I know, okay? Let me crab about my window and leave me alone. :)

But more seriously, I’m worried about the window. It could be a quick fix, but I doubt it. These things never are. And they certainly aren’t cheap. Never, ever.

Well, I can’t do anything but lay down towels for now.

Life is like that, sometimes. All you can do is do what you can and hope for the best.

At least the rest of my day went reasonably well.

My husband says on the phone that he’s fixed the desk, and it no longer has sharp edges. He also points out that if we use the old desk, that we are saving that $20 for something else.

My knee-jerk response is, “But it’s only $20!!!”

The slightly more rational side of my brain says, “Dude, $20 will buy 4+ pairs of shorts for kids for the summer, or 3 wonderful lunches at Liu’s, or get us 20 more dollars out of debt.” And yet left to myself, I would still buy the damn desk.

Financially, I really want to be debt free. But it is also really hard for me to give up the shiny, new “bargain”. Shopping, buying new things (necessary or not), is fun. Cutting coupons and giving up trips to the movie theater so I can pay the utility bills and the mortgage and still buy groceries and keep the kids in daycare is not.

I need to remind myself that that’s the point that we are at.

Arg.

I’m just spending some thought-provoking time sorting out what is really important, and where can our money do the most good.  It’s another two summers and one more school year of daycare before my youngest starts Kindergarten, and then alleviates a lot of the financial pressure.

It won’t be horrible, but it won’t be easy. As my son is currently quite fond of saying, “Life’s not fair!”

I received an envelope in the mail Monday from the federal government (along with the 2010 census). It looked an awful lot like the bonds that come for the kids around their birthdays, and since my son is having a birthday soon, I didn’t bother to open it.

On Sunday, I looked at our bills. I paid bills, and looked at what was coming due soon, and I felt The Pinch. The seriously it’s going to hurt soon Pinch. The savings is gone, there’s bills and mortgages coming due, and pretty soon, I’ll be robbing Peter to pay Paul Pinch.

It shouldn’t have worked out like that. I should have received a tax credit related to a home purchase about three months ago. I shouldn’t have had to replace my car so soon. We shouldn’t have had plumbing problems and car problems and all that other crap that creeps up.

But we did, and we dealt with it like a lot of other people do – credit cards, savings when we had to, etc.

So suddenly I’m trying to think of all the possible ways we can squeeze more money out of anything. Where can we earn more money? Where can we save money? What can I sell (without selling the house)?

Tonight I opened the mail a full six days earlier than usual, and along with the census I opened that envelope with the bond. I have never been so happy to not see a bond in my life – it was the tax credit money.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

What can money buy? Money can buy security. I’ve now got the funds to shore up our emergency fund.

Money can buy a clear mind. I don’t need to stay up late sweating over bills and how to pay them.

I’m calmer now, but I need to think a bit. I need to talk with my hubby and probably a couple other someones to get a really good idea of what goes where right now. I may wait to do anything until I see what’s what in terms of taxes.

I really, really need to get a decent budget. But it’s almost midnight, and I won’t get that done tonight. It’s a battle for another day. Wish me luck.

It’s a fact that some people don’t like, but things change. Families, work places, economies, weather, they’re all examples of things that do not stay the same. And while some things would be great if they always stayed the same and never changed, just the nature of the beast that is one way for several years is to suddenly up and switch the game.

So I should not be surprised that I am currently pondering some serious change coming my way.

It was a slow process. One that I was able to ignore for a while, but that is no longer the case. I have in front of me a situation and  a person. The situation has slowly moved from uncomfortable to one that I am no longer able to ignore. A person I once trusted, I now doubt.

And this is all based on my perceptions of the situation. I don’t know what the other person’s perception is – possibly they don’t realize what is really going on, or perhaps I don’t understand everything they know that causes things to be as they are.

But the fact remains that something needs to change. Either I change how I think, the situation changes, or something else will have to happen. Things cannot remain as they are.

And I don’t think it’s being un-American, as has been suggested. It’s just a game, they’re all NHL players (and even NHL Refs!), and it doesn’t matter that much to me. In the scheme of things, I mean.

But I missed most of the rest of The Games. I didn’t see any Downhill Skiing, nor did I catch any of the really cool looking snowboarding (Downhill Snowboarding?), or the figure skating. I just took a moment to watch some recaps – only about ten minutes worth – and I realize again just how much I missed it.

I want to be in a position, two years from now, to be able to have cable and sit and watch Olympics from the moment they start until the second they finish. To be able to take two weeks off of work, still send the kid’s to daycare, and just veg. Turn up the television and clean in the other rooms when there’s something on I’m not completely in love with.

That would be cool.

So I’ve got some events queued up in another tab, and I’m going to enjoy the things I missed. It won’t be the same, of course. I can see who won already, and I know who crashes and who doesn’t stand a chance. A lot of the fun is gone.

On the other hand, I did finally figure out who that squat little man-figure is supposed to represent, all on my own. Yay, me!

I’m supposed to be in bed right now, and surely my husband is worried. (It’s 12:30 a.m. as I write this, and I have to go to work tomorrow.) But was it worth it?

When the project is completed by the other party, I will have earned enough money to pay for 3 months of Internet.

I have gained some motivation, as the project wasn’t as difficult as I had been fearing – which is what kept me from working on it these past two months.

My butt is sore from sitting for so long in the same position.

I’m not completely finished, and I may not be able to get back to the project for the next 24-72 hours.

I think it was worth it.

So here’s how I do it. I don’t pay bills as they come in. When I first moved in with my husband in the late 90’s, my method for paying bills was something along the lines of, “Oh shit, I think that bill is due this week!” It didn’t take long (thank goodness) for me to realize that I needed a better plan.

My method now is pretty simple. Once a week on Sunday nights, I hop online. I spend about a 1/2 hour catching up my checkbook, and then open Google Calendar. In there I have every recurring bill listed exactly one week before it’s due. I look at all the bills that have been marked on the calendar since the previous Friday, and pay everything, right then, until the next Friday.

It works like this:

A bill that is due Thursday, February 18th, is marked to be paid on Thursday, February 11th. Since I pay all bills on Sunday, I’ll pay that bill on Sunday, February 7th. It’s not paid the second I get the bill, but it is paid well in advance, each and every month. I can’t recall the last time I had a late fee on anything. If money is tight, I have a little extra time to do a money transfer as well.

Here’s why this works for me:

1. It takes about 20 minutes to pay my bills.
2. It’s a regular Sunday thing, and after ten years is now routine.
3. I know that since I’m paying things that aren’t due for a week, nothing will be late.
4. If I can’t get online to a particular site, I still have a week to pay – plus I keep all the payment envelopes in case I have to mail something in (3 postal days in transit).

I can’t imagine taking a few minutes every time a bill comes in to pay it. First, that would mean writing a check without completely knowing the status of my checking account – that’s bad. Second, I would have to find five minutes to concentrate with a 4 and 7 year old in the house – not easy, not in my house. And third, what’s the point? Paying bills is not something I want to spend five minutes doing. It’s not something I like spending 20 minutes doing. But by doing it all at once, it ensures I’m in the bill paying mindset. I’m concentrating on numbers, not on what my kid is about to watch on television, or whether someone’s pulling knives out of the drawers in the kitchen.

Now if taking a few minutes every time a bill comes in to pay it works for you, great. The ultimate goal is to get things paid on time, and without any late fees. But if the thought of that just completely overwhelms you, take thirty minutes to collect all your bills and set them up as recurring events in Google Calendar. Keep an eye on things closely for the first month or so, and when you’re sure all your bills are set up correctly, you’re all set. Sit down once a week and get things done, not seven times a week to do a half job of it.

With this planning, I’m looking at the next year in a way I never have before. I always enjoy making a list of resolutions to get me through the New Year, those that are to begin promptly at midnight on January 1st, and are to be discarded as somehow soiled beyond repair if I don’t strictly adhere to them and execute them perfectly every day. (Can you tell I’ve been watching The Last Samurai? I can!) To put it more direct, if I can’t keep it up, then I give it up.

This time I’m trying to think of things as stepping stones. Yes, I want to do all these things, but they can’t happen all at once. For example, I want to drop a pant size (by when, I haven’t yet decided). To do that, I’ll need to drink less soda and more water, get more exercise and more rest, and stop pigging out so often (calorie control). And I also want to write a 50,000 word novel outside of NaNoWriMo. Well, I hate to admit it, but those two activities, currently and in my world, are mutually exclusive. They do not coexist. Writing is staying up late and not getting enough sleep and drinking to much caffeine to assist in it all. Healthy is sleeping in all my spare time and overdosing on water and making fifteen trips to the bathroom in a day at work.

But if I made drinking more water a habit, say for two months, and that’s all I focused on. Forget the sleep, soda, food, and exercise (or if not forget, at least not focus on exclusively). Concentrate on getting all my water in every day until it is a habit I stop thinking about and simply continue. Then suddenly adding in exercise to the mix isn’t so difficult. And once that’s a habit, I can try working writing into my schedule.

Just an example, but you get the idea.

New Year’s Resolutions in the past have consisted of:

1. Give up soda
2. Sleep more
3. Stop biting nails (got that one several years ago, FWIW)
4. Write more
5. Journal every day
6. Write two novels this year (had that one last year)
7. Et cetera

That’s a small sample, but perhaps you can see how even trying to remember to do those things all at the same time would be difficult.

I haven’t got it all ironed out yet, and you’ll probably see more of these posts in the next week from me. I’m recreating Chris’ spreadsheet because his wasn’t working for me, and this is an ordeal in itself. Trying to find enough time (and attention) to complete it is still a challenge, but I know I can make it work. All the while I’m competing with website ideas, a secondary business idea, and oh yeah! My family needs my attention too in all of this.

Plus, you know, Christmas.

So we’ll see how it goes. Perhaps it will proceed better than planned.

But that doesn’t feel like a good planning strategy. Chris Guillebeau has a good planning strategy, and I’m plodding my way through it right now. Here’s what I’ve gotten through my head so far.

Number one – making rigid plans you hate is bad. I have a habit of making rigid plans, and then feeling absolutely miserable when I can’t maintain them. That is a class act way of making oneself more depressed. Not a great way to actually meet your goals.

Number two – New Year’s Resolutions that are not resolute suck. Why make a huge list (as I tend to do) of things that can’t be accomplished? For me, New Year’s Resolutions are no good if you don’t start from January 1st and maintain them continuously for the entire year. “Exercise every day,” is a very easy resolution to break the first time you get sick, or get bored, or get stressed, or simply get too busy. Back to depression, irritation, and more stress. Nice.

Number three – how do you know when you’ve “written more”, “exercised more”, or “given more to charity”? If you can’t measure it, how do you know you’ve met it? Oh yeah, you can’t!

I’m all about this Annual Review, now that I’ve read through both articles by Chris. It’s all I want to do, even though there are many more things that I know I need to get done in these evenings before the end of the year. My hope is that this ritual, done in fits and bursts before January 1st will help me get my other tasks done in the new year.

Know what my first goal is going to be? Setting up a weekly schedule for my evenings so I can get some good habits started.

And then I’m going to try this.