Uncategorized Archives - Making Sense Of Cents

Spending, Life, Income and Food Updates… & A GIVEAWAY!

September 24, 2012 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 111 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Happy Monday everyone. I hope it was a great weekend. My weekend was good, I started it a little earlier because I took a half day on Friday. I took it for no reason, I just wanted a little bit of a longer weekend 🙂 And boy was that nice!

I took the pups to get their vaccinations on Saturday. But that's a post for tomorrow! I have a long animal costs post set up for tomorrow. You all know that I'm obsessed with my dogs so be prepared for a long post.

And I'm finally on WordPress if you couldn't tell! WOOOHHOOO! To celebrate this, I created a giveaway. I will announce the winner next week for the $100 PayPal cash prize.

My updates:

Spending: We didn't do a lot of shopping last week. I bought a couple of things for the house that we needed (new sheets, pillow cases, etc.).

Extra Monthly Income:My extra income wasn't as high as last week, but it's still pretty good. I made around $275 last week from extra income.

Food: We've been doing better, as I said yesterday, but we could be doing much better.

Being healthy: I've been doing much better! I've ran with my dog every day. We've been going to the track in our neighborhood every day also. My sister has been a crazy workout and healthy eating person lately, so she's helped keep me on track.

How's your spending, working out and extra income going?

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Sunday Meal Plan

September 23, 2012 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 1 Comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Happy Sunday everyone. I hope you are having a great weekend.

We're still doing better than usual. We did eat out a couple of times last week, but it was mainly to celebrate whenever the boy sold a car. This of course won't go on forever, but we are happy that it's only his second week and he's already sold 3!

He was told that it would probably take a month in order to sell his first one, but they were wrong 🙂

Here's what I plan on making as our main course for each dinner:

Monday – Steak and orzo + feta stuffed peppers
Tuesday – Zucchini Lasagna
Wednesday – Vegetarian Enchiadas (Thanks Jason!)
Thursday – Lemon Chicken
Friday – Turkey Parmesean Baked Rotini
Saturday – Out to Eat
Sunday – Spaghetti

What's on your menu? Share any recipes 🙂

3 Simple Steps to Theft Recovery

September 7, 2012 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - Leave a Comment

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Getting robbed is not an emergency you can foresee, but payday loan companies are there to provide cash when your creditors are busy freezing or closing accounts to mitigate more loss. It may be something as obvious as an unauthorized draft to your bank account or purchases on your credit card that get your attention. Either way, if you think you are being robbed, you have to follow a few simple steps on your way back to recover the funds that are rightfully yours.

1. Call Your Bank and Lenders
The first thing you must do is to notify any financial entities that may be at risk for theft. Your bank may want to put a freeze on your account for a few days. Your credit card company may decide to close the account so no new purchases can be made on a stolen credit card. You will also need to dispute any fraudulent purchases on the card so that you can be covered with their automatic theft protection. Call your lenders to let them know that you are having a fraud issue and are going to have to make payments for any due bills via a different method for the month – either via a new account, a money order, or in person with cash. By notifying them, they may give you more time to work out new payment methods.

2. Get Emergency Cash
Take some cash out of your bank account before your freeze it. If your funds are low, you may need to also contact a short-term credit lender to cover important payments like mortgages and car payments. Notify your employer so that they don’t direct deposit into an account you can’t access. Keep some cash handy for your expenses as you may not have access to your regular credit sources while the bank or lender investigates.

3. Safeguard Future Accounts
You may have to set up entirely new accounts with your bank or credit card company. Don’t forget to check with all three credit bureaus to see if you are also the victim of identity theft. Order your credit profile and consider putting your accounts on a third party service that watches them for you in the future. This way, even when you are too busy to pay attention, you’ll have someone else watching your accounts and they will notify you of suspicious activity the minute it happens.

Back from my vacation!

April 1, 2012 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 22 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

I took so many pictures of Queen's Bath. Great time!

I said I would jump off this, but the BF did it by himself. Too scary for me!

I'm finally back from my vacation! I had a great time. I'll be doing a post recap very soon and upload tons of pictures for you all. I finished the Hunger Games on the first day of my vacation and it was really good! Usually I'm not the one to read hyped up books (AKA Twilight ughh) but I really LOVED it.

I'm glad to be back. I miss blogging and tweeting. I can't wait until I get back into everything.

Blog posts and blogs I love:

Financial Confessions of a Young Brat posted about how financial security is her main goal. I'm the same way. I would like to not have to worry about something small coming up.
I love Curiosity Killed the Blog. There's great tips and I've been using a lot of the information. Check it out!
Well-Heeled did an MBA analysis and this is a great idea for all of you thinking about whether or not you want to go to grad school.

And make sure you read my guest posts that I had this week. Thanks again!

How I Purchased a New Wardrobe for Less Than $500
Please Forgive Me- I’m a Public Servant!
All-Inclusive Vacations
Guest Post – Our Money Story

The winner of my giveaway was Rebecca. I e-mailed you the other day so I hope you got it! The $20 gift card was directly put into your sneakpeeq account.

Lazy Day

February 4, 2012 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 25 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

Today is a pretty lazy day. I found out last night that I won the $50 newsletter giveaway at Budgeting In The Fun Stuff, so I was pretty happy! We went out for the boy's birthday and had a lot of fun, and then had people over afterwards. Lots of fun!

I've noticed that I've had some weird/funny/sad top search keywords lately, so I thought I'd share. Do you guys ever look at this? I look at it almost everyday because sometimes they are pretty funny. I'm not sure why some of these show up. And surprisingly, with most of these, I've gotten over 10 referrals from each. I must be putting up weird pictures or something

Top Search Keywords:

I hate snow
I hate cold weather
girl slapped me dog driving car joke
Miserable couples
Mexican principals
Workout kitty

I don't know what else we're doing today, we were invited to a wedding at the very last second, so we might go to that. I feel a little weird about not actually getting an invite. The groom invited us LAST NIGHT. So I don't know.

Anyways though, hope everyone has a good weekend!

I have a Twitter account! Finally…

January 26, 2012 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 13 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

I finally have a Twitter account. You'd think I'd have Twitter by now considering that everyone else has one, and also that I live in the town where the Twitter creator is from/grew up. But I delayed it for so long. I'm still extremely new to the Twitter thing, so sorry if I'm a little slow or stupid with it.

Follow me!

Purchased my own domain!

January 3, 2012 BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 37 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info.

I just purchased my own domain, I am now at https://www.makingsenseofcents.com/

Blogger says they will forward everything, but I'm not sure how that works or how long it takes. Anyone know? Or anything I should know?

So, what I'm asking is that if you could please update your links for my website. I would love you forever.

Also, when I bought the domain, I noticed that my blog list disappeared, and that I had to re-add everyone. If I forgot to re-add you just now, please let me know! Please look.

Thank you!

P.S. another question. Will I lose all of my followers via feedburner?

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