I had a four day weekend, which was quite lovely and gave me a chance to realize the following:

1. I’ve decided to have a garage sale. We want to sell our patio table, a couple of bikes, and an assortment of household items and kids clothes. I don’t know where most of this stuff came from, but it’s time for it to go. I haven’t had a garage sale for a half-dozen years and still consider this one to be an experiment. Will it be worth the time and effort? Should I have donated the lot to charity? I think I found a pretty exhaustive list of garage sale “dos,” but do you have any tips for me? Do I need fancy signs?
2. Even though we drive relatively short distances, the price of gas finally caused me to cringe this morning, when I filled up the grocery getter for close to $80 after a $2.65 discount despite the Cub Foods/Holiday gas promotion.
3. I have too many accounts. Currently, I have three high-yield savings accounts, a brokerage account, a plain old checking account, an interest-earning checking account and 7 credit cards. Many were opened up to receive promotions, such as $100 credits, $25 gift cards, 0 percent interest for 15 months, 6 percent worth of rewards points for gas and grocery purchases. But it’s really an unmanageable number. How many accounts do you have and why?
4. The energy drink, flavored vitamin water craze has taken over gas station and cafeteria coolers. I haven’t caught on, but my beloved bubbly water appears to be a casualty. The well stocked convenience store/gas station where I filled up this morning no longer carries mineral water, nor does our cafeteria at work for the time being. It’s making the idea of The Soda Club, which I dismissed on Saturday after a debate with friends about whether St. Paul or Minneapolis has better tap water, ever so attractive.
5. I don’t enjoy the experience of shopping at CVS. But with careful coupon-clipping and circular-scouring, I’ve been stocking up my cabinets with free soap, razors, Tums, baby wipes, toothpaste, toothbrushes and deodorant thanks to the drugstore’s Extra Care card and corresponding deals. And don’t forget to ask for a rain check for out-of-stock items, even if the clerk looks at you funny. Check out this primer.

Finally, I’m late to the party, or the theater, as it happens, but I just learned about University of Minnesota economist Andrew Cassey, who has been performing an economics one man show at the Bryant Lake Bowl. Read all about him at the U’s web site. If you’re free, tonight’s show is at 7 p.m. and he’ll rip the lid off monetary policy. He has another two shows planned for July and August.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Kara\'s finances. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.