Category Archives: home

Another home-made cleaner recipe

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I haven’t tried this one yet, but I’m going to. I’m actually going to copy-and-paste the whole message here, because it’s from my grammy. Yes, I don’t care how old I am, she’s still always going to be my Grammy! (She’s also test-driving the home-made laundry detergent with me–so far I’m happy with it at my house).

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Dear Jessie,

Got our utility bill today, and in it was a recipe for a cleaning liquid you might be interested in.

Mix the following ingredients in a bowl or bucket:

1/4 c. baking soda
1/2 c. borax
1/2 c. vinegar
1 gallon of water

Stir vigorously to dissolve the baking soda and borax. To make a spray cleaner, recuce the recipe and fully dissolve the ingredients to avoid clogging the spray bottle This recipe works great on countertops, floors and walls. Use with a mop, reusable sponge or rag.

I hope it will work out serendipitiously. (Sp.!!!) whew! Big word!
Lots of love, Gram xoxoxoxoxoxo
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Hope my gram decides to post again sometime. I wish my great-grandmother was still around, she had some amazing thrifty tips that I still use today. She would also be a great contributor here. For instance, speaking of utility bills–I save the carrier envelopes that my bills come in and I write my grocery lists on the outside and stick the coupons inside.

Today’s Activities

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Today Rob and I checked out SmartHippo.com again and decided how to approach our refinancing project. We had our first mortgage, as well as a home equity loan of $15,000. Our first mortgage was at something like 5.5% and the HELOC at 8%. We were able to refinance both into 4.5% with our regular bank, paying one point into a 15 year loan and keep our payment very close to our existing fixed 30 year loan. We’re also going to enroll in the mortgage accelerator to pay it off faster. This is exciting! We’ll be making real headway with every payment towards being debt-free. We spoke to a number of banks today about the subject and all were shocked that we were OK with a higher payment, and that we wanted a 15 year fixed, instead of rolling our 30 year loan (now in year 5) into another 30–and extending our term by another 5 idiotic years. (Dave Ramsey calls this the “stupid tax,” meaning the premium one pays for making dumb financial choices).

Our house won’t be underwater, and we’ll still have plenty of equity. Also, we’ll be building equity like crazy, with more than half of our monthly payment landing in equity–not interest.

One surprise in this process was that so many of the companies we talked to wouldn’t recommend their mortgage accelerator program–because it was administered by another company and you had to pay a fee to enroll, essentialy the other company works like a payday lender and loans the mortgage the difference between the two payments. We searched out the right accelerator program with the same zeal that we searched out interest rates.

Another interesting surprise was that because of our recent debt-busting efforts (two credit cards and two vehicles and an adoption loan paid off) we were able to qualify for our refinance based ONLY on my husabnd’s income. This we’re told was because of our excellent credit scores and our low debt-to-income ratio. The mortgage consultant said adding the verification process of my self-employment income wouldn’t get us a lower rate as we already qualified for the lowest available rate. Saves us a lot of headache, and provides a lot of peace of mind.

This just in: Shocking frugality

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Wow. Here’s an article from my local news station about families getting really frugal and ::gasp:: doing their own house cleaning and lawn mowing.

Making the article even more comical, the subject is a stay-at-home mom who ditched her maid service, and stopped sending her husbands’ shirts to the cleaners. They now also do their own lawncare. The family has even started preparing their own meals. Seriously? What was she doing before? I’m a work at home mom (running a business and writing career from home) but I also do the housecleaning and cooking (with my husband’s help, of course). If I didn’t have the chores to do and my job I’m not sure what I’d do all day.

I don’t know about you, but my kids wouldn’t even want that much “quality time” with mom! Ha ha!

For those of us who are really trying to be frugal, this is a comical no-brainer.

Time to Refinance?

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Back in January I blogged here after reading a magazine article that explained how to know if you should refinance. It’s a tricky question for many of us. I’m personally on the fence about refinancing the condo we’ve had for five years. We’re *this* close to listing it for sale, but at the same time, if we hang out for another year or two we think we’ll gain back the $30,000 in value that the market in our area lost in the past couple of years. Decisions, decisions.

I’m working on an article for the Prosper Lending Review, which profiles a financial startup called SmartHippo Don’t confuse this with SmartyPig, another brilliant-banking-mammal.

SmartHippo.com does for mortgage shopping what Travelocity does for vacation planning. This clever Web site allows banks to post their mortgage rates, but also crawls the web for rates. Finally, it lets users add the rates that they got–and also invites feedback and comments on lenders. Talk about transparency!

I took it for a test drive this week and it helped me come to some decisions regarding if we refinance our condo or not. Here’s what I found helpful:
First, it allowed me to “window shop” mortgages anonymously. This means your FICO score won’t be pinged by a prospective lender.

Second, once I entered my info (Refi, what the property is worth, what amount to refi and what loan term I want) it spat back dozens of very attractive options. In order to sort them I had two handy little slider tools that allowed me to narrow my closing costs range and my interest rate range to what looked attractive to me.

In my mental calculations of if I should refinance or not, I’d underestimated closing costs by a lot. Until I can get a rate .25% lower than what I was seeing this week, I’m going to stay put. However, SmartHippo saved me the FICO inquiry for later–when I decide if I want to sell my condo or refinance it into a shorter-term-loan.

I’m making a note on my calendar to visit SmartHippo once a month for a while and keep an eye out for that slightly-better rate. I hope you’ll give it a try.

If you want to follow SmartHippo news, they’re on Twitter as @SmartHippo.
If you want my latest info and updates, I’m on Twitter as @Jessc098.

On the subject of washing and saving money…

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Yesterday’s post was on the subject of saving money on laundry detergent. Today that got me thinking about an older, smarter choice we made on the subject of wash that has saved (and cost) our family a lot.

When we first bought our home five years ago, it had a five-year-old washer and dryer. Within a few months of moving in we discovered a wood rot problem that meant we had to replace an entire bathroom–right down to the studs in our 2nd floor condominium. It was heartbreaking, costly, and not covered by insurance.

Just a few months later, as we were leaving on vacation, the washing machine made a terrible noise. We called in a repairman and he gave us the news. “It’s dead.”

That is really the short story of what started our debt journey. An unexpected/unplanned bathroom repair after sinking EVERYTHING into the purchase of our home and an unexpected failure of a major appliance.

We had to replace the appliance. A busy family of three working all the time–and the nearest laundrymat is quite far. We bought a washer on a credit card, and delivery of the new one, and disposal of the old one.

One year later, as we sit down to dinner, black smoke rolled out of our laundryroom. Fire in the washer–of all places. The motor burned out.

We called a repairman who has a one-hour minimum charge of $150. Within minutes he’d told us that the machine had been damaged beyond repair.

My husband was especially resourcful in how he tackled this news.

“You’ve got to charge me for an hour right?” he asked the repairman.
“Yep.”

Rob made him a cup of coffee, pulled out the laptop at the kitchen table and had the repairman buy third washing machine. Without regards to price, but finding us something that we will never have to fix again.

This wonderful repairman navigated us to the best vendor, the best machine and told us what to look for if we didn’t choose that machine. We “comp shopped” around to other vendors, and he was right. (Who would know a washer better than he?).

We’ve now had the “new” machine two years and we love it. It runs smoothly, cleans well, and saves us a fortune on detergent and water because it’s a front-loader. Our energy bills are smaller too.

That’s not all–the repairman took a look at our dryer and told us what parts would wear out next and told us how much they would cost to fix. It turns out the main belt in the dryer was just about to go (hence the squeaking). The cost of another service call and the belt would have been the same as “adding on” a dryer to our planned order for the replacement washer.

Rob also got opinions on the dishwasher we knew was on borrowed time. We saved up another year and bought the recommended Bosch dishwasher and couldn’t be happier.

Three new appliances, and one consultation with a professional.

By the way–none of the three new appliances have ever required repairs. All came with excellent warantees, and all are kid-friendly.