Too cute not to share with all of you dog lovers!

Our house is listed via a flat-fee realtor for the MLS exposure but I also had listed our house on the for sale by owner website. I just received a request from FSBO from someone interested in seeing our house. Anyone here ever showed their own house before? I'm wondering if it would be best to just let them wander around the house by themselves. I know that when I look at places, I enjoy being able to walk about and take my time looking without the constant babbling from a realtor or owner behind my shoulder. Anyway, wish me luck!

We are thinking about going to Hawaii for the first time this July.

Lots of questions:

1) Is July a good month to go or will there be way too many tourists to contend with?

2) Which island should we fly to?

3) Where should we stay? Oceanfront would be just grand!

4) Do we need a rental car?

5) Is food expensive in Hawaii?

6) What is a must-do or must-see there?

We have a family of 4 and desire to go somewhere "tropical" this summer. If anyone has been to Hawaii and has any suggestions for us, that would be so great...or if you think we should go somewhere else, just let us know... thanks!

We just bought a Wii bundle last night from a gal selling it off craigslist. Very very nice system, hardly used at all. Did we need this? No, but it sure will help us with our healthy initiative for our family. Spent $300 for the console, accessories, games, etc. Thanks to all of you on the forums for helping me to negotiate to a fair price!

In keeping with my March goal of not shopping for clothes --- I walked away from Goodwill last night empty handed. I had an hour of time to kill so I thought I would stop in and see what they had. Oh, I found lots of stuff that I could have definitely bought but since I made myself that goal of not buying clothes this month, I just said NO. Then this morning, I get an email from my absolute favorite store where I buy clothes for work. They are having a 50% off sale. I went to their website and added some things to my cart. Then, I just said NO. Man, was that painful! But, here I am with no new clothes and I'm just fine. Guess I'll live.

1. Received our federal tax refund of $963 today in our account! Geez, that was fast!

2. DH got another $434 transferred to our savings account from his sales of 'A'. That makes the total now $7,434 in that account (goal use of the money is still undetermined right now).

3. Our contract with the flat-fee realtor expired March 1. The renewal fee with her was supposed to be $200 for another 6 months but she surprised us by offering to renew the listing for free --- we took her up on it, of course!!

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I have to say that life is pretty good right now. Financially, we are in a fairly strong position (for us) and I am very grateful for what we have. Sure, we can definitely do things to save more money toward this or that... we all can and should. However, we all know that life just gets in the way and what we should do is not necessarily what gets done. So, all in all, for our little family, I can't complain too much from a financial standpoint.

I've decided to get naked with all of you and post exactly what we have (and don't have) for the first time:

Debt -
Mortgage $268,000
Credit Card (@0%) $21,000
Total Debt = $289,000

Savings (NON-retirement) -
Mutual Funds $10,000
Emergency Fund $13,000
Short-term Savings Fund $1,500
Savings Fund (DH's sales) $7,400
Total Savings = $31,900

We so need to increase our savings and have done so steadily over the last couple of years. We currently have $970 taken out automatically each month from our checking to our savings accounts which is a huge increase over just a few years ago. This equates to about 15% of our NET monthly income so I guess that's about right? I would love to increase it to $1200 sometime this year but can only do so if DH and I get raises this July... chances are unlikely as our state's budget crisis continues but we'll see.