Time to diminish the piles. I’m buried beneath clutter and I despise it.
My goal for the remainder of the week is to clear away all the useless crap clutter suffocating surrounding me.

Our apartment is anarchy and it’s amazing how quickly clutter accumulates, taking up unnecessary space and festering in every nook and cranny. It’s time to remove all the senseless, stagnant ‘stuff’ and dedicate that space to items which are important to me.

Me verses The Crap, my plan of attack:

Tomorrow morning, before my first cup of coffee, I’ll flip on my favorite Pandora channel and sway to some beats as I de-clutter-itize, or prioritize which clutter/junky room corner to first tackle.  As I poke around in an attempt to corral stuff, I’ll maul over these questions; when was this last used? Do I love this?

My reward for completing the task of unsnarling a chaotic nook: a fresh, full-bodied cup of coffee from the french press.

Hodgepodge of other goals this week:

* What I have roosting in the fridge: onion, tomato, bell peppers, cheese and mushrooms; tomorrow, pick up whole wheat dough and pizza sauce for a tasty oven-baked pizza for dinner.
* Pay my car insurance. DONE
* Fix the control arm/ball joint in my car (to be completed during the weekend, with M. playing mechanic.) The part itself cost $200, and it was triple that amount to take my car in for repairs.
* Broke-Ass Mommy was at 18 subscribers when I made a goal to reach 25 by the end of this week.

Current subscribers: 22

A reasonable start, I believe.

=^..^=

Mali’o, the stuffed turtle.

…one saucy snapper

Because, who doesn’t love a Broke-Ass Monday? Enjoy some of this fun free stuff circulating around the web.

Broke-Ass Monday

Don’t miss out on your chance to win the following items:

• Musings From a Stay at Home Mom is sponsoring an Extreme Cash $500 Paypal Giveaway (open worldwide; ends August 20)
• Are back to school expenses getting you down? Win a $60 Amazon gift card at About a Mom (open worldwide; ends August 24)
• Win a Kindle Fire or $200 cash from Infographics Archive (open wordwide; ends August 31)
• Coupon Cup is offering a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card (US only; ends August 28)
• Jacob from My Personal Finance Journey is kick starting his August Community & Charity Giveback — one lucky reader will win $60 as well as an additional $59.13 to a charity of choice (ends August 31)

Good luck to all participants. See you for the next Broke-Ass Monday!

=^..^=

Ugh.

Expenses.

This weekend was brutal, financially. Another wedding. (Our second within a month.) A stag party last night. And another wedding reception next weekend.

M. and I calculated our wedding gift expenses, and it’s reaching such an exorbitant amount, I feel foolish (as a professed frugal-y chick) confessing the amount. I wonder how others deal with wedding gift expenses toward dear ones?

We haven’t blown through our entire budget, but next month we do need to aggressively tighten the purse strings, to recoup from these sprightly bashes.

My Financial Challenge Update.

As a stay-at-home mommy without a reliable income stream, I made a financial challenge at the start of summer to raise $1,000, somehow. This is how things currently stand:

(All income was passively made from previous writing projects & sponsors.)

June – $80.00
July – $57.71
August – $257.05

I’ve been incredibly lax but income has slooooowly been trickling in.

Now, my other dilemma: once my goal is reached, since I’m nearly half-way there, how should this money be invested?

To express my gratitude for your support with this site, I find this an exciting opportunity to give back to you, my broke-ass reader, in a sort of reader give-back scenario. So I am considering sponsoring a cash giveaway once my $1,000 milestone is successfully attained—something along the lines of 20 percent ($200) to one lucky reader and 10% ($100) to a charity. The remainder will most likely be stashed into our family savings, to help replenish the coffers from wedding expenses, etc.

Jacob from My Personal Finance Journey does a monthly community and charity giveback and I think it’s the niftiest idea, ever.

What do you think? What would you do right now with $1,000?

Be sure to sign up for email updates or click the ‘subscribe to this feed’ link at the end of this post so you don’t miss out on the progress of my $1,000 Broke-Ass Financial Challenge.

My to-do list this evening:

Read and respond to emails and comments left on Broke-Ass Mommy.
Devour a peach. DONE
Investigate why my Site Meter suddenly went kaput.
Browse through sites listed on my blog roll, and comment accordingly.
Hunker down and pay my American Express bill and car insurance.
Watch a movie with M. tonight.

Here’s what I’m currently reading:

• Metro Santa Cruz (feature story, John Moss). Field Trippin’ — One high school teacher’s account of a trip he didn’t mean to take
  Drugs are a common topic in my classroom. The students have questions and I have answers, and if I can prevent one less overdose or drunken driving death, it’s worth it. My students get fucked up. We live in the wine country, and whenever you live in a booze-based economy, kids are going to grow up with issues…Max had left a screensaver depicting 12 tabs of Scooby-Doo windowpane acid on one of my classroom computers. I told him to do a research paper on Timothy Leary and quit being such an asshole. I think that’s why he dosed me.

aaahhh hahahahahahahahaha…
UGH.

=^..^=

I find it motivating to track my site’s evolution, and thus in-between plucking boogers out of my daughter’s nose—she has a raging cold—I wanted to share some site stats, as you may find them interesting as well. Broke-Ass Mommy officially launched at the end of June, when I started consistently to post, and here is a basic overview of how things have progressed since then.

Content goals:  My objective is/was to maintain two to three weekly updates. DONE

Unique visitors per day — The site is now receiving approximately 30 unique visitors a day.

Subscribers –

July 3:
2 subscribers (Can I send you something to express my gratitude? Brandy snaps, perhaps?)

July 18:
11 subscribers

August 8:
18 broke-ass subscribers, as of this morning. (woo-hoo!)

Retaining readers is difficult, and my goal for the week is to try and reach seven new subscribers and bring my total up to 25.

Commentators –

Undeniably, the most rewarding part of building a blog is feedback from readers, and approximately 20 broke-ass readers have commented since launch. A huge thank you to those who’ve taken a moment to stop in and sprinkle me with comment love; your support and thoughtful feedback is invaluable.

Where traffic is coming from — the bulk of traffic is directly from Personal Finance Carnival links and other niche-related finance bloggers, and approximately 15% of traffic are Google hits.

Google Keywords — Ass. Mommy. (Heh.) Frazzled.

Alexa Rankings –

July 10th: 3,507,434
July 17th: 1,725,804
July 30th: 1,236,943
August 6th: 906,877
(current) August 8th: 826, 155

Page Rank: 2

I’m a bit baffled by Page Rank. Do all sites start at zero? 1? Is a PR 2 promising?

What Broke-Ass Mommy is for me..

Since I’m currently addled with gobs of ruckus-ness throughout my daily life, and pieces of me are scattered everywhere, this site is a creative outlet and means to hold myself accountable and remain focused.

(As I’m typing this, my kid is bopping up and down, lopsided, dribbling luscious snot all over my ankle. And screaming and mewling. Two hours and twenty-six minutes later: ok, I’m back. But, uh, lost. Anchor me here, folks.)

Oh, yes.

Stats.

Overall Broke-Ass Mommy has had a slow and steady progress.

My goal for this month:
To bravely soldier on.

=^..^=

An infinite grizzled rock peep.

My epiphany for the evening, as I pant inside this blistering apartment:

At the moment, even before a vintage typewriter (which I’ve always wanted, for the sheer pleasure of tapping on polished keys, to hear that familiar clickety-clack), I would love to acquire a sturdy, waterproof metal detector and wield it around like a bad-ass, foraging through meadows and beaches, to unearth elusive coins and other fascinating relics.

It could even spawn a whole new website, where I track the sheer awesome-ness of my treasure hunts!

(Me, trying to convince M. what a fun and cool investment this will be):
You know that Roman solidus gold coin minted in Constantinople that I’ve been looking for, we could discover one, but instead of purchasing it from an auction house, we dig it up from the earth. It could be right here, buried beneath our feet. HOW COOL IS THAT?

M.: No. I want a geiger counter.

Choosing a particle detector that measures ionizing radiation over a bad-ass metal detector??

It’s amazing I still find him adorable.

~¤~¤~

What I’m currently reading:
(And I’m soo using these as ammunition!)

Ancient Coins Worth 15 Million Found By Amateur Treasure Hunters
Roman coins mother lode! UK treasure hunter, using a metal detector, finds 52,000 ancient coins worth over $5 million

~¤~¤~

Also included for your reading pleasure, some financial carnivals whirled through this week:

Totally Money Carnival at James Petzke: Graduating with a Surplus
Yakezie Carnival at Kylie Ofiu
Carnival of Retirement at Life Insurance by Jeff
Nerdy Finance Carnival at Nerdy Finance Carnival
Carnival of MoneyPros at Making Sense Of Cents
Wealth Artisan’s FinCarn at Wealth Artison
Y & T’s Weekend Ramblings at Young and Thrifty
Carn. of Financial Camaraderie at The University of Money

~¤~¤~

On the financial front, we had to slap $200.00 worth of savings toward replacing a control arm and ball joint for the driver’s side of my vehicle. This is the second ball joint replacement in the past year (six months ago it was the passenger side), and I am not pleased. So, essentially, M. and I have chewed through $1,200 in the past few weeks between these car repairs and our recent family vacation to Cape Ann.

So, financially, we’ll be hunkering back into savings mode. Except for, of course, my shiny, new metal detector, folks, which I fully expect to be propped on the patio, fired up and ready to go, by next week.

Because, who doesn’t have room in their budget for a metal detector?
(Or a geiger counter. But it’s not quite the same.)

=^..^=

Is it weird that I’m laying in bed browsing financial forums on my iPod, with my daughter snuggled peacefully beside me, napping.

All of my friends tip-toe around the subject of personal finance. They find it a wee uncomfortable and pretty snooz-y, and yet I can spend hours devouring material and crunching numbers in my head. My favorite part about receiving a regular paycheck was the anticipation of squirreling some away — what percentage should I contribute to my savings this week? 15%? 35%?

I loved nurturing and observing my flimsy savings as it bulked up and blossomed.

Now, i feel a bit lost.

It has been an unfamiliar adjustment for me to abandon a consistent paycheck, in order to remain at home with Lexi.  She has been my whole world for a year now.

But on days when I’m frustrated and doubting myself, or trying to slog through yet another afternoon, and can feel the ‘stay-at-home’ mommy blues creeping on, Lexi will wriggle over to hoist herself into my lap and peek up at me with, you know, that look in her eyes; a twinkle, a glittering spark, which makes my heart go all ache-y.

That pure, unfettered joy. Gazing straight at me.

And by ache-y, I mean, like, trillions of butterflies smashing/crackling, like smeared speckled cherries, all over on the windshield of my soul, trailing rainbow-colored guts.

Like that.

Man, I want to sell that down at the 7-Eleven and pound it like a slurpee, her pure, unfettered joy. And as her tiny body quivers, it oozes from her pores like sweet sugar sunshine’s banana pudding. And her fingers, like tiny chubby mushrooms, grapple at my hair, jam into a nostril, jab at an eyeball — it’s that sensation of being cloaked in absolute sweet unspitefulness.

Perfection.

And then everything feels surreal and I wouldn’t change a damn thing, not ever.

Because in those blissful and quiet moments of clarity, I’m precisely where I belong. Curled up in bed with my sweet butter bean.

=^..^=

Thursday evening, M. and I spontaneously decided we wanted to celebrate our daughter’s first birthday while camping by the ocean. We compiled a rough budget, and by four-thirty a.m. on Saturday morning, our rusty-orange Caliber was stuffed with gear and we were cruising five hundred miles to Cape Ann, Massachusetts.

Our Anticipated Budget For Our Road Trip: $960.00

Starting Mileage: 37,224
Ending Mileage: 38,300

Total Distance Traveled: 1,076 miles

Day 1 -
Saturday, July 21, 2012.

The first day consisted mainly of driving for over ten hours and then staking a claim to our land upon arrival, followed by camp set-up.

Lexi and I in our humble dwelling for the week

Final Cost :  $49.32 gas / $2.65 large coffee / $16.65 tolls / $128.00 Cape Ann camping, four days = $196.57

Day 2 -
Sunday, July 22, 2012.

We drove to Good Harbor beach during the morning, and then visited Wingaersheek Beach for some evening clamming during low tide. Lexi was delighted to watch Papa sift through and dig wayyy down into the sand with his bare hands, to harvest some fresh Atlantic clams.

Final Cost: $6.99 brandy / $33.43 groceries / $7.00 ice & tent stakes = $47.42

Day 3 -
Monday, July 23, 2012.

We explored the Cape Ann and Ipswich area further, and browsed some antique shops in Essex. For dinner, we stopped by the docks and bought four live lobsters straight off the boat, and brought the wriggling, thrashing beasts back to camp for a scrumptious lobster feast over our campfire.

Our campfire lobster feast.

Lexi has the claws duke it out.

Final Cost: $20 four fresh lobster, straight off the boat / $47.50 beer, ice, lemon & asparagus, salad, and other groceries = $67.50

Day 4 -
Tuesday, July 24, 2012. Lexi’s first birthday!

It was my butter bean’s first birthday and we spent the afternoon swishing through the streets of Salem and visiting the haunting, eerie sites from the witch trial hysteria of 1692.
(I was less than bewitched, however, to discover a Salem parking ticket tacked to the windshield.)

Salem, Massachusetts

Then it was off to the Cape Ann harbor for a festive dinner at the Gloucester House. I ordered some steamers and succulent seafood ravioli, and M. and I polished the birthday celebration off with a slice of triple-layer chocolate cake, with one unlit peppermint candle plopped among the buttery ripples.

We sang happy birthday to Lexi (who was absolutely tickled to be up past her bedtime) and, while she was absorbed with cooing and waving at the waitresses, Mommy slyly wolfed down the delectable chocolate treat.

Happy first birthday, Lexi!

Final Cost: $64 camp reservations, two more nights / $2 ice / $44.21 gas / $16 Salem Dungeon entrance fee / $12 Salem Witch Museum entrance fee / $22 Urban Oasis for lunch / $15 parking ticket in Salem / $100.00 dinner at the Gloucester House in Cape Ann = $275.21

Day 5 -
Wednesday, July 25, 2012.

Wednesday morning was gorgeous so we returned to Wingaersheek Beach during low-tide so Lexi could wade into the water and scout for sea shells and sand dollars. My precious girl was soo captivated by the beach and got a kick out of observing other children splashing around and playing in the ocean.

Spotted: clams, crabs, loads of fish, and sand dollars.

Wingaersheek Beach

Final Cost: $18.00 ice, water, propane & other groceries / $10.00 Wingaersheek beach parking pass / $11.81 beer / $4.00 ice & a Snickers ice cream bar / $20.00 groceries = $63.81

Day 6-
Thursday, July 26, 2012.

Stick figure built to ward against any lingering bad mojo from Salem. Seconds later, Lexi decapitated the poor chap.

The Cape Ann weather forecast was ominously warning about possible severe storms and hail, so we decided to break camp a day early and head to Boston before returning home.

We had a comical incident where I was gnawed on by a tick and consequently burned, and then it was off to the Boston Aquarium for the morning. We left Boston right before rush-hour traffic started to jam up the highways, and were homeward-bound by 3 p.m.

Final Cost: $35.00 Boston parking garage / $45.90 Boston Aquarium Admission / $35.46 gas / $3.80 Boston toll / $4.00 Massachusetts Pike toll / $40.54 lunch @ Applebee’s / $5 two coffees / $11.95 toll =   $181.65

In conclusion:
The original pre-planned budget was roughly $960.00.

Unexpected Expenses: $15.00 Parking ticket in Salem, Massachusetts

Cape Ann & Boston, Final Vacation Cost: $832.16

Now that our vacation is over, it’s back to the writing hole, so expect regular updates once again.

=^..^=

Due to an itsy-bitsy tick munching into the crook of my arm, I spent most of yesterday at the doctor’s office being treated for tick bite.

: (

(And a slight burn, but more on that later.)

Thursday morning, M. and I discussed whether to camp out for one more night or head to Boston for the day before starting our eight-hour return journey home. The Cape Ann, Massachusetts forecast called for afternoon and evening thunderstorms, with strong winds and potential hail, so we both agreed it would be pretty miserable breaking camp with a soggy tent and water-laden equipment.

As we debated over our early morning brewed-over-a-fire coffee, a few fat raindrops began to fall.  M. immediately sprung into action and leapt into the tent. Momentarily, I heard a bunch of clattering/banging, followed by some curse words, and what sounded like a frantic struggle to roll/cram equipment into prospective compartments.

Humming, I lifted Lexi into my lap and cradled her in my arms to nurse. That’s when I noticed a black speck in the crease of my right crook. I brushed at the spot but it appeared to be embedded into my skin.

There were tiny legs and a small ass swaying in the breeze, pointing straight up at me.

Ohh crap.

“Ummm..honey? What does a tick look like?”

Silence. Then: “I’ll be right out.”

M. unzipped the tent and stepped over to the log Lexi and I were lounging on to examine my arm.

“Yep, it’s a tick, all right.”

Oh god. There was a pinkish patch of irritation creeping beneath where the teeny blood-sucker had latched on.

M. raised an eyebrow, lit a cigarette, and took a long, cool drag, before announcing: “We’re going to burn it off.”

WHAT??!

That which ensued was a trauma resembling a comedy routine: Lexi twisted in my lap and burst into giggles as I yelped in pain, while M. tried to burn the damn thing off with his cigarette — the tick was tiny and the cherry was burning into my skin! — We were in a hurry and admittedly it was not the best decision, but the relentless black tick finally did let go with head intact.

I also received a lovely slight burn mark in the process.

By the way, burning a tick off is not the proper procedure for tick removal, as we later learned. Apparently, putting the tick under any duress (like scalding it with a cigarette, or coating it in Vasoline for suffocation, etc.) may cause the itty critter to puke up its guts and act as a syringe, plunging whatever gunk/bacteria held in its stomach straight into your wound.

Here is the proper method for tick removal, as per the CDC website:

1. Use fine-tipped tweezers to grasp the tick as close to the skin’s surface as possible.
2. Pull upward with steady, even pressure. Don’t twist or jerk the tick; this can cause the mouth-parts to break off and remain in the skin. If this happens, remove the mouth-parts with tweezers. If you are unable to remove the mouth easily with clean tweezers, leave it alone and let the skin heal.
3. After removing the tick, thoroughly clean the bite area and your hands with rubbing alcohol, an iodine scrub, or soap and water.

Totally freaked out, I visited the doctor yesterday and was prescribed antibiotics for the (rare) occurrence of Lyme Disease and, in a few weeks, as a precautionary measure, will contact the Health Department to have blood work done for further evaluation.

My week-long camping adventure in Cape Ann: fun as hell.

Getting bitten by a tick on our last day: not so much.

Yecch.

=^..^=

Right now it’s almost midnight and I had to use a flashlight to stumble my way to the bathroom.

M. and I packed the car up Friday night and drove eight hours to Cape Ann, Massachusetts. Right now, I’m huddled in a tent in utter darkness, tapping out an update from M.’s 3G phone.

Tomorrow is Lexi’s first birthday, and we decided to celebrate by camping at Cape Ann for one week.

So far, we have:

Claimed our stake by setting up a tent, our little home for this week.

Lexi got a kick out of splashing in the ocean waves, and we dug around on the beach during low tide to partake in some clamming. Mmm, fresh Atlantic clams…

Tonight, we bought four gorgeous fresh lobster straight off the fisherman’s boat and indulged in a scrumptious treat over the campfire.

Tomorrow, it will be a nice dinner out for my little butter bean’s birthday, where I happily will nibble on mucho cake in her honor. : D

And then..

We are planning to engage in some cemetary crawling in Salem and visit the dungeon where those unfortunate souls during the witch trials were held.

Expect scarce updates this week.

=^..^=

Bitcoin, the ‘Comeback Kid’ — how a transient financial decision may be turning into a viable (and lucrative) emerging crypto-currency.

Source: Prospecting Journal

Community-orientated currencies have always fascinated me.

There is something so darn compelling about a thriving, robust community transforming their hard-earned life energy into something honest and tangible and having that vision unfold in their marketplace.

When Bitcoins—an anonymous, peer-to-peer network crypto-currency—first entered my radar last year, it was shrouded in mystique due to some controversial usage by a minority, and my curiosity was piqued.

And I probably actually squee’ed a bit in delight. It was so off-beat, innovative and cool.

M., the computer engineer, was squee’ing for different reasons. He believed the premise/technical stuff behind Bitcoin seemed pretty solid: hashing. algorithms. cryptography.

Ya, that tech-y stuff.

Bitcoin has battled a tumultuous evolution since its emergence in 2009.

A stigma developed when Bitcoins became the only acceptable payment method on now-infamous The Silk Road, an anonymously-led virtual black market peddling drugs and other illegal wares—you’ll have to delve beneath the rippling waves of the regular internet and into the massive sprawling labyrinth known as ‘the deep web’ or ‘hidden web’, to find these guys.

It was a slight setback for those trying to legitimize Bitcoin as a real currency.

Then a string of events unfolded: numerous hacking of buyers’ virtual Bitcoin wallets, followed by a monumental hacking of Bitcoins’ largest online exchange, MtGox, caused the Bitcoin price to crumble to approximately $30 per coin, then to $17, then to a few cents. Mt Gox temporarily shut down.

The Bitcoin community struggled to recover and Mt Gox, learning a hard lesson, scrambled to plug security holes resulting from their inadequate attention to detail.

M. and I decided to use the momentum of this carnage-aftermath as our cheap ‘buy-in’ point, at $4 per Bitcoin.

One concern I had considered before buying: would Bitcoin be resilient enough to overcome its perceived shady past?
To which I reasoned, absolutely.

Because Bitcoin itself is/was not the inherent problem.

Because occurrences such as The Silk Road are equivalent to your local drug dealer using dollar bills (cash) to conduct illicit affairs. Or the hacks are like a thief sneaking up and stealing your real-life wallet to swipe out all your cash. There are simple ways to protect oneself in these scenarios; secure your real-life wallet to mitigate damage if, god forbid, a theft should ever occur and don’t use your cash (currency) to conduct illegal transactions.

Other concerns I grappled with:
Was a peer-2-peer virtual crypto-currency too abstract for the average person to grasp onto or care about? Too pie-in-the-skyish?

A bit too utopian-esque?

Just before Lexi was born, M. and I decided to invest a teeny percentage of our savings into Bitcoin for our own amusement and enjoyment. We wanted to track its progress and if our investment was slaughtered into oblivion—a real possibility at this infancy stage—then so be it. At least we were both supporting a cause we felt passionate about.

Those savings, we reasoned, could be channeled into a more conventional investment—to fund a CEO’s or bankers latest malfeasance—or we could purchase an emerging global virtual currency: with no central bank, no government and no corporate underpinning.

Fast forward through a blurry year of Mommy-hood, up until yesterday. I’d completely forgotten about our little foray into Bitcoin until I uncovered a CD stacked in the corner, showcasing latent prints in dust on the case with M.’s sloppy handwriting adorning the front: BITCOIN WALLET.

I researched into the markets with renewed vigor. After its brutal smack-down, how had Bitcoin been faring this past year?

Apparently it has made a come-back. Which is awesome and encouraging.

These markets are notoriously volatile but the currency has been hovering between $7 – $9 per Bitcoin.  Personally I’m used to extremely wild gyrations in markets but this type of investment is not for weak hands.

But a larger hindrance still looms.
Are Bitcoins doomed to be confined to the inner circles of tech-y coders, barely scraping on the fringes of contemporary finance; too obscure and inaccessible for the mainstream?

The Bitcoin community is continually hitting new strides to bridge that gap, which has been super exciting to observe. Each day visionaries and innovators are unleashing more of the immense untapped potential of a peer-2-peer virtual currency to bring their vision straight to the front door of the masses.

And some people have been paying attention.

Forbes contributor Jon Matonis is keeping a keen eye on this phenomenon and frequently writes about Bitcoin in his financial column, ‘The Monetary Future‘. Here is a recent article: The Bitcoin Richest: Accumulating Large Balances.

Will I be investing further in Bitcoins? On the basis of belief that Bitcoin fundamentals are still promising: Yup.

We’ll probably continue to add a small percentage of Bitcoin to our virtual stash during price dips.

Have you heard of Bitcoin before? What are your thoughts on independent, community-driven currencies?

=^..^=

Sit back and enjoy, dear reader, a period of merrymaking, feasting and celebration during our financial carnivals, made possible by;

• The Ultimate Juggle, who served as our gracious host for Yakezie Carnival: The Summer Heat Edition.
• And Nerd Wallet, who marked the jubilee of Totally Money Carnival #28.

There were many participants this week–ensuring enough material to make your eyes bleed. Below are a handful of my favorites.

~¤~¤~

Your Investments Are In Big Trouble @ Thousandaire.
I believe this is one of the scariest economic times in recent history, but if you prepare yourself financially there’s a good chance you can make a bunch of money while many people around you are losing their shirts. Let’s get started..

5 Things That Can Be Outsourced on your Blog @ When Life Gives You Lemons, Add Vodka.
As my blog has grown, I’ve found myself getting more overwhelmed with the time and effort required for me to sustain it…it turns out you can outsource a whole lot, though..here are 5 time sucking blogging activities that can be outsourced..

How I Cut My Spending 38% By Simply Writing It Down @ L Bee and the Money Tree.
You may have heard me gushing on my blog/twitter about this FREE debt worksheet I’ve been working off starting last month…I am always eager to try out tools that work for others, and I must say this spreadsheet really is helping me stay on top of things..

Why I’ll Never Get My Future Kid a Credit Card @ Work, Save, Live.
When I was in high school and I started driving, my mom added me as an authorized user on her credit card. This meant that I got my very own credit card that I could charge whenever I wanted. I was like a grown-up without a job! How cool right? .. I will never add my future kids as authorized users on my credit card… here’s why..

~¤~¤~

More carnivals to peruse:

Wealth Artisan’s FinCarn at Wealth Artison
Totally Money Carnival at Money Challenge
Y & T’s Weekend Ramblings at Young and Thrifty
Yakezie Carnival at Passive Income to Retire
Carnival of Fin. Camaraderie at Modest Money

~¤~¤~

Have fun, all you revelers.  =^..^=

Is it time to kiss our credit union goodbye?

Recently M. and I stopped by our local credit union to proudly stash some of our family savings, roughly $5,000, away into a joint savings account. Everything was going swimmingly — until the first statement arrived in the mail. I was perplexed by a continuous charge levied on our account. Since business hours were past, I took to the internet in order to do a bit of sleuthing on the matter through their website.

That’s when I realized our savings account, earning a skimpy .1% interest rate, was getting clobbered with a $5.00 monthly ‘maintenance fee’.

Grrr.

Tomorrow I will be on the phone with the credit union, politely requesting that this ludicrous monthly fee be waived.

Me: I’d like to have this fee removed.

Bank Rep: Of course, right away. (taps some keys) Is there anything else I can help you with?

or

Bank Rep: I’m sorry, we can’t help you with that.

Me: You don’t seem to understand. With this $5,000 in my coffers here, I would like an account with no annual or monthly fees, if you would kindly direct me to that … No, not possible? I’m sorry then. I’m afraid we can’t do business and I no longer will be a customer here. Please close my accounts, effective immediately.

Depending on what occurs tomorrow, I may very well be shopping around for a new credit union/home for our savings.

And to those sneaky banks who continue to nickel and dime their customers, I will continue to jeer at and blow big raspberries your way.

You may have received my business briefly, but it won’t happen twice.

=^..^=

[Edit: I was successfully able to waive the maintenance fee! I ;heart; my credit union again.]

A few bitty bobs from a Sunday evening scouring the inter-webs.

• New York Times (July 13, 2012) – That’s No Phone. That’s My Tracker.
  The device in your purse or jeans that you think is a cellphone — guess again. It is a tracking device that happens to make calls. Let’s stop calling them phones. They are trackers…Eben Moglen, a law professor at Columbia University, argues that they are robots for which we — the proud owners — are merely the hands and feet. “They see everything, they’re aware of our position, our relationship to other human beings and other robots, they mediate an information stream around us..

• Salon (July 15, 2012) – Big Banks Keep Ripping Us Off.
  Earlier this year, researchers at the university of Southern California published the results of a study examining whether the wealthy – the mythical “engines of our economy” – display a better character than the rest of us. As it turned out, after conducting seven experiments they found that the narrow pursuit of self-interest at the top of the economic heap leads our elites to behave like complete dirtbags..

• Ev Bogue (June 27, 2012) – If you aren’t watching Bitcoin, you’re missing out.
  I’m scared to write this piece. I’m scared because I believe I’m beginning to witness the collapse of the current dominant currency (USD), and the rise of a new one (Bitcoin) … When peer2peer technologies come into being, there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them..

• Jacob Holdt (1965-1995 photo collection, Skyscraper forums) – Brutal New York
  Being an undertaker is one of the surest ways of reaching middle-class status. For death is as ubiquitous in Harlem as the fear haunting everybody beneath the uneasy sporadic laughter. Yet I feel safer as a member of the ever-present invisible “Whitey” in Harlem than most blacks are, for as always in slavery, aggression is aimed towards fellow victims rather than towards the hated oppressor.

See everyone Monday morning. Same place, shall we? (ZzzZzz.)

=^..^=