By: Revanche

Net Worth & Life Report: February 2016

March 1, 2016

Change from Jan 2016: 0.10% decrease
0.10% decrease from last month

ON MONEY

I use Swagbucks. Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join and earn.

1. By way of ebates and Swagbucks, our Side Money tally this month went up $118.
2. I knocked serious money off a bill with a phone call which was good because…
3. We had that lovely episode with Seamus.
4. I pick the best Valentine’s gifts. I’m loving this delightfully petite broom and dust pan! When you spend half your snack time sitting on the floor picking up crumbs, tiny cleaning implements are suddenly fabulous. Well, no, that’s not true, tiny gear of any kind is always fabulous. I gave LB a demonstration of how to use it to sweep up counters and got a little chuckle. Laughing at me, laughing with me, whatever. As long as we’re laughing.
   
5. I bought a humidifier in an attempt to not die of the latest Viral Scourge and it came with a free subscription to Better Homes & Gardens. Imagine my tiny triumph when I read the fine print and found we could refuse the subscription and get a check for $6 instead. Yes, that’s small beans. It’s half a bean. But it’ll pay for my postcard mailing habit so it’s mine mine mine.
6. File under credit card churning. I picked up the Bank of America Alaska Air credit card and used it to pay for our car insurance and a couple incidentals to meet the minimum spend of $1000 in 3 months. We netted 25,000 bonus miles (one round trip ticket), a $100 statement credit, and some thousand and change purchase miles. The downside was the $100 wasn’t pure profit – they didn’t waive the first year’s annual fee like most of the cards I prefer to nab so we came out ahead $25 and 25,000 miles.
   
7. Two really sick friends received the gift of food delivery. It was a surprise and the best I could do once I found out how sick they were because I couldn’t run over to help myself. It ran to the tune of $400. That’s coming out of our discretionary spending and I regret nothing. (There were tears, the good kind. I double regret nothing.) Then PiC sold car parts to cover half of it, so I triple regret nothing because it’s always been my instinct to make up for unexpected expenditures instead of just cashflowing it. I’m a good influence, dammit!
8. I’ve been wearing holes into the only pair of jeans that fit after I sized out of the maternity jeans. After weeks of deliberation, and cajoling by PiC, $55 bought me a pair of new jeans (50% off) so of course when I wasn’t looking, I dropped the last 7 pounds to hit my pre-baby weight. DAMMIT. I’d plateaued! There was no reason to believe those lingering pounds were going anywhere. Has unanticipated weight loss ever been so annoying??
9. We are so close to completing our estate plan I can taste it!
10. I’m also very close to completing our tax document compilation! We’re just missing a couple of forms. But I’m maybe not so much in a hurry to file because thanks to something outside my control on PiC’s side, we’re expecting a huge tax hit. Ugh.

ON LIFE

The Hunt for the Perfect Car continues. It’s no longer fun, unfortunately, and once in a while we’re frustrated enough to talk about getting a new car. We’re not there yet, but it’s an exasperating, infuriating timesuck. Damn bad drivers!

***

I’m applying for a second, smaller, life insurance policy that’s subsidized through PiC’s work so I can reduce the first one I purchased, unsubsidized, by an equivalent amount. I didn’t feel like we had the luxury of shopping around when LB was born and I wasn’t covered but next month I can carve out some time for that.

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I’m feeling bearish on life’s expenses right now. As you can clearly see, there’s been a lot more spending than earning and saving and that always makes me feel like I need to press the reset button. Or the restart button. I need my spending to be about creating more assets, I need to be creating more income, etc.

This is still all money stuff. Cheater./Obsessive.

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I have read a LOT this month. Enough to fill a post.

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My butt hurts from all the hills Seamus and I have done to satisfy that whip-crackin ne’er-be-satisfied speed demon of a child.

The rest of me hurts because the rest of me is a broken mess.

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I’ve written a LOT OF WORDS, but mostly for this blog and not for anything else.

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Plan I just this second came up with: put together a fee-only consultation package for people who’d like my help on getting dug out of their money position. Also a fee. Interested? Let me know!

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A lesson in blocking spam IMs from AOL

I got a spam text from “265060” and I hate that crap, so I looked up how to block it.

According to AOL: If you receive a text message from the number 265060 – 265068, someone sent you a message by directly inputting your number into AIM. One of your friends might be trying to text you. To stop all future messages from AOL, text STOPALL to 265022, and then visit http://www.aim.com/products/txt#block-txt. To block an individual sender only, reply BLOCK to the text message you received.

Texting 265022 gave me a “you may be charged” message so I went to the follow up site instead and told AIM to block messages to my phone. It sent me a confirmation code and voila: Pressing this button will disable all text messages coming from AOL® and AIM® Services to your phone. Visit the Mobile AIM webpage to re-enable messages to your phone. 

I pressed that button immediately. We’ll see if that works.

*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich, Disease Called Debt and Frugal Consumerism*

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