this wasn't in the plan |but life is still pretty good

Sometimes it's helpful to examine how you're doing something and rearrange things if necessary.
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I used to love all of my ING accounts. And,  while I do still love ING, I've closed a majority of my  accounts and I'm just left with three - a checking account, a generic savings account, and a Christmas savings account. I liked being able to see that we had x amount saved for a vacation or y amount saved for car repairs. We still are saving, and have several savings goals, but I decided I don't need a separate account in ING to keep track of it for me.

I began using You Need A Budget (YNAB) almost a year ago. Their blog was my inspiration for closing my extra accounts. If I use their software correctly, it just isn't necessary, and actually makes things more difficult!  Before starting YNAB, we used Quicken, and seeing what we had saved for different things just wasn't all that easy. With YNAB, I can still very easily see what I have saved for various things. My husband laughed at me when he noticed I was closing accounts left and right. He never really understood why I opened them all in the first place. My response? It worked for me at one time, and now, not so much.

Note: I just really like ING and YNAB and this post is in no way sponsored by either company.

My son is in first grade, so this year was his second elementary school bookfair. My husband took him this time. He told me afterwards that the bookfair was a horrible when it came to kids spending money. He said he saw so many kids that felt the need to spend every penny they had, and thus they were adding random posters and pencils and erasers to their book purchases (one must hope there was actually a book purchase involved).  I'm guessing that money came straight from the parents and didn't belong to the child.

I like to look at the book fair as a great money learning experience. I tell my son I'll purchase one book for him and one for his classroom. If he wants something else, the money comes from his wallet. Once it comes time to choose what he wants, he seems to do so pretty carefully. Funny how spending your own money and not someone else's will do that to you!

I always have such a hard time balancing between just buying something and holding out for a better deal. What about you?
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'Tis the season for deals that must not be missed. For doorbuster savings and prices that are the lowest of the season. I went to Walmart at midnight on Thanksgiving night because (a) I'd rather stay up late than get up early, (b) I'm clearly a sucker for $4 pajamas and (c) it's way fun to watch people go crazy for things they clearly can't live without. Though I didn't realize that last reason until I was really there.  Sometimes I wondered if people really knew what they were buying, or if they were just filling there cart with said item because there were a bunch of them on a rack and other people were grabbing them too.

Just the other day, I found something at Amazon, that I thought would make a fun stocking stuffer for my three-year-old, though I hesitated because, well, it probably wouldn't have actually fit into his stocking! Later, in the afternoon, I went back to purchase it. The price had gone up, so I decided it wasn't that great after all. These blink-and-you-miss them deals tend to drive me crazy because I can't help but wonder if something better is on the way, and obviously I can't make up my mind fast enough.

It never fails that as soon as I've made a fabulous money decision, I nearly immediately make an incredibly stupid one.

A few months ago, I switched our homeowners' insurance (yay - good choice!), yet didn't immediately cancel the old insurance (boo - bad choice!). I naively thought that once the new insurance company billed our mortgage company (we have an escrow account), it would set in motion a series of events that would ultimately end in the old insurance company realizing we were no longer their customers. But when I received a bill from the new insurance company (I did give them the necessary information to bill the mortgage company, I'm not sure why they didn't), I went ahead and told the mortgage company about our new homeowners' insurance and cancelled the old policy. We eventually received a check in the mail for the difference due to us (the policy was cancelled before the year was up), but it wasn't as large as it would have been if I would have just cancelled right away.

Next time I won't get so excited about the money success and instead try and focus on thwarting the inevitable money fiasco that's probably just around the corner.

Yesterday I received a call from the collections department of one of our local hospitals in regards to a bill that I actually paid several weeks ago. It was a call that I half expected, given how things had previously gone with this bill.

When I first received it, I knew it wasn't correct. They were billing me for forty dollars more than they should have. I called and sure enough, the billing rep can see that I did indeed pay $40 upfront when I took my son to the nutritionist. She said she'd go ahead and make that correction and I'd get a revised bill in the mail.

I didn't get a new bill in the mail, instead I got the old, incorrect bill a month later. So, I call again, tell the billing rep that I already paid $40 of it, and I go ahead and make a payment over the phone. But that payment never gets processed. A few weeks later, I call again to make a payment. This time at least, the billing rep tells me that my balance is the correct amount! A few days later, I receive a receipt in the mail and all is well.

Except that is not, because as is evidenced from my previous experiences, the right hand of this company has clearly not yet met the left hand. I told the collections lady that I paid it several weeks ago and had a receipt to prove it. She did a bit of typing on the computer, and sure enough, I did pay it! I have a strange feeling this is not over.

On a similar note, last week's mail brought with it a lab bill. Suspicious simply because we have $0 copays for all lab tests. I can't make any sense of the bill, so I call the lab. The girl I talked to pretty much had no idea other than it looked like the insurance company had paid, but then taken back the payment. I call the insurance company. The man I talked to did a lot of digging and found some paperwork that wasn't filed correctly, which apparently resulted in them taking back the payment. He said he'd correct it.

So that's two bills in a fairly short amount of time that were incorrect. I wonder how many past bills have also been incorrect, yet still blindly paid by me. None, I hope.

What errors have you noticed on your bills?

Contrary to what you've seen on this blog recently (i.e. nothing), money has been on my mind an awful lot lately. Namely, that big holiday that is quickly coming near. One of the savings accounts that hasn't been touched at all this year (despite the car buying and the medical bill paying) is the Christmas savings account. Well, I take that back, but the only reason it's been touched is so it can grow. Each month a set amount transfers out of our main checking accounts into that account. So easy.

In previous years I've come up short when it came to saving for Christmas. I never quite socked away enough. It's never been really a big deal, we still don't even come close to going into debt to pay for it, but it's annoying.  Last year, I took a really good look at everything I spent on Christmas related expenses (and by everything, I mean even the extra groceries and stamps for the Christmas cards) and upped that monthly amount that gets transferred into the Christmas savings account. So, I have high hopes that this year will be different!

I know how much I have to spend on Christmas from here on out. But past experience tells me that I need a detailed plan to make it work, and often that's the part that I'm not so good at.

Have you started planning your Christmas shopping lists yet?

Our vacuum cleaner broke about a month ago. We've still been able to use it, it just isn't nearly as efficient as it was before it broke. Yesterday, I threw in the towel and decided it needed to be fixed or replaced ASAP.  We knew how much the needed part would be, but I sought out some alternatives. It was my husband who ended up heading to eBay and finding our exact vacuum cleaner. The auction ended that night and if we won it at a good enough price (even including shipping), it would be less than half of the price of the needed part. I just had to figure out how much we were willing to bid for it.



As I'm sure you all know, eBay can be crazy dangerous when it comes to getting you to spending more than you really want to.  I knew what I wanted to spend, but realized that if it ended up going for just a little bit more than that, I wouldn't be happy. I needed to figure out just how much we really could afford to spend (and, of course, make sure that amount wasn't more the price it would take to just take ours to a repair shop or purchase a new one).  Luckily, it's the end of the month and I knew just how much extra money there was in the budget. We also had a pretty good idea of how much it would cost to repair it. With a few minutes remaining on the auction, I entered in our maximum bid and we won! Now we'll have an extra on hand for the part that we need now and for anything else that should break in the future.

My youngest son has a very limited diet. We've eliminated all the common allergens, plus a few others, in an effort to figure out what's triggering his eosinophilic esophagitis. Finding foods that he can eat and wants to eat has been tricky. One food he's fallen in love with is avocados. I don't traditionally feed my babies avocado because they tend to be a bit on the pricey side and if I'm going to buy one, I don't want to share it! But back in April or May, when I decided to test out avocado with him, they were on sale for three for a dollar. And you know what? Every week since then, they've been three for a dollar at our local Smith's. There is not some obscene overage of avocados in town either. I've visited other Smith stores in the area and none of them have ever had them at that price. From what I can tell, it has simply been a summer-long unadvertised special at my local store.

I'm truly grateful to have a food that is healthy, doesn't seem to give him trouble, helps him gain weight, and doesn't cost too much (unlike some of the other foods I feed him!). Focusing on smaller blessings like this helps me realize that things are going pretty well after all.