Wicked

Last night I finally got to see the Broadway musical Wicked. I've been wanting to see it for quite a few years now because I kept hearing about how incredible it was. I'd heard quite a few songs from it and they all impressed me. A couple of years ago it game to Phoenix (Gammage) but I missed the opportunity then. I didn't realize how rare the opportunity was at the time I guess. After hearing endless people tell me how incredible it was and how glad they were that they went I was definitely a bit jealous. I then attempted to go see Wicked ON Brodway when I was in NYC this year. Didn't end up working out unfortunately.

When I heard it was coming to Tucson I got pretty excited. Ever since I went to the Chris Tomlin concert down in Tucson I get the UAPresents mailers. Of course at that time tickets weren't yet on sale so after I saw the mailer I forgot about it for awhile. And of course by the time I started looking into tickets (around when the holidays were starting, crazy time of year) all the cheap ones were gone. So, while I ended up with more expensive tickets, it was worth it. Tyrel and Tyler (Ty-Ty) went down with me and we met up with a few people for dinner.

"Defying Gravity" was without a doubt the best musical performance I've seen live. I like the version I heard last night better than any recorded version of it I've ever heard. The lighting effects during that part were incredible as well. "For Good" is an amazing song that was well executed. And I had no idea how closely the story would tie into the Wizard of Oz. Obviously I knew it was the story of what happened before Dorothy but I had no idea how tightly knit everything was going to be.

If you ever get a chance to see Wicked live, you should do it!

20 Financial Milestones For Your 20s

There's an article going around that a lot of personal finance bloggers are writing about on their blogs. I figured I'd do so as well since I enjoy all this personal finance stuff.

20 Financial Milestones For Your 20s

# 1 – Finance a dream vacation…in cash – NOT REALLY
Considering I’m not even sure what my dream vacation is, this is a no for now. Maybe a honeymoon someday? I did pay for a cruise back in 2008 (2009?) and of course it was in cash, so I suppose that somewhat counts. That was not a dream vacation though. I don't see myself ever taking a really elaborate trip but we'll see how this one turns out.

# 2 – Pay off your student loans - CHECK
Never had any to begin with. I was pretty anti-student loans and was lucky enough to never have to use them.

# 3 – Automate paying your credit card bill in full – N/A
This is a no because I want to force myself to review the bill every month when I get it. If I automate it I’d stop checking it.

# 4 – Get rid of all bad debt – CHECK
My only debt is my mortgage and it’s not considered "bad" debt in the personal finance world.

# 5 – Build an adequate emergency fund - CHECK
This was the first thing I did after graduating from college. I probably need to re-asses how much money I want in there and see if I need to beef it up now that I’m a homeowner though.

# 6 – Make your first, and last, investment mistake - NO
Well, I opened a Roth IRA in 2008 and it promptly lost 50% of its value when the market crashed. It’s now about back to where it began. I suppose that wasn’t a mistake so I guess I still need to try real investing before I’ll make my first mistake.


# 7 – Develop a statement of cash flows - CHECK
I use Mint.com. Best financial tool I’ve ever used.

# 8 & 9 Max out a Roth & Contribute to your 401(k) – NO (Not Doing)
I haven’t been contributing to a Roth since I left my last job that had a Roth 401k. I’m also not going to be maxing out my traditional 401K this year but I am contributing 10% and that’s enough for me. I don’t need to be rich in retirement and there are better things I can be doing with that money now.

# 10 – Get a degree or certification that increases your earning power – NO (Not Doing)
Considering that I want to be a stay at home mom I don’t really see the point of getting another degree at this point. Sometimes I think about the fact that I could get my work to pay for  a Masters and I consider it but then I think about all the other things (ministries I’m involved in) that I’d have to give up to make that happen and that’s not worth it to me.

# 11 – Take a career risk - NO
Probably never will.

# 12 – Negotiate something - CHECK
I negotiated the price of my Elantra when I bought it in 2007. I had just turned 20 so it counts for this decade of my life.

# 13 – Earn your first side grand – NO (Not Doing)
Unless I get into a major blogging spree and try to advertise my blog I don’t see myself making any side income. I could easy do side jobs using my programming skills but I program enough at work and as side projects for ministries, I don’t want to program even more. Plus I just don’t care about making extra money.


# 14 – Start a sub-savings account for an upcoming financial goal - YES
I did this when I bought my house. I also realized that I really hate it when I zero out an account, even if it’s for a good thing.

# 15 – Set a target retirement date – NO (Not Doing)
I have no idea what God is going to do with my life. I’m not going to try to plan something that is potentially 40 years down the road.


# 16 – Monitor your credit - YES
I get my credit report every 4 months exactly on schedule. I haven’t gotten my credit score since I bought my house in 2009. But since nothing is showing up on my report and I’m not interested in taking out a loan or anything that would require my score, I’m not concerned about it right now.

# 17 – Say no to a financial salesman - NOPE
Does throwing away credit card offers count? I get about two of those a day.

# 18 – Give just enough to make it hurt – COULD DO BETTER
I definitely give. And I tithe the classic 10% like a good Christian. But I want to make sure that I take the blessing that God gives me and use it to bless ministries.

2 Milestones for the Over Achiever

# 19 – Invest $1 for every $1 you spend - NOPE

Definitely not doing this, although that would be pretty awesome.

# 20 – Start a 529 College Savings Plan – NO (Not Doing)

I have no plans of setting up saving plans for kids that don’t even exist. And even if I had kids, I’m not sure I’m going to pay for college for them. We'll see when the time comes I guess. I think I’m better off having been forced to take that responsibility on myself.

Hail

Back in October something shocking happened in Phoenix. It hailed! No joke, it really did. If you don’t believe me you can read the news report:
http://www.kpho.com/news/25288568/detail.html

And being a girl who’s only seen hail one or two other times in her entire life I thought it was pretty cool. And as I watched the hail come down from the floor to ceiling windows at my work (where water was leaking in because the building is new and apparently poorly made) I was thankful that my car was safely parked in the parking garage. I wasn’t concerned about my house at all. I never figured that hail could do any real damage to my house. And did I notice the golf ball size hole on the outer pane of one of my windows when I got home? Nope, I didn’t. Now mind you, the hole is at the top of the window (you can’t see it even when you pull the blinds up) and on the back of the house. Not a place I tend to look often.
Luckily, I had quite a few people recommend that I have my insurance adjuster come out and inspect my roof to make sure that the hail didn’t do any major damage since my neighborhood got hit pretty hard. I had nothing to lose so I went ahead and had an adjuster come out. He’s the one who noticed the hole in the window (and then I found another small one in another window) and decided that they could replace my roof.

For the price of my deductible ($1,000) I’ll be getting:
-A new roof
-AC combing (they straighten out the vents on the AC)
-Replacing the wood in my side gate and repainting (I still can’t believe the adjuster included this)
-Replacing two window panes
-Replacing one of the external doors (Apparently it has dings in it and a small crack near the window. Another thing I can’t believe got included in the claim but I’m not complaining).

Being new to this whole home ownership experience and never having made a claim on anything before this whole process has been a tad bit exciting for me. Plus, the roof is really old (I recently found out that it was done a few years ago and just installed poorly and with cheap materials) and in bad shape and would probably need to be replaced in the next few years anyway. The fact that I’m getting it replaced for $1,000 has me pretty excited.

Now I just need to find the time to get all of these things done. Where am I going to find that?

365 in 2011

My friend Elise is in the middle of doing what she calls "365 as 24". She's documenting an entire year (her 24th year) in photos. She posts a pic from her phone each day to Facebook.

I've loved seeing her pictures each day for so long that I decided I wanted to do it as well. I didn't want to wait another half year until my birthday so I decided that I would do "365 in 2011". I missed January 1st but I've managed to upload pictures the last two days.

It'll be interesting to see if I keep this up or not. Look for the pictures on Facebook.

House Fixes To Date

When you buy a foreclosure you know that you're taking on something unknown. You also know that there will be plenty of little things to you're going to have to fix right after you move in. With my situation I was lucky that the bank fixed a couple of immediate issues (like two leaky sinks) as well as painting the entire interior of the house. And while the tan color they picked isn't the shade I would've gone with nor is the choice of flat paint and off-white trim, I'm still happy I didn't have to paint over any crazy colors that existed here previously. I know the bank also spruced up the front yard (poor grass, I let it die) and put in a watering system. Most people aren't as lucky as I was in regards to the kind of bank I ended up working with.

However, I still ended up doing quite a few things after I moved in. Some out of necessity and some less so.
-Replaced a shower head (Water was barely coming out)
-Replaced the kitchen faucet (Was leaking a little into the sink and it was ugly)
-Fixed the seal around exterior door off master (you could easily slide things under the door, no seal whatsoever)
-Fixed the master toilet (The toilet was not properly sealed or screwed down)
-Replaced the washer valves and added the dryer vent (the dryer used to just feed out an open hole in the outside wall)
-Got the AC tuned up and the flow to a couple of vents adjusted
-Reset all the locks (Not required but essential for my peace of mind especially given the foreclosure situation)

Other things I did:
-Added a ceiling fan to the master bedroom (I'm used to having a ceiling fan plus it allows me to use the AC less at night. Odd thing though, the master bedroom was the ONLY room in the house that didn't have a fan in it not counting the dining room...weirdness)
-Replaced the garage door (Biggest single expense so far. Another odd thing was that the old door was a commercial garage door, not a residential one)
-Added a garage door opener
-Removed Tiki Man

-Fixed the kitchen light situation (Someone who lived here before me decided that it would be a good idea to put recessed lights directly above a ceiling fan and wire everything to the same switch. If you wanted to have the fan on you had to have an obnoxious flickering from the fans moving under the recessed lights. I had them wired to be on separate switches)

-Replaced two sets of blinds in the “extra room” (I did this for aesthetics mainly)

I'm sure there are things that I'm forgetting right now. I'm trying to get keep a detailed log of all projects I do to the house. Things like changing out the blinds probably won't make it on the list but I want to be able to have a history of all the major changes that happen to the house. I'm guessing after a year or two that I'm going to start forgetting things and it'll be good to have the list to refer to.

I also have a long list of things I want to do to the house. But that list is far, far longer than the list above. =D

Projects, projects

I’m not sure if it’s the new year’s resolutions wearing off on me or if it’s because I caught up on sleep but I’ve had a huge itch to get some home improvement projects done. And some decorating projects. And given the fact that I don’t have to work an extra two hours  everyday anymore, I’ll actually be able to be home while there is still daylight outside. I see some spray painting projects coming on!

I have a few places in my house that have been bugging me (decorating wise) for awhile.

1) The big wall in the living room (which is painted but needs something on the wall). I’m contemplating mounting my LCD TV on this wall.

This is by far the largest wall in my house that I have to decorate and I think that is why it's been so daunting.

I also like these pieces of wall art from Target. I’d prefer to find something a bit more frugal though and I’m still hoping to find a Goodwill steal one of these days.

2) The other wall behind the couch. I think I’ve decided that I want to get a verse to put on the wall there. Problem is, ordering the wall stencil for a verse will not fit in with my frugal decorating ways. I did find a cheaper stencil place the other day and will probably end up just splurging on that item.

3) The guest bath. I actually painted this bath with stripes. I love the stripes. I hate the colors. Long story short, Lowe’s paint department failed me. What was supposed to be nice light green and gray stripes turned into green and purplish gray stripes. Not quite what I was going for. So now I have the task of repainting that bathroom.

Right now I really want to paint a room gray and decorate it with yellow accents since I love yellow so much. I think I might save this color scheme for my bedroom though.
I did some Googling and found some good inspiration:
http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&biw=1280&bih=620&gbv=2&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=gray+and+yellow+bedroom&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

4) My bedroom (the master). This involves painting, possibly finding a new bedspread and painting or staining the dressers/nightstand/trunk that I got last year. All of the furniture pieces are unfinished wood just waiting to have something done to them.

I also have two curtains that I'm in the process of hanging up as well as a shelf in the laundry room that needs to be finished. I ran into an issue with the shelf that I'll have to get help with in order to fix. The curtains I'm just moving slowly on.

Question is, which project will actually get completed first?