<$Friday, November 30, 2007$>
Getting back to normal
| I crossed the finish line for NaNoWriMo last night, and now I'm all written out. I spent this morning uploading a new template for and updating my writing blog, but now, except for knitting, I think I'm done being creative for the next few days. I need a weekend of sleeping and vegging and taking things in instead of putting them out, and giving my brain a chance to rest. I signed up for NaNoFiMo to help me keep my momentum and finish my other novel, but even so, starting Monday I'm going to get back to a regular posting schedule around here. Thanks for sticking with me, y'all. Labels: personal |
<$Tuesday, November 13, 2007$>
Debt reduction update and more ING links
| With the aforementioned medical bills, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to make my goal of getting the credit card balance below $4,000 by the end of the year. But I did just fire off a payment that will knock it below $4,300, which, SCORE! That's about $400 down since I started this here blog. Not too shabby. Tricia over at Blogging Away Debt asked for more of my ING Direct referral links this morning. If you're late to this game, she keeps a page of referral links that are available for anyone who wants them. Once she ran out of her own referrals she started asking those who took them to donate their referrals so she could keep going. She's about to post four of mine. I've been really happy with my ING account, both the high-yield savings and the Electric Orange checking account (also a referral link). Both have been extremely helpful in my debt reduction strategy, allowing me to have money deposited directly into a "Debt Reduction" sub-account (oh how I love the sub-account feature--it's like a virtual envelope system!), and then it takes about two minutes to log in, transfer the money to checking and fire off a check to the credit card company. It's very ADD friendly. ING's interest rate is currently 4.20%, and if you use any of the links posted at BAD (or the checking link I posted here) to open an account with at least $250, you'll get a $25 bonus just for signing up. And yes, there is something in it for me: a $10 referral bonus that will get deposited right into my "Debt Reduction" account. |
<$Monday, November 12, 2007$>
Score another one for the Emergency Fund
| I'm still here, y'all. There are plenty of reasons for my lack of posting lately, not the least of which is the food poisoning I got last week. Hoo boy, that really did a number on me. It took me all week to completely recover. I'm also participating in NaNoWriMo (you can follow my progress here), and between that and trying to finish knitting a sweater in time for my sister's birthday later this month, all of my free time is pretty much spoken for. I just got word that I'm about to receive a nice little $100 windfall. I was sitting here debating whether to throw it at my debt or use it for Christmas shopping when I remembered the hospital bills I'm sure to have soon. They had to call an ambulance for me for the food poisoning, and I'm not sure whether my OTHER trip to the emergency room after my fainting spell a few weeks ago (which I still haven't received hospital bills for, but my insurance statements assure me will cost me about $500) will use up the rest of my deductible for the ER. I've been trying to squirrel away money whenever I can to put towards that, so we won't have to cut too deeply into our emergency fund (though if this doesn't qualify as a justifiable emergency expense, I don't know what does). So this $100 will help towards that. I might have to put the debt reduction on hold a while so we can build our savings back up after the medical bills are paid; but the good news is that we're in a position where that won't hurt our ability to pay the rest of our bills or cut into our living expenses. And that's pretty cool. Labels: emergency fund, personal, saving+investing |
<$Thursday, November 1, 2007$>
"A Click a Day Saves a Life"
| I first saw this on Neil Gaiman's Blog, and I figured if he was willing to post it, it's probably on the up and up: Project Download is a project set up by woman suffering from two rare and painful neurological disorders. Her condition has left her unable to work, and her in-between status (too "well-off" to qualify for Medicaid while still too low-income to afford health insurance) has left her unable to receive the brain surgeries she needs to prolong her life. In an attempt to raise the funds for her surgery, she signed up for a rewards program with MegaUpload which promises a payout of $10,000 if/when she reaches 5 million downloads of a single document. As such, she's simply looking for folks to download her file and rack up her points. I did it, and all it is is a short .txt document explaining all of this in further detail along with a note of thanks. No viruses, pop-ups or anything hinky, and the download only took seconds. The caveat is that only downloads each day from unique IP addresses count toward her points, and multiple downloads from the same IP on the same day could disqualify her, so there can be no well-intentioned cheating. There's also a Paypal link at the site if you'd like to help her out with a donation, but all she's really asking for is about a minute of your time. Labels: charity |