To put some things in perspective.  Sine Lisa started Weight Watchers she lost around 90 pounds, since I started I lost 20 pounds.  She’s managed to keep herself close to her lost weight, I’ve gained it all back.  I mostly blame my gain on my lack of physical activity in the past 6-8 months.  Since I stopped going to Tae Kwon Do in the summer I haven’t replaced that with any other physical activity.  With the cold weather we’ve done much less walking.  The path has been fairly obvious, but I haven’t done much about it.  I said I’d start something after the cruise.  Lisa on the other hand wanted to do something sooner.

There’s a fitness center in the “new” shopping center right next door.  It has the convenience of being close, and being open 24 hours.  It’s not much more than a big room with treadmills, stationary bikes, and weight equipment, but it’s more than the equipment in the house, and it’s easy to ignore the equipment in your house.  I find that when you setup a schedule to go do something, it’s usually a lot easier to stick to it once it’s routine.  With both of us going, it’ll be easier for each of us to keep the other on the routine as well.

Our bodies aren’t the only thing we’re trying to get fit.  Our finances, while not a disaster have too much money going out against debt and not just bills.  I’ve tried getting a handle on the credit cards before, and while none of them are maxed out anymore they all carry balances a high percentage of their limit.

When we agreed to let our daughter move back in for a time we all agreed to a rent amount.  While we certainly  didn’t need that money, it will help to offset increased utilities etc.  The thing Lisa and I agreed to do with the money was put it toward the credit cards.  So part of what I did Tuesday night was plan out all the payments for serveral months.  Credit card number one should be paid off in March.  Credit card number two in May.

It’s amazing what a little planning can do for you.  I’ve tried this method of paying off credit cards before, but I didn’t do enough planning, so while I eliminated one or two cards from the list I didn’t have a good road map for the future.  Even this time until I started planning out all the payments it was a vague sense of sometime in the future.

Most days work is work, but today was at least a little interesting.

On the surface I work for a small auto finance company called Coastal Credit LLC. They are owned by a holding company called White River Capital (RVR). RVR doesn’t actually do anything, they are just a small office with two employees that put out or finical statements and are the public company that I hold stock in.

Today they put out a press release announcing a merger with First Chicago Bankcorp. The definition is a reverse merger

The irony of that post just hanging out there is that I no longer work for Coastal.   Nowadays I work for an even smaller company named sandSecurity.   The greatest thing about it is I get to work from home.  The owner of the company is also a long term friend.

The only other major thing in the past 6 months was the passing of my Maternal Grandmother.  That involved an emergency trip to Utica, NY.  This occurred right after the 4th of July, and took up most of that Emergency Fund I was talking about.  But hey that’s why it was there, if it had not it would have been that much more on credit cards.  Since then I’ve rebuilt that fund back up, and also managed to knock off a few credit cards.

I’ll be adding a new blog to the links today.  An old friend started up his own blog, with a little more direction than just random life.  I guess you could say that that has shamed me into coming back here, and it was probably the straw.  I’ve been thinking about it more lately.  I’ve been active on facebook for a while, and status messages there morphing to making sure my twitter was updated, coming back here was just the natural extension.

One of the reasons behind it is that noting seems that interesting anymore.  I work my 40 hours a week, I try and relax with some tv, reading, etc at home.  I am back at Tae Kwon Do after about 5 months off due to money problems.

Money, the root of all evil.  Or so they say.  Depending on who you ask, it’s the leading cause of divorce.  I know it’s sparked our fair share of “debate” at Casa de Viluppo.  I’ve been doing a lot of “soul-searching” when it comes to finances and debit recently.  I’ve decided to try and dig myself out of the small depression I seem to be in.

Late last year I started reading a blog about personal finance.  There were definately things there that I needed to work on.  With close to $9000 in credit card debit I needed to start filling in the hole.  I took two of the suggestions to heart and tried to start implementing them, Emergency Funding and Debit Snowballing.

As of now I’ve managed to get close to $400 in the emergency fund, and this month I’ll pay off the first of 6 credit cards.  Lisa and I have sat down with the budget a few times and we’re working on ways to curb all the “excess” spending.  We’re also working on trying to reduce the regular expenses as much as possible.  The credit card debit isn’t just going to disapear soon.  Even with the way I’m paying it down it’ll take a few years unless I can accelerate the process.

For other things, I’m trying not to stress as much over the past.  On the finances that could make me miserable, looking at how much there is to pay back.  In life it could be even worse.  I’m trying to take the look of “the past is done, move on and plan the future”.   Other people have expressed that to me in other ways, but hopefully I’ll be able to stick to it.