The snow started around 11 and by 11:45 a.m i was on my way home from work.

It's expected to snow all night and end around 7 a.m. About 10 inches expected. I will work from home tomorrow on my laptop.

I don't want to shovel during the workday, but I will try to get some done early a.m. and then again at lunchtime. I'll have to finish it tomorrow night in the dark, but I can turn the garage lights on at least.

I met my spend requirement ($750) for my Discover card, so am just waiting for them to issue the $150 credit.

I caved and purchased 100 gallons of heating oil at $3.799, the highest I've ever paid for heating oil in 18 years. I went with a company that has a 100-gallon requirement rather than 150; I'm betting the extra .05 a gallon I'm paying will be worth it because I'll be able to buy the next 50 gallons at a significantly lower price sometime in March.

Yesterday I made a cauliflower leek soup. It was a little watery. I have a much better recipe that uses cheddar cheese, but I'm really trying to go vegetarian, and that includes no dairy.

Today I did much better by adapting a plain tomato soup I found at food.com. Ordinarily plain tomato soup would bore me, but I've been trying to use up the many bags of frozen crushed tomatoes from my garden.

By adding a teaspoon of unsweetened baking cocoa, some freshly ground allspice, a bay leaf and basil (the recipe already called for thyme) I really ratcheted up the complexity of the soup quite a bit. It has quite a bit of flavor and is simply delicious. To ensure protein, I also added a half cup of sprouted mung beans and lentils and about a half cup of red kidney beans. I'll bring it to work tomorrow with some croutons.

I also made another batch of granola. I use old-fashioned oats, flaxseed that I grind myself in my little Braun coffee grinder, honey, oil, Cinnamon, allspice, toasted walnuts and either raisins or chopped dried apricot. I used to also add unsweetened coconut flakes and wheat germ, but I prefer it without those two ingredients.

I have some leftover kale I should really use up in a salad as well. (I'm thinking marinated in orange juice with dried cranberries, raw onion, dried currants and toasted walnuts).

I really do love cooking healthy and trying new recipes, especially vegetarian.

As for the electric snow thrower, I noticed the last time I used it on some ice-crusted snow that I was smelling a plastic burning smell, so I stopped using it. Then I decided to try it again, thinking maybe I was imagining the smell, but within a few minutes, I smelled it again.

So today I brought it to my local Toro dealer. I was hoping it wouldn't cost too much, but he'd told me it would be $75/ hr and they'd let me know if it was a simple belt change or something worse.

They have a 5-week backlog of repairs to do!

Maybe 10 minutes after I dropped it off, they called me at home and told me they checked out everything on the thrower and they can't find anything wrong with it!

So I drove down there to pick it up, wondering how much they might charge me. Thankfully, he said there'd be no charge, but I'm still a little worried about using the snow thrower.

I have a very long driveway and use it with a 75-foot-long outdoor extension cord, so today I examined the entire length, looking for something amiss, but didn't see anything.

I guess if I use it again and it begins to smell again, I might consider getting a new cord, just to be sure. The dealership guy said it's possible it could overheat after long use, and I'm wondering whether this very small thrower, which I got about 5 years ago for $279, wasn't really intended for such a big driveway as mine.

I've been tracking the cost of heating oil for years. Not just in the winter, but also in the summer months, too. I like to have an accurate picture in my head of where prices are going. Over time, I learned there were really just two area oil delivery outfits that consistently had the best prices, so those are the two I alternate between when ordering a delivery.

This week, their prices were $3.71 and $3.79 a gallon. In the 18 years I've owned my house, heating oil prices have never been that high. It's a record!

Online energy trend outlook reports from the federal government confirmed my fears that we are seeing record high prices on heating oil here in the Northeast. In most other parts of the country, oil is not used nearly as extensively as it is here.

Unfortunately, many heating oil companies have minimum purchase requirements of, for instance, 150 gallons. So that makes it difficult to try to time your purchases, or buy a smaller amount when prices are higher in the hopes that by the time you need more oil, later in the season, prices will have dropped.

In fact, it really irks me that they do that. When I questioned that practice with the gal yesterday, she said without the minimum purchase requirement, they wouldn't make as much profit. But then she quickly corrected herself, saying well, their truck only gets 6 miles to the gallon. But you already organize your deliveries so that all deliveries to a given town are done the same day, right? I said. Yeah, but in a more spread-out town like yours, the houses aren't close together, she said.

And so it went. As much as companies preach how "customer-friendly" they are in their marketing, they are all looking out for their own bottom line first.

Since I have just a 200-gallon oil tank, a 150-gallon fill-up essentially fills up the whole tank. In the past I toyed with the idea of buying a second oil tank to put in the garage (there's room) so I could better time my purchases, but I never got around to it and now that I hope to move at some point, I won't bother with that particular expense.

I usually fill up just twice a year. The first fill-up is always in the summer, when oil prices (and demand) are lowest. But then I have no choice but to fill up again in the dead of winter, when prices are highest, usually around January.

I've got a quarter of a tank left now and decided to wait one more week rather than have to buy at $3.71. Psychologically, it's hard for me to buy when I know prices are highest. I may not have a choice next week, but at least now there's a chance they'll dip a few cents.

It was a fairly uneventful week at work, and I got in my 40 hours. Work continues to be rather slow paced and at times, the day is very long for that reason. But my boss seems happy with my work.

Ballard Deign again has a sale on some ceramic garden seats I've always liked.



I think they're regularly priced at about $130. Now they're $99 with free shipping. So tempting, but honestly, I don't need them, I just admire their looks, and again my savings plan is important to keep in place as I could be unemployed again in July.

I love Ballard Design in general, so I allow emails from them. When I got an email mentioning the sale, I found myself scanning the sale items and found these garden seats, but I eventually left the site. At that time, the garden seats were on sale for $99, but no free shipping.

The next day, I get another sale email, and this time, it's $99 and free shipping. They must track your visits. So perhaps it's worth it to remember not to make a purchase the first time you visit the site after getting an email, because you may be able to do better just by waiting for the follow-up sales pitch.

I now officially have two nieces and a nephew. Technically, they are "half-nieces and a "half-nephew," as they are the kids of my half-brothers, from my dad's second marriage. My brother Bob married a Chinese woman and their kids have a very interesting, almost soulful look to them because of their eyes.

I don't have kids of my own. My plan has always been to leave my money to environmental charities, something that's very important to me. But there's the question of my tangible belongings and personal possessions. I would hate to see it all pawed over in an estate sale, going to strangers. So I think I may leave just my personal possessions to my nieces and nephews, although I have never seen them in person.

Before they were born, I only saw my brothers once in a blue moon. They grew up separately from me and my sister and pretty much lead separate lives in NJ, while my sister and I are here in CT. It would have been very nice to have closer relationships, but the realities of time and distance intervened.

I had once shared with my dad my plans to leave my money to charity, and I remember him saying, "Keep it in the family." But there's a part of me that resists doing that, especially since my brothers, while friendly, have never made any effort to establish closer ties, initiate a get-together or heck, even remembered my birthday with a card. Now that they are married, I notice I get Christmas cards regularly and this week I also got some baby pictures.

Spoke to my friend R. last night. He has a habit of often reminding me of all the good things I've accomplished and making me feel good about that. The fact that my house is paid off, my brand new car is paid off and I'm making good money (now).

Unfortunately, after having been helping his niece get through a divorce and search for a new house for her and her kids, the niece finally rebelled against my friend's domineering ways and told him that while she appreciated his help, she wanted to make her own decisions from here on, as it was her life they were talking about. My friend R. is extremely controlling about everything he does. That's a big reason why he and I broke up 30 years ago when we were dating. It's why his wife left him. And now his niece.

I mean, his intentions are good but he goes way overboard, crossing boundaries he shouldn't cross. Although he is using much of his own money to buy his niece a new house, he was also pressuring his sister (the niece's mother) to pitch in $50,000 and also the same with his other niece, as she and her husband are both accountants and make very good money.

That backfired as well, since the other niece has own kids' college to think about and the mother has her own retirement to think of. It's fine that my friend R., with no kids of his own, wanted to contribute his own money, but it was wrong of him to tell others in his family what to do.

Oh well. People are all so different.

And then there's the woman I work with, who finally got a visa for the man she met in Jamaica and married 2 years ago. (She's white, he's black.) Now she's got him home and he's living in her nice condo (which her parents paid for) while she goes to work (sometimes). She's a contract worker too, and her job will end in March.

She's spent many thousands of dollars on this guy, traveling to see him 14 times during the past 2 years. Since I started working there in October, she spent most of every day, when she decided to come in to work, on visajourney.com, poring over it to learn all the ins and outs of how to get a visa and answer the questions right in the interview.

She's talked to creditors she owes money to at work. She had former alcohol problems. She smokes. Her life is a mess, but she has this strangely endearing quality about her, really a naivete, that makes you want to help her. Her parents still pay her bills.

She's only supposed to be working at home one day a week, but she takes extreme advantage of our good-natured boss, who travels every other week, so she has often worked from home 3 or 4 days a week when our manager is not in.

Her husband doesn't know how to read or write (!!), so her parents are helping him get classes, so there's at least some hope he can get a job.

OK, so for whatever reason, you didn't go to school as a child. But the guy's in his early 40s now; why didn't he ever take the initiative to learn how to read and write as an adult? This guy sounds like such a loser to me and he's had the world handed to him on a plate because my co-worker is exceptionally needy and insecure and just wants someone to love her and make a baby with her.

This guy literally has a new lease on life. Flying to America was the first time he'd ever been on a plane before. And now, she tells me, he is telling her to get rid of her cat. Because Jamaicans don't keep animals as pets and he doesn't get it.

I am so, so wanting to tell her to stand up for herself and her own needs and happiness, not just his. I mean, this guy owes her a lot. He should be trying just as hard to please her as she is to please him. She's a very needy person. She calls him several times a day to see what he's doing. This poor cat is FIV positive, so it's doubtful it would get adopted very soon; everyone wants a healthy pet.

I want to tell her, look! He's in America now, so he should adapt to the American way of life, not the other way around. I hate seeing such an imbalanced relationship; to me, it seems doomed to failure. So far, I've managed to keep my mouth shut.

Ironically, the condo she lives in is one I LOOKED at in an open house when it was for sale last summer. This town is over an hour away from where I live, but I just happened to discover this lovely condo complex of detached condos in a nice, woodsy setting, just minutes from a gorgeous state park on Long Island Sound. And now I sit right next to the woman who lives there now. Talk about small world.

I like to minimize the number of things I "have" to do on Sundays, preferring instead to spend the day close to home, either cooking, reading or spending time online.

Today, I'm cooking up a storm. I've been inspired by reading Super Immunity by Joel Fuhrman. I tried one of his recipes, an eggplant hummus with a lot of healthy stuff in it. It was on the bland side and I wound up with a good 4 cups worth, far more than I needed, but I will bring it to work with some raw broccoli and carrots.

I also whipped up another batch of my own granola.

Next, I made a delicious mushroom soup. It's not quite like a cream of mushroom soup, but it has onions, garlic, leeks, carrots, celery, barley and both button and portobello mushrooms for more complexity of taste. It was very good. Though the recipe didn't call for it, I used my immersion blender to make it more cream-like. Very good...also will use for workday lunches.

Tonight, I want to try one more new recipe, a "crustini" on crusty bread made up of cannellini beans, flat leaf Italian parsley, red onion and sun-dried tomatoes. How yummy is that??

Still inspired by Dr. Fuhrman, I returned a bottle of multi-vitamins to BJs because it had several ingredients he says aren't good: Vit A and beta carotene, iron, folic acid and copper. (I am thankful they have such a liberal return policy, as I didn't have a receipt and had opened the bottle.) Plus I bought a bottle of zinc, which he said, along with B12, is important for vegans to supplement with.

Today's the last day I'll get to enjoy my free month of Netflix. Being a reality TV junkie, I sort of got hooked on Dr. 90210, a show featuring several plastic surgeons and the work they do. Surprising that the vast majority of patients want breast implants. The face lifts, etc are much fewer and far between.

Talked to 2 friends and my mother, but didn't leave the house today except to pick up a few groceries. And there I ran into my old boss from 6 years ago when I worked right here in town. His kids are all in college now, when they were just in middle school at the time I worked for him. He's one of the nicest people I've ever met, just a kind, gentle and humorous person who was very easy to work for.

I had a light, early dinner last night with Bachelor #4. He was nice enough. My problem is that I seem to have difficulty feeling any strong attraction to men I meet in this way. I don't feel a chemistry, although he was clearly intelligent and, as I said, nice enough that I could see. I suppose I could go out with him again and see if "something develops," but then again, I wouldn't be too upset if I never saw him again. I'm wondering if I have lost my capacity for romantic love.

After saying goodbye to him, I did some grocery shopping at Trader Joe's, which was right down the road, and then, since the all-day rain had kept me from leaving the house earlier, I also stopped to get gas, shop at BJ's and shop at Shop Rite. So I got many of my chores done and got home around 9 pm.

Tomorrow night there's a lecture on certain aspects of our town's history by a local, well-known historian. I've always wanted to attend these monthly meetings, but when I'm working, it's just so hard for me to venture out, especially in winter, after putting in a day of work. I really have little excuse, as the meeting is less than a mile from my house. But I have a feeling I won't go even though I'd like to.

From American Banker....

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that at Wells Fargo, where employees are pushed to sell eight products and services to each customer household, staff have opened hundreds of unneeded and unrequested accounts for customers, ordered credit cards without customers' permission and forged client signatures on paperwork.

"One former branch manager who worked in the Pacific Northwest described her dismay at discovering that employees had talked a homeless woman into opening six checking and savings accounts with fees totaling $39 a month," the paper reported. After the article was published, 70 more former and current Wells Fargo employees and customers came forward with similar stories of sales of unwanted and unneeded products at the bank.

The rest of the story is here:
http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/179_5/the-downside-of-the-data-driven-decision-1064719-1.html?zkPrintable=1&nopagination=1

I reported my financial intentions here for the New Year, so figured I might as well report that I followed through: I did contribute $6500 to a traditional IRA, my 2014 contribution. (It was a simple transfer of taxable savings to the IRA.) I also contributed $800 to retirement savings in my new Barclay's Dream account. This came from checking, and left me with just about $1500 to pay ongoing bills, but I think I can make it til a few more pay days bulk up my checking again.

I made the contribution to my traditional IRA on the advice of my healthcare "navigator" because doing so would reduce my 2014 modified adjusted gross income enough to hopefully ensure my income remains low enough so I can indeed qualify for the healthcare subsidy. When I calculated my projected income for 2014, I was right on the subsidy cut-off border (around $46k) and could easily go above or below that by a few thousand. Making that IRA contribution, something I'd be doing anyway (although normally to a Roth) also helps ensure my income falls below $46K.

So thinking along the same vein, I've been waffling about whether I should take on any freelance writing this year. I never make that much, especially working f/t. Typically, it comes to about $5,000 gross and the net is probably around $4,000, so if doing that freelance work jeopardizes my healthcare subsidy ($300 someething a month), I don't think it's worth it.

On the other hand, if my current contract job does indeed end in July as it's supposed to, with no extensions, then I will very much be wanting to do that freelance work. So I don't want to turn away my 2 chief clients now, or make them feel I'm unreliable, if I may need that work later.

It's a little bit of a dilemma. I may do up to $600 worth of work for both clients (they won't issue a 1099 if it's under $600) and after that tell them things are getting very busy with my f/t job and I need to take a break from the freelance, but then remind them the contract job ends in July and I'm available after that.

In July, if I find out the contract job will continue, then even an extra 2 months' income will cause my annual income to increase enough so that I'd lose the subsidy anyway, so then I might as well do the freelance work too. (One thing I'm unsure of is, if the contract job is extended and I report my now higher expected annual income on my state's healthcare website, I know I'll lose the subsidy but would I then also be required to PAY BACK the subsidy I'd gotten thus far? It would seem unfair to require that since it's not like I'm intentionally under-reporting my income, and I had no way of knowing beforehand whether my contract would be extended or not.)

If I find out in July that the contract job will indeed end, then I'll definitely be wanting to do the freelance work for the rest of the year (although you can bet I'll be carefully tracking all income YTD, just to be sure. So either way, I think I'd be able to do the freelance, but only after July.

The reason why I don't think I should do the freelance work from now until July is because I could be cutting it very close, and not doing any freelance until I have a better handle on my contract job status would seem to give me some assurance I wouldn't risk exceeding $46K.

Can't remember the exact monthly amount of the subsidy, but I think it's around $350 a month. That's $4200 a year, which is around what my freelance work usually grosses. So it would hardly seem worth it to do the freelance at all. Since I only have time to do the freelance work on weekends, it would certainly free up a lot of personal time I've sacrificed for a little extra money.

As an added step, knowing I would be using taxable mutual funds to fund my 2014 traditional IRA contribution, I made sure I sold those mutual funds in December (last month), so any cap gains from the sale (which are viewed as income) would be reported on this year's tax return, not next year's.

Sound confusing? It is! All because the uncertain status of my contract job makes planning everything else very difficult.

Feedback welcome!

OK, I'm officially home bound today after the overnight storm, which dropped about 5 inches of snow. It's bitter cold outside, 2 degrees. I kept the house at a balmy 64 overnight.

Because I need to be "at my desk," working at home, I can't go out and shovel til around 5:30 pm. I may just leave it til tomorrow, when it will reach a high of 26.

I have a conference call at 1 pm but otherwise am free.

After a long hold and a fair amount of wrangling with 2 reps, I was able to get AT&T to remove a $110 charge for work done by one of their technicians when I complained that I kept losing my Internet connection. I think I had a pretty strong case. I had just switched over to UVerse phone and Internet. I'm already paying for their Internet service with a monthly fee, so why should I pay extra to fix the problem? It had just been installed a month earlier. He said rather than deal with someone else's wiring, his preference would be to run a new line and install a new jack. He didn't tell me it would cost me anything. I didn't tell him to do all that work, that was his decision. All I wanted was for my Internet to work properly.

If you ever want to dispute a fee or charge with AT&T, be aware it's a lot easier to do if the charge is under $100. If it's over $100, they have to pass the call on to someone else and get special permission to waive the fee. It would have been penny wise and pound foolish to lose me as a long-time customer as I know they'll jack up the monthly phone charges in March when the promo is over. If I can't get another promo at that time, I'll be looking into Magic Jack or Ooma. Right now I'm paying $30 for phone (4 hours free monthly talk time) and $15 for Internet. That seems reasonable, and I don't want to pay any more. They send me promos for UVerse TV on a weekly basis,incessantly.

They're predicting blizzard-like conditions with the wind, about 10 inches of snow and very cold weather in the negative numbers, for overnight tonight and through tomorrow.

Let's all say a prayer that Patient Saver won't lose her power, because she has no fireplace to keep the pipes from freezing. Seriously, this and falling trees is what I worry about in a storm.

I went to work today but left early, around 4, to make sure I'd get home safely, There's not much on the ground yet but lots of dire warnings. I have my laptop, so I'll be working from home tomorrow, and thank god the storm is happening on a Friday, because that means I don't have to break my back out there tomorrow night to clear the driveway for work the following day. Now I can take all weekend to do it.

Work has been extremely slow, partly, I'm sure, becus so many people accumulate their PTO and take a long extended holiday at the end of the year. I feel a little better about that, and less nervous about losing the job prematurely, because I recently saw a job posting online for a manager who would manage the process of what I do and manage me.

There is a Bachelor #4 waiting in the wings. We're still in the talking stage but I suspect we will meet soon. He sounds...my god, intelligent. He's exactly my age and he gets brownie points from me because he indicated in his profile he was open to meet women as much as 10 years older than him. 99% of the time, men will be looking to date someone much younger than themselves. I found this to be true when I was in my 20s, 30s, 40s and now in my 50s, I've got grandpas in their 60s who pursue me. I really want someone closer to my own age who would be more likely able to do the things I want to do. He's an attorney, divorced after many years of marriage with 3 kids. More to come.

To start the New Year off right, I just finished opening up a new online Barclay's Dream money market account. I already have a regular Barclay's money market, which I currently use for three purposes:

1. As a place to transfer money from my checking account when the balance there gets higher than I need (since I earn no interest on checking). Currently a regular Barclay's online money market earns .90%.

2. As my so-called emergency fund. It's basically liquid money. I don't dip into this too frequently, but when I have a big ticket purchase, I transfer money from here back to checking so I don't have to cash out any mutual funds. It's usually something I use for big home improvements, like my new roof.

3. My property taxes are due twice a year, and rather than let the money sit, earning no interest, in my checking account, I transfer $500 a month to my Barclay's account so the money is there when I need to pay the bill in January and July.

Now Barclay's has debuted its new "Dream" money market account (https://www.banking.barclaysus.com/dream-account.html),which gives you the following benefits above and beyond its regular money market:

1. Interest is .95%.
2. BONUS #1: You're supposed to use this account to save money for a specific purpose, whether it's for college, a car, house, retirement or whatever. Every time you make consecutive deposits for 6 months, they give you a 2.5% bonus on the total interest you earned over that time.
3. BONUS #2: Make no withdrawals for 6 consecutive months and earn another 2.5% bonus on the past six months of interest earned.

You can only contribute a maximum of $1,000 a month.

I figure I'm planning on saving anyway, to bulk up my emergency savings, so this will allow me to have a dedicated account for that; the other account will be solely for property taxes, making it easier for me to see where I stand with the segregated funds, plus I'll get a nice little bonus for doing so.

Nothing momentous today, but enjoyable all the same to have all this time off from work.

I went down to Barnes & Noble to use a $20 gift card and, strangely, had the hardest time trying to find something to spend it on. Maybe because I already got 4 books for Christmas? I wound up buying 2 crossword puzzle books. I got in the habit of doing these at night after watching Hulu for a while, and without having cable TV anymore.

I also bought a quilt at Christmas Tree Shop. It's so thin, one could hardly call it a real quilt, but they were just $20 for every size, so I bought a king size for my queen bed. I also bought 4 green bowls because they were half price (.99 ea) and I am so hooked on vivid, saturated green colors.

I meant to next check out an Indian spice shop but there was awful backed up traffic on the other side of the highway so I decided to skip it.

I came home and made a very good chili using unsweetened cocoa in it as well as ground allspice, cumin, oregano, turmeric, chile powder and a few other spices.

Tomorrow is my Asian brush painting class and perhaps a few groceries in town.

I saw an online job posting for a marketing manager. It is clearly my employer (they listed the 2 addresses where the job could be located). It is also clear this new position (a contract job like mine) would supervise me as they reference that in the write-up.

I guess the reason why they are looking to hire this position is not because they think I need better supervision, because as I mentioned, they listed the job location as being either here in CT where I work or in Massachusetts, where one of our other offices is.

I like my current boss and would rather not have to report to someone new, but she clearly is overloaded and has very little time to work with me in any way. But it is curious to me that both my position and now my new prospective manager's position are both contract positions. It doesn't really give me any insight as to what their plans might be next July, when my initial contract is up.

I'm continuing to get a LOT of use out of a free month of Netflix, which expires mid-January. Nearly every night since starting it, I watch Netflix rather than Hulu and avoid all the commercials. A friend had recommended 3 or 4 movies, but none of them were available on Netflix streaming, though.

I am anxious for the New Year so I can make my $6500 IRA contribution. I sold some taxable mutual funds and the money is now sitting in my checking account.

In my last post, I looked at the details of my 2013 expenses, which totaled $37,807.

Now I'll look at my income.

The grand total is much higher than I thought it would be, but after working no less than three contract jobs, one part-time job, doing my freelance work and all the smaller miscellaneous money-makers, it was hard to keep track of.

My total gross income was: $48,761 and my net after taxes, which is what I actually lived on, was about $40,000.

Net wages from the five jobs mentioned above, plus partial unemployment when I worked part-time, came out to about $35,000, while the rest of my income was earned from many and varied sources, including:

Credit card rewards: $1324 (This doesn't include another $94 in earned in credit card gift cards).

Focus groups, product testing: $340

Manufacturers' rebates, promos: $191

Online surveys and forums: $117 (This doesn't include $519 in mostly Amazon gift cards I earned throughout the year.)

Garage sale: $101

We the Savers blog contest: $100 (I got paid for this today, but the blog won't post til next month, I'm told.)

Housecleaning chores done for family and friends: $384

So, all told, looks like I saved about $2,665 for the year. Not bad, considering I worked full-time for only 3.5 months of the year.

So of my net $40,000, about $5,500 of that was non-wage, unconventional income. So when I think about how hard it would have been to live on $34,500 without that extra $5,500, it helps motivate me to keep up all of the little diddly things I did to earn a hundred here or $50 there. At a higher income in the 70s or 80s, that little bit of extra money probably wouldn't matter so much, but at this income level it made a huge difference in livability and comfort.

The credit card rewards, I can clearly see, were the most lucrative among these things and took very little work, other than tracking my spending. Each time I think I've pretty much gotten to the end of bonus reward credit cards I can exploit, I come across a new one.

I spent a total of $37,807. That's just $2,000 more than 2012, which I consider very good.

Let's take a look at my ranked expenditures up close and personal:

2013 Honda Civic: $19,976. This represents 34.5% of my total spending for the year. (I'm not including it in my total spend referenced above because it's such a large, one-time expense and it would really skew things.)

New roof: $5,800, or 15% of total spending for the year.

Health insurance: $5597, or 14.8% of total spending. This is actually 12% lower than what I spent last year, but only because I skipped paying premiums for 2 months (and took a chance) when I switched from my COBRA, which was expiring, to the state plan of last resort.

Property taxes: $5,368, or 14.1% of total annual spending. I have seen for a while now that, excluding big ticket special expenses like certain home improvements, health insurance and property taxes vie for the #1 and 2 expenses each year.

Food: $3,277, or 8.6% of total spending, This is 13% more than 2012. While I don't eat a lot of meat, I do tend to indulge in certain pricey food items and organic foods.

Sewers: $3,033. This includes both the payoff of the loan as well as usage fees. In 2014, with the loan out of the way, this figure should be way, way down on my ranked list of expenses.

Healthcare out of pocket: $1,739, or 4.5%. This was 32% higher than what I spent last year, all due to spending hundreds on diagnostic tests and doc visits to determine the cause of 2 unexplained (and unrelated) symptoms: a cough and headaches. Never did figure out the cause of either one. Doc thought cough was due to post nasal drip but tried 3 different sprays and they did nothing. As for the headaches, they started in June and finally resolved by end of November, on their own. I chalk it up now to stress.

If i combine my out-of-pocket expenses with premiums, that is a whopping $7,336, or 19.4% of my total annual spending. I sure hope that with my new Obamacare plan, my expenses here moderate in 2014.

Household: $1224. Don't like using this category much as it camouflages what exactly I spent on. It's sort of a catch-all for certain items that don't neatly fit into some other category.

Home maintenance: $1,200. .

Heating oil: $986. This was the first of 2 pleasant surprises. I actually spent 19% less than I did last year. Since I took no special additional conservation measures, I can only attribute the lower spending to lower fuel prices.

Gas: $840. This was down 7% from last year, again due to lower energy costs, not any change in driving.

New computer/monitor: $834

Car insurance: $795

Clothing: $733. This is something I kick myself for. I tend to spend on clothing before starting a new job. Really not needed, and I can't justify this level of spending when my income has been so unstable.

New hot water heater: $723

Cats: $667. A 31% increase over last year! This was mostly food and litter, though it also included one trip to vet when Luther jumped out of a second story window. But I've also gotten into the bad habit of regularly buying expensive, $3 a can cat food as a "treat" for the cats a little too often. Half the time they don't like the new foods anyway, so I have decided to stick with the lower priced cat foods, which are still far and away better for cats' health than dry food, according to vets.

IRS: $665. These are quarterly IRS tax payments for my freelance writing.

Electric: $625. Rates will jump 20% in 2014.

Phone/Internet: $625. I'm hoping that with my switch to AT&T UVerse I'll save money and not need to buy additional cell phone minutes anymore since I'll now have 4 hours of free talk time each month.

Homeowners insurance: $584

New furnace humidifier: $520 Worth the expense. No more static electricity when I pet the cats and it's fairly comfortable indoors at 64 degrees, the highest I set it at.

Car repairs: $496, mostly for my 14-year-old Honda. It should be less next year with the new car.

Car tax/registration/license: $366

Gifts: $296

Dining out: $164, all fast food here and there

Borough taxes: $156

Water: $153

Gardening: $138

Dump sticker: $85

Entertainment: $69 (very frugal here)

Haircuts: $51. Managed to spend less this year than last by using Great Clips coupons, even though each year I got 4 haircuts.

Bird suet: $5

Next up: Tomorrow, I'll analyze my income!

My mother doesn't like driving in the dark anymore (it's the blinding headlights of other drivers on secondary roads that is the issue), so I picked up my mother yesterday and then we drove together to my sister's house. We were a small group of five: myself, my mother, my father, sister and her boyfriend. As mentioned earlier, this was the first time I can ever recall sharing a meal with both my parents, together, so it was very nice.

My father, up from New Jersey, was spending the night at my sister's after having spent Christmas eve with my half brother and his family.

They must have felt a little awkward at first, but it's been so many years since their divorce, I don't think it really mattered. My sister made both salmon and prime rib, and wouldn't you know that even among the three of us who are mostly vegan, all of us chose the prime rib!

My chocolate cheesecake and walnut/pecan/hazlenut pies were a huge hit. I left the remains at my sister's but took my mother's mostly untouched pumpkin bread for myself.

CeeJay the gentle Rottweiler was also with us. A very gentle rescue dog who likes to have her belly rubbed.

I got a lot of books I'd asked for this year, 5, to be exact, all related to nutrition and health. I've started reading the first one, Healing Spices. I also got a very cool feeder for Baltimore Orioles. It is a vertical wire hanger with little spears that will hold three orange halves in place. Can't wait to try it, as I have seen Orioles around here in summer, although not regularly. I also got some clothing, gardening gloves and a very nice copper pot, also a pair of two cordless phones. Also my sister made me a batch of tulsa tea (homegrown) which is supposed to be good for stress, which I've been having a lot of lately.

This weekend's plans call for seeing a matinee with a friend on Saturday (I got $25 worth of AMC movie gift cards from my recruiter agency) and possibly driving my mother to Litchfield to collect some old unsold art from a gallery.

For my own entertainment, today I may go to Barnes & Noble to spend another gift card, do some grocery shopping and run a few other errands. I still need to work on charging up my Discover card for rewards.

Once I get my final paycheck tomorrow, I can finalize all my year-end expense and income numbers and post them here.

Merry Christmas, one and all,
Hope you and yours have a ball.

Just don't eat too much turkey,
Or others may think you're a little bit jerky.

Sadly I am not a poet, but the intention is good!

I was officially "done" with Christmas shopping 2 weeks ago, but you know how you feel right before the holiday when you just have an urge to go into a pretty little shop to browse for some small little perfect gift?

That's how I felt today, so while I didn't really have to, I went down to a garden nursery nearby where it's always fun to browse among the pointsettias and evergreen garlands, table centerpieces and trees of every size.

I ended up getting up a little bee house for my father, who's hard to shop for. The bee house hangs outside in the garden, and bees will lay their larvae in the cylindrical tubes, where they will eventually hatch and become the next generation of pollinators. I have one my sister gave me years ago and yes, they do indeed plug up the holes with their eggs.

I also stopped in at the local grocer and picked up coleslaw and a cold beet salad for my lunch on the 2 days I'm working this week: Monday and Tuesday.

I decided on impulse to make some yummy treats for the other people who have decided to work this week. (There won't be many.)

If you like chocolate, you MUST try this easy-as-can-be recipe for chocolate/nut/fruit clusters.

1 cup chocolate chips (I used dark, but you can whatever kind you prefer)

Melt the chips in a glass or microwave-safe bowl in microwave for 1 minute. Stir, then heat for another 45 seconds. Stir and make sure all the chips are melted.

Add to them a half cup of walnuts or pecans, chopped coarsely. (If you toast them beforehand, it really brings out the flavor.)

Also add a half cup of dried cranberries.

Stir well to combine, then drop onto a cookie sheet with a spoon. Refrigerate for 3o minutes until they harden.

That's it. They're delicious.

I debated making a swag for my front door using evergreen branches and some lovely cedar branches with the little blue berries. (I also have those pink beauty berries.)

I may not get to it, out of lack of motivation. Even though it's close to 60 degrees here today. At 3:20 pm, it already seems darkish.



I bought some very inexpensive picture frames to give as gifts to 2 friends at work. They were $2 each but look like they should be around $10 or $15. I also got a bag of assorted, individually wrapped Ghiardelli chocolates. While I'll eat the dark chocolate ones, I don't care for the milk chocolate/caramel ones, so I picked those out and put them in a pretty little drawstring bag for the garage parking lot attendant at work. I was wanting to get her something, but not wanting to spend a lot of money, so this worked out perfectly.

I planted the amaryllis bulb that I got as a gift from my boss. Love to watch how quickly these grow.

That's about it. Tomorrow I'll try to straighten out my overdone SEP IRA contribution and see if T. Rowe can correct it so I don't get in trouble.

I planned to make both a chocolate cheesecake and my famous three nut pie (similar to a pecan pie) for Xmas, but I just realized I only have one crust. I'll stop at Stop & Shop after work tomorrow, but don't know if I can find the crust I like there.

So I managed to get in a 40-hour work week this past week, but by Friday, the place was really quiet as half the people seem to have lots of PTO.

I got a few nice unexpected gifts from people, including an amaryllis bulb from my boss, an ornament filled with loose tea and a $5 Dunkin' Donuts gift card, as well as a bag of holiday chocolates.

At the office party Secret Santa, I got a $20 barnes & noble gift card...perfect.

Today I had a long list of errands to make and did most of them before the craziness of the traffic and other shoppers got to me. I washed off most of the road salt from my car.

I'm working Monday and Tuesday of next week (it will be dead) and then will have off til the following Monday.

There is an interesting workshop in town I'd like to do during the time I'm off from work....it's an introductory workshop on Chinese and Korean style brushwork. Just a $5 fee and you learn to paint four classic plants: bamboo, orchid, cherry blossom and chrysanthemum. Being held at the church on my street....how convenient is that?

I decided to make a chocolate cheese cake and three nut pie for Xmas dinner.

I was feeling kind of dizzy for a while so just lay in bed and read the paper. Got through the one-year anniversary of 12/14 okay. There are so many groups doing healing things in town. The arts workshop mentioned above is just one example.

From American Banker magazine....

Mississippi AG Sues JPMorgan Chase Over Debt Collections

JPMorgan Chase (JPM) pressured customers to repay debts they did not owe, sold collections agencies rights to credit card accounts that had been extinguished in bankruptcy and tolerated frequent errors by its third-party collections attorneys, according to a lawsuit filed by Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood on Tuesday.

The state's complaint is, despite significant redactions, the most detailed and potentially damning attack so far on JPMorgan Chase's credit card debt collections operation, which the bank has shut down.

JPMorgan Chase declined to comment on the Mississippi complaint through a spokesman.

The bank ceased filing suits to collect consumer debt in the spring of 2011, following a probe by the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency into the legitimacy of its collections lawsuits. That probe ended in September, when the OCC ordered the bank to repay customers and reform its collections department.

JPMorgan Chase disbanded the group tasked with suing to collect delinquent accounts entirely the following month, leaving the future of its debt collection operation unclear. Its decision to shutter the litigation group, an apparent acknowledgement that further collections suits could be fraught with legal and regulatory risk, may also suggest that the company was bracing for a wave of lawsuits from state attorneys general.

The Mississippi attorney general's complaint, filed in the Chancery Court of the First Judicial District of Hinds County, Miss., alleges "egregious" lapses at every stage of JPMorgan Chase's collections process — from violations of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act to Microsoft Excel errors that compromised $600 million dollars in defaulted customer account records.

Bank executives were allegedly aware of many of the problems with the collections unit, where employees referred to one of JPMorgan Chase's outside legal providers as an "outhouse" firm. Nevertheless, the bank continued to churn out faulty lawsuits in the hope of obtaining uncontested judgments, the complaint says. Robo-signing of legal documents, sloppy legal work and reliance on inadequate recordkeeping persisted even after the bank was rebuked for similar errors in handling defaulted mortgages, it claims.

"Chase pursued Mississippi consumers for debt that they had paid or settled, did not owe, or had discharged in bankruptcy. Consumers' paychecks were garnished and their credit damaged, making it harder for them to refinance their homes, take out a car or student loans, or even get jobs," Hood said in a written statement. "We have tried for months to resolve our concerns cooperatively, but have been forced into litigation."

If accurate, the state's allegations threaten to escalate JPMorgan Chase's consumer debt collection woes, which have already resulted in a consent order with the OCC, a civil suit filed by California, and investigations by 14 states including Iowa and Massachusetts. Mississippi Attorney General Hood alleges that Chase sought to collect debts from customers who had already paid them and may have similarly mishandled car and student loans.

JPMorgan Chase's control failures date back as far as 2007 but increased as the debt collection operation struggled to keep up with the wave of credit card defaults during the recent recession, the Mississippi complaint says. The bank's consumer-debt recoveries grew more than tenfold during the previous decade, to $1.2 billion in credit-card recoveries in 2009 from $130 million in 2000, the complaint states.

To meet this frantic pace of recoveries, the bank allegedly set collections quotas for employees and fired those who failed to meet them. It used outmoded recordkeeping systems for customer accounts, and its different systems often suffered from discrepancies in basic customer information, the complaint says. These problems were worse with accounts JPMorgan Chase acquired from other financial institutions, including Washington Mutual, BankOne and the card issuer Providian.

For Chase, the main cost of its problems so far has been the substantial revenue it failed to collect during the OCC's two-year investigation. Attorney General Hood is seeking up to $10,000 from the bank for every violation of the Mississippi's Consumer Protection Act, plus compensation for the state's legal costs of pursuing the case. The complaint lists 18 types of alleged violations. Among them: quoting inaccurate debt figures to customers, failing to investigate credit-bureau disputes and selling compromised accounts to debt buyers who then initiated their own collections efforts.

By seeking to hold JPMorgan Chase responsible for misconduct by law firms and collections agencies it hired, the Mississippi lawsuit could serve as a warning to other banks that outsource collections to outside vendors.

The suit alleges widespread violations by Couch, Conville & Blitt, a New Orleans, La., law firm that the bank used for collections litigation beginning in 2009, and Mann Bracken LLP, a defunct law firm which the bank used for arbitration claims through mid-2009. The complaint also names NCO Financial Systems among the collections agencies whose misconduct JPMorgan Chase failed to check.

"Chase engaged these firms to handle official legal proceedings against its customers and let them engage in widespread deception, with no supervision and no repercussions," the complaint states.

Operating through the outside firms, JPMorgan Chase "filed complaints purely as a strategy to obtain default judgments," submitting claims backed by "no evidence whatsoever" in the hopes that borrowers would not respond and the bank would be awarded default judgments, the complaint claims. When borrowers fought the claims, Chase would typically abandon its efforts, it adds.

Couch, Conville & Blitt "failed to conduct any meaningful review of the alleged debt to verify the customer information" and "did not even review documents before they were filed in court," the Mississippi complaint states. Despite spending little effort on the suits, JPMorgan Chase and the law firm would then seek awards for "exorbitant" attorney's fees that ranged up to one-quarter of the total amounts demanded, it says.

Mann Bracken's recordkeeping problems were so widespread prior to its demise that JPMorgan Chase employees referred to the firm as "Mann Broken," the Mississippi lawsuit says. The law firm's customer-account data did not match Chase's about 15% of the time in 2009, it says.

These recordkeeping problems prompted a group of JPMorgan Chase employees to try to fire Mann Bracken in 2008, but top Chase executives blocked the efforts, the complaint states. The bank kept using Mann Bracken until mid-2009, just prior to its closure amid a Congressional investigation.

JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon acknowledged vender-oversight problems in a letter to employees in September, writing that the management of third-party firms was an area where the company needed to improve.

I just realized that a week or so ago I accidentally contributed more than I should have to my SEP IRA. You can contribute up to 20% of what you earned, and I contributed 25% ($1100 vs. $887). This is for my freelance work, what I've managed to do in 2013 when I'm not working my other job.

Do you think the IRS will catch this on my low income tax return, perhaps by some automated system? I'm wondering if i should go to the trouble of trying to undo it, or having to file some special form possibly to do so.

Ugh.

So, okay, I've always opted to get snail mail credit card statements on all my credit cards even though I also get online notices which I pay online immediately. I liked to get the follow-up statements in the mail in case I lost power for an extended period of time or otherwise could not access my computer.

But with, I don't know, maybe 10 different cards at any given time, it gets complicated to pay online, and then check the paper statement again, just to make doubly sure I already paid it. I seem to be getting notices every other day, so I finally took the plunge and eliminated all of my paper statements. It SHOULD be okay, although I'm always a little paranoid about missing a payment.

I should really whittle down my cards more, but I DO get attached to some of them after a while, especially the "design-your-own" cards. And since I paid off my mortgage last year, my only installment debt, I wonder if having a heaping serving of credit cards, aka revolving debt, might partially compensate for the lack of installment debt.

Here's what I have right now:
USAA visa and Amex green cash card: The USAA card has no rewards program and the amex card has very minimal rewards, but I'm committed to keeping both of these (and charging on them once in a blue moon) because they are my oldest cards and hence benefit my credit score. I think it must be like 20 years or something. So they will stay.

All the other cards I've got were acquired in the past 2 years. These include Chase Freedom, Citi Forward, Discover It, Capital One Cash Rewards (benefits the World Wildlife Fund so I will keep this one), Capital One Platinum, Barclaycard Platinum MC, Capital One Platinum Visa (a different one!), and BankAmericard Cash Rewards. Any strong opinions which I hold and which I should fold?

I always feel kind of sheepish when I call in to cancel becus I'm sure they can see when I got the card and read between the lines....oh, another lady just trying to get the bonus. Hmph!

I'm working at home today due to the snow. Just 2 to 4 inches expected, but hey, they supply everyone with a laptop, including us contractors, so i guess that's what they're there for.

As a writer, I don't like using the laptop much though. It's very convenient in that you can set up whereever you want, but the screen is so tiny it doesn't lend itself to what i often do, placing 2 or more documents side by side and having multiple windows open.

So I have the laptop open but emailed some documents to my personal email so I could do the actual writing on my much larger personal monitor, and then when i was done, I just emailed them back to my work email address. Seemed to work pretty well.

I sent off my $404 payment for a Gold health insurance plan.

Tomorrow is my company Xmas party, at 3 pm. So as not to lose yet more work hours, I am working an extra half hour each of the remaining 4 days this week to account for the 2 hours (3-5 pm) of the party. My boss already told me not to bother coming in to work on the 2 days after Christmas, which was disappointing, cus again, so much time lost to holidays. Christmas week I'll only be able to log 16 hours. Not good for the pocketbook.

I did get a nice little gift from the agency that hired me for the bank job. I got a $25 movie theater gift card, plus $5 for concession snacks. I LOVE the movies but rarely go, but already invited a movie-loving friend to see something right after Xmas, now that I have the time off. (Compare that gift to what I got from an agency around the holidays in 2010...a small (not even full size) box of 4 chocolate truffles.)

I'm still waiting for the We the Savers website to post my blog, and of course, to receive payment for winning their monthly essay contest. Also expecting payment any day now from my #1 freelance client....they owe me about $600.

I've decided (with input from Dido) to sell $6500 worth of taxable mutual funds this month (right after they declare distributions) to fund my 2014 traditional IRA contribution.

By selling those taxable mutual funds this year, that $6500 will be reported as 2013 income on my tax return, and I want to keep my 2014 income as low as possible to ensure I don't exceed about $46,000, the cut-off amount at which you don't qualify for a subsidy if you're getting onto an Obamacare healthplan. It's going to mean a pretty big tax bill for me in 2013, as earlier this year I already cashed out about $26,000 from the same one taxable fund, partially to pay for my new car.

I am feeling pretty broke right now cus I just sent off that $404 for my first month on my new health plan, then my $3,000 of property taxes must be paid in about a week. After that, I can finally start SAVING, not spending. Of course, I'll have to think about refilling the heating oil tank sometime in January. That's usually good for $500+. Sigh.

Working on charging up the Discover card with $750 of purchases, but so far I've done just $15 as I'm done with all my Christmas shopping and don't really need anything just yet. No worries, still 2 more months to go.

The really good news is, the issuer of my new health insurance, which happens to be a new non-profit issuer on the CT healthcare exchange, said they will begin letting you charge your premiums in mid-January!! As long as there's no fee for doing so, that would be awesome for all my credit card charging schemes. Assuming I have some offer I'm working on at the time. Otherwise, it would be just more or less normal points of 3% or whatever.

I spent a few hours yesterday playing with one of those retirement calculators which tells you how long your savings will last. If you tinker with any one of the variables, like years in retirement, age upon retirement and your income needs for each year, of course, all the numbers will change.

I'm determined to retire early, in 6 or 7 years time, and I need my savings to last until age 95, by which time, I'll promptly keel over. (Just kidding, but we should all find some humor in retirement planning, right?)

Oh, when I say "retire," I mean I want to retire from full-time work, but I'm quite sure I'll want to work part-time, and/or continue my freelance work, for some time. I'm not even bothering to factor that in.

I also figure that about $48,000 in annual retirement income sounds about right. It should leave room for some travel and various comforts without being so much that I can never reach my goal, yet it's not so low that I'd have to skimp or pay much attention to budgeting in retirement (although it's sort of a hobby of mine anyway).

That figure of $48,000 also includes Social Security benefits and assumes I'd start collecting at 62, which IS NOT something I plan to do, but there are a few things like this you can't adjust in the calculator. (I actually plan to hold off collecting SS benefits for as long as possible, up to my full retirement age of 66, since each year you defer your benefit amount increases by 8%.)

So I determined that in order to have $48,000 a year in retirement starting in 6 or 7 years time, and assuming a rather conservative investment growth rate of 6.5% pre-retirement and 5% in retirement, I calculate I need to save a total of $908,278. (As you can see from my sidebar, I'm already up to about $585,000.)

By tinkering with the calculator, I determined that I can do this in the 6 or 7 years before my planned retirement by saving $800 a month, every month from now til then. (I'm not even factoring in the growth of my existing investments, just to play it safe...course, I'm not factoring in any lossss, either.)

It's actually pretty easy to do this working the bank job I have now. Remember, I don't have a mortgage anymore. The job pays about $72K, which is not the most I've ever made, but it's not bad money, either.

So for at least the first 7 months in 2014, I feel confident I can contribute $800, or actually more, to stick to this plan. If the contract job ends in July as it is now scheduled to do, then I will have to revise my savings plan, but I am really sort of hoping I will either get a perm offer or figure something else out.

So for now, instead of just settling for $800 a month contributions, I have already figured I can actually contribute as much as $2,000 toward savings a month. That is 2.5 times more, so I figure it is the equivalent of paying $800 for 17.5 months, not 7, so that is like making contributions into June 2015. Hopefully by that time I will have found other work if need be.

I always make mistakes when it comes to math (!) but I THINK all those calculations are correct. Maybe a good reason not to consider doing other people's tax returns, Dido, but I love the idea!

This is the time of year I love, when I get to fiddle around with my income and expenditures for the past year and see how I did.

While I haven't gotten to my micro spending analysis yet, I did create a new chart tracking the growth in my net worth for the 5-year period from January 2009 through January 2014 (I'm actually using my Dec. 1 2013 figure for now to represent January 2014.)

Sorry I can't show you the chart, which I made using Word. It's very interesting to read but can't seem to transfer it here intact.

But here are my net worth figures for each year:

Jan 2009: $315,226
Jan 2010: $434,872
Jan 2011: $486,302
Jan 2012: $461,436
Jan 2013: $519,228
Jan 2014: $582,124

Assuming the December figure I used doesn't change much between now and Dec. 31, I will have increased my net worth by 84% in 5 years. This amazes me.

I started this analysis in 2009 because September 2009 was when I lost my job, and I wanted to see how badly I was hurt by both a substantial loss of income as well as the nosediving stock market. Remember, during this entire period, I was not contributing to long-term savings at all.

In fact, I withdrew from savings at a few key junctures in the past 5 years. All for good reasons, I think, but these all worked to reduce my nest egg and presumably slow its growth:

2009: Sunroom/garage windows: $6,176
2011: Vinyl siding: $14,000, Mortgage prepayment: $17,000.
2013: Sewer loan payoff: $2900, New car, $20,000, new roof: $5800

So in addition to all my normal bills, I also withdrew from savings a whopping $65,876 in big, non-recurring expenses for either home improvements or loan prepayments.

This excites me. It's spurred me to put in writing a new savings plan, fueled largely by optimism while working a full-time 10-month contract job. More to come on that in a bit....

Hey, guess what? I won a contest!

Maybe a month ago I came across a personal finance site I hadn't seen before....wethesavers.com. It's a website created by Capital One credit cards. They feature a monthly essay contest with a different finance-related question each month.

The question for the month of November was, when do you plan to retire (at what age) and how will you get there?

So I wrote something up....nothing really new to you guys since I post about my post-2009 circumstances all the time.... but I won the November contest! I get $100 and my post will be published on their site. I just had to fill out a bunch of paperwork giving them permission to do so. It'll be first name only and I prefer no picture, which I think is ok since I've seen earlier winners do it the same way.

It's funny, because I was just thinking about that contest yesterday, and in fact I went to the site to see if they had announced a winner yet, and I saw they hadn't.

I love earning money!

I'm working from home today. Bliss.

Did I tell you I'm all done with my Christmas shopping? Ahh, relief.

Spoke to my good friend R. His dad is now receiving hospice care. Ninety-six-years-old and dropping weight, now down to 107 lbs i believe. He's also dealing with his own prostate cancer and new lower left jaw pain they picked up on the scan. Not good. It could be either cancer, an imminent heart attack or maybe just plain old TMJ, although that's not confined to one side.

My mother's all messed up with her computer and email again. This happens on a weekly basis and then she calls me to fix it magically, to troubleshoot over the phone with her.

My sister's announced she's doing Christmas dinner for the first time in at least 10 years, and not only that, she's inviting both my mother and my father. I have no living memory of ever sharing a meal with both parents at the same time, as they divorced when I was six. This should be interesting. She said she was tired of always having to decide how (and with whom) she was going to spend Christmas. The last time my parents met was at my mother's mother's wake, I believe. They'll get along, I'm sure, but it will still be weird.

Got my new Discover card ($150 bonus waiting in the wings) and am ready to start charging everything exclusively to the card to hit the spend goal ($750) asap.

My total credit card rewards for 2013 was $1400. Not bad, huh? Hard to believe, but I recorded only $371 in credit card rewards income in 2012. I thought I'd done much more.

For those of you who love to pursue rewards for new credit cards, you should love this site: www.rewardboost.com.

I've posted about it before.... It's a neat little site where you can open an account and then enter the names of all the credit cards you currently own. Then you can enter in the approximate amount of money you spend monthly on different categories of expenses, and the site will tell you which of your many credit cards offer the highest % points for any given expense category.

Yeah, you could figure this out by looking it up on the card website, but if you collect cards like I do, a site like this is really helpful in fine-tuning your credit charges so as to maximize your points.

They also have a nice little blog that summarizes the pros and cons of various rewards credit cards. I've opened (and closed) so many in the last few years, it's tough to find one I don't know about. One blog post contained some helpful advice about how to meet the upfront spending target if you're having trouble doing so, and the advice will probably be familiar to some of you, like buying gift cards for things you know you'll spend on eventually, or charging your car insurance and what not. I added another idea I had used: getting close friends to let me charge and pay for everything when we got together, and then having them reimburse me in cash....this evolved into letting me charge for larger purchases they planned to make, just to wrack up the charges on the card. With a very close friend you trust, or family, this is not too difficult.

I got my $108 bonus from Bank of America World Wildlife Fund card as well as my new Discover card, which offers a $150 bonus. It also provides your credit score....789 at Equifax. Here we spend again!

The season's first real weather event (a combination of overnight and early morning ice and freezing rain), has caused me to miss out on the holiday party I'd planned on going to today.

We were to head up to Boston today and then come back tonight. The other three women who I was driving with are all still going, as far as I know. I spoke to the one who's driving and told her I didn't feel comfortable going. I could clearly see a layer of ice on my lower roof, walkway and drive. Of course they treat the roads but temps were still 29 in my area at 6:30 am, which is when I was supposed to leave to meet them at 8 am. The rest of them live on the shoreline, where temps are higher.

It would have been an hour driving to meet the others at a designated spot, then another 2 hours drive together. An already long day I'm sure would have been really long.

I colored my hair last night and laid out the clothes I thought I'd be wearing, got up at 5:30 am, had wrapped my Secret Santa gift, etc.

I called my manager this a.m. to let her know I wouldn't be there and she said she was sure I wouldn't be the only one bowing out. She had arrived sometime over the weekend, and she said what is normally a half hour drive from where she's staying just outside of Boston turned into 2 hours. So I think I made the right choice, although with slowly rising temps, the ice should melt by noon today.

I had been looking forward to meeting many of the people I work with (on the phone) in person for the first time since I started in October, but guess that's not going to happen now. Perhaps at some later date. I'm a little disappointed, as we were having a holiday brunch, gift exchange and volunteer gig, but at the same time I'm relieved not to have to deal with the long drive back and forth, especially with possible black ice.

Unfortunately, although i have my work laptop with me at home, I have nothing to do, so I'm going to have to call this a non-workday, just at a time when I'm trying to start building up savings (now that I've gotten the new roof on).

I've also had to ask manager if i can work from home Thursday since i have an important doc appt middle of the day and sure don't want to lose any more work time.

Oh well.

I saw another really good documentary yesterday on free Hulu called Milk? I think it's a play on the famous milk ad, Got Milk? If you want to know what goes into a purportedly healthy beverage that many people drink every day, you might want to watch it. Filmed in 2012, so it's pretty new.

Trying to shift gears here to make my unexpected Monday at home productive. I'm thinking I may venture out around noon. Today's the perfect opportunity to hand deliver a small food gift I got for the insurance agent who was so helpful in getting me signed up for an obamacare health plan.

There will be no other time to deliver it since his office closes before i get home from work, and i didn't want to waste money mailing it via the post office when it's just a mile down the road from me. So I can do that today, and also pick up a few food items, including bread so I can make some sandwiches for this week's lunches.

I'm pretty much done with my Christmas shopping, and everything else is also wrapped. I started decorating the house, but since I now know I won't be hosting the holiday dinner (sis is) it seems a little less necessary. Sometimes I don't really get into the spirit of it all until right before the day, and at that point, it's like, why bother when you'll have to out all the stuff away again.

OK, before I forget (and since I tried at least 3 times to mention this but the SA system here kept deleting my posts).....most of you probably have heard of No Impact Man, right? The New York City guy who, with his family, lived for a year without contributing to environmental damage, which meant no electricity, buying only locally grown food, not using the elevator in his high rise, etc.

I came across the No Impact Man documentary on free Hulu last week and I must say it was pretty interesting, though I already knew the story. Your first reaction may be, well, i already know I can't do without toilet paper, so I won't try..... Yet it's interesting to see someone push the boundaries of what's possible, and I think it's an important thing, whether your priority is frugality for its own sake or protecting the environment.

Next up...
My roof is done. Looks pretty good. Roofer coming here in a half hour to do a walk-around with me and collect his check. He finished on Tuesday, but seeing as how I have no time in the a.m. to really check it out thoroughly and it's pitch black when I get home, the final inspection had to wait til today.

I did go up in the attic with some flashlights after some rain we had to make sure there are no leaks. I didn't see any. I did do a quick walk-around earlier, and told the roofer I wasn't happy to see a number of black smudges on my 2-year-old vinyl siding, caused by roofers carelessly dropping the old asphalt shingles straight off the roof. He told me they'd be using tarps to protect landscaping, but I know they didn't do that....the crew had already arrived on the a.m. of the 2nd day when I was still here. As I walked out the front door, a roofer let drop a big loose roll of tar paper, and it fell straight down just a few feet from where I stood. He saw me looking up at him as I was getting into my car, and i think that was the only reason he made an effort to throw something else he had in his hand away from the house. But judging from the smudges on the vinyl siding and all the grit on the window sills, they weren't doing that regularly, if at all.

When i brought this to his attention, he said oh, but we haven't finished the clean-up process yet. We always go around and do the "fine clean-up" Uh huh. Maybe, but maybe he was just saying that to cover himself. One of my two front entry columns also got scratched up, though truth be told it was peeling paint anyway and will need to be repainted regardless.

I asked him to remove those smudges because I shouldn't have to hire a power washer to get it off, and I sure don't feel like climbing on ladders. That's already been done, although I haven't looked at it since.

So no real damage I don't think. The roof looks very good with sort of a three-dimensional shingle. He did take some pix of the progress also so I could see how the underlying sheathing looked, etc. So I guess I'm glad I got it done. It will be good when I sell the house.

He said while I will still get ice dams, the water should not get inside the wall like it did last winter. I sure hope he's right. He replaced the snow and ice shield that extended 3 feet up from the eaves with a barrier that extends 6 feet up from the eaves, plus he added that same barrier all along the gable sides of the roof and i think also around the chimney. He'll walk me through what they did when he gets here.

Contrary to what another roofer told me in 2011, a guy i thought seemed very trustworthy, honest and straight-talking, the sheathing underneath was in very good condition except for 2 small spots of rot which they replaced. The other roofer in 2011 had said oh yeah, that sheathing underneath is so old and soft, I'm not sure it would hold a nail. So your new roof will cost $8,000. (I got it done for $5800.)

You can't trust ANYONE! How they present themselves, their mannerisms, friendliness, etc means nothing as far as judging their honesty!!!!

And, that first roofer was recommended to me by a friend. So a referral from someone you know means absolutely nothing. They are all one and the same...out to make as much money as they can.

On Monday I'm headed to Boston with three co-workers for a Christmas party with the rest of our team up there. One woman has rented an SUV and we're all supposed to meet at a certain commuter parking lot. It's going to be a very long day, with a three hour drive to get there and 3 hours back. The day will consist of the secret Santa gift exchange, a brunch and then a mandatory volunteer gig at a homeless shelter where we're more or less required to wear my employer's logoed t-shirt.

I don't mind doing volunteer work, and have done so on my own in the past, but I dislike it being something I "have" to do as part of my job. I also feel we could have much more easily met our co-workers at a location mid-way between Boston and CT, ie, Rhode Island. It would have cut our drive in half, from 6 hours to probably 3.

We may have freezing rain Monday morning, so it's possible the trip will be cancelled. I brought my laptop home with me just in case.

Today I'm getting a haircut and then going over to my mother's to help her place some Amazon Xmas orders. I think my mother may have dementia because little things like this that she used to be able to do, get her all messed up.

I have a ton of stuff to do this weekend, mostly holiday related. Last night I was able to squeeze in 2 hours of freelance work developing some value propositions for a company. $100 earned for some Friday night work, not bad.

Just when I thought I was through with all the good credit card deals (I just redeemed a $100 bonus from a Capital One World Wildlife Fund card), I saw an offer on My Money Blog for a $150 bonus from the Discover card. I used to have a Discover card but canceled it maybe a year ago. Even though I had just cancelled my Chase Sapphire card (just too many cards, i don't need that one) and knew my credit score would temporarily dip slightly as a result, I immediately applied for the Discover card and was approved, so should see that in the mail next week. This is the card that provides you with your credit score for free on your statements, so that will be nice.

Accomplished the following:

1. Vacuumed the upstairs (badly needed, with all that cat hair)
2. Went for a walk
3. Made a lentil/tomato soup for lunch and put the rest into containers so I have 2 days worth of lunch, at any rate
4. Made a double batch of granola, which I plan to bring in to feed a group of 12 on Thursday. (I'll also be bringing OJ, bagels with cream cheese, muffins, plain yogurt to go with the granola and fresh fruit.) In return, I'll get a free breakfast once a week for another 3 months before it's my turn to do it again.
5. It was a pretty mild, albeit cloudy day, so I swept up some leaves to get them off the driveway, raked some pine needles off the lawn and erected some winter fencing around two viburnums so the deer don't destroy them. I already saw damage to one, around the trunk, but oh well. I have one that's unprotected but I've run out of fencing and don't plan to buy more. I also swept the garage of leaves that had blown in there and planted a cedar seedling that had already lived one winter in a pot, so figured it was time to plant. Also watered it, now it's on its own.
6. Two loads of laundry.
7. Made 4 blueberry cheese rolls, using those refrigerated crescent rolls, but there's a brand called Immaculate that doesn't contain hydrogenated oils. Very easy, filled with cream cheese and frozen wild blueberries. Will serve as my breakfast the next few days, just for a switch.

Now that lawn mowing season is over, i was sort of thinking how nice it would be to get the Sunday New York Times in the a.m. and just luxuriate with it all day indoors. I pretty much ran out of time to do that but perhaps in the near future. It's been years since I've read the Sunday Times and I used to enjoy it.

The only thing I didn't get done was the priming and painting of the back upstairs closet wall. I hope I can muster up the enthusiasm next weekend or all my folded up sheets and such are going to start getting dusty.

I went to Trader Joe's where, along with a few of my usual purchases, I picked up a few holiday food items for my mother. One of the gifts I'm giving her is a gourmet style tray filled with some of my favorite foods, which are sure to become her favorites! (We are both big dark chocolate and nut people.) Unfortunately, I left the tray of food on my dining room table when she stopped by before Thanksgiving, and I think she was studying it. Chances are, she'll forget about it by Christmas.

Also stopped at BJs, where I was relieved to see the 3 lb bags of frozen berries for $9.99 in the cooler again. They seem to run out from time to time. This is another regular purchase for me as berries (like avocados, beets, nuts, cabbage and kale), is another power food. I also picked up some coleslaw (another favorite).

Then I stopped at Caraluzzi's to spend $10 for Small Business Saturday on free groceries by charging on my Amex card, but when I got home, I suddenly realized I'd used a different credit card! I am SO easily distracted. Luckily, I live just a mile from the store, so back out I went as this is too good an offer and it only comes by once a year.

While at BJs, I picked up 3 tins of chocolate covered crackers, a gift for the insurance agent who was so helpful in finding me an Obamacare health plan. I wrapped it up and was going to hand deliver it to his office, but they are closed and only open 8:30 to 4:30 pm. Seems wasteful to mail this from the post office when I can just drop it off sometime, except that I leave for work at 8:15 and get home around 6 pm.

I do have one doc appt in mid-December when I hope to work from home (just less running around) so that would be the day to do it.

For lunch, I decided to try copying a salad I saw behind the case in the deli which was selling for a very pricey $8.99 a pound! It was chopped up raw kale with dried cranberries, toasted walnuts, scallions, red onion and minced carrot. There was probably some sort of dressing on it as well. Mine came out okay, but kale is a somewhat tough green to eat raw. I probably should have cut it into even smaller pieces than I did. No matter. It won't go to waste.

I've been enjoying leftover turkey since Thursday and have one more serving before it's gone. I went to the trouble of brining it overnight outside in a cooler, and it really made a big difference, so this will be the way to go for future turkeys.

So this has been a stretch of 5 days off (Wednesday was a work at home day, but felt like a day off since I was home and work was slow) and it's been very nice.

While at TJ's, I also stopped in at that shoe store, DSW or whatever, after seeing a very cute pair of brown suede moccasins my mother had worn on Thanksgiving. I did in fact locate said moccasins, but they didn't quite fit right. I really need to find a wide size more and more I find. They were so cute, though, right out of the 60s, as far as I'm concerned.

I should really prime the back wall of closet, but don't really feel like it. The sooner I prime and paint it, the sooner I can get all this stuff lying around back in it, but feeling rather lazy.

Roofers are now coming Monday to start as weather will be a bit warmer, with a high of 44 on Monday rather than a high of 35. The temperature makes a different, he says, when laying down the rubber membrane.

Last night I saw a GREAT movie called Father Frost. It would be just perfect to occupy the little ones if you have any children to entertain around the holidays. This movie, based on Russian fairy tales, was remade in 1996, but I would strongly recommend the original 1966 version made in Russia and featuring some fascinating authentic-looking costuming, along with some interesting fantasy elements involving elves, witches and other bad folk out to mess things up for the neglected and unloved little girl who finds her Prince Charming. I really loved the simple story and the decidedly un-Hollywood feel to this movie.

If I were one to collect DVDs, this would be one of a select few I'd add to my collection.

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. We had just a small group but I must say we had plenty to eat. No one guessed that I ordered two of my sides from a local butcher shop! They thought I'd made everything myself. I sent everyone home with leftovers, and I had a second Thanksgiving meal later that night.

Today was the day my roofer was going to start on my new roof, but he called early this morning and asked if it'd be ok to start on Monday instead, because it will be about 5 degrees warmer (40ish) and the rubber membrane they put down under the shingles should not be put down in such cold weather.

I said sure, although that means I won't be around to "supervise" and keep an eye on things. Come to think about it, I didn't do that when my 1st roof was put on, so I guess it will be okay. I just felt better knowing I could walk out at various stages of the work to make sure they were doing it right, like, if I was here, I'd know if they had to replace any of the plywood underneath, but if I'm not, I'll have to take their word for it if he tells me they had to replace x number of 4 x 8 plywood sheets (at $40 a pop). So he could easily add on to the cost of the job and I'd have no way to verify if that was true. (Unless maybe if I look in the dumpster on the morning of the second day, before I go to work and before they return.... I think I'll do that.)

But at the same time, I knew that staying here while the work was being done would be nerve-wracking with all that banging going on.

So anyway, I no longer am tied to staying home while the roof is being done and I am free to consider venturing out to shop and join the maddening crowd. I may just go to BJs and Trader Joe's.

For the last two months, I'd been TRYING to sign up for health insurance via my state's healthcare exchange. I managed to register and view my insurance choices online, but I did have some questions I wanted answered before I signed up.

The exchange's hours are 8 am to 6 pm, which is a problem when you work and have no privacy to have this kind of conversation.

Once I tried calling right at 8 a.m....15 minutes before I have to leave for work, but after she insisted she had to ask ME questions, she then put me on hold for a licensed agent and I had to hang up after waiting too long.

I tried calling from work by going into the stairwell at my 10-story office building and climbing to the top (vacant) floor so I could sit on the stairs and call, but again, I used up my entire half hour lunch on hold.

Whenever I tried logging onto the website I encountered frequent problems.

The ONE day I had to call them was this past Monday, which was the first time I was able to work at home due to having a doc appointment. But the handyman also came to do his thing and AT&T came to check out a line that's causing dropped UVerse connections (they ended up rewiring the whole thing) and then I had an appointment with my mother to see a lawyer to get power of attorney, so I simply RAN OUT OF TIME to call the state health exchange.

So I was at the end of my rope when I decided to make an appointment with a local insurance agent here in town who advertised that he was health exchange-certified and could help walk people through the process.

I've had 6 jobs in 2013 (p/t, contract or freelance) so calculating this year's income was a bit tricky, but I estimate I will only make about $41K. What they really look at, though, is 2014 income, and I calculate (carefully) that my 2014 income will be about $51,000, just $5,000 over the threshold of $46,000 income under which I'd qualify for a healthcare subsidy.

I met with this agent for an hour-and-a-half last night after work. Without his help, I would have settled for a Bronze plan with Anthem paying $500 a month in premiums with a $6300 maximum out of pocket cap and a $6300 deductible that includes pharmacy as well as medical. This is not good, since the very expensive medication I take for my MS is nearly $3,000 a month. So this means that I'd essentially have to shell out $6,000 in the first 2 months of 2014 before getting any kind of medical or pharmacy coverage.

But the insurance agent came up with something I would never have thought to do. If in 2014 I make the maximum IRA contribution (with the catch-up for being over age 50) to a TRADITIONAL IRA, I will have lowered my adjusted gross income to $44,500. Bingo. We revised my 2014 income to that rate on the state website and now I qualify for a substantial subsidy.

Not only that, but I'm now signed up for a GOLD plan where I pay just $404 a month with a $1,000 deductible and $3,000 maximum out of pocket cap.

The only hitch is that at least right now, my neurologist does not appear to be on that plan although my primary care doc and gyno are. The other thing that is a little unsettling is that the plan I signed up for is a NEW (non-profit) health insurer. While a lot of people might shy away from signing up with an unproven insurer, I decided to go with them because more of my regular doctors are in their network compared to another plan with a better known company.

So I'm paying $589 a month now on the exceedingly lousy Charter Oak (state Medicaid) plan. In 2014, I will save $189 a month in premiums with the other benefits I just mentioned.

There IS just one potentially problematic issue. As you may know from reading my blog, my current contract job at the bank is at least right now only intended to extend to July 2014. So when I calculated my 2014 income before deducting for the planned IRA contribution, I had just calculated bank income through July and then added unemployment benefit income for the rest of the year, assuming I had no other job lined up. This is the worst case scenario that assumes the bank doesn't extend my contract, as they do for many contractors, by 3 months or 6 months, or even possibly offer me a perm job, as they have also done for some others.

So based on this worst case scenario of losing the bank job in July, my health insurance at least would remain somewhat more affordable, at $404 a month.

And of course, if in July the bank offers me a perm position, then I will leap into their arms and sign up for THEIR health plan as quickly as I can and wave goodbye to everything related to the healthcare exchanges and probably get away with paying $200 or so a month.

HOWEVER, there are many shades of grey here. If in July the bank says, Patient Saver, we'd like to extend your contract for 3 months, then I will have to report the change of income on the state healthcare exchange website. That will cause me to exceed the $46,000 income threshold to receive the subsidy.

At that point, I would then have to pay the full price of the Gold plan, which is $700-something a month, for the remaining 5 months of the year. So for the latter 5 months of the year, I would have to pay at least $3500 just for the premiums.

(Quick calculation: An extra 3 months of bank income would roughly gross $17,000, pushing my annual 2014 gross up to about $68,000. 7.5% of of that is $5,100, so i guess to the extent that my healthcare expenses exceed that, I can deduct in on next year's tax return.)

But anyway, back to the scenario of getting a 3-month extension on the job but losing the subsidy. Working full-time, I guess I could afford to pay $700-something a month for health insurance, although when or if I lost the job after the extension, I'd have to report change of income AGAIN and probably wind up on the Medicaid option which I decidedly DO NOT want to be on as I've already experienced how difficult it is to obtain coverage on it, despite what they claim.

To actually have to be talking about paying $700-something a month for health insurance sounds like insanity to me, but that's the way it goes. And unfortunately now with the subsidy, what's good for me job-wise will not be good for me healthcare expense-wise, unless I get a perm job and I can go on the employer's plan.

So it's hard to know what the heck to wish for!

Anyway, I am still extremely grateful to this insurance agent who found a creative solution to help me lower my healthcare costs, at least for the first 7 months of 2014. On my list of things to do is to get him some sort of gourmet gift/food basket and have it delivered to his office.