Didn't do much today at all, but i noticed in the late afternoon that the skies were finally clearing and lo and behold it was warm outside.

On impulse i grabbed my bike helmet and away i went for a ride around town. Thought i'd see what progress they've been making at the former state mental hospital grounds.

It's the size of a college campus with huge brick buildings, but the place has been vacant since the 1980s. The state gave it to the town a few years ago, and there are plans to renovate one of the buildings and make it our town hall. They put some softball fields there and a large indoor sports facility is going in, too. The local hospital will set up some kind of offices there as well. Some buildings are being demolished cus they're in too bad disrepair, and others will be salvaged. Asbesthos remediation is ongoing.

After years of study and surveys, one thing is for certain: the townspeople want NO residential development there and they want most of the space devoted to town needs, including recreational.

It was still a gloomy day out, not much light, but here are a few shots...












And on the way home, a view of Hawley Pond from the little bridge. It's just a 5-minute drive from my home, and close to the center of town. Mary Hawley is the town's benefactress. She built the town hall and the library and left money in her will for the library's trust fund.


Here's another view of the same park. It's known as Ram Pasture, so called becus during colonial times, the farmers would communally graze their sheep together, and this is where they'd graze.

A not uncommon question, when you're taking personal finance, is, "What percentage of your income are you saving for retirement?"

My knee-jerk response is usually to say, "15%," because i know that's what i'm contributing to my 401(k). (I also max out my IRA each year, but since i have taxable savings, I simply transfer money from a taxable account into my Roth IRA, so I'm really not saving additional money. So i don't include the IRA in the calculation.)

But if i look at the bigger picture of what i'm trying to do to reach retirement quicker, I am pleasantly surprised....

That's partly because I'm inching closer to the time when all my money management efforts on several different fronts will eventually coalesce, and i can begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

What in the world is she talking about, you say? Well, I've been aggressively paying down my mortgage for quite some time. Well, really since i got the thing in 1995, 13 years ago.

There was a time i was just throwing an extra $100 a month toward it, but as my income slowly grew over the years, and after i studied amortization tables and realized how much money in interest i could save by prepaying, especially in the early years of my mortgage, i gradually upped the ante over a period of time. Then, back in November of 2006, i increased it to its current level, an extra $425 a month in prepayments. Even with a greatly reduced income at that time, i stubbornly didn't want to lose ground, so i tightened my belt, as they say, and resolved to maintain the current level of prepayments regardless.

People often refer to their mortgages as "forced savings," because paying it, rather than rent, helps you build equity. (How much equity, during the current real estate slump, is another story, but let's put that inconvenient thought aside for now.)

So if i take my current gross monthly income and subtract both the $875, or 15%, i put toward my 401k monthly as well as the $425 in extra payments toward the mortgage monthly, i can see that i'm actually living on 77% of my salary and saving 23% (if you include my mortgage prepayments as savings, which i do.) Nice.

These numbers are also helpful in coming up with a more accurate idea of how much money i'll need to live on in retirement.

If you go with what the "experts," say, i would need about 75% of my pre-retirement income. Well, my income changes all the time, but ok, right now, 75% of that would be $52,500 annually. That still sounds like a lot to save, multiplied by 30 years, doesn't it? That would be $1.575 million.

But since I've already calculated that i'll have the mortgage paid off several years before i retire, i know i can shave off the following from the annual income needed: my mortgage principal ($770 x 12 months = $9,240), mortgage prepayments ($425 x 12 = $5,100) and 401k contributions ($10,500). These 3 items will no longer be expenses when i retire, and they total a whopping $25,840.

So going back to that figure, $52,500, which represents 75% of my current salary, if i subtract $25,840 from that, I only need to count on saving $26,660 a year to maintain my current standard of living (which sounds wierd, given that i'm now making $70,000). And that's not including Social Security. So if, say, i retired completely at age 60 (which i don't intend to do, by the way), i'd only need to save, in today's dollars, $800,000 to fund 30 years in retirement. I haven't factored in inflation, but i haven't factored in any interest earnings, either.

As you can see from my sidebar profile, i'm planning on going beyond that target, to $1.2 million becus i don't want to cut it too close.

These are just ballpark numbers and there are lots of variables, but i guess the takeaway here for me is that, provided you can have your home paid off by the time you retire, you shouldn't necessarily feel overwhelmed by the experts' projections of the huge amounts of money you'll need in retirement.

This is, in fact, emerging as the theme in the opening chapters of the book i borrowed from the library today, Retire on Less Than You Think.

Of course, if you have children, as most people do, you'll probably equate all of this to fantasyland, since i don't have to worry about raising a child, let alone college tuition. However, i also don't have a spouse's second income as backup, either. It's all on me.

Now there are many out there who don't view mortgage prepayments as a smart thing to do because investments usually out-perform. Course the current market, once again, could put that rule of thumb on its head. My mortgage rate is 6%, BTW. But paying it off early is a conscious choice of mine, whether or not i could earn a little more by putting the extra payments into my mutual fund investments. I'd rather sleep well at night and get rid of one really giant bill, the biggest i have.

Being on this self-imposed savings "schedule," i often feel that money is "tight." I would estimate that after all "routine" expenses are paid for at month's end (and that includes some modest eating out, a small amount of clothing shopping, perhaps or miscellaneous expenses), I have about $600 to $750 left over, which, if i've been very spartan for the month, i can put toward savings. But more often than not, what seems like an ample amount of extra money is sucked up by unexpected bills and all i hear is a "whoosh" as the money disappears.

For instance, in September, I had 2 unfortunate big bills that put me in the hole on paper, anyway, by about $474. One was a $700 car repair bill to fix my emissions system. Another was a $605 annual assessment for our sewers; the money goes toward the construction of the sewer treatment plant and i'm stuck paying off a $10K mandatory loan for another 8 years or so. So those 2 combined big expenses once again zapped my every effort to "save" a little more.

Interesting stuff, though, isn't it?

I came across some book recommendations on retirement (my favorite subject) so i stopped at the library this a.m. to see if they had them. I picked up "Retire on Less Than You Think," and Ordinary People, Extraordinary Wealth."

I don't read many personal finance books, not becus i'm not interested, but becus i just don't have the time. I do read quite a bit of Kiplingers/Smart Money/Money/NYT/Wash Post etc online for my job.

But i'm going to try to get thru these 2 books. I did GREATLY enjoy 2 classics, Your $ or Your Life and The Millionnaire Next Door.

In the same driving trip i also stopped at Walgreen's and picked up 2 free after rebate items. Also on sale they had Ghirardelli Dark Mint Chocolate bars on the discount shelf for just .57, so i picked up 4! Why they would be discounted, i don't know. I didn't see an expiration date on them. And then at checkout, i saw a small bag of macadamian nuts, so i bought them too, as a sentimental purchase. You see, my grandmother, knowing how much i liked them as a child, would always have them at her house when we came to visit. They're so expensive, i don't buy them now, but this one's for you grandma. I miss you so much.

I took the backroads to Walgreens, then took the highway coming back to compare mileage. It was actually longer to take the highway, so now i know not to do that. On the way back, i passed a pretty bad accident which appeared to have just happened, so i used my cell phone to call 911 and report it. You never know when someone might not have a cell phone, and i sure would appreciate it if a passerby did that for me.

The bank that has had the honor of leveraging the balance in my checking account for the past 15 years is still screwing up my linked online money market account i just opened with Dollar Savings Direct.

(I'm trying to beef up my emergency fund, which currently has just $4,500 in it. I'm aiming for 6 months worth of living expenses, or $18,000.)

DSD only accepts online transfers, but for some reason one online transfer i attempted to make from my bank to DSD for $3,000 ended up going to them in the form of a check, which they do not accept, and so they returned it to me. But now my regular bank deducted that amount from checking, and i'm down to about $200. Lucky for me that nothing bounced, or looks like it'll bounce. I had to spend another 20 minutes on the phone with a bank rep to get it straightened out.

Truth be told, i would still very much like to open a checking account at a different local bank (and i know which one it would be). Maybe when my checks run out.

This weekend is a rainy one and i have things to do around the house, as usual, though i'm feeling lazy today. Like just feel like reading instead of mouse-proofing. (I heard one last night, so my job isn't done.) I also bought the proper-sized foam insulation that goes around the plumbing pipes in an unheated room, like my basement. I had replaced some larger, galvanized steel pipes years ago with smaller diameter copper pipes, but just kept the old foam on, which hangs loosely and uselessly. I don't know why i didn't take care of that before. That's one thing i want to do this weekend.

I hope you watched the debates last night. It's probably not wise to talk politics here, though i would like to say that McCain came off as very rude to me becus he did not once look Obama in the face. He only addressed Jim Lehrer. It did not seem very respecful.

Among the many things i want to do when i "retire" is work for a presidential campaign, when there's someone I believe in.

We had a wild ride this week in the financial markets with the fed seizure of Washington Mutual and the $700 billion bailout package pending, both of which i wrote about for our website at work. The sale of WaMu to MorganStanleyChase was a very good thing becus it means the FDIC doesn't have to put up the funds to back up their losses, and their current funding is fairly depleted after the IndyMac deal. That's our tax dollars, crisis averted there, folks.

Unfortunately, our tax dollars WILL be used for the bailout of the banking industry once they hammer out a final deal. There seems to be no alternative becus the entire credit apparatus seems to have seized up itself. The problem is commercial paper, short-term loans businesses rely on to carry out their day-to-day operations. Banks, after getting carried away on a wave of greed and reckless disregard for any semblance of loan standards, are now freezing like deer in the headlights, afraid to loan any money whatsoever becus they're now suffering the consequences of sub-prime and 0% interest loands, option ARMs and all the rest.

So while you may think you won't be needing a mortgage, student loan, car loan or HELOC anytime soon, this fiasco still affects you greatly, becus businesses like your employer can't make payroll without short-term loans.

What a world we live in.

So i went to my town's annual health fair last weekend; i think i posted about it earlier. Among other things, i took a minute to enter a free raffle. Actually, i barely glanced at the list of prizes.

I got a phone call on my machine Monday night from my town's health district, which sponsors the fair and the raffle. I won a prize! But she didn't mention what it was. I was hoping it was the one prize i saw listed, something about a weekend stay at Mohonk Mountain House, a beautiful hiking spot and Adirondack style resort in Dutchess County, about an hour or so northwest of me. I've been there hiking many times, but it's very expensive to spend the night.

Of course, this is all i thought about Monday night, until i could call them back Tuesday am and learn about the prize.

Sure enough, when i asked her what i won, she started saying something that sounded like "Mohonk Mountain...." but i actually interrupted her with my scream of delight and subsequent rants. Staying at Mohonk Mt. House would make me deliriously happy. (Even though right now i have no SO to stay there with, but that's another matter that could be worked on.)

So I raced to pick up the prize before work, and that's when i learned that what I REALLY won was 4 adult ski lift passes to MOHAWK Mountain Ski Resort in Cornwall, CT. Oh. Wow. Sounds very similar, doesn't it? Problem is, I don't ski!

I decided that maybe i could either sell them on Craig's List or call the place and see if i could exchange the tickets for an equivalent amount of spending money in their ski shop. I considered which was the best choice and decided i should try to sell the tickets. I'd rather have the cash instead of a few more severly overpriced fleece pullovers or some such thing of which i already have enough of anyway.

When i got to work, i recounted the whole experience to my friend and he immediately offered to buy them after i told him i recalled the letter with the tickets put a value on them of $100. I offered to sell them for $75 and he immediately accepted. I was quite content. But it was only later that i realized after reading the letter more thoroughly that the ski place apparently intended at first only to donate 2 ski lift tickets at a value of $100. That's what was typed in the letter, but then someone had crossed out the "2" and replaced it with "4" and crossed out "$100" and hand-wrote in "$200." (There were, in fact, 4 tickets included in the packet.)

I hadn't caught that change. Meaning that i could have gotten a lot more $ for the tickets and that my friend got a REALLY good deal. Oh well. He's got 2 girls so i hope they will enjoy a day of local skiing this winter. ($50 for one lift ticket sure sounds expensive, doesn't it?)I will be content with my newfound $75, which represents, oh, i don't know, a month's worth of electricity.

Anyway, it was EXCITING to win something and it certainly reinforces my intention of filling out EVERY RAFFLE i come across in the future!

I've been on a homemade pesto sauce kick lately. Made it for the 3rd time this summer today over pasta for lunch. Once I learned how easy it was to make it (fresh basil leaves, olive oil, walnuts, garlic and parmesan reggiano cheese all ground up in a Cuisineart) I've begun looking at the basil plant i've got as not just an herb, but a food source.

In the past, i would snip off just a leaf or two occasionally for a cold summer tomato/feta cheese salad. Now, that sturdy little plant i buy each summer can be as productive as the veggies growing in my garden. And i love the vivid green color of it in my blender. Once again, no comparison with the store-bought variety. Yum.

I am working at home today and taking my little lunch break. It's just my 2nd work at home day and tho they don't come often, i treasure them. And i am super-productive, too!

I have to go back to work tomorrow after a lovely week off, especially considering i didn't go anywhere.

But to recap, I took my mom out to dinner, went with her to some very nice private gardens, went with friend H. to a national historic site walking tour, went with H. to a historic home guided tour, did 2 bike rides by myself, did some freelance writing, earning $320 and the promise of more work, and got some work done mouse-proofing the basement.

Yesterday i went to my town's annual health fair. I got my cholesterol checked for free (184) and then headed to my mom's, and together we went to some very nice private gardens that are open, free, to the public, on weekends. It's called Garden of Ideas, and they had lots of outdoor sculpture, poetry and water features plus some unusual plants.



They also had a large pyramid made of bricks, which i thought was an interesting garden accent.

My mom really enjoyed it, and we both took lots of pix.

Today was also another picture perfect weather day, so i decided to devote it to working in the yard, which i really hadn't done all week. As a gardener, i go beserk in the spring after a long winter cooped up indoors, but come July and August, i really do very little in the yard besides mowing the lawn and trimming shrubs, mainly becus i can't stand the humidity. But i've been doing more now that the weather has improved, and i like to tidy things up and begin to put the gardens to bed for the winter.

I made a pretty good mushroom, barley and spinach risotto type thing today.

H. wanted me to go to Trader Joe's with her today, and i would have liked to go, but i decided to pass becus spending time on the highway and fighting Sunday afternoon crowds at that store are just not a good way to spend such a nice day. It felt really good to garden pretty much all day today except for making that risotto.

I have some Virginia rose that is becoming problematic becus it spreads like mad, via underground runners, and pops up where it's not wanted. I started out with 2 plants quite a few years back. They are a native rose, and that's partly why i bought them. They look nice early in the season, but then they get that black spot on the leaves and at this time of year they look quite unsightly. They were really overrunning my bed of autumn joy sedums, which really look spectacular now in bloom, so i yanked out quite a few of the Virginia rose. I would like to keep them, but near the front entryway is not a good spot for them as they tend to get weedy and scraggly looking, so maybe next year i'll try to relocate them.

When i got home from my first meeting with K., i got on the phone with both H. and my mom to tell them about him. i was at my computer and up comes an email from him saying "tried calling you but your line is busy. Just wanted to say I really enjoyed meeting you and would like to see you again next weekend. Here's my home phone, xxx-xxxx. Full disclosure.

The full disclosure thing was meant to be a joke, since when we were talking, we were exchanging bad date stories i told him about a pharmacist i met once who had fooled me (he was married) but not my friend R., who got suspicious when i mentioned he had given me his cell number but not his land line. R. who was working as a PI at the time, did some "investigating" and he's the one who learned that he was married.

So K. wanted to assure me he was on the up and up. Thanks for all your supportive comments on him earlier, by the way. I always know where to go to get a little ego boost!

Heading back to the office will be hard, though as it turns out, Tuesday is a work-at-home day for me so i'll just be in on Monday. When i work at home, though i love it, i work TWICE as hard and make sure to hand in twice the amount of work i'd normally get done in the office, just to assure they don't think i'm goofing off or anything.

I've really enjoyed the daily blogging here, but i'm guessing i'll have to go back to my weekend-only routine again, as it seems i hardly have any time during the work week. Uck.

Might as well take the day in chronological order....

Friend H. and i went to the only national historic site in the state of Connecticut, Weir Farm. We were the only ones there for the 1 pm walking tour, so we got a very personalized tour with the park ranger. Weir Farm is a very picturesque farm with various studios where a succession of artists lived, starting with Weir (forget his first name already). It was fascinating because the park ranger would show us paintings the artist did when he lived there, of his children, wife or other people, and we could see the exact same scene which in some cases, had changed very little.

Here are some pix:


Inside the studio


Outside the studio


Shutter detail

Hmm, unfortunately, some of my nicest shots are too large to load...

anyway, it was a nice visit. We ate some apples from the orchard and those were THE BEST apples i've had in a long time.

To keep the spirit of the artists who lived here over several generations alive, they have an artist in residence program where there's a little cottage on the property an artist can live in for 4 to 6 weeks and create art in a beautiful and inspiring setting. They even also GIVE oil paints to visitors for free so they can set up their easels around the grounds and paint. How cool is that?

OK, so tonight i met K. for a drink. As i'd mentioned earlier, he responded to something i posted on craigs list where i said that one of my favorite things to do is go to this cinema. He was quite tickled, becus he owns the theater. It's a local icon, 3 or 4 screens but very anti-cineplex. It's an old-fashioned theater. Years ago, the place was having financial difficulties and looked like it was going to close down but people chipped in $ to save it, as i recall.

Anyway, after all these years of dating, i'm pretty cautious and try not to have any expectations. So i was pleasantly surprised, and am even feeling a wee bit excited about this turn of events. I would describe him as very friendly, gregarious, outgoing, happy and having a sunny disposition. He seemed interested in me, i'm not sure why. I'm not the razzle dazzle type, and i'm wondering if he'll soon realize i'm boring after another date or two. He wants to do dinner next weekend, fall madly in love and go to the Galapagos Islands next year. In that order.

I'm sort of reluctant to say more, in case i jinx it and then all you guys will know about it, so that's it for now.

You may have caught on this morning's news how Hershey, trying to control costs and retain profits, has replaced the cocoa butter in many of its chocolate candy products with vegetable oil, which is cheaper. Of course, the FDA says it's not "milk chocolate" without the cocoa butter, which gives it its rich, creamy taste, so they've had to change their labeing and wrappers, too, but most consumers don't really read the print or understand that "chocolately taste" or "chocolate candy" is not the same as "milk chocolate."

Supposedly, you can really taste the difference.

Many retailers are simply shrinking the size of the food package you buy, hoping you won't notice.

Yesterday, i saw another interesting way that retailers are saving costs, and this idea, at least, wouldn't seem to hurt consumers or give them less product for their money.

I had a free after rebate offer (courtesy of this website) to try Arm & Hammer's Essentials Multi-Surface Cleaner. When i found it on the shelf, i was so surprised because the plastic spray bottle was completely empty. Attached to it was a much smaller vial which contained a powder that you simply mix with water in the container. You could then buy the small vial refills as needed, and continue to reuse that same plastic spray bottle.

Now this, i thought, was actually a good idea. Just think how much Arm & Hammer is saving on shipping costs if their bottles are, well, filled with air rather than liquid. And consumers are actually benefitting the environment by not having to buy additional plastic spray bottles, just the much smaller vial-sized ones.

Have you come across other ways you've seen retailers trying to save some money?

Today was a nice day.

I had plans to meet up with my friend H. for a few activities, but before then, i did run out to the dump to get rid of some old insulation i'd torn out of the basement during Mice Barricade Duties. It had lots of mouse poop in it and was gross and i didn't want it sitting in my garage even a minute more than it had to. All i need is to contract the Hanta virus and i'll be all set.

So i got rid of that, and on the way back stopped at Stop & Shop for a second "stock up" of Lean Cuisines, on a half-price sale. I really had trouble stuffing them into the freezer, but i refuse to buy them at full price and they sure do come in handy for a quickie lunch at the office when i'm too tired to make something the night before.

So H. picked me up around noon and we headed for a town about a half hour drive from us that's known for its many antique stores and historic homes but not much else except for its retirement community. We stopped for lunch at the Good News Cafe, which has made quite a name for itself with its creative, organic menu and contemporary rotating art exhibits.(My mom would really like this place.) We both had "Scottish wild salmon." Very yummy. Never heard of Scottish salmon before but our young waiter informed us it had the lowest mercury content. It's pleasant to think about heavy metals in your food right before wolfing it down.

After that, we headed to a historic house that was home to the very first Episcopalian minister in the New World, dating back to 17-something, before the Revolutionary War. We were the only ones there and the 2 women sitting around were so happy to see "customers." So we got a very personalized tour from one well-informed docent. It was all quite interesting. I loved the super-wide, unfinished floor boards and i was amazed to see an 18th century, handmade MOUSE TRAP. It really resonated, since that's been the story of my winters each year for the 13 years. We were also able to handle one very old, hunk of compacted tea. The docent said when they threw the tea overboard in England, it was actually in this kind of form and it floated, so afterwards, they were able to fish it out again, cus i guess it was very expensive.

We wondered how those early settlers survived New England winters with no central heating, just a fireplace in every room. We saw those rope beds where the mattresses were stuffed with straw and filled with bedbugs, hence the expression, "sleep tight and don't let the bedbugs bite." EWWW.


Sorry, this is NOT the Glebe House, but it's a view from there...

On the way home, we stopped at Shaw's supermarket and i was able to use a coupon i had for a free bag of frozen Ore-Ida Mash & Smash or something like that potatos, as well as a free after rebate spray bottle of some sort of household cleaner.

Lunch was $18 with tip ( a little steep) and admission to the Glebe House was $5. (I also learned that "glebe" was an old English word for the parsonage, or the house where the minister lived.) The minister there, who was ordained by the Episcopalian church back in England, was frequently persecuted by other colonists becus he was loyal to the church, and in fact at each Sunday sermon he had to reaffirm his allegiance to the church, so they disliked him. During the tour, we saw the hidden passageway behind some wood paneling in the front entryway where he would crawl in and hide when they came looking for him. His wife had 9 children. Imagine. I wonder if he had a 401(k) plan.

I actually had wanted to visit this place becus the gardens around the house were designed by the famous landscape designer Gertrude Jekyl. I believe she lived around the turn of the 20th century.

Tomorrow i have yet more fun stuff planned with H. and then tomorrow night i hope i'm not too tired cus i have a, oh, i hate to call it a "date," but i suppose that's what some might say. With K., the movie guy. He suggested dinner and a movie, but ewww, i'm nervous already and i have trouble with commitment as you might guess, especially when i haven't met him and might want to make a quick escape. He sounds like an outgoing, gregarious and happy kind of guy, just a very initial impression over the phone. Could be a nice change from all the wackos i've dated, but i really just want to dip the very tip of my toe in these waters....stay tuned.

If this doesn't take, i will remain a spinster for the rest of my days. Seriously.

I spent the late a.m. and until about 2 pm doing my freelance writing project. It's a $3 million contemporary overlooking a private lake. Quite nice. I hope they like the writeup. It'll cost 'em $230, thank you very much.

I interviewed the owner/wife on the phone, a French woman who seemed very nice.

Ordinarily i wouldn't have the time for any more freelance, but the timing worked out very well, since this is my week off from my full-time job. And the extra $ will come in really handy, seems like the bills never stop flying in.

I should also be receiving a check for about $100 for my week of cat-sitting recently for a neighbor who went to Rhode Island. Thank you again (!) very much!

After finishing up the freelance assignment, i worked just a bit out in the yard since it was really a nice day. I pulled up and dismantled the rest of the veggie garden and just did some tidying up.

Then my mother came over and we went to dinner at a local restaurant where they had a buy 1 dinner, get the 2nd free, up to a maximum of $20. I figured if we kept to the $20 entree limit, we'd both end up paying just $10, plus tip. Well, we both wanted the chicken stuffed with asparagus and lobster with lobster ravioli in a mushroom sauce (very good) and they were $22 each, so i paid a total of $35 and just asked my mom to chip in $10, so i'm only out $25. I think it was worth it. Niether of us has had a nice dinner out in ages.

Tonight, i'm embarraassed to say, but i love watching America's Next Top Model. Oh well, we all have our junk TV. Actually, i also recently enjoyed watching America's Biggest Loser. Am i a loser for watching that??

Day two of my vacation. I started off the day, after leisurely perusing these blogs, with a 3-hour bicycle ride around my town's back roads. Petted a horse. Dodged traffic. Admired some homes. And capped it off by stopping at the dairy farm about a mile from my house for a yummy peanut butter/chocolate/banana ice cream cone. It was a chilly, overcast day, so i was the only one at the stand, but i sat on a picnic table enjoying my cone and petting one very friendly farm cat.

Back home, i posted a tin lantern on Craig's List. I did a little wallpaper scraping in the bathroom.

Then i was debating whether or not to do a kayak trip tomorrow, when i got an email from one of my realtor contacts with a project i couldn't turn down. I used to do a lot more real estate freelance writing but with the f/t job, it's just too much. But since i have the week off, i offered to do a brochure for a $3 million home for one of their top producers. If the agent likes my work, it'll mean 8 or 10 such jobs a year, which suits my schedule very well. Less than a weekend a month of work i can handle. So we'll see how it goes. So that's what i'll be doing tomorrow, not sure if i'll have time for kayaking.

I've got a beef stew on the stovetop and it should be ready by 6:30 pm. Other than that, looking forward to a quiet TV night.

Last night, I walked to the movie theater to watch the latest Indiana Jones movie for $2. My girlfriend had already seen it. Walking home at around 9 pm was a little spooky on my dark street. I started thinking about the coyotes that killed the neighbor's dog. And I knew it was a bit dangerous with drivers not seeing me, but not much traffic on my road at that time, and it's just a 15-minute walk. My goal is to see 3 movies this week as part of my Vacation Bonanza.

I got home just fine, but then last night i heard some very audible scratching that sounded like it was coming from under the first floor, in the basement ceiling, exactly the area i've been trying to cover up. It was way too loud to be a mouse, and i dread the thought of another chipmunk. If the chipmunk that met its demise in my toilet tunneled into my house via some hole it found on its tunnel route, other chipmunks may use the same tunnel. God. It's really terrible.

If i have free time tomorrow after doing the freelance work, i may just have to continue on the basement. Hate to say it, but i may have to get a rat trap to catch the chipmunk becus i can't deal with them getting inside the house.

Welcome to my bathroom.


It's one of my favorite rooms in the house. And it's where i keep all the free samples and "free after rebates" i get.

Come take a look:


90% of what you see are either free samples or Walgreen's "free after rebates."

Shall we explore?


This is the bottom shelf. These are the full-size "free after rebates" from Walgreens. I think I have enough shampoos to last me for many, many years. All you pay is sales tax on these!


This shelf holds all the deoderant and many of the hand lotion samples, dental floss and toothpaste, etc.


And this box holds all the shampoo, lotion and etc. that comes in those little packets. I could open a B&B with these!

I've been doing this for a few years now. It's kind of like a hobby, yet i have found a number of products i really like, so i have a list of my favorites that i will actually buy after i've used up all the free samples.

I thought you'd be amused. I really don't go after everything i see in the freebie listings here. Just the basics i use nearly every day: shampoo, conditioner, deoderant, toothbrushes and toothpaste, dental floss.

Gosh, i have really changed my ways. I still remember the time, shockingly, a good 10 years ago when i was making good money, that i actually blew $100 on a small bottle of perfume in a department store. That was a different person then, believe me. What a waste.

Update on the mice barricading:
I worked another 2 hours or so on it yesterday. (Seems that's as long as my arms, neck and shoulders hold out.) Progress has been very slow. I finished boarding up the 3rd hole. In another area, i discovered an area where a plumbing pipe went straight up thru the basement ceiling, and whoever cut the hole for it did a real hack job. It looks more like they just punched a ragged hole in rather than cut anything. Plenty of space for a mouse to go thru to the 1st floor. So i cut another square piece of tin with a circle in the middle to fit around the pipe; i have to finish screwing it in this a.m. I just didn't have any more arm strength yesterday.

I had picked up a bunch of new insulation batts, R-19 vs. the R-13 that's in the basement now, so i figure i'm improving things on that end. I replaced some of the insulation i tore out that appeared in bad shape. There was a lot of mouse doo-doo. And i am inserting the insulation the RIGHT way.

Right now, you can see the brown facing on the insulation that's in the basement ceiling. That's the vapor barrier, and that is supposed to be installed so that side is closest to the heated room. In other words, since my basement is unheated and the first floor IS heated, the brown paper vapor barrier should be facing the first floor, so what you should see in the basement is the pink insulation itself. But it was installed incorrectly, so as i replace certain sections, it will be easy to keep track of which areas i've checked for holes. I don't really plan to replace everything, but maybe eventually i will, at least before i sell the place.

I'm not really sure if what i've done so far will really help with my mouse problems, since all the holes i've boarded up have been in the ceiling of the basement, not the outside wall. I suppose I'm helping to prevent mice that come in the basement some other way from migrating up to the first floor, but i'm not really sure what effect, if any, it will have. I suppose i am helping things from an insulating, plugging up air drafts point of view. The basement is quite chilly in winter, about 45 to 50 degrees.

My take on Lehman Bros. implosion: I'm sorry that 25,000 people have lost their jobs, but i'm very relieved that the government is not bailing this company out like they did with Bear Stearns. I'm sick and tired of my tax dollars being used to bail out companies that got themselves into a mess through greed and excess. Their execs made their millions, so i have little sympathy for them.

Aside from more work in the basement, i did get out to Wal-Mart to pick up a bamboo cutting board i'd ordered, plus i got more screws for the basement proejct. On the way home i stopped at Xpect Discounts, which is the cheapest place for Revlon Color Silk, at $2.99. I bought all the "Light Browns" on the shelf, 5 boxes, plus about a dozen packages of suet (.50 a piece) for the coming winter...birds love it. Also stopped at the bank.

Today, i hope to continue on the basement though i am getting a bit tired of this task. It is my vacation week, after all. Also plan to run down to Agway to stock up on bird seed and get my free pumpkin with purchase. On the way there will stop at the dump with all that icky insuulation and household trash. On the way home i'll stop at Stop N Shop which has a half-price sale on Lean Cuisine.

It's supposed to get very breezy today as a cold front arrives, so i'll also be doing laundry and hanging it out on the line.

That's the day's schedule. The fun stuff begins tomorrow!

I have all of next week off, so i considered yesterday the official 1st day of my vacation.

A friend of mine who i THOUGHT was going to help me barricade the basement against mice bailed on me and i decided to try doing it myself. At least start, that is. It was a messy, dirty, exhausting job, largely becus the space i am "barricading" is between the top of my basement wall and the floor above, maybe 6 inches.

Here's what I did: I pulled out maybe the last 2 feet of insulation against the back wall of the basement, which is where i suspect the mice are getting in. There are joists spread about 15 inches apart, and in between them is where the batts of insulation are laid. So i figured i'd pull out the insulation closest to the back wall so i could take a look at the wood frame of the house underneath, to see if i could see any obvious holes or entry points.

I chose the area between one set of joists at random, and what i saw were TWO rather large holes going up thru the ceiling and probably allowing further entry into the main part of the house (1st floor). I don't know how the holes got there; it's an old house; maybe it was once a smaller hole but a critter chewed it bigger. Or maybe it was just sloppy workmanship; my house was built circa 1930, which was around the time of the Great Depression, right? I found old newspaper stuffed into one of the holes; not surprisingly my local newspaper, in continuous circulation since 1877. The date on the newspaper was November 11, 1968. I've found newspaper stuffed into holes in my basement before....cheap insulation, to be sure.

Anyway, i had bought a role of flashing, a thin tin which can be cut with scissors and is somewhat flexible. I was able to cut patches of the flashing and screw it over the holes. I couldn't use nails cus not enough room to swing a hammer. I had to use very short screws as some of them i was screwing into the sub floor and i don't exactly know what's behind the wood i'm screwing into, but i sure don't want to have screws pop through the first floor!


Here's what I'm dealing with! You can see a small shiny metal; that's the tin i used to seal small holes. (The metal at the top of the picture are the heat ducts for my furnace....i'm talking about above the small window, in the little crawl space.) You see what a small space it is. I kept bumping my head on the water pipes and of course i got covered in cobwebs. I was wearing a paper mask so as not to inhale any mice poop spores, and i had my hair back in a pony tail and was wearing a baseball cap backwards. A sight to see!

I worked on this awful task for about 2 hours, but was thoroughly exhausted becus of the awkward space to work in. My arms were killing me. I was able to patch 3 holes, and have a 4th to do before i pull out more insulation. This job alone could take the whole week, i have a feeling.

After doing that, i decided i'd better mow the back lawn before the rain returned. Then i pulled up most of my veggie garden (total tomato count is now 121 tomoatoes plus 15 cherry tomatoes) but i left 1 tomato plant and 2 pepper plants.

I can't keep up with the tomatoes so i cooked up one final batch of the tomatoes on the stove and froze it after it cooled. This will be used as the base for soups and stews.

I also made granola.

On Friday after work i stopped at Shop-Rite and spent $50; everything i bought was on sale. Very cool. They were selling full-sized tubes of Aqua Fresh toothpaste for .88 each, so i snatched the maximum of 4 boxes allowed per person. Prego pasta saauce was going for $1.66 each, so i got 6.

This a.m. i am procrastinating, but i suppose since the weather is lousy outside i should make myself go back and work in the basement. Later in the week i have fun stuff planned, but right now, WORK.

The rationale behind an emergency fund is sound -- have an easily accessible supply of cash on hand in case of emergencies such as a job loss, unforeseen medical expenses or that really big sock-it-to-you car repair bill.

Although I'm an uber-saver, nearly all of my money, both monies earmarked for retirement and non-retirement monies, are in mutual funds, probably an 80/20 mix right now.

My so-called emergency fund, an online money market account, has a piddly $3,000 or so, not nearly enough if you follow the advice of most gurus out there who advocate for at least 6 months worth of living expenses. For me, that would be $18,000.

But i just can't do it! Stash $18 grand in an account earning less than the going inflation rate of nearly 4%? My new Dollar Savings Direct money market has a 3.75% APR, which i reckon is better than what you're getting in a savings or money market account. It just kills me to put so much money into a losing proposition, from a money loss point of view.

HOWEVER, one never knows when a job layoff is coming. In fact, I've somehow weathered a total of FIVE job losses, due to company dissolution, company relocation, 9/11 slowdown, cyclical business slowdown or just plain layoff, over the span of my nearly 30-year working life. That's 5 times i had to SCRAMBLE for new work. Somehow, i got through. Thank god i've been able to build up ample savings.

But now we've got this unusual confluence of a really sucky economic picture and rising unemployment coupled with an equally sucky stock market. So if, worst case scenario, i did lose my job, to pay the bills i'd soon have to sell some taxable mutual funds and do so at precisely the wrong time, during a bear market, meaning, i'd lose a lot of $$.

Coming to grips with these realities is what's forcing me to do what i never could bring myself to do before...bulk up that emergency stash. Now.

My garden is winding down. What with the cooler temps and shorter days, you can tell the growing season is coming to a close as the produce is considerably smaller.

But early on, i decided (obssessively so) to COUNT how much produce i picked, in part to determine how worthy this undertaking was from a strictly financial standpoint.

Of course, i can't tell you how satisfying it is to walk down there after i get home from work and see what the day's pickings are. (Organic, of course, and noticeably more flavorful than store-bought veggies.)

So, without further ado, here's what I harvested this summer:

Enough lettuce for 2 large salads
Several servings of snap peas
3 zucchini (the zucchini rapidly got shaded out by everything else)
7 green peppers (3 plants)
33 cucumbers! (just 1 or 2 vines)
108 tomatoes! (I had no more than 6 plants!)

I gave some produce away, to someone at work and to my mom. And when the tomatoes threatened to go bad before i got to eat them, i chopped them up, mushed them with a potato masher and cooked them on the stovetop, then cooled and froze it; it's destined to be the delicious base of many future winter soups and stews.

As for costs, I did sit down to calculate that as well, though these are estimated guesses as i couldn't find the receipts (strangely). My sister gave me some seedlings, but otherwise, i spent money on seeds, tomato seedlings, deer netting, poultry fencing, wood stakes and Miracle Grow. I esitmate all this came to about $50.

So, that's $50 for 108 tomatoes, 33 cukes and an assortment of other stuff. I don't know what a tomato goes for in the summer, in the supermarket, but I think i came out ahead.

I'm definitely planning a much larger garden next year to accommodate the same veggies plus more pepper plants and definitely string beans, of which i planted a few but which also got shaded out cus i just didn't have enough room. Also yellow wax beans and yellow squash for extra variety.


In other news..

It's a wee bit frustrating...
I saw that Dollar Savings Direct is paying 3.75% APR on its online money market account, better than most. So i decided to transfer my modest emergency stash that i want to bulk up, which until now was at Emgirant Bank, and transfer it to my bank checking account, and then transfer that back into Dollar Savings Direct (DSD).

There's some kind of bugaboo and i keep getting these automated email messages to my DSD acct online saying there's a problem. Every day for the past week i've been calling DSD, then my local bank and reading these stupid messages. They make 2 small "test" deposits to your checking account and once you verify what those deposits are, your account is live and good to go. I've confirmed the deposits twice now, but still, something is wrong.

You'd think if they really wanted my business, a live person at DSD would take the trouble to pick up the phone and call my bank to straighten this out. This is the kind of thing that is soooo aggravating becus i really have no way of fixing the problem; someone at the banks needs to. Anyway, the latest thing i have to do now is fax a voided check to DSD, to a specific live person. I'm hoping that will clinch it. If i were more paranoid, i'd say my local bank doesn't want to part with my money, cus i noticed they accepted the transfer from Emigrant just fine!

I'm cat-sitting this week for my neighbor/friend again. It's easy enough to do, though the cat won't let me touch her, and i pick up a hundred bucks or so, tax-free.

Since i'm working from home today, i was contemplating whether it'd be doable to bike my way over to her house instead of using up gas. It's 6.5 miles round trip, which doesn't sound too bad, but there is one MONSTER hill and i wouldn't be able to head over there til 5:30, which is when my workday ends. I'm wondering if i could get there and back before dark....but i do like a challenge.

My friend and i have all sorts of ideas for how to spend my vacation time, coming up next week. I'm SOOO excited to get this much-needed break. There are a lot of possiblities, including an herb fair at the historic home of John Jay in NY (did he sign the declaration of independence, I'm not sure), a dog show and an art history talk and tour of a historic farm. Then i want to kayak and bike ride, paint and wallpaper my downstairs bathroom and do some kind trip with my mother. And i want to squeeze in a few movies. (Looks like i'll be doing a movie with the movie theater owner guy this weekend, too.) Fat chance i'll get all that done, but i like to set my sights high and make it FEEL like a vacation, so dining out at cool places will definitely be on the itinerary.

I have an over-abundance of what you call "the Puritan work ethic." If there's a choice between "doing something that needs to be done" vs. having fun or goofing off, i'll likely do what needs to be done.

I'm just hardwired that way. Keep busy, keep busy, work, work work, even at home. I write my list of things i want to do and then i tackle them, one by one.

Today, for instance. It was a gorgeous day, the way days following god-awful weather usually are. I left my knee-high garden boots out front, and they were filled halfway up; so we got 5 or 6 inches of rain last night!

But anyway, back to my Sunday...I had asked my friend M. last weekend if he would help me barricade my basement against the mice. Ever since the chipmunk came in, i'm a little freaked about it, and they start coming in as soon as the nights get a little chilly, meaning right about now. He had actually offered to help me with it 3 years ago, and i (foolishly) never took him up on it. So i asked him last weekend.

He had several social engagements, so he couldn't do it. I called him Thursday, for this weekend, and he said "possibly." I said, could you let me know one way or the other, Sunday a.m., if you can come up? I'll treat you to a nice lunch afterwards. He said ok.

He also said i could call him by noon if i didn't hear from him. Actually, that was my suggestion. If there's one thing i can't stand, it's having to sit and wait for the phone to ring. Cus if he didn't come, i could be doing a hundred other things. (Puritan work ethic again.)

So by 11 am this a.m., i called him, got his machine and left a cheery message, ending with, could you let me know either way if you can come...He called me back a little later, he was just waking up, and said he'd call me back.

OK, gorgeous day, and i'd already been to Home Depot at 8 am to get more stuff for the mice wars, and did it early enough, just so i wouldn't miss his call later in the a.m. (I also stopped at Walgreens and Wal-Mart.)

Then, when i got home and was still waitign for him to call, i even spent some time applying hydraulic cement to some holes in my basement cinderblock walls where water was coming in from last night's hurricane. I was glad to get that done. I hope it holds.

Anyway, he never called me back, even tho i asked him twice to let me know. It just really perturbed me, as i recalled that he's done this to me before. I think it's very inconsiderate to leave someone hanging like that. I have a feeling that he feels bad or maybe a little guilty not wanting to come up, and so he doesn't call. Course that just pisses me off. Sigh.

So after waiting 3 hours for his call, til 2 pm, i decided to hell with it. I decided i was going for a bike ride. It was simply too gorgeous to be pissed off and sit inside. So i slathered on the 60 spf sunscreen, put on my padded biking shorts, filled a tire with air, donned a helmet and away i went with a map and a general destination in mind. I rode for about 1 3/4 hours and i could've have gone further, but decided i did need to mow the lawn. I brought some watermelon cut up in case i got thirsty, and i was able to put that in the cute little wicker basket i got for my bike.

It was just a pleasure to get out and pedal thru some beautiful back roads in my hometown. After all this time, there are many streets i still haven't been on. My town is very spread out. Picked up 5 beer cans for return deposit. That's what i call multi-tasking!

I did a load of wash and hung it out to dry. Then, after mowing and trimming, i started to pull up some of my veggie plants, which are getting spent. My next post will fill you in on the WOW! quantity i've harvested. As with everything in life, I counted what i picked. These things need to be noted! Prepare to be mind-boggled!

Oh, yeah, i should have a "date" next weekend with "K." Believe it or not, i met him on Craig's List. I said in my post that one of the things i like to do is go to the movies at XXX Cinema, a small, non-cineplex type theater that shows mostly independent and foreign films, my favorite kind. The place has a definite following.

So he responded and was practically falling all over himself to contact me. Turns out, he's the OWNER of that theater and he was tickled pink that i mentioned it in my post. So we're going to meet. (Yes, he's divorced/available.) Should be fun.

Ever wonder what your car REALLY costs you? I mean, not just the purchase price, but the gas, repairs and maintenance, insurance, license, registration and if you're lucky like me, car taxes?

I figured it out this morning, just for fun. I had finished reading an article in Kiplinger's about whether hybrids are worth the price, and they mentioned that the Prius and the Honda Civic Hybrid are tied for lowest total ownership costs over 5 years, at $39,780.

So i decided to see how much my 99 Honda Civic HX has cost me since i bought it. I track all my expenses anyway, so it was easy to do.

So, here we go with the breakdown. I'm sorry that i can't do a normal table in this blog, but the 1st column = the year; 2nd column is for taxes and state fees; 3rd column is for gas; 4th column is for repairs and maintenance and the last column is for car insurance.

Purchase Price: Jan 99: $14,500

Tax/Reg Gas Repairs Insurance
1999 1175 639 200 813
2000 365 409 235 718
2001 507 516 507 874
2002 325 370 739 894
2003 302 520 466 719
2004 149 393 945 796
2005 214 377 614 655
2006 130 496 1020 393
2007 206 514 1029 388
2008 YTD 89 888 980 378

Totals 3462 5122 6735 6628
10% 15% 20% 20%

Total costs: $36,447
Minus sale of old car: 2,850
Balance: $33,597 divided by 10 years of ownership = $3,360 per year to operate.

Just think how much you'd save if you used your legs, bicycle or public transit to get to work.....

A few interesting things to note:

Total costs for state taxes and registration, etc. fees was a SUBSTANTIAL (10%) part of overall ownership costs.

Gas and repairs each accounted for 15% of total costs while insurance counted for 20%.

The cost of car purchase itself represented 35% of overall costs over the 10-year period.

Gas, interstingly, didn't show a unilateral upward projectory leading to 2008. I guess i used the car for travel/vacations, though i don't remember which ones, but i see that the year i bought it i spent $639 for gas, which is more than i spent in 2007. 2008 is already the year showing the most spent on gas for the whole time i've owned the car.

Repairs have kept rising each year. Guess that's to be expected.

Insurance, happily, has FALLEN, especially from 2006 on, which i think is when i dropped the collision/comprehensive on the car, in year 8.

So i spent less money to operate my car for 10 years than the new prius and honda hybrids will cost over 5 years. Yeah, the cost of gas for those cars will be less than what i'm spending, but i don't think that would make up for equally high expenses for registration, insurance and repairs. Unless, of course, you really need a new car. But otherwise it's clear that coaxing an old car along is a whole lot cheaper than buying a new one.

So while i grumbled a bit last week to fork over $650 for repairs to my car's emissions system, it's still a small price to pay compared to new car ownership costs. But you knew that already, didn't you?

I read about the new Dollar Savings Direct MM account offering 3.75% interest in a post here and also somewhere else, I think. Decided to spring for it and transfer all my MM $ out of my current Emigrant Bank acct (same company, different divisions or whatever) and did everything online. Very easy.

I need to bulk up my emergency stash. I've got plenty in taxable investments, but i'd really be in a crunch if, say, i was laid off and suddenly needed to dip into savings for living expenses. With just about $3600 in the MM account, i'd be forced to sell taxable investments at a time when the whole stock market is way down. Not a good idea.

I've never liked keeping a lot in a money market cus they earn so little and i have other $ anyway, but like i said, i sure wouldn't have to sell mutual funds right around now.

I had a nice day, off-site meeting and got home earlier than usual. Puttered around the yard, watering the garden and shoring up the fencing around 2 corkscrew willows the deer keep nibbling. Also had a big bowl of watermelon and mango chunks. the best.

Read a whole issue of Vegetarian Times. I'm not going to renew the subscription, though. Everything looks great there, but their readers must be full-time stay-at-home women cus i just don't have the time to make these complicated recipes with ingredients i doubt i'd find in the supermarket.

well, time for a shower and then bedtime.

Good night.

What am I doing on one of the very best days of the year? Analyzing my expenses!

What with inflation and rising prices every which way you turn, I thought I should look at my 2008 YTD expenses and compare them to end-of-year 2007. (I track my expenses all year long, so getting at this data is easy to do.) I can project out through the remaining 4 months of the year and come up with a pretty good guess where I’ll stand compared to last year. Then, if I’ve under spent YTD compared to 2007 totals, I can divide the difference by 4 (for the 4 remaining months) to see what I can spend for the rest of the year without exceeding last year’s total expenses.

The goal, of course, is to spend no more than last year and hopefully less.

First, I have 6 fixed expenses that I have no control over, and they are:
Mortgage/property taxes
Homeowners insurance
Sewer assessment
Car insurance
Cable TV
Local taxes

I have 5 categories where I project my spending will be pretty much the same as last year:
Dump sticker
Books/music
Entertainment
Car upkeep
Major expenditures: This usually ends of meaning home repairs, maintenance or improvements. For me, a major expenditure is anything over $500. Just an arbitrary figure I felt was significant enough to separate out into its own category so that big expenses don’t get buried in broader categories.

I spent about $4,200 both this year and last year. Last year, most of that went toward painting the exterior of the house. This year, the $ went toward having 2 big trees taken down, expanding my back brick patio and doing 1 vinyl replacement window. I consider it $ well-spent.

There are 2 categories where I will greatly OVER-SPEND compared to last year. I bet you can guess what they are: gas and heating oil!

I got a new job, so my gas expenses were bound to increase anyway, since I went from no commute to a 45-minute commute, but add to that the rising cost of fuel and I project my total gas spending will be $1308, or 40% more than I spent last year.

As for heating oil, I project I’ll spend $1295 (1/2 of my winter’s supply is now sitting in my tank), and that’s 43% more than last year, when I spent $956.

Happily, of my 29 total categories, there are 14 where I project I will spend LESS than last year:

Food: I have to say this is one of my biggest successes in terms of saving money. I’ve made a conscious effort to carefully scan the weekly sales circulars of the 3 cheapest grocery store chains in my area, and then I choose to shop at the ONE that has the most sales of the items I’d normally get.

I also am not buying as much organic. I only buy in-season produce and I also watch the unit prices to spot the best values, for instance, when I’m buying cereal, there’s such a large assortment of brands and sizes, that looking at the unit price is a huge help in determining maximum value for the $.

I have not sacrificed anything in terms of what I like to eat or nutritional value. (Aside from not as much organic.) However, I don’t eat much meat anyway.

Also I’m confident I’ll be under-spending in 2008 for:

“Household” expenses, which is a sort of catch-all for expenses that don’t fit in other categories and go toward the purchase of items that will see ongoing use, like a dish towel or box fan (as opposed to house maintenance, where the purchase is “used up.”

Out of pocket medical expenses: Chalk this up to better health coverage with the new job and some leftover expenses last year from my 06 surgery, plus a month of pricey COBRA in ’07 when I was in between jobs.

Jewelry: I got a little hooked on QVC jewelry but this habit’s easy to break.

Electricity: I’m pleased to say I’ll spend less this year cus I’m diligent about turning off lights, hang-drying clothes and using mostly CFLs.

Clothing: Based on what I’ve spent YTD, I can still go with a monthly allotment of $60 for the remaining 4 months of the year and come out under what I spent last year.

Phone/Internet: I found savings here from dropping long distance on my land line (I also have a prepaid cell phone, so don’t need it on the land line) and threatening to cancel Internet when AT&T announced a $5 monthly hike.

Gardening: No comment

Vacations: Vacations are always free  when I go see dad!

Gifts: No boyfriend means less $ spent on gifts. All I have to worry about for remainder of year is Christmas.

Car registration/car tax/license: Less than last year

Bird feeding supplies: Didn’t feed ‘em during the summer.

So, total spent last year was $42,772. (Yikes....but its' worth noting that about $5,000 of that was pre-payments on my mortgage.) My new goal now is to stay at or below that level for this year, and now that I’ve done this analysis 4 months early, I know where I stand and how much i can spent without exceeding 2007 expenses, despite rising fuel and heating oil prices. It will be interesting to see how close my projections hit the mark. I’m eager to be able to say at year-end that, at least for 2008, I’m “recession-proof.”