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Yep – I’m a Joiner!
Is Lending Club More Risky Than the Stock Market?
I’m a little worried about investing in anything, period right now because the first time I did…when I finally took the plunge…I cashed out the stock after making a 100% return. I put it into another stock that I know within the next year or so will do the same thing.
Because, in my opinion, we’re going into a place where it’s going to be difficult to pick losers in the market. Simply because homes will be built again, the world will turn and no matter how poor any of us are, the sun will come up tomorrow.
I need to do an interview with a stock expert, I think. I hear pundits and read blogs about finances and the stock market and I just don’t understand. Unless you go into futures or weird crap like commodities, you can’t lose more than you put in – there aren’t any S&P500 thugs that come to your house with brass knuckles because you bought stock in a company that went out of business.
Hmmm…I wonder if there are any stock experts that talk to mommybloggers. Even though I don’t know if I’m a mommyblogger in anything but name only since my focuses are mostly on business growth, debt elimination, and investing. That’s not very mommyblog of me, is it? Except I am a mom that happens to blog.
But back to Lending Club…
One of my favorite charities is ModestNeeds.org – it’s a place that gives microloans to people that have (you guessed it) modest needs. A guy who needs his alternator fixed or he can’t drive to work – that sort of thing.
Lending Club works on kind of the same premise, except you don’t have to be totally philanthropic about it. Because you get a return on your investment of 9%-16%-ish … unless you don’t get paid back at all, in which case you lost your money.
Kind of like if a business goes out of business that you bought stock in.
So I’m not sure which way to go on this one. Any stock experts out there willing to help out a marketer-mom with a knack for picking decent stocks?
This Much Closer To Ditching My Vacuum!
My husband has finished the magical floating hardwood in the living room and the hallway.
When he gets back from checking on gram he will finish the tile in the playroom and the office (there are two half tiles needed in each room to butt up against the wood.)
So…yeah…almost done…will be 100% done by bedtime!
I’m excited about breaking out the Swiffer and not having to vacuum the living room anymore. To know at the end of every night I can hang out in the living room for five minutes with a Swiffer and the floor will be CLEAN. No stains. No matted, old, gross, trampled-down brown carpet.
The room looks bigger and brighter.
I can’t find my camera, but I will, and when I do I will add pictures 
For now, you can see the exact type and color of the flooring right over there.
Tomorrow? He starts on – and maybe even finishes – the back bathroom. It’s looking like the front bathroom will have to wait for next weekend or sometime Monday after his in-person interview. He’ll probably start after the interview to keep himself busy and not-crazy with wondering.
Renovation Time!
I don’t know if I mentioned we received a small inheritance from my great-grandmother’s passing.
So we spent some of it.
We are redoing the floors in the living room and the kitchen. Nothing super-nice. Laminate floating wood flooring, I think it’s called. I call it “stuff that’s easy to clean spills off that looks way better than my uber-stained carpet until it wears out and I have enough saved for real, professionally-installed hardwood.”
We also got the stuff from Menards to redo BOTH bathrooms. Pedestal sinks, WHITE toilets (they are currently robin’s egg blue in the front bathroom and pepto-pink in the back bathroom *yuck*) beautiful white cabinets with glass in the front, beautiful chrome fixtures for the sinks, new lighting fixtures, and paint. Oh, and new, inexpensive-but-pretty laminate peel-and-stick tile. And a new (totally awesome) shower head.
The bathrooms are crazy-small so every purchase was made with the idea of that small space in mind. Trying to use every illusion in the book and every space-saving measure to make it feel less claustrophobic in there!
All that, all brand new, only cost us less than two grand! To redo two bathrooms completely and redo the floor in the living room, kitchen, and small hallway.
We could have done it even cheaper, I know, but I like the fact that everything we bought has warranties because it was new. With the baby coming in a month or less, I did not have the time to start searching craigslist.
So the renovation schedule looks like this:
Today: Living room floor.
Tomorrow: Back bathroom (it’s smaller)
Sunday: Front bathroom
Monday: Hubby has his in-person two-and-a-half hour final interview…which is why we’re keeping him busy all weekend with projects…so he doesn’t go crazy worrying about the interview! (Two birds, one stone…)
Guess Who Went Downtown Today? (plus a credit and job hunting update)
Yep…that would be me.
I did a lunch and learn at Zócalo Group (where I am a telecommuting Senior Analyst) – it was really nice to be able to meet people up close and in person that I’ve been working with for almost a year now!
It seemed like a good plan. Randy went with me because I was a little scared to go alone and be wandering around downtown 36 weeks pregnant. Call me crazy, but I liked having my “assistant” with me. I felt safe and he was a whiz taking care of the Internet connection and working the websites while I did my presentation.
I also came up with a great way to involve mom bloggers with our brands that will circumvent the whole argument of should they be paid in cash or product or giveaways or whatnot. Here’s hoping they listen and at least attempt to implement, because I think what I proposed is going to be the future of how PR interacts with bloggers…
Really, my favorite part was coming home on the train…sitting across from my husband, our legs touching, listening to music on my phone. It was so relaxing and I felt so much love for him – it was kind of nauseating, really.
We came home to find out that his third and final and in person interview will be Monday at 10:45am. It will be two-and-a-half hours long and he’ll meet and talk with five people while he’s there. Talk about an intense interview!
There is a bit of irony involved in the job. You know we’ve been doing the Dave Ramsey program now for the last couple of years, right? Well, it seems that when you get interviewed for a company that basically IS representative of credit cards and credit lending you need to have some seriously kick-ass credit to GET the job.
Turns out there were a couple itty-bitty debts left on Randy’s credit report. Thanks to our emergency fund, we were able to make a couple calls, make a couple payments, and get a couple faxes in less than an hour that truly brought his debt load to zero (not including the on time payments to his student loan).
Seeing the irony? Following the “get out of debt” plan from Dave is allowing my husband to work for a company very closely tied to the credit industry. So awesome!
I reminded Randy not to mention Dave or that we follow his program during any of his interviews.
We don’t want them thinking he’s crazy now, do we?
(Please pray to your various deities for his interview to go well, k? I’d really love to be able to rock some serious stay-at-home-mom time without having to breastfeed with one arm and work on the keyboard with the other…if you’re an atheist, just cross your fingers for him!)
Spending Too Much But Not Really
So…we paid for a bunch of stuff in advance to buy ourselves some breathing room.
- We won’t owe anything to the martial arts class until next June or July (we paid for a year in advance and got a %20 discount)
- We paid the first semester of preschool for both girls and won’t owe anything until January (only got a $25 discount for paying in full, but better than nothing).
- Car insurance? Yep. Six months’ worth (over $100 savings for paying in full!!) paid out this month.
The key is to make sure we’re saving enough that we can keep up these bulk payments. I went a little crazy shopping for baby – this is the first baby where we had extra money I could use for shopping so it got a little out of control.
Now we are, as a family, trying to cut back and live like paupers again…no matter what is in the savings account. It’s so easy to get sucked into spending $40 here and $35 there – but WOW do those “not so big” purchases add up…and FAST! I know that’s a no-brainer thing to say, but it doesn’t matter how much you know something or people tell you something or you’re in agreement with something – when you see it, when you feel it – all added up in your bank statement it’s enough to take your breath away and you suddenly understand it on a whole new level.
I’m trying to come up with a plan to pay off the student loans. I want those gone *so* much I don’t even know how to put it into words.
I did start listening to Dave Ramsey again – just to keep my head in the game and eye on the prize and any other catchy phrases for not losing focus you can think of!
The savings account is nice, but reducing baseline expenses is where my personal stress reduction fairy lives. That’s why I’m doing the whole “going debt free” thing. It’s just what makes my psyche happy.
I hate having monthly bills. They just make me nervous.
Toll Free Panic Attack
Today the phone rang…when I checked the caller ID it was an 800 number and underneath just said, “Toll Free Call.”
I damn near freaked out completely trying to figure out if I knew who it was, or why I’d be getting a call from a toll free number. Finally, with my heart racing, I let it go to voicemail and then used Google to look up the number and find out who the heck had just called me.
You see, even though it’s been almost a year since we got rid of our consumer debt (we’re still rocking student loans and a mortgage) I still freak out when I see a toll free caller on my phone. That old “debt collector is calling” fear still lives somewhere inside of me, just waiting to burst out unexpectedly based on caller ID.
Turns out it was an automated message letting me know Lane Bryant was having a sale. I called back and opted out of the phone list, because even though I do shop there, I certainly don’t need to know, by phone, about every upcoming sale.
I’m not saying it’s a bad idea – I think that could be great for some people that like being called and “in the know” – I especially appreciate there was a way to opt out of the calls.
But how long do you think it takes for the panic to go away when I see that 800 number on the phone? Is that panic forever? It’s a shame that my brain has been trained to freak out and I didn’t realize it until now.
BlogHer, Cell Phones, Newborns and Shopping
I got even more stuff in the mail. I’m really excited about it.
I really feel prepared for the new baby. Just a few luxury items are left.
Really, only one luxury item is left on my list…a touch screen phone.
Sure, it’s a want and not a need…but if you were there at 3am while I was crying and breastfeeding and feeling so damn lonely I could die…you might cut me the slack my husband is more than willing to.
Since I already have (and would like to stay with) AT&T it’s looking like the iPhone is my best option. So now my big goal is to get that phone before BlogHer. It may or may not be possible (BlogHer starts Thursday!) but I’m going to try. Otherwise, I’ll have it before the baby comes and that will be more than good enough.
I’m on the third of five washes of the prefold diapers. I’m going to wash them four times and then store them in my closet – the final wash can happen closer to my due date just to make sure no dust or anything collects on those diapers before baby comes.
We did find the diaper hanger/holder thing from the attic and it’s washed and ready to hold some diapers!
I rebooted my laundry again this morning and that load has been folded and put away. As a bonus, Randy even put away a whole basket of kid clothes that were washed and just not put away from last week (aka before I took over laundry and the house.)
I know I’m not doing FlyLady the way it’s supposed to be done. My sink is not shiny. My shoes are not (and will never be) on and laced. But between the zones and missions and hotspots I think there is a system in there that will work wonderfully for our family. I’ve already started seeing glimmers of that system in just the past three days!
The shopping is done, the baby is gestating nicely and jumping around like a mad little monkey in my tummy, I’ll have a decision on the cell phone thing by the end of the day, and I’m looking forward to BlogHer…even though I wonder now and then why I’m going. Maybe it’s just so I can hook up with whatever Sesame Street character shows up this year.
I’ll be lucky if I can stay awake through the days!
My Fantasy Life: Homeschooling
One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is homeschooling.
Mostly because I’m insane.
But today I had the idea for a co-op homeschool where five families get together and all the kids go to one house for school each weekday. This gives all the parents a chance to homeschool while giving all the families four days without kids. Kind of a best of both worlds strategy. Plus, if you’re only homeschooling one day a week you have time and energy to get a really great lesson plan together instead of trying to scramble it all together over the weekend.
The problem that I see happening is that I want to make a cirriculum for my kids that I don’t think matches any I’ve currently seen out there.
Let’s take math for an example.
Kindergarten – Learn about fractions and become comfortable with them through basic cooking/baking. Learn the names of pieces of money and what they are used for. (You know, concept and recognition stuff, no hard math yet.)
First Grade - Explore using fractions through the use of money and get deeper into the topic of finance. Buying, selling, adding, subtracting, fractions. (All through hands on training and examples.)
Second Grade - Concepts like interest, compounding, and more advanced finance topics. Maybe take them to the Chicago Board of Trade. Not so they can learn specific things, but so they can be overwhelmed by the awesomeness of the world economy.
Now, don’t get me wrong. There would be some globalization thrown in there – my husband is the geography whiz in this house – but the basic premise is first introduce the concept so they are working with something familiar, THEN teach them how to manipulate the familiar concept they’ve learned about.
If you know of a pre-existing homeschooling cirriculum that does things this way, please email me and let me know. I’d rather not create workbooks for the next year in addition to all the other stuff I’m already doing.
Using grades is just a guideline. Since if we do homeschool we’d be doing it during summer too (why should learning stop??) this may still be too fast for the kids, or they may take to it like ducks to water and we’ll be past these sooner than I anticipate. That’s not something I can know until the kids are doing it and I can see how it’s going.
At the same time, I could also just put them in kindergarten and call it a day. We did move to this town for the schools, and they are fantastic schools.
Luckily, I have a year to figure it out!
