Wow, happy Tuesday everyone! What a jam-packed weekend it’s been! I hope y’all got as much done with just as much free time in between things to relax and enjoy.
The Friday elopement took FOUR HOURS. We raced from my work to the courthouse, only to arrive about 5 minutes late for their appointment. The clerk reassured them that it would be fine, they’d just have to wait a little while. 30 minutes later, we realized that perhaps Friday courthouse weddings were a tad more popular than we expected. I wondered what everyone’s story was: were they here because it was spur of the moment? (well, as spur of the moment as it can be, since you have to have your license all worked out before you can make an appointment for the ceremony) Were they avoiding the big wedding hullaballoo? Were they trying to avoid the big Asian ceremony that I’m dreading?
Surprisingly, once we stepped into the wee chapel, the whole thing became extremely nerve-wracking. I thought I’d made my peace with the idea of keeping this a secret, and that my best friend was getting married. But no, it hadn’t sunk in yet. Still hasn’t. Quite frankly, I couldn’t believe we were actually going through it all. Then we stood in line AGAIN after the ceremony to turn in the application for the certificate. Two hours of standing in line rubbed off some of that just-married glow. But when the new hubby left us in line so he could feed the meter, some guy walking past did a double-take and leered because he thought that it was us two girls who’d gotten married!! Of course we started giggling. Who wouldn’t? Apparently he didn’t see this sign:
(Yeah, there were signs posted that we could only take pictures in the chapel. No, I sure didn’t see them until after I’d taken all my illicit photos of the other signage.) Wedding: 15 minutes. Waiting in line and traffic: 3.5 hours. Ugh!
I spent Saturday running errands and attended a coworker’s father’s funeral. I haven’t been to an American funeral since high school, so I ended up wearing all black – isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Had no idea, so I picked out all my black, warm-weather clothing and called it an outfit. It was insanely hot too, I found myself sweating within seconds of getting into my car.
Sunday, I ambused my water-hating dog and gave her a bath outside. We sunbathed for about an hour waiting for her to dry after I washed my car. I should have taken a picture of her, she was being too cute! She kept pushing my book out of the way so she could lay her head in my lap, or rolling onto her back for a belly rub. She’s really not actually lapdog-sized, either. Don’t tell her that though, she still hasn’t figured it out. Then I spent the rest of my day resting the rest of the righteous: feet up on my desk, reading a book, and NOT working. Mmmmm… yeeeeeesss…. that was good.
Monday was a pick-up-and-get-done day: I had work and laundry to get done, and my friends came back from their year in France/Morocco/Spain so we hit Coldstone’s for some good, old-fash, overpriced specialty ice cream and free gossip. The Citrus Sunsation smoothie was surprisingly good, despite the THREE dollar price tag on a little 6 or 8 ounce cup. And they use styrofoam, I just can’t get behind that.
I work hard, my credit cards should work hard for me, too! (Yup, I’m a deadbeat! Heehee) It’s time to evaluate which of the current credit cards should be switched out for cards that will yield more consistently useful rewards. I’d not intended to keep any of the new credit cards I got (solely for the points/miles bonuses) but I suppose they’re worth keeping during the fee-free year.
[Oh my lord, I hate trying to create a table in Blogger. I give up!]
Card: Chase Free Cash Earning: 1 pt/$, for all purchases Primary Use: (wallet-worthy) “Daily” use: phone bills, purchases, medical bills, etc. Rewards redemption: Routinely $25 check for every 2500 pts
Card: Citi Driver’s Edge Points: 3 pt/$, for gas, groceries, drugstores, 1 pt Primary Use: (wallet-worthy) Gas, groceries, drugstores Rewards redemption: Use for car maintenance as necessary Card: Citi Dividend Select Earning: 2 pt/$, for utilities Primary Use: (stays home) Utilities: trash, water Rewards redemption: None yet
Card: Hilton AMEX Earning: 5 pts/$, for restaurants, cell phone Primary Use: (stays home) Restaurants (5 pts), cell phone bill (5 pts) Rewards redemption: Eventually I’ll need a Hilton Hotel room. Until then …. Card: Starwood AMEX (until 12/07) Earning: 2 pts/$, for Starwood purchases, 1 pt/$ on all other purchases Primary Use: (stays home) Large expenditures like auto insurance Rewards redemption: 20k points can be converted to 25k miles, or 10k/night at Starwood hotels
Card: CitiBizPremierPass (until 01/08) Earning: 1 pt/$ plus 1 pt/mile flown, for airfare purchased with this card Primary Use: (stays home) Airfare Rewards redemption: Just adds to the TY pts pool
I like the idea of pulling out all three cards that I carry normally and replacing them with one or two cards. The Hilton AMEX was going to be retired but I decided it can stay for the sake of the Autopay cell phone bill because I’ll need to use those Hilton points eventually. I may as well have a slow trickle feeding that pool of points until I’m ready to redeem.
The extra 1% I’m getting from the Citi Dividend isn’t really worth it, though, and while having an extra cushion of auto maintenance money from the Citi Driver’s Edge is nice, I can get 2% more and in cash from the Cash Plus card.
The Starwood card is good because it nets an extra 25% when you convert the points into miles so it may be worth keeping on just because that’s an extra 5k miles I can get on United. Depending on the saver fares available, that 25k miles can either equal one free flight (roughly equivalent to $220) or 1.66 free flights = $360.
I may just use that Starwood card for all regular and large purchases and keep the Chase card for my gas/grocery/drugstore card. I’m still reducing the cards from 3 to 2, and I wouldn’t want to carry just one credit card because it’s best to have a backup card when you charge everything like I do!
So, what’s in YOUR wallet? Do you *hustle* the credit card companies too? 😉
With the added benefit of cleaning up the overflow of aluminum cans *temporarily* stored in the backyard since 2001, I made a trip to the recycling center up the street and came out a whole $30.26 richer!
Good for the environment, good for the pocketbook! [I like the word pocketbook, it gives the impression of a book that can hold all your crap and still fit in your pocket. And seems to inherently mean there’s money in it, unlike my empty wallet.]
I’ve never actually used this sort of recycling center before but I learned that they are open 8:30-4:00 everyday. It’s a manned station, but you can either have the guy working there do your cans by volume or insert them, one by one, into the little feeder doohickey. They pay 4 cents per can or $1.75lb of sorted aluminum. They’ll take your assorted recyclables in bulk, too, but they’ll just pay you less by the pound: $1.17? I was vaguely wondering if I came out ahead doing about 17 pounds by weight or if I would have made much more going by the feeder system.
But since I had three enormous garbage bags-full, I would still be there feeding those blasted cans in one after the other. In 98 degree weather. Ugh. Oh, and the disadvantage of the singles system is that they do not accept squashed cans. Back in 2001, recycling centers still accepted squashed cans, so I had can-pucks aplenty.
That was kind of fun, now I’m eyeballing the cans in the kitchen anticipating another profitable recycling run.
In contributing to the family budget, monetarily or in terms of time devoted to searching out a better deal or a better price/package for a variety of services, I’m frequently frustrated by having to work with the non-ideal scenario that is not under my control. Today’s case is ….. auto insurance! I did the usual: research the top companies, compare the exact same quotes with the same requirements, increase the deductible to $1000 since I know I have enough in the e-fund to cover that, drop any unnecessary coverage.
BUT, the things that would really help lower the price are not options! ie: I can’t age our vehicles, unfortunately we have relatively new cars (2003, 2005). AND: I can’t improve the family’s driving record: every Ducky in the family has some dings on their driving record. BroDucky most of all it seems, but since cutting him out of the plan is not an option …
On the bright side, the credit union membership that I’d financed my car through three years ago and hadn’t gotten around to cancelling may offer an additional discount for our current company. Or …. the only representative they have is on vacation and they don’t have anyone else available to help. Drat! You know, shopping for insurance is really not fun at all! I’ve been doing it for about a month now and haven’t turned up any good deals at all. I think the only one quote that was significantly lower (about 200-300, per 6 month term) was esurance.com, but I can’t really find any sort of feedback on what kind of company they are. And I think this is really a situation where you do get what you pay for, I’m not willing to compromise that much on quality when the gains are so little.
(Yeah, there were signs posted that we could only take pictures in the chapel. No, I sure didn’t see them until after I’d taken all my illicit photos of the other signage.) Wedding: 15 minutes. Waiting in line and traffic: 3.5 hours. Ugh!