Dimples' Divine Domain
My journey to financial empowerment.

Wow I am doing pretty good with this Craig's List thing. I just sold my wooden futon for $75. I have a TI-85 calculator listed for sale on CL for $75 and I got several bites yesterday. One college kid is supposed to call me later to come over and check it out. Usually thats code for him coming over and actually buying the calc. At least that's how its always worked out for me. I am almost done with my summer cleaning and have some other things I want to list for sale. I am putting all the money I make into my spending account. I haven't figured out what I will do with it yet. I can take it and pay off some of my credit card debt. Or I can take it and use it the next time I go see the family which will be a few days before my sister's wedding. I am leaning toward the latter because I know I will need to spend money when I get down there. If it's not for the fam it will be for my sister's bridal shower and bachlorette party. Well I think I just sold my...

I have finally found the courage to admit another factor to my increasing credit card debt........my family. I just got back from spending the weekend with my parents, siblings, and daughter. And I winded up spending $405 big ones. $210 of it was put on a credit card and the rest came out of my spending account. Here is the breakdown of what exactly I bought/paid for: Lunch @ Panera's with sibs : $40 Dress for Sweet Pea for my sis' wedding (she's one of the flower girls) : $95 Groceries for the house : $130 Money to Bro for haircut : $20 Money to Pops : $40 Gas in sis' car : $25 Gas in pop's truck : $55 The dress was a must so I guess I can subtract from the total. Lunch @ Panera's was kinda unavoidable. I was going there to grab a an iced Chai latte and they tagged along. Iced Chai latte turned into lunch for 3. How could I say no?? :-/. We had an awesome time so I really wouldn't have changed that for anything. So why am I paying for all this? Her...

Sorry for the lack of posting this week. My week from hell was followed by a week of blessings. My co-workers were able to help me get back all my information and work emails. I am truly grateful for their help. And having the laptop has been such a convenience and so essential with my job. We were finally given the go ahead on the new building and I have been working from it since last week. The building is beautiful and has the latest high tech gadgets. Only thing is we don't have computers. This hasn't been an issue since EVERYONE at my job has a laptop. So we just bring our laptops in, connect to the Wi-Fi they have set up and work. If I didn't have a laptop I wouldn't be able to do any work out here. So I guess everything happens for a reason. Speaking of things happening, my cable stopped working the same day my computer died. The cable guy came out on Wednesday to check out what was going on. Come to find out that lightning had struck my apartment an...

I winded up giving my desktop CPU to one of my co-workers. Majority of my co-workers are computer gurus and he is one of them. I was going to throw it away but he said he would take it off my hands so he could take the parts like my 2G of memory, processor, etc. I am not into computer like that so I didn't care. Well I get a call this morning around 10:30 on my work cell. Who in the heck is calling me on my work cell on the weekend?! It's my co-worker. Looks like my hard drive wasn't fried like the guy at Geek Squad lead me to believe. My motherboard was what was dead and therefore my hard drive wouldn't start up unless it was taken out and hooked up to another computer. So I got all my personal information back. At first I was pissed because I felt like I just bought this laptop and the whole while their was nothing seriously wrong with desktop. My co-worker explained that I would have had to dish out about $125 for the motherboard, $50 for the power supply, ...

This week has been the most ridiculous, craziest, most insane week by far. I'll start from the beginning: I had a big project due at work this past Monday. I have been so swamped with other projects that I put this one off to the last minute. Needless to say I didn't start crunching until Friday the 13th. So from Friday until Sunday night I had been working like a mad woman. About 25 hours worth of work. By Sunday night I am basically finished with my project. I save everything to my 1G flash drive and I turn off my computer. I wake up the next morning, turn my computer back on, and make some coffee. When I come back I notice that my computer is not recognizing the flash drive. Is something wrong with the computer? I mean it is 5 years old. So I turn it off and turn it back on. Still nothing. No worries. I'll just take my flash drive to work, pull the project up there, do the last finishing touches and send it off. Well the computers at work didn't recog...

I decided to take the time to understand why I keep building more debt. I need to find out exactly what are the underlying factors when it comes to my accumulation of credit card debt. I pulled 2006 annual reports for all my credit cards and did some analysis to try and find a pattern..........a "method to the madness" as they say. I found myself encountering one major issue over and over again. It's like a sickness and I need to find the cure pronto. *deep breath* I AM A SHOPAHOLIC. I spent so much on shopping (I will do a post with all my findings later) but I have nothing, I mean ABSOLUTELY nothing to show for it. And guess what?!! Majority of the shopping was done ONLINE!!!! I mean like 90% of it was all online orders. Wow!! So I asked myself, "Why do I shop online so much?". I answered back, "Well it's convenient, I don't have to deal with other shoppers or wait in line at a register, and I get all those awesome coupons and promotion...

I just read Saving Diva's post about her pudding score so of course I was instantly interested in what my pudding score was. For those that don't know what a pudding score is, here is the definition from the site: What does my Pudding Score™ mean? Your Pudding Score™ is a measure of how your current retirement fund assets compare to the amount the Benchmark Account says someone your age and pay should have accumulated by now. A score above 100 says you are ahead of the index at this point in time and a score below 100 says you lag behind the index’s pace. My pudding score is a divine 126 !! Finally, I am getting something right.

It's about 1:10 am here and I have been cranking away at this stuff for the past 3 hours. Needless to say I am real tired. Budget: I recalculated my budget for the month of July and August. After all bills are paid, I will have about $800 to apply towards my credit card debt. The budget is only the the next two months because I did not include my daughter's school costs which I am not paying right now. I'll edit my budget to include that expense once she gets back and I find out what the rate will be for this school year. You probably wondering why gas or groceries are not included in my budget. Well I have decided to pay for those out of my spending account. Right now I do about $150 or more with cash duck. I am pursuing a few other venues to make extra money and majority of them seem like they will play out nicely (I'll do a post once I am 100% sure). I also have yet to try that whole notary thing. I will attempt this for the next two months and see how well I...

Thanks everyone for your comments and advice regarding my last two posts. In regards to the American Express reward, I have decided to wait until I am able to redeem the reward and make a decision then. Based on the fine print, the reward points will show up on my account 10 to 12 weeks from now. Thats around late September, early October. A lot can happen by then. So I will choose a reward that better fits my situation at that moment. Due to the severity of my financial status, I have decided to put a hold on the whole vacation account. I need to focus as much as I can towards eliminating my credit card debt. And there is no way I can take a vacation and enjoy myself knowing full well what awaits me when I get back. I think I'll just wait until after I buy my house and payoff my debt. Then I can enjoy my vacation guilt-free. Laptop fund is going away also. The laptop is something I wanted not needed. I have survived until now without one, so another year won't matter.

I would like to thank SingleGuyMoney for his post on TrueCredit . TrueCredit basically gives you access to all 3 credit reports and all 3 credit scores. They also have other cool features like debt-to-income analysis, available credit, and so on. If you go straight to their site the service is $14.95 a month. But if you go through Walmart Financial Services you can get the same service for $11.21 a month. For $11.21 a month I can monitor my credit report and scores. I think thats a great trade off. *deep breath* I have a confession to make. I have not been on my credit debt reduction game like I should be. I mean I paid down $3000 of it late February when I first began. But I seem to have added an additional $1500 since March. And I can't even tell yall where all that money came from. I have no clue.............well I have a clue but not any one thing I can put my finger on. UGH!! I am so frustrated with myself. I am starting to repeat exactly what I did a year ago....

You would think I had enough dang on funds right?!? LOL Well I guess not. Four of my close friends just got back from the Essence Festival in Louisiana. Some are going to Vegas in August for 5 days. I was invited for both trips but declined after I realized how much I would need to spend. For some reason I can't imagine spending so much money for those trips. I try and have an open mind about the whole thing but I just feel like it shouldn't cost me an arm and a leg to travel to another state for a few days. After doing some thinking, I have come to the realization that maybe I would see the matter in a different light if I had money specifically allotted for vacations. Then I wouldn't see it as such a huge hit on my finances. Hence, the vacation fund. :-) My current goal for now is to put $50 a month into the fund. I don't have any trips set in stone right now. I know that I definitely want to go to Atlanta to visit a close friend before the year is over. I a...

I applied and got approved for an American Express Business Gold Card on Saturday. I applied for the card through Cash Duck , who pays you $80 once you get approved for the card and make your first purchase. I also received American Express' current promo. In a nutshell, you get 25,000 reward points after your first purchase that can be redeemed for a $250 gift card to any of the stores that are on the list or a round-trip ticket to anywhere in the US. I know I said before that I wouldn't apply for anymore cards but I couldn't pass this one up. And after doing some research I found that because it is a business account it will not show up on your credit report. That was the icing on top of the $330 cake ($80 from Cask Duck and $250 from American Express). This is what I have planned. Once I receive my 25,000 bonus points I will redeem them for one of the following: 1. $200 Dell gift certificate and $50 American Express Gift Card 2. $250 Linens N' Things ...

Krystal at Give Me Back My Five Bucks has tagged me for the latest meme going around . This is my first one so I am a little excited. :-D Here we go: I don't eat red meat. Haven't in 12 years. I am the first in my family to graduate from high school, go to college, and earn a degree. I love okra. I have one tattoo. Its on my right thigh. I have never thrown up or blacked out from drinking (heavy drinking). My favorites shoe brands are Sketchers and K-Swiss. I never studied in high school but still graduated with a 4.3 out of 4.0 GPA. I have an excellent memory when it comes to numbers but I am horrible with names. Now here are the following folks I am tagging: D.C. 2 @ Challenging Debt Rad @ Daddy Financials Ms. Voad @ V.O.A.D (value of a dolla) and finally Single Guy Money @ SingleGuyMoney Have fun.

I am leaving to go down south to my parents tomorrow. I can't wait to see my sweet pea. I miss her so much. I'll be back on Friday. Have a wonderful 4th of July. Eat lots of BBQ. And be safe.

I finally found a bank that had all the requirements I needed for my laptop fund. I opened a money market account with Capital One Saturday morning. I have a credit card with them and while checking my credit card statement I noticed that they had a very nice high yield money market account. There was no minimum balance to open or to maintain. Their APY is 4.75%. No fees. And they offer free checks and an ATM card. There was no bonus which is fine with me. I am pretty happy with my choice.