 and the rental income of $1100 and rebuild my new car fund and then some with no problem. All the while, I have $51K in my home down payment acct.

5. I guess the main thing I'm wavering on is do I just put the money in my home down payment account since this is a rental and I will probably end up selling it in 2012 anyway. I also love the idea of having a paid for piece of income producing asset that paid in full.

6. I'm just interested in seeing what others think. Thanks in advance!

While watching the news this weekend I saw this gentlemen talking about a week long camp available to kids called Camp Millionaire. It's just like any other camp that you may pay to send your kids to, however it focuses on teaching them the basics of finance. It covers budgets, debt, checkbooks, basic investing, etc.. I think this a wonderful idea! I will be looking more into it becuase I would love to teach kids about money while they're young so hopefully they won't make as many mistakes as they get older

I've decided that starting 1 Aug, I will try the month ahead method meaning that the paycheck that I get for 1 Aug won't actually be spent until September. I've been reading alot about this and it does sound easier to manage. Especially seeing how I wouldn't have to time when automatic bills/savings are completed.

The budget software, YNAB(You Need A Budget) that I use is actually founded on this principal but I just never did it seeing how I'm paid on the 1st and 15th.

I figured this would also be good retirement prep practice for me. When I retire from the military in 2012, I will only be paid once a month.

For those of you that have an account but don't check their facebook page, I just wanted to let you know that for tomorrow only, you get 5% perks back on all non debit charges at supermarkets. Remember, use the card as a credit instead of debit in order to get the extra perks.

Amazon currently has the Leapfrog Reading System on sale for $25.97 and it qualifies for free shipping. It normally costs $49.99 at Amazon and also at Walmart becuase I checked there as well today. I will be giving this to my niece.

I normally shop during the year so that I'm not invovled with the last minute madness. What about you, have you started your shopping yet?

Hello everyone,

Can you believe it's July already? Well I just got back from my vacation(that's a seperate post) and I need to get focused. I will take this next week to sit down and take a look at my goals for the remainder of the year. What about you? Are you on track with the goals you set in January? Do you need to refocus as well to finish the year strong? If so, please join me with getting back on track for the remainder of 2010!

A few of us on the Dave Ramsey site started a debit card challenge. Most of us don't give it a second thought to whip out the debit card to make a purchase. Unfortunately, it may cause you to overspend your budget. What we have decided to try and do is to break the habit and start using cash more. You can personalize the challenge as you wish, for example, I will only use my card for gas or other online payments that I have set-up against my card. Everything else will be paid for with cash.

If you slip up, just pick yourself up and start again. Are there any takers out there? You can join in at your leasure.

I'm happy to say that I made it back from my year long deployment to Iraq. I got back stateside around the beginning of the month and I must say I'm truly happy to be back home with my family. I tell ya, it takes you going to a place like that to appreciate the small things in life. Like your space and not having to brush your teeth with bottled water just to name a few.

Well I just wanted to drop a quick line and there will be more to come as I get FOCUSED on prepping for my retirement in 2012...

It has been a while since I've blogged but that's becuase I've been busy studying. One of my goals for this year long deployment I'm on was to earn my certification in financial management. In the military it's called Certfied Defense Financial Manager(CDFM), it's equivalent to a CPA but for the military.

Well today I passed my last module, I'm now CDFM qualified. I am so happy I don't know what to do with myself. For starters, I'm going to relax and catch up on some reading while drinking a near beer(since I can't have the real thing I will have to make due with what I have)

As a last note, I only have 46 more days to go!!