We're still alive!!

It's been a long time since we posted anything, but we're still here!!! We're just plugging away with homework, school, homework and more school! I got some good news yesterday....I passed the Praxis test (elementary content knowledge. Has to be passed before I can do student teaching). Yay!!! Now I can do Level 3 in the spring and student teaching in the Fall. Then perhaps I'll be able to graduate next December.
Other news, we went to Alex's friends wedding yesterday! Now we have more married friends in Logan. Hooray! Sometimes it's hard to play with single people. Dating is fine and married is better! It just makes it easier.
We were at church the other day and there was an older couple visiting their daughter, the guy basically had a heart attack. Apparently he had had a spider bite and was taking some kind of medicine to heal it....the medicine caused him to have a heart attack and we had to call 911 and stop the meeting for a while. It was pretty intense. It's scary when things like that happen. It makes me grateful that I'm not a doctor because I couldn't deal with situations like that on a daily basis. So sad.
Anyways, Alex is doing well, too! Stressed by all his math classes, but what do you do about it?
Oh, yeah, here is my schedule this semester!!




















I don't know why the picture is fuzzy, but you get the idea. I'm pretty busy, but it's entertaining anyways!! Well, I better get cleaning the house. Grandma is bringing us some rugs and a new couch from one of Aunt Rita's storage units!! How exciting. It's like Christmas.
Love you all!

Financial stuff everyone should know but maybe doesn't

I am really loving my Family Finance class that I am taking and I am learning a lot from it. We just read a book called "The Automatic Millionaire" by David Bach. It's a pretty good book... but anyways a few of the useful things I've learned:

You can get a free credit report every 4 months. The government has made a law that Experian, Equifax, and Transunion give at least one free credit report per person per year. The trick is to get one of these three every 4 months every year (that would be every Oct-Experian, Feb-Equifax, and June-transunion if you start now). Get one for every person in the house... you, spouse, and even children. Children should not have one but you should always check because identity theft could really hurt them, especially if not discovered for many years. If there is ever anything on there that you did not do, report it... they have instructions on how to get it disputed and removed. To get your free report go to www.annualcreditreport.com.

The credit report is not the same as your credit score... that you must pay for if you want it (it comes from a company called FICO). You can "estimate" your FICO score for free at www.bankrate.com/calculators/credit-score-fico-calculator.aspx.

If you don't have money for something, don't buy it. However, there is a cool credit card repayment calculator at www.ftc.gov/creditcardcalculator.

If your savings account is making less than 1.0%APY you may want to consider finding a new savings account with someone else! Ally has one of the nations best rates right now at 1.80%APY compounded daily. Anyways what I am saying is shop around for your banking needs using one of these excellent sites: www.mybanktracker.com; www.bankrate.com; or www.mymoneyblog.com.

If you are interested in seeing the US debt on many levels go to: www.usdebtclock.org

I know that's a lot of website stuff... at least you should get the free credit report if nothing else! Also... I have posted some of these links on our "Links" list to the left (which by the way will now open the links in a new tab so you don't have to use the back button).