Monday:
- Sold guitar to a friend. Transaction is still pending but it’s at least sold.

Tuesday:
- Called Comcast to make sure I got the $30 prorated amount for switching plans. The website wasn’t updated, but the woman I spoke with (Amanda) said the prorate will show up on my next billing cycle.
- Emailed MVA (calling them is heinous) about the prorated amount for switching to historic tags. (They did email me back and said a refund for $90 is on the way)
- Emailed Vehicle Emissions to let them know of my switch to historic tags in case the MVA doesn’t let them know.
- Left a 2nd message with the Commissioner of Indian Affairs regarding our Lakota Charity at the Grove.

Wednesday:
- Emailed my host about offering me a better hosting package and found a package that will save me $300/year for two of my domains.
- Sent off a form to the MVA to get a card to put with my license about my name change back to my maiden name. I could have went in and gotten a new license for a fee, but this method is free. I can put up with having to use a card with my license for now until it’s time to get a new one in a couple years.
- Sent out an inquiry on freecycle to see if anyone has a used couch that would suit me and my father instead of paying the $600 my dad wants me to spend on a brand new couch. wtf at -that-.

I’m so glad I use ING for all of my banking services now that I just read that HSBC and Bank of America most prone to Idenity Theft.

Most secure bank? ING.

A little disheartening reading that now that I’ve refinanced my car loan through HSBC though.

By the way, if you want an ING referral, let me know

I was listening to my co-workers debate about the best method to organize emails and they had my head spinning so I figured I’d post down my very watered-down simple method of dealing with emails at work and at home. Granted everyone has their own system that works for how their brain operates.

Work Email

- My inbox is only filled with items to be addressed. Items flagged red are for work. As of this post I have 2 flagged assignments for work, and 3 personal assignments for myself in my inbox.

- When tasks assigned to -me- are completed they are archived into the individual project folder.

- When logins/passwords are sent to me, they are put into a LOGIN folder so they are all grouped together should I need to reference a certain login or password later on.

Home Email

Home is a bit more difficult because I get so many correspondences and requests that I’m not able to fill right away. It’s also a lot less organized, whereas work is almost impeccably organized.

Inbox: Tasks to be addressed, though there was a time this got out of hand so I have about 500 emails that were put into a “to go through” folder so I wasn’t feeling so overwhelmed in my inbox. I’ve cut them down considerably but this is still an ongoing project. But the point of moving them to a separate folder was to rid of that “overwhelmed” feeling of backlog.

Several category folders such as: CLG correspondences (including sub-folders for those like Message archives for big flamewars and stuff that happen that I need to keep for future reference), genealogy inquiries, receipts, mud applications, old mud logs.

Bookmarks

This is a different monster all together. I do keep these categorized into folders because otherwise the list is extremely long. Folders like, Survivalism, ADF, Shopping (links that I keep on reference for items I like for my house or may want to buy eventually), Gaming links, and even a folder for links I want to post about eventually.

I’ve pondered switching to an online bookmarking service like de.licious but haven’t made that switch yet, and am not sure I’m going to. It’ll be nice to reference links outside of my home, but I haven’t really had the need yet.

As far as articles or how-tos that I come across, instead of saving tons of links of these to filter through that may eventually disappear anyway, I print them into a .pdf file and archive it on my computer. This way I know the article will never be lost and I don’t have to deal with paper clutter. I’ve been working on scanning some magazines this way as well, and writing the two magazines that I subscribe to in order to convince them to switch to electronic format or at least provide the option. I just can’t stand so much paper clutter.

The Digerati Life asks How did you get interested in Personal Finance?

*rolls up her sleeves*

Instead I am doing a timeline of events that kinda escalated my interest in Personal Finance out of necessity at the start, and then out of desire and overwhelming feelings of accomplishments towards the end.

Circa 2000:
My father falls off of a building and lands headfirst onto a metal beam, splitting his scalp open.
My father has a stroke.

Circa 2001:
- I decide to leave the Naval Base and move home to take care of my dad.
- August 1st: Dad is told by the doctors if he doesn’t quit work completely, he will lose his leg because of the ulcers.
- August 26th: I get hired on at the Vet at $8/hour, which is what we live on for the next 6 months while we wait for Social Security Disability to kick in. This was the first big wake-up call, realizing my father has no retirement, no pension, and absolutely no money saved up. I knew then that I would be the one supporting my father, and I needed to figure out a way to get there.

Circa 2005:
- I get my first credit card (by myself, I had one while married), to try and build up my credit with at $200 limit.
- May: I make my first attempt at buying a car after getting fed up with my bronco.
- I am unable to get approved for any loan, nor convince family members to co-sign for me to even buy a $10k car. This was the second big wake-up call. How was I going to make it if I couldn’t even buy a used car to drive back and forth to work?
- I start using Microsoft Money to track every financial transaction I make.
- I start an emergency fund

Circa 2006:
- Capital One sends me one of those “pre-approved” offers so I decide to check it out. I get approved for $14k which I use to buy my 2004 mustang.
- I get another credit card through USAA’s military program.
- I work on paying down all of my debt, which was actually quite easy.
- I sign up for ING’s high interest savings account
- I find a better paying job making 10k more a year than I was making before, doing something I love to do

Circa 2007:
- I sign up for ING’s high interest CHECKING account and eliminate BB&T completely
- I start a Roth IRA
- I start contributing to my 401k
- I start paying down my fathers debts (This -will- be completed in 2008, I can feel it!)
- Started evaluating my bills and reducing them to the lowest minimal cost possible
- I started changing how I view money. I take lunches to work, I don’t go out to eat, I don’t have food delivered, I don’t buy things I don’t need, I sell things I no longer need or that make me happy anymore.
- Started keeping track of my dads finances, helping him make small adjustments and stop getting overdraft charges.
- Started a Christmas Fund and had all the money saved up for Christmas instead of trying to scrimp and save last minute making myself miserable.

Goals 2008:
- Pay off all of my fathers debts
- Buy our home here as an investment
- Pay off my mustang by March 2009 (2 years early)
- Reach $5k in my emergency fund
- Up my contributions to my 401k and Roth IRA to 10% each.

Taking an idea from my friend Bonnie, a bullet list of recent accomplishments:

• Got historic tags put on my bronco and my dads F-150. Total cost for both: $146. Total before cost for both: $360. Total savings: $214 every two years. And now I no longer have to deal with getting emissions done on either vehicle which is required bi-yearly in the state of Maryland.
• Submitted refinance papers for my mustang and mailed them off. I attempted to call Capital One to see if they would refinance the loan since that is where I got the original car loan (I figured maybe they’d want to keep it), but apparently they don’t refinance their existing loans, so I decided to keep the HSBC refinance offer, saving $100/month.
• Bought a new washing machine, unloaded the old one at the dump.
• Called up Comcast and asked them to reduce my monthly bill, and they put me on a promo that saves me $420 a year
• I am going to be attending the Washington-Baltimore Pagan Leadership Conference this weekend, and staying at Caryn’s place since she’s not too far from it.
• Got my taxes done and will be receiving a refund of $1900. I’ve already received the state taxes which part of went towards the historic tags for the broncos, but the rest will sit in savings until I get the Federal and then I’ll divide it up between my car payment and my emergency savings. Incidentally this will put my emergency savings over $3k, which feels great. More than halfway towards my $5k goal this year.
• Finished one of my web projects, which was to convert the MUD’s building tutorials to Wordpress and make them searchable for our builders. I still need to comb through and update tutorials where code has changed.
• Counted $176 in change in the house which I gave to my dad to deposit into his account

To do next week:

• Call Commissioner of Indian Affairs again since he has not called me back.
• Call Comcast and make sure they take off my prorated amount for switching to their new promo
• Call MVA and get the prorated amount for switching my bronco over to historic tags.
• Call Vehicle Emissions and let them know that my bronco is now on historic tags.
• Write and mail off some official correspondences for the Grove
• Order my dad his prescription glasses online finally, now that we have a prescription and I can find them uber cheap

There was a lot of money saving to be had for February, all from little things. I feel very accomplished in that, as a lot of it was just caused by little things that I did. It’s actually quite fun finding new things to save money on, almost like a game to see if I can get my monthly expenses down to the lowest denominator.

Total Money I’ve saved by doing small changes for 2008 so far: $2024 less!

The bonus of having our cable switched around and reduced as resorted in 2 all day Western movie channels. My dad is now in what he calls “hog heaven”.

His arm looks pretty swollen this morning. Fortunately he has a doctors appointment later today, but I wrapped it up in oatmeal before I left for work this morning. Still it worries me.