Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
I just had to plug this one real quick. I’ve always liked yogurt and enjoyed tossing in some dried fruit from time to time. But lately, I’ve been hooked on adding Aldi’s Banana Nut Granola to my yogurt. So, so good.
I prefer their brand yogurt as well, Fit & Active vanilla flavored. Along with the granola it makes a real good snack for those calorie conscience and for anyone who is looking for a protein boosted snack. Seriously, try it!
Joe-
What a crazy week it’s been in entertainment news, right? Among other deaths this week there was Doris Roberts, Chyna and Prince.
I’ve always felt I grew up in a stellar time for music, the 80’s. I was in my teens for the majority of the decade. And oh, what a decade it was for music. Stadium rock bands like Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, and Queen. Big hair bands like Poison, Whitesnake, and Warrant. The great alternative bands like Depeche Mode, The Cure, New Order and the early days of Smashing Pumpkins. And then there were the one-hit (or two-hit) wonders that were so prevalent during the decade: Come On Eileen (Dexys Midnight Runners), 867-5309 (Tommy Tutone), and Relax (Frankie Goes To Hollywood). I could go on and on with bands and songs, I can remember them like they just hit the radio. SO many great bands and songs. Prince And The Revolution was definitely part of those memories for me. You have to appreciate the contribution Prince made to music.
Joe-
March Dining Out Expenses
After separating from a company it used to be the only option for continuing healthcare was joining COBRA or looking for private coverage. Nowadays with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) there are more affordable options. That’s a good thing since you’re required to have coverage or pay a penalty.
In order to determine what options are available to you, I recommend starting at your state dedicated site or even the Healthcare Marketplace where eventually you’ll be directed to Healthcare.Gov to began the application process. I found the interface was set up so that even someone with limited computer experience could navigate the site pretty easily since it’s designed to walk the applicant through the process step-by-step.
A Day In The Life
Ah, Tuesday.
Tuesday is actually more like the first day of my week. I say that because Nicole works three days a week – Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I save all the cleaning aside from the daily dishes and things like that for Tuesday. I’ve reiterated before, whomever is home more should be doing more around the house. It’s not fair for Nicole to have to work and clean the house if I’m not working. That just doesn’t make any sense to me.
Our townhouse is about 1600 square feet. Not huge, but not small either. Fortunately, with just two of us and my son here only a few days a month, the house never really becomes what I would call dirty. It becomes cluttered at times, but that’s about it. Nonetheless, I do a pretty thorough cleaning on Tuesdays. I look at it as exercise as well; burning a few extra calories doesn’t hurt. I like starting early too. By the time Nicole leaves for work – around 6:45am – I’m already starting on the kitchen.
My morning today is dedicated to cleaning. It only takes about 3-4 hours to clean all of the “usual” things in the house including laundry. And each week I end up taking on something that is a little more time consuming, but it’s more of a once-in-a-while kind of item to clean. Today it’s the patio door vertical blinds. Our patio door has three sections to it, so there’s about a 10′ section of blinds I’ll take down and wash. Fun stuff.
As for dinner, slow cooker cashew chicken is on the menu tonight. I’ll post a review and my pics later this week. Yes, I found it on Pinterest, as always.
Joe-
Well, March gave us a full month of Unemployed Joe. We pulled the reins back pretty hard on most expenses, especially dining out. We’re still working on rolling up our March expenses so we can compare to February to see the impact we were able to make with expenses, but we do have a peek at our dining out expenses.
February dining out expenses – $161.10
March dining out expenses – $82.47
Wow! What a difference. And the expenses we did have eating out were reduced further as we only went to places where we were able to get a discount – BOGO or coupon. Not too shabby. And the majority of the expense is because I’m a divorced dad and see my son a few times a month for dinner and of course we tend to dine out opposed to bringing food from home. Realistically, we would have our dining out expenses less than $20.
Nicole also has tracked our grocery spending. Perhaps we were a bit naive thinking we didn’t really spend that much. But considering March came in at about $325, I think that’s pretty good for two people. Our February grocery expense was closer to $285. We expected to see an increase in grocery shopping with eating out so much less in March. Something worth considering, however – we purchased quite a bit of food in bulk for use down the road – chicken, beef, sausage, etc. We would be able to cut back on grocery shopping even more, but it’s kind of fun and we only buy things we are going to use and are a good deal at the time. I know, that’s step one of a shopaholic. I mentioned to Nicole we should stop buying groceries for a month to see how much we can get through in the pantry and freezer. Not sure we could make it a month, but we may try a week or two.
Joe-
I thought I’d have a little fun on a Monday morning to start the week off. While they may not have taught me how to calculate the payments on a 30 year fixed mortgage, these movies taught me (a little) something about business. This list started out as only 5 movies, but then my list grew to 21! I went with the middle of the road, so in no particular order, I give you 10 of my favorite business related movies.
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Happy Sunday everyone! It’s a really nice, albeit windy day here in Chicago. Sitting at the computer thinking about a whole lot of nothing in particular, I figured I would jot some of my thoughts down.
- Hulu – We started a 30 day trial of Hulu this past week. I haven’t had a chance to really browse through the offerings yet. It seems like there’s a good selection of shows/movies. Nicole has been binge watching The Mindy Project though so we’re already getting some use out of it. We’ll post a review of Hulu at some point soon.
- Mobile phone changeover – We went through a change in service carriers a few days ago. Nicole is putting together a post on it which will be out this week. Keep an eye out on Extrapolate! for the post!
- Star Wars – Thanks to some free credits we had on Fandango Now we have a digital copy of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. We watched it Friday night and we’ll see how many times I can watch it this next week. Yes, I’m a huge Star Wars nerd. I still have all the action figures from my youth to prove it!
- Quora – I’ve been hooked on Quora since joining a couple weeks ago. Quora is like a better version (IMO) of Yahoo! Answers. The replies are a little more detailed, articulate and actually helpful. Not that Y!A isn’t, but you won’t see any sarcastic or stupid/mean answers on Quora. If you’re interested you can join and follow me.
- Theme Change – I’m working on a theme change to the ‘ol site. As soon as I run it by the Co-CTO (Nicole) and get her approval, we’ll try a new one on for size. I’m excited to move to a new layout.
- Garage Sale – We’re running through the house and garage to locate items to sell at a garage sale I’d like to have either late this month or early in May. It seems prime time as I think many people will be looking for garage sales coming out of winter. I didn’t have too much luck inside the house, but I think I’ll find plenty of items in the garage. We have accumulated quite a bit of “stuff” over the years. I think I’m also going to hit a few local garage sales looking for deals so I can flip the item for a better price.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
Joe-