Whew! Finally Done With Income Taxes

taxes
Mr. A and I spent a couple of hours this morning going through his mileage records and got those accounted for on my 2008 mileage spreadsheet.  That enabled me to finish up our income taxes. We'll owe $137 to the Federal government, but we'll be getting just over $250 back from the state. I also went through the planning feature that TaxCut offers to see what we need to pay for estimated taxes.  It's really difficult to know how much… Read the rest

Mr. A Finds A Deal on Craigslist

spending money
Mr. A needed some scaffolding for a job where he was going to be installing 15 ceiling fans into homes that had 20′ vaulted ceilings. We checked on Craigslist and found a guy that was selling not only the scaffolding that Mr. A wanted, but also a 32 foot extension ladder, and a shorter ladder. The guy only wanted $125 for all three things! The ladder alone was worth nearly $400 if Mr. A bought it brand new. And the… Read the rest

Electricity Going Up Again

electricity
Bummer!  I got a notice by email a couple of days ago that our electricity bill is going up to $296/month. Shoot! It was down to $280/month.  I was a little worried that it was going to go up again, because there has been more than one day in the last month that 80°F was more than I could handle, and turned the thermostat down to 78°F. I need to continue to be proactive in watching the meter and making… Read the rest

Just What I Needed, More Credit

credit cards
I bank with Wells Fargo and they recently decided that it was necessary to lower my overdraft loan amount from $5000 to $2000.  They didn't touch the $20,000 line of credit attached to the account we use for Mr. A's business. I've been using my Chase Amazon card pretty heavily and paying it down with big chunks. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago I decided to estimate how much we'll put on it in the next month and… Read the rest