One Day = $720 Million

 A video by the AFSC about spending priorities...

Death of a Treo

The Palm Treo 600 I picked up more than two years ago in Africa has been through a lot.  Its case has plenty of scratches and whatnot from numerous times it fell or went skidding across a rough surface.  Its "M" key is a little sketchy, and the volume controls... well, it's been a while since they controlled volume, or anything else.

Today, though, without any new or special abuse that I'm aware of, its display decided that the time had come to die.  So it's got a super-saturated bright yellow blob on the right side, and some blue bars obscuring a lot of stuff.

It's okay.  Really, it is.  For some time now, I've been pondering either replacing the phone or deciding that 8 years with a "digital leash" is long enough, and going without.  I've got less than $30 in credit on it right now, so I'm not sure what path I'll take.  I guess I can swing by the local T-Mob store and see whether they have anything really cheap I can stick my prepaid SIM card into.

Good news for the new year

All the work I've been doing lately hasn't been entirely without purpose - in the next several weeks, I hope to completely zero out my credit union credit card.  As my balance has dropped over the last year and a half, the minimum monthly payment has gone from close to $500 to only $125, and if all goes according to plan, there will soon be no monthly payment on it at all. :)

Once that's done, any money that I no longer have to apply to my balance on that card will start going toward paying off my other card, the one that earns me frequent flyer miles.  A mileage credit card isn't any use if it's maxed out, since I only earn miles for purchases, not for interest!

I'm not quite sure how long the other card will take to pay off, since I'll need to continue using it for some things (I had almost totally stopped using the one that I'm about to finish zeroing), but I am looking forward to getting rid of that balance, too, since any other debt I have is long-term secured debt related to my house, and although the amount of that debt seems big to me, it's not bad compared to the likely value of the house at this point, and compared to what most thirty-something Americans owe on their houses. ;)