It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

*Yawn* Happy Monday everyone.

I confess, I'm watching the news and I can't keep my eyes open, or stop yawning!  I blame my cat.  She decided 6 a.m. was a good time to get up, and kept pushing at my head until I sat up.  Ugh.

Another ugh, too.  I didn't complete my reading goal for last week.  I only finished one book.

What I Read Last Week:

I swear there was a good reason not to read.  This past week I achieved an important goal: I closed 2 credit cards!



Let this be a lesson to everyone else who lets a good credit score get to their heads.  The past few years I've been a little stupid about credit cards and got myself into an incredible amount of credit debt.  Well, maybe not incredible, but it was a lot, approaching 5 digits.  I almost drowned in debt, and my score dropped a few dozen points.  So a few months back, I took control of my finances, created a strict budget, and gradually started chipping away at that debt.  And a couple of days ago, I was able to close out 2 cards, with only 2 cards remaining, and a total credit debt of $2000!  Give me another month, maybe two at most, and I'll be completely debt free!  Whoohoo!

There's a reason for the fanatical budgeting.  A big reason.  My husband and I are hoping to purchase our very first home by the end of this year. (Ahhhhhh!)

I've got houses on my brain, people!  I really want to buy some real estate!  I'm sick and tired of living in an apartment, I'm ready for the next stage in our lives.  And we definitely want a house, not a condo.

Which brings me to what I'm currently reading:

Yep, I went out and got a book about buying a house.  Admittedly, I've been perusing this book briefly for the past several months each time I shopped at Barnes&Noble.  I'd read a segment, put it down, walk away, but I would keet coming back to it.  It was because of this book (and others) that I started whittling down my debt, and now I'm reading it front to back in preparation for house shopping this fall.

I confess, I'm a little nervous.  I'm afraid we won't get pre-approved for as much as we'd like (being a self-employed teacher might make this a little difficult).  I'm worried that we won't have enough saved up when we're actually ready to buy.  I'm wondering what we're going to do when our apartment lease expires.  There's a lot to consider, and there's a lot of preparation involved.  I just hope we don't screw up!

Anyway, I do hope to get some more reading this week.  Besides the real estate read, I have a few other books on my list for this week.  And here they are:

My Reading Plans:

Well, that's it for me folks.  I gotta go read about buying houses now.  Toodles!
-Lisa The Dancing Bookworm