Thank you all once again for your input on the handbag. As "luck" would have it, my laptop died (It's three years old, had heavy use, and keys missing. Not worth looking into having it fixed). Therefore, the proceeds from selling the handbag will pay for the new laptop I picked up yesterday at Walmart for $328. I put it on my Capital One card mainly because it doubles the warranty. As soon as the handbag sells I will pay it off. If for some reason the handbag doesn't sell, I will take the money from savings to pay for it.

Christmas was nice and quiet here, but we did make a nice turkey dinner.

I am working on my 2014 goals and will post them soon. I hope everyone has a great new year!

I do some freelance work for a company based in Vietnam. My boss is very kind and generous. He told me he was shipping me a handbag in an email for Christmas. I didn't think much of it until I had a call from a handbag company out of Colorado verifying this was legitimate since it was purchased out of Vietnam. I said yes, my boss said he purchased a gift and it was bought from a US company who would ship it. The gentleman from the handbag company forwarded me the shipping confirmation and I about had a heart attack!

This is a $350 Michael Kors (sp?) handbag! I am a frugal girl who has never spent more than $20 on a purse and find it wasteful (For me, I don't judge others). I am grateful my boss is so generous and kind, but I hardly ever carry a purse at all and cannot fathom carrying this extravagant one. I don't know what to say or do. I didn't even spend $350 on Christmas altogether!If I say something I feel rude and ungrateful and if I don't I feel like he wasted his money. What would you do? How can I handle this gracefully?

I have been so busy lately. I am proctoring a mock SAT this morning so a perfect time to catch up online (and write out my Christmas cards)!

Not much has changed on the financial front. I am able to pay all the bills and save my $26.50 a week, but no major progress.

Today will be a very long day. I should be done here around 1pm and from there I have five mystery shops which will net $95.00. I only have one small purchase ($3) to make for one of them and it will be a Christmas gift. Of course I will get reimbursed for it next month. The mall will be packed I am sure, but it is worth it to get paid to go.

I met both of my daily goals all month last month for Swagbucks. It was a challenge and although I will still shoot for the first goal all this month, I am not going to worry about the second. It was too much effort.

That is all that is new around here. I feel behind. I have a ton of wrapping to do tomorrow to get the out of state gifts shipped this week. I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Today only open a custodial account and receive a $100 bonus after your first trade. Looks like adults can use it too.

From my email:
Today only, open a Capital One® ShareBuilder® Custodial account with promo code GIFTSTOCK13
By Dec. 31, 2013, make just one trade or automatic investment
Bingo! You've earned a $100 bonus to help get that kid off to a good start.
For adults the code is CYBMON13
I just opened one for my son and my grandson.

My other Cyber Monday purchase was a new Kindle Fire (I have one and LOVE it but the screen went black after dropping it). The low end one (8gb) is $139 with ads. I got the 16gb without ads on sale for $134. I used Amazon credits from Swagbucks and paid $92.85 total for the Kindle Fire and a case. I put it on my Capital One card which doubles the manufacturer warranty. The first one that dropped would have been around $50 to fix. I figure I got an updated model and a case for only $42 more.

If you are in New England and have a Service Credit Union (mainly in Walmart), they have a spectacular deal on Friday! I almost fell over-11% (Yes, ELEVEN) on a 3 month savings certificate! It is for anywhere between $250 and $1000. Since my emergency fund is low, I don't want to tie up my regular account. However, I think I will withdraw some of the business savings and put it in a certificate. Best of all you don't have to be a new customer or have other accounts with them.

Even if you don't have this credit union in your area, I find credit unions in general have offered some pretty sweet Black Friday deals. Of course, online banks often do too!

I did some Christmas shopping today. We are keeping the budget VERY low this year. It was agreed to only get the grand kids a small gift for under $10. They range from 15 months to 7 years old and none live near us Anyhow, I found recordable story books (good ones too!) for $5 each (if you are in New England they are at Ocean State Job Lot). I got those for the three youngest. Walmart had several games on sale for $5 and I got two of those for the oldest two. All five grand kids are done for only $25 (and if I play my cards right I can pick up post office mystery shops to cover the shipping).

I have done very little with my "regular" blog in the last several months. Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised to be offered three sponsored posts yesterday. One for $25 and two for $40 each. I also picked up three very easy mystery shops in early December for $15 each. A total of $150 extra income and pretty easy work overall.

On the tutoring front, business is picking up as well. I signed on a new student yesterday and a couple other promising prospects.

I am definitely very thankful for the past few days. They have been good to me!

I am happy to report without a heck of a lot of effort I earned $35 today. I did two mystery shops ($12 and $15) at the mall (very easy ones with no purchase and the reports each only took five minutes), a Pinecone survey ($3), and a Nielson survey ($5). I also got a nice walk in at the mall and didn't spend a dime other than the gas to get there (only five miles).

I actually earned a few bucks more because I reached both of my Swagbucks goals (total of 140) and earned over $2 on Instagc today as well. Not bad for a day off!

I hit the goal all month again in Swagbucks. I cashed out 5 $5 Amazon gift cards (bought household goods), 2 $5 Walmart gift cards, and 2 $5 Target gift cards (stocking stuffers). I hope to earn $50 in November.

The tutoring business is moving along nicely. It took in $600 more than last month. I, of course am still not taking a full paycheck. I took home even less than originally planned because I did some newspaper advertising (it's report card time). Luckily for me freelancing picked up the last week or so.

I am regularly adding to savings ($26.50 which equals the 52 week challenge) and hope to take my student loans off deferment soon.

I see others have successfully went from a check through Pinecone to PayPal. I guess I am in the minority. They gave me a debit card which they load my payments on. I asked to be switched to PayPal and was told it isn't an option if you have the card (I never wanted the card, but Pinecone decides how to pay you). Anyone else in this predicament?

I hope everyone did well in October and hits their November goals as well!

Every four months I take an extra $150 (total) and do wardrobe updating for the three of us and an oil change. I did all that this morning and I have $30 left. I plan to use it for a new pair of sneakers for my husband. I did pretty well. The oil change, tire rotation (which was free because I bought my tires at that auto place), and air filter came out to $38.00. I got 2 dress shirts, jeans, and a sweater for my husband (Goodwill but brand new!). My son got a brand new pair of American Eagle jeans (reg. $49 but were $15 at Goodwill, new with tags!). I also got a pair of jeans and a pair of pajama bottoms. All items were needs so I don't feel too bad for spending the money. Now we are all set until spring around here.

The weekend should be a no spend other than the $30 set aside for the sneakers. Pretty low key, our only plans are dinner at my brother-in-law's house on Sunday.

It's interesting that so many of us track our spending in so many different ways (envelopes, cash, spreadsheets, etc.). I keep my budget on a spreadsheet. Gas, groceries, household goods, gifts, and entertainment have a designated debit card. I simply transfer the same amount each week to that card (I also earn 1% back on this card that makes a payment to my student loan each time I accumulate $15 or more).

I have a regular budget of $115 per week for the items listed above. This is $500 per month which probably seems low for a family of three. However, I am very frugal, a homebody for the most part, and I also supplement with the gift cards I earn from Swagbucks (several of the household goods and gifts throughout the year). I never have to worry about going over budget since the weekly transfer is the only money on the card.

Ugh! TWICE this week I had a post about the update on the progress of my new (well now about two months old) tutoring business. Nice long, detailed updates that went POOF!

Therefore, this is a very abbreviated version. All is well and I should be able to take 2/3 of my "goal" paycheck home come November 1st.

I hope you all have a great weekend!

There is one more day in the month, but I don't anticipate not being able to reach the Swagbucks goal. This means I hit it all thirty days. I will get 300 extra Swagbucks in addition to the extra 10 percent each day. This should be a total of around 550 extra Swagbucks! I cashed out 5 $5 Amazon and 3 $5 Walmart this month. All gift cards earned from mid-September through end of November go for Christmas.

October personal finance goals:

Tutoring earnings: $900 (Remember this is still a new business. My ultimate goal is $2100 monthly after paying employees and overhead. I also hope to take a semi-annual bonus. I do have other household income thank goodness.)

Reboot emergency fund and add $26.50 per week. This is the "easy way out" for the 52 week challenge. It comes out to $1378.

Step up the budget. The emergency budget is $2500 per month, which we have been on since August. The "full" budget is $3100. I plan on hitting in between the two at $2800 per month through the end of the year and hope to return to the "full" budget in January (more debt repayment).

I just spent $26.88 on Amazon for household goods including toothpaste (2), paper towels, razors, shampoo (2), and deodorant. I have Amazon Prime so shipping is free. Actually it is all "free" because my gift card balance was earned from Swagbucks, Instagc, and Media Insiders Panel.

So happy to save a trip to the store and knock $26.88 off the monthly grocery/household good budget for the month!

After getting students to tutor with all of our initial leads from my previous boss, things dried up and I have been waiting for mid-month advertising to kick in. I am still waiting on that, but doing some work online listing the business in directories is paying off. We obtained four new students!

I am hoping by mid-October to be able to take my planned salary. Right now I am taking very little. This is okay for another month or so, but eventually it will be a huge issue. However, I firmly believe we will be fine and have plenty of students to tutor very soon.

I also got a windfall yesterday. I had written for a chicken company early in the summer and had told I would get a check within two weeks. It never came. Finally, after a third email last week I received a $50 check yesterday. It will go to help rebuild the emergency fund.

As I said previously, I am going to stay on the emergency budget for September. I should have a better idea of regular income later this month. School has started and we have advertising going out mid-month. It should be prime time for tutoring by then.

Hubby has some extra income coming in September which will help tremendously. I can rebuild savings and pay off the laptop I had to buy for the office.

I have decided if things aren't where I want them to be by late September, I will look for a weekend job to supplement.

I was so busy with the new business, I let some smaller tasks slide more than usual in August. For example, I try to earn $50 from Swagbucks every month and only earned $40 in August. There are a couple of other areas where I earned less also. I have to watch it and be careful not to lose that cash in September.

Have a great holiday weekend everyone. My exciting weekend will consist of accounting and some writing.

I am working very hard at the tutoring center. Panic has set it knowing half of our students are doing SAT/ACT prep and will be gone shortly. However, myself and my education coordinator (also a good friend) put our heads together and bartered for free advertising so I am sure we will be okay. We have an ad going up on a local deal site similar to Groupon. It costs us nothing, but we split what we sell.

I know there is a lack of tutoring available in our area with the franchise we worked for closing down. Our new center is basically it. We simply need to get the word out of our existence.

The frustrating part is digging into savings and simply not knowing my long-term income. I am trying to remain calm and not freak out. I know I can make this business a success with a lot of hard work and a little luck!

In the meantime, I am going to try and do a little more freelance writing to help make ends meet and stay on the emergency budget.

So far, so good overall with the new tutoring company. The worst part is keeping track of the accounting using my personal account. I can't wait until the LLC approval comes back from the state so I can open a business account and separate all of this from my personal finances.

School starts here on the 27th, so we can have more regular hours and get in a routine which should make things a lot easier!

Hoping to relax this weekend. Picking up my sister-in-law at Logan (Boston) on Saturday and spending the day Sunday at a lake house my brother-in-law has rented for a week. I hope you all have a great weekend!

Although I feel out of control this past week, I know every penny I have spent has been necessary. I am in the process of opening my own tutoring business and starting up is expensive. So far, I am even with the checks that have rolled in this week. Still, for me to spend almost three hundred dollars in one week is unsettling.

I really hope this venture is successful. So far we have 6 students and 4 more solid leads. My business partner and I have been working non-stop. I have been doing the bare minimum for my other jobs. I definitely will spend Friday and Saturday tending to them.

I hope everyone is well. I have been reading posts when I can.

I was so worried about income, especially this month with such short notice on the tutoring center shutting down. I am much more optimistic as things seem to be working out well. However, I hate to "count my chickens before they hatch."

It looks as if taking on the remaining students will work out well. So far, it looks as if myself and the other tutor who are building our own little business won't lose much, if any, tutoring income.

Also, I had a conference call with a client who I write real estate articles for. He more or less offered me full-time work.

So, if all of the above go as planned, not only will I not lose income, I will add quite a bit to it!

I still plan on staying on the emergency budget this month. After all, I need to have that income in place before I can plan its use. The one thing I may go ahead and do is pay the student loan payment rather than putting them back on deferment (which I can do next month if necessary).

Keep you fingers crossed, but I do believe everything is going to work out quite well! The only downside is I may be working 12+ hour days every single day.

I have put more effort into Swagbucks this month and it paid off. Basically I work on it for 15-30 minutes in the morning when I am too tired to do anything that takes effort. Then later on I try for a survey or two, other than that I do activities while multi-tasking. The main idea is not to let it suck my time and earn $1 an hour when I can be making money elsewhere.

Today I hit $50 for the month! I had cashed out 5 $5 Amazon cards (best value but the limit is 5 per month) by the 12th and today I cashed out for $25 Paypal.

The only thing I don't like is some of the quality of the brand activities/videos lately (as others have also noted). I contacted someone regarding this and hope that improves. Otherwise, I have been very happy using Swagbucks the last four years. However, it is only lately I bothered to figure out a "system" to earn more.

With my lower budget for August that $25 will certainly help out! I spent the Amazon earnings earlier this month on household goods. Anyhow,that's my "exciting" news for the day. Hope you all are having a good Sunday.

After a final last ditch effort with the CEO of the company calling me, the tutoring center is definitely closing on Wednesday. He really wanted me to buy it and I told him I would need them to cover everything for three months because we have so few students. He also wanted me to sign a 10 year agreement. No way!

I didn't waste time and met with my friend/co-worker yesterday afternoon and there is a plan in place for us to tutor the remaining students at the library. We will make calls this week. I don't anticipate losing much income and possibly none at all, but I told my husband we are on the emergency budget for August.

1. Savings is cut to $15 per week (can be cut altogether if necessary).

2. Cut weekly grocery, gas, etc. budget by $15 (It's already quite low so can't realistically cut much)

3. I hate this, but put student loans back on deferment.

4. I am ahead on the car payment so I can pay as little as $150, but will see where I stand on the 22nd when it is due. I usually pay $400. I am hoping to pay at least $200.

I am due a paycheck on Monday and have one more coming in two weeks. I am going to ask if I can get paid everything so I don't have to worry about that last check. My boss is a nice guy, but I fear he is in huge financial trouble and worry the check will bounce or possibly not even get paid.

I am going to spend today catching up on other work I put off with all of this fiasco. I hope everyone has a great weekend.

After several conversations, I have decided not to take over the franchise where I tutor. My boss is a nice guy, but hasn't run the business well the past year and there are not many students left. I don't have any momentum to get things going and paying the overhead in the meantime would be difficult to say the least.

I was talking to the Education Director and told him I would love to take on some of the remaining students and tutor them at the library, but don't want to "step on any toes". He thinks it is a wonderful idea and thinks the owner will appreciate it. I will call him today about this. One of the other tutors is willing to do this with me (I do English and she does math so it is perfect). I believe we will not only make up our lost salary, but potentially make more. Who knows maybe we can grow our "business" as well.

I am still a little sad as I will miss the rest of the staff and the students we won't see again. It's a shame my boss didn't handle this better. I think it would have been salvageable a few months ago. However, I am feeling a lot less stress now that I made a decision. I only have the final hurdle of calling the boss. I believe my final official day tutoring for the company will be Tuesday.

My next plan of action is coming up with a bid for this writing project. I would love others with experience to weigh in. It is for 42 articles that should be around 400 words each. I have to proofread, edit, and add info where necessary. I haven't looked at all of them, but the half a dozen or so I took a look at were only 200 words. I am thinking of bidding $250.00 total. I want to be fair because I have ongoing work with this client, but I don't want to undercharge either. I am used to writing from scratch so this is a tough bid for me to figure out. Thanks in advance for any advice.

Not only do I have to worry whether or not I have to purchase a home sooner than later, but now I have major job decisions to make as well.

I received a call Thursday for a long writing contract for a client I have worked with in the past. This will increase my income anywhere from 425-600 per month. Within an hour of that phone call,I also found out my boss is not renewing his franchise where I tutor.

I had a lot of weekend plans so I decided to do my best not to think about all of this and enjoy the weekend. Last night I had an email from my boss asking if I wanted to take over the franchise for the remainder of the term (18 months) at no cost. I am in the office this morning and he is supposed to call with more details. Needless to say it was a sleepless night. I am infusing myself with coffee so I can be coherent when my boss calls.

I took an extra $100 cash out this week. I cringed, but it is the most I will spend all year. I have four free passes to a water park for Friday. I plan on packing food and water, but at the very least I will need to purchase extra gas to get there.

Also, on Saturday we are going to see the Bon Jovi concert. The tickets were bought months ago (My son's birthday was last week and this was his gift), but again it is a lot of gas (not sure offhand on mileage but over an hour each way) and parking is $40!

On a side note, I have to vent a bit. The apartment buildings where I live were bought out a few months ago by a corporation who are doing improvements. I do appreciate them sprucing things up, but they are very inconsiderate in doing so. We almost got towed one day because they were doing work on the parking lot and "forgot" to give us notice to park elsewhere. I got home just in time to stop the tow truck from towing our second vehicle.

The "best" part was coming home from an errand at 6pm last night telling me I have to move all furniture away from the windows because they are replacing them at 8 am this morning. Call if there is an issue. This infuriated me. How can I call when the office is closed and 14 hours notice (overnight at that) is completely unacceptable. If I hadn't happened to run that errand I would have never seen the note which was not there at 5pm when I left. Not to mention they didn't call or knock on the door (hubby was home).

I do feel a bit better now that I vented. I really was hoping not to move until I am financially ready to purchase, but this company is making me rethink my plan.

My weekly deposit for spending hit my card last night so I went grocery shopping and put gas in my tank this morning. I had a total of $114.90 (105 for the deposit plus a little left over from last week). I only spent $54.72 for gas and groceries, so I have $60 left for the week and nothing I have to buy.

I did my first Amazon subscribe and save purchase so I have a six month supply of soap and deodorant coming next week. Of course that was paid with funds earned by Swagbucks, etc.

I have no plans at all this four day weekend and not much work to do. I think I may splurge and go for a drive up north or to Vermont tomorrow or Saturday since I was able to spend so little on necessities for the week.

Nothing special on the agenda here today. I think we will do some teriyaki chicken and corn on the cob for dinner and maybe go to the local fireworks. I hope you all have a safe and happy 4th of July!

I've had three no spend days in a row. I don't see myself spending anything today either. My weekly spending will hit my account tomorrow night, so either then or Thursday I will need to do some grocery shopping.

I need to stock up on some household items soon, but plan on doing that with the Amazon cards I am earning on Swagbucks and a couple of phone apps. I have $25 I am waiting to hit my account so I can place an order. I have a plan to order 8 items over the summer as part of Amazon's Subscribe and Save program.

I may have mentioned this, but I called about my student loans and have settled on a $200 payment (this is for both undergrad and grad) loans. It's a doable payment. It will be nice to take them off deferment and make some progress! My first payment is in August.

I have used Swagbucks since 2009 and accumulated several hundred dollars in Amazon gift cards. I rarely reach the daily goal. However, I just downloaded the SBTV app on my phone. Since I run my phone on wi-fi 90% of the time, it isn't using my data.

I simply let the videos run over and over on the app in addition to doing the usual tasks (daily poll, NOSO, toolbar, couple of searches, codes) and find it will be very easy to hit the goal every single day.

Therefore from now on my plan is to earn at least $30 a month. I will cash out for $25 PayPal and a $5 Amazon code. Who knows, I may even do better and grab and extra $5 Amazon or two.

I will keep you posted on how well this works out. I did already reach today's goal and it is not even 9am!

I have been reading the blogs here on Saving Advice for quite awhile. I must confess; I am a lurker. I love, love, love how everyone tracks their finances and stays accountable. This motivated me to start a blog here myself. I do have a "regular" blog that is related to personal finance, but it has other topics as well.

I figured here is a great place to track each and every personal finance success (and "failure").

I will be adding my numbers in the next couple of days. For now I wanted to introduce myself and say hello. I read everyone's blogs here so often I feel like I "know" you all (I hope that isn't creepy sounding!).