Month: October 2014

As you probably know, we’ve been following Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover plan. We started 29 months ago, in May of 2012, thanks to Nathan and Amy presenting us with the complete kit to learn and get started. We had a lot of credit card debt.

In June of 2013, 13 months later, we made the last payment of the last of the credit cards and we have been debt free since then.

The next step was to have a fully funded emergency fund. It was hard to estimate what we would need, since we both get income from various sources. So we decided on $10,000. We had the original $1,000 set aside, but needed to save another $9,000.

Today was the day I put the final deposit in the emergency fund, so we now have $10,000 set aside for emergencies! That took us 16 months and it seemed like a long 16 months. We have had several financial changes of direction during that time – deciding not to build a house, my deciding to quite my job, buying the Knapp Street property and moving out of our rental. But we just kept throwing money toward that fund, as much as we could.

So the next step is to get all of our rental properties mortgage free. The actual mortgages are paid by the renters, but we are going to be putting an extra $800/month toward paying them off one at a time. If all goes well, we’ll have them paid by the time Dad retires from Marshfield Clinic. With the income from the rent, then, as well as Social Security, and Dad’s retirement funds, none of you should have to support us in our old age!

Three years ago, I was not sure that would be the case!!

I’m very happy!!!!!!!!!!!!

I second what Erica said. All of a sudden it feels like winter is actually coming. It isn’t so much the temperature, because it is still above 32, but it is the blustery wind. Makes you want to wrap up in a warm blanket and not go anywhere.

Monday was the middle school concert and I remember that last year we had a significant amount of snow on the day of the fall concert. It was quite slippery walking and cold in my concert clothes and shoes. It seems to me we had even less wintery weather for the Christmas concerts.

Living in such an odd place, I’m not sure how many kids would find us for trick or treating, so I’m just giving my piano students a candy bar at their lesson and telling them I’m not going to be open on Friday night for treats. I don’t expect any other kids, and since there was no one living here last year, I can’t imagine anyone will be disappointed.  And I can have a quiet evening. I’ll have to lock the door and turn off the front room lights when the 4:00 and 4:30 lessons (all in one family) get here, so the place looks deserted.

Sun shining on wall outside bedroom window. Some days the bricks just seem to glow!

I just added the hanging lamps, that we got from my Mom’s house. I think it dresses up the room nicely. And not having a floor lamp gives me a lot more room on my side of the bed.

A couple shots of the back yard, now that we have the fence up and painted and the barrier fence between us and the cafe. Notice the hobby horses from my mom’s leaning against the barrier fence?  They are brand new and we found them up in one of the store rooms. Wonder who they were for. Also notice my mom’s cute little car sitting past the fence. We’ve ordered a hard top for it, since the zippers don’t work any more. That will make it a lot easier to load things in the back, as well as make it quieter and warmer! The drape and upside down tub are covering other things from Dembee Ranch that still need to be cleaned and sorted.

It seems like it just was Friday. Dad and I were both rather under the weather a lot of the week. We have this virus that is going around and we just can’t seem to shake it. It has a cough and I, for one, start coughing at the most inopportune moments. I just skipped New Auburn choir Monday, because I knew singing would set me off coughing. I finally feel like I’m getting over it today, but I still have cough drops in my pocket. Dad’s went into his head, so he’s been dealing with a stuffy head, too. Fortunately mine just stayed in my chest. But he has been sick two weeks longer than I have, so it has been almost 6 weeks for him.

I finally did a good cleaning of the house yesterday. It really needed it. I don’t know why it gets so dusty here, but it does. And with so little floor to walk on, the floors get pretty dirty pretty fast. But I also did cabinet fronts and dresser tops and things like that, so everything is sparkling clean for a couple days, at least.

Dad brought another load of stuff from Grandma’s, when he was down for the funeral, and we have to find a place to put it all this weekend. One thing is a second chest freezer which will go in the basement once we redo the steps, but for now it will have to go in the fitness studio. I really need it though – I can’t fit one more thing in the freezers we have after all the squash I froze!

I’m hoping it is nicer tomorrow, because I have one 4 foot section of the picket fence to paint yet and we won’t get many more chances before winter. Have a great weekend, everybody!

I don’t think I mentioned that the college up in Rice Lake hired me to play for student vocal lessons. There are four students – two one hour lessons and 2 half hour lessons, for which I get paid $45. I go every other week. And it is really fun! I just love the new voice teacher. She is very much a college level teacher, so expects a lot of the students – something that was definitely not the case in the past. Like she tells them they should know the notes and rhythms before the first lesson on the piece. One girl actually does, but the others struggle with that. In the past, not only did most of them not know their notes at their lessons, but they still didn’t know the notes and rhythms when they came to me to prepare for the recital.  Their teacher was just playing their notes with them at lessons.

Three of them sang for a masters class at the college last Friday. There was a husband and wife vocal team that was down from UW-Superior to put on a concert on Saturday and they did this class on Friday afternoon. I learned so much!

Today was my first day to practice for the first concert at the Chetek Schools for this year. The 7th and 8th grade choir is pretty small, but they sing well. The 6th grade choir is larger  than 7/8 combined, and they actually sing pretty well, too. The concert is Monday. And so it begins for another year.

Keith Crook, son of Paul Crook (who is Aunt Dee’s husband), died yesterday morning. He’d been suffering from various health issues for many years and had spent this past year in and out and in and out of the hospital.  He had a heart attack while he was in the hospital and died. If you want to send Paul and Dee a card, the address is 1247 Seitz Drive, Waukesha, WI  53186.

Another week almost finished. It has been a normal, but fun, week. Most everyone had their lesson – I even started a new student this week. My exercise classes are filling up to the point where it is actually worth my time to do them (aside from the great exercise I get!)  They had lasagna one day at the senior center, so I took two to go (we can do that for $3.50 a meal, now that we are 60!) and we had delicious lasagna for supper. I bought another meal for Thursday when I have to quick heat something in the microwave at church and gobble it down between my last lesson there and my lesson and choir at the college. That day it was beef stew on a biscuit.

Today was the first of three sign language classes being offered for free at the senior center. There were 11 in the class and it was lots of fun.

Nothing planned for tonight. We do find out what the person interested in buying the youth center is offering. Steve Vork and Lynda Rogers met with him today and are going to email the rest of us the offer, then we’ll decide on Tuesday what to do.

Work on the rentals planned for the weekend, plus Dad doing some work with Gary Mohr, I think. I’ll probably just be freezing more squash and cabbage and playing with the dogs.

Taking in the sun. She isn’t supposed to be on the table, but what can I do if I’m inside? Plus, I’ve got to admit it is a great place to sunbathe.

And a nice view of the front of the building with Dad’s decorations from our garden.

‘

Snow tonight? It is only October 3rd, for crying out loud, but they are predicting snow beginning around 8 this evening and continuing through the night. I’ll let you know how right or wrong they were!