Dear Readers,

First, let me express how deeply touched I am by those of you who reached out to me via email to see if I was okay.  It did my heart good to know that there are people out there reading my blog and who care enough to check up on me.

Second, let me put any fears to rest:  The Husband is doing just fine.  Most of my absence has to do with my own personal health issues right now.

Right now, as in at this very moment, I’ve got a bad case of the flu.  But on top of that and going back several weeks, my remaining 1/2 of my thyroid is so completely enlarged that it’s messing up my life big time.  I need to have it removed but that’s a long drawn-out process of doctor appointments and scheduling and, well, I’ve been so overwhelmed I’ve just been putting it off.  Everyone seems to concur that my goiter is most likely the cause of my sleep apnea.  Now that the goiter is so big, my CPAP machine seems to be completely ineffective which means that I’m not sleeping.  Or rather when I am sleeping, my goiter is obstructing my throat to such a degree that my CPAP machine cannot effectively keep my airway open thus my brain receives a signal about every two minutes that I have too much carbon dioxide in my system and I need to do something about it.  So my body wakes up just enough to start breathing again; just enough to keep me out of REM sleep.  When I wake up in the morning, I’m exhausted.  As a result, my Fibromyalgia has flared.  So I’m exhausted and in pain.  I drag through my days feeling overwhelmed, barely staying awake, feeling blue and frustrated and pathetic.

In Daily Dollar news, The Daughter is now officially a Junior and out of school (as of Thursday).  The Husband and I have decided that it would be a great experience for her to be the family budget keeper this summer.  On May 31 we sat down together for a few minutes with the YNAB software program* and walked through a quick overview.  Then she allocated our June budget dollars into categories.

My hope, once I recover from the flu, is to

1. share the how’s and why’s of having The Daughter be in charge of the entire family budget this summer;
2. catch up with all of my missing Daily Dollar posts;
3. journal a little more about the financial and emotional repercussions of suffering from chronic illness and having a terminally ill husband.

sjean over at Stacking Pennies did a What’s In My Wallet? post earlier this week and I thought it looked like fun.  Actually, I’ve been meaning to do something similar to this since starting this blog.

Since I have nothing better to do today (ha!), I thought I’d give you all a snapshot of what I carry in my wallet.  And then, because my wallet is just one part of what I carry around with me on a daily basis, I decided to include a snapshot of what’s in my purse.

My Wallet

Because everything that’s important to me and my everyday Suburban Wife existence is the size of a credit card, I carry a credit card wallet.  My wallet is neat black leather Fossil® case that holds my driver’s license, has one external pocket, a main compartment, and a small separate internal pocket.  I bought the wallet maybe 13 or 14 years ago; I’d love to replace it but I’ve never seen anything quite like it again.

My stash of credit and debit cards are organized in order of frequency of use with my main Citibank Dividend card always in front and my Kroger 1-2-3 Rewards card second.  My kids have been around the block enough times to know that if they get into my wallet for any reason, they must always put that Citibank card back in it’s sacred place as the first credit card.  The sight of any other card in that honored spot can and will send me into instant panic mode!

My Amex card is usually third though I’ll probably retire that card altogether when my new American Express Blue Cash® card arrives.  After the Amex card comes my two Chase cards (rarely ever used but carried nonetheless).  Next is my gold Washington Mutual debit card.  It’s the only gold-colored card I have and I think it’s kind of flashy and cute but I rarely use it.  The card is tied to my personal checking account so I use this card when I’m making personal purchases like birthday or anniversary gifts for The Husband.  At the back of the pile I carry my Paypal debit card (business account) and my business debit card from a local bank.

Next come my membership cards — Costco, Safeway (both of which get used regularly, if not frequently), and my Borders Rewards card (which I almost never use and really should remove from my wallet).  Next are my REI co-op membership card and my Barnes & Noble educator’s discount card.  The B&N discount card isn’t used as often as it used to be because I’m only homeschooling one child these days instead of two and now that he’s older we tend to use the Internet and the library more and buy fewer books.  Still, I consider it to be among the upper echelon of wallet contents.

The final membership card is my AARP card.  I don’t believe I’ve ever used the actual card but I do take advantage of my membership every time I have to stay in a hotel.  Although I’m only 43 (and do, according to general consensus, look younger than my actual age), I’ve never had an employee question my AARP membership status.  Kind of disappointing, actually.  I’ve always wanted an excuse to pull my card out and prove the validity of my membership.  Why, if I’m 43, do I qualify for AARP?  Because my significant other (The Husband) is significantly older and, at 72, is a long-standing member 

The one “missing” membership card is my library card.  I use my library membership so often that it was easier to simply memorize my card number.  My actual card is tucked away safely — somewhere. 

Behind my credit and debit cards and my membership cards come my gift cards.  I rarely receive gift cards as gifts.  More often, they are grocery cards I buy from The Daughter’s school as fund-raisers or gift cards that my children receive as gifts but don’t want.  In the latter case, I buy the cards from the kids – or rather “trade” for them.  For example, this past Christmas The Son received a gift card for the Gap.  Well, The Son couldn’t care less about clothes and considers the act of clothes shopping to be one of the cruelest forms of torture imaginable.  What The Son does like, however, is books.  So I buy $25 worth of books for him and he gives me the $25 Gap gift card to apply to clothing purchases I make — usually for him but not always.

At the very back of all my cards in the wallet’s main compartment, just before the paper items (described next), I keep my medical and dental insurance subscriber cards.  I keep them at the very back so I can find them easily and don’t need to go rifling through my stack of credit cards to find them.

Next comes the “paper.”  It’s rather ironic but I happen to have a ton of cash in my wallet right now.  In late January I had to make a last-minute cash withdrawal from The First Bank of Husband because I had to fly out of town to help my mother and sister prepare for my mom’s impending move.  It’s actually quite rare for me to have more than $10 cash at any one time and quite common for me to have absolutely no cash at all.  I don’t like carrying cash because I tend to spend it more easily and with less thought than I spend money if I use a credit card.  But The Husband and I feel that carrying cash when traveling is imperative, so I usually stock up when I have to leave town.  Usually, I return all unspent cash to The Husband immediately upon returning from a trip but as I knew I’d be leaving again soon (this weekend, in fact), I just kept the cash.  So, in this picture, I’m flush with $69 in cash.  Funny thing is, I actually came home with more cash than when I left with because I purchased some groceries for my sister while I was out of town.  Naturally, I put the groceries on a credit card but my sister paid me back in cash.

Behind the cash I carry coupons.  In general, I’m not a big coupon-clipper mostly because the brands I buy rarely, if ever, offer coupons.  I’ve yet to come across a coupon for Horizon products, Coleman beef, or fresh veggies.  But I see know reason pass up the coupons I can use.  Usually my coupons are a mixture of Kroger store coupons, custom-printed coupons I receive in the mail as a result of my Kroger 1-2-3 Rewards credit card usage, plus the few token manufacturer’s coupons for items I do occasionally buy.

At the very back of the main compartment in my wallet, I carefully fold and store the day’s receipts.  I always request a receipt, no matter how small the purchase.  Every receipt goes into my wallet (never in the bag or my pocket) and each night I remove my receipts, record them in my YNAB budget*, and report them here in my Daily $$ entries.  I do find it much easier to keep my budget numbers accurate when I enter my expenses daily; it only takes a few minutes each night.

That’s it for the main compartment — which is the bulk of my wallet contents.  In the small internal pocket I keep frequent buyer punch cards.  We have an almost full Einstein’s Dozen Bucket punch card — it would have been full long ago if I remembered to have it punched more often.  I also have a half-full Einstein’s Sandwich punch card that gets used even less frequently — both because we buy fewer sandwiches and because I rarely remember to use it.  The third punch card currently in my wallet is a full Great Harvest bread card.  I’d forgotten I had that; I should go redeem it for a free loaf of bread soon.  We used to shop at Great Harvest much more often back in the days when I could eat bread but since discovering that I’m allergic to yeast, my bread consumption stopped completely.  The Husband never was a big fan of Great Harvest and it’s a lot easier to simply pick up a loaf of Rudi’s organic whole wheat bread in the grocery store or Costco.

The final compartment in my wallet is the small external pocket.  This is where I stash business cards — for our doctors, hairdressers, therapists, handyman services.  I sort through my business card stash every now and again and cull down the cards to essentials.  I guess I should put most of those people in my cell phone directory and get rid of the cards but so far it’s a project I haven’t gotten around to.  And it’s a good bet that if I ever do get it done, I’ll need to replace my phone shortly afterward. 

My Purse

My wallet is just one item in the pile of things I carry around in my purse — albeit the most important one.  My current purse is a beautiful black Coach bag I bought a year or so ago at the outlet.

[Note:  I always buy Coach; I always buy at the outlet; I don’t think I’ve ever paid over $110 for a purse; I usually carry a purse for 5 or 6 years before deciding it’s time for another; I have all of my old Coach bags tucked away in my closet; once I get a new purse, I rarely switch back to an old one unless the size and style is better suited to a specific event — for example, I recently dug out my old big brown hobo bag when I flew to my mom’s because it holds everything pictured plus my digital camera and my meds all in one bag.]

In addition to my wallet, my purse holds (at the time of this photo, at least) my iPod Nano (1st generation — a birthday gift from The Husband 1-1/2 years ago), my asthma inhaler, a small bottle of Advil, a lipstick I haven’t used in probably 2 years, my cell phone (a 5-yo Motorola work-horse that I hope never dies), a pocket appointment calendar with a photo of my children, my checkbook (rarely used but always carried nonetheless), two scrips from my doctor — one for an inhaler aero chamber I need to remember to fill and the other for a hearing test and a recommended doctor, and my four fold-up nylon shopping bags (3 are Chico bags).

If you decide to join the “What’s in my wallet?” fun, be sure to email me or leave a comment so I can come check it out.

Greetings everyone.  If you’re a returning reader, welcome back!  If you’re new, welcome!  Come on in and take a look around.

I’ve finally gotten around to creating an “about me” page here on my new WordPress blog.  The page provides some background on who I am and what my blog is about.  It might help provide a little perspective on the overall theme of my posts.

I realized this morning that I haven’t provided a much background info about myself or the other characters mentioned here frequently. I’ve posted a few small tidbits about me so far but nothing comprehensive. So, how about we get a little more personal?

The Husband
He’s 72 years old. He’s survived cancer twice. Now the first cancer is back. At this point the cancer is considered incurable and inoperable but the treatment he’s currently receiving has slowed the growth rate of the cancer.

The Husband still works 7 days a week. He has a master’s degree and had started working toward his PhD but never got a chance to finish. Now he’s on his second career. He’s always joked that if he were to retire, he’d become a hacker The truth is he works because he loves it all that retirement means to him is working for himself without the responsiblity of stockholders.

The Husband is the main bread-winner of the family. He makes a very modest annual salary as the president of his corporation. In addition, he receives his monthly social security benefit, a small pension from his first career, and a very small disability check from the government for injuries received during service.

Me
I’m 43. I’m a stay-at-home mom. I’m also a entrepreneur — I used to be an eBay PowerSeller with annual sales of over $30,000 in my second year of business. When eBay took stores out of search results and then hiked fees by over 300%, I left. I now maintain stores on Wagglepop and eCrater but business is dead. In addition, I work full time from home for my husband’s company and make a small but contributing salary. And I’ve been homeschooling for 10 years.

I was a poor student — undiagnosed learning challenges. I have an Administrative Assistant certificate and paid my way through night school for a few years but don’t have a college degree.

Three years ago I suffered a series of TIAs (small strokes). Recovery was difficult and slow. My cognitive abilities have recovered about 90-95%. I have sleep apnea, asthma, Fibromyalgia, and extensive food allergies. Oh, and half a thyroid and that half needs to come out soon.

The Daughter
She’s a 15 year-old with a driver’s permit and an attitude — in other words, she’s pretty normal.

The Daughter was homeschooled through 8th grade but decided that she wanted to attend high school and I gave in. Now she’s a Sophomore in a small private school. She’s a hard worker and a good student and very well liked.

At this point in life, she resents all of my parenting decisions. She has assured me that I am by far the strictest among all of her friends’ parents.

Her wish list for her upcoming 16th birthday consists of: a car, a nose piercing, and a push-up bra. She’s getting a camcorder. I hope that some day she will forgive me and know that all of my decisions came from love.

Despite our differences at this stage, our relationship is filled with a great deal of humor, love, and, I believe, mutual respect.

The Son
Normal isn’t a word usually associated with The Son — and that’s just fine with him. He’s bright and has a sharp wit; he’s funny and adorable and as sweet as any 13-yo there ever was. At present, we’re in the process of exploring whether or not he has Asperger’s or whether he’s simply quirky. It really doesn’t matter to me; I just want what’s best for him and I don’t want to handicap his future — he has a lot of offer the world.

The Son is still homeschooled and most likely will be homeschooled through high school. He does participate in a program for homeschoolers though our local school district. The children were both initially enrolled in the program three years ago when I was sick and it has served us well so The Son continues. The best part of the program is that he has access to a fabulous Spanish teacher and a full science lab.

other minor characters include:

The Tank
My 21st century version of a trusty steed; my big suburban-mama SAV (Suburban Assault Vehicle). It seats eight passengers with 3-point safety harnesses (shoulder-lap seat belts) with all but one of those seats also having a head rest. The Tank was purchased used in 2002 and has all sorts of fancy extras that we never would have paid for if we’d purchased the car new. I love it.

The grandchildren
The Husband’s five grandchildren from his first four children.

The nieces and nephews
I have four nephews and two nieces — the children of my three siblings.

I’ve read a lot of personal finance blogs that are dedicated primarily to tracking the blogger’s journey out from under overwhelming debts. I applaud both the impetus (shedding debt) and the effort of journaling their trek out of the abyss.

There but for the grace of God…

In our case, despite daily credit card use, The Husband and I do not carry a credit card debt load. Our debt load consists only of one car loan and our mortgage.

The Car
We bought our 2007 Subaru Impreza wagon in July of this year — the same month that we made the loan-retiring payment on The Tank (our SUV). The new Subaru was purchased to replace the Subaru Legacy wagon we purchased new in 1994. The day we brought home the new Impreza, we sold the Legacy for $900. It was 13 years old and had in the neighborhood of 224,000 miles on it and still ran well with no major issues. The dealership wanted nothing to do with it

We bought the Impreza through the Costco Auto Buying program. If you ask me, it’s the only way to buy a new car. First of all there are no pushy salesmen to deal with — Costco purchases are all run through the dealer’s fleet sales department. From what I understand, the deal one gets through the Costco program varies depending on the manufacturer of the car you’re buying. It’s typically in the neighborhood of $100.00 over dealer invoice.

We couldn’t be happier with the Subaru and we couldn’t have been happier with our purchasing experience either. Because we were buying a 2007 (the 2008’s weren’t out yet but were due out soon and the new ‘08 was a model redesign year), our deal was particularly sweet. We paid nothing over invoice (that’s right, actual invoice price only and yes, we saw the invoice) plus we retained the Subaru incentive being offered that month (the pot was sweetened in July) of $1,500 cash back. We also opted for the 2-year 1.9% financing.

The Husband made a payment today and showed me the payment details. Our monthly payment is $904.15. Of that amount, $871.63 is applied to the principal of the loan with only $32.52 in interest charges.

The House
We bought our house in the spring of 2002. The Husband has owned several homes over his lifetime [he loves reminiscing about buying his first home — a brand-new 2-bed, 2-bath in Boulder, CO for $18,000] but I was a first-timer. Before buying the house, we’d rented a house for 8 years and rented an 2-bedroom apartment for about 5 years before that.

The Husband had a pretty definite budget in mind — which was about 1/2 of what we qualified for. We got a VA loan (The Husband had previously bought a house with a VA loan and didn’t think he could use it again; his brilliant wife did the research and found out that he could). We had nothing to put down and thus financed the entire purchase price. I don’t remember what the final numbers were but the seller accepted our offer of $224,000 (it had been sitting vacant for nearly a year). We got a 30-year fixed rate at 6%.

Shortly after buying the house I read somewhere that by simply making one extra house payment per year a homeowner can effectively take 8 years off of a 30-year mortgage. I was floored! So I mentioned it to The Husband and we agreed make it our plan.

According to our this month’s mortgage payment statement, our unpaid principal amount is $208,910.83. Our October payment was $1,640.10 and of that amount only $342.58 was principal. Interest was $1,046.27 and $251.25 was applied to escrow.

Each spring The Husband sends in a check for $3,000 in lieu of our $1,640.10 payment. So once each year, we apply (approximately) an extra $1,360 to our principal pay-down. That’s like making 5-1/2 principal payments and saves us approximately $5,755 in interest each year. And with each extra payment, the principal paydown portion (how’s that for alliteration?) gets bigger.

I’ve seen it argued that homeowners are better off applying that annual extra house payment to higher yield investments. That may well be — in some cases. However, in our case, that extra payment brings me peace of mind. With The Husband turning 73 next spring and battling cancer for the third time (a battle that, statistically he will not win this time), anything we can do to make the future a less scary place is good.

Sometimes it’s called “robbing the cradle.” Another euphemism is “May-December” relationship. My usual way of stating the age difference between The Husband and myself is to say that he is “significantly older than I am.”

The fact is that my husband is 29 years, 2 months, and 25 days older than I am. I usually just round it up to a 30-year age difference. I’m 43; he’s 72.

So, yes, I am a lot younger than my husband. And yes, I’m his second wife. And since my goal with this blog is to be as transparent as possible without compromising our anonymity, I will even admit that at one point I was “the other woman.” But I am not a trophy wife and I can prove it.

Fact No. 1 — I am not a trophy
Fact No. 2 — He is not a trophy winner.

Ask anyone who knows me and they will confirm fact #1. Nothing about me screams (or even whispers) trophy! in the typically understood definition of a trophy wife. I am as flat-chested as they come. I don’t “do” make-up; I have no interest in clothes or baubles or purses or shoes; I pay no attention whatsoever to my hair; I keep my nails short, never use polish, and have never had a manicure.

The Husband, as I stated, is not a trophy winner. He’s no Daddy Warbucks, he’s got wrinkles that resemble the Grand Canyon, and unless baby-blue leisure suits make a tremendous comeback, he’s never going to grace the cover of GQ.

I’m not completely lacking, however, in trophy wife qualifications. Trophy wives are often seen as being high-maintenance. I am high-maintenance. I’m not even ashamed to admit it anymore. Sing it loud and sing it proud: I am high-maintenance! I require a good bit of attention and affection. My feelings are too easily bruised and I can’t hear “I love you” often enough.

I do possess one other trophy-wife qualification: I have expensive tastes. But instead of coveting big furs, flashy cars, and overpriced jewelry, my eyes glaze over when I think about electronic gadgets.

Imagine how I’d look with a new Sony camcorder cradled in my palm! The only way to top that look would be to add a top-of-the-line Nikon SLR with a 300mm telephoto lens draped around my neck. Wouldn’t that Bose SoundDock system accessorize beautifully with my white Nano?

I dream about making the switch from PCs to Mac, getting each child one of those incredibly cool and ultra-portable MacBook laptops. Naturally, I’d have the new 24″ 2.8GHz iMac with 500gb hard drive. Our existing Mac Mini would be perfect for The Husband and I’d hook us all up to an Airport Extreme-driven wireless network.

I’ve been keeping a close eye on the field of networkable external hard-drives — imagining the ability to store all of our music, photo, video, and document files in one place and being able to access them from any computer in the house, that’s the stuff of wet dreams!

My latest guiltily-secretly-coveted gizmo is a flat-panel TV. Something that we could install on the wall and pull out and swing around according to where viewers are sitting. When not in use it would hang unobtrusively on the wall looking like some sleek, new-age, ultra modern piece of art. I could get rid of the big black box that sits in the corner on the ancient wooden wheeled stand along with the DVD player and the VHS player and all the cables and the wires and the dust. I’m still trying to decide, should I go Plasma or an LCD? And what about size: 42″ is a probably bit excessive, don’t you think? Maybe 37″?

A girl can dream, can’t she? Dreaming is free.

My husband thinks I’m the perfect type of trophy wife — my head might be in the clouds but my feet are planted firmly on the ground. I might dream of a life of electronics luxury but in the real world I’m perfectly content with my 4.0 megapixel point-and-shoot Nikon, our 20-year-old 27″ color TV, and my 4gb first-generation Nano iPod.

After posting last night’s dollar diary entry and working on today’s, I decided that not only did I need to make Shopping While Impaired an official entry tag but I also needed to write a post explaining this particular term.

About three years ago I went through a really rough patch with my health. About two years ago I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, fibromyalgia, and a screwed up thyroid gland.

The sleep apnea was a real shocker especially since I don’t fit the profile, ie. I’m not overweight. And a real pain because I sleep hooked up to a CPAP machine every night.

The screwed up thyroid gland resulted in half of my thyroid being removed. The stupid thing is still acting wonky and I will have to have the rest of it removed soon. This means a second ugly gash of a scar across my neck and no question about whether I’ll have to continue taking a synthetic thyroid for the rest of my life.

The fibro, though, that’s the icing on the “life sucks” cake. Sometimes, when I’m really, really lucky, the fibro takes a vacation and I feel like a normal middle-aged woman with two teenagers and too much to do. When life is going too well, however, and life decides to take me down a peg or too, the fibro kicks in. On good days, I feel like I have the flu. Generalized body aches and feeling like I’m running a low-grade fever (even though I’m not). Those are the good fibro days. The bad fibro days…. Those are harder to describe. Take the flu-feeling body aches and low-grade fever, add all-over weakness and fatigue and brain-fog, then top it all off with shooting and sometimes searing pain in various parts of my body. One minute I’ll have a sharp stabbing pain in my wrist or elbows, next it’ll feel like someone is drilling into my femur. Or I’ll have sharp, infection-like pain in my ear or feel like someone has stabbed me in the face right under the cheekbone. The pains are sharp, sometimes incessant, sometimes intermittant, often wandering. And the very worst part is that it’s chronic. Chronic pain will really mess with your mind. Oh and of course there’s nothing that I’ve found that will relieve the pain. No painkiller touches it.

Days like today, the pain level is high enough that I feel continually nauseous. It’s days like this that any shopping done is likely to be a little nutty and impulsive.

Watch out, she’s Shopping While Impaired.