Money Matters
cbee817
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Monday (a day late) Accountability
Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!
1. How MM was your weekend?
2. Any progress towards goals?
3. Do you decorate for the holidays? If so, is everything up?
Re: Monday (a day late) Accountability
1. How MM was your weekend? Not too bad- groceries ($144), dinner with DH ($40), Target ($110), Rifle Paper Co prints ($75). The girls' presents are all done including 2 handmade pillows for their beds.
2. Any progress towards goals? $500 to savings. Some electrical work planned for Friday including the bathroom lights. Bathroom just needs caulk, touch up paint and it's done!
3. Do you decorate for the holidays? If so, is everything up? We do- our tree, decorations have been up since Friday. DH did the outside lights on Sunday. Love the glow of the tree at night- definitely my favorite part.
1. I mentioned this on another post, but I went crazy with BF appliance deals. I needed them for my new duplex anyway, but it was over $4100. Ouch! But I got brand new items with warranties for only a bit more than I would have spent for used. I also spent $50 on 3 sweaters and one pair of shoes. Pretty great! And I bought $150 worth of gift cards at Rite Aid, but I got $32 in Plenti points back. Another good win. I also spent $49 there on various items, including a sweet deal of Buy 1 pair of Foster reading glasses for $20 and get 2 free (for my H).
2. Good progress on the duplex! All the appliances and ac/heat window units are purchased. That was the last major expense we will have for the reno (knock on wood). We should be finishing up next week and I already have a showing for the 2 bed unit tomorrow! I didn't put ads up yet, but I replied to a few people in the "Housing Wanted" section of CL. The potential tenant has two small children and is very excited I provide a washer/dryer.
A neighbor of that duplex is interested in the 3bd unit for her mother. I'm hoping to be so luck as to have two good tenants lined up before we are even done with the reno (crossing fingers).
3. We don't have any Xmas decorations up and I kind of doubt we will. I usually like to put a tree in the corner of our living room, but we are using it as a staging area for various construction supplies at the moment. My H prefers to put up no decorations anyway but has been good with putting up the tree in previous years.
My cat will be disappointed, lol. She's good about not climbing it. But loves to sit next to it and swat at the ornaments on the lower branches.
1. How MM was your weekend? Not great. I need to get back under control. $100 at the bookstore, but half of it was on Christmas gifts. Another $100 at the little gift shop, but again, around half went to budgeted Christmas gifts. $200 at Lowe's on some new Christmas lights, pegboard and organizational stuff for the garage. $20 at the grocery store on some random things we needed. $230 on Amazon on Cyber Monday. Our router went bust over the weekend so $140 of that was on a router, I broke the beaker on our large French Press so another $20 out the window, and the remainder was Christmas gifts. Good news though is we're done other than gifts for my mom and sisters which will total around $120 for the three of them.
2. Any progress towards goals? I got paid and put $500 in savings. Only two more paychecks left in the year after this and then I can finally re-adjust my federal withholding to something that doesn't cut my take home pay by more than 50%.
I'm feeling really down about this, like I'm practically working for nothing and we haven't had much goal progression in the last 2 and half months so that just makes it hard.
3. Do you decorate for the holidays? If so, is everything up? Yes, we do! But no, I've only done outside decor so far. I'm so happy because we finally switched to all LED lights this year. It was kind of expensive to break into but I hope we get a lot of use out of them and some savings on electricity as well. I had several sets of old incandescent bulbs given to me by my parents and those can finally be passed on to someone else or recycled. I still need to do all of my indoor decorations but I'm dragging my feet. We normally do a live tree and since we're going to be out of town for Christmas, DH doesn't want to buy one.
1. How MM was your weekend?
Good. We spent about $15 on airport food and the rest was online shopping with good deals. $50 on two tickets to the holiday pops concert at the symphony. We saw it advertised on facebook and couldn't resist. Then another $125 on restaurant gift cards for ourselves because they had some bonuses attached. I also got a few things on my list with my fun money that were well within budget.
Kennel bill and airport parking will arrive soon and the kennel bill (probably $300) won't be fun.
2. Any progress towards goals?
Our last credit card bill came in at a low number. That was good to see. It should give us some momentum to close out the year with some money going into savings.
3. Do you decorate for the holidays? If so, is everything up?
We'll decorate this week and weekend with house decor and a table top tree. We have a bigger tree but we feeling too lazy to put it up this year since it requires moving furniture and old school tree assembly.2 - I've booked 3 gigs in the past couple weeks so that money will be split between savings and retirement. I made an appt next week at our local fidelity office to talk to an advisor about some funds that may be good for me to purchase with some cash I have.
3 - we do decorate. All exterior lights got put up on Saturday and we will put up the interior decor this weekend.
1. How MM was your weekend? Not bad! We hosted thanksgiving so although we had leftovers, we did eat out a couple times because you can only eat leftovers so much before you get sick of them. Breakfast at the McDonald's drivethru was paid for by the person in front of us. $20 for Chinese takeout on Friday evening and $20 for pizza on Saturday. $7 for Gluhwein (mulled wine) and this is kind of MM because we had planned to go to a Christmas market in a large city near us, but decided against going, so we saved lots of money in train fare, food and drinks, so $7 for a bottle of wine is a deal in comparison. $20 normal church offering, $25 at Joann's (scored a door wreath that's normally $49 on sale for $14.99, plus a couple other items, with coupons), and $58 on tops at JcPenney (this was not a deal; I'm in need of a white top for a concert and couldn't decide which was better, so I bought both to try on for my mom, and I'm keeping both because they're cute).
2. Any progress towards goals? Our biggest goal right now is to pad our savings after our spendy summer on the car and bathroom reno. We're continuing to save my entire salary so this is going well. Except we're itching for master bedroom furniture so we may dip into it soon.
3. Do you decorate for the holidays? If so, is everything up? Yes, and our tree and outside lights are up! The rest of the indoor decorations are out of the cabinet but not displayed. I'm also working on improving our front door/stoop Christmas decor, so if anyone has any MM ideas for this I'm all ears.
2) As of this morning my H had to bill 9 more hours between today and tomorrow to hit the next level of bonus. He's going to make it. I'm really happy he will cross that threshold because he totally blew past the last hours threshold a couple weeks ago. If he didn't make it to the next threshold he would have basically worked November for free. Anyway, he will see an extra $3,000 in his bonus.
3) We decorate a little bit. I started putting up decor yesterday. One of our cats climbed the tree within 10 minutes of putting it up, and he has taken to launching himself at it from various points in the living room. The whole thing kind of sways, and I'm thinking about adding hooks to the wall behind it and tying it down so that it doesn't fall over. I may not put ornaments on it this year...
@smetter04 We have a large front porch, but for just a front door I'd do something similar. Drape the eaves with garlands, you can get them super cheap at Michael's for the 9 foot lengths...I think they put them on sale for 50% (or more) off very early on in the season. Also, it's super easy to buy wide, wired holiday ribbon and watch some Youtube videos/google how to make a poofy bow. Then you can attach a large bow at the peak of the garlands or on the corners or something. Kind of like this, and if the garlands look at little thin, you can buy some filler stuff from the floral area that's on sale and wire it into the garland.
I like to make my own wreaths too, but it's possibly too late to do that if you're thinking MM. I usually buy all my supplies (fake evergreen wreath, filler/decor stuff, ribbon) at a deep discount after the season, put together the wreath and store it til next year.
2. Not really this week, but everything is staying on schedule. Next week I'll make a payment that kills my deductible for the year so that's good progress I suppose.
3. We do, but nothing is up yet. Growing up we never decorated TG weekend and it's only recently that I learned that puts me in the minority.
We didn't either! I'm with you. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized decorating on TG weekend was what most people do.
Growing up, we also never decorated the outside of the house or put up lights. I remind my H every year how lucky he is that outdoor lights and decorations are not something I'm used to or care about, lol.
Fun animal fact. Although water is "flavorless" for humans, that is not true for most mammals. For most mammals, including dogs and cats, water has a very flavorful (presumably delicious) taste.
Though why they like to drink it out of toilets, bath tubs, puddles...and apparently Christmas tree holders (hilarious!)...when they have perfectly good water bowls, is a mystery to me.
1. How MM was your weekend?
2. Any progress towards goals?
3. Do you decorate for the holidays? If so, is everything up?
1. Let's hope I can remember...$43 Dinner out, $17 Gas $50 BJ's Membership renewal, $63 BJ's, $70 Shopping etc
2. $300 to vacation, $100 to ROTH accounts
3. We always decorate so the inside is all done, and we will do the outside this weekend.
2. Nothing last week.
3. Minimally. I put out a wreath, plus a few small decorations. We have a tree from the 1950s, but it's so much work to put up! I didn't last year, and if I don't do it this weekend I won't bother this year.