I posted my house for sale on 3 different websites on Saturday and Sunday. This is only Monday, and I already have 2 responses. This may move faster than I thought it would. Plan is sell my house by the end of school, get married and move. Then I get to become a stay at home mom-farm wife. I'm excited, its what I have always wanted to do and who I have wanted to do it with. I have already started going thru the house, planning on going thru 1 room at a time-cleaning and packing. Right now I am planning on just packing stuff to sell. As friends have garage sales, I can put stuff in them, until I have my own.

Well, I thought I had done real good all year long by throwing all receipts & tax related items into a box labeled taxes. I did my taxes myself using "Turbo Tax" and was very pleased with the results. I mailed them off on Moday. Now that I am cleaning up the office area, I find 3 more receipts, medical, that I should have claimed. So, I just finished redoing my taxes (which was easy, since the forms are saved on my computer and I only had to update them). It is giving me back another $160 between state and federal, so it was worth the time I took to redo them. I just remailed my ammended taxes....I am now down to 1 small file left to file away and a clean desk and drawers!!

Today is my day off, and I am spending it cleaning and reorganizing my office. My file doors were so full that I had papers to be filed that were in laundry baskets, because they wont fit in the file drawers. So, I have gone thru the files, burned some stuff and given some to my hamisters (they shred it and I don't have to pay for a paper shredder--how frugal is that??). When everything is done, it should fit in the file drawers. I also set up a large (biggest I could find) 3 ring notebook binder for each member of the family. Each one of us has an ING account, savings account at 2 different credit unions, and a mutual fund account. I also have a couple more-retirement and IRA accounts. Each person now has their own notebook, and they are divided into sections. When we get those monthly statements, I use my 3 hole puncher to put in holes, and then put them in the persons book, behind the tab for that account, with the oldest in the back. My girls seem to have more money than I thought they did. All their baby money and most of their birthday money has gone into their credit union savings accounts. It is starting to add up now. Ideally, I would like them to use one account for college, and have the other for when they get their first home. Just getting all those files for 4+ accounts per person out of the file drawer freed up a lot of room. Some of the older stuff that I don't need, but don't want to get rid of, I will box and move to the attic. So far, I have found 4 savings bonds, coupons for a free bag of chips, and some change on my desk and in the bottom of drawers.

Little Miss is back in school again & I am back to work. I sold some stock that carried us thru the months I was not working. Now I get to buy it back up again-(its an option at work), but the good part is, when I sold it back in Dec, it was worth a lot more than it is now. I will start my option to buy more in March. It also helped by cashing in some of my free gift cards I had from mypoints. I had several for walmart, which I used for gas (and saved 3 cents a gallon at the pump also by using them). If anyone wants info on my points, just let me know & I will send you an invite. Basically I read ads they send me and get points for it-then the points I can convert to gift cards from major companies, such as JCPenney, Red Lobster, Target, Walmart...
I have been pretty tight with the cash since we have been back but I think we will make it. Had a cold snap, which didnt help the heat bill any, but it only lasted a few days, and I burned wood some too. Since I keep the pantry and deep freeze stocked, the only groceries we will need to buy for probably the next month will be milk and eggs.

Am finally back, been gone with a sick little one. I have missed work, without pay, so I am really going to have to be frugal now. Today, I called and dropped the caller ID, the extra dish receiver, and dropped the extra channels on the dish-I am back to having just the local channels for $5 a month. I tried a TV antenna before, and they just don't work at my location. I would drop it all together, but the oldest often needs to watch the news for school homework, and I also like the extra channels as we are going to be in tornado season again here in a few weeks. I am debating if I want to drop the DSL back to basic internet or not. Before I did some work for a work at home company that required DSL. If I can get back on with them, I will keep it. If not, I will drop it. Since I do work for the phone company I do get a discount on it. But, what I did today will save me $37 a month. Not a lot, but thats a weeks worth of gas for me. I have been trying to think of what else I can cut out, but I think I am pretty much at bare bones now. The last few months completely ate up my savings again, so I will have to built that back up again.