January 23

I took a volunteer to work on the company today, we had burritos. And once again I brought half home for dh. Dd ate the chips and guacamole on the way home from school. We had soup for dinner tonight, the burrito will be dinner tomorrow.

Also stopped by the culled produce bin at the local organic foods store. I got a bin full of mostly lettuce. The chickens will get most of it, but there were some veggies we could use. Free is good!

After there, I stopped at the local grocery to check out their scratch and dent area. I got four bags of cookies & cream chex mix. Originally 2.99, marked down to .99. With coupons two were free and two were 49 cents. They also had a 9.49 Aveeno sun screen marked down to $3 and I had a $2 coupon. Dd wanted apples and they were 1.09/lb for large or 3/$1 fro the smaller ones. Smaller is better and I weighed them to see which was a better deal. Smaller was a better deal with 3 weighing about 1.25 lbs. We picked up six apples. My total for the shop was $4.09. I put it on the gift card, so my OOP was $0.00.

I spoke with a mortgage broker on Friday regarding the possibility of refinancing our loan. I thought I'd go to our current mortgage holder today to see if maybe I could work a better deal. I really prefer staying with them because 1. I would owe a $500 fee for closing out my HELOC account, not cool. It is paid off, but has to be kept open for three years to avoid the fee, its been open 14 months. 2. I get all account fees waived for savings & checking and 100 free trade/yr by keeping the mortgage with them. I have stopped by the mortgage guy's office on occasion to chat, and in doing so have become somewhat friends with him. He said he would beat the other guy's deal if I would stay with his bank. He said he would cover all costs, fees, etc and still give me the same rate. I told him to proceed. So, we locked in the rate today and will be getting paperwork tomorrow. The payment will go up, but we moved it to a 3.5% 15 yr loan rather than a 4.625% 30 yr. I still intend to pay it off in five.

I forgot to mention, I had a dental check-up Friday. I have worked out a barter with the Dentist. He was the one who initially offered. We trade hunting for dental work, its a good trade. He hunts our 40 acres and in trade gives us 4K in dental work annually after insurance. We come nowhere near using that much in dental work, but it is still a great trade.