Surviving At Home

I love being a homeowner. Honestly, there’s nothing better than having a place to call your own with room for the family to spread out, a yard to run around in…

ahhhh….bliss…

The part I don’t love so much is how everything seems to break at the same time. This year we got the double whammy of losing 3 big items right before Thanksgiving. It’s not like we can tell the kids, “Sorry, Santa brought a new dishwasher to mom and dad instead of toys for you under the tree.”

This was one of those “grin and bear it” scenarios.

We start the saga with the tale of our dishwasher. It was a basic GE brand, no frills dishwasher that we had installed brand new 9 years ago when we moved into our house. It served us well, despite the racks getting a little broken from the constant wear and tear.

We were stymied when we ran a regular load of dishes twice only to discover no water was leading into the machine. My non-technical hubby took off the kickplate and made some noise under the sink but because he’s not a mechanical person, could not figure out a way to fix this thing. Needless to say, we were NOT happy to pay the GE repair guy $97 to tell us the machine wasn’t worth fixing.

Ugghh…

The next casualty we had was our lawn tractor. It was a nice ride on mower which again served us well for 8 years but when we heard the kathunk sound of a broken belt (or so we thought), we had no idea it was going to the great metal graveyard. So we had to pay the local lawnmower repair guy $65 to haul away our tractor and pronounce it dead.

Double ugghh…

And rounding out the trifecta was our vacuum cleaner. Granted, not as big as the other two items but still an annoyance. I don’t remember how long we had this one – less than 8 years, I’m pretty sure – but it decided it had had enough with the dog fur and started emitting sparks.

Good times…

I’ve managed to find the silver lining, however, despite having to shell out more $$ than we wanted to. We got a rebate for free delivery ($69 value) and we paid far less cash to the delivery guys to install it (saved $40) so we already made back the $97 we paid to GE.

Paying the lawn guy to haul away our tractor was worth the $65 because we don’t have a truck and it would have sat by the side of our shed, becoming a home for wild animals and hiding behind the weeds.

Classy…

(And besides…where the heck do you bury a broken tractor anyway?)

And lastly, I had my suspicions that the vacuum was on its way out for quite awhile. I should have followed my intuition (just like Oprah always says) because we bought a new bagless, super-duper-strong-pet-hair- picker-upper and let’s just say, we sucked up enough hidden dog fur to match the equivalent of 3 puppies. Just goes to show how badly our old vacuum was running.

Where’s the money tree when you need it?

Here’s keeping our fingers crossed that nothing else breaks until AFTER Christmas…

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

photo credit: pfala

You see that list of Top Spot advertisers in the right sidebar? Well, it was a fun little widget to fool around with but I really want to take it off my site.

But I need just one more person to purchase a link to get my payout.

If you decide to help me out, I will post your link permanently in my blogroll (family friendly sites only, please!) and I will do a special post all about your site with another link.

So, mom bloggers or those with a mom- or kid-related business, please consider spending $2.00 for a permanent inbound link and website review.

Thanks a bunch

My curiosity has been piqued by this blog post in which we are introduced to the “Coupon Queen” and the fact that she saves $7,000 a year on her grocery bill simply by using coupons!

My first question: how do you keep track of your savings? Do you have a shoebox full of the year’s grocery receipts?

I am trying to be a believer because since I started clipping coupons again I have noticed an average savings of $35 each week. Not bad since it all adds up, right? But holy cannolli, Batman, give me the scoop for saving $7 grand!!

This Coupon Queen could make a small fortune sharing her strategies for saving money at the grocery store. I’m willing to let her keep one trade secret to herself but come on, share the wealth with all the other stay-at-home moms that are struggling to make ends meet. I like to write…I’ll put the words on paper for you! Anything to get you sharing the goods!

My second question: Do you bring your children shopping with you? If so, doesn’t the constant droan of “Mom, can I have ____?” get on your nerves? 

Every Sunday my husband hands me the two piles of coupon fliers and if I’m good and organized, I’ll sit right then and start clipping. Normally I’m not that good and they are stuffed into a cabinet until the next shopping day when I’m scrambling to see if I can find any coupons to use. I don’t like being this disorganized, especially if organization can save me some money, so a remedy is in order.

One of the problems, I find, is that there are bunches of coupons for products that I simply do not use, so those end up in the trash. And the coupons that offer 25 cents off 2 boxes just don’t seem worth it to me, even if they are doubled. Give me $1 or more and now you’re talkin’. Or is it that I need to just think of the bottom line savings?

My third question: How big is your coupon file container? Is it small with lots of expired coupons (like mine) or is it magumbo size so you need a table of contents to find what you need?

I have also heard of some programs where for some kind of fee you can buy coupons for products that you use regularly. I can’t get my head around that idea either because you’re paying for coupons that will save you money; won’t you end up spending more money buying coupons??

Well, until the Coupon Queen contacts me about writing her bestselling book, I’ll continue to clip away. Hey, how about a cross-blog conversation revealing some useful tips? I’m game!

My mortgage broker called me out of the blue last week. We had not spoken in three years since we refinanced our mortgage to help pay for our basement renovations.

I immediately thought that she was looking to drum up business. You know how it goes: you get the phone call, you chit-chat, then they ask you if you know anybody who can use their services. I know this type of networking is important but more often than not, I feel like all these people are after is a name.

Rather than feel like a slab of used meat, my broker sincerely asked how we were doing and that this was a courtesy call to let us know that with all the hullabaloo in the mortgage industry, our loan was safe and the terms would not change.

Honestly, I have no idea what problems she was referring to. We generally don’t watch the news and I remember seeing a few headline online about problems and lots of mortgage companies going out of business but I really don’t know how this could affect us.

Come to find out during the course of this conversation, lots of people’s loans will adjust to much higher payments in the coming months, which will catch many of these people off-guard. I’m not sure how that happens; do you apply for an adjustable rate mortgage and then forget when it adjusts? My broker said that these people would get slapped so hard in fees that many of these properties would be in foreclosure soon.

That’s truly frightening! I guess it’s the old saying, “Ignorance is bliss” but it’s not bliss if all of a sudden you’re on the brink of foreclosure and bankruptcy. Gone are the days of Leave it to Beaver and I Love Lucy (am I totally dating myself now?) where the women were given an allowance and were otherwise oblivious to their financial situations.

Mortgages can be complicated, especially when it comes to sorting through multiple offers and finding which one serves your family’s needs. Contact a mortgage professional to get the best service and to get the best loan for your needs.

*This is a paid post*