And yet Detroit was once a vibrant place...

While visiting the Detroit forum board over on The Nest this morning, I came across this article that someone posted. It is by Mitch Albom, who isn't one of my most favorite people, but this article is excellent!

"And yet Detroit was once a vibrant place, the fourth-largest city in the country, and it lives in the hope that those days, against all logic, will somehow return. We are downtrodden, perhaps, but the most downtrodden optimists you will ever meet. We cling to our ways, no matter how provincial they seem on the coasts. We get excited about the Auto Show. We celebrate Sweetest Day. We eat Coney dogs all year and we cruise classic cars down Woodward Avenue every August and we bake punchki donuts the week before Lent. We don't talk about whether Detroit will be fixed but when Detroit will be fixed.

And we are modest. In truth, we battle an inferiority complex. We gave the world the automobile. Now the world wants to scold us for it. We gave the world Motown music. Motown moved its offices to L.A. When I arrived 24 years ago, to be a sports columnist at the Detroit Free Press, I discovered several letters waiting for me at the office. Mind you, I had not written a word. My hiring had been announced, that's all. But there were already letters. Handwritten. And they all said, in effect, "Welcome to Detroit. We know you won't stay long, because nobody good stays for long, but we hope you like it while you're here."

Here's to hoping that things will turn around for the state of Michigan in 2009!

Got some awesome deals today!

I was checking in over on thenest.com like I do pretty much everyday and came across a post with some awesome promo codes to use at Victoria'sSecret.com. I was able to get 2 bras and a pair of panties for $16 which included shipping! How awesome is that?

Then later on I went shopping with my mom and hit up DSW. She had a coupon for $20 of a $50 purchase and wasn't going to use it, so of course I wanted it! My $50 purchase were these Skechers

And then they had 80% off all of their sandals. I got these red ones for $8.99 regular $40,

and these awesome yellow ones for $11.99, regular $60!

Seriously...how awesome of a deal is that? Of course I have to wait until next summer to wear them, but oh well.

Then when I got home Jim and I went grocery shopping. Our total was $180, but after bottle returns and coupons the total dropped down to $115. Yeah...we had A LOT of cans/bottles to take back. We hadn't taken any back all summer.

Anyway, I was just super excited about my deals today and I had to share.

I'm headed to some training for work this week, and while I have my work laptop, I'm not totally sure that the Internet works on it. It works at work, but I don't think the wireless connection is working nor is a connection with an Ethernet cord. (Okay and how many times did I just use the word work??) So I may not be posting until I get back...not like I post anything all that exciting anyway...lol.

We paid it off!!

Almost 5 years ago when Jim and I bought our condo (I can't believe it's already been 5 years!) we had a bunch of credit card debt. We each had two cards with three of them having balances anywhere from $3000 - $7000 but one had like $20,000!! I pretty much freaked out thinking we'd never get out of credit card debt. We paid off the small ones, but last year at this time we still had the big one with something like $17,000 still left on it. For the past 6 or 7 months we've been putting $1500/month towards it and I just made the last payment a few days ago! So excited to have that gone!!!

I got a lot of great tips over on the nest, specifically the Money Matters board. I learned of a person named Dave Ramsey and we used his debt snowball plan to pay them off. Worked like a charm!

Our plan is to start saving for a house, but first I'm going to purchase the DSLR camera I've been lusting over that I've mentioned before.

I'm just so excited to have it paid off!