Gather Little by Little

A little bit of Sunshine by *Micky

For the first time in weeks it seems, we actually had a fairly quiet week in the GLBL household. Nobody has been sick, work hasn’t been to crazy, and we enjoyed a little downtime. One surprise this week for me was Gather Little by Little being blocked by my employer.

My schedule for the past year has been to arrive at work around 6:30 or 7:00am and write my article for the day first thing in the morning. I would then formally start work at 8:00am once my article for the day was published. Seems my site along with a number of other blogs was included with some type of site blocking update to my employers firewall software. So, had to make a change to my blogging schedule suddenly.

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So Many Choices by: dewayne.brooks

When my wife and I started following a budget more than a year ago, I decided to use something straight forward and simple, a spreadsheet. I had used Quicken in the past and found it too difficult and frustrating. I needed something that would budget the way I wanted to budget, something that gave me the flexibility to do what I wanted to do.

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Photo by: chrisscott

While sick last week, I spent the majority of my time reading, working on my StumbleUpon profile and watching TV. One of the shows I ran across on HGTV profiled super high end motor homes. The least expensive motor home profiled was just shy of 1 million dollars.

These RVs were incredible. They included flat panel TVs, surround sound, satellite TV and literally miles of wiring to put it all together. Seats were made of luxury leather and ostrich skin. Interiors had custom LED lighting, mirrors, and real high quality wood. One motor home was manufactured for a couple that had 6 cats. Instead of the area below the floor being used for storage, the area was converted into a luxury suite for their cats, including air conditioning, and a flat screen TV so that cats wouldn’t get bored!

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Photo by: Tracy O

I recently wrote an article answering the question: Is the economic stimulus package a loan? That article stimulated some discussion between my wife and I about what we will do with the money when we receive it. For us, how we will spend it is a pretty big decision. See, we have 6 kids and based on the Economic Stimulus Payment Calculator we’ll be receiving $3,000 ($1,200 for us and $300 for each child). Some of the ideas we came up with include:

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Photo by: Andy Welsh

This article is part of an ongoing series called Money Saving Monday. Each Monday, I share tips and techniques you can use to start saving money.

Instead of sharing one focused tip with you as I normally do, I’m going to share 6 completely random things that I do (and you can too) to save money and reduce overall expenses.

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Photo by: royal_broil

I’ve been a fan of Michael W. Smith for a very long time. The very first song I heard from him was Friends. Michael has so many powerful and beautiful songs, it’s hard to choose just one favorite, but if I had to pick, would be my favorite.

Below are the lyrics and you can listen to Michael sing it here.

Jesus, I’ve forgotten the words that You have spoken
Promises that burned within my heart have now grown dim
With a doubting heart I follow the paths of earthly wisdom
Forgive me for my unbelief
Renew the fire again

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Photo of Taipei 101 by umm

The following is a guest post by Becky at Family and Finances, a blog about finances and saving money. If you like this post, consider subscribing to her feed via RSS.

Remember the tech stock boom and, later, the bust? Doesn’t it bear some resemblance to the housing boom and, now, bust? In both cases, investors put too many eggs in one basket, and that basket broke.

Obviously, the key to successful investing is to diversify your investments. Here are some tips:

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Photo by: rachel_thecat

The past two weeks have been nuts for my family and I. We just can’t seem to shake being sick. When one of us gets better, seems someone else gets sick. My wife was up most of the night last night with a migraine headache due what we think may be a sinus infection. I was sick the previous week, and our kids have been sick off an on in between. Fortunately it seems the kids are past it, as they’ve been healthy overall for the past few days. I’m praying that once my wife gets past this one we’ll be past all of the sickness mess!

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I previously shared with you that my wife and I decided to purchase her a replacement engagement ring through Amazon.com and we were anxiously awaiting its arrival. We were both excited to see how it would look, but at the same time nervous that it might not be what we expected. After all, we had paid a considerable amount of money for a ring we hadn’t even seen yet.

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Debtkid recently shared his dumbest purchase ever and is asking others to “fess up”. As further incentive, he’s giving away his dumbest purchase ever. Unfortunately, my dumbest purchase ever isn’t near as cheap or small. Sure wish it was…

Prelude to the dumbest purchase ever

I had never been camping before in my life until I met my wife. Her family had been camping for years and as I started seeing her more frequently and we began dating “steady” I started to go camping with her and her family to the beach. At first I really hated it. Not the camping so much, but the sand. I wasn’t much of a beach person at the time. I hated the fact that the sand just plain gets everywhere…and I mean everywhere. Funny though, after a few trips, I learned to love it and looked forward to the trips.

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