The pigs are making me stressed/scared/angry

We have a vacation planned and paid for to Cabo in July. I'm trying not to think about it, but people will not stop talking about it!! I finally tried to do some research today. They are advising that you cancel any 'non-necessary' trips.

BUT, they are not giving a time frame! Is this just for trips this week, next week, all of May?? What people!!

I keep telling myself that this will be worked out by July. We have 2 months. Surely they will have it all taken care of by then.

And I double checked today that I did indeed purchase the travel insurance. Whew!

Now that I type this out, I'm sounding pretty selfish. I mean there are people really sick and some even dieing, and I'm bitching about a vacation. Oh well, it's a well deserved vacation. And I really do hope they get this under control before more people die. I'm really not that selfish, at least not all the time.

I'm losing my mind!

I got a book in the mail today. I have no idea where it came from. I used to sign up for the give-aways, but stopped because my to-be read pile got too high.

But, this is a book that maybe I saw on a give-away and thought "wow, I need that book!", and signed up for it. But I missed the winning part. Or I just forgot the winning part. Which really wouldn't surprise me.

So, if I won a book and you sent it to me, please refresh my memory so that I can thank you!

The book is, Real Solutions for Busy Moms. Which is something I need! Can't wait to read it.

Oh, and I have read a few books that haven't made it to the blog pile. I want to say that The Red Tent was awesome! I'll do a better review at some point :)

Money and Bank of America update

We received our Federal tax refund yesterday. I immediately transferred $4,500 over to our BoA card and $1,000 to our ER savings!

Take that BoA!! Hubby still has to call our other two cards to get the remaining balance transferred over.

When we had the horrible conversation with BoA and they cut our limit, DH kept asking to speak to a supervisor. They said there was not one available and someone would contact us in a few days. We never got a call. But, we did get a letter in the mail saying they were trying to contact us and gave us a number to call. So, he did. And guess what? There wasn't a supervisor available. So, we left another message. Someone did finally call and leave a VM, but DH hasn't had time to call back.
When he does and they see that recent payment, maybe they will take us seriously, but I doubt it.
I also still haven't wrote the letter. I need to get on that.

Anyways, I updated our progress bars! They are looking nice!

And we are getting new toilets next weekend! I'm trying to be very excited about that :)
It's not a new couch, but I guess I still get to sit on it, right?

It was really depressing to see a $5,500 deposit in our account yesterday and just watch it go away without having anything to show for it. (except for new toilets) If we were out of debt I could have saved half of it, bought the toilets, a new washer/dryer and a new couch! THAT would have been awesome................ahhh.........someday. Right?

2010 Vacation

My mom has a time share. She is giving us a week next year, but we have to make a decision soon. We can go anywhere in the US.

If you could take a family vacation anywhere in the US, where would you go? And what time of year would you go there?

Suze Orman, BoA, and savings.

Her new advice includes paying the minimum on your credit cards and socking some into a savings account. At first I didn't listen.

After reading a bit about this, and after Bank of America lowered our credit limit..........I started thinking.

We do have four savings accounts.
Travel, which is at zero.
ER, which is low
Mine, which is supposed to be at 1,000. But we've been using it for unexpected things.
DH's, which is used for yearly expenses such as car tags and birthday gifts.

If you notice, I've added a new side bar. It includes the balance on my credit cards and their limits. And how far I am to paying them down.
I also show a few savings accounts, I choose not to track DH's because it's more like a checking account that we only use every few months.

I've always felt like our small 1,000 savings would be good for us, and if anything really bad happened, we could use our credit cards..............
but not anymore! We're losing our credit, so we can't rely on having it there if we need it.

We're going to listen to Suze. On my credit cards with the lower balances, I'm going to pay the minimum due.........and put the extra that I planned to pay into our savings account. I have a new goal. I will still have the $1,000, but we're going to up our ING account to $5,000. After we reach our $5,000 we will figure 6 months expenses and put that as our new goal. But, the money we put into it will decrease, because at that point, we will start aggressively paying down our credit cards again.

We're also going to start adding to our travel fund. We have a trip to Cabo in July, but it is already paid for. In 2010 we are planning a long weekend somewhere in the US. Probably within driving distance. In 2011, we are going to Hawaii.

You see the BoA one over there? Since they lowered our limit we owe 98%. That card is getting zeroed out by May. We are getting a tax refund of $5,500. 1,000 will go to our new savings goal, and $4,000 will go to BoA card. We will also take some money out of DH's savings, transfer some with a zero percent offer to Chase, and some to Sears for a 3% offer. BoA will not get another penny of our interest.

The rest of the tax refund is going towards new toilets. We had to call a plumber in because our kitchen sink clogged up. We tried everything, but couldn't fix it ourselves. While he was here we had him look at our toilet, because it has been clogging quit a bit lately. He also looked at the other one. Both need to be replaced.

Walgreens just lost my business

I think I might be on a roll for companies that want to loose my business. First it was Bank of America Credit Cards, then Bank of America Banking (almost), and now Walgreens.

So, you all know that our dog, Sebastian, has cancer. When he was diagnosed in January, the vet in KC wrote a prescription for Morphine, 15 tablets.

Here it is April, 4 months later, and we are out of Morphine. We've used 15 pills in 3 months. Our new vet wrote us a new prescription last week, we took it to Walgreens tonight. The same place that filled it in January.

We dropped it off at 6 pm. Our vet closes at 6 pm. He doesn't open again until Monday. The pharmacist didn't "feel comfortable" filing the prescription, and said he would call the vet on Monday. I said, our dog has cancer, 15 pills have lasted 4 months, he needs a pill.

No deal.

Now mind you, my husband and I both have monthly prescriptions that we get at this place. Sebastian got 15 pills in January. We obviously ARE NOT abusing the morphine! My dog has cancer in one leg, and a laceration that is healing on the other leg! He needs his pain medication!

We asked for the prescription back, drove across the street to Dillons, and 20 minutes later had his morphine.

I really don't understand what the guys problem was at Walgreens. But I will be in the store on Monday, talking to a supervisor and explaining to him why we will no longer shop there.

Bank of America credit card conversation

Warning: I'm not too happy right now and there may be some not so nice language in this post.

Wow! So, we have taken the advice of calling our high interest credit cards and asking for a rate reduction.

This woman (a supervisor) will not reduce the interest rate.

What she IS going to do is lower our credit limit. This sucks because it will raise our debt ratio, and in turn lower our credit rating. She says this will help. DH is trying to tell her it won't. She won't listen. We're trying to get someone above her and she is saying she is the top. Bullshit. DH is being really good, calm, persistent, and knowledgeable.

We have been good customers. We have a high balance, they've been making around $200 per month in interest from us, and we want something in return. Instead they fuck us again. Now it's time to take our business elsewhere. The interest rate is 23.99%. Screw that.

Good thing we have a 0% transfer offer. We will be transferring our Bank of America balance to another card and never using them again.

We won't be closing the account, because that could hurt our credit rating, but we will never use it again (other than the occasional tank of gas that gets paid immediately).

edited to add:

Our current balance with this card is $8,762.50
Our current limit is $14,700.00

We owe appx. 60%

She is cutting our limit to the amount we currently owe, hence making us owe 100%.

We are done with Bank of America.