Wednesday, February 11, 2004

refinanced and in the red

I called around to a few banks looking for a lower interest rate on my car loan. I called my bank and they said they could drop it to 6.5%, down from 7%. How white of you, thank you. Here, slap the other cheek just so I can have a matched pair. Found a bank that offered me 5.75% which is the best I was able to find. So the next day I hot-footed it over there and got it all taken care of.

My payments had been $300 a month but with the new loan I stetched the term to 36 month and now have a $215/mo loan. This way I can put an extra $80 on the priciple every month since I'm already budgeted for that amount, and when things get tight, (like that have been this month) I don't have to worry about defaulting.

I was rambling on about this to Scott over the phone last week. He said he was very happy that I knew about budgets and money. His ex didn't. She had 5 or 6 jobs a year and spent a lot of money. It wasn't until after they were divorced that she called to thank him about being so anal about staying on a budget so she could spend and still come home to a warm house and dinner.

Then today I checked my balance and my online credit card payment went through a day before I expected it to, and it showed me as being $13 in the red. ACK!

So I called the bank to find out how much the overdraft charge would be. She said I'm not technially overdrawn right now, if I can make a deposit by closing time, then I will stay in the black. So I moved over $40 so I could cover the credit card payment and get groceries. And sometime between midnight tonight and Friday my paycheck will be deposited. YES!!!!!!!

And for the first time in many months I'll have a nice cushion and not worry about asking mom for more money.

Tuesday, February 03, 2004

yeah, so?

I missed the whole Janet's boob brew-ha-ha. I did see her singing, but when that Justin whoever came out, I told Scott he could channel surf and he did for a few minutes until the second half started. Which was delayed by a streaker. I figured the streaker would be the talk come Monday. Wrong.

I don't know what the big deal was. I figured it was planned, who wears star shapped pasties (some have said it was some sort of pierced nipple jewlery) if they don't expect to have their top ripped off.

The primaries are today in Oklahoma and 6 other states. The Gazette, an alternative newspaper here, had a little table of each candidate and their views on the big issues. There's one twit who's running that claims the attacks on NYC and the Pentagon were a failed coup d'etat by someone(s) in the US military. He also wants some former Iraqi deputy prime minister freed.

Other than that, things are going quite well for me. For some reason my house was tres stinky when I came home from work. I could smell it in the breezeway outside my door. My first thought was that I forgot to take out the trash. But the only thing in my trash was junk mail and a little bit of peach cobbler. The stink smelled like steamed caulflower. I hate caulflower, steamed or otherwise. I did two loads of dishes last night, so the sink was empty, there was nothing stuffed down the garbage disposal and never disposed of. So I sprayed air freshner and lit a candle. I can still smell the stink.