My best friend, Cat, recently gave Quicken a whirl and decided that it could take a flying leap off a cliff. This conversation made me begin thinking about all the things I adore about Quicken, and because I can't stop foaming at the mouth about a product that makes my life better, I, of course, got bitten by the "postaboutit" bug. So here we are.

Why I Adore Quicken:

1. It allows me to receive and review transactions as soon as they are posted. I've caught at least 150.00 worth of fraudulent or accidental charges in this way, and I was able to address them IMMEDIATELY.


2. It lets me keep records about non-institutional transactions, like family loans.


3. It maintains a record of my billion and one checking/savings/credit card accounts.


4. It lets me see what I've been spending my money on with one click. Or where I've been spending my money. Or when I've been spending it. Or who's been spending it. Or how much sales tax I've paid . . . you get the idea.


5. It tells me how much of a budgeted category I've spent with the month-to-date function.


6. It lets me project to the penny where account balances are going to be after upcoming bills are paid.


7. There are no surprises when the credit card bills come.


8. I haven't missed a credit card payment or gone overdrawn (unless it was planned) since I started using it. This is HUGE for a disorganized wreck like me.


9. It keeps all my financial accounts in one place. Without it, it would be a nightmare to keep track of:




• 5 checking accounts


• 1 Paypal account


• 6 savings accounts


• 1 money market acccount


• 9 credit cards


• 2 overdraft lines of credit


• 1 401K


• 1 ROTH IRA


• 3 student loans




10. It does all this in about five minutes a day. *Shrug* How could I not love it?

I'm loving my money-making experiment. I just got 245.00 deposited in my Paypal account from Instant Profitz, and they're giving me another 250 next month, primarily from referrals. The two combined means that I'm about to hit the 600.00 ceiling after which my income will be reported to the IRS, so I'm going to redirect my attention to Dealbarbie Pays, which I'm enjoying because of its reliability, speed of credit, and extreme user-friendliness. (I would recommend this site to anyone who wants to try the paid-to-join game with a bunch of free sites.)

Bottom line? THIS IS WONDERFUL! I grant you, I was skeptical at first, but I'm having a great time getting PAID to receive interesting products in the mail. (I've fallen in love with some of them. Time Factor, which I got paid 18.50 to try through Instant Profitz, has me rubbing my face every morning when I wake up. I can't get over how soft it makes my skin.)

And hey, I'm not gonna stick my nose up at free money. Bring it!

Well, the universal consensus seems to be that the grocery idea is a stinker. LOL. I thought it had potential, but clearly I am delusional.

Still, there's a part of me that still wants to try it, if for no other reason than that it would be fun to blog about it, track its success (or, more likely, dismal failure), etc.

Mom suggests the following: don't worry about getting extra work until you finish your thesis.

Dad suggests the following: get your thesis, and then take your collection of letters of recommendation and your publication and go see if you can teach for the University of Phoenix. He knows about the technology education market, so if he says it's the place to be, he's probably right.

As promised earlier, I've been thinking about ways to increase my income. One idea is the possibility of shopping for those who don't want to do it for themselves. Essentially, I would look for the sales and gurantee to purchase their grocery list for them at the lowest possible price and then deliver the food to their home.

I've already done some preliminary research, which indicates that:

• None of the major online grocery delivery services (or, for that matter, any that I have found) have reached my area yet
• Only one of the stores in my area does grocery delivery. The fee is six dollars, and it requires a minimum purchase of thirty dollars. Additonally, this is not the store the generally has the lowest prices.
• A second store offers the option of calling your order in in advance and paying the cab company to come pick it up. This also costs six dollars. Again, the disadvantage of this is that you have to pay whatever price the store charges, and this is not the cheapest store in town.

What could I offer customers?

• I feel confident that I could offer a low price guarantee. In short, I would find it for them for the lowest price in town, or I will refund them the difference.
• Perhaps lower rates? I'd have to consider that.
• Certainly more personalized service (though I'm not sure who, if anyone, cares about that any more.)

What other companies can offer customers that I could (or would) not:

• On demand delivery. I would probably limit shopping and delivery to one day a week, whereas stores will deliver any day of the week.

Why this might work well:

• We have a high concentration of (sometimes carless) college students and often reluctant to shop seniors.
• I have to shop for myself anyway, and I generally hit all the major stores in the process. Additionally, I have a streamlined system for finding sales, and I already maintain a pricebook (the tool I would need in order to guarantee the lowest prices) for my own shopping.
• This is a low to no-cost venture. If I try it and it tanks, no skin off my back.

Possible Drawbacks:

• We live in a blue collar town, where people are cheap and reluctant to try new things. Finding a market might be difficult.

Other things to consider:

• What to charge?
• How to charge? (On a monthly subscription basis, or by order? A flat fee or a percentage of the order?)
• Many of the smaller supermarkets don't advertise their sales online, or if they do, they are not supported by the sales-searching metacrawlers. This means that I would have three options:
• Explicitly list the stores whose prices I will search, and exclude from that list those stores who aren't on the metacrawler.
• Include those stores who are on the metacrawler AND those stores whose searchable ads are online, but not supported by the metacrawler.
• Include all stores, and simply haul my tail end into the stores or actually search the print ads (gasp!) to guarantee the low price.
• How to advertise. What is the biggest selling point of this idea? The convenience? The low price guarantee? My friendly smile? *Wry grin*
• Would I need paperwork, licensing, or contracts of any kind?

Ideas and candid feedback are very appreciated. If you've tried this and had success, I would love to hear why you succeeded and how you made it most time and cost-effective for you. If you've tried it and failed, I'd love to hear your experiences, warning, cautions, and dire predictions.

An unexpected opportunity!


I confess, that's putting a positive spin on it.

Due to declining enrollment, one of the courses I was supposed to begin teaching next week has been cut. While this by no means puts us in a financial crunch, it does cut into our plans of saving/investing/paying off debts with all the extra money.

So the challenge then becomes this: how does a smart, well-educated writer (I'm about to get my MA in English. Yay!) turn the loss of income and the accquisition of extra time into PROFIT? LOL. (I sound like a Ferangi. Quark would be so proud.)

My husband and I were counting on the extra hours to compensate for the drop in take-home pay he'll get once February starts, and he qualifies for the health plan and the 401K contribution. Now, instead of his pay dropping slightly and mine going up slightly, hopefully to make things even out, his pay will be dropping slightly and mine will as well. Eeeeks!

And, on that topic, it is now time to decide if it's worth paying the daycare provider, who charges 187.50 per month regardless of how many hours we use (up to twenty), in order to get the income of just one class, instead of two.

Or should I see if I can return to teaching assistant status? The upside is that they pay more per class to teaching assistants than they do to part-time faculty, so my current income wouldn't actually drop. They also pay health insurance, which would keep my husband from having to pay for me on his, and I wouldn't have to pay the 236.00 fee for my thesis credit this semester. Additionally, this would extend the grace period on my student loans for another six months (though that's not really a huge deal.)

The serious, serious downside to this idea is that in order to reach the nine credit requirement to remain a graduate assistant, I would have to take yet ANOTHER course, and I can see the seat time, as well as the demoralizing aspect it would have, breaking the momentum I currently have on my thesis. No. Despite the fact that trying to return to TA status is clearly the better financial move, I feel quite strongly inclined against it. I will simply have to find another to increase my income, or simply accept the fact that we will not have as much padding as we were looking forward to having.

I've recently become familiar with the greatest shopping website ever invented: www.cairo.com.

Okay, I exaggerate. But not much.

www.cairo.com is essentially a metacrawler which searches the online ads of the stores in your region to find whatever product you're looking for. At its most basic use, you simply go to the website, type in whatever product you need to buy this week, and see where it's on sale.

So, tomorrow night I'm going to need sour cream (becuase I was a moron and forgot to pick it up this morning), so I simply go to www.cairo.com and do a search for "sour cream".



I press go and I immediately see that sour cream is on sale for 1.99 for 24 oz. at Fred Meyer, for 1.00 for 16 oz. at Smith's, and for 1.50 for 16 oz. at Albertson's.



Because I have a price book, I know which, if any, of these prices are good, and that's where I get my sour cream.

I suppose before I plunge into this blog I should make some effort at introducing myself and explanining who I am and why in the world I'm arrogant enough to believe that I have anything to say that anyone will want to read.

Well, really, I'm not.

Quite simply, I'm a 25 year-old English graduate student who became tired of always feeling pressed and cramped by my financial position. I felt as though my money was controlling me, instead of having it be the other way around, as it ought to be. I began exploring the world of couponing, having been seduced by pictures of couponers' stockpiles, and that led me into an exploration of dealfinding, then frugal living, then saving, and now, finally, I'm beginning to learn more and more about investing.

In short, I began to discover that money could be fun instead of feared, a challenge instead of a monster. While controlling and using it is definitely an uphill climb, it's more like an invigorating hike with a gorgeous view at the top than the Sisyphusian battle I had always thought it to be. (Sisyphus is a character from Greek mythology; he is doomed forever to push an enormous boulder up a hill. The trouble is that the moment he gets it to the top, it rolls back down again. Boy, was this the story of my financial life!)

As I began to make these discoveries, people started asking me how I did certain things, where I found specific information, and if I could explain particular concepts. Additionally, I began to think of things that I had only learned through much trial and error, and I realized that it would have been helpful to have had some concise articles to explain these things to me. I figured if they would have helped me, they might help others. This blog is my attempt at explaining some of these things in a way that will make sense and help others, allow me to explain (and thus clarify) some of the ideas for myself, and perhaps provide me with a bit of accountability for continuing to be consistent in my financial goals and responsible with my use of money.

So, that's it! HTH!

(*My first acronym lesson* HTH=Hope That Helps)