I doubt if I'll take a vacation again this year

Ugh I am not happy about this either. First I didn't take a vacation in almost 6 years. Then in 2012 I sucked it up and went to Aruba. It was a great vacation and I would love to go again. Last year I decided that I really couldn't afford a vacation so I didn't go anywhere again figuring I would go in 2014. Well bingo-bango no. I'm not going anywhere again this year.

I realize that it's mid-April and there is still time for me to make something happen. Quite frankly though, it's not looking good for the home team. I'm really upset with myself that I've let my debt get the best of me. It's just me and although it's expected that I should have some bills, I should be able to eek out a small vacation at least every other year.

I need this debt gone because I miss vacation!

I need additional income

There are pretty much no if ands or buts about it. There are only so many expenses that I can cut and at this point any more cuts will literally hurt.

I have very little savings besides my house account. Truthfully right now I have almost zero cash. That's a big no-no for when I try to buy my home. I will be able to put my savings into overdrive once the summer is over. I will have a small bill paid off and I can double up on another one to get that bill paid off by the end of the year. Any excess will be split between savings and extra debt payments.

When I buy my house I will have one credit card bill and a personal loan payment left and that's all I want. If I could figure out a way to get both of those paid off I would. Unfortunately that's not really possible considering those two amounts almost equal a new car.

Man I tell ya....debt sucks!!

My certificate expires in 2 weeks

So I never paid anything extra on my loan. I had planned on paying something on it so that I would only need to pay $1500 when it was time to pay it off. As it stands now, I still owe almost the entire balance.

I really need to figure out a way to bring in extra income. Right now things are way too tight and it's not comfortable.

I never paid off the loan for my car

No not the actual car note, that's been paid off for several years. I'm talking about the loan that I took last year to pay for the engine work that I had to have done on my car.

Honestly I thought I would have come up with at least half of the money that I owe but I haven't. I did take a secured loan backed by a certificate of deposit so my interest is only a few bucks a month. On the downside when the cd matures, I'll have to let the money sit in my checking account and then use that to pay the loan off.

Great, now I have to figure out where to come up with the money to get the cd back where it should be. Sigh. It's always something.

I didn't watch the "big game"

Or the Super Blow-Out as I referred to it. First I just wasn't interested in either team. At all. So I knew I wasn't going to watch. Add to that the fact that I've been battling the flu, with the flu winning, and I just wanted to lay down. I did wake up about mid-way through the 3rd quarter and noticed the score. I laughed, turned over and went back to sleep.

Later on in the evening I went to YouTube and found the video of Bruno Mars' halftime performance. Wow! He did great. And when he brought the Red Hot Chili Peppers out?!?!?! I was in heaven. Too bad the game wasn't as good as the halftime show.

Congrats to Seattle though!

Where in the heck have I been?

lol. It's kinda funny to realize that I haven't updated my blog. Especially considering I only update this one twice a month anyway. Then I look and realize that I haven't updated in almost 6 weeks which is crazy.

One of my main blogs got eaten by cyber-space and I've been dealing with that. And when I say eaten, I mean gone, toast, kaput. You get the idea. I lost 6 years worth of posts and there's no going back. It looks like a brand new blog. It sucks but hey at least I have a "clean" blog.

Now that I'm done dealing with that disaster, now I can get back to the task of blogging regularly again.

I'm still trying to come up with car money

I just don't have the amount of money that I had to spend to get my car worked on. I was very surprised at how much it ended up costing. I was not expecting to have to get major work done so I had very little saved up.

I ended up taking a credit union loan against a certificate of deposit that I have. I would love to pay as much down as possible before the loan comes due so I don't have to use the certificate. It doesn't look good though so I will have to use the certificate money. I don't want to use more than 1/2 even though I think I will.

So far I'm on track to have $200 paid off but to use half I would need another $450 by April 1st. That doesn't include the fact that I'm trying to pay off credit card debt too.

Sigh debt sucks!

My car is a mess

I finally got around to getting my car inspected and the bill was out of this world. It was over $1,600 but since I paid in cash, it was $1,560 which is ridiculous. I needed a lot of motor work done and the parts were almost as expensive as the labor. Usually the parts are dirt cheap but labor is a lot so I was surprised.

The worse part is that it was almost 3 times what I had actually put away for a car expense so I had to dip way into savings to pay the bill. I think I'm most frustrated because it's a small economy car and I only drove 6K miles last year. Yes, 6 thousand! The only reason I needed an emissions test was because I was exempt the year before and you can't go two years in a row without the test.

I love having my car but some days I really wonder if it's all worth it.

Please don't let my car cost too much

My car is way past due for inspection. It was supposed to get done in July and here we are in October and it's still not done. I was trying to push it back so it would coincide with my registration but I thought it would take me another year or two to get them synced.

I was going to go this week but then I decided that I didn't know how much it would cost so I decided to push it back until next week. That way I can take it just before I get paid and I know that I'll have enough to cover the cost.

I guess I procrastinate so much because I barely drive the car. Oh well, it needs to be done so I'll get on it.

Ugh Fall

So it's Fall already. You can tell by the fact that there is fall foliage on the trees, and the ground, in addition to the chill in the air. Sports enthusiasts love this type of weather but I hate it. I hate it every year when the seasons change and it seems to get worse.

I could move to somewhere warm, which is my dream by the way, but I have family obligations that are keeping me in the area. So for now it's just hoping and wishing and saving for a tropical vacation to take my mind off of the fact that it's cold outside.

Maybe if I keep envisioning Summer I won't notice the cold. Think that will work?