MONEY

The WT party at Emily's house was mostly a success. Other than the screaming children and the more-people-than-I-comfortable-addressing-at-once-ness of it all, we had a lot of sales. I think there were 10 tickets I entered into the system, Emily got her free 1/2 gallon of GSO for having a party over $500, and I made a little cash. I'm happy. We did not, however, get the ALS fundraiser thing going, because Emily wanted to do it after the WT thing, even though I told her it wasn't a good idea... But I will be hosting a tasting here in a couple weeks so I will do it then. No worries, all is not lost, we will raise money for the ALSA and WT at the same time...

As far as other money matters go, we paid off our first loan last week. It was one of my student loans, and it was the one with (come to find out) the LOWER interest rate. If I had known that last year when I started budgeting... But whatever. I used to put extra principle on all of our loans (car, house, school...) and then I got this spreadsheet that helps with budgetting and I realized it I put all the extra principle I was paying towards 1 loan at a time, I would not only get to knock some of them off the list, but I would get them all paid sooner. So that's what I did. I AM SO HAPPY! I hate debt.

Right after I sent the final check off for that loan, however, I read my pen-pals blog and discovered that not everyone is having great times financially. I knew this already anyway, but it really put it into perspective for me. Yeah, my family growing up was never really high class, and indeed some of my siblings are not where they should be with their finances, but this girls husband lost his job due to the company having to layoff people and while they did have some savings, it doesn't look likethey will have enough to pull through this recession we're going through. I wonder what will happen. You hear about this kind of stuff all the time, but when it happens to someone you know, however distantly, it really hits home. They have had to start cutting hours a little at G's office, as in since they are so slow right now noone has to work on Saturdays, but fortunately G is on salary so it doesn't affect us other than I get my husband home all day for about 2 more days every month. That is GOOD for me! Who knew a recession coul dhave it's benefits?