I am continuing to cut on long distance costs by using MSN and its video call capabilities. The long distance phone card I am using in conjunction still has nearly 200 minutes on it!

We have been eating at home religiously for the past week (gotta love that neverending pot of chili, and some other options too). Lunches have always been brown bagged in our house (nursing and construction, what can I say?).

We went for a BIG grocery shop at the beginning of the month: $220 on Nov. 3rd. Let's see when we need to go again. I can definitely see how actually planning before you shop helps you out financially in the long run. Funny thing how you "need" to go out to eat less when you actually have some dinner options at home.

I also had to load the laundry card: $50 on Nov. 3rd.

I am going to see the Dixie Chicks tonight - woot! In semi-financial related news, I am going to get the final x-ray on my foot today. If all goes as planned, I will finally be back to work on Nov. 9th.

The phone savings are chugging along nicely - all the long distance chatting I've been doing has been through the mic on MSN. Yay!

It looks like we will be selling our property to hubby's parents (his half of the duplex they share) for 60K. We are going to pay off DH's two lines of credit and my student loan (debt load of approx. 20K) with it by the end of January. I can't believe it!

I have drafted up a contract for us - now that the debt will be taken care of, we have to commit to building our savings back up again ($500 each per month).

Talked to a banker friend of ours - we are going to put the lump sum in some sort of term deposit through our bank.

This feels great!

I made some changes to my phone services today.


I cancelled some extra calling features (voice mail and call waiting), keeping only call display. I was told that was $6.00 monthly in savings, putting my phone bill down to under $40. The answering machine I am going to buy today will pay for itself pretty quickly.

I also cancelled my long distance carrier (different company) and will opt to use a phone card that charges 3c a minute. I will also be purchasing a mic and webcam for the computer, so I may not even use a $10 long distance card each month.

When all is said and done, I expect to be paying between $40-$50 for the monthly phone instead of the usual $80-$100.

As with any savings, it's no good unless you APPLY it to something, so I have also increased my student loan payments to $600 from the current $500.

Whew!