One More Disappointing Open House

Well, we went to another open house on Saturday. And boy was I disappointed! On the email listings prepared for us by our realtor, it looked perfect: just four years old, 5 bedrooms, 3 baths and a one car garage for just 407,000. I was so excited, thinking that is it! look no more. But the moment we parked our car on the street, I know this is not for me. Because the house is so close to the street, I can hear the cars speeding by inside the bedroom close to the street and it is not safe at all for young kids (if we ever have any) to play around the house at all. My husband said no wonder it is cheap! I agreed. I can't buy this house and enjoy the neighborhood. I think we will keep looking!

Another Free Grocery Website

I mentioned Coupon Mom yesterday as a free web service for grocery savings. And today I found another one through fools.com message board. The name is Budget101.Enter your zip code, choose the stores you want (they have a much larger store selections than Coupon Mom which includes Giant, Safeway, CVS, Rite Aid, Target and Kmart). And you can see all the weekly special deals with coupons.

It is also very easy to use and it is separated by the products such as food, pets, beauty and baby foods so that it is very easy for you to go to each specific products.

Hope you enjoy this free website!

Coupon Mom

I know a lot of people use Grocery Game to reduce their grocery bills. It works like that. For example, Grocery Game will tell me what kinds of sales combined with Sunday paper coupon my neighbourhood grocery store (Giant) has for the current week. It will tell me what weeks of coupon to use, what is the sale price and how many sale items to buy to get the coupon. It cost $10 for 8 weeks. But you can join for $1 for a 4 week trial. I did the trial and canceled it after it ends. I don't think it will benefit us much since we can pretty much do it ourselves with a price list. I also found another similar service, Coupon Mom, for free! It uses the same technique as Grocery game.

Like this weekend, I bought 2 Purdue 93% lean ground turkey from Giant for $3.9 after a $1 off two coupon. The coupon I believe was from Jan 7 Washington Post Sunday post coupon.

Coupon mom is very easy to use so I encourage everyone to try this free service.

HDTV

2millionblog had a great entry about buying HDTV and canceling cable to save money. I love it.

He bought a 32'' LCD HDTV for $463. With an antenna, he can receive lots of channels and great picture quality. So he canceled his $50 a month satellite cable service. With that savings , he actually come out $158 extra for this year.

Isn't it amazing?

It won't work for us though since we only pay $16 a month for basic cable. It will take us 2 and a half year to recoup the TV cost. But that is a great idea for the future just in case we need to replace our TV (don't get any funny ideas, honey!).

New United Airline Flights to Beijing From Dulles Airport VA

Wo Hoo! I am so excited to read the news this morning on metro. Great way to start the day. I can't wait to take the flight home. It will make my trip home to China sooooooooo much easier. I don't have to transfer multi million times (OK, not so much,but you get the idea).

I hate flying. Really do.

But I think I am willing to pay a little extra just so I will have a easier time visiting my parents. Spending 14 hours on a cramped seat is suffering enough without having to transfer multiple times.

Done with Roth IRA 2007 Funding

And I bought FIREX for DH. So I am all set. But of course stock market turned lower after I bought both funds! It never fails:)

I am comforting myself with long term view although it does hurt to see your account turning red instead of green.

So far I haven't seen the January Effect yet, it may never show up this year. I am not timing the market so I just keep investing, day after day.

Investing can be tiring. I spend hours per day watching all the investment websites and boards and I do learn a lot. But I think one day, when I don't have that much time, it will come to a point that I don't enjoy investing that much any more. By then, I will switch to index funds and ETFs and only balance once a year!

For now, it is still my passion.

Bought Fund in my Roth IRA

I bought EUROX yesterday in my Roth IRA for 2007. And I will buy FIREX for my DH next Monday once the fund is available. I emphasize international especially intentional REIT for 2007 because international investment will act as a hedge against falling dollar which most investment managers and advisers predict will continue to trend lower. I continue to over weight international investments in his TSP and our brokerage account, hopefully to capture some of the profits. But I am not into putting big bets on anything, so I will keep a balanced allocation plan.

Car is Ready

And we paid $1025 for everything. Not cheap! But I am glad we did it. It will help with winter weather safe driving and improve our mileage to an even better number! Remember in Christmas travel season we got 35 miles per gallon, hopefully in the future, it will be even better. My DH already commented that the brake felt so much better. I consider this money well spent although we can't spend like this quite often!

Car Tuneup Update

Well, dealership called. They found some problems we need to work on. Wiring is pretty bad and brake is about to go out. Total costs for these two would be $500. So it means we are facing an $1000 bill just for this maintenance check up. Good lord! They also suggested timing belt change too, but we decided against it for now. I have enough bills for this time! I know it, any time the car is in the dealership, I pay big bucks:)

Car Tuneup

DH took our car to the dealership this morning for a three hour long tune up! And it is not cheap. It would cost us at least $400, maximum $495 depending on how extensive the work will be. I am not happy to pay big bucks of course, but in this case, I don't have a choice. It is important to get some checkups once in a while so that our car can run at its top efficiency. Besides, winter is really here and we want to get our car ready for the cold weather. Cars can be so expensive, with insurance, regular maintenance, gas and other repairs!

Our car is 10 years old so I expect more and more repairs and checkups. But so far, it has been a wonderful member of our family! I intend to keep it as long as I can, with only 84,000 miles, I think/hope it can last another 10 years.