Deadbeat Dad

My step daughter's father has once again decided to quit his job, without anything else in line. This happens to us every couple of years. Which means no more child support for awhile. It's only $280 a month but it helps at least take care of some of the bills. And of course he never let's us know when he's working again so it takes time to track him down and start receiving payments once again.

Showing love in terms of the internet.

I decided to go through my blog and make some changes, some to increase the speed of the page and others for the looks of the site. The main thing I decided to change through was getting rid of the Blog Roll It, nothing against Blog Roll It personally but I decided it was time to implement a more personal list.

What I decided upon was doing a manual add list which is on your left hand side listed as WCF's Top Rated. In this space we call the internet there are some people out there that are willing to help another newer site become successful. Or just actually care to read the content that people write, either way those that are listed on my left hand side have done nothing but shown me love in a number of ways.

Either they have genuinely helped bring traffic, commented on stories or lended a helping hand to our little space on the internet. Help us show the love back by visiting these sites, as the sites that are listed have genuine people behind them helping to make ourselves and the internet a better place.

Definitely not a good start to the morning!

I am so frustrated right now, one because I was woke up at 7 a.m. by a raving lunatic by the name of my wife yelling at me where's the money! So here's the deal I get home last night from work at about 12:30 in the morning and the house was dark everyone asleep so I decide to have a bite to eat and a beer. I hear her voice come from the bedroom all sweet sounding, clearly not asleep can I have some money for the States tomorrow?

She's going to finish up the back to school shopping and I already gave her $100 U.S. and she asked if she could get another $100 earlier in the week just in case. So I said fine but remember the initial budget was $300 and that she already spent $210 on back to school last time she went to the States.

So I grabbed a $100 and placed it next to my wallet. In her sweet sounding voice can I have some more? Uh no that's $200 US for you it should be more than enough, to make a long story short this went on for about 15 minutes till I finally said no this time I'm putting my foot down that's it your not taking anymore!

So back to the raving lunatic this morning 7 a.m. where's the money? She's checking our bank account online there's only $116 left in our account what happened to the rest of the money? I reply back half asleep I don't know your the one that makes all the cash withdraws that I can't track you can see everything I spend it's right there in detail. She replies back with while I checked your wallet and there's no cash in there so where did it all go, we still need to pay the babysitter $180.

Oh ok she's not worried about the finances she's trying to grab more money to take with her to the States, so this is where the argument gets into full swing because somehow everytime were without money it's all my fault. Which of course is on a bi-weekly basis and I'm so sick of having the finger pointed at me. I always use the debit card so everything is documented as to my purchases which usually is a case of beer and a tank of gas I'm such a bigger spender on myself. Everything else goes to the bills.

Now if you've been reading my blog you'll remember the post earlier this week Nothing better than completing your goals about how finally I was getting out from behind the financial black ball. So you might be asking what happened with that, while basically it's starting to fall apart apparently I put the horse before the carriage.

I haven't been completely honest as I was embarrassed to admit 2 weeks ago I went back to the 2nd Paycheck Advance place that I got out of, read Victory against payday advance . I thought no big deal I knew I was going to get paid out my vacation pay from my former employer, I would get the money and be back out of it and the other one as well in two weeks.

While granted that hasn't happened now, I did reduce the amount significantly but I'm still stuck with the two of them. And the $1000 that was to go to repay the loan of $1200 while now it's down to $900 and I still have to pay the sitter the $180 which is clearly not in our bank account as well as we still need groceries for the week. So that $1000 payment is quickly starting to dwindle down! What a great way to start my morning off as well as my financial week!

If the raving lunatic and myself can't start working as a team here nothing is ever going to change as we've been going through this for the last 7 years. It's really time for it all to stop.

What does it take to be the next millionaire?

I was watching the Millionaire Inside on CNBC tonight and some of the comments from the panel really got me thinking. The panel biggest thing tonight was surround yourself around successful people. I question that thinking I do know personally a couple of millionaires, many middle class. My thoughts is I have something to gain from everyone. Sure I love picking the minds of the millionaires and learning what it took for them to be successful.

But at the same time I can relate much more and push that much harder not to end up like some of our middle class friends. Just do to the fact there so busy trying to keep up with the Joneses that their running themselves further into debt. I want to be financially free not debt ridden with alot of nice things. And when I do purchase something it needs to make sense, I need to see value and the opportunity for the item to make money.

For an example I would love to pick up a laptop right now reason being is between my wife and kids it's getting more and more difficult to gain access to our desktop. I want to be able to devote more of my free time to working on this blog, why I'm not going to lie. One to focus myself, two there is the opportunity to earn income from the advertisements although I do not pay to post, but I do contain ads in order to help us achieve our goal to become debt free and financially independent.

If were constantly chasing the Joneses were not getting any further ahead just further behind. I truly believe it's more of a mind state, since I was young I knew at some point in my life I would be a millionaire today at 32 that hasn't changed I still know I will make it. Some might say your a daydreamer but I honestly know deep inside it will happen and I focus to ensure it will.

What if a tree came crashing down on your finances?

Last night here I am working on my blog and I notice the sky turning green, sweet it's going to be a great summer storm! Wind starts whipping, lighting, thunder and pouring buckets of rain. Boom the power goes out no problem it will be back on in a couple of minutes right. Wrong 1 hour past and still no power.

At this point I thinking a transform must of blew, or a tree must have came down on a powerline. Well I was right about the tree, I decided to look out my side window and I notice a large branch from my tree in the backyard hovering 10 feet up in the air, oh no this is not good at all! So I head outside to further investigate. Upon inspection there's my tree branch hovering thanks to landing right on my neighbors hydro line.

The police show up shortly thereafter I inform them that I was trying to get a hold of the hydro company, they state that they have already contacted them. I'm left in the dark complaplating whether is this considered an act of god or will I be charged to handle the repairs on my neighbors home as the tree branch bent their hydro stack? 4 hours later the power comes back on. And I'm still left wondering how much will this cost me.

Do you let your wife go shopping alone?

What in the world was I thinking? Let my wife go back to school shopping alone in the States! You can read about our plans for Back to School Shopping and how we planned on saving money. Low and behold my wife comes home last night starts showing me everything, this was $3 or this was $7.

My only concern and question to her was did you bring back any money with you? To which she replied yes, so now I'm estatic thinking she brought $200 U.S. with her and she even managed to bring home money with her. Later that night I hear her talking to her sister and I hear the amount of $290, $290 where did that figure come from did you take $290 with you? At that point she makes sure to tell her sister thanks now he knows and tells me how she brought back $80 with her. Ok did you get everything the kids need, um no I still have alot more shopping to do.

So let's see were down $210 U.S. probably in the range of $225 Canadian and you have more shopping to do, we have your cousins wedding this Saturday which you want to give a $100 too. And yet were still behind on some of our bills great! Now I know some of you out there are going hey $225 on back to school shopping for 3 kids isn't bad at all, it is when you consider most of the clothing that was purchased was summer wear aren't you suppose to be buy fall clothing?

Not to meantion they really didn't need that many clothes in the first place, and she should have discussed with me prior to how much she was taking with her instead of being sneaky. Hope she can keep the rest of the spending under $75 as that's what we budgeted for.

Gas Prices

Pre warning major rant here! Gas prices keep going up I remember just 5 years ago when it jumped to 70 cents a liter and I was complaining to put it nicely but now, come on over a $1.05 a liter! I was watching the Calgary channel last night and they were up to $1.15 per liter and were warned that it’s probably going to be the lowest you’ll see in that area this summer. At what point will our government actually step in and say enough with these Oil Companies complaining about oh my poor refinery or it’s the storm season, we blew a line we can’t produce enough for the supply and yet are claiming astronomical profits. Maybe it’s time that the big executives of the oil companies take a pay cut to reduce their prices that way they’ll still make their profit margins and the consumers will be a hell of a lot happier. At this rate I’m willing to take a pay cut to find another job closer to home because what’s going to be the price next year $1.60 a liter!!! A great place to check the price of gasoline is through the website gasbuddy.com.