The Toyguy's Blog

I finally put my goals up on my sidebar. That will make it easier to keep track of. I actually have lots of little goals but they are not real specific and not totally financial so I don't bother putting those things up. Plus all my goals change a little from month to month depending on what life throws at me.

I also put a picture of myself up. Its me on a "good day" so look at our own risk. LOL. I don't plan to leave it up long. I think I'll put a different picture up like once a month or something.

I found a dime last last night. I've been putting any found money into a separate piggybank. I probably have about 80 cents in it. I'm going to save that money up to buy some little things that I want but don't want to spend my real money on.

Well thats all I got to write for now. Have to head for work soon anways. Have a great day!

Getting paid every 2 weeks seems like it takes forever sometimes to make progress.
After everthing else is accounted for, I'm adding $20 towards my extra mortgage payment for February. I'm still keeping slightly ahead of my goal for that so I'm happy with it. And paying myself back $70 for the car repairs from December. I now still owe myself $144. I think I'll budget that money to be paid off over 3 paychecks so I'll be done with that goal before the end of march.
I'll also have my Efund goal started by that time.
April is a 3 paycheck month for me so I count one of them as an extra. I'm going to divide that check up into several various funds to try to get the most impact out of it.

Nothing much else is new. I'm looking forward to this time next week. I'll be off friday and saturday to use up some vacation hours. I'll probably go see the "Fri. 13th" movie and I might go out for a fish dinner.

Had my yeary evaluation at work today. Those things always make me nervous even though i've always done well.
They pretty much said all the same basic things that they always say except for the first time in 10 years I only got a "Meets" as opposed to the "Exceeds".
I'm feeling a little down and disappointed. I know I deserve the exceeds just as much as I ever have. At the same time I really expected this eval
to be bad. Maybe even worse than it actually did go. Partly cause of the economy and partly cause my current manager has some kind of personal issues with me. So my raise at the end of February will be 40 cents. I think I would have got 60 cents with the exceeds.
It could have been worse I suppose.

Had to go to the BMV and get new license plates and a new drivers license card today. It cost $79.50. The good thing is I basically budget the amount over the course of the entire year so it was kinda like I really didn't spend anything.
My friend went with me and couldn't believe that I really budgeted all year to pay for stuff like that. He said "ohh but you don't really do that?????" and was incredibly shocked when I said yes I do.
He drives me crazy cause he is un-imployed right now and has no idea of how to budget at all. He always says how smart I am about money and such. But then he gets defensive and says I'm cheap and that he refuses to live poorly and that sort of thing. He told me he doesn't have enough money to buy anything at all for the next couple of weeks yet he went to the movies with me yesterday and today he spent about 8 bucks on pillowcases. I gave up a long time ago trying to help him understand some of his money troubles. But it still drives me crazy!


Ohhh one last note. The movie I saw was "Underworld, Rise of the Lycans" It was free for me cause I got a free ticket with my regal card from the last time I went to a movie. The movie was very good if you like vampires and such like I do. My only real gripe with the movie is that they filmed it as though the camera was glued to the actors. I kept saying to myself (to thE director)hey why don't you pull that camera back a bit so I can see whats going on. LOL.

McDonalds sent everyone around here a coupon for one of their MC-cafe things.
So I got a free Latte on my way to work. When I got to work they had free donuts so
I guess I did pretty good. I really don't drink coffee normally, but every once in awhile I like a cappacino or some kind of fancy flavored coffee.

I also found a quarter today. Recently I started putting any money I find into a special piggy bank. Its kind of my version of the $20 challenge. So far I have about 75 cents in it. I usually find quite a bit of money but haven't found as much lately. I think people are holding onto their money tighter these days.

Cashed paycheck today and made a little more progress on my goals. I could do better if I worked a normal 40 hours a week or God forbid a little overtime. But things are slow at work and I'm very lucky
if I can get about 38 hours a week.

Anyways, put $60 towards my extra mortgage payment. I think I'm about $40 ahead of what I need for this month on that one cause I'm only actually paying $100 extra a month right now no matter how much I can save over that.

And I paid myself back another $50 for the car repairs so now I'm down to $214 I still owe myself.

I only work less than 36 hours this week so the next paycheck (which I get paid every 2 weeks) wont get me too far on my goals either but I am making baby
steps forward. At least I am completely debt free other than my mortgage and regular utility bills. And I plan on having my mortgage paid off in less than 3 years from now. Can't wait for that!

Just thought some of you may be interested in this website. Its a government site that you can encourage what things you want Obama to focus on during his office.

It ranges from things to help the economy to high speed trains, to UFO disclosure. Soon the most popular ideas will be put into a book that the Obama Whitehouse will see and hopefully use.

{url}http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov/{url}

I'm going to start posting updates on when I accomplish anything from my 2009 goals. I'm hoping this will help me stay focused and maybe do better than planned.
Also it will help me keep track of what I'm doing.

Today was payday and I did some calculating so I completed the goal of paying myself back the $70 for a car battery.
I also paid myself back $80 from the other car repairs I had. So now I still owe myself $264 for that.

I also put some money from my check ($50) towards the extra Principal on my house. That I'll just add up and send in when I pay my house payment of course. Basically I'm only sending in 100 extra per month but the more I can save towards that goal will help me through the leaner months ahead.

I was leaving a friend's house this evening and failed to notice it was freezing rain. I fell down the steps and hit the back of my head pretty hard. Fortunately my head is very hard and I'm ok. Then being a bit rattled and holding on to my car door not to fall down again I ended up locking myself out of my car while it was running. AAA came to my rescue so no serious harm done.
Man I haven't seen it so icy out in ages.
Maybe the blow to my head knocked some sense in to me. LOL. Not likely.
Anyways I decided to finally post my 2009
goals.

1) Pay myself back (into my checking account) the money I spent on some recent car repairs. The total is $344 but I've already paid myself a little of that back.

2) Also pay muself back for a car battery I had to buy. (about $70)

3)Add $400 to what I have in my E-Fund. That will put it over 2000 which is simply the best I can do for now. My eventual goal is still 12,000 for the EFund.

4) Hold off on all my smaller "funds" that I'm saving for just temporarily until I get the other more important things taken care of.

5)Continue saving for a total of $4000 to put in 2009 IRA. I'm not sure right now exactly whats in it but probably only half way there right now.

6) Put $4000 into 2009 IRA. Use money from regular savings to make up anu difference from goal number 5.

7) Start saving $3000 towards 2010 IRA.

8)Try to have my first ever yard sale around May.
9) Go camping and canoeing with my nephew and his son at least once. I will go camping in some way or another at least 3 times.

10)Try to take a real vacation this year that I wasn't able to do last year. Possibly Costa Rica around July or August.

11) Pay at least $100 extra on Mortage principal every month. I'm trying to pay off my house within nthe next 3 years.

12) keep using Quicken. I really didn't do as good with this one last year as I had hoped but I did improve on tracking my accounts and will continue to work on it.

Thats all of my goals for now. I plan on adding or tweaking them as I need to.


I feel I did good on my 2008 goals even though they were not as detailed as most of yours. I tried to be a little bit more specific this year.
I wish us all a great 2009.

Pinecone sent me a link cause they need more membrs. Probably a lot of people have left them since they don't pay as much as they used to. It says only one person per hoousehold can sign up.

http://www.pineconeresearch.com/signup/ds530Referral1.asp

Well last night I tried ordering some absithe like we were discussing in Whitestripes blog. But after I filled out the order form it said that they can not deliver the product to Ohio.
Sheeesh.
So i'm giving up on that notion for now. I guess the good news is that I save about 70 dollars.
I don't know whats wrong with Ohio anyway. Not only does it prohibit something fairly harmless like Absinthe but its also the only state in the area that prohibits gambling casinos. If we were truely so moral I don't think they would be shipping bus loads of Ohioans to the 5 states surrounding us to gamble.

Anyways in better news, I once again found a dollar yesterday. I really should be adding these up. I've found a lot of money lately.
Today I was off work but I went in to our
christmas party. Its just basically a free dinner so I was happy with it.

I got a email from one of my online bill pays that said I might have got a virus from their site. It turned out to be a legitimate letter so I called the number. It wasn't worth the effort cause the just told me it didn't seem like I got the virus and didn't really do anything for me. I just scanned my computer on my own now and did find a trojan. The antivirus found it and deleteted it so hopefully it wont be a further problem.

Thats all i got for now. I haven't had time to read everyones blogs but I've been trying to get to as many as possible.

On one of my last posts I mis-spoke. I said that I was now getting 40 hours a week at work again. When I went in that day I found out I was only scheduled for 34 hours that week. I don't know what happened. The good news is that my boss left me work a few extra hours so it wasn't too bad. Still its a shame working in a store thats doing fairly well and working in the toy department at the Christmas season and I can't have my crumby 40 hours a week.

Anyways I found another dollar a couple days ago. My luck on finding money is still holding pretty well.

I also got a Pinecone check waiting to go to the bank and another one should be on its way. I was putting all survey money into my travel fund. But then I got sloppy and started dividing it into various other accounts. I have to start
putting all Pinecone money back into travel again. It added up kinda fast and it gave me initiative. I'm hoping I can go to Costa Rica in 2009 or someplace thats far off and exciting. I have enough money in my fund to pay for it already so its not totally a financial decision.

Had to pay my dentist about 21 dollars today from my last visit. I thought I paid them already but actually had forgot until I received a second bill from them. So I took care of that right away.

One of my credit cards was closed by Chase. I had 2 cards from them that are very similar. The one I use a lot and get points from. The second one I just kept as an emergency type thing in case I needed it. They asked me once why I didn't use the second card and I explained it to them. At that time they said it was fine and told me I could just save it for emergencies. They also upped the credit limit by a lot on the card that I do use. So now I got a letter from them closing the account because of lack of use. Ohh well it seems like more of a loss to them than for me. I just wonder if it hurts my credit rating. Even if it does I have no plans on buying anything major in the near future and my last credit score was 805 so I really don't care.

Everyone have a good week and a very happy Thanksgiving.

Haven't had anything worthwhile to write about. I guess I'm pretty boring or a more positive way of looking at it is that I'm holding my own financially.

I found $6 cash last night. There for awhile I was finding a lot of money then I went through a dry spell. The extra little cash comes in very handy.

On an earlier post I mentioned that everyone in my store has to work this Thanksgiving. But thats changed. People that volunteeered for it are working and the rest of us have off. I really didn't care too much. I'll get paid for the day anyways. My hours seem to finally be improving too. For a long time my hours
were cut down and that hurt a lot. I managed OK but it made it impossible to get ahead. I'm just worried about after the holidays. We usually get hours cut quite a bit about January 3rd anyways. But this year with the recession and everthing it could be really bad.

I don't spend much on Christmas. I think its a wonderful holiday but I also have "issues" about it. Might be too many issues to explain here. But for one thing I don't consider myself a Christian. I'm not sure what I am but I don't believe there is such a thing as a messiah or anything like that so I feel a little hypocritical about liking Christmas.
Also the spending on Christmas has got out of hand and I just can't afford to play into that.

I give all my young nephews and nieces a small gift card. I mail Christmas cards to various friends and family. And last year I bought a small gift for one friend and a gift for my sister. So I only spent somewhere in the area of $120 total for everyone. I feel a little bad that I don't do more but I think considering my income and the fact that I don't really believe in the roots of the holiday that I do plenty. The funny thing is that I really do like Christmas even with my issues. I have fond memories from when I was little.

Well I ran out of stuff to write about for now and I hope I didn't offend anyone that might have read my post. On some things like politics and religion I can be a bit controversial. I try to tone myself down but I'm not one to hide what I believe in. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Went to the Democrats Election party tonight. Everyone was in so much happier mood than the last election. Plus I got free food. :-)

A couple weeks ago someone stole my yard sign for President. I was sooo mad. I couldn't get a replacement sign so I made one of my own. I have to admit it was funny tonight when I got home cause someone stole my sign again, but this time they replaced it with a McCain sign.
I am in too good of a mood to get very angry and it was funny.

My vacation is officially over tonight.
Its going to feel strange going in to work tomorrow after 2 weeks off. I was actually supposed to be off one more day but they made some kind of mistake. I'll get an extra day of pay this way so it worked out pretty good for me. I can use the extra money.

Well regardless of the election I hope things start getting better for everyone.
Life is still going to be rough for many of us for a good while but I feel tonight like there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Happy Halloween everyone.

Last night I finally went to the other "Crybaby Bridge" that I was wanting to see. Didn't see any ghosts or anything, but it was a cool spooky place in the middle of no where. It was really weird how they blocked the road off there. For some reason whoever runs things don't want anyone in the area after a certain date in the fall. So the road is blocked off with about a ton of dirt on both ends. You can get to the bridge but you can't get past it. I was tempted to walk but they have pretty stern warnings about trespassing. It just adds to the mystery I suppose.

Didn't do a whole lot of anything today but I feel pretty good overall how the day went. First of all I didn't spend any money at all today. Yay! I rarely ever ever ever have a complete No Spend Day.

I made chili today. I'm not a great cook but it was pretty tasty.
I spent most of the day doing my "Halloween Movie Marathon". My nephew and my sister even came over and watched some movies with me which was nice. "Boogyman" was probably the best and most scary movie I watched. The worst (IMO) was "Shadow of the Vampire". I just didn't like that one. I planned on watching the original "Night of the Living Dead" on Halloween night. But I ended up watching it today. I'll probably watch it over again anyways. Now, dare I make a terrible confession?
I was thinking how I've watched that movie way too many times. I honestly couldn't even give an accurate number. But I was thinking today how the first time I watched it was on Halloween night about 24 years ago. Since then I've watched it at least once a year. And a number random times in between.
I also did do some necessary cleaning today. Mopped my kitchen and bathroom, and vacuumed, etc. So I had a simple, non-eventful but decent day.

And not the kind I would like to do.

I turned my heat on about 11 am today. Its set very low but its on. I guess that cold front came in and I just couldn't handle the temp in my house under 50 degrees. So please mark me down for Oct.
27 on your heat contest Fern. I put up a good fight but was no match for the Californians.

I watched several of my horror movies last night. I watched "The Equinox",
"The Nurse", and "Howling 4".
Horror movies don't usually bother me at all. And these ones were pretty mild really. But something must have got to me last night. I had a strange dream this morning about an amusement park and a guy
trying to kill me in my garage. I think he was trying to make bacon out of me.
I think it was the cold getting to me. Or maybe I was getting hungry for some bacon. LOL.

Well I started vacation on Saturday. Pretty boring truth be told. But I'm getting paid and not at work, so it can't be all bad.

I went to a corn maze thing this evening. Then took a little hike ( about 4 miles total)through a park. The corn maze was nice but cost $5 and wasn't really worth it. The walk through the park was free and very nice. Walking in the woods kind of clears my head. I should do it a lot more than I do.

If anyone is in, around, or visiting Ohio, the Cuyahoga Valley National Park is a wonderful place you should check out.

Tonight I'm half watching some movie on TV. I have no idea what it is but its fairly good. Then I'm going to watch some
horror movies on DVDs. I do a little Halloween movie marathon every year and try to watch as many scary movies as I can throughout October. I know I'm silly or just plain odd. Might be why my romantic life is as dead as a doorknob.

I've recovered well from the injury that I had at work.
The stiches in my head came out last week and I just have a very slight scar. I got a statement for what it cost my employer. It was $679. Unbelievable.

Still no heat turned on here. I might turn it on tommorrow but it depends if the cold front comes through that I saw on the news. Well thats all I got for now.

I haven't been posting much again but I'm still reading your blogs and still around. I just haven't had much interesting to write about. I don't really get as worked up about the stock market as everyone else. I mean it does upset me terribly that I've lost thousands of dollars over the last few years or so. To be honest I don't even keep track of it. I look at my statements to make sure of any apparant mistakes but otherwise I don't bother with it. I never put a huge ammount of money into stocks and basically I "let it ride".
I have been tring to tweek things and make needed adjustments lately. It just seems like the right thing to do. But after I make my little tweeks I intend on going back to my usual of "letting it ride". I have quite awhile before I can retire. And I know things will pretty much work themselves out. So thats my Bart Simpson slacker approach to finances. LOL.

Still no heat here. I'm a very stubborn slacker.

I tried making a few changes on my companies 401K and profit sharing investments and didn't get very far. They have it set up so complicated that I just couldn't do it. I talked to a customer service guy on the phone and he wasn't much help.
I did do one thing but I'm not sure if it was a wise idea. I actually upped the amount I'm putting into my 401k by 1 percent. I figure its a small difference but might as well buy a little more stock while things are low.
I'll take my time with the other changes I wanted to do.

I got hit in the head at work Weds. and had to go to the hospital. Got 6 stiches and a tetanus shot. There goes the modeling career I was planning on. :-)
It cost my company a lot of money for a fairly minor accident. They not only had to pay for the emergency room visit and the shot, but they also make you take a drug test if you get injured. Waste of money completely but if they want to waste it ohh well.

Nothing much else new here. I did buy gas at $2.95 a gallon today. That was kinda nice in comparison to what it has been.

I had a meeting with the investment guy at my bank today. I have put off talking with them for a very long time and figured
its time to be a little more active in my finances with the way the economy is right now.
He gave me some good basic advice that wasn't anything too drastic for me. But he also said that next time we talk that I should consider transfering the money from my IRA CD's to Annuities. What he explained to me made sense and he didn't pressure me into anything.
BUT, I do not know anything about annuities and if they are good for me or not. I seem to recall someone else on here that said annuities are a bad investment. If anyone on here has a recomendation or common sense advice I'd appreciate it. I like my Cd's but they are hardly earning anything right now. I definately want the money in something thats considered safe and conservative.
But I think I can do better than interest rates on CDs.


On a different note. Still no heat used here. I'm still in Fern's No Heat Contest! Its warmed back up a little so I should ok for awhile yet.

I also went to the dentist yesterday for a checkup. "Look MA, No Cavities".

Since the store I work for is becoming a "Super" store I can pretty much expect to work every holiday from now on. Even though the construction is in progress and will take close to a year to complete we were already told we have to work on Thansgiving day this year and will be going to be open 24 hours (I think the day after Thanksgiving).
So I probably will be working on most holidays from now on.
Halloween even though its not truely a holiday is actually my favorite. I'm off for that for sure cause I'll be on vacation. I think I've only had to work on 1 halloween in over the last 15 years or longer. I know I'm weird. :-)

In some good news my nephew managed to fix my washing machine last night. Its still old and basically could break down anytime but for right now its working very well again. Yay! Pretty much all that was wrong with it is that the motor came loose and shifted out of place. He pushed the motor back where it belonged and tightened it up. So at least for now I saved about $250 cost of buying a brand new washer.

The washer being fixed was in itself enough to make for a good Tuesday. But I also enjoyed playing Paranormal(more like abnormal) investigator last night. There are lots and lots os stories about "crybaby bridges" and about 42 such bridges just here in Ohio. So a friend and I went to one last night close to midnight. We found the bridge and the haunted church next to the bridge. No we didn't see or hear any ghosts. But it spooky fun and the church looks haunted.
There is a better crybaby bridge that I'm going to go to closer to Halloween. I'll let you know when I do it and what I see or hear. If I survive.

OK PROBABLY NOT!

But anyways,I was watching TV at my friends place a couple of weeks ago and there was show simlar to Mythbusters where a group of nerdy looking people were testing various theories. They were sort of like Urban legends and they were testing to see if they were true or not.
Sorry I don't know the name of the show but there are a few similar shows.
Supposdly there is one of these theories that a human can't eat 6 soda crackers in one minute without water. On the show they tried and failed. But they were so close that they said they believe someone could do it.
So the other day I bought some crackers and did the test with my friend. He failed miserably on his first try but almost did it on his second try.
I tried it once and SUCCEEEDED. Yes I am the one that the TV show was talking about when they said they were sure that someone could do it. Thats why maybe I'm special.

I forgot to mention in my last entry that
I got my Arbitron radio survey a couple days ago and I'm starting it today. I just have to write down on a little diary every time I listen to something on the radio. I haven't been listening to much radio lately so I wont be writing very much for them.
Its not exactly a paid survey but they gave me $4 as a "gift". I have a feeling they will send me another buck or 2 once I complete and send my diary in.

Sheesh, it seems like something is always going wrong. I've had so many roof problems with my house. I at least finally found out exactly what the problem is and I'm slowly getting it fixed. But now my washer just decided to die. I thought the last couple of times I used it that it sounded different. It was working fine but was making sort of a grinding sound. So last night when I went to wash cloths it just wouldn't run.

I'm going to see if I or a friend of mine can fix it. Hopefully it just needs a belt or something.


In other news. I went to the fencing demonstration I had mentioned in my last post. It was just a simple demonstration to get people interested in the sport. The guy has an Epee class that I'd love to sign up for. Its pretty reasonable cost wise. But there are (as usual) a couple problems with it.
1) Its on Saturday mornings. I'm not a morning person and no one can convince me to be one. :-)Besides I work Saturday evenings which makes it more difficult.
2) Its location is in my general area but its still a fairly long distance drive. With gas prices I'm trying not to drive very far and don't really want to add to my gas budget.
3) With having to do so much maintenance on my house and the possibility of replacing my washer I don't want to spend anything on somethinng that isn't neccesary.

The class starts in a few weeks so I have some time to see how things go with my washer and other stuff before I make a final decision. I might talk myself into it yet.

Well I ate and just caught up with my SA blog reading. Thats about it for today. LOL.
This evening I'm going to a lecture/demonstration of Fencing at the library. I took fencing for a couple of years but its still interesting to me.
If I ever start taking a class on fencing again I'd pretty much have to start all over from the beginning.

Nothing to report financially right now.

Well off to see if I can find something to do for awhile.

Got my quarterly bonus with my paycheck today. An extra 364 dollars.
I most likely wont get another bonus till
about this time next year because our store is being turned into a supercenter and the construction is hurting sales. I can hope though. The nice thing is that when the bonus will be quite a bit bigger when the supercenter is all finished.

I usually use bonus money towards my vacation fund but I have it pretty well funded for right now and I have more important things to put the money towards.
I decided that I really should have had my home already paid off or closer to being paid off than it is. So I'm going to
put a lot more effort into getting rid of the mortgage. Thats always been one of my goals but it seemed like I had lots of time. Time has a way of catching up with you and passing you by.
I'm also saving up what I can for next years IRA contribution which I want to put in $4000. There are a lot of other things that I would like to save up or spend money on too, but the Mortgage and the IRA are my priorities.

Ohh I also got FREE cake at work today so I'm happy.

I haven't really had much to report financially lately. Thats a good thing though. I was a bit busy the last few days and didn't get to read these blogs. Last night I played catch up and read a condensed version on what I had missed.
I'm a little bit addicted to reading everyone elses blogs so I hate when I don't get to.

Anyways last night I had to pay my verizOn phone bill. Their website is the worst anyway in my opinion. I have dial up and with all the other bill pay sites I don't have much of any trouble. But with Verizon it always takes me a long time. Its very slow. Well last night it would make me wait seemingly FOREVER then it would say my password was no good or the site was having problems. Finally I got through and they had re-vamped their security measures. So I had to answer questions and wait for a special number to come in my email. Eventually I was able to pay my bill but it sure wasn't easy. I'm glad all the other online bill sites work so well. I used to just go pay it in person if it wouldn't work online but they closed all the human places down. Its a little sad sign of our times I think. One more step to no human contact at all. Other my work I really could go my entire life without actually speaking to any other live human being.
No wonder its so hard meeting people and forming relationships.

Well that was just a few thoughts I had.
The good news is that I did pay my bill on time. And usually online bill pay works beautifully. So life is good.

I got a letter from some radio survey thing in my mail today. I think its called Arbitron. They want me to do a neilson type survey of how I listen to the radio. I might sign up for it but
I have to look at their website and see
how much work it is first. Still, it might be fun. Anyway the good thing is that they included a dollar bill in the
letter as a gift.

I'm off monday but not because of it being a holiday. Just cause its my regular day off. But I still get paid for the holiday so that extra days pay will
be very nice. Usually they give me an extra day off so they can save some money.

Well not really the house payment itself. Thats pretty reasonable and at a fixed rate. But taxes and insurance and all those good things that are added to my mortgage are going through the roof.
The amount I pay just got raised for October by about 60 bucks.

Thats going to hurt the budget just a little. But not so bad. I was planning on adding more to my payment anyways so I can pay my house off a lot sooner. So that extra 60 just cuts into my plans a little. Taxes in general are going crazy around here and they always want more. I don't even mind paying taxes really at all. I just want them to be at a reasonable rate and I want to feel like we get our moneys worth from them.