Doesn’t it just burn your butt when you go to the store to buy printer cartridges for your printer?!?  A full set of color ink cartridges for my HP Photosmart C5180 All-In-One costs a quarter of the price of the printer itself!  That’s just plain crazy!

Each of the 5 colors that I need costs about $9.99.  You could buy a color combo pack for $35.99 that has all five colors and prints about 150 photos.  But if you want enough ink to print a lot of documents, or heaven-forbid more than 150 photos, you “should” get the combo pack with larger quatities of ink for $44.99.  (Oh… You didn’t know that the cartridges come with different quatities of ink either?)  Only some of the HP packages tell you how much ink is actually in the cartridges.   In the larger combo pack, the color cartridges have about 3.0 ml of ink.  (Whatever that means.)

So I just stood in the store trying to figure out if it was even worth buying the cartridges.  Finally an associate directed me to some store brand remanufactured cartridges that were only $40.99 for the color combo pack.  Each of those cartridges contained about 7.0 ml of ink.  NOW we were getting somewhere, but I still didn’t want to pay that much money.

Compare that to the color cartridges at 123Inkjets.com.   Their compatible color printer cartridges hold between 7 and 12 ml of ink for only $6.50 each.  More ink.  Less money.  Imagine that. 

Every other Friday is pay day (for my husband, that is).  It became a natural and necessary thing to balance the checkbook and pay bills on Fridays.  It then became a habit, a part of my life balance routine.  After reading Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace, and accepting that some big financial changes need to happen around here, I have formally designated Friday as “Financial Friday“.

Financial Friday is my financial management day.  I still balance the checkbook and pay bills, but I also work on debt management strategies.  Using worksheets in Financial Peace, I am starting to analyze all of our income and spending on a monthly basis.  With the gruesome details layed out in front of me on paper, I can see where changes need to be made and I am forced to face the facts.

I’m having a problem though.  Debt busting and the ever-popular “snowball method” of debt reduction don’t work well for people who have no money left over at the end of the month.  I’ve reduced every bill that I can reduce.  Being a stay-at-home mom for the past five years has put a huge burden on our financial situation and we have acquired an enormous pile of debt.  Yes, my website business has brought in some income, but not enough.  We have more monthly expenses and debt payments than we have income.  Many months we rely on credit cards to buy groceries and pay medical expenses…  only compounding our problems.  (Maybe I should have named this post “Confessions of a WAHM”.)  Any way…  Enough whining…

One Financial Friday at a time, right?

Financial Peace: Revisited (Revised) With new chapters on marriage and money, kids and money, and singles and money, Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace Revisited helps readers to understand the forces behind their financial distress and how to set things right–financially, emotionally, and spiritually.

What is Project Payday?  Their answer: Realistic extra income for the average Joe.  My answer: An interesting concept at income potential.  Keep following my Project Payday review to see what happens.

Day One

I was promised a quick start teaching guide, a 24 hour money-back guarantee and limited time signup at no cost.   That was almost true.  I paid a total of $1.97 to get my free membership because of the option I chose with my enrollment.  I think their claim would be true if they said there could be no net cost of enrollment.  They do claim to rebate me for my cost.  (If you sign up, don’t forget to go back and request your rebate.)

I’ve read the first 11 pages of the training guide and I’ve got to say that the program makes sense.  It has to do with all those send-us-this-many-referrals-and-get-this-free deals.  Basically, there are people out there who will pay you to be their referral and complete an offer.  You sign up at a website and complete an offer, you get paid.  Could be annoying and tedious, but for those of us who need the extra cash, why not try it?  Project Payday teaches you how to work these offer deals to make a profit.

Project Payday does not claim to be a get-rich-quick program.  Actually, quite the opposite.  They say that you won’t get rich.  It’s just a way to earn money on the internet.  I’m going to try it.  I’ll keep you posted.

Day Two

I received my rebate in the total of $5.34 as promised.  So, technically, I have made a profit from my Project Payday review. 

I registered for one of the listed forums that connects the offer/referral “traders”.  I networked a bit with a trader who has done this for a while and helps the newbies get started.  Quite a bit more reading was done, but so far I haven’t found an “offer” that I am willing to sign up for.  The free offers won’t get you anywhere in a decent amount of time and the paid offers are… well… paid.  If I had money to pay for a membership up front somewhere, then I probably wouldn’t need the extra income bad enough to work this program.

Yeah, you can make a profit doing this.  It is legit. 

I’d rather spend my time working on people’s websites.  However, I do know where to go the next time I want to apply for a credit card or sign up for internet phone service.  It’s interesting to know that I can get paid for doing so. 

Two school supply lists and an hour later… I’m done with our school supply shopping.  Yep, all of it, in one afternoon.  And I’m not the stressed out mess I usually am after the adventure either. 

How did that happen?

I hit the store on the first day of the sale and more importantly, I went with a friend.  We tag-teamed the process.  It felt more like a scavenger hunt than a required chore.  It was almost fun. 

“I need two 24 packs of Crayola Crayons.  How many do you need?”

“Can you grab me a roll of paper towels and a box of zip-lock freezer bags while you’re over there?  Thanks.”

Then we stood at side-by-side checkouts chatting while we unloaded.  Four large bags of school supplies: $33.38.  Bonding with friends while doing getting it done.  Priceless!