So last month I get a notice that someone has visited my page and left their name. Of course, when you log you can't see their name unless you upgrade to "gold" membership. But there was a 7 day free trial. You know, those free trials where they take your credit card number because they know that you'll forget and they'll get some money out of you.

So of course despite my best intentions, I forgot. I just checked my credit card balance online which I rarely do, and caught it. Of course the membership fee is non-refundable and of course I promptly went to Classmates.com to see what I could do in order to avoid any more charges. I cancelled the automatic renewal that I had never authorized and deleted my credit card information. They had the wrong expiration date by a year anyway. My mistake.

I'm just pissed that I knew it was going to happen and did it anyway. I've learned my lesson.

There's a new link at the IRS website where you can check on the amount and date that you can expect to receive your money. Mine will be $600 deposited May 9th.

I upped my withholding for this year. Because I'll get a $2,000 credit for tuition I'll be getting a good bit back. I'd rather get it back over the year. I need it now. Next year I'll lower it.

I love that with the federal government you have access to so much employee information online. I was able to get a lot of detailed information on their Employee Express website.

I wonder if you receive a W-2 for Pinecone? Do you need to declare that maney as income? I've started to keep track of my checks just in case.

I'm on vacation for the new few weeks. My last day at my job was Monday. I worked the holiday weekend. Four 12-hour shifts, 7p-7a. Now I'm on leave for several weeks, trying to use up my annual leave. I start my new job April 14th.

I'm not going anywhere special. I want to save money and do things here at home. I have several things on my to do list. I had my alarm system installed Monday. I feel much more secure after the break-ins in the community.

I've been working out more. My blood sugar is running a little high and with my extensive family history of diabetes I need to lose weight and exercise. I feel better already.

The next few months will be very frutiful for me financially. I have a surplus on my graduate school account and it will disbursed to me next month. The economic stimulus will be in the mail in May.

Leaving my old job I will get paid approximately 500 in annual and compensatory leave. I wiil have that amount contributed to my 403(b). I also have my 457(b) to contribute. It's nice having both plans and being able to contribute $31,000 a year. With the federal government I'll be getting a 5% match on my contributions as well. I'm feeling very blessed.

A few weeks ago I got a call from the Veterans Health System for an interview. I had applied for a job several months ago with the VA clinic here in town. I was surprised to hear from them as the job announcement said that the job would be filled within 30 days. I had a phone interview then a call for references. I got the job. Well, with the federal government it's called a tentative offer. I had to fill out some papers, have a background investigation, get my fingerprints scanned, get my education and experience evaluated by the Vet Pro board.

It's amazing the red tape you have to go through to get a job with the federal government. I had to do none of this when I got a job with the state government. Just a drug test and that's it. I think I'm looking at several weeks before I can begin the job. The sooner the better, the situation at my job is not getting any better.

GWB is on TV signing the economic stimulus bill. How long can they drag out this one bill? It seems like they just keep debating, voting, passing, and signing on the same darn bill.

I've been home sick all this week. My mom has taken good care of me. She comes over and brings me food and medicine. I'm a lucky lady.

I stopped H&R Block so that my dad could complete my taxes. He had a few questions about my educational expenses. I'll get a nice refund this year. Even more than last year when I bought my home. I will also be getting back the balance of my loans this month. And, if I get the job that I interviewed for this past week, I'll get 160 hours paid out as well. Another 300 hours I can deposit in my 457. February will be a very fruitful month for me!

The interview went well. I was there about an hour and a half. It didn't feel like it. I answered some questions with a panel of 5 people that I would be working with. When I went to sign out of the builing I recognized the name of the other person that they were interviewing for the job. I've known her for several years and she was actually one of the people that trained me when I was in doing my clinical rotations. She has more experience and seniority than I do so I wasn't hopeful at that point. I even came home and started browsing more positions.

A few days later the lead interviewer called and left a message on my answering machine. When we finally got back together on the phone a few days later she had more follow-up questions for me. Rightly or wrongly, I was completely honest in answering her questions. I didn't want to waste her time or mine. Basically she wanted to know if I had other aspirations besides this position and I do, absolutely. So we'll see where that goes. Judging on the lack of communication, it's not going anywhere. That's fine. I'm not stopping on my quest for a new job.

I got my first interview! The lady emailed me on Tuesday saying that she had received my application and wanted to interview me. She would be out of the office Wednesday and wanted me to contact her Thursday. Well, she ended up calling me on Thursday at 7:30 in the morning because she wanted to make sure to catch me. She didn't have to worry as I get off at midnight. I had only been asleep for a few hours so I hope that I was coherent. The interview is January 9th. I'm the first interviewee. I don't know how many positions they are interviewing for, if there are multiple positions.

It would involve some local travel, which would be my only drawback. I'm already putting a lot of my miles on my new car to get to graduate school. Hopefully they provide a car. I also hope that they will be understanding og me attending graduate school. When I'm at work I'm totally there, but I need my off-time to be for school.

December is always a big month for me, but even more so this year. I turned 30 on the 5th of this month. I finished my first year of graduate school and for the first time in over 7 years I'm looking for a new job. I'm so excited about all the changes happening in my life right now.

I'm really concentrating on growing my income by working smart, rather than just hard. Which means I'm advancing my career rather than just working a lot of overtime. I think I'm on the right track.

So my final payment to Sallie Mae was finally processed after 4 days. Unfortunately, they also processed my regular automatic payment. So I have a credit sitting in my account that they refuse to return to me until they finish "processing" my loan. In 30-45 days! Never again.

As well, they always credited my extra payments that I sent through the mail to interest as well as principal. Now I'll pay the principal online and save myself the postage. My graduate school loans aren't to be in repayment until six months after I graduate at the end of 2008.

I decided to write down my goals for 2008.

EMERGENCY FUND:

Contribute $245 to my three accounts. My goal is $15,000 in 3 years, my current balance is just over$5,000.

DEBT:

I have about $2,000 on a credit card. I will contribute $500 plus the amount of my monthly purchases every payment.

My original Sallie Mae loan is now at $300. With automatic payments my loan will be paid off in about 4 months. My grad school loans will begin repayment 6 months after my December 2008 graduation.

My car payment will be $326. After finishing with the credit card balance I will contribute the extra to the car payment.

RETIREMENT:

Continue contributing $400 biweekly to my 457. That is an annual contribution of $10,400.

Continue to fund my Roth IRA to the maximum. That will be $5,000 in 2008.

HOUSE:

My payments are $313 biweekly. I occasionally get a few pennies interest from a savings account and will transfer to principal. Otherwise, my payments will continue as is for this category. I'm more focused on the other debt.

CAREER AND SCHOOL:

In somewhat related plans, I want to focus on school and looking for a new job. I'm off this week since I worked the holiday (12 hour shifts for 4 days) and I'm writing papers and taking civil service tests.

The lady asked why I wanted to take the test again since I scored so well. I told her that I wanted an 80 on the test. I scored a 74. She said that few people score so well and I must be a perfectionist. I'm not. What I am is really motivated to move on to a better position.

I took another test since it hadn't been 28 days since I took the one that I wanted to retest on. Next time I'll take a different one again. I'll keep taking them until I'm where I want to be.

What are your goals???

I've been thinking a lot about my next job. I'm not considering staying in the same position once I finish grad school. It's insane to even consider it. I wouldn't put out $18,500 to stay in the same position.

In my Organizational Behavior class I have to write a paper that details my Personal Strategic Plan. I'm glad that my professor chose this particular subject for the paper.

I do have some dissatisfaction at my work now. We have administrators that have such little regard for what we do and how we do it. I'm tired of feeling so belittled.

I've actually applied for some jobs at DHH that would give me an immediate 10-14% percent raise, with another 4% raise after 6 months. I would lose me shift differential, but working evenings is not conducive to school right now so that's okay.

I'm nervous about this because I think my mom will question my decision, but at the end of the day I'm the person most qualified to know what's best for me. I'll have to wait and see how much of a commitment a new job will be if I get an offer and weigh the pros and cons. I'm just waiting for the call...

I've had issues with this particular non-profit group that keeps calling. I think they're called Non-Profit services and apparently several groups contract through them. They have been an incredible nuisance. I don't like being called for charitable donations and I don't like what almost feels like harassment from this particular group. When I offer a certain amount they tell me that I can't offer that little and to send more. Are you serious? If you're asking for donations you accept whatever you get. A minimum donation? Whoever heard of such? Their mailings can't possibly cost them more than $10. If so they need to change agencies.

So today the man hung up on me when I asked him to take me off their calling list. Now I don't feel at all guilty about my impressions of this group. They really are hurting whatever causes they are representing.

I will continue supporting Christian Children's Fund and my veterans groups. My passion truly lies with these two groups. I also am beginning to support my local food bank. It's amazing, but for every $1 donated they get $12 worth of food.

So today was orientation. I got off last night after midnight. My dad had called at 8:30 last night saying that he didn't think that I should be driving my car back and forth to New Orleans. So after getting off, I went by my parents' house to get my sister's car. Actually, it's my parents' car, but you know how that is. It was all good though because she has a CD layer unlike my car so I was able to rock out on the drive up. It went by fast, but time-wise was actually about 1.5 hours. I could make it in less time, but I'm not trying to speed. They had an accident on the spillway to boot.

I got there around 7:30 this morning. I think I got maybe 2 hours sleep last night and I'm being generous saying that. I was up before 5am. They have a really nice continental spread for brekfast on class day. Every kid of juice, soda, coffee and tea, plus cereal, oatmeal, pastries galore, yogurts, and a beautiful selection of fresh cut fruits. So anyway I grabbed some fruit and coffee and tried to give myself a jolt for the day.

I'm so excited about the program and my classmates. We had to stand up and tell the class something about ourselves. I get so nervous speaking in front of people. I feel like I forget to breathe. I admire my classmates that speak so easily and I hope that their eloquence and easy conversation rubs off on me.

We had a financial aid meeting after. Oh yeah, and lunch was an awesome hot buffet meal. I can't believe that the program provides such quality in all aspects for the $18.5k fee. It really is reasonable. Anyway, I found new loans offered on my student account online after coming home. I accepted them all. They'll deduct the amounts as they come in. The rate of 6.8% isn't great, but I'd rather continue contributing to my investment accounts and get a tax break there as well as for my student loans.

So it looks like my employer will pay about $3600 and I've already paid my $500 deposit. So that leaves me a $14.4k balance. I know my parents' offered to pay some, but I'd rather have that money at another time. I think was approved for the maximum amount of loans which is something like $20.5k so my balance will be covered.

As well there is an international trip at the conclusion of the program. We'll be going to Grenoble and Paris, France as well as Geneva, Switzerland. It will cost about $3k and a guest can accompany you for $1k. Plane tickets not included. I have to take the international business course on top of my regular load so I'll have to see how I'm handling things before I make a decision. I have a while.

That's a long blog, but I guess I just had a lot to say. I'm really pumped to do this. Getting my master's has been a goal for as long as I remember (like way back when I was in high school and thought that 29 was old) and now it can actually be reality. I hope my enthusiasm doesn't waver too soon. I'm also hoping I can go and get some sleep!

I'm feeling pretty good about the amount of debt that I've paid off this year. Since September 2006 I've paid off more than $9,000 in debt. Next month I'll cut my remaining $6,000 or so debt in half. I worked a lot of overtime to make this happen, but it was worth it. I can't wait until I see that amount down to $0.

These past few weeks I've had some big bills to charge to my Mastercard. I had over $600 from my car repair and about $150 for my dental bill. I hope to be able to put some overtime towards that.

Today I spent over $100 on scrubs. My hospital is now requiring that we wear a certain color so I'm getting ready for that. I said that I would wait to order them in September since the dress code isn't in effect until October, but I decided not to wait. Better to get that off my mind and just focus on grad school. I also need to have my oil changed if they didn't do that at the garage already. I don't think so, but I need to check the invoice.

And in case you're wondering, though I know you're not, my weight went back down. Thank goodness.

I don't know why I never considered that there were sites for blogging about your finances, but imagine my surprise when I search for something else and stumbled upon this. I visit so many financial sites, but this is an entirely new concept for me.

So let me introduce myself. I'm 29 and single. I bought my first home last year. I'm working full-time on the 3-11 shift. I will be attending graduate school on alternate weekends starting in 3 weeks. I have two undergraduate degrees, the second earned while working full-time so I feel a little bit prepared for this.

Graduate school will cost $18.5k. I have paid the $500 deposit which comes off the original amount. Then there are $4.5k payments over the 4 semesters. My employer paid $1k. The remaining $3.5k will come from Stafford loans. Yes, more loans when I was so close to paying off the small loan from my first degree. I incurred no loans the second time around. My mom says she will pay $5k toward my tuition the last 2 semesters.

My immediate goals are to build up my emergency fund, a car fund, and a short-term savings fund, which I will call my Christmas fund. Why I call it that I'm not sure as I will end up using it for more than Christmas.

I got paid today, or actually now it's yesterday. Today's check reflected the $0.72 an hour that all state workers received. Not a huge amount, but $1500 a year, and every little bit counts. I'm going to increase my savings to start funding the aforementioned savings accounts.

Today I went shopping. It's called tax free weekend, but you actually still pay 5% local taxes. I got some school supplies, some groceries, an outfit, and some hand soaps from Bath and Body Works. I haven't shopped like that in quite a while!