My English Castle's Personal Finance Blog

Just got an e-mail from DH who may have a new contract lined up. More when I know more. That would be the best happiest news in a long time.

Christmas details also to follow, but waiting on the big news.

Happy Holidays to all my SA friends! I really do feel like so many of you are my friends.

I just realized I've spent nothing today! Yeah! Of course if I averaged it with the past two days, but let's not go there.

Still wrapping and organizing and cleaning here, but have made a big batch of my mom's hot fudge sauce in honor of her and decanted the cherry brandy for gifts.

I'm geared up for getting it done!

It's not often I want to clean, but today I do. Too much holiday stuff laying around--bags and receipts, and ingredients. We spent a lovely hour this morning at DD's Christmas concert at school. We must've been seated in a great spot because only spotted three people texting and one guy on his phone chatting.

So I'm off to clean!

I was laughing with an old friend today about one year we bought virtually everyone's gifts at ---unbelievably--the liquor store. It was easy! Baileys for aunts and uncles, craft beer for lots of folks, nice wine for siblings, champagne for party types, interesting liquers for friends.

That kind of simple shopping is hard to find. Where else could a tired gal get so much done? A bookstore? Maybe a gourmet grocer?

I spent 15 minutes trying to get INTO the mall parking lot and another 15 trying to get out before I screamed, "SURRENDER" and went to the local shops instead. Great bargains to be had and I spent probably too much. But except for stocking stuffers, a few odds and ends for DD, I think I'm almost done. Tomorrow is grocery shopping, a quick fling in Target, wrapping, laundry and ugh, more grading. But my evening class is wrapped up as are two of my regular classes.

I attempted a British mincemeat cake today. I always try to do either a Christmas pudding or cake for DH, but this recipe challenged my addled brain. It called for an 8" cake pan, and so without thinking, I put it in an 8" cake pan. A layer cake pan. Duh--As the smoke began billowing out into the kitchen, it occurred to me that they probably meant a spring form pan with deeper sides. Now two oven mitts, a kitchen towel, the dog's paws, and the bottom of the oven are all well doused in mincemeat cake. While I salvaged most of it--and indeed we liked it--I think the oven mitts are beyond rescue. Maybe I'll feel differently in the morning. Some days I feel like I'm living in a situation comedy.

I graded all day Thursday but still have a day's work left. Thursday night I couldn't bear the sight of it one more minute, and at 11 pm bought Amtrak tickets to Chicago for the next day. I phoned DD's school in the morning to say she wouldn't be at there, bundled us up, packed coupons, train snacks, my Art Institute membership card, and we were at Union Station by 12:30.

We headed straight for Macy's, got a beeper for the Walnut Room restaurant even though they said it would be a two-hour wait. Off we went to the Christkindl Market, where DD swooned at the glass ornaments, had a piece of strudel, finally chose a white owl ornament (because it looked like Hedwig from Harry Potter) and enjoyed a fabulous hour there. Our beeper buzzed by 2:30, and we had a delicious lunch at a table with a great view of the spectacular decorated trees. The Christmas fairy came by, sprinkled DD with fairy dust as she marveled over the store, the lights, and the Christmas overload of it all. We took pictures by the trees, shopped a little, and had dessert at the Chicago Magnolia Bakery cafe before heading to the Art Institute for the Chagall windows and a few Impressionists, a walk on Michigan Avenue, and wound up at the Cloud Gate with carolers at 6pm. They lit candles, we sang, and when we decided we needed to head to the train station, my darling started to cry because it was all so wonderful, she didn't want it to end. When we got home at 10pm, she ran in the house to tell her father we were going to make a tradition of it and she wanted to do that same trip every year for the rest of her life. Take that, evil grading! I defeated you and refused to let you eat my life. I'll deal with you tomorrow when I obliterate you for good for the rest of 2011!

Oh man, I was dreading today. Lots to do and so little sleep, but somehow it went very well.
I closed out three classes, finished the grading for two of them last night, had a superb discussion in the Business in Literature class, found my missing evaluation forms, spent 20 delightful minutes chatting with colleagues, went to the last job candidate talk, almost ran out of gas but didn't, made my new favorite bratwurst soup and then delivered it to my colleague who had preemie twins. Phewww. After eating the other half of the soup, I graded a massive stack of papers, and now....drum roll... have only one (horrible) class left to grade. Tomorrow. I want to be free tomorrow.

I've spent all day after church on grading. But we managed to squeeze in some fun this weekend. A local college had a "Hogwarts Evening" and we went with some friends. It was lots of fun--dementors and runes and potions and Honeydukes and a Quidditch match. DD was in Hogwarts heaven. Yesterday we took several of her friends and their mom to a gingerbread house decorating day at our church. Today we came home with the gingerbread house! And yesterday night after a long spell of grade updates, DH and I watched "Luther." He's now officially hooked on the show--part fabulous writing, part fabulous acting, part fabulous London scenery.

My only outing besides those was a quick trip to CVS for the bargains and the accompanying gift card.
I'm so boring right now...

I have a long day tomorrow so am heading off to bed with grading still looming. But done by Thursday, I swear it!

Last weekend in Chicago I spent 30 minutes or more oohing and aahing over fancy coats for girls at Macy's. The Rothschild one I almost bought was about $85 after discounts, but I just couldn't quite bring myself to pay that for a coat DD would wear two years.

I bid on and bought the same coat (used) on ebay for under $30. It was an indulgence, but I remember so well my "fancy" coat when I was 11, and I wanted DD to have one of her own. Maybe more for me than her? But less than half price!

And likely to be that way for another couple of days.
I left the house twice today--once to go to a faculty meeting and then again to take DD to Kumon. I think I'm too submerged in it. I burned the sandwich rolls while making dinner, forgot to defrost the chicken we were going to eat, and left the dog outside for 45 minutes. I'm a focus freak. I get in the groove and can't do anything else without disrupting my pattern. I spent nothing today except for 8 cents tax on Advent calendar fillers on my way home from school. CVS extra bucks paid the rest.

Back to it.

DH met today with his contracting agency. I think they're afraid they'll lose him to another agency, so it appears that they'll pay him through January. That's great news--but they want him to take long-term travel assignments after that. He told them he needs to work locally. Maybe I'm stupid, but I just can't see it working for us if he's gone for weeks at a time. I'm not sure I could swing the single-parent routine. Several of my friends are trying it now with their husbands working hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away. They've shown me how hard it is, DH is not good by himself, and it would really disrupt our current before-school and evening-class routine. Maybe I'll feel differently if no work appears. I hope we don't have to think seriously about that. Sigh.

I've been reading student drafts all day. By 5pm, I had a killer headache. Student writing is worse than a clunk on the noggin.
But I've also managed to knock off a few things around the house,revamp DH's CV, and read and edit two capstone projects, But there are more invitations to ibuprofen in my inbox, so I foresee another two hours ahead of me.
I have spent nothing except $15.40 at the vet's office to get the dog's stitches removed. I probably could've done it myself! But I'm happy to report she's fine and perkier than ever. She has been released from the cone of shame and is buzzing around the house like a puppy.

I long to shop, bake, and relax, but I've got another week or so like this. Head down, full speed ahead.

I'm now happily at the point in the semester where students look harried, exhausted, and overwhelmed, and I don't. Everyone has their final assignments in their hands, I'm just waiting on deadlines and responses. The weekend away did me a world of good.

It will still be busy busy, but I'm feeling good about things. I powered through some papers tonight on a break from my evening class, and I'm spending all day tomorrow grading before the dog gets the stitches out and (hopefully) the cone off.

The husband of my best buddy here has lost his job. They're underwater on their house, and I'm not sure they can swing it on her university salary and extra gig. But we're in the same boat. Small salary, lots of work, one kid, foreign husbands without jobs. I predict we're trading thrifty soup recipes by the end of the week.

I had a great weekend in Chicago with my best friend. While it wasn't super-cheap, we made it affordable. We have similar budgets so that always helps. I got the AAA discount on my train ticket, shaving $4 off, got a great rate on the hotel which was withing walking distance of the train station and had a great free wine hour in the afternoon and coffee/ hot chocolate in the morning. We saw "The Santaland Diaries" (for mature audiences from a David Sedaris story) on Friday night and figured out how to take the el to the theatre. Transportation was a bargain all around. The free wine hour saved us $ on cocktails with dinner, and we had great meals. Saturday night we went to the new casual and cheaper Rick Bayless place, Xoco, which was great. I bought nice, interesting, affordable Christmas gifts for DD and DH (including a tie with an understated map of London for DH) and today was the Art Institute which had a fabulous free Beethoven string quartet concert. I'm in an art/food/culture swoon. Very worth it! And CB--that Marilyn statue is huge! She looks very cold there over the river!

Before we heard about DH's impending job issues, I'd booked a Chicago weekend with my Minnesota girlfriends. For a while I'd thought about canceling, but we got a great hotel rate, and the train is pretty cheap.
I've also got a house that looks like it's been hit by a terrorist strike, but I'm caught up on my grading for the next 10 seconds. Additional grading will accompany me on the train, and frankly, I need the break.

So, tomorrow morning I'm off until Sunday night.
I can't wait!

Nothing spent except $1.76 on coffee today and my car tab renewal. I felt the need for a nice dinner tonight; we've been eating a bit too haphazardly lately--partly from frugality and partly from lack of time. Too much eating all the little bits of stuff left in the fridge. I'm all for that, but after a while, it feels meager. Plus it's the end of a long week for me with tomorrow only online classes. So we had a very nice pork tenderloin with dried cranberry sauce, baked sweet potatoes and broccoli.

While I have plenty of work ahead of me, I'm devoting tonight to cleaning up around here, laundry, and for once, a sparkling clean kitchen. Few things are more satisfying.

All that makes it easier to tackle tomorrow's mountain of work.

I'm too busy to blog much, but have been thinking about a lot of things that will need to be sorted out once things settle down.
Some of them are how to stick to a better exercise routine, how to reorganize my office, whether I'll ever teach another online class after the headaches of this one, where wine belongs in my budget, and other mostly minor things.

But I had a very contentious class last night, and I've been thinking about it a lot. We read three Flannery O'Connor stories, all of which contain the "n-word."
My evening class is primarily African-American women, and we had a very difficult time discussing how a writer can have a character use that word, whether we should read those stories, the problems of conflating the author with the character, etc. In each of these stories the character that use the "n-word" is despicable and flawed. O'Connor punishes them: one character is shot, another is shown up as a pretentious buffoon, and another reduced to thinking of herself as a warthog (no, I'm not kidding) from the lower regions. But still, the legacy of that word troubles and haunts. We literally spent hours discussing it, at times way too vehemently.

I love these stories, but need to find a better way to communicate and teach them. Not financial news at all, but since they pay me to do this, perhaps it has a financial component. I wish I could think and work at the same time...

I'm still working on school prep for this week, and hope to get some financial matters squared away. I need to drop off the 403b reduction at our HR office and pay some bills. After church I stopped at Walgreen's for their sale on instant coffee. My DH loves instant (is it the Brit in him?)and I've seen it regularly priced at $13 lately. I bought two at $6.99/ea and with another coupon and used my soon-to-expire register rewards. DD and also swung by Michael's for her "book-share" project due on Wednesday. I mostly restrained myself from any unnecessary purchases, but they had the cutest wrapping paper for $3, so I gave in to my wrapping desires. I love wrapping paper.

I feel like I spent a lot of time cooking this weekend. But we start the week with a couple meals worth of soup, ravioli casserole, and beef stew, not to mention another batch of crock-pot applesauce.

We had a very nice Thanksgiving with my brother and his family. The nephews were all with their womenfolk and their families, so we missed them, but had a great time anyway. My brother and his wife are just wonderful; we're the same kind of low-key wine-drinking, PBS watching geeks, and we always enjoy their company. This was our first holiday for my brother and me without our mom, and it made it better to be together. I had time for breakfast with two of my Minnesota friends on Friday and then we headed home. We did the 12-hour round trip to Minnesota and back in 48 hours,so I guess it's no wonder I'm dragging a bit today.

I did swing by CVS after we got home last night and picked up a host of Black Friday freebies. Many of them will be stocking stuffers, some in the Advent calendar, and some will likely go to the food pantry barrel. The 16-year-old checker whooped and hollered in praise at how many extra bucks I earned and used, but honestly, it took no time at all.

The weather stinks--cold and rainy--so I made lentil soup and another batch of slow-cooker applesauce. I'm watching pennies carefully. We've made a photo collage free at Walgreen's that will go in with the other small things for our sponsored child in Swaziland.

I'd like a few more days at home. It feels good to potter around here.

Sunday night about 10, I heard DH yell, "I think we have a problem." While running after something in the yard, the dog instead caught the edge of the upended tomato cage. It sliced right through her right upper chest, and she was bleeding heavily.

After a most stressful five-hour jaunt to the emergency vet and almost $700, she's home, sewn up, and medicated.

I'm very thankful she's ok. I'm not so thankful about the bill. Today we go back for another look at the wound. Ah--the emergency fund.

After all the energy expended these past few days, our house should be toasty and warm. But it's cold.

I've spent the past 36 hours trying to get control of school work and the budget, and I'm a little tired. DD had a dream about a bear in the garage(?) and slept between us last night. That's rarely comfortable as she's a flailing, muttering sleeper. So I started getting anxious, and the bear in the garage seemed like a wolf at the door to my brain at 3am.
I got up, turned up the heat, and read for a couple hours. Poetry seemed like the answer, and may I recommend Lorine Niedecker, an underrated wonderful poet. Her spareness was just what I needed, and I slept like a baby in the guest room for a couple more hours.

So today dragged. I got some grading done, but fell asleep after lunch. Now, refueled by caffeine and a raspberry turnover, I'm back it for a few more hours until bear-haunted girl returns from school.

I did slash (ouch) all our retirement plan automatic contributions. DH has upped the deductible on his car insurance. Back to grading.

As scheduled, DH and I sat down and had a budget meeting tonight. He's a bit prickly about it and has never been much interested in our finances. I think the poor thing is just emotionally exhausted and a bit disheartened by the whole thing.

We found that if we dramatically slash our retirement contributions, we could indeed live on my regular university salary. It won't be pretty, but it can be done. So that's the plan. We bank his unemployment, look for a new job with lots of energy and also bank my night class money to build our cash reserves further.

I have to say, it really hurt me to log in to the retirement accounts and curtail them to that extent. Although I know it's right, it just feels so wrong.

We're doing the opposite of freezer cooking; we're doing freezer eating. I found two of last summer's lingering bratwurst (Milwaukee life) and a frozen carton of chicken broth in the freezer. It turned into an amazingly good soup from a blog called "Eatin on the Cheap." I tweaked the recipe a bit, but who knew two brats, three potatoes, an onion, two carrots and some chicken broth could be as good as it was. I wish I had more!

I'm starting my "what to cut, shave, trim, snip, and other hair analogies" list.
Our goal will be cash preservation.
So, I think I'll pare down the retirement plan contributions since we have no match, increase the insurance deductible on DH's car which we should've done months ago, stop the mortgage principal prepayment, but what else?

We have no cable, but we're keeping Netflix streaming. I've considered giving up the Sunday NYT, but not yet. Kumon also stays. The grocery bill and the energy bill both need some scrutinizing. The prepaid phone is about as cheap as it gets.

Today I used the Mattel vouchers to buy toys for the Christmas donations at church with a little left for DD's stocking stuffer and some upcoming baby gifts.
I thought I might have a hard time using the voucher at Target, but checked with the service desk first, and they were happy to help. Between that and the coupon for free milk, it was a cheap day.

DH got the official news today. He'll be done at the end of the year. Tomorrow's list will be on more income generation and job search stuff. I'm a little daunted and welcome any advice you want to throw my way!

Four small but nice things happened that reminded me again of all the abundance around.

My dear husband found the long-missing Mattel gift certificates. They have a $65 value and some of that will go for donated toys while some stays in DD's Santa stash.

A former student who is graduating and moving to Florida came by my office with books yesterday. She gave me three of our textbooks, even after I advised her to sell them. She wants to clear out her apartment and be out by December 1. I have a copy for my office, one for reserve, and my bag copy, so I will sell these.

My officemate reads the Sunday paper in our office and left it for me--coupons and all. That means a double set in time for double days.

DH and I pulled the crabtree branches from the lawn waste pile and are cutting them up to dry for BBQ smoking. Thanks to Patient Saver for this advice.

It's another warm November day; long may they last!

So, as we expected, it looks like DH's almost 11-year contract will end sometime shortly after the new year. They love him, want to keep him, but can't afford to keep him. Their budget has taken close to a $500K hit. He's indicated he'd work fewer hours happily enough, but his boss isn't sure there's money for that.

His contract with his agency specifies they pay him even if he's not working. But we're both relatively sure they'll dump him quickly if he's not. So he's already put the word out to former co-workers at other firms, to other parts of his current company etc. Later this week we'll revamp his resume. Emergency planning has begun.

Our US cash reserve is ok, almost to the 25K I wanted, but not quite. We should be able to get it there by his layoff. We've got more funds in the UK, but our goal is to live on my regular salary if we can. His unemployment and my second-job and freelance money will go to the emergency fund. All that would work, except there's those three months in the summer when I don't get paid. For those months, we'd rely on unemployment and my freelance and second-job money.

All in all, it's not that bad. We will hope his jobless state won't last long. We are again pleased that I am the insurance holder,and we have no worries or extra expenses there. We are both pretty frugal, and we will crank it down another notch, refiguring travel, entertainment, and Christmas expenses first.

I have some heavy work days ahead, so our budget meeting will have to wait until Thursday or so. Our freezer and pantry are full.

My dear mother always said when faced with bad news, celebrate the good. I bought a restaurant.com voucher (what a deal they are!) for a good Italian place and we went out for dinner and a movie last night. Have any of you seen "Margin Call"? I thought it was swell. Kevin Spacey and Stanley Tucci are spectacular. Jeremy Irons is as loathsome as he should be in that role. Going out was cheap and raised our spirits.

I've volunteered to roast a turkey for the meal-share Thanksgiving through my church, so the house smells delightful--just like Thanksgiving. They want the meat taken off the bones and the drippings frozen separately, so I've done that. I really do not like pulling rurkeys apart (why does that sentence seem so funny to me?). Residual bones and skin have gone into two soup pots which are bubbling away now.

I want to make crockpot applesauce, but that might have to wait until tomorrow. I also did a little CVS shopping with a $5 offer from Mastercard and a lot of double coupon purchases at the grocery store. I sense a lot of economic anxiety out there. Lots of detailed lists and counting coupons were in evidence throughout the store. And not all of it mine.

I'm still processing DH's job news, but we're going out tonight to see "Margin Call." I'll likely think through this all tomorrow on this blog.

DH is again nervous about his job. He's still a contractor, but he's been at the same place for more than 10 years. They put a hiring freeze on several years ago, and for a long time, he was the only contractor there.
But some of his regular tasks have been reassigned to employees, and he's feeling nervous. We talked it through last night and rather than worrying, we decided he should talk to folks. That's happening in a couple hours.
As usual, I'm bracing for the worst-case scenario. I've been super-freaky about grocery spending and utilities. But I did get my small challenge list done for yesterday with nice lentil soup, pumpkin bread, clean laundry, ebay listings,spelling-word quizzes--but no toy vouchers have yet to surface!

While I'd like to quickly pay off the mortgage, lose 20 pounds, have Michelle Obama's arms, and look 10 years younger overnight, I think I need some simple achievable goals for the next week.

Here are today's six:

Do two more loads of laundry

Finish lentil soup in the crockpot

List two things on ebay

Quiz DD on spelling words

Make pumpkin bread

Find the toy coupons I've misplaced

I've got more to blog about, but want to finish a couple of these before I come back!

An old childhood friend of DH's turned up in town, and we all went out for pizza tonight. He had an interesting story: He was born in Tanzania, moved back to the UK when he was a teenager, met his wife in Morocco and now lives in Canada. I feel so boring!

My favorite part of the evening was the waitress' inability to understand a word either of the guys said. Neither of them have particularly thick accents--not heavy Northern or Cockney or Yorkshire---but she just stared at me every time they said anything to her--and needed me to repeat everything they said. We had a lovely dinner and it made up for the wet, horrible, rainy day here.

More on a new financial wrinkle tomorrow.

It's mostly been a day of catching up, but there's been some flash cash and some slow cash coming.

Two textbook publishers contacted me today, one from my current text and one from a competing text. The current text, though it's been out less than a year, is already planning revisions. They wanted feedback from me through a survey in return for $20 from Amazon.
Done!

The competing text publisher wanted me to do a survey and an intensive two-chapter review. While I know they're just trying to lure me back to their text, for the $400 they offered, I'll do it. I figure it'll take me about 2-3 hours.

Slow cash coming from a cheaper magazine offer for one of DD's magazines, a couple of good deals at the drugstore, and my goal sheet (not as fun as Paulette's!) that I'll do later this afternoon.


I've been overstretched and tired, but took a nap yesterday after teaching and took it easy last night. Onward!