Wonderful Wednesday

I "wonder" why this guy has so many books in his car?? Couldn't he find any boxes to put them in?

DBF, his sister, his mom and I saw this car on the way back from a flea market near Lexington, KY. It was so odd, I had to get a picture!


In other news, my last day at Wal-Mart was the last Saturday in August. Do I miss it? About as much as I miss a root canal! I've got enough to do with teaching about 17 special needs K-5th graders five days a week. I feel overwhelmed at times, but it's getting better. There's not enough time in the day to give all of them everything they need. However, the regular classroom teachers say the same things, so it's not just me.

I finally got a TEACHING check yesterday! This was the first one in four years, so I was tickled. I haven't had any check at all since July 15th! It will be nice to have money to put back each month. Now I can actually make a budget that I can follow. I am going to start putting money back each month because I know that I'll need to replace my car in the next year or so. I also want to start putting money in a Roth IRA instead of the school's 403b. There would be no matching money and with a Roth IRA I wouldn't have to move it again if my job changed. Another positive about TEACHER pay is that I don't have to worry about not having a full check during school holidays. I had two months in the spring when I was only bringing home $800 per month. DBF told me last night that he thought he was going to have to bring me groceries during those two months. Nah, I'm a grocery hound and had shoppied sales before the short checks came. However, I thought I was going to die when I got the $230 gas bill! Thank God I had money from Wal-Mart put back for it.

One more wonderful thing for this post: Snowball turns 15 this month!!!



I don't think she looks a day over 3!

Where to start?

Well, I've started this blog to help me with my goals. One goal is to save money.....or more specifically add to my EF (currently a little over $2,000), pay off the last of my student loans (a bit over $1,200), and to live within my means. I have a high FICO score, 782 the last time I checked, and luckily, I carry no CC debt. I would like to be able to add to a 401(k) again. I contributed to one between 2001 and 2005 when I taught special education in KY. However, I lost that job and haven't been able to afford to add anymore. It's currently around $6,000. The last time I received a statement, I think it said I had made a profit of 48%. I also have around $6,000 in stock with the company I work part-time at as a cashier.

My next goal is to lose weight. This has been a challenge all my life. I have recently lost about 10 pounds! However, I'm still 32 lbs above my lowest adult weight (during the summer of 2002). That's my problem........I lose weight, get stressed, eat like there's no tomorrow, and gain it back! I'm back on the right track now so I'm going to get back down there. I've got a whole slew of like new clothes that I want to wear again!! Once I get to, or closer to my goal weight, I will post before/after pictures. I have the before picture (in a bathing suit of all things), but not ready to share it with the world yet.

My third goal is to get organized. I've been working on this in the past couple weeks, just trying to do spring cleaning and get rid of things I don't use. It feels so good to see progress. I just hope I can keep it up.