Earlier this week I signed my son up for High School Spring baseball.  First, it made me pause for a minute and think about how fast he’s growing up .  I started to think about the shenanigans I was involved in when I was 15……then I wanted to stop thinking about that, and quickly.  Second, it made me think about how when I signed up for sports in high school the process involved showing up at a meeting and getting the practice schedule.  Signing him up for baseball required a payment of $160.  Yikes.  I hope he makes the team, […] Read more »

My employer announced another round of layoffs yesterday.  Thankfully I am still employed, although it did have me thinking again about how fragile our finances are.  Even though we are making strides to improve our overall financial picture, if I lost my job as a software engineer, we’d be pretty screwed. I guess all I can do is keep making those improvements, and continue to be the best engineer I can be, constantly learning and growing as I go. The whole situation has me in a bit of a funk, so my fist pumps may not be as forceful as […] Read more »

We had a major snow storm hit Minnesota (and surrounding states) yesterday, with a blizzard warning still in effect as I write this.  Ten inches of wet, heavy snow was dumped on us over the last twenty four hours.  It’s not  record breaking, but it is a major storm.  Some surrounding neighborhoods lost power, but thankfully we did not.  It’s times like this that I’m extremely thankful for a home to keep me warm and safe.   As an added positive, being stuck at home gives me time to catch up on my blog post reading, such as my favorite posts […] Read more »

Happy Valentine’s Day, EOD Nation!  I had plans in place for Valentine’s day, but yesterday Vonnie initiated a conversation saying that she didn’t want us to make a big deal out of it.  We agreed that after she got off work at 12:30 (she doesn’t work at her afternoon job on Fridays) we would simply go out to lunch at her favorite restaurant.  We haven’t been there for awhile, as it’s a little pricey, and thought it would be a nice change of pace.  Plus, since it’s lunch it likely won’t be very busy.    No complaints from me, I hope […] Read more »

I didn’t love anyone like a blogger last week.  Instead I announced that Vonnie and I had made our final payment to our debt management program, which is GREAT news, but it has me itching for some fist pumping action. In other news, you’ll notice my emergency fund section has disappeared.  The reason is we utilized all the resources we had to knock off that credit card debt early.  But not to worry, in one week our emergency fund will be at the desired $1000.  Our first payment on our newly refinanced mortgage isn’t due until March 1st, but our […] Read more »

I’m out of town this weekend on our 3rd annual mid-winter vacation to the Wisconsin Dells.  We’re having a ton of fun at the indoor water parks during the day, and playing games at night.  It’s our way of presenting the middle finger to this whole Polar Vortex thing.   The AWESOME thing is, we saved up enough cash to have a healthy spending budget while we’re away.  We’re still evaluating each purchase to make sure it brings value to our vacation, but we have a little more liberty this vacation than we have in years past.  It took a little […] Read more »

It’s been a rather exciting week in the Pizel household. First,  we closed on our mortgage refinance last Friday and now have our mortgage nicely wrapped up in one fixed rate loan.  More on that adventure in an upcoming staff post bia My Personal Finance Journey.  Watch my twitter feed for when it goes live, or check here in next week’s Shameless Self Promotion section.  🙂 This was the first full week implementing the home grown weight loss plan I cooked up using lessons learned from getting our finances back on track.  As per the info in the newly renamed […] Read more »

Vonnie and I are refinancing our mortgage, and we close today!  The interesting thing is, given how the process works we skip our January mortgage payment. With that extra cash, we may have the ability to finish off our debt management program at the end of January instead of a month later.  The downside is that it could take some serious penny pinching and all of our reserves.  We’re not sure what path we’re going to take yet,  but stay tuned here on EOD for how this developing scenario unfolds. 🙂 Now, let’s get those fists pumping! Posts That Make […] Read more »

I didn’t lose any weight this week, but I didn’t gain either.  Not bad for a week that featured New Year’s Eve AND my 40th birthday. I have some added incentive and motivation now, however.  I’ve teamed up with another blogger in a bit of a weight loss competition.  He’s going to announce on his blog tomorrow, so I’ll let him go first – then I’ll give more details next week and we’ll do some cross linking.  I’m sure you’ll all cheer me on to victory! Time to get down to our Friday business.  The new year is off to […] Read more »

Well, it’s finally arrived.  Tomorrow is my birthday. My 40th birthday. The 40th birthday is traditionally when a person gets all that “over the hill” bullshit.  The thing is, I don’t feel old.  I’m in great physical shape, I like to have my fun, AND we’re just over two months away from being done with our debt management program.  My 40th year on earth will be a new beginning, a new chapter of my life free from the shackles of debt and poor spending habits. For me, life really does begin at 40. Now, let’s get down to business.  Get […] Read more »

We’re leaving town for the weekend for our usual holiday tour of Minnesota, but will be back home for Christmas Eve and Day.  We’re getting together with our neighbors for Christmas Eve dinner, and have planned something special.  We’re all chipping in and having prime rib and king crab legs.   I’ve never made prime rib, so I’m looking forward to the challenge.  It’s going to cost each family a bit of funds, but it’s going to be an awesome meal, and Christmas Eve is  a special occasion.  This is the sort of splurging that I can get into. The only […] Read more »

Like clockwork, it happened again.  The lamp for my LCD TV (which is our family’s primary TV) blew again.  This seems to happen every year right around Christmastime.  I checked my Amazon history, and sure enough the last bulb arrived on 12/23/2012.  These things are supposed to last YEARS – however this TV is known for blowing the bulbs.  At one point they did give owners of the TVs a sum of money to go buy a new TV…but you had to know about the offer and contact them.  We found out about it long after the program had ended.  […] Read more »

A lot of buzz surrounds the weekend after Thanksgiving as the official start to the holiday shopping season.  We did get my daughter’s laptop last weekend, but the bulk of our shopping will be done the next two weekends.  I also see a lot of friends on facebook talk about how close to done (or not) their shopping is.  This always confuses me, because we  actually spend very little time shopping for presents.  Most of the work is done at home.  We make our list of people, the gift(s), and where to purchase them.  At that point it’s just a […] Read more »

Happy Black Friday, EOD Nation!  I slept in until 8:30, which is HUGE for me since I normally get up at 4:30 or 5:00am.  A good night’s sleep feels way better than spending a bunch of money on things I don’t need.  I had a house full of family yesterday and had a fantastic Thanksgiving stuffing my face with food and other goodies and watching football. Speaking of goodies, we had a $100 Visa Gift Card Giveaway going on here an Enemy Of Debt the last few weeks, and it closed last night and it’s time to announce the winner: […] Read more »