I did a big, scary thing today....at least for me. I changed my mortgage to a bi-monthly payment automatically deducted from my bank. Auto payments make me uneasy just because I feel like I'm not in control of it. But, the benefits of doing this FAR out-weigh that. First off it will force me to pay even more attention to my spending, always a good thing. With splitting the monthly mortgage into two payments I'm actually able to pay more each month on it which means the loan will get paid off earlier. The projection with what I'm paying now is it will cut 7 years off the mortgage. Nice....but not good enough for me. My goal is to pay off my house in 15 years so I will be working for the next year to get into a position of being able to up my payments even more. The third benefit is in 10 years I will have gained an additional $26K in equity that I wouldn't have had. All in all, a smart financial move that I've known every since I bought the house I needed to do....just had to get serious about it.

I still want to start a home business too. Something else I really need to get serious about and start doing some planning for.

I got derailed from blogging over the last few months. And I think I've figured out why this happens to me. I'm someone who needs there to be a point to doing something. I love blogging....as long as I feel someone, anyone, is reading. No comments ever equals no one reading in my mind. So if no one is reading then why blog, right? I know that's not necessarily the reality of it but its how my mind works. So if you read my blog comment on occasion! And I promise I'll be more regular about blogging.

I've gotten re-focused on the financial stuff so will be blogging more on what I've done and what I'm doing now. I'm also looking to learn to be a more frugal shopper. Coupon cutting has always been a fruitless exercise for me but I think its more a function of I just haven't found a method that works for me. Plus, for a lot of things I buy store brand/generic so coupons don't tend to work. But I want to learn to plan grocery lists based on what's on sale and figure out which grocery store truly gives me the most bang for my buck.

I'm checking out www.mint.com to see if its something I'll use. Not sure yet. The one huge negative I've found with it is you can't add a debt to it that you don't have an online log in for. So if you have a short credit-line debt or personal loan with someone there's no way to add it to the loan category. That sucks when trying to use the site as part of your debt pay-off tracking. It looks like the budgeting function though has a lot of nice features so I'm going to finish setting up my budget in it and try using it for a couple months to see how it goes. Any and all suggestions and advice welcome!!