In the middle of winter and the height of broomball season, demand is high for broomball shoes.  New shoes sell for around $85 and I wasn’t willing to pay that for shoes I was only going to wear a few times a year. 

I’ve always known that shoes made  a difference but I didn’t think they were worth the expense…until this season.  My game really struggled….the ice was slippier than ever…and my teammates urged me to get shoes to alleviate the problems I was having staying vertical.  I kept checking craigslist but there were far more posts wanting shoes than those selling them.

Now that the ice is melting and season is over, I decided to keep checking craigslist, figuring demand would definitely be down.  Yesterday I checked and someone had listed a pair in my size posted for $50.  Bingo!  I contacted the guy, arranged the meeting and bought myself a new pair of shoes.  He said they were only used for one season and that he played goalie (so not much running around on them).  They look brand new and I’m pleased as punch with my purchase.  Worth the wait and I saved some money.  Too bad I won’t get to use them for another 9 months or so!

Yeah, that’s right, I took PTO on Monday so I’m staring a long weekend right in the face.  Three more hours to go until three days off!

Tonight

Bird and I carpooled to work today so after I pick her up we are going out for pizza which will probably run around $30.  Then we are off to the Sara Groves Christmas concert tonight with a couple of friends.  Did I tell you that we LOVE Christmas music?  We do!  Tickets were $18 a piece, but Bird paid for all 4 of them and we are expecting to get paid back by our friends, but you never know.  So $72 for now, but hopefully only $36 in the end.  After the concert we are invited to a friend’s birthday party taking place at a bar down in Dinkytown by the U of M.  We’d love to attend but it will depend on how late the show goes vs. how late the party goes vs. how we’re feeling.  If we go, that will probably be another $20 or so.

Saturday

I always write that I hope Saturday involves sleeping in, but it never does.  Bird has a Christmas cookie baking/swapping extravaganza planned with her cousins for most of the day, so I will be free to do what I choose.  Perhaps I’ll go book hunting, but most likely I will play around on the internet.  This blog sure could use a few tweaks.  And the apartment could use some cleaning.

Saturday night we have dinner reservations here to celebrate that one year ago we got engaged (actually on the 20th, but you’ll see below that we have plans for Sunday).  I’m not sure if that’s something that usually gets celebrated, but what the heck, why not.  We love Levain and this is a really good excuse to go there.  It’s not even the place we went the night we got engaged, but as it turns out, we like Levain more than the other place.  Dinner is probably going to cost about $80-$100. 

Sunday

After church, we’re headed to Bird’s uncle’s place for my in-laws side of extended family Christmas.  Last year was my first year there and it wasn’t so bad.  I’m sure it will be just as not-so-bad this year.  They are smart and always plan Christmas for the Sunday before, so that the guys can watch football while the women hang out in the kitchen.  It’s a wise plan and works out well.  I’m still getting to know that side of the family, but I know one of her uncles is a financial advisor.  We are going to try and talk to him a bit about what we should be doing with our money as we save up for a downpayment.  I’m thinking we’re doing okay with ING Direct at 1.3%, but I’ll let you know if he has any great insights.  On Sunday night when we come home, I’ll be trying to find a place to watch the Vikings game.  Let’s hope it goes a little better than our last Sunday night game.  This should be a no spend day!

Monday

I took Monday off because I needed to use a PTO day or it wouldn’t rollover.  I tried to get Christmas Eve, but it was not available.  I am going to do my remaining Christmas shopping on Monday.  And get my car washed.  And maybe book shop.  And work on Bird’s Christmas present.  And then have dinner made when Bird comes home from work!    It will be a full day, but I’m hoping it makes more sense to shop on Monday than it does on Saturday.  This will definitely not be a no spend day, but I’m hoping to keep my Christmas shopping under $200.  At this point I am only shopping for my brothers, parents, and maybe Bird’s parents. 

What are you doing this weekend?  Do you have your shopping done?

Friday

After work, Bird and I headed over to our friend’s house for a double date consisting of dinner and a movie.  We ate at a new Mexican restaurant in the area and didn’t love it.  $32.  Then we went and saw This Is It, the Michael Jackson movie.  This, we did love.  I went in with really low expectations, not exactly what you would call a huge MJ fan.  I mean, I like his hits, but there’s really not much else about the guy I like.  I didn’t even really know what the movie was going to be about, but it was actually pretty interesting.  I’m recommending it to anyone who has even the least bit of interest in MJ or his music, because you get a different perspective of Michael Jackson that you never really got in the media in the last 10-15 years or so.  $18.50 for two tickets  (movies are ridiculously expensive). 

Saturday

This was the great errand day.  We went to the bank and deposited a few final wedding checks.  Yes!  We tried to add me to Bird’s bank account and change her name on her checking account.  We tried to do that online, but turns out we need to do it at the bank, so that was kind of a bummer since we were just at the bank!  Well, at least we got those checks deposited that we’ve been sitting on since mid-September.

We drove to the thrift store and dropped off 3 or 4 bags of Bird’s clothes and shoes that didn’t make the cut as we were cleaning out the apartment.  Then we headed over to Verizon to add Bird to my account as a family plan.  Now, instead of each paying $50-60 a month for cell phones, our combined bill will be about $75 per month.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is we needed to get her a new phone.  We paid $159.99 for a pretty cool little touchscreen phone (and case) and we’ll get $50 back on a rebate which I dropped in the mail today.

After Verizon, we stopped at Target and did massive amounts of grocery shopping.  Total bill: $89.40 but $20 of that was for a new USB computer mouse that I wanted for my laptop.  We used wedding gift cards for all this and we will be using Target gift cards for months to come!  From Target, we headed over to Subway to grab lunch.  $12

Our last stop of the day was to be Old Navy.  Bird had seen a vest there that she really liked a few months ago and she knew it was now on sale.  We had also picked up a 30% off coupon from Twitter, so we were going to get a great deal.  That’s the good news. The bad news is we didn’t just get the vest!  She ended up getting a few shirts and I got a new pair of pants for work, 1 shirt, 3 t-shirts.  Total bill was about $90 but that’s okay because that was quite a deal for everything we got and I desperately needed those new pants.

Once we got home, we signed up for Turkey Day 5k that we are going to run with my brother and his girlfriend.  $51.57  I really need to bring down my time from my last race and so we’ve started running after work.  With that, we were done spending money for the day and we spent the evening cooking, playing games and watching Angel.

Sunday

It was a pretty low key spending day.  Filled up my gas tank ($22.60 at $2.49 p/g) on the way to go book shopping in the morning.  Bird went out for coffee with her friends.  I ended up buying two bags of books for about $30.  Then I headed over to my parent’s house to watch the Vikings game and to do laundry.  My mom bought pizza for lunch.  After the game, I drove over and met Bird at her parent’s house where we had another free dinner.  Love days like that.

Bird and I went to Macy’s last night to buy a few things that were left on our registry and to take advantage of a 20% off deal for anything on the “home level” of the store.

Here’s what we bought:

• Le Creuset Cookware – Original price: $245.99.  After coupon: $203.99  (We got the one on the top left)

• Wusthof Steak Knives – Original price: $79.99.  After coupon:  $63.99

• Pillow 1 – Original price: $34.  On sale for $16.99.  After coupon:  $13.59
• Pillow 2 – Original price: $34.  On sale for $16.99.  After coupon:  $13.59
• Pillow 3 – Original price: $34.  On sale for $16.99.  After coupon:  $13.59
• Pillow 4 – Original price: $60.  On sale for $29.99.  After coupon:  $23.99

And that’s all we got!  We did a pretty good job of limiting ourselves because actually, there wasn’t all that much more that we wanted/needed.

Our total with tax came to: $356.95.  We saved $83.20 with our 20% off coupon and we saved $164.24 overall.  We used a gift card for the whole purchase and we still have a couple hundred bucks on gift cards to spend, but I think we are done with home stuff at Macy’s and will spend the rest of the gift cards on clothes and/or presents for others.

The funniest part of the night was shopping for pillows.  Neither of us has ever shopped for pillows before in our lives so we didn’t really know what we were looking for.  We basically decided to go middle of the road, nothing too cheap, nothing too spendy.  We just read the labels that said good for stomach sleepers (Bird) or good for side sleepers (me) and trusted the manufacturers.  I don’t know about Bird, but I slept pretty well on my new pillow last night!

There were only 2 sets of Wusthof steak knives available at Macy’s.  One was this presentation set pictured above and one was a set of 6 that came in a wood block.  We ended up opting for the presentation set because we didn’t want another knife block cluttering up our counters and this way we could store it in a cupboard or drawer.  However, upon arriving home, we noticed that the knife block we already have has 6 slots for steak knives.  So we are going to return this set we just bought and buy the set of 6 that comes with a block and just incorporate them into our current block.

As you know, Bird and I did not make it to Macy’s over the weekend to finish up our registry fulfillment shopping.  So we are going tonight.

Here’s a list of what we are planning on getting:

• Le Creuset Dutch Oven
• Wusthof Steak Knives
• Pillows (inspired by SP and this post)
• We are looking at bedding, but I doubt we’ll buy anything

And then who knows what else we’ll end up getting!  I guess you’ll have to come back tomorrow to see.

And oh, since we’ll be at the mall, we’ll probably grab dinner out.  I’m voting for chipotle!

The house I live in is literally steps away from an amazing bike trail system.  The problem is, I don’t have a bike.

I haven’t had a bike, probably since I’ve had a car and I never really missed it, but now I really want one.  Bird has a bike and we’d like to do active things together but she likes to run and I don’t.  I think biking will be a nice compromise.  So I need to get one.  She’d like to get a new one because she’s had her current bike since middle school.  We had talked about getting new bikes for each other as wedding presents, but we really want them sooner than that.

The weather is finally getting nice up here (but not today) and I want a bike soon.  So I think I am going to set aside $500 from my tax return to go bike shopping with.  I’d love to get a bike for less than that, but that’s what I will budget for it.

Bird and I had dinner plans last Friday night but before we got to the restaurant, I surprised her with a trip to the jewelry store.  That’s right, we went ring shopping —> together.

She was very surprised and really happy!

For about a month or so, I have been browsing and researching online and beginning to ask a few of my married friends about their ring shopping experiences.  Based on their feedback and all of your input on this blog, I decided to take Bird with me to a well-respected family-owned jewelry store here in Minneapolis. To be honest, I also brought her with me because I have never been in a jewelery store in my life and I was intimidated.  I’ve heard plenty of horror stories about pushy salesmen and Bird is just a lot better at dealing with people than I am. That’s one of the reasons I love her.

I went into this first experience basically expecting to have a educational experience followed by a sales pitch.  That’s not exactly what we got.

Upon arrival, we were basically told to browse through the display cases. Even after we mentioned that this was our first time and that we were looking for a little guidance, we didn’t get much help. The salesman came around and offered to take a few things out of the cases for us, but other than that, didn’t really offer much help.  We spent about 30 minutes browsing and it became pretty clear that we were not going to be helped any further.  So we left.

At dinner, we talked about our experience and it made me very happy that I decided not to go it alone. Going in, I really didn’t have much of a clue as to what she would want. I assumed that she had thought about this many times and had a good idea of what she wanted. I was wrong! She had no idea what she wanted.

So this little trip was helpful for two reasons:

1. It gave us an overview of what’s out there, allowing us to begin the process of narrowing it down.
2. It let Bird know that I’ve been thinking about this and that it was okay for her to think about it. I told her to keep her eyes open and that she should let me know if she sees anything that she really likes.

Even though our first experience ring shopping was kind of a dud, it was still a worthwhile. In a very admittedly cheesy way, it brought us closer together.

Regarding the actual rings, here’s what I thought going in:

Based on what I know about Bird and her lack of jewelry, I assumed she would probably prefer something more traditional. Perhaps a classic solitaire. I knew yellow gold was out, but I thought she would prefer a plain-ish setting. I also didn’t know exactly what shape of diamond she would like. Two of my female coworkers (who didn’t have a hand in the shopping) ended up with round rocks when they both would have preferred princess cuts. So I wanted to make sure I got it right.

Here’s what I learned:

First and foremost, I learned that I will most likely not be making my purchase at this particular store. Just not impressed. It wasn’t only the service, but we also didn’t see anything that we really loved. The selection was smaller than I expected.
I learned that Bird didn’t really have any idea of what she wanted and that really surprised me. I guess it was good to learn that she didn’t have her heart set on a $25,000 Tiffany ring like another friend of mine does.  After browsing through the stores selection, we determined that Bird preferred round diamonds. I was also surprised to learn that she didn’t really like plain settings.  She preferred the settings with a little bit of sparkle, but not too much. She liked the pave-settings better than the channel-settings.

At dinner, we also talked about diamonds in general and she told me a story about one of her friends. After seeing Blood Diamond, this friend vowed that she would not get a diamond. When she got engaged, she got a sapphire engagement ring. I know many of you commented about the fact that this is becoming more and more popular. Unfortunately for Bird’s friend, it is still not quite popular enough to keep her from having to explain herself EVERY time someone asks to look at the ring. Bird thinks she now kind of regrets her decision. All that to say, we did confirm that we will be going with a diamond.

I guess I forgot to note that we also talked about whether or not she would like a say in the final decision (does she want to pick her ring?) and we decided together that we would shop around for ideas, but the final decision is up to me!

So now that I’ve received some direction from her, I think the next step will be going out again and doing some shopping on my own.  Wish me luck!

All I can say is wow!  Thank you all for spreading the word and leaving such helpful comments. I never expected such an overwhelming response.  I guess it helps that I got linked to from MSN’s MoneyBlog.  I have no idea how Karen found my little blog, but I’m glad she did.  Thanks!  And welcome readers from MSN.

As promised here is my response to that post and your comments:

I’m a romantic.  I love the idea of surprising Bird with a proposal and a ring.  But I’m also a realist. I understand that she has to wear it and look at it forever, not to mention that the ring is going to be getting a lot of attention for the next several months.  We’ve been talking about marriage, so it won’t come as a surprise to her that I’m asking her to marry me…but I do want the when, where, and how of the proposal to be a surprise.  After reading through your many comments, I have a few ideas of what I can do to get a ring she’ll truly love and still have it be somewhat of a surprise.

It was very interesting to read your comments on the diamond quality versus size debate.  I had talked to two of my female coworkers and both of them said size was more important than quality.  They said girls that said otherwise were lying. Maybe my coworkers are just shallow. They argued that people notice the size right away and nobody goes around looking at diamonds under microscopes.  That seemed to make sense to me.  However, most of your comments begged to differ.  Everyone really seemed to stress quality.  I guess I can see both sides of this argument.  I obviously don’t want to buy a low-quality stone just because it’s huge, but I still think that people primarily notice the size. Nobody I know ever talks about the color or clarity of a diamond (except when you’re buying one).

As far as metals go…I already knew that yellow gold was out. That is one thing she had made clear in the past.  Many of you mentioned I should look to Bird’s current jewelry, but alas, she doesn’t wear much.  She doesn’t wear any rings and she primarily only wears one pair of pearl earrings.  But here’s a fun tidbit I did recently find out…Bird has a nickel allergy which apparently rules out the white gold option.  So it looks like it’s going to have to be platinum.  While conducting research online, I had read that palladium is similar to white gold in price but it’s in the platinum family and shares its hypoallergenic properties.  Apparently, it’s not that popular as no one seemed to mention anything about it in the comments.  It’s mostly a white gold versus platinum debate and due to her allergy, it looks like I’ll be going with platinum.

For now, I’ve mostly been browsing and researching online.  In the next few days I’ll probably go out and explore the brick and mortar stores (trying to avoid mall stores though).

So those are my initial thoughts. This is fun. Please continue to give me any input you would like to share. Thank you all for being a part of this big decision and for your encouragement.  I hope you continue to read along as I continue my search and as always I will keep you posted on the latest developments.

Dear Readers:

I’m going to propose to Bird.

I know I have a disproportionate amount of female readers so I would like to ask you some questions (but this only works if you actually leave a comment letting me know what you think – don’t be shy!)  Guys, feel free to add your thoughts or experiences as well.

Here we go:

1.  Would you rather be surprised or have a hand in choosing your engagement ring?

2.  Size vs. Quality? (in regards to the diamond)

3.  Gold vs. White Gold vs. Platinum vs. Palladium (Lots of metal options)

4. Traditional Retailer vs. Online (I see even Amazon sells E-rings now, but I’ve also been browsing Blue Nile.)

Okay, I can’t really think of anymore questions at this point.  Basically, you don’t even have to answer those questions, I just want all your thoughts and opinions on all things engagement rings.

And here’s the scoop: I don’t have a ton of readers (but I really love the ones I do have!), so I’m asking you to please send this post around so I can get as many opinions on this matter as possible.

I will share my thoughts and feelings in an upcoming post very soon, so please keep reading (subscribe by reader or by email in the right sidebar!)

Here are some other blog posts from around the PF blogosphere on engagement rings:

It’s Just Money

Free by 50

PF Blogs

ps. In case you haven’t figured out how personal finance comes into play here…engagement rings can be very expensive. Even when they’re not, they still cost money.

pps.  When sending this around, please don’t send it to Bird.  Haha

About two weeks ago, I got to work and tried to fire up my iPod. It started making a loud whirring noise from deep inside as if it was working extremely hard to turn on. But nothing happened. Eventually, a little symbol showed up on the screen directing me to the Apple support website. Uh-oh. I set it aside and went on with my work for the day, figuring I could deal with it later when I got home.

That evening I tried to plug it into my PC and a message came up that said it was corrupted! Double uh-oh! I have no idea how this happened. It wasn’t like I had just loaded it up with illegally downloaded music that were full of viruses or anything. Absolutely nothing had changed from the day before when it had worked perfectly and the day it decided it was corrupted. I headed to the Apple support site and went through the steps they recommend for fixing iPods. I reset it. Same corrupted message.

At this point, I was getting a bit nervous because the next step was to restore it which would wipe all my music off of it. I took a few minutes to make backups of all my music. I can’t imagine how awful it would be to lose my music collection. After the backups were complete, I restored the iPod. I got the same message. The next step was to uninstall and then reinstall iTunes. That didn’t work either. So I googled “corrupted ipod” and learned that this was not an entirely uncommon thing. At least I wasn’t suffering alone, but as I searched I couldn’t find a solution.

So I came up with my own solution: Buy a new iPod! The corrupted iPod is a 2nd or 3rd generation, 20 gb one that I got on ebay several years ago for around $200. It has a clickwheel, but only a black and white screen – no colors, no pictures, no video. It’s pretty much a technological dinosaur. Though it’s old and outdated, I consider it one of the best things I’ve ever purchased. I’ve used it almost every single day. So I’m not too sad about its passing. I’m actually quite excited about the prospects of getting a new one, but that opens up the debate: What should I get?

The new iPod Touch is pretty awesome, but totally expensive and it doesn’t have much storage. The Nanos are also very popular, but again, they seem to have little storage. I’m leaning towards buying an iPod Classic (they storage has gone way up and the price has come way down!). I’ve been shopping around a bit and I’ve found the 120 gb Classic on ebay for about $215. Part of me thinks that I don’t really need that much storage, but the 80 gb isn’t that much cheaper.

So what do you think?
What kind of iPod do you have and what do you like or dislike about it? Did you buy directly from Apple or some other place? Does anyone know of a place to score a good deal on iPods?