Monday’s post hosted a review and giveaway of Todd Tresidder’s  book, How Much Money Do I Need To Retire and it’s time to announce the winner.  Gina Helton, come on down, you’ve won!  Expect an email from me in the near future to finalize delivery of the book to you.  Congratulations to Gina, and thank you to everyone who entered. This weekend we’ll be celebrating my daughter’s twelfth birthday (which is officially on Monday).  Is it me, or does there seem to be less pressure on birthdays as kids get older?   This year she wants to get together with her […] Read more »

Do you want to hear someone’s idea of a cruel joke?  I’ve been soaking in the Florida sun for the last week, and we begin our road trip back to Minnesota tomorrow.  Taking place this very minute in Minnesota is a late season major snow storm dumping over a foot of snow in some parts of the state. Cruel. Luckily my city will only get a few inches….and I’m actually hoping it melts off by the time I get home Sunday evening. While on vacation, Vonnie and I managed to stay right on top of our finances.  I wanted to […] Read more »

Greetings from Bloomington, Illinois!  My family and I are at the end of our first day of driving down to Florida (from Minnesota) for a family Spring Break Vacation.  It’s our first vacation since we exited our DMP.  Sounds like a blog post in the making, huh? I’m sitting at the desk in our hotel room, it’s almost midnight, and the rest of my family is sleeping.  But I had to dig into all my favorite blogs and get my fist pumps ready for ya’ all.  That’s the kind of love I have for the EOD nation. Before we get […] Read more »

This weekend I’ve got one of my favorite neighborhood activities on tap – Poker Night!  There is a group of about 8 of us (not everyone can make it all the time) that get together once a month to play Texas Hold ‘Em.  I usually buy in with $20 worth of chips, and play until it’s gone, or until midnight whichever comes first.  Whether I win a few bucks, lose it all, or somewhere in between, it’s always a fun and inexpensive night with the guys. It’s so much fun that it makes me wanna fist pump, which coincidentally is […] Read more »

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 »