by Forest on September 29, 2010
Here’s a long trip report about our recent visit to the east coast.
Thursday
We grabbed dinner at the MPLS airport and arrived in DC around 1030 pm. A quick metro trip to our friend’s apartment where we dropped our bags and then headed out for a little walking tour around the White House and Washington Monument area. Headed to bed right around 2 am (that’s real late for us!)
Spent: $20 bag fee, $16 dinner at airport, $10 metro passes
Friday
Woke up bright and early and headed to a bakery/cafe for breakfast ($9). Took the metro out to the suburbs to pick up friend’s car and headed for North Carolina. We got stuck in traffic north of Richmond, but thankfully we had my Dad’s GPS which saved us time by providing an alternate route. After 6 long hours, we arrived in Durham. We bought dinner, checked in at our hotel and then over to campus to meet up with everyone else for homecoming events.
Spent: $9 for breakfast, $27 for dinner, $65 for our half of the hotel room
Saturday
Another morning, another bakery stop ($6). We spent the morning touring campus and Bird spent it reminiscing. I bought an obligatory t-shirt in the campus store for $12. Then we headed to Raleigh to meet our friend’s grandparents for lunch. After that we headed back up to Chapel Hill to visit the UNC campus. From there, it was back to Durham for a birthday party. The party was at a local restaurant which set us back $32. After the party we headed back to Raleigh to spend the night at the grandparent’s house. I do love me some free lodging while traveling. All in all Saturday was a crazy day and I hit all three points of the Research Triangle.
Spent: $6 for breakfast, $12 for T-shirt, $32 for dinner
Sunday
We met all our friends back in Durham for brunch on Sunday morning. It was bittersweet because we were all heading home to our respective corners of the country. But we had a good time and then loaded into the car and headed back to DC to catch our flight home. We stopped in the DC suburbs to grab a bite to eat before our friend dropped us off at Dulles.
It was at this point that the real fun began! Our 630 pm flight was delayed to 8 pm and we were connecting in Atlanta so there wasn’t a lot we could do but hope that everything would work out. We sat around the airport for a while and eventually got loaded onto our plane only to have them tell us while we were taxiing on the tarmac that Atlanta was delaying us longer because of bad weather. So we sat on the tarmac for another 20 minutes. Then when we were finally airborne and approaching Atlanta, the pilot informed us that we needed to circle because Atlanta was still delaying us. So another 30 minutes in the air. We finally landed around 11 pm (originally we should have been back to MPLS by 1030 pm) and were told to head for gate D2 for our connecting flight. Figuring that everything must have been delayed, we took off running. Several sweaty minutes later we arrive to find our flight long gone. So we are stuck in Atlanta for the night. AirTran scheduled us for the next available flight (9 pm the next night! what!?!?!) and we also got a voucher for a discounted hotel room which eventually cost us $66.
Spent: $15 for brunch, $20 for gas money, $10 for dinner, $15 bag fee, $66 hotel (plus $17 for lunch at the airport on monday)
Long story short we made an earlier flight as standby passengers and made it home to Minneapolis by 330 Monday afternoon and it never felt so good to be back!
Total trip expenses*: $341.83
*Not including our airfare since we paid that back in June.
And it would have been only $258.39 if the weather wouldn’t have screwed us all up. On the bright side, I did get to miss another whole day of work!
I transferred $350 over from the travel fund to pay for the weekend’s expenses. I also transferred $2,000 over from the travel fund to prepare for our upcoming trip to Greece. Here’s hoping we don’t run into any problems on our next trip! We leave Friday morning!
by Forest on September 23, 2010
Bird and I are headed to North Carolina this afternoon for homecoming weekend. Looks like the weather is 90s and sunny in NC whereas here in the Minnie it’s forecasted to be 50s and rainy. Sounds like a good time to get out of town.
Here’s hoping you all have a wonderful weekend and I’ll report back next week!
by Forest on September 15, 2010
We’ve been celebrating a lot around here lately so let me catch you up.
As I’m sure you all remember, Sunday was our first anniversary. We spent the day together in weather that was about as perfect as you can get. It was lovely. However, the point of this post is that we exchanged anniversary gifts later that night and I received some desperately needed new clothes from Bird and she received concert tickets from me.
We’re going to see Arcade Fire next week.
So excited!
And then, tomorrow is Bird’s birthday (just a day after MPP’s!). Due to the fact that she has class on her birthday, her parents had us over for dinner on Monday night. She got a couple of gifts from her parents and siblings and then I gave her a second set of concert tickets.
We’re going to see Sufjan Stevens in October!
This show will be just a few days after we get back from Greece. And yes, we’re still going to Greece and no, we haven’t really planned anything and are basically going to wing it. Full reports when we get back of course.
Anyway, back to the concerts…
Bird has seen Arcade Fire before and loved them. I have never seen them live but am loving their latest album. I saw Sufjan back on the Illinoise tour and it was probably one of my top five shows of all time. Loved it. He’s making different music now, so I’m curious to hear what he plays on this latest tour.
As always, a lot to look forward around here. Our next couple weeks look something like this:
- Bird’s Birthday (thai food with friends tonight!)
- Arcade Fire next week
- North Carolina for homecoming next weekend
- Greece the week after that
- Sufjan in mid-October
- And then Halloween parties!
by Forest on September 10, 2010
Here’s a snapshot of our finances as of September 1, 2010.
SAVINGS -$7,437 to $35,437 Down 17%
In August, we bought new furniture, paid for the fall semester of grad school and moved a couple thousand over from savings to the Roth IRA.
INVESTMENTS -$431 to $13,619 Down 3%
We didn’t put any new money in the market, but the market didn’t help us much with the money we currently have in it.
RETIREMENT -$187 to $60,708 Down 0.3%
At first glance, it doesn’t seem so bad to only be down a couple of hundred here, but don’t forget we moved a couple of thousand over from savings and also our normal paycheck contributions to our 401ks. So more realistically, we probably lost somewhere between 3 or 4 thousand across our retirement accounts. All thanks to poor market performance in August.
STUDENT LOANS +$228 to $25,922
Slow and steady as always on this one.
Overall, our net worth decreased by $7,827 to $83,842. A nine percent drop.
by Forest on August 25, 2010
The initial 6-month promo pricing on our cable package just expired and our bill this month went up to $140. We had been paying $110 a month for cable and internet including the sports package ($5), a dvr ($15) and leasing a modem ($5).
So I did what any good PF Blogger would do and called them up and tried to get my price back down. (In this case, calling them up means logging on to customer service chat). Didn’t quite go as expected and they wouldn’t budge on the price (even when I threatened to check out satellite instead of cable) and the only thing they offered was a $150 Visa gift card if I locked in at the $140 rate for 24 months (which includes a $150 early termination fee). No thanks.
Why lock in for 24 months at a price I’m currently paying? Don’t you think to lock in for that long you should get some kind of discount? I understand that locking in would protect me from future price increases, but believe me, if the price goes up any more, I’ll get rid of cable in a heartbeat. I have plenty of options like hulu and netflix to tide me over. Oh yeah, and I have lots of books to read.
All of this had me seriously reconsidering cable. Bird doesn’t really watch tv so she left the decision to me as to whether we should keep the cable or not. After putting some thought into it, I decided I would like to keep it which led me to look over the details of the bill and see if there was anywhere we could be saving. Basically, the only add-ons were the sports package, dvr and modem. I have the sports package primarily to watch English soccer and I’m a pretty big fan so I didn’t want to get rid of that. It’s totally worth the $5 a month to me. The DVR is an expensive add-on and one we could probably get rid of but we’re not going to because, well, maybe we save $15 a month by not watching commercials! And it’s nice to have all those old episodes of Glee recorded. Which brings me to the modem…why am I paying $5 a month to rent a modem when I can buy my own? I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t even think about buying a modem until now.
So I bought a new modem at Best Buy for $90. It wasn’t the cheapest one, but it will eventually pay for itself now that I’m saving $5 a month for the rest of my life. I only wish I would have thought of this earlier, since I already spent $30 on renting a modem for the last 6 months.
So my new bill will be $135 a month. I asked a few friends for comparisons and it seems like I’m on the lower end of what people are paying for cable and internet around here. How much are you paying?
by Forest on August 23, 2010
Back in February when Bird and I were preparing to move into the townhouse, I called the electric company to switch the service over from the renter to us. The woman on the phone took my information and then asked if I was interested in any energy/money savings programs. Savings? Of course I was interested, but I had called from work and I didn’t have time to listen to her script, so I made a mental note to check out these programs sooner rather than later.
Well, February turned into late July and after I received a larger than normal electric bill (curse you, super hot summer (but the air conditioning feels so good!)) I finally remembered to investigate these savings programs.
I went to the electric company’s website and clicked on the Programs buttons. There were about 4 or 5 programs listed, but most of them were not applicable to me. However, the Cycled Air Conditioning program sounded promising so I called them and signed up. Here are a few details from the website:
- You receive a $10 credit on your bill each June, July and August.
- On days when homes and businesses are using a lot of electricity and purchasing wholesale electricity is more expensive, we will cycle your air conditioner condenser on and off in 15-minute increments.
- Your fan will continue to run.
- Interruptions usually occur only on the hottest days of the year when air conditioners must work harder to keep people comfortable.
- Available only for central air conditioners.
Basically, they sent a technician out to install a little control box near my AC unit and then like they said, they will cycle my air on and off when they need to during peak times. And I save $30 a year. 
Of course, I missed out on ten bucks this year because I didn’t sign up for the program until July. I’ve now been on the program for 3 weeks or so and I haven’t noticed any difference with the temperature in my house. Of course, it has cooled down a little bit lately so maybe that has helped as well.
Anywho, nothing like saving $30 with one simple phone call. You are hereby encouraged to look into any savings programs your utility companies may be offering!
by Forest on August 20, 2010
I wrote the other day that Bird and I were furniture shopping and that I would follow-up with our opinions after polling all of you and a few of our friends. So let’s jump into it.
Option A:
On sale for $1,599 down from $1,999 for the bed, dresser, mirror, and nightstand. Extra nightstand for $299. This one received a couple of votes but it was the most expensive option and it was Bird’s least favorite.
Option B:
The clear runaway winner in the voting. This package was on sale for $799 marked down from $1,700 for the 4-piece set. Extra nightstand for $200. I really liked this one and not just because it was the cheapest. Thank you all for validating my opinion!!!
Option C:
This one received few votes but most importantly it got Bird’s. The 4-piece package was on sale for $1,299 down from $1,799 and an extra nightstand would be $249. However, the store had a floor sample package of bed, dresser and mirror all for $556. The dresser alone usually retails for $649.
***************
That was all on Tuesday night. The sale runs through Sunday but I’m out of town this weekend and Bird was going to be busy Thursday so I felt like we needed to make a decision. FYI – I realize furniture stores have sales all the time, so it wasn’t like life or death, but I spent Wednesday thinking about furniture and that night, Bird and I were back at the store to do a more thorough comparison. I was leaning towards Option B and I think Bird was in love with Option C. By this point we had kind of thrown out Option A because it was Bird’s least favorite and also the most expensive.
After comparing B and C, we concluded a few things. B looks amazing in the picture, but not-so-much in real life. It was lower quality and just kind of cheapy-looking (maybe that explains the price!) The drawers didn’t slide very well and the wood/veneer looked really fake. C was made of a harder wood (higher quality) and would hold up longer according to the salesman. I told him I was concerned it might be too-orangey for our house (I felt like the lighting in the store was deceptive) and he said we could have 30 days with it in the house and return it for a full refund if we didn’t like it. That went a long way toward helping our decision. Being a floor sample, it had a few nicks here and there, but we gave it a good going over and there was nothing we couldn’t live with.
So we bought Option C! The salesman went to write it up and told us we were getting a great deal. He looked at the price tag and wrote down $556 for the dresser and mirror, then asked if we wanted the bed too. We pointed out that the price tag actually said the bed was included for the price. He did a double-take and was like, Wow, that’s a really good deal! We thought so too. We added two nightstands at full price but we still paid less than all the other options.
Retail price: $2,325
Sale price: $1,650
We paid: $1,226
Total savings of over $1,000
ps. Yesterday I was digging through our coupon drawer (what? doesn’t everyone have a coupon drawer?) looking for a Best Buy coupon (separate post) and I came across a coupon for the furniture store that was set to expire this Sunday! 10% off any item under $399. Of course the small print said floor samples were ineligible nor was it good for previous purchases. Our nightstands were not floor samples and I figured surely the night before shouldn’t count as a previous purchase. I buzzed over to the store after work and presented the coupon. Five minutes later I was walking out with an additional $56 in savings! Huzzah! Now we move on to mattress shopping…
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