It's Official - I Am No Longer Cool

I know, you hadn't even realized I was cool before. Well, I was. For my eight years as the owner of a Ford Mustang. As of Tuesday, that time is over. We sold the Mustang for about Blue Book value.

I lowered the price on Monday, and that seemed to do the trick. I had three people contact me (two through Craigslist and one through Carsoup), and one of the Craigslist guys drove up from southern Wisconsin on Tuesday night and bought it!

About half of the money went back into our emergency fund, which is how we paid for the Mazda. The other half went into our New Car Fund for our next vehicle(s)!

To put salt in the wound, the wonderful state of Wisconsin sent me new license plates for the Mazda, which showed up yesterday. I was really fond of my old plates, which had been on my Mustang and we transferred to the Mazda. You see, Wisconsin license plates used to be three letters, a dash, and then three numbers. The three letters on my old plates were "RBL", which I took to mean "Rebel"!

A couple of years ago, they changed the plates to read three numbers, a dash, and then three letters. They are slowly moving all of the old plates over to the new system.

The letters on my new plates? "PUY"

Not cool.

Car Selling Tips?

As I mentioned a few months ago, my husband and I bought a new (used) car last winter and were waiting until spring to sell my really sweet Mustang. Well, spring has arrived and the Mustang is up for sale. We put it on Craigslist last Sunday (speaking of which, I should re-post it today) and have also put it on CarSoup.

So far, I've only had one reply, and that was from a kid who wanted to trade it for his 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse (umm, no thanks!).

We have some wiggle room in the price, so we'll probably drop it down soon. I priced it above Kelly Blue Book, but way below anything else comparable on CarSoup.

I'm beginning to wonder if we should also list the car on Cars.com??? I know our local newspaper links to Cars.com and so does Yahoo!, so the traffic is probably a lot heavier.

Anyone have any advice? Are people even buying cars right now? Should we list it on Cars.com? Any thoughts are appreciated!

A Little Update

Is anyone still out there? I wouldn't blame you for leaving me, I haven't been very faithful around here!

I haven't had much to post about lately since life is still kind of in limbo. I'm hoping to scale back from working fulltime to working parttime and still don't know if/how that's going to work out.

I've had it in the back of my mind since last summer that I wanted to cut back my hours and spend more time being a homemaker. I was originally planning on doing it as soon as possible after the first of the year (I'm covered under my husband's health insurance plan now). Then the economy went haywire, and I was uncertain as to what I should do. I've decided to go ahead with my plans, and I've talked to my boss. Now we just need to find someone to job share with me! I'm hoping to be working parttime by June. We'll see how it goes!

An Ambassador? Sure!!!

Sorry to post two articles in a row about things I received in the mail, but this is too cool to not post about. Check out what was in the box I received in the mail the other day:


The box contained a full-size bottle of Jergens Naturals lotion, plus ten sample packs and ten coupons! Jergens included a letter asking me to be their ambassador by handing out the samples and coupons to my friends. How fun is that!?! I think I received this because of a survey I filled out awhile back, but I don't remember exactly.

Anyway, I'll try to post something more substantial on here soon :)

Fun Mail Day

I received a ton of fun stuff in the mail today!


Here is what I got:
- Two $2.00 Purina coupons that I received after emailing Purina and letting them know how much my cats love their food!
- Two Home Made Simple coupon books. I'm not sure how I got two of them, but I'm not complaining!
- Nexxus shampoo and conditioner samples - but no coupons :(
- Two samples of Pamprin and coupon. Only one of the samples is in the picture because I used the other one already - how's that for perfect timing!
- $5 off any purchase at Famous Footwear coupon
- the best of all: three coupons for free items!!! I got these from a Kraft sweepstakes. It includes a coupon for a free Nabisco Cracker item, a free Planter's Peanut item, and a free Kraft Cheese item.

I love awesome mail days like this :)

A New (To Us) Car

Ok, before you get excited, I'll be straight with you - the new car is actually a downgrade.

If you've read this blog for awhile, you know that one of our 2008 financial goals was saving in our "New Car Fund". My husband and I have been discussing our car situation for quite awhile now, and here's what we've come up with.

My husband doesn't like driving my Mustang (I know, isn't he crazy?!?), but since he works so close to home, he ends up driving it a lot in the winter. Also, we won't know what kind of vehicle I will want to drive next until after we have kids (if we have kids). If/When the little one arrives, I'd like to try using a four-door car first and only buy a minivan/SUV if the car doesn't work well. But, I don't want to buy a newer four-door car only to sell it again a few months later.

The answer we came up with was to buy a cheap car to replace the Mustang. Then, once we know what we want to upgrade to, it will be pretty easy (and inexpensive) to sell the cheap car.

Our original thought was to sell the Mustang and buy the cheap car next summer/fall. My sister-in-law just had a baby, though, and bought an SUV to replace her 1998 Mazda Protege. She bought the Mazda new and has taken great care of it. We couldn't pass it up!

So, we are now the proud (sort of!) owners of a 1998 Mazda - paid cash, of course!


Since winter is not the prime time to sell a rear-wheel drive Mustang, we're going to park it out at my parents' house until spring (thanks, Dad and Mom!). We should get more for the Mustang than what we paid for the Mazda, so hopefully we'll be able to make a nice boost to our car fund at that time.

Below is a picture I found online of a similar-year Mazda Protege. This isn't the actual car, though our car is blue (darker than the one in the picture, though).


As you might guess, I am pretty sad at the thought of selling the Mustang. I've owned it for 9 years and loved every minute of it! I always knew, though, that someday I'd want to have kids and that the Mustang just wasn't going to fit in with that lifestyle. *sigh* I'm going to miss you, Eleanor!

The One Where a Bonus Saves the Day

In my last post, I mentioned that my husband and I were going to try to max out our Roth IRA's at $5,000 each by April 15th. Well, my husband received a nice bonus and we decided to put it all toward our Roths, so we will be maxed out by December 22nd! I'm really happy about that.

My plan is to take some time before the first of the year and discuss Financial Goals 2009 with my husband. I thought I'd be throwing any extra money for the first couple of months toward the Roths, but that's obviously changed :)

Some options will be: getting a jump start on 2009 Roth contributions, beefing up the emergency fund, putting extra money towards the mortgage, and/or working on the car fund. I'll let you know what we decide!