Big Brood

According to this article on Yahoo Finance, MasterCard is finding quite a bit of profit from other countries even as it gets more business in the U.S. from consumers desperate to cover their bills in a down economy.

As much as Goose and I have found credit cards to be useful, I’ll be glad when we are out from under them. We have spent years shifting some floating debt around on 0% interest cards, rather than paying it off like we should. While this has helped us to live a little “faster” than we could have, we now regret this.

The truth is, we came to a point where our monthly bills nearly exceeded our monthly income. Our credit card debt was increasing due to sloppy buy habits and this was making it hard for us to meet our other obligations.

We were working for Mastercard and Visa rather than for ourselves.

Now, we are on a road to recovery and we are looking forward to keeping our money out of the hands of credit card companies.  So far during our recovery we have had a fairly rigid “no credit” policy.  So far, we have slipped a couple of times but paid off the new balance at the end of the month.    I’ll post later on how we are doing and what our plans and techniques are.

Have you had problems with your credit cards?  What have you done to avoid using your cards?

We love granola for breakfast, snacks or really any time to be honest!  I have always used a recipe from this cookbook.  It is really yummy and healthy!  I haven’t been able to eat this granola since the discovery of gosling 6’s allergies so I decided to try a new recipe that is a little more gluten/dairy free.                                                                                           http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/peanutbuttergranola.htm  I only had to change one thing.  I used soy “butter” instead of the margarine called for.  The only thing I can say is YUMMY!!!  I think it will be gone before gander even gets home from work.

… when you get out of your car, you feel like you’ve seen this at the circus before.

In found this article on the population problem for small towns and rural areas. In this article Charles Wheelan discusses how the rural American population is shrinking while the U.S. itself is growing due to farming productivity, a skills-based economy and farm subsidies.

A few things in this article really bother me. First, the fact that the author thinks that one can’t work in a skills-based workforce and also live in rural America. Since I live in rural American and work in a skills-based job, I’m not sure I buy his argument. In fact, I think that the rise of telecommuting may play a role in increasing the population of some rural areas in the future.

I’m also concerned about the truth that farms are growing larger and more corporate and that our farm subsidies are going to these large profitable corporate farms. We’re not supporting the family farmer with these subsidies anymore. We’re paying corporations to make a profit.

This also makes me wonder we will continue to be able to buy locally. If the family farmer is being squeezed out, who will grow the food for our farmer’s markets?

Do you see effects of corporate farming in your farmer’s market? What do you think about the loss of population in rural areas?

We have a family goal to learn Spanish at a conversational level. Since none of us speaks Spanish natively and we don’t have a lot of chances to interact with native speakers, we need help.

We have been thinking about buying Rosetta Stone Spanish because it has garnered good reviews and is well-known. It is, however, pretty expensive. We have so far held off on buying it but were thinking that we would buy it this year as a homeschooling expense.

However, I work for a large, multi-national company. I just found out that our company has licenses for Rosetta Stone and asked my boss if I could use it to improve my ability to interact with employees in our Spanish speaking facilities. He approved it, and I should have Rosetta Stone Spanish within a few days at no cost to me.

This is a win-win-win situation for myself, the company and my children. I will really learn Spanish at an accelerated rate, the company may benefit from this in the future if they decide to use my skills and my children will benefit by learning a language much more quickly, too. Since we will be learning together, we will be speaking it together and my skills will improve even more.

Many companies have software purchase programs that allow employees to use some software not only on their work computer but also on their home computer for free or at a greatly reduced cost. For instance, they will often do this with virus software since employees will read email or work from their own home computers.

So, if you have some software needs, check with your IT department and see if they have any purchasing programs like this. It could save you a bundle!

Buenos dias!

Have you found any creative ways to save on software?  Does your company offer any other benefits like this?

… you’ve ever heard: “You know how that happens, don’t you?”

Are you starting a softball team?  Have you ever heard that question before?  I have, even though we’re nowhere close yet (just a basketball team, so far).

This family of 11 kids, however, can answer: yes!

I think this sounds like a lot of fun to see all those kids working and playing together, especially for a cause.

Have you ever had a family team like this?  Did you find it fun or frustrating to play with your siblings or kids?

While conducting my own research into investing, I found an article at RedOrbit on different investing communities on the Internet. Since I’m looking for as many different ways to learn as possible, this article is a real gem!

Here are some of the sites they discuss:

• Valueforum: Looks very promising. They require payment via Credit Card to get access to any of the member-only content. This should discourage “spammers” who are trying to bash a stock (or trick others into buying). They claim 101% growth in contest portfolio since 2004. I may try this one just to get a feeling for what sorts of things are debated in these communities. I found, when I wanted to understand a lot more about Catholicism that watching and participating in online debate really helped me to grow in knowledge.
• Wikinvest: I like the free access to this one and they seem to have some interesting features. The WikiData feature allows you to see data about companies by industry.You’ll notice the “Add” links here show the beauty and the frustration of working with a Wiki. The data is put in place by those who care, but there isn’t anyone paying to make sure the data is complete. You also need to watch out for “spam”. When you look at the site, it may say one thing and it will eventually be fixed but it would be best to crosscheck your data with other sources.

There are also several other sites available in the article that are pay sites. I’ll be looking at them more seriously when I feel I have a good grasp of the fundamentals.

What do you think? Are these sites worth anything? Have you tried any of them out?

In this article, we see Lawrence Dillon talking about how being the last of 8 has helped to inform his artistic direction as a composer but didn’t help him so much with dental hygiene.

Do you have any budding composers in your house?  Do you see your goslings art effected by their older siblings?

While changes in grocery and fuel prices will naturally lag behind the price of commodities, they are linked. In an article at kiplinger.com, we see that the commodity prices may be a bubble about to burst.

What’s the takeaway? Commodity prices are inflated due to speculation (ie: people wanting to make a quick profit). This speculation is further driven by lower returns in most other areas of possible investment.

ETFs are allowing more and more investors to jump in and out of the commodities market, increasing volatilty and adding to the market. The dollar is falling, which inflates prices as foreign suppliers try to compensate to maintain profits.

In the end, we’ll hopefully see a drop in some of these commodity prices in the summer but not that much as supply is still low compared to demand.

 Have you seen these price increases recently?  Have you changed any of your habits because of them?