We still haven't paid our property taxes and its because we don't have the money to PAY the property taxes. They are about $5,000 and I've been stressing on this one for the longest. How do I come up with $5,000 RIGHTNOW to get the county paid off so they don't start crawling down my back like the credit card companies? I'm afraid its going to end up in the realm of "gonna have to take out a loan." DH is looking for a part time job and we still have my mom to watch our son. I just had a phone interview for a slightly better paying job. I REALLY REALLY REALLY hope they call me in for a second interview. The job is closer to home too.

I finally got my strawberry and bushelmaker tomatoes in. The strawberries are potted and the tomatoes are planted. I also put together the garden arch I bought for only $7.00. Now I'm training one of my climbing rose bushes to it. On my local freecycle group page, I found people that need to get rid of plant pots and bricks. That means I get to give some of my "babies" new homes and the bricks will be used for another flower bed. I also found a new gardening site today, davesgarden.com. There's a lot of good information on the site plus people to trade plants with but its not as cost effective as gardenhere.com because Dave's Garden wants a membership fee to view replies and pictures of plants in the forum.

The best news of the day is that we now have another credit card paid off! YAY! Now all I have to do is call and cancel it. Four more credit cards to go.

Today, I got a piece of "junk mail" in the mail. It was an ad/offer to refinance my house on a flexible plan (four different payment amounts to choose from), lower interest rate AND their hook is that they'll pay for our property taxes for 2005. I could skip up to 2 payments on my mortgage as well. It sounds a bit too good to be true but for the sake of saving money, I will call them on Monday just to see how their program works. If it is a GOOD program to refinance our house, we may finally be able to pay off those pesky credit cards! I'm sure I'll be posting here in the next couple of days to tell everyone whether it was a scam or not.

I've gotten to the point where I'm thinking and scheming every day to figure out how to get ourselves out of credit card debt and pay off my student loans. We're so far behind it's ridiculous! To date we have paid off the two lowest balanced credit cards just to get them out of the way. Now I have to work on the "biguns" to get their collections people to quit calling me day and night.

Today I took care of my student loans, applied for a forbearance and a payment lowering plan for the time being so I can stay in the good graces of Sallie Mae and company. I also pulled all three of my credit reports today and took a look at what those missed payments on my credit cards are doing to my credit. Needless to say, I'm not happy about that at all. I also found an account that is not mine on one of my reports and disputed it! The last thing I did was apply for a loan to consolidate all our remaining credit card debt to a lower interest rate. I'm hoping even with the state of my credit reports, I'll be approved so I can get rid of these pesky credit cards for good.

The only thing left will be to figure out how to get my property taxes paid. We were hoping for the tax return money for that but the IRS had other ideas for our money. This one I'm still working on.

I still haven't mastered the art of NOT spending money but I'm working on it. I always seem to find things we need though. Of course, yesterday I went to Half Price Books with two boxes of books and got $20 out it, not as much as I hoped, but good enough I guess. I also have a CD for sale out on Ebay, seller ID midlight21 if you want to check it out.