More to come…probably!

The budget is so far gone, its not even funny.  We should be on track by the end of next month though.  In July we went over budget by at least $1900.  Yes, FOUR digits.  Not even barely four digits.  Well into the four digit numbers.

We found out we were pregnant, had a surprise you pay your own tuition moment, and increased some of our expenditures (like travel to school) all in one month.  Plus we bought plane tickets for Thanksgiving weekend to visit Daniel’s family.  This was something that we knew was going to happen, and I found a great deal online ($420 for both tickets, child in lap including fees).  We also lucked out because last week they added more flights and changed flight times so we got better seats and flights.  Can we say nonstop from Orlando to Kansas City on the Saturday after Thanksgiving?  Oh yeah! Those tickets would have cost us $350 a person, one way! Sometimes amongst the financial drizzle, hope shines on. I mean, we are leaving the next morning, so my husband can go to his evening class and work a full day the Monday before we leave.  We have a super short layover in Atlanta on the way down, and we will actually be getting more time with his family this way.

Anyway, between the tuition and the plane tickets we put almost two thousand dollars on the credit card. Which is due after our first paycheck in September.  The husband is working as much overtime as he can handle while going to school full time and having a cub scout troop. We haven’t paid extra toward any debt either.  We are handling this pretty well considering.  Of course its rather scary to look at our bank account and say “hi $300. I am glad you are here, where are your 700 friends that should be here too?”  At least this financial crunch has motivated my husband to not only have a thousand dollar cushion in our bank account, but also to open a separate savings account to have a thousand dollars in. Obviously, the goal is $1000, and it might get to be much higher than that, but having $1000 easily accessed in the case of a financially down month will be a great asset.  My real goal is to get a years worth of at least mortgage payments and insurance put away.  Its a lot easier to find money to cover things like gas for the car and utilities when we have the larger monthly expenditures covered.

Now, I just need to stop nesting.  All this, plan and buy things for several months worth of meals before I get too huge and pregnant or we have the kiddo idea can get a little crazy.  I know its silly to be really concerned about things like trash bags and toilet paper, but I just hope that I will recover faster and do better adding a second child to the mix than adding the first. Part of that recovering faster = lots of super simple meals planned ahead.  That means I will cook and freeze some meals as well as having lots of meals from a can like soup or Hawaiian haystacks.  I haven’t had Hawaiian haystacks in SO long. That’s a meal we should probably try out before planning on the menu.  Especially if we end up planning it multiple times.  I also did some good though.  We are assuming we are having a boy this time around.  (it will be confirmed in 4 weeks) I have clothing (except for a super tiny coat) for a boy that will get us by until he outgrows 18 months.  Most of it came from the daughter’s wardrobe, but I have spent around $15 at yard sales buying a bit of wintery things for 0-6 months.  Besides, if we end up with a boy wearing a newborn sized white  snowsuit with embroidered flowers, I don’t care.  He will at least have blue and green underneath and neutral colored blankets.

So, I rambled.  Sorry guys.  Anyway, long story short, we are still doing ok.  I have been making do with the 6 items of maternity clothing I have (until next month at least).  I even turned some old, out of syle jeans into maternity jeans.  It worked ok, except that the jeans were rather high waisted to begin with, so I don’t think they fit under the belly as well as they should. Again, rambling!

Next month, I hope to report that we paid off the school expenses and have a balance on the credit card of about $300 for gas and groceries.  Maybe we will also cash out our reards then. I have already bought some Christmas presents (i.e. gift cards) using reward points.  The less money we have to actually spend, the better.

Can I afford the closing costs? Closing costs can be rather significant.  They tend to be at least a couple of thousand dollars.  In a recent email from my mortgage company, they estimated $2800 in closing costs.  That may not be much to many people, but that is more than 4 times our current monthly house payment (including our escrow account).

Can I afford the additional monthly payment? Often, refinancing to a shorter term mortgage will increase your monthly payment.  It may increase by $20 or $200.  In some situations your monthly payment may decrease, though that often means an increase in the life of your loan. The problem with adding additional months or years to your mortgage is that you will be getting less equity every month.

Do I have the dedication/will/funds to pay extra toward my mortgage every month without refinancing? This is a huge factor.  If you or your spouse lose a job your income is obviously less than it used to be.  If making your mortgage payment at all is difficult, you should really consider refinancing to a lower monthly payment, not increasing. If you can find an additional $50, $100, or $200 a month to pay toward your current mortgage and have the will and dedication to continue that route you do not need to pay the bank to change the terms of your loan. Note: if you have a mortgage that has a penalty for paying ahead, this is not really an option.

How much will this decrease my interest? This question relates to how high your current mortgage rate is.  If you have a 7% interest rate, or 8% or 9% its very likely that a refinance will save you money.  I have heard that a general rule of thumb to remember before considering a refinance is the new interest rate.  If the refinance will not decrease your interest rate by 1% or more, it will most likely not benefit you.

So are we going to refinance? Signs point to no.  You see, it will decrease our interest rate by less than a percent, cost us closing costs that we would have to put on our HELOC which has an adjustable APR, and would cost us $100 more a month.  It makes more sense for us to continue our current plan (double paying the mortgage).

Sure we haven’t double paid every month, but this allows us the flexability to have an extra $600 on months when we have a baby, need a car repair, travel to visit family for the holidays, or anything else that life throws us. Life doesn’t throw us these things all that often so we typically pay extra toward our mortgage.  Other people may have a more tumultous life that doesn’t allow them the benefit of dedicating that large additional payment most of the time, but for us this works.  Sure we don’t expect to have our home paid off in 6 years, but with this plan, we will likely have it paid off in 10.  You know, assuming we don’t move before then.

I got a basic credit card for textbook purchases, that I paid off as soon as the payment posted on my bank account. I was a little anal, its true.  But that way, I know I wouldn’t forget about the purchase, and I wouldn’t pay any fees. It was simple and it worked for me.

I never bought groceries or gas with the credit card.  In fact, I rarely used it at all, aside from online purchases.  Sure I bought a box of vintage clip on earrings for my roommate’s birthday, and I even made a somewhat impulse purchase of a PS2, but I never bought something I knew I could not pay for immediately from my bank account.

Times changed, my roommate was graduating and I had a semester left in school.  Leases tended to run for an entire year though, so I wouldn’t be able to stay in my apartment.  An older lady from work offered to let me live in her basement.  I didn’t know what else to do, and I didn’t want to be caught up in a lease, so it seemed like the best solution.

Then one day I was driving the missionaries to an appointment and a huge truck turned into me trying to make a left from the right hand lane.  My little car was totaled.

I had never had that happen before.

The insurance company that ‘bought’ it, sort of cheated me.  I didn’t really understand at the time.  I was young and naive. They put the mileage down as a much higher number than it had.  I also didn’t realize that the new tires, tailpipe andmuffler I had replaced in the last few months should have been reimbursed.

I bought the roommates old junker.  And let me tell you it was a junker.  At first I just drove it.  The tires were totally bald, and when 2 of them went flat when I was in class one day, I replaced them all.  I ended up giving her a couple of hundred dollars so she could pay off the title loan she had on the car, and it was mine.  Every bit of the oil burning, strange clunking, pulling the wheel to one side, all with no AC.  But, lets be honest, you cannot buy a used car in decent condition for less than $1000.  The insurance had only given me $1200 so I didn’t have many options. Even though the car has many problems, and was 2 years older than the car I had before.  It was what I could afford.

For the next four months I lived in that basement.  Occasionally paying her overdue electric bill, cleaning up after the poo filled bunny, and washing her nasty moldy food left in the plates dishes. (That was one thing I never understood, why did she leave, and let the kids leave food in the plates.) I would go home, or away for a 3 day weekend and come back to horrific smells.  It didn’t help that the bunny’s cage, which was also filled with poo, was right next to the sink. Lets just say, I gagged often.

Then I met a boy.  Roommate was pressuring me to move out (though the semester was not over), and the boy and I decided it was fast, but it was right so we were going to get married.

That’s when things became hard with the roommate.  She thought I had lied to her about this boy (totally not true).  She was probably also jealous that she was overweight and 40, had an 11 year old half black and blind son, and had never even been engaged. She said some things that really hurt me.

I moved out as quickly as I could.  We were officially engaged for just under a month, and found an apartment for a couple of weeks before the wedding.  Of course, before I had everything out, she wanted my keys out, and I was so hurt by the things she had said, I don’t know why she thought i wanted to come get the rest of my stuff at a time when she was home.  So a few days after the wedding, I sent my new husband by to get it.

It was hard woking where we did.  Here I was, in my early 20s and her supervisor. I had to maintain a professional relationship while trying to avoid her so I wouldn’t cry.  It was really hard.  It was hard to know if I should quit or not.  It was a good job.  It would be hard to find another that would work with my school schedule, and pay $9.00 an hour (a bigger deal at that time than now days).  I had earned the higher wage too.

So life continued, work was stressful, home was pretty relaxed.  It was sort of unusual thatwe got along so well as a married couple.  Sure things like squeezing the toothpaste in the middle or toilet seats left up were issues, but there was nothing too bad.  The hardest part was probably the strange dietary choices my new husband made.  He ate his spaghetti with only grated cheese, no tomato sauce. Macaroni and cheese in a box was one of his all time faves, and we ate a lot of white wonder bread (off brand of course). He also ate an unusual amount of ice cream. Lets just say, the biggest change was food. Though personalities and feelings were hurt and words misunderstood (that was mostly me doing the hurting). But financially we were fine with my sort of good paying fast food job, and his temp work that would last a couple of months, take a week or so off, start a new project.  It was fine for our life at the time.

So I had to look into options. My mother suggested a local house that rented out rooms to women.  She lived there when she was 18 and moved to tiny town for school and work.  It was more common for women to live in coop style houses in the 70s, but the place was still open and my aunt even still lived there at the time.  The best thing, it was income based.

Based on my 2 days a week work schedule I could have a room for $90  a month. I would have to do certain chores around the house, and I had an assigned cupboard and refridgerator. It seemed better than home.  Even with tubs only in the bathroom.  It was quiet, it was private, and best thing, there wasn’t a curfew.  Not that I stayed out late or was crazy.  In fact it was years before I even considered stepping into a club again.  That was in a different town, with a different set of friends and at a much later time of day even.

I finished up my semester living there.  Most of the people living there were older.  Women who had family in smaller towns and would travel home for the weekend.  The only person close to my age moved in not long after me.  Her roommate had kicked her out, and this girl was totally different than me.  She was a little older and FAR more experienced in the world. She talked about drinking and sex like everyone did them. She even convinced me that someone was stealing food from me.

I am almost positive that it was her stealing the food.  My only response to her saying that was “Well, they must have been hungry.” I think it was a few packs of Ramen noodles that were taken.  It might have been twenty cents worth of food.  It wasn’t that big of a deal to me. Living on my own, food seemed to go really far.  Living at home with 6 other people, you couldn’t buy something and expect to keep it for yourself. Food was communal.

She also convinced me to make a dumb financial decision.  I moved to a bigger, and more expensive room with outside access.  It was ten or twenty dollars more a month.  Really not a huge deal, but still.  It was a sign that I could be influenced by others easily.  It also gave her easy access to my things.  I don’t really know what all she took of mine, but it started driving me nuts.  I talked with the house manager.  I told her about everything.  I decided to move home for the summer.  My parents had calmed down.  My mother missed seeing me all the time, and I was going to try living at home for the summer while working.  I hada friend from a class that I talked with about becoming roommates in the fall, but no real set plans.  Plus, my good friend (the one I had gone to the dance club with) was moving into apartments right by my parents house.  I could always escape to her place.

It seemed like a great situation. And so summer began.

When you live at home while going to school things are different. Wall, actually they aren’t.  Its almost the same as high school.  Except suddenly you have friends that want to go do things that weren’t allowed as a youngster.  Like go to clubs.

I am a total homebody.  But, sometimes when  friend says it will be fun, and its for a birthday, you decide sure lets go to clubs. None of us will be drinking, and we will go early enough that it will be pretty tame. Right?

Wrong. Don’t get me wrong, the club was fine.  There was one couple that needed a room, and the place was sort of stinky, and dirty.  But it was fine. We danced, we laughed, and we enjoyed ourselves.  I was home around midnight.  (Honestly, midnight isn’t that late, but remember its different when you live at home).

My father met me at the door and accused me of smoking.  I don’t know why he would think I started smoking, I had never tried it before and didn’t even know many people who smoked.  Sure I smelled like smoke, but this was the day before smoking bans in public places.  Even going to the bowling alley would result in the stench of the fag.

I was angry.  It was the beginning of my second semester of college. My parents were telling me I was kicked out of the house, and I didn’t even have a chance to explain anything.  Saying I was at a club was the worst thing i could have said.  It was as if I said “I decided to become a crack whore tonight. I now smoke, drink illegally, and am a slut whore. You have failed as parents.” I didn’t have any other option.  I was an ‘adult’ and living there by their good graces.  I had to get out.

I found myself the next morning looking into life options.  I had a barely part time job that gave me minimal spending money, no savings, and no rental history.  I was broke and young, a combination that is usually not to your advantage in situations like this.

My mother tried to tell me to move into the dorms.  In the middle of the semester. Getting a student loan to pay for it.  My father wasn’t talking to me.  And here I was.  Eighteen with no car for transportation, no friends houses, not even a cell phone (then again that was before everyone had cellphones).  I didn’t have any way to get away from it all.

Want to know what happened? Stay tuned for part 3: house hunting and roommates.

Growing up, we were poor.  Poor enough, that we always had free meals at school and even got food from the local food pantry occasionally.  We also ate the weird cuts of meat since there was a local butcher in our tiny town, and he would sell the meat very cheap.  Then there were the times we were given half a deer, or cow or whatever just because people had extra.

Even though we were poor, I never really noticed.  Sure I knew other kids had nicer clothes and shoes without holes in them, but I would wear my shoes without really caring, hiding my self behind a wall of bangs, or silence.  Its a lot easier to be ignore d by people when you don’t talk to them.

As I got older, my mother decided to continue her education.  My mother was never dumb, but taking on school full time with 5 kids 10 and under is a bit daunting.  My youngest brother was the first and only one of us to go to daycare.  The daycare was paid for by some program at the local university.  Yet another thing that we were poor enough to qualify for.

I remember getting special permission to rent “Stanley and Iris” for my mother.  She watched it many times for some paper she was writing for school.  I don’t even know how she decided on that movie. I personally thought it was horribly boring, plus it had swearing.  How could she watch that? Ironically several years later when I began college we had to write a paper on a movie, a critique I believe.  I choose a movie I was familiar with, and owned. I only watched it once, and then completed the paper. I am not trying to put down my mother, that is just the facts.  For all I know, her class was given a list of movies and she choose Stanley and Iris randomly.  Or it was assigned. Who knows.

Anyway, college proved to be really difficult for my mother.  Learning Spanish after the age of 40 as well as taking on school full time is hard.

This was also when my parents started getting in debt.

You see, student loans, while they are considered “good debt” can be very tempting.  You get money and you don’t have to start paying it back or paying interest until after you are done with school? Sweet! Graduation seems far off, and if your scholarships and other funds only cover tuition, you need money for the books.

I don’t remember the exact reason why my mother stopped going to school. I think it was a combination of the stress and the fact that she had all sorts of kids running around.

After she stopped, she took a CNA course, and started working.  The debtor will always get his dues.  With no experience in the health care industry for almost a dozen years, and no recent work history, my mother got the pick of jobs.  Overnights in the local nursing home. I don’t know if this nursing home was corrupt, or good. I do know that my mother didn’t do so well working nights.  She would come home and all of us children would be there, just waking up.  Needing rides here and there.  That summer my mother got into 4 car accidents.  That cost money of course.

I remember the summer we found out the house we had been renting was sold.  It was going to be tore down for new apartments.  My parents began looking into buying a place.  They found a smaller home that was honestly dirt cheap.  It needed work, but it was livable, and since it would cost them $200 less per month than renting it seemed like a good thing.  It was pretty cramped living in a 2+ bedroom home with 7 people.  Sure the attic had been converted into an efficiency apartment, but it was still close quarters.

I was 15, almost 16 at the time.  My parents bought it saying that in 2 years my twin and I would be graduated from high school and move out.  Then the house would be a good size.  Imagine that.  I got an eviction notice at the age of 15.  Sure I had 2 years, and it seemed really far off, but hearing those comments doesn’t make you feel welcome and loved.

Also, even though my parents house payment was lower than the previous rent, the utilities were higher.  My mother got a job as a school bus driver, and after a couple of accidents, she was given a job as a bus para.  Pretty much, she entertained the little kiddies, and helped out with the handicapped bus.  She could have this fantasy life where scores of preschoolers would love the bus lady.  She could also use her (minimal) Spanish skills and talk with them.  Lets face it, most kids that are entering school and come from immigrant families speak their native tongue at home.  The knew little English, and the fact that she tried to speak some Spanish was exciting. I grew to hate all things yellow and school bus related. But I digress.

Even when I graduated high school and decided to go to the local state university, my parents encouraged me to live in the dorms.  For some reason sharing a room with my sisters seemed far better than a slightly larger room with 3 other people.  Plus, living in the dorms was pricey they cost much more than my tuition.  It was far cheaper to live at home and walk the 2 blocks to campus.  I made the smarter financial choice as a senior in high school and choose to give up some independence and live at home.

Things don’t always turn out how we plan them though…

(Keep an eye out for Part 2 of the Why I want to be debt free. Lets just say my financial education was no where near complete.)

1. My husband is back in school for a summer term taking Calc 2.  This isn’t an easy course, especially since it has been a good 5-7 years since he took calc 1. I was trying to help him out, but I sort of think he is just trying to pass at this point.

2. The back to school means we sunk $600+ dollars into two months of torture. We put it on the credit card, but just for the rewards.  I have already made a payment toward the card, and we will pay the rest when we get our statement.

3. A few weeks ago while going to yard sales as a family, we ran into a guy who had some high efficiency windows for sale in his garage.  He had them left over from a remodel project and had been trying to get rid of them for a while, so they were only $400 for three of them.  We measured our windows, and determined that even though we could get a tax break by buying new, these were of a higher quality and nicer windows than what we will end up getting for the rest of the house. Now we are just waiting for August when there is no more Calculus, and before the fall semester of school starts to replace our windows.  I am looking forward to the end product, but not the process.  It will be hot, and we will be replacing all the windows in our living room.  We will be suffering without AC when that happens.

4. I gave away our old couch.  It was one we got free off of Craigslist, and at the time it seemed like a blessing.  Its not that the blessing thing changed, but that couch was massive.  Like you sit it next to a day bed, and that couch wins for sheer bulk.

5. Thanks to giving away the old one, the last weekend of May we bought a new couch at the local furniture outlet.  We have had some misgivings since the couch was obviously broken within a few weeks and the repair guy they sent did a quick fix that literally lasted for less time than it took him to make the repair.  Luckily the store is good at keeping people happy, and after hearing it would be another 2 weeks before we could have someone come back and saying that wasn’t good enough they replaced the couch.  That was a surprise.  I was just hoping for a sooner repair date.  But lets face it, when you spend hundreds of dollars buying a new piece of furniture and more than half of the time you have owned it, its has been waiting for repairs.  You start hating that piece of furniture.

6. We did not double pay our mortgage for July.  Its not that we can’t.  Technically we can pay until the 5th with no additional fees, and we get paid again on the 4th.  But, instead of doing the same as ‘floating a check’ we are just not paying extra.  We get 2 paychecks in July instead of 2, so we will go back to the plan then.  We might even pay more, but more likely we will finish off the HELOC and start putting and extra $200 (on top of double payments) toward the mortgage each month after that.

Yes, its absurd when you think about it.  And, yes the interest rate is still lower then our fixed rate mortgage.  But its rising slowly.  And, it will be nice to have one less bill to pay every month, even if we won’t have any extra cash in our pockets.

So you see, we have spend a good $1500 in one time, randomish expenses this month.  So, I feel justified to not double the mortgage until the August 1st payment. Also, none of these expenses, including school were bought on credit.  That’s a pretty nice feeling.

Check your tire pressure

Tire pressure can greatly affect your mileage in your vehicle. If your tires has less air in them, more of the tire surface is touching the road.  This means the engine works harder to move the car.  While, having more of the tire touching the road may be good during poor weather conditions, it does decrease how far you can get on a tank of gas.  Last weekend we checked our tire pressure after the check engine light went on. (For the car newbies, the check engine light can mean anything, but I knew it had been several months since adding air.) It was at 31mpg, and I like the pressure to be close to 40 in the summer.  After filling the tire, the check engine light went off, and we noticed that our in town gas mileage increased by about 3mpg to a reasonable 24mpg.  Last weekend we did some highway traveling for Mother’s Day and got about 33mpg for the trip.

Change Your Air Filter

Air filters are another simple maintence for your car that can affect engine effiency.  It won’t necesarialy increase your mileage, but it will affect acceleration.  A clogged filter will slow air from entering the eingine area, making you push on the gas pedle more to accelerate.  While there is no tested increase in gas mileage, if you have to push harder on the gas to get anywhere, you will be using and wasting more gas.  This also affect wear on your car engine.

Get a tune up

When you get a tune up on your car, they check your your spark plugs and throttle, as well as things like fuel and air filters.  Proper maintenence can easily save you money in repairs as well as at the gas pump.  Fuel filters are made to last $5000 miles or more depending on how dusty of an area you live in. If you drive on gravel roads often, tis a good idea to replace your fuel filter.  Once they become completely clogged your car won’t start and that can mean a trip to the mechanic as well as a tow.

Get an oil change, and use the right oil

When you get an oil change, they replace the oil filter and remove al lthe old oil from your car.  Oil is lubricant for the car’s engine.  All those moving parts of your engine move smoothly thanks to oil.  Also, check your manual and find out what kind of oil is best for your engine.  Using 10W-30 if you car needs 5W-30 will make your car work harder and decrease your gas mileage.

Combine Trips, and shop early

If you run 3 errands and make threetrips from home for each of them, you are using more gas than you need to.  I don’t like to do all my shopping in the one stop stores, but it can save your car some hard work.  If you need to mail a package, and go to the grocery store, it might make sense to go to the grocery store that has postal capabilities.  Even if you don’t choose to go to these stores, its helpful to time your errands properly.  If I run errands early in the morning it can take half the time of later in the day.  Lines are shorter, there is less (or no) traffic, and sales people are more helpful.  Maybe its because they have just started work, or maybe its because they have less customers to assist.  Some stores even do thier discount markdowns in the morning and you can find a larger selection of discounted items at 9am than at 9pm.

Last of all, Lighten the load

Keep your car light! If you went to the store and bought 200 lbs lf mulch for your yard and have it sitting in the car for the next week until you have time to put it down. Stop! You are effectively carrying around a large adult, or three kids in your car at all times.  Even if you can’t put the mulch down immediately, out it in the garage, or on the porch.  Also, if you usually carry sand or kitty litter in your trunk in the  winter, take it out.  Most parts of the country don’t have to worry about freak snow storms by mid may.

1. Open your windows.

This tip won’t help once its in the upper 90s, but for late spring when its just starting to get hot its great.  If you can open windows across the house from each other you can great a significant cross breeze.

2. Turn your cieling fans to the Summer setting.

That means the blade turns in a counter clockwise direction and pushes air down.  The hotter air will sit above the fan and not circulate. Did you know it will feel a good 5 degrees cooler under a ceiling fan? Some companies claim it can feel even cooler with ceiling fans.  If you have ceiling fans in the rooms you use every day, you can set your thermostat warmer. Speaking of thermostats…

3. Install a programmable thermostat.

All you renters, I am sorry you don’t have this option (though if you ask your landlord they might install one for you).  We installed a programmable thermostat in our house this last January.  It only cost us about $40 (can’t remember the exact price) and we got at the local big box store.  Our heating bill was much lower than last year, and we had a crawler/new walker on our hands.  There is only so many times you can let your child crawl on the floor and come back to you with chilled hands and feet.  Anyway, I figured if we could decrease our bills by $3.30 eah month we would pay for the thermostat by the end of the year.  Even with a 11% rate hike by the utility company we saw a decreace in our overall bill.

4. Get thermal window treatments.

Our house came with some cheapo blinds, but if its not broke don’t fix it.  Last fall I decided we needed curtains.  Partly because the blinds had tiny holes in them so people could see in at night when our lights were on, and partly because winter of 07-08 we had a $160 heating bill one month, and I did not want to repeat that.  Fall of 2008 I was on a mission. I sewed one curtain panel that I lined with polyester fabric, and after discovering I cannot sew a straight line, I decided to price curtains.

I went to the local box store and looked at what they had and decided on some thick fabric curtains.  Then when we were going to leave I noticed they had some curtains at the end of the aisle marked clearance.  Of course the discounted price drew me in and I started putting my initial choice back on the shelf.  Among the marked down drapes were a set of thermal lined curtains in a shade that would go nicely with my living room.  After fruther incestigation I found the same drapes on the shelf for twice the price! These drapes had been returned and the store just marked them down to sell them fast.

The rest of the thermal curtains in our house were bought one window / room at a time. Its made the drafty windows feel less drafty.

5. Can I get some caulk?

After living the winter with a blanket literally nailed up covering our fireplace all winter, I found out about cement caulk / furnace caulk.  It typically comes in black and its meant to go between the doors and the black fireplace.   And I thought it would require hiring a professional to take out the fireplace door/cover thingy and putting in more insulation.  Now, I just need to spend my $10 and get some.

Around the fireplace cover isn’t the only place where caulk will help.  Any place where there is an opening to the outside you shuld caulk.  Around doors, windows, trim on the outside and inside.  If there is a crack, chances are caulking it wold be a good idea. We did some major caulking and sealing of holes last year after discovering a mouse got in and had babies. Spring is a good time to check the old caulk and if its cracked or separating, replace it.  There is nothing worse than ants in the springtime.

6. Upgrade your windows.

This isn’t for everyone, in fact its not something you can do anything about if you aren’t an owner.  Its also quite pricey.  I priced windows and supplies and to replace the 6 windows in our home it will cost about $1000 for supplies.  While part of that is tax deductible (supplies only  because the windows are energy star rated), its a huge project.  Especially the two windows in the upstairs.  That will require assistance, and possibly borrowed or rented scaffolding.  If we paid someone to do it, even just the two windows on the second floor, it will increase the cost significantly.  Still, the new vinyl windows are leaps and bounds above the 30 year old metal framed with poor seals that are currently in place.

Thoughts

So there you go.  Some things are simple, raising the thermostat two degree, turning on a fan, or opening some windows; others will cost thousands of dollars and some hard work.  Try doing at least one of these and see if you can save money keeping cool this summer.