January cannot end soon enough!

The highlight of this month came on Tuesday when my nephew was born! I have *six* nieces who I love dearly, but now my son will have a playmate close in age and he can have a partner in crime to commiserate with since I suspect my niece (his mom, so yes, he is a great nephew...but my hair ain't purple, I don't smell, and my pantyhose don't fall down, thus I am not a "great" aunt!) and I have similar mothering tactics so both boys will be scarred for life...ha!

Aside from this, in January we carried a balance on our credit card, were charged overdraft fees at the bank, got the annoying WRONG letter from our mortgage company, had a small fire which resulted in the loss of our dryer for at least three weeks, and barely saw one another since I was doing my freelance work at night. I don't think February will be much better, but I can hope.

We carried the credit care balance for the first time in I don't know how long because I wanted piece of mind. We could have paid this off, easy. But our savings took such a hit in 2009 I was just not comfortable having "that little" in the bank in case something happened. It will be paid off by March, unless we win the lotto, and our savings will remain in tact. I don't like this, I dread opening the Discover bill, but I don't want the other shoe to fall and us be up a creek. Gotta love the holidays!

The overdraft notice from Wachovia was a real shock! I monitor online daily. Unfortunately a check took longer to clear than expected so that when we used our debit for three purchases (all under $10) we were charged $22 EACH TIME in overdraft fees. A fourth charge was because of a refund, go figure. I immediately went to the Wachovia branch nearest us and asked the manager to review our credit and to take pity on us. She did, sort of. Since it wasn't a bank error, she only refunded half, or $44. I can live with this. I immediately put the $44 in savings, so we are still feeling the pinch of the fine, but at least we are getting some benefit from it.

The good people at Sears finally came the other day. I waited 8.5 hours. They are coming back on Feb. 9 to fix. I am not happy with them or the situation. That's about all I can say.

One of my biggest beefs with January though has been my utter lack of time. No time to post here. No time to scour for deals. I still owe thank you cards for Christmas presents and have a thank you gift that has been sitting on our kitchen table waiting to be mailed since the middle of December. I keep telling myself that tomorrow I will make it to the post office. I hope that's the case, but realistically this thing won't go out until next week, sigh.

I hope February is better. I hope by then we have found new homeowners and car insurance. I also think we need to get some affairs in order, we have a toddler and still don't have a will. I know, I know. We need to get our wishes down on paper. I also want to be able to write here more, not just my musings of recent days/weeks, but also the deals. Several Blue Patchers have emailed me deals and ideas and I haven't had a chance to follow up and that makes me sad.

Next month, next month! As I said, January can't end soon enough.