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Done Christmas shopping and other stuff

December 23rd, 2008 at 06:19 am

I already posted this over on the "what frugal thing did you do today"...but I want to put it here too.

I used my Health Savings Account up today...$61 worth of tylonol, saline, alka-seltzer, day-quil and ny-quil. Got $4 and $5 register coupons back, so I bought throat losenges with the $4 and kept the $5 coupon for later. $65 of medicine for free, plus $5! (well, I already paid for it out of my paycheck, but if I hadn't used it, I would have lost it)

I used a gift card at Bed Bath & Beyond that we got for our wedding to buy 2 Christmas presents. I got 5 presents there this year, so all 5 were free to me!

I went to Shepler's to get DH's present today. DH, if you read this STOP RIGHT NOW! Others, hightlight the following:

I got him a black felt cowboy hat. He had one before I moved into the house, but once we put all my stuff away, we can't find it now...and truth be told, it was a bit small for him, so I thought it looked kind of funny when he wore it Smile Sssshhhh. Don't tell him that Smile I had to take one of his caps he wears all the time and we measured it with a tape measure and got the size off that. Below, first thing = hat, second thing = hat band.

Strangest thing. When I was picking the gift, I look up and see a teammate of mine from college I haven't seen in 10 years. It was good to see her. Exchanged phone numbers, and we'll be going to lunch after Christmas. That will be cool...don't hardly know anyone here, and don't hang out with anyone, so that will be nice.

She doesn't usually shop at Shepler's (she was there with her mom) and when we checked out, she got a buy one get 50% off coupon. She turned around and handed it to me. So, I got the second thing for half price. I was going to go pick something up that was similar in price to the first thing so the discount would be more, but then I realized I could just get the second thing for less.

There was a lady in front of me that was buying two sets of coveralls and paid full price, but then got the coupon as well, after her purchase. I told her under my breath to return both sets of coveralls at customer service, pick up two more sets on the way through the store, walk up to the front and pay 1/2 price for the second pair. Her eyes got big and said "THANKS". Was that ethical of me? It would save her like $50.

DH still needs to get one present for his brother. I handled his sister-in-law and his mom, and his brother/sister-in-law handled his dad, so he gets to pick one gift. Lots of wrapping to do, and I need to install some software on multiple computers in the next week.

Today was a not-productive day at work. My boss said "someone needs to be here to answer phones and take trouble tickets." That's why I had to work 3 days, 3 days, 2 days the past three weeks instead of 2 4 day weeks and have this week off (which meant I had to drive down here 3 times instead of 2 times). So, that's what I did today. Answered phones (2 calls) and took trouble tickets (2 tickets). Doing exactly what she said to do.

We got 1/2 a beef last week. We paid $583.31 to the farmer and $200 to the butcher and got 641 pounds of beef. Our garage freezer is stuffed, our refrigerator freezer is stuffed, and thank goodness it has been 0 degrees lately, because we even have some of it in a cooler in the garage (no heat in there). And this is hamburger, steaks, ribs, hamburger patties, and it is YUMMY! Oh, it is sooo good. Even the hamburger patties. I mean, how good can hamburger patties be? They are AWESOME, especially when DH grills them.

We had property taxes due today...$1,179 for the first half. Not bad at all, considering. That is for the house and 400 acres of land. I forgot to send them in the mail last week, so DH had to take them in himself today. $1273 for protein tubs for the cows will be paid 12/31 with bill pay, and $1229 will be paid to the coop on 12/31 with a check. Was going to wait until January to pay for the protein tubs, but this way we can write it off this year and we will probably need more, so I didn't want to run up too much of a bill with them.

DH also sent in the milo and soybean ledgers (a signed copy of how much we exactly had in the elevators). Apparently since we bought crop insurance, and since the prices were so high this summer and less than half of that now we will get some of the difference. I don't quite know how that works, though. We'll see what we get. We had to sell about $2000 of soybeans and milo to get us through the end of the month. We have about 350 bushels of soybeans left at the elevator and about 300 left on the truck...the roads are too bad to take in right now, and no one needs the truck, so there it sits.

Oh, I never mentioned that I cut the last of the soybeans this year. He had some swathing he wanted to do because he was afraid I would get stuck (he is doing it this month...that guy we are swathing for is crazy for doing it now, but he wants us to). In fact, HE got stuck! I used to run a combine for Dad for about 6 summers through high school and college, but that was for wheat. I've never cut soybeans before, and I've never run his combine before. But, I did it just fine.

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I'm a bit perturbed today. Maybe confused is a little better term? I don't quite know how this happened. DH got a phone call on Saturday about a pickup a friend of his had. It is a 1997 3/4 ton F-250 4 wheel drive diesel. It is really clean, and gets 20 mph, and was $5600. So, on Sunday, DH said let's just go look at it. We went, and long story short, the line of credit is $5600 heavier. I told him we have to sell 2, maybe 3, maybe 4 (! I KNOW !) of the pickups we now have.

One is a junker that won't drive now and would take about $4000 to fix. We have an offer of $1000 for it for parts, but DH called another friend who has a fix-it shop and he is going to come look at it to see if he will offer more. This is the pickup I bought for Dad to use about 5 years ago when Dad had all of my cows so he can feed with it. It is now completely shot...like I said, at least $4000 to fix. Fixing this one was going to be our option before we found the one above.

One is the pickup we bought last year due to the 4 wheel drive being out on the white pickup. We bought it for $1300 and are hoping to get $1100 from it. The white pickup is up and running now, so it isn't on the chopping block.

One is considered our "fuel wagon". We bought that one for $400 and DH put a bed and a 5th-wheel hitch on it. It needs a clutch now, though.

One is an old 1963 Ford DH wanted to fix up at some point. He doesn't have time, and we took the insurance off it last year because it hasn't made it out of the garage for a year at that point. It hurts DH to let this one go, but I think we need to.

That will leave us with the white 4 wheel drive and this "new" pickup for the farm. Oh, and the one I drive to work. I owe about $4000 on it still, and it will be paid off next October.

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I had $125 left in my gas-and-food-and-Christmas-presents checkbook when I got paid Thursday, so as promised, that, plus $50, went to the credit card. That is the minimum payment for the card, and when I have some left over in two weeks, I'll send that in too. I KNOW I need to pay more than the minimum. Since Christmas presents are done and I'll be home for almost 2 weeks starting tomorrow night (until Jan 5) I should save a lot of money in the next two weeks. Especially since I won't have to buy meat for months.

I need to make some progress on these debts. It seems like all we do is spend money! Granted, most of it is an investment, and either tax deductible or we can depreciate it. But still, money is going out the door faster than I can keep track of it.

Things to look forward to, though...we are selling our calves probably at the beginning of February. We have 42 calves and they are looking to be at least 700-800 pounds. Even at $.75 a pound, that is at least $525 a piece. Last year we sold for $.90 a pound, but I don't think we can get that this year. $525 * 42 = $22,050. We also have about 20 calves with dad. They are a bit smaller, and we only get 1/3 of the price for them (he gets the other 2/3). Let's call that $3000. We'll start calving around then, too, and fattening up the cull cows and sell them at the end of April. My tax refund should be huge, which I know is bad, but we didn't know when we were going to sell the calves (either in December or in 2009) so I didn't know how much of that would we would be taxed on in 2008. We are getting people saying they want us to swath/bale for them next year, and DH has a lot of planting lined up too. We'll see if all that pans out, of course.

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So, we are coming up on our year anniversary at the end of January. That is CRAZY! We have been "trying" to have a baby since we got married. By "trying" I mean, you know, having lots of sex. But we aren't charting or anything. I'm going to start charting in February (i.e., using my basal temperature to determine when I am fertile). I'll also start taking the "crazy pills" again. I.e., Metformin, hopefully to control my PCOS. I tried it for two months last summer and it made me go completely crazy. I think it is because I normally have less estrogen in my body because of the PCOS (or is the less estrogen causing the PCOS? No one knows) so I got PMS like you would not believe. I told myself I was being an emotional idiot, but I couldn't control myself. I literally told myself ...outloud... to stop it, but I couldn't listen to myself. That is something to look forward to, huh? Sister thinks maybe I'm finally feeling some of the effects of estrogen other women have had to deal with since they were 14 and I got my first big dose of it at 30, so I would just have to learn to deal with it. Hopefully I'm not so crazy that DH won't move out...that would kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn't it? Smile

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