I feel I have to announce my progress today or else I’ll start feeling down about things.

1) I am making some progress on my credit cards. A new chart will be going up at NCN Network for $16,154.26. Even though I am still charging a little on my cards, I am making sure to pay off all new charges, hence the small movement downward.

2) I bought another CD because I am too good at dipping into my emergency fund and I need to cut that out. I won’t break a CD unless I am desperate for cash, therefore signifying a true emergency. Hopefully that will help me get my head straight. In a real emergency, am I going to care if I pay the withdrawl penalty? Probably not. I get more upside in buying the CD than not.

Ultimately, the tuition reimbursement I got went towards these two items. I am trying really hard to live off the cash I keep on hand and not charge things, but at the moment while I’m waiting for a new ATM card to kick in, I am closing up old checking accounts and waiting for stuff to clear. I’m in a bit of a cash crunch, but I am going to bear through it. No reason why I can’t grow up a little while this happens.

Killing your Television is worth a million bucks!

Yep yep. It’s true. I save space in my apartment and lots of money.

I have no extra energy costs.
I have no cable bill.
I have very few movies to take up space.
I canceled Netflix.
I have no entertainment center.
I have no game consoles. (But the Wii does tempt me.)

I think I lead a pretty full life without it. I go out to meet my knitter friends. I read a LOT. (I think I’ve read 5 books in the last 2 months. Two John Sandford books, Snow Crash, Goldfinger, and one more.) I am always doing something and frankly, it’s exhausting. When I want to veg out, I play computer games for hours on a DSL line I’d have anyway. The game is an additional $75 a year subscription rate, but that’s what some people pay in a month for cable, and if I’m really into it, I’ll play over 10 hours in week.

There is TV all around us for free. I hit up the local bars to watch special stuff like the Red Sox winning the World Series! Friends have TV and host movie nights. I just don’t miss it.

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE TV. I DO. I loved watching Victoria Beckham last night. She was cute, perky, and very funny. I don’t think she takes herself too seriously, after all she did send out a blowup doll as a decoy. But I don’t see myself catering my life around TV programs. Rarely do I run around trying to find a TV even when one of my friends is on Jeopardy. (That made me sad when no one could TiVO it for me and burn it to disc.) I am horrified at the number of people who make watching American Idol the highlight of their day or week. That’s completely insane.

I’ve gotten sucked into the drama, sure. I was rooting for Chris Daughtry, but for the longest time I had no idea what the deal was with Sanjaya and never bothered to find out. My friends have to clue me in sometimes, but no, my life does not lack for my ignorance. Nay, it’s better for it. I’d rather sleep than watch TV.

ps- My friend on Jeopardy is probably one of the biggest frugal influences in my life. But that’s a story for another day.

James of DINKs Finance reposted a list of saving tips from Jane Bryant Quinn. It’s a good list and a great way to take stock of where I am.

1) Save all your cash gifts: - Not really doing it, but I hardly get cash gifts anymore.

2) Pay Yourself First: Got the 401K going on. I stopped doing an automated payment to savings from my checking account though. I need to get that started again.

3) Trim Your Spending By 5 Percent: “This is easier said than done.” No kidding. But I am trying this week to cook more and dine out less.

4) Don’t Spend Your Next Raise: I don’t know if I’ll be getting one next year, but this year’s raise allowed me to move my 401K contribution back upwards.

5) Pay Off Your Mortgage Faster: Contemplating this, but I have too much credit card debt.

6) Refinance Your High Interest Loans: Yep! Paying 7.9% and 10% for the credit card debt instead of 15%+.

7) Pay Cash For Everything: I am trying this out and so far it is working pretty well for me.

Stop Buying Books: I think I’ve spent less, but I know that in the past 2 months, I’ve read about 6 books for fun and only bought one of them. I did buy another, but it was a tech book for work, which could be tax deductible, but is not because of the threshold amount.

9) Pay off Your Car and Save The Payment Money: The car is paid off, but I am not saving the payment money for another car. Instead, I’m saving it in my 401K! WOO HOO!

So according to her, I seem to be doing ok, which is good. I need the reminder that I’m doing a LOT better than I used to be. Looking at where I was 3 years ago when I purchased my condo, I’m doing well. When I compare to 5 years ago, I’m doing FANTASTIC. Sometimes all I need is some perspective on my activities because lately I’ve been feeling a bit down about money.

Turns out my little discrepancy from the paycheck to my 401k plan is a question of printing. My paystub has the wrong amount for the corporate match. I am only supposed to receive 2.5% of my salary as corporate matching (if I contribute more than 5%), however, the math ended up showing that the corporate match on my check was a lot more than that. That’s what threw off Quicken.

I never checked to make sure the corporate match was the right amount of my check so I didn’t notice that the error was purely on the paystub showing the wrong dollar amount. Otherwise, my contribution and all dollar amounts were correct.

Darn. I was hoping to squeeze out another ~$70 from my company, but alas, it’s not mine.

Either way though, that might be an error purely on paper, or coming from someone else’s account, which would really stink.

I’m not sure how that all will get resolved, but the payroll lady is going to let me know if all my pay stubs will show the proper year-to-date amount going forward.

The World at PRI did a great story on “food miles”. Basically it’s the commute your food takes to get to where you can buy it.

Personally I usually buy my groceries at one of three places:
The local farmer’s market, about 1 mile away from my apartment.
The local Harris Teeter, which is on my way home in an easy right turn at a light and an easy right turn out.
The local Harris Teeter near my office, because it’s sooooo much cheaper than the Whole Foods which is closer.

As much as I love the cheap prices at Target, I just don’t go there that often for all that I need.

As I consider the idea in the story of buying food that has traveled least and consumed the least amount of resources to get to me, I am liking the idea of the organic farmer’s market. Spinach is one of the most insecticide drenched vegetables you can buy (per Jonathan. I was wrong a few days ago. I thought it was Consumer Reports where I read that.). Because I try to get spinach at the farmer’s market, hopefully it’s traveled a short way from Pennsylvania and has fewer insecticide residue in or on it. How do I know it’s from Pennsylvania? The side of the truck says so and that’s what Mr. Farmer tells me when I talk to him and ask him about his practices.

I realized this week that I hadn’t eaten McDonald’s in months. There’s one down the street from me and every once in a while I stop in for a quick bite, but I think it’s good that I haven’t gone there in a while. I went to Boston Market in the past month, but for fast food, it has the appearance of being slightly more wholesome than Mickey D’s. While I know both places ship their food hundreds of miles to their franchisees, I think I’m better off staying away from the Golden Arches and trying to cook more at home.

At least for this week.

Apparently he’s been notified by the FBI of a criminal investigation.

From my very limited experience, he’ll probably only go to jail for 3 years and then like the defendant on whose case I worked before, he can get out of jail and go right back to fraudulent practices and get indicted again about 5 years from now.

Rob thinks I am obsessed with Mr. Serin. It’s not that. I have schadenfreude and I have enough knowledge of what the feds do to prosecute a case like this. The banks should be so lucky that it’s only 8 properties he bought and not the 50 or so that I had to process. I read through HUD-1 after HUD-1 (These are settlement sheets used in real estate transactions) and saw the fishiness over and over again. I feel bad for the settlement attorney and appraisers who might have worked on these transactions. They may be dragged into the much for associating with such an idiot.

Who knows if any creditors will actually see any money again. I worked on this from the bankruptcy side, which is how the defendant was undone basically. Since Mr. Serin hasn’t actually done a filing, there may be no civil remedy here for them, only the satisfaction that he is in jail.

Disclosure: I worked a the case for the bankruptcy trustee who administered the defendant’s bankruptcy proceeding, and we were cooperating with the FBI to serve justice properly (and find a missing Mercedes). As part of the federal indictment, the defendant had to cooperate with the trustee to recover as much money as possible for the creditors because the jerk made a lot of preferential payments. If you really want to know who it was, I can tell you if you want to email me privately. There are several news articles or court documents you can easily Google to verify what I am saying.

Do you like used books? Then get ready! This Saturday the Goodwill at Glebe Road and Route 50 is having a book sale.

The last one on June 9th got rained on pretty badly. But there’s a sign out today that says there’s another one “This Saturday”. All books were a dollar each at the last one, so I expect the same for this one too!

Full details of the last event from their Goodwill Good Neighbor Newsletter:

The Goodwill Retail Store at 10 South Glebe Road in Arlington, VA will be holding a major $1 Book Sale in the parking lot on Saturday, June 9th from 10AM to 6PM. All books are only $1 with proceeds benefiting Goodwill’s job training and employment programs for people with disadvantages and disabilities. Shoppers who purchase one of Goodwill’s environmentally friendly tote bags can also stuff the bag with as many books as it will carry for only $20!!

The full address:
Goodwill
10 S GLEBE RD
ARLINGTON,VA 22204
(703) 769-3711

By Metro:
Take the Orange Line to Ballston and then #23 A/C Metrobus towards Crystal City. There is also an ART (Arlington Rapid Transit) bus that follows the same route until Columbia Pike. (And you are going to get off way before Columbia Pike.

An alternate Metro route is to take the Yellow Line to the Pentagon and take one of the #16 buses down Columbia Pike, however, that will be a far walk to the store with an armload of books, so transfer to a northbound #23 to Ballston/Tysons Corner.

For readers in DC/PG County:

The Summer Sizzle’s with a Buy 1, Get 1 Free Sale!

If you live or work in Washington, DC or the eastern Prince George’s County area, you might want to stop at the Goodwill Retail Store on South Dakota Avenue on your Friday afternoon drive home. The store will be hosting a Summer Sizzle Sale every Friday from 3PM to 7PM in the store parking lot now through August 24th. Buy one item get a second item of equal or lesser value FREE!!

If you already thought you were getting great deals on Goodwill’s vintage and contemporary merchandise, now the deals get even better!

Oh dear. I still write paper checks for my HOA fee. I like to have an imaged copy of it, but I suppose I can get away from paper checks now primarily because of my sheer laziness outweighs the check writing. I have no impetus for ordering new checks. I don’t need to express myself with angels, butterflies, or Garfield.

I can’t believe my sloth will be the final undoing of paper checks in my life.

As I peruse the payees in my paper register, (Only to keep track of what I wrote, otherwise, it’s Quicken all the way) I see that I paid off my back taxes, my student loans, my car loan. I see the escrow money for my condo, the check for my motorcycle. All of it logged in my checkbook for the last four years.

Not being able to send a check whenever I want will make me nuts.

My solution? Get rid of my Wachovia checking account and open one somewhere else and get some new checks. Crazy. I know. The link is to an older post when I first thought of doing this.

Fundamentally, I’m really ticked off at Wachovia for charging me for my Quicken download. I was very certain over the last month NOT to do a Quicken download, but they charged me anyway! So screw them! I’m closing that account.

I went into a bank this afternoon after a dental appointment. I am happy to report a new checking account. I will have to get it ready with Direct Deposit, etc, but it will be worth it to get away from Wachovia. I decided to go with a box of checks anyway for the peace of mind I will have. At least the bank officer was kind enough to let me request what will go on the check. First initial last name only, no phone number and no apartment number.

There is still much that needs to be done before I can terminate my relationship with Wachovia completely, but let that be a lesson to Wachovia, don’t be stupid and just eat the cost of doing business!

After sleeping on it for a night, I called three places for tires. NTB, Merchants and Goodyear. Specifically I was looking for Goodyear Assurance TripleTred tires, which were the top-ranked all-season tire for regular driving by Consumer Reports. They were ranked in the middle for performance tires.

I called all three shops and only the Goodyear store had them in stock. I decided not to go with patching the tire or replacing just two for several reasons.

1) I hated the old tires. I felt like I slipped a lot on curves.
2) There was a blister on the tire with the puncture.
3) “Plugging” a tire isn’t done by shops as often anymore because of liability reasons.
4) The tires were almost out of warranty.
5) Getting two would only confuse me later about rotating and which ones were the ones to replace, etc.

I still haven’t really had a chance to try them out. The new VA traffic fines are making everyone drive abnormally [or normally]. I did take one curve at a higher speed than I normally did in the old tires and was able to stay with the turn a lot better. I think once it rains, I will really feel the difference.

Currently there is a deal that if you buy four tires in a set you can get $20-$100 in a Visa gift card. You have to mail away for it, but that will bring my total down under $700.

I know Jim is a fan of buying tires at Costco, but I didn’t see the point of a membership and driving all the way out to the suburbs to find a Costco with a garage. (The Pentagon Costco is a crazy zoo. You pay for parking and spend 30 minutes just waiting for a spot to open.) Again, like the library, their hours weren’t what I needed, but Goodyear opens at 6:30am and I was in the door by 8am because I needed a little more sleep. (I did call them at 7am when the NTB opened and called the Merchant’s last because I was calling them before the store opened.)

The last meal was chicken salad with capers on bread with brie. The last of the unfrozen broth was used to make polenta which I was going to for breakfast, but will eat with some steak tonight for dinner. Yum!

Ok, no more chicken this week. I bought lunch only once and dinner only once, both were chicken. (Chicken parm and a basket of wings)

I think I am chickened out for a while, but I did save a lot of money. I spent about $20 to dine out this week. That’s because I had filled up my frequent dining card at the cafeteria and used that to buy the chicken parm.

How much did I save? Easily $30 for the whole week. That’s 4 lunches at $5 and one dinner at $10. And that’s a pretty conservative estimate because sometimes I buy breakfast and get a juice with my lunch. If you add that up, it’s more like $40-45.