Well a drop here and a drop there adds up. Occasionally I do insurance assessments on the side. Very occasionally. I've been wondering if it's even worth my time. Wednesday I went to see a lady and it took me one hour to do the interview and 1 hour to do the paperwork. $60 for the assessment=$30/hr. That's not too bad. So I've decided to keep doing them and I'm hoping I can keep it up at the rate of 1 per week at least until June. Also I got a check in the mail today for $200! I did a survey about rheumatoid arthritis(my specialty) for this company. The interview was online and it took about 20 minutes and I did it at work. Now that's what I call an efficient use of my time. So now with that money + the 3 recent assessments I've completed, that puts me at ~$350.


So vacation budget looks like this so far:

$350 cash
1 free night at Choice Hotel( from Choice points)
1 free round trip airline ticket(from that old Polident promotion)
1 free one way airline ticket (from Airtran Airways Visa promotion)

It's a start...

I just finished my taxes. Big deal since we owe the feds $35 dollars and we got back a whopping $52 from the state of GA. Oh well *shrug*.


I was surfing in one of my credit card accounts and I found out that I get my credit score for free. I don't even know why I was looking on the site since I don't have a balance or anything but there it was. That's pretty nice since you usually have to sign up from TrueCredit or one of those credit monitoring services to get it. I never noticed it before and I was so excited that I went into all my other credit cards to see if I got any other little perks but nope.

My credit score is 735. I can live with that since I'm not planning to buy a car or get a mortgage any time soon. Once I pay off some of these balances, that should improve. Yippee!

I've been thinking a lot lately about how I ended up almost 40 with a very meager savings and retirement. What amazes me is how quickly the years went by. I kept telling myself that I'll save once things settled down and I had the extra money to invest. That day has never come. When I graduated from college in 1991, I was in a good place with no kids and no debt. But over the next 10 years, I had a couple of kids and like a lot of women, I put my home first and worked either very part-time or not at all so I could be here for my family. I also fell into the monthly payment mentality, you know if you can make the monthly payments, you can afford it. Now the kids are older and I am working full-time again and I am realizing how behind I am. To make matters worse, my husband is a spender and he has over $30,000 in credit card debt! I can't tell you how angry that made me when I found out especially since he ran up this debt while he was working overtime! What in the @#$@#$ was he doing with his money? Geesh, well no more. I am on the road to financial peace of mind. Within the next couple of years, I plan to pay off my debts and build my emergency fund. Better than planning, I am actively making it happen. I of all people know that there are no guarantees in life and I have to be prepared.

I've decided to join the blogosphere in my journey to financial peace of mind. To begin with a few stats: I've been married for 17 years, I have a 14-year old daughter and an 8-year old son and I've been an RN for 16 years. Except for two years in El Paso, TX, I've lived in GA my entire life; not that I'm complaining.
That's the personal stuff, now the financial:

Debt:

Student Loan- $10868
Chase MC- $9394
Auto Loan- $13,484
Mortgage- $180,000

The good news: except for the mortgage, I don't have an interest rate higher than 4.75%. That's the only good news about this.


Assets(I'm not including property like my jeep and the house):

Personal savings- $1445
IRA- $2530
Individual stocks- $1800
401K- $1252


Pretty pathethic huh? I am what is referred to in "The Millionaire Next Door" as an UAW-Under Accumulator of Wealth. How did I end up like this at such an advanced age? More on that tomorrow......