With a loud Whoosh, our typical fall schedule arrived this week. Football season started for my 13 year old this week. He’s currently playing in Pop Warner but is also planning on trying out for the school team next week as well. The school has been running 2 hour conditioning sessions each day this week from 3:45 – 5:45. Following that, he then goes directly to his Pop Warner team practice which is from 6-8:00 3 nights a week.
The roofers should finish up installing the new roof on our current home today. It’s made a huge improvement to the look of our home. I didn’t realize how bad our roof was until I came home from work and saw the new one. Wow!
Which reminds me. We ended up hiring a painting company to repair the chimney, fix all of the rotten wood, and paint the house. I shopped around, received several bids and then selected the company I was comfortable with doing the work. I challenged their offer and practiced some negotiating tactics. I saved $1000.00 off the initial bid. Here’s the best part…the bid was low enough that we didn’t need to borrow any money! We were able to pay off the entire repair with our emergency fund!
Failure number 2 occurred last week in our house hunting adventure. I sure hope this isn’t a sign of things to come. I know many of you have been following our progress and wanted to provide you with an update.
The first house, the foreclosure, didn’t work out as the selling agent just stopped returning our calls. I really think this was a blessing in disguise, as the more I’ve thought about the house, the worse it was.
Ever heard of a bump key? If not, you need to. A bump key is a normal house key that fits your lock but has a special series of cuts. If you put the key in the lock and tap it with a screwdriver while turning then the lock will open. Basically, the tap on the key bumps the pins in the lock exposing a split second when everything lines up and the lock will open. Bump keys work on deadbolt and doorknob locks. They are cheap and easy to obtain. They literally cost just a few dollars on the internet. They are so simple to use even children can master this new break-in technique.
We went on vacation a few weeks ago to the North Carolina mountains. It was a very frugal vacation in that we camped on our in-laws land and really didn’t go anywhere nor did we spend much money. My wife and I have been visiting the mountains of North Carolina since before we were married. I fell in love with them the first time I visited Biltmore house and then my wife and I have some very fond memories of hiking in Chimney Rock park when we were first married.
One of the things you learn pretty quick as a blogger is the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Getting your pages ranked high on search engine result pages can bring very large amounts of traffic. That traffic turns into potential new readers and commentators. Search engine visitors are also the visitors most likely to click on your ads as well. While I don’t make a great deal here on Gather Little by Little, it does pay the hosting fees, compensates me for the time I spend writing, and supplements my income some.
Photo by: msprague
We returned on Wednesday from a wonderful week long trip in the North Carolina mountains. We didn’t visit anywhere special, but spent all of our time resting, relaxing, reading, exploring and playing with our kids. We got a little more rain than we would have liked, but our Swiss Gear tent held up great and kept us nice and dry. I can’t recommend Swiss Gear products enough!
I want to take a second and thank the bloggers who wrote some excellent guest posts for me while I was away: rocket from Rocket Finance, FrugalDad, and That One Caveman from One CavemanÂ’s Financial Journey. Also, thanks to Lynnae from Being Frugal who kept an eye on my blog while I was away.
Photo by: JamesWatkins
As you read this, I am in the NC Mountains at around 4,000 feet above sea level. No computer, no cell phone reception. Just peace and quiet. If you live in the US, IÂ hope you’re enjoying the Fourth of July holiday and maybe eating some great food with family and friends.
Since I can’t read all of the great articles from around the personal finance blogosphere, I thought I do a little retro-Gather Little by Little Friday Gathering.
Here are my favorite posts for the past 1 year of Gather Little by Little:
Photo by:Point-Shoot-Edit
My wife and I were having a discussion last night about our house. As many of you know, we’ve been casually looking around for another home. We’re looking to move out in the country in a house with some land. I say we’ve been casually looking, as we can’t really sell our house right now. We have a whole list of things that need to be done before its ready to sell: repainting, repairing some interior molding, new carpet, and some other minor things. The big problem is the major items on the outside.
Photo by Hamed Saber
I was thinking this week that I owe you updates on a couple of things: How things turned out when by debit card was stolen and what happened to the house we were contemplating buying.
Late last year, I wrote about a terrible experience we had when my debit card was stolen and used by some low down thief. I’ve followed up with my bank a few times, and while they did recover some of their money from the merchants involved, the remaining amount was written off. What did surprise me is that the bank made very little effort to track down the thief. I was told they generally leave that to the merchant or customer. Customer? Wait, was I supposed to do something?
