We went to the bank to begin the process of borrowing money against the house we live in. That would be what is currently listed as Mort. 2. What's currently listed is money we borrowed from family members to renovate the house we live in. Interest rates are low, and it's time we borrowed money from the bank, and get them most of that money back. With the real estate market, especially in Michigan, we won't be able to borrow all of the money. I'm figuring somewhere between 56 and 58K is all we'll be able to borrow. The house is probably valued at right around 70K.

The mortgage originator ran all three of our credit scores. I don't remember exactly what mine came in at, but they were all greater than 700, and less than 710 (I think). What I remember for sure is that they were all +700, and pretty close together.

DW's scores were in the 7 teens. Like 715 or so. 20 months ago, my score was 580. I'm quite satisfied with the improvement.

We're going to sign the house paperwork to get our house back on the market today. Our Realtor will FAX the pages to my office. They're not here yet, so I'm waiting.

We asked the Realtor to suggest a price that would hopefully lead to a sale by around September 1. As I mentioned yesterday, that's $20K less than our previous listing. We'll see where that goes. If we don't have a few serious lookers this month, we'll drop the price again.

If it's sold at list price, we'll have to go the short sale route. So, we'll probably end up getting Mort 2 financed through a bank prior to selling this house. In case you haven't been following my blog, or don't remember, Mort 2 is money we borrowed from family to renovate the house we're currently living in. The original agreement was that we would pay them back when house #1 sold. With the reality of a short sale, that changes things dramatically.

The next chapter in our continuing saga with our For Sale/Rental house.

Last July we rented our house out. The renters were interested in buying, but just "not yet". They figured they might be ready in a year. DW never believed them, and I wanted to. So, the deal we struck was to charge them an extra $100/mo. above our rental fee. Their "cost" for us taking the house off the market for them to save up a down payment, and line up financing.

We're getting near the end of the year, so we began a "where do we go now" conversation with them. When it became clear to me that they had no intention of buying the house, I gave them 3 options:

1. Let's negotiate a price, and you buy the house, as we had planned.

2. Pay monthly what we are paying for our mortgage, and we'll keep the house off the market for another year. That would be about $150 more than they are paying now.

3. Pay us the original rental fee ($100 less than what they had been paying), and we'll list the house for sale again. We'll need to give them 30 days notice to move out if/when the house sells.

Our rent check showed up in the mail yesterday. It was for $100 less than they have been paying. They chose door #3.

We're working on getting the house listed again. Hopefully by the end of this week.

It's nice, at least to know what direction we're heading.

Oh yeah, we dropped the price $20K from our previous listing.

Anybody need a house in beautiful N/W Michigan?

I posted a while back about my aunt and uncle gifting me a car. They delivered the car a couple of weeks ago. They ended up selling the car to me for one dollar. I guess to properly transfer the title, and remove the car from their insurance, it needed to be sold.

When I took the title into the Secretary of State office, I had to state fair market value, so the state could get their share of sales tax. I had no idea what FMV was, so I said $2,000? The guy behind the desk was nice enough to tell me that was probably a bit high for a 1997 Mazda with 200,000+ miles. We settled on $1,500. I just checked kbb.com, and it turns out that that car may be worth as much as $2,036. It's in good condition. Turns out I was closer than the guy behind the desk, and he saved me $30 in sales tax.

So the car is legal now. Have I mentioned the it has an automatic transmission? Learned to drive on a stick shift, so not a problem with me. DW, however didn't know how to drive a stick. Until yesterday. She needed to drive the car, and I needed to teach her. If you were Facebook friends with both me and DW, you could see our respective sides of the story of me teaching her to drive the stick. Let's just say it was entertaining.

I'm keeping my old car. It's a 1993 Chevy Lumina with 140,000+ miles. If the Mazda craps out, I'll have a back-up. Plus my sister drives a POS, so she can have the Lumina if she needs it.

My grandfather built a chicken coop in the late 1940's. At the time, it was a state of the art building. In fact, the coop was visited by a poultry specialist from Michigan State College named John Hannah. Dr. Hannah went on to become president of the small agricultural college as it transformed into Michigan State University.

As a child I occasionally helped my grandparents by feeding and watering the chickens and collecting eggs. When my family moved to the farmstead nearly three years ago, DW and I (briefly) considered restoring the chicken coop ourselves so we could raise chickens. When we realized the restoration would include at minimum a new roof, we quickly decided against the idea.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. The farmers to whom my dad rents the farm land hired a bulldozer to clear out some fence rows behind the farmstead. I asked if the man on the bulldozer could knock down the chicken coop. This action would serve two purposes. First, it would remove what had become an eyesore. Second, it would allow the farmers to square up the field directly behind the chicken coop, making it easier to farm, and giving them a bit more tillable acreage. So the chicken coop went down.

Part of clearing this land included picking up pieces of iron from old fences and ancient equipment. We found an old harrow and an old packer. In total, we found 1,460 pounds of iron. Some of it came from other iron abandoned from other parts of the farm, but the majority was from immediately around the chicken coop. I took it over to the salvage yard, and was paid $126 for the iron.

We burned the old lumber from the coop last night. It was a big fire. The pile of stones and concrete remain. We'll have to wait for the bulldozer guy to return with his back hoe to bury it.

Things are just about to get crazy busy for me at work. I'll be tied up for about six weeks. So my posting frequency will drop off substantially through May. Unless it rains a lot over the next couple of weeks. In fact, I started posting to this blog late last April because it was raining. A lot. I had very little to do at work because I was stuck inside, so I began posting here. Then I got busy, and quit for a long time. Clearly I came back. So, hopefully I'll be back in full personal financial blogging mode in June.

And now on to the current personal financial stuff.

So remember how we're supposed to get a federal adoption tax credit? And remember how that person claimed our adopted son as an exemption?

Most people who claim the adoption credit (at least according to the online forums DW follows) seem to receive it in Junish or Julyish. Apparently a topic came up in this forum tonight. "Have you gotten you adoption credit yet?". One person responded that they didn't get their 2010 credit until September 2011. Another person responded that they didn't get their 2010 credit until just last month. And none of these people had their kid's social security number hi-jacked!

(pause rant)

Thanks to everyone who offered congratulations yesterday. I really do appreciate it!

(resume rant)

For the second month in a row, our rent check is late. Disheartening. We sent the notice to begin eviction today. That gives them seven business days to either send the rent check or move out. I hope they send the rent check.

We did the same thing with our previous renters. Two days after we sent the notice, they sent the rent check. About three weeks after that they sent notice that they would be moving out. And about three weeks after that our current renters moved in.

So, there's no way of knowing how this will turn out. But right now it's not good.

Yesterday when I updated my monthly debt progress, I upped my monthly debt retirement goal from $1,000 to $1,050.

I was thinking about how that $1,050 number was pretty much pulled out of thin air. I didn't base it on anything other than my gut feeling that it was an amount I thought I could handle without stretching myself too much. I thought I should base that figure on something real. Like, my average monthly debt retirement over the past year. I've already confessed to over-analyzing things.

So, I went through my monthly debt retirement figures over the past year. I omitted the month where I got my tax refund, and I averaged the remaining months. And it turns out I came up with $1,052. Darn close to what my gut feeling was yesterday.

Is it really a good goal to match last years debt retirement? Probably not. So, I will set a new goal. My new goal is to pay off debt at a rate of 5% more than last year's average - or $1,105 per month principal payment.

What a month was March! It seemed as if money was flowing in and out at an abnormal pace. Here are my new updated debt figures. Slowly chipping away.

April 2012 Debt
Mort 1 $103,172
Mort 2 $69,370
CC1 $3,220
CC2 $2,058
CC3 $1,151
CC4 $2,502
Van Loan $5,604

Total principal paid as compared to last month: $1,123. CC 3 is scheduled to be history in October. It's nice to see it melting down. We're also sending $190 worth of principal toward the van now.

I've decided to up my monthly payoff goal. For a year, my goal has been $1,000 per month. I've hit that most (not all) months. I'll up that 5% to $1,050 per month. I think that doable without stretching too much.

So the fence we picked out was a special order. We would receive it three weeks after order. We initially went with it, but changed our minds to one that is in stock. It's a good fence too, but maybe not quite as attractive. Our contractor will pick it up today, and start on it either Thursday, or early next week. He has another job lined up that he may or may not start this week, depending on his client's needs.

The fence that we went with is cedar. We'll need to get on a schedule to stain it. I would guess every two or three years. We might not need it beyond three years, or we might need it for the next eight. We'll see.

The fence is $760. The contractor is charging $500 to construct. So that's on the outer limits of our budget. Too bad. But, as I've already discussed, it is a need. So far we've met my goals - attractive as is possible, and it doesn't appear that it will break the bank. Only time will tell if it's sturdy enough to withstand the strength and persistence of our boys.

I don't know how much snow you got this winter, but we got barely any, until the last couple of weeks of February. And, when the snow finally came, we learned quickly that we needed new tires on the van.

DW bought them yesterday. They were $85 each.

I sure am glad that we ended up getting our rent check this month, because we seem to be going through cash like water.

I started blogging here about 11 months ago, and it's taken this long to hit 100 posts.

For my 100th blog post, I'd first like to thank everyone who has offered advice and words of encouragement to me over the past 11 months. I've come a long way since I began posting here. With that, I'd like to offer what I've found to be the benefits of posting in the SA blogs.

1 - Accountability. I've never met any of you personally, and I wouldn't recognize a single one of you if I met you on the street. But I feel accountable to you. Of course, I'm first accountable to my family, and second to my debt holders, but each month when I post my debt progress, I'm looking to hold up my end of the "bargain" that I've made with you as a group to make good progress in paying down my debts.

2 - Advice. You are full of good advice. I've found 97.5% of it to be very good advice. The SA forums are very good for advice as well, but it seems to be offered at a more personal level here in the blogs.

3 - Organization of thought. Just typing things out helps me organize my thoughts, and set my priorities.

4 - Perspective of others. Following other blogs helps me set goals, and also shows that others are struggling, or have struggled in the past with debt similar to mine.

That's it for now. Thanks for following as many of my other 99 posts as you have. Hoping to report more progress over the next 100 posts.

I know some of you have been following my tax refund situation. In January we adopted a special needs child, whom we had been caring for since last April. Someone else illegally claimed him as a dependent.

You also may remember that we filed our 1040 without claiming him as a dependent, and once we received our partial refund, we filed an amended 1040 claiming both him as an dependent, and also caliming our adoption tax credit.

Well, we received the remainder of our State of Michigan refund last week. That's god news. We're still waiting for our federal refund (plus adoption credit). But we've heard that we could wait until Jume or July for that.

Now I'm working on an assumption here. Please correct me if I am not thinking correctly. But, I would guess that the state would not send their refund until after they got some sort of green light from the Feds. That is, is our state refund good evidence that the feds have found us worthy of claiming our son as a dependent? And now it's just a waiting game for the balance of our fed refund and adotption credit?

I don't think I've ever posted twice in one day, but this just couldn't wait.

Our rent check showed up in the mail today.

Actually, renter called at around noon to explain her situation. She said the check was returned due to insufficient postage. Whatever. DW called at around 2:00 to say that it was in the mailbox.

It still has to clear, but we are much more optimistic than 24 hours ago.

Really shows the need for an EF.

We probably would have begun the eviction process Monday.

I called our renter yesterday. She (of course) didn't pick up. We want to give them all the chances in the worl to make payment, or at least contact us about a plan before beginning the eviction process. But I did stop by the courthouse yesterday to pick up the needed paper to begin the eviction process.

It's amazing how quickly my outlook has changed. For those of you who have been following my blog lately, you have probably noticed how much more upbeat I have been about my financial outlook. That has quickly changed. Now I'm wondering how we're going to keep up on bills with the loss of rental income.

We haven't received our rent check yet. It's due on the first of the month.

I've been out of town for a couple of days. When I left, I told myself that if the check wasn't here by time I got back, I would have to do something.

I guess I'll start with a phone call.

I hope this doesn't get nasty.

Our previous renters were chronically late with rent, but they always ended up paying. These renters have been so good.

Until now.

Ugh, I really hope this doesn't end up going bad.

It probably won't.

But it might.

It's flowing ---- out. Tomorrow is pay day, so more will flow in.

Our window guy started yesterday, should finish today. We also called to have a plumber stop by. Long story, but with the new basement windows we needed to change the configuration of the sump pump, and needed a plumber.

Also, I ordered heating fuel again.

We have the cash set aside for all these bills, but it will nearly wipe out our savings. But, it's nice to be able to pay bills.

This is an interesting time for me financially. We were able to pay down quite a bit of debt with our tax refund. Now that we have our CC debt somewhat tamed, I've been using more of my mental energy on our mortgage debt, unsold house, etc.

I'm guessing most of you watched M*A*S*H. When the choppers came in with wounded soldiers, Hawkeye and Margaret would triage the patients. They took the terribly worst off ones first, and the really bad ones second. That's what my finances feel like. I concentrated on the high interest credit card debt first because it was killing us, and left the really bad mortgage debt for later. I feel as if it's later now, and we need to start addressing the mortgage debt, even ahead of the CC debt now.

I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but we have renters living in our house #1 now. They are interested in buying the house, so we agreed to rent to them for one year, take the houde off the market, and revisit in July.

Wheter or not they are the purchasers, we have to unload that house this summer.

So, I'm going to start hoarding cash ahead of paying off CC debt, so we can be in a better position to close on the house when the time comes. I'll still pay more than minimum payments, but not as much as the past 16 months.

I hope this is the right decision. If not, I'm sure someone will let me know.

We got a bid for replacement windows for our basement. Acually, I called three other people for bids, and only one of them returned my call. He's booked through August.

So I contacted a friend of a friend (actually a friend of my sister) who works for a contractor, and does some jobs on the side. He put in a bid of $800. We had $1,200 set aside for the job.

They're not actually windows per se, but glass block. We have 5 windows, and are having him put glass block in 4 of them and a vinyl window in one of them.

So, that's 2/3 of what we had set aside. Great news! Too bad we didn't get any other bids for comparison. We could wait for another bid, orjust get it done. The price sounds right to us, actually better than alright.

I had a chance to cash in coins again. Today's total: $16.84

Our Federal income tax refund was direct deposited into our checking account last night. What a great surprise today!

The refund was $3,434. I held back $600 for our basement windows project, and $750 for our final heating fuel fill up. The $2,084 balance was transferred to CC1.

Wow is that great!

I paid off twice our monthly debt retirement amount in one fell swoop.

Our small rural electric co-op now accepts on-line payments.

If you're familiar with the Rural Electrification Administration, under FDR's New Deal in the 1930's, that's how our electric co-op started. In fact, my dad has told me a story about how my grandpa was paid $0.50 per hole that he dug for the electrical poles when electricity first came to our area.

To this day, we as cooperative members write down on our bill (or now submit via the web) our monthly electric meter reading. Or, pay $5 if we forget, and someone has to come out and check it.

Anyway, now that they accept on-line payments, we are taking advantage. That will save us one more written check and stamp per month. No wonder the post office is going broke!

I feel as if I'm in a financial holding pattern.

DW checked the status of our federal refund last night. It's estimated that we will receive our refund on February 14. Plenty of time to pay our bills before the end of the month, but I want it NOW nonetheless.

Also, as I've mentioned previously, I opened a new CC for balance transfers. I transferred all of CC4 and part of CC 1. The transactions still haven't shown up. The new card stated that it could take up to two weeks for the tranfers to complete. This Friday will be two weeks for the transfer of CC4, and next Monday (I think) will be two weeks for the partial transfer of CC1.

Total credit line on new CC is $9K. I transferred $2,700 total from the two cards. That way I'm utilizing 30% of the new CC, which I've heard helps your utilization ratio for your credit rating.

Also on hold is the total state and federal refund because of someone else claiming DS1, and the adoption credit.

So, we wait. Good things will happen.

We're finally (I think) at a position financially that we can set up a new account to save for non- monthly occuring expenses. Things like property taxes, heating fuel, garbage pick up, and even Christmas spending.

We've been scrambling each time most of these expenes occur to figure out how to pay for them. So, here are the annual totals:

Property taxes (summer and winter) - $540
Heating fuel (three fill ups per season) - $2,238
Garbage pick up (paid quarterly) - $200
Christmas - $700

All totaled - $3,678
Montly expense - $306.50

So, I'm going to start allocating that amount to a new savings account each month.

Assets
House 1 $80,000
House 2 $73,000
Retirement $94,051
Autos (2) $7,440
Cecking $2,368
Total Assets $256,859

Liabilities
House 1 $103,572
House 2 $69,790
CCs $12,594
Auto $5,984
Total Liabilities $191,940

Current Net Worth $64,919

Net Worth last month $56,404

Change compared to last month $8,515

$5,941 (70%) of that change came from the increase in retirement fund.

Something tells me that the situation in Greece, or heaven only knows what other factor will send that crashing down in no time.

We didn't do anything more than what we should have done. We continued to pay our mortgage.

But thousands (tens or hundreds of thousands? I really have no idea what the number is) did (or are) walking away from the mortgage. We didn't.

Oh, I know that many people didn't have a choice. But it seems that a great many did, and chose to walk away. We didn't.

We thought about it. Very hard. In fact August and September 2010, we were very darn close. In fact, the subject came up again between my wife and me just six weeks ago.

A little back story - I took a new job four years ago this month. Yes, February 2008. Just as the bubble was bursting. The job allowed us to be much closer to family, so our kids could grow up knowing their grand parents. We lived in a beautiful gorgeous Victorian house in a small village in north west Michgan. We put the house on the market in Jan. 2008. And we still own it.

I'm still glad we moved. The improvement in quality of life is priceless.

But, we were short on cash maintaining two houses. From February of 2008 to October 2010, we had choices to make - namely which bills to pay. We always paid the mortgage on time and in full. We fell behind on credit card payments. I know, we shouldn't have credit card debt, but we did and we do.

Then something happened in Oct. 2010. DW had done a massive free lance project, and se was paid $10,000. Also, we had renters move in to our for-sale house. These events allowed us to become current on all past due bills, and allowed us to remain current, and
we have ever since. And of course now we have foster care payments to help out. Trust me, we take care of the kids first and ourselves second with theses foster care payments.

The bottom can fall out again. All it would take is to have our renters move out or stop paying or trash the house or have the furnace go kaput. We are still walking a thin line. But, we continue to make our mortgage payment.

And that is satisfying.

Our state of Michigan income tax refund was direct deposited into our account today. $603.

DW and I have different opinions as to what to do with it. I, of course, want to put it all toward debt immediately. She wants new basement windows. We do, of course, need new basement windows. They'll keep water (and cats) out of the basement, and help to some extent keep the house warmer.

My sense is to wait, her sense is to fix them now.

We'll be getting our federal refund shortly, and the money will be enough to get new windows, and take a sizeable chunk out of the debt balance.

Mort 1 - $103,572
Mort 2 - $69,790
CC 1 - $7,335
CC2 - $2,322
CC3 - $1,526
CC4 - $1,410
Van Loan - $5,984

Difference as compared to a month ago: $1,322!

Some changes to note: we finally began making some progress in paying family members on Mort 2. $210 per month. Not an incredible whole lot, but one drip at a time.

Also, I transferred the balance of CC4 to a brand new credit card. 0.0% introductory APR for 12 months, and no balance transfer fees. I don't really like that I'm playing the balance transfer game. Obviously, at some point I'm going to have to buck up and pay it off. But, I do like the idea of concentrating efforts on the behemouth CC 1, which has an APR of 8.9%.

Back to the real highlight of this post - we have $1,322 less in debt that we did a month ago. That's about 10% of our total credit card debt. Gone!

Still lots and lots of progress to be made, but things are getting better - a lot better than they were fifteen months ago.

Woot!

I sent the final payment for our heating fuel in the mail this morning. It was all paid in 30 days. The fuel company charges 2% per month for anything over 30 days, so that was avoided by 4 days.

It's nice to see our bank account at such a high level, even if it is only for a couple of days. We have several payments scheduled on the first day of the month, including mortgage, insurance, and most of our CC payments.

So, on Thursday, the amount of money in checking will be much less, but it's nice to live a fantasy for a couple days.

We got a wonderful surprise in the mail on Friday. A refund on overpayment to our mortgage escrow account. $368!

That will sure come in handy.

Of course, we've had to pay into that account because of underpayments in the past.