angelawatts.comwill you love me tomorrow?

I love when my views are validated. Signed in tonight to check on replies about jobs and saw this article about why it costs more to be poor. Everyone who is not worried about paying bills or how to manage to afford to live should read this twice and take it to heart.

And then write to their state politicians, the president, etc and implore them to fix it. There are more working poor out there than the country can handle and its not getting better despite the daily updates about what the president is doing for the economy.

The High Cost of Poverty-Why the Poor Pay More

So Easter is almost here. Well its about a week and some away. I’m looking forward to getting some decent deals on clearance with the .50/2 Cadbury or Reese’s eggs coupons Tim brought me home from Irving. The best I’ve gotten them so far is .39 for two. Not bad, but I bet I get them free on clearance.

We’re working on affording a ham. Nothing says yummy like a big spiral ham for easter and some deviled eggs. Kraft seems to want to help out with $5 off when you buy $20 worth of Kraft products. Cheese is on sale for 1.99 a bag which is nice. I’m pretty sure I can manage a good deal somehow. I always do.

The only thing almost as good as Mr Pibb finally hitting store shelves this far north is finding that Dr Pepper has made a new flavor-and it comes in regular not just diet. Introducing Dr Pepper Cherry. The packaging says its “smooth” and it is indeed a nice flavor of cherry overlapping the regular Dr Pepper we all know and love. So with a nice sale going on we picked up a case or 8 for $1.50 each as much for the soda as the $1 coupon inside. Said to come in both the 12oz cans and the 20oz bottle, the one Coke distributor we caught said he hadn’t stocked it yet because he mistook it for yet another new Coke Zero product.

Its coming…scarier than the New Year’s Resolutions you’ve been ignoring for almost a month now, tax time. A great hoopla of forms and numbers and governmental red tape. I’m not looking forward to it myself as i have to file a self-employment thingy for the first time (and hopefully claim part of our rent on a two bedroom) but there are worse things in life.

At least I have heard that this year there will be more people allowed to efile and turbotax is allowing more free usage than ever.

Say that three times fast. Or instead just get to the goods. This year finances are on everyone’s mind as are ways to get through the holidays without going broke. So I thought I’d share two of my favorite recipes for jarred beverage mixes. In a cute glass jar with a pretty tag they make great gifts.

Chai Mix

1 1/2 cup tea powder

2 cup powdered creamer

1/2 cup vanilla creamer

1 cup powdered sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 tsp ginger

1rsp cinnamon

1tsp ground cloves

1 tsp allspice

1tsp black pepper

1tsp cardamon

Blend together in food processor until well mixed. Tag should say :add 4 tsp in 6oz of hot water

Cappuccino Mix

2/3 cup instant coffee

1 cup powdered cream (flavors are a fun twist)

1 cup chocolate drink mix (Nesquik or Ovaltine work well)

1/2 cup white sugar

3/4 tsp cinnamon

3/8 tsp nutmeg

Pulse coffee until fine powder (rolling pin over ziploc bag works too) then add remaining ingredients and combine. Tag should say: Add 3 tblsp to 6oz hot water.

I normally buy the little folded tags and some jute string. They also look cute with a square of fabric in the lid of a mason jar and some ribbon.

Well there will be no buying a house right now, but we will still be moving. Can’t really get out of that one. We have it narrowed down to a closer apartment that doesn’t include utilities and a farther out one that is all-inclusive. Its a bit of a either/or as one has almost no yard, the other has a large yard.

Not a decision to be made lightly and yet thats exactly what we have to do. Its either done this weekend so we can start moving or the landlord is gonna put our stuff on the lawn (or try). Hopefully in six months or so we can have our credit cleared up further, some cash saved up with me working and be ready to get a home before the market really crashes or turns back up.

So tonight was bath time in the Watts household. The plan was to wash Cherokee first since he takes longer to dry. But heaven forbid you try to keep Boris from the tub when he thinks he might miss a bath. So he kept jumping in and shoving Cherokee around.

This shot above started out as Boris blocking Cherokee from being able to see me so he stuck his head under Bo’s stomach and shoved. As you can tell it was rather comical looking. Everyone got their tub time and a towel afterwards. At this very moment they are both napping while they finish drying off.

As the days start to get a bit chilly I’m hard pressed to get through the coffee in the freezer so that I can buy my favorite flavors, eggnog and spiced pumpkin. I have regular and Amarettoin there now and no room beside the hotdogs for anything else. So if I don’t find a way to go through the rest, and quickly, I will have to wait to drink the seasonal flavors even if I buy some.

I miss working the Fryeburg fair and getting my first taste of pumpkin spice coffee from my favorite vendor, the one who also sells the biggest and best whoopie pies. They always gave me a good discount. $2 for a pie and cup of coffee is like a slice of heaven when you’re dead tired and chilly from working since 5am. Its not quite the same when I drink my first cup at home without the smells of the animals and hay bales.

I heard about Kmarts Super Doubles on HCW, but originally wasn’t in the test market. The second round I decided to put in an e-mail to customer service asking if either of our two nearet stores was participating. Even driving out to Rochester, NH would be worth it if theywere doubling. Imagine my surprise when they said that both Rochester and Portsmouth, NH were participating. The promotion allows for the doubling of up to 4 like coupons of up to $2 (doubled to $4) up to 75 coupons per person per day.

So Saturday after my Living Green party I clipped coupons and prepared while Tim took a nap. We stopped at the steak house for dinner first to use our $10 gift card for a cheap meal. We probably spent around an hour at Kmart going up and down aisles looking for deals. Unfortunately there was only one can of Endust left but everything else was in stock on my list.

When I got to the register the gentleman checking me out was super nice and amazed by how much I saved as he’d seen others coupon shopping but none had saved as much as I had (which is sad as I didn’t try very hard). They had to manually double the coupons but he only missed one in all of them. I started with $161 and change and spent $30 and change. We got lots of goodies for the dogs and shampoo for my dad and other great stuff so it was well worth it. I look forward to the next one. Hopefully I do even better then.

Trying to buy a home these days is a headache and a half. Add to that the stress of having to move out as soon as possible and you can see where its been a rough couple weeks for us. We regularly run our credit reports and knew the one big minus came off 07/2008 so when we went for a pre-approval and were told it had popped back on in 08/2008 as a collection we were pissed. Just about that time we found a pretty decent home that with some fixing should be a great first home for us with room to expand later on.

We did some quick thinking, some begging and borrowing and just settled the debt for way under what they wanted, although we could have done better in my mind. With this we can go back for the pre-approval again. However in the meanwhile I found “our home” which we found originally listed for $94,500 listed three places for $74,500 which was what we were going to originally offer. So hypothetically spending the money to settle the debt may have saved us about 6 times that amount even if we pay the lower asking price. Since we intend to offer less (probably around $60k) we will have saved money by having to pay that debt and finding the information while we did it.

However the seller is taking forever to get back to our real estate agent. And in the meanwhile its getting chilly, there are frosts and our landlord is getting itchy. The list of fixes is pretty long and we’d love to be moved in by the end of October, a little over a month away. But with closing probably not being fast it may not happen and I don’t like moving in the snow. But hopefully by Christmas we can have our first holiday in our own home.