Gather Little by Little

I give the readers of Gather Little by Little a chance to ask me anything. The only real rule is that I can decline to answer. I’ll do my best to answer as many questions as I can though. Have a question you would like answered? Just drop me a line!

Wendy asks:

We are selling a commercial property that we own with a bunch of family
members. The closing is set for early January, to maximize tax benefits. My
husband and I expect to receive approx $330,000 after taxes from the sale.

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Those of you that have been reading Gather Little by Little for a while know that I’m a planner. I’m not a long term planner, but when I know something is coming up I work out all of the details ahead of time, and in particular the financial aspects of it. I generally layout a spreadsheet listing out all of the expected costs and how much I think each of those line items are going to be. Right next to that I layout where the money is going to come from.

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I got the upsetting news yesterday that a friend and co-worker where I worked died over the weekend. He began having major back pain early in the week but held off going to the doctor. His wife finally convinced him to go on Saturday where he was diagnosed with a major infection that had spread throughout his body. The doctors did what they could, but he died at 6:40pm on Sunday evening. He left behind his wife, a teenage daughter and teenage son, his mother, father, and brother.

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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.

Now that we’re getting settled into the new house we’ve begun to explore the area a bit and locate the various stores and restaurants, unfortunately the closest grocery store is 20 minutes away as is the closest decent hardware/home store. The least expensive grocery store is 25 minutes away.

We’ve been spoiled. In our old home, we were 5 minutes from three different grocery stores and about 10 minutes to two diffeent hardware/home stores. When we decided we needed something, we just hoped in the car real quick and went and got.

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The following is a guest article from Elizabeth who blogs about how and where she spends her money, but includes thoughts on why she spends her money the way she does. if you enjoy what you read below, please head over and subscribe to her blog either via RSS feed or email.

In April of this year, I made a pretty hefty (and somewhat risky) investment in shaving equipment for The Son. A few days later, I dropped another chunk of change on shaving products. Then, about a week later, I followed up with a rather thorough post explaining my reasoning and research behind the purchases.

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Four Pillars from Quest for Four Pillars caught me online the other day and asked me: How do you know when to change your tires? He knew I had a huge interest in cars and some knowledge about them. I of course replied and told him about tread wear indicators. We both thought that an article describing how to know when to replace the various items on your car might be of interest.

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No more than a few hours after Gather Little by Little came up it went down again. Dreamhost resolved the initial application server problem, but then a problem occurred with the database server that caused the site to be down all day yesterday. After waiting most of the day for a reply I finally just gave up on them and moved Gather Little by Little to another server. They did finally reply stating that the problem was that I had an old version of software. What’s interesting about this is that it was software I pay them to maintain that was out of date.

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As the holiday season approaches, I begin to think about wonderful music, good food, colorful lights, family and friends, and debt. Yes debt. The holiday season was one of the times in the past where I unfortunately had a tendency to significantly increase the balance on my credit cards.

I would never plan ahead for Christmas and buy my presents all at the last minute and using a credit card. Each year I would thoroughly convince myself that I would just pay it off quickly after the first the year. Each year I would never due that. I would pay the minimum payments and always find some excuse on how to spend the extra money. As a consequence, each month my debt would grow significantly due to the interest and continued use of the cards.

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Just a reminder that I’m moving and won’t be posting for few days. Most likely until not until Monday the 27th and that’s assuming my DSL connection gets hooked up as promised. If for some reason I’m not back by Monday, hang in there I’ll be back soon and hopefully give you an update on how our move went and include some pictures!

If you just can’t wait that long (and you can’t right???) read back through my archives. There’s lots of really great articles in there…or at least I think so. Here are just a few:

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As I sit here in my favorite easy chair, typing away on my laptop in the cool quiet morning, I’m surrounded by cardboard. All of our belongings are safely packed away in various sized cardboard boxes. Our shelves are bare, cabinets empty, and surprisingly there are no toys on the floor. It’s all so weird. We’ve lived in this house for more than 11 years. We’ve brought 4 of our 6 children home to this house to raise them. We’ve watched them grow here inside these walls. Over those 11 years, this physical wooden box we call a house has managed to become a part of us. A place of safety and security. A place of laughter, sadness, of good times and bad.

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