Mah Money

Isn’t there a statistic out there about how many New Year’s resolutions FAIL?

January 1, 2012

Maybe I should just ignore it.

Did you know that close to 80% of the New Years resolutions made are not kept?

Every year, people say they are SERIOUS about it “this time”, and yet– we all still fail. Need I remind you of my post from December 30, 2010? How many of you are YOUR own worst enemy?

The one thing I did accomplish in 2011 is that I became a READER again. I found a new love for books after reading close to SEVENTY of them this past year.

So, for 2012, reading will still remain in my list of goals. I won’t even call them resolutions… they will just be called GOALS.

Here we go:

1. Join Weight Watchers – Long term goal is to lose 50 pounds. Short term goal is to lose 20 pounds before July 1st.

2. Read 52 books – I feel since I managed to do it in 2011, I can do it again in 2012. A book a week isn’t too shabby, either.

3. Find a church we like and start going again. Still have to figure out if we want a large church, small church, what denomination we prefer…

4. Start budgeting again via the Dave Ramsey plan. We really only do it halfway right now, which I guess means we really don’t do it all…

What are your New Year’s ~~resolutions~~ GOALS?

Filed Under: About Me, Mah Money, The Big G-O-D, Weight Watchers, What I'm Reading

Overwhelmed

December 9, 2011

Last time I checked, December falls at the same time every year. It’s always on the same page of the calendar, always the 12th month of the year. So I really don’t know why it creeped up on me this year. I feel like I flipped the page from November to December, and I was completely caught off guard. I wasn’t prepared for Christmas, I wasn’t prepared for winter, I wasn’t prepared for anything.

I am, in one word, overwhelmed.

I have to-do lists that are not getting accomplished. The kids are busy with basketball season, and husband is working overtime 6 days a week. Also, he’s going to school two nights a week. Then there’s our weekly adoption classes, which thankfully– we only have two left of.

That leaves me with lists of things to do, gifts to buy, cards that probably will not get mailed out AGAIN (2nd year in a row, FTW!), a house to keep clean, a full-time job, and it leaves me frazzled.

I look at my calendar and see that Christmas is 16 days away, and I have only purchased a small handful of our gifts so far. This is so unlike, as I usually have most of my shopping done around Thanksgiving weekend. I have a home study to prepare for next Friday, which means more housework, husband is studying for finals, and all I want to do is lie down and put my feet up.

I know… cry me a river. Right?

And then I witness something that makes me put everything back into perspective.

Yesterday, I rode along to deliver gifts to Children & Families of Iowa. The employees at the company I work for adopted FIFTY families in need this holiday season, and loaded up a delivery truck with gifts for parents and children. It was incredible. Seeing the people at the organization when this truck pulled and watching the boxes and boxes and boxes and BOXES of gifts being unloaded for FIFTY FAMILIES, y’all!

Now THAT was OVERWHELMING.

I think I can handle my holiday stress for a little while longer.

Filed Under: Around The House, Family Matters, Mah Money

Selling ourselves short.

August 26, 2011

I have always wanted to be “one of those bloggers”– you know, the ones that make a great income just from their blog. They have great advertisers, have tons of offers to review free product. What blogger doesn’t want THAT?

Oh to be a Dooce, or an Ali Martell, or a Barefoot Foodie, or heck — a Pioneer Woman. The ones that are offered writing deals, book deals, television shows, trips around the world, and the like.

I have stuck my toe into the advertising waters a few times over the years, doing sponsored posts, inserting ad-links into my blog, and even reviewing free products on occasion. Obviously, I am taking the wrong route– because my bank account? Doesn’t seem thrilled at the lack of blog income I’ve got coming in.

Recently, I was approached by a “writing service” asking me if I would be interested in adding a few ad-links to some of my blog posts. They would pay me $5 for each link I added, and it didn’t really sound like a bad deal.

Until they told me where I needed to add them.

I assumed they would be small ad-links at the bottom of my posts every once in a while, but oh NO. These people were thinking bigger.

They actually wanted me to add the ad-links into my post content on five posts, making it look like it was something I wrote. I read the email they sent me, with the list of links and wording they wanted me to add to my posts, and I felt violated. Was I willing to compromise my ~~crappy~~ writing for a few measly dollars in my pocket?

Five dollars for a link wasn’t worth selling my soul for. I’ve seen other bloggers doing it, and I keep thinking that maybe it’s ruining things for the rest of us. It makes us “mommybloggers” seem cheap and easy… not a good reputation to have.

Product reviews are a different matter, I guess. I don’t mind a company sending me free items for me to try out and review, as long as they don’t expect me to write something good just because they sent me something for free.

What’s your take on blog advertising? Do you accept ad-links into your site? Do you sell ads in your sidebars? Do you review products?

For me, I think I’ll just keep my zero income and the five readers I have and sit tight.

Filed Under: Blog World, Mah Money

August Blog Challenge – Day 21

August 21, 2011

I am participating in the August Blog Challenge. Thanks to Belinda for the daily prompts!

Day 21: What has been your best vacation?

Usually, our kids are so busy with sports in the summer that it leaves very little time (or money) for us to take big family vacations. Traveling as a family of six can be quite hectic and pricey, so I don’t have a lot of vacation memories to choose from so far.

In the summer of 2009, we took our family of six to the east coast and stayed with my brother-in-law in Pennsylvania. He agreed to be our tour guide ( and driver) and led us to some of the most amazing sights the area has to offer. We visited Washington DC and got to see the Smithsonian Museums, nearly all of the monuments and the best part was– almost everything was FREE. My kids got to see the White House, the Vietnam Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and so much more. It was so amazing to me to see this part of the country that I had never visited before.

We toured Gettysburg, and several of the Smithsonian museums. We visted the Hershey Factory in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It was busy at all of these places, but it didn’t even matter to me. Because we were all learning so much on this trip — I couldn’t have asked for a better vacation.

I think probably my most favorite part of the trip was visiting Arlington National Cemetary and seeing the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We watched as the crowd fell completely silent and these guards changed shifts. I shed tears at the whole ceremony. What an amazing experience. We visited gravesites of some of the country’s most famous people, such as JFK, Bobby Kennedy, the victims of the 1986 Challenger crash, and so many more. I will never forget the experience we had there.

If you would like to see our vacation photos, click here.

Filed Under: Family Matters, Mah Money

I don’t expect Redbox to hire rocket scientists, but jeez…

August 16, 2011

It must be a law somewhere that every company I deal with has to have a barrel of monkeys working in their Customer Service department. Because boy– have we had some doozies! As my husband always says, there’s people that have book smarts and there’s people that have street smarts.

Redbox? They really don’t seem to have either one.

Saturday night, we stopped and got two movies from our local Redbox machine. Surprisingly enough, our small town of 1,000 people doesn’t have any restaurants or a grocery store, but I’ll be darned– we got ourselves a REDBOX!

So, we got two movies. When we got home, my daughter and her boyfriend were going to watch one of them, and my husband and I were going to watch the other.

My daughter brings up the case to the movie they were going to watch and said there were two movies inside of it. One was the movie that we intended to rent, and the other was the children’s movie “Rango.” Apparently, the person that had rented that movie before us had put two movies back in the same case.

So we were stuck with 3 Redbox movies and two cases, and thats when Mark decided to call Redbox’s Customer Service department. He was on hold for a LONG time before he finally got to speak to a Customer Service Rep(like we probably could have watched our entire movie). And this is the part where I just have to scratch my head and wonder what in the heck Redbox is thinking.

Mark explained the situation, how it wasn’t OUR movie that we were trying to return, but a movie stuck inside the case of the one we rented.

The Redbox rep told my husband we would have to go back to the machine and request a replacement case. An empty case would pop out and we could return the movie. Sounded easy, right?

Until the Rep told us we would have to swipe OUR credit/debit card to PAY FOR THE REPLACEMENT CASE. Yes, thats right. They wanted US to pay to return the movie THAT WE DIDN’T EVEN RENT. Someone explain to me how this makes any sense at all.

My husband asked if they would just mail us a replacement case, and the Rep said “No, we don’t do that.”

My husband kept explaining that we were just trying to do the right thing and return the movie that wasn’t ours. But again, Redbox insists WE’D HAVE TO PAY THE FEE.

So for now, we have a Redbox DVD that doesn’t belong to us sitting on our kitchen counter.

At least it could have been a GOOD movie… But we might just be the proud new owners of Rango.