money money money

So I got a step towards my financial resolution done last night. I met with my Aunt who is our Investor's Group chick. wow do we have a plan...

First I gotta say, hubby and I are making oodles of money. Our combined income is like $100,000 a year. Every month after bills and everything we have about $2000 that just disappears. Poof. It's all spending where we don't need to, in the bar, on clothes, I really don't know where it all goes. Hubby admits it's mostly him. (I really can't fathom that we just blow that much money each month, I always sooo cheap!) Anyway, in the next little while we want to finish the basement ($12000?) buy an SUV, pay off the little bit of debt we have ($3000) and then think about kids. So she suggested we rework our mortgage. We bought our house 2 years ago, just a month before the market exploded here. So in 2 years our house has doubled in value. So it's like we got it on sale! ;)

Anyway, she suggested we increase our mortgage by like $50,000 (or whatever number we come up with). Use it to finish the basement and pay of the debt maybe. Then take the rest ($35,000) and invest it. It will increase our mortgage payment by a couple hundred bucks so it'll be the same as just investing that much every month, only we'll already have a large amount invested so the interest will work out much higher all the time. Get it? Seems so scary though. It makes sense as long as we're earning interest at a higher rate than our mortgage is charging us. The SUV (and maybe the little debt as well) will just be a regular bank loan since you don't want to pay for your car for 25 years. but the basement is part of the house so it makes sense to be on the mortgage. Any financial people out there want to weigh in?

So if we do that and buy our SUV, we're looking at increasing our bills by $1000 each month. If we've really got $2000 that we just blow all the time, then it should be no problem. However, we blow it so fast, it feels like we don't even have it. (I have got to check up on hubby's spending a little more, I swear I only "burn" like $100 max each month on make up or clothes or whatever). Anyway, we're supposed to think it over, figure out just what we can afford our monthly payments to be and decide if we want to do this. It's exciting.

In other news. I'm going swimming today. I didn't say that as a resolution, but I'm sort of leaning towards that triathalon thing, just a sprint distance or something. But that means getting back into swimming! I used to be a lifeguard, so the training for that involved a lot of swimming (duh) so I used to be quite pro at it. But not for ages. So my sister and I are going today after work. While I love swimming, I can't stand getting out of the pool all stinky and my eyes are so sensitive they're purple, and my skin is just itchy and yucky. Plus then you're half wet trying to put your clothes back on and go home. Just gross. So hopefully I'll enjoy the swimming part enough to counter that yucky stuff.

Also, I returned a present from my MIL (didn't tell her, shh) to Costco and got a cookbook. The Jerry Seinfeld's wife one. About hiding vegetable puree in your food. Pretty good. I like the idea. It's not to hard, just a little preplanning. So last night I made a spaghetti sauce from scratch (first that was pretty cool, only took like 1/2 an hour) with all these veggies and ground chicken and then added sweet potato puree. You can't even tell, it just made it more like regular pasta sauce (thicker). Even hubby liked it. He wasn't a big fan to begin with because it was mostly veggies plus he likes plain pasta. But it didn't gross him out at least! That's my lunch today too. Pretty good.

Hubby is not doing that great on his whole "diet". I think it might just start with me telling him every time he's eating something bad. I told him it was important to eat breakfast, so he went and bought poptarts. I just laughed. I explained to him at McDonalds how the muffins had the most fat of anythign there and that shocked him. and how his salad with ranch dressing had just as much fat as a big mac. So he sorta feels like he's screwed now, the things he thought he should eat aren't right. Oh well. He'll get it. It's going to be a tough turnaround though. I think he was still gaining, so if he decreases a little bit, he'll just maintain, so he'll have to decrease even more to lose. It's just going to take a bit of time for him I think. He is doing some small things and seems really gung ho about it. Like he decided to wrestle with the dog for 10 minutes every day. and he wants to get on the elliptical more often. we'll see.

Anyway, I'm still not caught up on all of your blogs and lunch is almost over!