Debt Free Kid

I'm supposed to be on my way to the big city right now with Bean to meet up with my mom's family for xmas dinner, but I got a call today saying that my Gramma is sick, and we are postponing to maybe next weekend. She is the reason why we get together so we meet at a restaurant near her condo. Since everyone has to drive in, and one of my cousins is also sick, and another cousin spent christmas with her baby son at Sick Kids Hospital, we will wait to get together. I spent the morning organizing all my photo files from 2014, which I will transfer over to two separate external hard drives. I also cleaned up my desktop on my laptop. I'm trying to catch up on Feedly, but am almost three weeks behind again on blogs. Maybe I need to go through and delete a bunch, but I don't really want to. I get a lot of ideas reading other people's blogs, but I rarely come here to flesh them out. I have been meaning to write about my solo home-buying adventure for weeks, but I'm ...

I mentioned  in my previous post that I won a gift certificate from Squirrelers' Thanksgiving contest. It was for $20 at Amazon.com. I normally order from Amazon.ca but xmas was arriving quickly and I thought I'd redeem it for something for someone I love. I had a harder time than I thought I would. Shipping from the U.S. is expensive and since I had left it so late, nothing I chose would be here in time for xmas. A couple of toys I had picked out for my son would not ship to Canada at all. I finally chose a backpack for my bro-friend but before I hit the switch I decided to check locally. I found the same pack for the same price at a shop in town and avoided shipping altogether. Last week I decided to buy a book with it. The book cost $10 and the shipping was $11! I couldn't bear to spend more on postage than on the book itself, so I went with my original plan and offered the gift certificate to a friend in the U.S. Since I had carelessly applied it to my own account ...

I did it. I said I wouldn't, but I pulled the trigger. I bought a netbook. Actually, more than a netbook. About $300 more. I put in some overtime hours and instead of putting the extra money onto my debt I used it to buy myself an early birthday present. A $600 early birthday present. A little laptop, that had all the specs I had been researching for the past six months. I tried to wait another month to see if the price would drop for xmas, but I gave in. It's an Acer Aspire Timeline 1810T. I'm going to write a proper review for the Future Shop site and I'll copy it here too. So far, a fun little toy. Please don't judge me :) Seriously, Karissa PS: I also bought a new winter coat for $89. It's goose-down. Hopefully it lasts the season. It has been years since I bought a proper winter coat. PAID OFF. PPS: I also bought a gym membership for $40 a month. So far I've been going to yoga twice a week and it's totally worth the money spent. Dedu...

Because I may be buying another car soon, I put off the new laptop purchase for a while. While Dell has deals for back-to-school and Mac is "giving away" Ipod Touch, it seems like the computer I want is only going up in price while the weeks of summer dwindle away. A month ago it was in stock and $599, now it's back-ordered and $692. Grrr. So I'm looking at Dells again but the reviews aren't great, and I even contemplated a Macbook because there's one with an 11" screen, and Bean would LOVE an Ipod because his cousin has one. Any feedback on netbooks or small-screen notebooks (I'd like Duo Core rather than Atom) is much appreciated. CAR UPDATE: just got off the phone with a mechanic (who fixed a rusty brake line on the Honda I've borrowed, which is a scary story in itself) who said that my Ford may have been misdiagnosed and he might be able to replace the timing belt and get it running again. He's going to research a bit more and get b...