Rebate Chasing

Some of you are probably aware of the fact that Tricia has taken up coupon clipping/rebate finding lately. It's time-consuming, but can be a big blessing, especially in building up a year's supply of certain items. Well she came across an interesting deal a few weeks ago.

SanDisk (creator of memory cards used in gadgets like digital cameras and cell phones) has an interesting rebate program going on where the more memory cards you buy, the more you get back per card in rebate money. For example, if you buy one card, you get $10. If you buy two cards you get back $15 per card. And if you buy three cards, you get back $20 each, or $60 total. Well, normally that wouldn't be very enticing to us, except that during the "cyber Monday" sales of early last week there were some very good deals on memory cards. They usually sell for at least $40 each, but there were a few online retailers selling them for only $20. Well, doing the math, Tricia figured out that if you bought three cards at $20 each, you'd be spending $60 total, and you'd be getting back $60 in rebate money. That's a pretty good deal.

So, she bought three memory cards, gave one to me for my camera (it stores around 5 times as many pictures as the card I was using before), and sold the other two on eBay for about $20 each. So, by doing a little research she was able to get net $40 and a new memory card for my camera. And that's what rebate chasing is all about.

PS--This promotion is still running, by the way, if you want to try and make it work for yourself. There are a few conditions to the rebate, but I'm sure Tricia would be happy to explain it if you care to try.

Jarom's Phones

At any given time, you 'll probably find Jarom wandering around the house with some random object at his ear, pretending it's a phone. Doesn't matter what it is: shoes, calculators, toys, food from his plate, or maybe even an actual phone. Remote controls, though, seem to be his faux phone du jour, as seen here. He's currently mastering the "hi" part of answering the phone (or the remote)...

The Random Late Halloween Post

Yeah...This post is only two weeks late. But as Livi says: "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit!"

Livi's Pictures

Liv and I went out for picture day today. Lesson learned: mid-day is not a very good time for taking pictures outside. I struggled with shadows, squinting, uneven light on her face, etc... Earlier in the morning, or later in the evening is definitely the way to go. Anyway, here's a sampling of what we got.

Pictures with Anna

Instead of having the kids all get "school pictures" this year, we thought we'd try a little something new. We have a nice camera, and decent picture software on our computer, so we figured we could take our own pictures and see how we do. If it doesn't work out, we can always go back for boring ol' school pictures again next year.

Anna was our first test subject (due in large part to the fact that she's the only one who had a clean outfit this morning). So after Mommy got her all prettied up, Anna and I went out for an hour around the town taking pictures. Here are a few that I've played around with so far:

Walking

As promised in the last post (or at least alluded to), the time has come to post about Jarom walking. But instead of boring everyone with prose, I'll just post the video. Enjoy!

Baby Steps

And no, we're not talking about Jarom, although we could be. Videos to be posted shortly, because it's so fun to watch him move...

Anyway, the baby steps we're talking about are perhaps better known as "Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps", and they are his method for working on financial freedom and (eventually) building wealth. In keeping with Tricia's other blogging efforts, I'm posting them here, or you can go right to Dave's website and find them there, with a wealth of other information, which we do not necessarily endorse. However, these seven steps we agree with mostly, and they are most likely very applicable to those of you who might be reading our blog. Anyway, here they are, with my own thoughts added.

$1000 Emergency Fund. Tricia likes to call this the "Baby Emergency Fund" which makes it sound like it's for those surprise pregnancies, but it's not. It's a small emergency fund that needs to be kept away from your other money, usable only for emergencies. Only you can know what constitutes and emergency, but for our family it would most likely be something of a medical or vehicular nature... This is step #1 because if we have this money stashed away, we don't have to go into debt to solve those problems that will surely come.

Pay Off Debt. Except your house. Use what Dave Ramsey calls the "debt snowball." You're probably familiar with this concept, which entails using all your disposable income to pay off your highest interest debt first. Once that debt is paid off, you roll all the money you were using on it to the next highest interest rate debt. And you continue on until all your debt is paid off, except your mortgage. For most people these debts are likely to be credit cards, automobile loans, student loans, home equity loans, etc...

Real Emergency Fund. As opposed to the "baby" one in step #1. You build off your $1000 fund and make it bigger. This would be cash reserves equal to 3-6 months of living expenses. The goal here is to use it for the same types of emergencies for which you'd use your "baby emergency fund", but it will cover you in the case of a longer-term financial strain (extended medical care, loss of employment, etc...).

Retirement. Dave Ramsey suggests 15% of your household income. I suggest that you do some research to determine what your retirement needs will be, and that you customize the amount to match what you expect you'll need. Either way, saving for retirement comes after you've saved up your 3-6 month emergency fund.

College Funds. For the kids. I don't suppose this needs much explanation, so we'll just point out that there are more pressing financial needs to be met first.

Pay Off Mortgage. Early, hopefully. The idea here, as usual, is that you use your disposable income on paying off your mortgage early. Your mortgage is most likely your single largest drain on your personal family finances, and imaging living without it. Wow. A lofty goal to be sure, but one worthy of working on.

Build Wealth and Give. Invest for growth, give to charities, etc... I don't know much about this, since we're a long way off at our house, but we'll get there eventually.