$$: Groceries, Investment, & House Painting Services

Posted on | October 28, 2008 |

Before boring you with today’s purchases, I want to share the fun.  The Husband’s Christmas present was delivered yesterday.  I spent the better part of the afternoon uncrating it, getting adjusting the brakes and making necessary adjustments, and then riding it around the neighborhood.  I had to make sure everything was safe and secure, right?

Man, is that little thing fun!

Truth be told, I spent a good chunk of time zipping around on it again today.  In fact, between the meeting The Husband and I attended regarding The Son’s 504 accommodations and having to pick The Son up for his classes, I zipped over to the grocery store.  After all, we were entirely out of ice cream   

Then, after picking up The Son and doing a walk-through with the painters, I bribed The Son into zipping up to the store for some supplements I keep forgetting to buy.

Have I mentioned how entirely fun that electric scooter is!?!

So here’s where I spent our money today:

Kroger — $10.23

• Breyer’s French Vanilla and Natural Chocolate ice cream  — $4.99/ea. (saved $0.70/ea.)

Vitamin Cottage — $41.18

•  fiber caps — $19.39
• chewable Vitamin C — $16.55
• chocolate bar — $2.45 (The Son’s bribe

House Painter — $2,680.00
This fee covered hand-painting and/or hand-rolling (no spraying) of our entire house in three colors (doors, body, and cement/downspouts/etc against brick).  That total includes the extra $200 I paid to the cement foundation painted.  The house is a ranch with a walk-out basement so there’s a pretty steep slope down both sides of the house.  Since we don’t have side fences/gates, that expanse of basement cement is rather obvious and glaring.  I love the way the dark brown blends in with the dark brick and makes the house look larger and more unified.

The painting job comes with a full 3-year guarantee with no exceptions for trouble spots.  I have no doubt that the quality of coverage and longevity of the hand-painted/hand-rolled paint job will prove to be vastly superior to that of a sprayed paint job.

Now all I need to do is get back to my landscaping projects and give this house some curb appeal — or at least make it so my neighbors don’t hate me for dragging down the property values.

Sharebuilder — $200.00

I’ve given up on trying to time the market and forking over $10 trade commissions and have gone back to Dollar Value Averaging and Automatic Investments.  So on Monday I made sure to turn on my automatic investment settings to make a $200 GE purchase on the 4th Tuesday of the month (today).  The purchase was funded, as usual, through my WaMu checking account.

I was thrilled to discover that the purchase was timed perfectly and my share were purchased at what must have been the day’s low price of $17.87 per share.  That means that after paying my $4.00 commission, I ended up with an additional 10.97 shares of GE stock added to my portfolio.  GE closed at $19.49 today.

The Husband and I discussed this matter yesterday and agreed that I should continue to make automatic investment purchases of GE stock through Sharebuilder for the foreseeable future.  I’m not quite ready to set up my account to make a purchase every single week but I’d guess that I’ll end up buying 2 or 3 times a month.  I’ll be keeping a close eye on the market.  I suspect that we’ll continue to see the dizzying ups and downs of a bear market for some time to come.  The election and then the period between the election and the seating of the new president are likely to prove to be uncertain times.

I’ll continue to report in each time I make a stock purchase.

Related Posts for Further Reading

• $$: Coyote Sighting Edition
• $$: All The Usual Suspects
• $$: Food (plus, I voted!)
• $$: Groceries, an Odwalla, & “Harvey”
• $$: NPR, Gas, Groceries, Health Care, & ….. Paint
• $$: Chocolate Milk, Chocolate Candy & Snow Pants, etc.

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