New Find!

I found this great new website that I'm thrilled with! I was reading about it in my Real Simple magazine and I signed up and now I'm hooked. It's called Mint.com.
It's basically a free website that will help you manage your money and budget. All you have to do is sign up and then individually add each of your accounts (checking, savings,credit cards, mutual funds, 401k's, etc.). From there it updates the balances on those account daily.
It also imports all of your info and will show you exactly where your money is going. You can set up a budget and tell the program how much you want to budget for gas that month and it will automatically update your budget and where you money is going as your spending it. You don't have to go through receipts and enter that amounts you spent that day. Obviously if you buy everything with cash that's not going to work for you. For us it's perfect as we put everything on credit card for the rewards we get and then just pay our entire credit card bill off every month.

Steve & I really liked to save money, but I'll be honest I'm just too lazy to budget and enter everything into spreadsheets and such, so this is just perfect! I'm so glad I heard about this site and wanted to share in hopes that it will help someone else as much as I think it's going to help us!

one more thing...

PS...I do have pictures of the house we're trying to buy uploaded to my Flickr account. They are in a private album though, so if you're not added as one of my friends or family you will have to add me in order to see them.

waiting....

I had a great time with Steve & the Roberts these past few days. I was REALLY sad to see them leave. Steve & I ended up putting in a contract on that place and we've been negotiating the last few days. It's a cute place, although it needs quite a bit of work....item number one the list would be promptly removing all the carpets from the house and trying to get rid of the cat pee smell. Seriously...this place stinks SO bad. The majority of the work (with the exception of needing new windows) would be relatively cheap and just hard labor for us. If the price is right we're up for it! The kitchen is the only room in the house that doesn't need any work (except for a dishwasher) and it's GORGEOUS and has all brand new stainless steel appliances.

So...we should hear back today or tomorrow if our recent offer will go over with the seller. She seems a bit weird. After our initial offer she sent us over a counter-offer asking us to pay for $4,000.00 more and offered to throw in the washer and dryer that were in the house to sweeten the deal a little bit. It would have been one thing if this washer & dryer were high commercial grade appliances, but they were really from the 70's and looked like they were on their last leg. It's just funny the things people do.
We responded offering her $2,000.00 more from our original offer, but only if she removed her old nasty washer & dryers and got rid of all the curtains in the house as well (they were SO hideous and once again something she thought would make the place more appealing.)
We might have just made her mad asking her to get rid of her precious items, so she might cut us off. If she does we're fine with that. We really liked the place and even more like the price, but we're not looking forward to all the work we'd have to put into it either. I guess it's worth if it's saving us a good $30,000.00 dollars though eh?

Other than that life continue on as normal. It was so nice to see Steve, but very hard for me when he left. I find a little bit of comfort in the fact that he'll be back here next weekend when Dale & Jacqueline come to visit. These first 3 weeks without him have been really hard so it's nice to know I'll see him in just another week.

So Excited!

I just got word that Steve, Chris & Christina are coming to visit me on Wednesday & Thursday! I could hardly sleep last night cause I was so excited!
I can't wait to see my husband and friends! I've made some nice friends here, but it's just not the same as having friends that you have a decade of history with.

Steve & I will be looking at a house on Wednesday morning that we're interested in purchasing, so hopefully we'll come to some conclusions and maybe make an offer. If we decide against this one then it's back to the drawing board and we'll basically have to wait until something new comes on the market as there's not really any other properties in all of Madison that we're interested in (that's in our price range). I hate to be too picky, but buying a house is a large investment, so it's not like we're just picking out a pair of cheap flip flops from old navy or something. Sometimes it pays to be picky, I'd like to find something sooner rather than later, but I don't want to buy something just to buy something either.

The job hunt it going okay, I've actually had 2 offers, both of which I've turned down. They're jobs that I just think I would hate. I hate to be too picky with that too because I really need a job, but in the long run I would rather have lived uncomfortably for a few extra weeks knowing that down the road I would end up with a job that I at least somewhat enjoy rather than take something that would make me miserable 24/7. I should be hearing back from one of the jobs that I'm really interested in later on this week, so hopefully I'll have good news there, and if not I'll just to start from scratch again.

It's crazy how not stressed out I've been with all of this housing/job stuff. I am a person that likes to have all of my ducks in a row and have everything carefully mapped out, but with this moving process God has given me some kind of supernatural grace to just go with the flow and now allow myself to freak out. It's really been pretty cool. A lot of my friends have commented that they're totally surprised with how "ok" I am with all of these unknowns.

Anyway...so that's the update on all of that. It's funny that my life is so crazy now but still just incredibly boring. I guess I just must be a loser. :)

Here I am...

I made it to Madison. I left on Monday and it was so hard leaving Steve behind. I really hope he'll be able to join me up here soon.

I'm subleasing a basement apartment until November and I'm getting such a great deal and it's such a nice place. I have a shared entrance with the homeowners that live upstairs and they are the nicest family ever. They're a young couple (my age) with 4 kids under the age of 6. Seriously, this lady is a super mom! They are such kind people and often invite me up to have dinner with them.
When I got home last night I came down to my place to find some cookies sitting on my kitchen counter. It's really comforting to be living below such nice people since I'm here all alone and have been kind of lonely with missing Steve and Missy and her girls a lot. Anyway...so I feel REALLY blessed to be living in such a nice place and to have met such nice people.
I also met up with a new friend in the park yesterday. She is also a friend of a friend and moved to town not that long ago herself and has been calling wanting to get together. She's got a little 1 year old boy that is so cute!

So...really it hasn't been as hard as I thought it would be here. I've been busy with looking for jobs, getting acquainted with the area and meeting new people. So far I really like it here. I think the most homesick I've been was last night. I was going through some of my stuff and found some pictures that Hannah had drawn for me and got really sad. I think the single most difficult part of this moving deal is knowing that I'm not going to see those girls grow up. I miss them so much and can't wait until next month when I can go home and visit when Missy's has the next little one.

I had a job interview this morning that went well. They seem anxious to schedule a second interview with me, but I'm not so sure that I'm really interested in the job at this point. I don't want to be too picky since I really need a job, but I'm just not sure I'm up to working for this kind of company. It's a collection agency, my job would be assisting the VP, CEO and COO, so it's not like I would be calling and hounding people to pay off their debts, but I just hate debt so I think it would be a really depressing job for me to work for that kind of company. One of my passions is that one day I could help people get out of debt and teach them wise financial practices and budgeting and that sort of thing, so working for a collection agency just might be a job that I would hate not matter what my position was.

I have another interview this afternoon that I think I might enjoy more working as an assistant manager at GNC at one of the malls here. The pay wouldn't be as good and neither would the hours, but really I'd much rather be happy and poor then a little better off and miserable. I'm just kind of learning that I'm not really a corporate america girl. I like being around people and working in more of a retail setting where I'm interacting with people than an office setting where I'm just staring at a computer all day long. It's just too bad the hours and pay suck eh?

Anyway...so that's the update. More to come later.