Yup, after two years and nine months I have finally decided to get my own site. You can now read all my blogs at www.beautyfromchaos.com Make sure to add my new site to your google reader!!
This blogger site will be used for my payu2blog assignments, so there will still be activity, but my actual blog will continue at Beauty From Chaos.
YAY another meme thing! I am normally a neat freak. I’m semi-anal as my husband’s family calls me. Everything has a place and everything needs to be in it’s place. The one thing I let slide?? papers. Yah, bills, old bills that are already paid, coupons, easy saver catalogs. Anything paper has been deemed the privilege of stacking up on any flat surface available. This includes my desk.
So, Since Beth tagged me in her messy desk meme, I decided to see if I could find 5 crazy items on my desk. First I need to mention that the desk we use as our computer desk is entirely too small to be used as a computer desk, but it’s all we have. So here we go…
I’m gonna tag my mom. This means she HAS to make a blog. She’s been talking about it. (Mom, if since I tagged you it means you have to make a list of the 5 weirdest things that are on your desk like I did.)
I also tag anyone who may look at my blog. If you look at my blog leave a comment on this post with a link to your blog (if you have one) I’m just curious as to who reads this.
I guess it’s called a Meme, that’s what Ashley called it when she tagged me in it.
The Rules:
Ok, I really don’t like my middle name, but it’s not a secret. In fact like Ashley, 2 generations share this middle name, me and my daughter. The name is Renee.
As for tagging people, I don’t know 5 people who have blogs, Ashley and Beth have already done it, so I’ll say
Katie
Stacy
that’s all i know and neither of them actually put anything on their sites anymore. so who knows.
I am little irritated with companies right now. I briefly mentioned the fees that State Farm adds in each month to your policy in my blog about saving money. I just don’t understand it fully. We HAVE to pay our monthly bill- everyone knows that.
Well, most companies send you a statement each month with the little tear off section at the bottom that you can include with your payment (if you still mail in payments). Some companies offer paperless options where they send you an email each month saying your statement is available and you can look at it online.
I guess once companies started offering the paperless statements they decided it would be fun to charge people who still wanted the paper statements. Not all companies do this, but some do. Ok, fine, I’ll go paperless to avoid extra monthly fees. We normally pay all our bills online anyway (the ones that offer online payment options.) One time I called a company to make my payment over the phone and they said it was a $10 fee to pay over the phone!! $10!! to pay THEM! Of course I told them that was ridiculous and decided to pay online instead.
Other companies have the drafting option, where they just automatically take the money out of your account and you don’t even have to worry about paying the bill. I really do not trust this, so we’ve always avoided it like it was the flu.
Then we meet State Farm. They charge $3 if you want a monthly statement. no paperless option. and $1 for drafting it out of the bank account.
Let me get this straight… You are going to take an extra $1 a month to take my money out of my bank, but if i want to do all the work and mail you a check it will cost $3 a month? Something doesn’t make sense here.
So we pay an extra $1 a month for renters insurance. Oh, and we get a “bill” each month saying the money will be drafted on the 5th. So if we get the letter anyway, why do they charge $3 a month for those people who don’t want it drafted?!
Today my husband made the car payment. Guess what? There’s a $5 fee to pay online. There never used to be!
This is getting a little bit out of hand. Soon there will be fees if you want to mail out an envelope by leaving it in your mailbox for the mailman. Or maybe on the use of auto accessories. This world is crazy.
Yup, Today is Beth’s 25th birthday. She is a quarter of a century old. Be sure to wish her a happy Birthday.
I thought I’d wish her a happy birthday by honoring her with this post to remember good great times. Although I don’t have pictures of all of our great memories, and I seem to be missing a few pictures that I do have, I thought I’d share some of these memories with you.
So I found some more great pictures. They were in my photo album, go figure… Most of my pictures are kept in boxes.
There’s not a better work out in the college dorm then dragging your friend up a hall in a laundry bag now is there? I wonder who’s laundry bag that was.
attack of the killer quotation hands!! Really, Beth what were you doing in this picture?
Maybe I should save this for a Frugal Friday post, but I had to share my excitement.
Since before we got married we’ve used Farm Bureau insurance for our car, well when we moved her we were bummed to see that there wasn’t one in our town. Eugene took one day off from work to get everything with car insurance, drivers licenses, inspection and all that stuff done. We were kinda rushing and just decided to go with State Farm- my mom and dad always used state farm and i used it before i moved to NC from Maine- it was pretty cheap then.
Well we got a quote of $86 a month for full coverage on our Taurus. We were quite shocked since in TN we were paying about $140 for 3 months. We knew the cost of living was more here so we accepted it, added renters insurance (which we were astonished was so cheap, about $11 a month. I wish we had known that earlier!) so our total per month was $97. That was fine, we could make do.
Well then we got something saying it was going to go up because in NC they have insurance points (not points on your license) and Eugene had 2 from an accident he had almost 3 years ago in the Band Van. So our new monthly total was $130!!!! That was crazy. Plus an extra 67.83 to make up for the difference in premium.
We started looking at other places and found a Farm Bureau in the town Eugene works at and decided to check with them. Before we signed any paperwork we had the insurance agent check with the “underwriter” who can see more information and give us an exact quote. I Highly recommend doing this, that way you don’t jump into anything then find out it’s way more than you expected. So our quote with them for six months for just car insurance was 620.78, because of our bad credit we were unable to get renters insurance with them but it was still a savings.
$620.78 compared to $778.35. $157.57 every 6 months, $315.14 a year we are saving. That’s 3 years worth of car insurance we saved by switching to Farm bureau (sounds like a commercial) .
There are some other fees involved with both, State Farm charges $3 a month if we want to pay by check – they say it’s to cover the cost of the bill and postage, yet we picked to have it drafted for $1 a month but we still get a bill. I have no clue. anyway that’s $12 a year. With Farm Bureau you have to pay a yearly membership of $25. So technically we are only saving $302 a year. Either way, we’re saving almost 3 months of insurance!!
So I suggest you shop around for car insurance- but make sure not to switch until your policy has run out (normally every 6 months) or you might end up paying a fee.
I also recommend you look into renters insurance if you rent. It’s so cheap I think just about everyone can afford $11 a month, you might have to give up a soda or a meal at McDonalds, but think about how it would help you if anything ever happened to your apartment.
YAY! We’re home! We left on Friday afternoon for a weekend camping trip on Lake Moomaw near Hot Springs, VA. (this is also known as The Middle of Nowhere- but we didn’t know that before we made plans.) So we spent the weekend there with my sister and her husband. We had tons of fun sitting around and relaxing. Since it was in the middle of nowhere there wasn’t much to do, there were some hiking trails and a beach- but the lake was really low do to the lack of rain this year so the beach wasn’t that exciting. it was VERY icky. We still had fun though, I got to run with my sister which was great since Eugene is not a runner and I normally run alone. She pushed me further than I thought I could go and I shocked myself. Despite the great amounts of fun I am so glad to be home. Lexi came down with a cold or allergies or something so we got very little sleep, plus there’s nothing like my bed and my computer- yes I’m addicted to the internet.
There’s one bad thing about coming home from camping. the piles and piles of dirty laundry, as well as the need to put away all the camping gear. I’ve done four loads of laundry and I still have at least one more to do. 3 of them were from our camping trip and the other two were left over from before we left. My kitchen looks like a war zone and my bedroom’s not much better. oh well, at least we’re home.
I have a problem and I’m not really sure what to do about it. The guy who lives in the apartment above us smokes in his apartment. That’s fine, it’s his business not mine, I don’t know if we’re allowed to smoke in the building, but I know we’re not allowed to have dogs and he has one. Like I said, that’s his business not mine. But there are days when he’s home that he smokes so much the smell comes through the floor and half of our apartment smells like Cigarettes. Now it’s my business. I do not want my apartment or my stuff smelling like we smoke, and I definitely do not want us breathing in his nicotine. So now what? Do I confront him, do I confront the landlord, do I just ignore it? If I confront someone what do I say? I can’t keep him from smoking in his apartment, that’s his home. He should be able to do what he wants just like I should be able to do what I want with my home. But what happens when him doing what he wants affects me doing what I want? that is the big question in life, the question behind numerous wars and arguments. I know life wont always be the way I want it but there has to be something to keep me from smelling smoke all day. I don’t want to be the tenant that complains about everything and I will admit in our previous apartment I complained a lot about stupid things. I’ve tried to only mention the important things to our property managers here, things like leaky sinks and broken kitchen lights. It’s so hard to stay content when you want so much more.
I am probably the only one doing a quiz to see which Character I am most like from a movie/book i know nothing about so I’ll let those of you who know me and Narnia tell me how accurate this is.
You scored as Lucy Pevensie,
Which Chronicles of Narnia character are you most like? |
