Well, I decided to do an internet disconnect day Sunday, so I thought I'd get an entry in before that! I'm shooting for midnight-to-midnight, so I've only got about 2 hours left! The house is a mess, but I figure I can clean tomorrow, because I think I'll suddenly have a lot of time on my hands.

That is, assuming I feel OK tomorrow. My stomach's been bugging me all day; feels somewhere between indigestion and period cramps, so I can't tell what's going on. I hope it's one or the other, and not a flu symptom. That would be terrible, after just getting over one long illness! It ebbs and flows; I just took some Alka Seltzer and it feels less painful, but I can still feel something. Anyway, we'll see how I feel tomorrow. I was going to do abdominal workout today but I don't think I could handle that!

NT and AS are out at a dance performance thing, so I've got the house to myself. AA only recently went to bed, because her nap was thrown off today and because she's kind of sick again, so I was humoring her and letting her stay up late.

We rented a carshare and got a lot done today. AS and I are going to need our passports renewed before the May trip to the UK, and SL will need a new one. So we went to a FedEx Office and got passport photos for all three of us, as well as photocopies of NT's and AS's driver's licenses (which they needed to provide since SL is a minor). Then we went to a government center and submitted her application. AS and I just need to mail our old passports in with the new photos and application forms. All told it's nearly $400 of our travel budget toward this endeavor! Yikes.

But we did get the good news that NT's mom wants to pay for our rental car on our vacation. So that will just about make up for the money spent on passports.

After those chores were over, the girls were exhausted and we were all starving, so we got some takeout food at Chipotle and dropped AS and the kids at home. NT and I used the remaining time on the carshare to do our weekly grocery shopping, because the weather was getting ugly and we really didn't want to bus, walk or bike with heavy bags!

Our groceries came to about $145. Considering our pantry was pretty much empty of staples, that's pretty cheap. We got pastas, various beans, rice, veggie burgers, snacks for the girls, as well as our usual weekly fresh fruit & vegetables, milk & soymilk. We even got a big bottle of olive oil and a bunch of herbs we'd run out of. So I think we did really well!

We got some frozen peas where we stacked and doubled coupons, and we actually made 48 cents on the deal! We also got a box of Fruit Newtons cookies for free after sale and coupon, and some Teddy Grahams for nearly free.

We have about $110 left in the grocery budget through the 31st (and I've already subtracted what we'll spend on diapers). We'll definitely need formula for home ($25) and we may need one for daycare, so we'll have either $85 or $60 for next week's grocery run. But we should be able to utilize a lot of the stuff we stocked up on, so hopefully we can get through this period without dipping into the next! Oh, and we may have $25 put back into the budget from Amex rewards; if that happens, we'll really have a good shot.

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I've started another personal finance blog! This has been a couple weeks in the making, but I didn't want to write about it until I'd actually done something about it, because I tend to make plans and not follow through when it comes to blogging, creative stuff, etc. It's weird; some things in my life I've really stuck to, while a lot of other things fizzle out before they really get going.

It all started when a friend asked if she could come over and ask my advice about retirement and some other financial things. I agreed and was a bit surprised about how basic her questions were. She basically wanted me to advise her on what to choose for the 401(k) at work and how much to put toward it. Then, she had a credit card offer she'd gotten in the mail and wanted me to look at it and make sure it was as good a deal as it seemed.

I looked through her 401(k) and told her to pick an aggressive fund that already had the mix set up for her, and to contribute up to the matching max, explaining how that ROI was unbeatable.

Then I looked at the credit card offer, read all the fine print, asked about her existing credit cards and advised her that, as long as she was careful to not use her existing cards anymore, it would be a very good deal to transfer the balances to this $0 transfer fee, 0% for 12 months card. (Even after the 0% period is up, the rate will be lower than both her existing cards.)

That led to a conversation about credit scores, and I sent her links to annualcreditreport.com and creditkarma.com and explained what each site had to offer.

So, you know, really basic stuff to those of us who have been on this site for a while, but she didn't know any of these things. It felt so good that I'd helped a friend basically exponentially increase her financial literacy in less than an hour!

Then, a friend of AS was talking to her about my personal finance obsession. She wanted to see my blog so AS sent her a link. (Hi K if you're reading this!) AS mentioned that other people, upon hearing about my very exacting financial management, have expressed their confusion and anxiety when it comes to their own personal finances.

So that made me think that maybe I could do what I'd done for my friend, but in a group. People could bring any questions or issues from their financial life, I could share my basic philosophy of finance, and we could trade ideas and inspiration.

I posted on Facebook to see if anyone would be interested in something like this, and got 5 or 6 people expressing interest. Several more people from out of state said they wished they lived near enough to take part because they loved the sound of it.

THEN, I started thinking further. What if I started a Facebook page to record everything that we talked about in the discussion group? Then my out-of-state friends could also get some value from it even though they couldn't attend in person.

Then I thought, why not have a website as well as a Facebook page? Maybe other people besides just my friend group could get something out of it too.

I started brainstorming name ideas with AS. I wanted something that sounded sort of heroic but also kind of old-fashioned. I picture the group being very inspring but also nonthreatening, so old-timey superhero-y was the vibe I was going for. She and I collectively came up with "The League of Ordinary Savers." I love it more every time I say it!

I liked it so much that I went ahead and registered the domain "ordinarysavers.com"! Now I've got skin in the game, so hopefully it'll motivate me to keep it going. I've got 2 weeks free but after that, I'll get charged about $120 for a year of service. I'm going to pay for it gradually with my weekly spending money, $10 or $20 a week until I pay it off.

AS is helping me set up the site; there's nothing there yet, really, except an intro post and some "about" info. I hope to pretty it up and add more content in the coming weeks.

Then, I invited all the local people who had expressed interest in a personal finance group to come over in February. I just did that tonight and already have 2 Yesses!

I'm pretty excited. I've off and on cast about for ways that I could use my past mistakes and what I've learned from them to help other people with their money. This seems like a way to do it that's fun, and it's "scalable"; I can make this as informal and private, or as high-minded and public, as seems appropriate (and depending on how interested I stay in this project). I've also wanted a creative project such as a blog, and I've considered and discarded several blog ideas. This is the first one I felt sure enough about to actually get it going! I know there are a ton of well-established, prolific personal finance bloggers out there, so maybe the wider world doesn't need another one. But I at least feel like my social circle could get something out of it.

I'll let you all know how it goes!