More Computer Woes

I'm whining just a little. My "a" key is broken, so to type an "a", I have to copy and paste. What a pain!

CC Interest Rates Going Down?

The interest rate on my last credit card has been slowly declining over the past year. It started at over 7%, and now it is just over 5%. Has anyone else experienced this? I think the CC company is trying to lure me into charging more!

Debt Reduction Doldrums

It seems like I have been five months away from being debtfree for the past 6 months! Every time I recalculate how long it will take to pay off my last credit card, the pay off remains 5-6 months away. Buying a new house, moving expenses and an unplanned income drop have all contributed to my inaccurate estimates. Now, I'm just tired of the struggle to keep paying to debt reduction each month. I want to spend on house projects, new clothes and things for my kids, not credit card payments!
Objectively, I know that I have made tremendous progress in reducing my debt. I owed over $13,000 in July 2007, and I now owe $3500, reducing my debt by $10,000. On the other hand, I've been working on this for almost two years, so this journey is getting a little old. Another worry at the back of my mind, is that my income will probably be reduced by $600/month after September. That means that I really must get my credit card paid off by September. After that, I'll only have about $200/month over planned expenses in my budget, so my savings rate will be very slow.
Okay, enough whining! What can I do now?
1. Stop worrying about what will happen six months from now. Concentrate on what I can do this month--follow my budget.
2. Look at the positives--I have a little (almost $1000) emergency fund, as well as growing sinking funds for irregular expenses.
3. I have $60 in the house project fund. Decide what to spend it on. Landscaping? Wooden blinds for the dining room? Slipcovers for the living room?
4. Make a list of nonfinancial things I would like to do--distract myself with other things until these doldrums pass!

Goals Update

I have been very lax in updating my goals since the computer problems in February. I guess I got off my schedule. Even though I haven't written about my goals, I have been making progress on the goals as a group, but I need to focus on the details. Here goes:

Financial goals

Track spending with YNAB weekly. I'm still enjoying using YNAB to track spending. I got a little off track when my computer was cleaned, but I was able to use my bank statements to reconstruct Jan. and Feb.
Begin sinking fund account. Keep in checking account. This is working well. I've started small funds for taxes, car repairs, life insurance, and house projects. I'll be able to modify the amounts needed because of tracking what I actually spend.
Pay off $6000 in credit cards by July 1 . Not doing so well with this one. In order to achieve this goal, I need to pay $800/month to credit cards. February was good, but March was only $600 and April will only be $400 because of car repair. I will have to modify this goal to September 1.
Save emergency fund of $3600 by Dec 31. This goal will also be modified, probably to $2600.



Personal goals

Work out or walk (1 mile) 2x week. February and the 1st 2 weeks of March were successful, but the past 2 weeks have been exerciseless.
Walk Gretsky every day . Not everyday anymore. I need to renew my commitment to this.
Do Flylady routines. Nope
Bible study. Yes! I started attending a Bible study group in February. I also have been learning from Beth Moore online.
Learn something new. Yes! I may be going overboard a little here, but it's fun!
Compost bin/garden. I'm stuck on making a new compost container because I can't find my drill! Organization is lacking!
Monthly house project Nope

Wow! I thought I was making adequate progress, but 6 out of 11 goals are in the red. It's time for me to refocus.

Target vs WalMart: Is there a lesser of the Superstore "Evils"?

This is a guest post by Shopping Ethically. Her blog has links to websites that feature Fair Trade and USA made merchandise.

I recently read an article, "Confessions of a Sweatshop Inspector," on Washington Monthly. In the article, T.A. Frank recounts his experiences as a sweatshop inspector and gives insight into just how difficult it is to have a REAL inspection of most Chinese factories since most inspections are announced so that factory managers have time to hide anything shady, change employee time cards, coach factory employees on how to answer inspectors' questions, etc....

The real highlight of the article for me, was an answer to a question that I have asked myself many times over the past year since I started my ethical shopping makeover: is Target any better than Wal-mart or are all superstores created ethically equal? According to Frank, one test for determining how "good" or "bad" a company's social responsibility is finding what percentage of the company's factory inspections are unannounced. Obviously, unannounced inspections are much more accurate in determining the actual conditions of a factory than previously scheduled visits.

His findings: Wal-mart: 26% of inspections unannounced
Target: 100% of inspections unannounced

By this criteria alone, Target seems to have the lead over Wal-mart in social responsibility.

My verdict: if you absolutely have to shop at one of these superstores--make it Target.
***But, you really can avoid shopping at any superstore if you're willing to tack on a few extra dollars (depending on what you're buying) per shopping trip to patronize local businesses. For me, the extra dollars are worth spending to help keep these local businesses running--I don't want to be in a position where my only choice for shopping is a superstore. I have avoided both stores since January, and I haven't had to go without anything--nor have I noticed any huge changes in my expenditures (except for the costs of house-building, but that's another story!).

I'm back!

I apologize for the 2 week hiatus from posting. My computer was infected with nasty stuff (spyware and all kinds of nasty stuff). My Symantic antivirus could not get rid of it and it kept getting worse and worse. Finally, I took the computer to the local repair shop and after two attempts and I'm finally free of all the bugs.

The bad news is that through a series of unfortunate event, I accidentally tried to reinstall Windows and erased some of my programs--like YNAB. I spent yesterday evening entering the data from the last two months and I think I'm pretty accurate.

I'm glad to be back! Has anyone else had problems with computer bugs?

Debt is Going Down!

My credit card debt is coming down! It now stands at $4140! I am very excited to be below $5000 and I should be able to get below $4000 by the end of the month. Maybe a payoff of July is possible :).
Tracking my spending is still fun. I'm going to check my spending percentages in each category at the end of the month to see if my spending is in balance with what Dave and other financial gurus recommend. I don't want to be obsessed with spending, although I must confess that I am right now. My goal is to get a workable system in place, and then move my energy to other hobbies.
On another note, I mistakenly deleted my blog roll on Sunday. I'm slowly building it back up. If you see that your blog is missing from my blog list, please leave me a comment so I can add it!