Thanks for visiting Ultimate Money Blog! If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. I think one of the things I struggle with most is obsessing over money.  If you’ve read my blog for quite sometime, you probably aren’t surprised.  There are many times that I worry about our money.  Will we have enough? Am I saving enough? Am I keeping a good balance between spending and saving? Should we pay more on our mortgage?  Many questions run through my head all the time.  Sometimes I think about money so much that I drive myself crazy. It’s hard because I work at a bank, and also have a personal finance blog that I use to talk about money.  Money is a large part of my life, and probably more so than most people.  Sometimes I think about finding a new job that’s not at a bank, but then I realize that I’ve got so much invested in my current career and I want to be a stay at home mom as soon as I have [...]

We made a “fun” discovery this winter when it rained pretty heavily: we had a leak somewhere in the roof. I had a roofer come out and he determined that it was the attic window that was cracked and the caulking around the window needed to be redone. He said he could replace the plexiglass window for me for $75, or we could go to the hardware store and ask them to cut a piece of plexiglass and then install it ourselves. I told him we’d do that. Over a month later it’s still not done. Big surprise. What happened was we started debating whether or not to just go ahead and replace that window with a real window that slides shut so that it’s stronger and more energy efficient. That led to the fact that we have one more attic window that could stand to be replaced, as well as three windows on one part of the house that need to be replaced eventually as well. Of course I’m debating whether or not we just replace the attic windows [...]

The other day Mr. Money went to Costco to pick up some things for us.  He bought eggs, dog food, organic butter, and toilet paper.  When he was on his way home he gave me a call to tell me the total so I could update our check book register.  He then proceeded to tell me how he saved us money on toilet paper because he bought a cheaper brand.  I hesitated for a minute, but let him finish on all the good things that the toilet paper boasted: -Paper individual wrapper (versus the Kirkland brand that has plastic wrap around each roll apparently) -Cheaper per square foot -More toilet paper in each individual roll I decided that if he was that proud of himself for saving money and figuring out the cost per square foot, then who was I to criticize him?  I told myself I would give it a try.  Surely it wouldn’t be as bad as I thought it would be. Wrong. I started a new roll the other day and had convinced myself that I had [...]