My friend asked me an interesting question today: should I stop contributing to my 401K and pay off my car?

That kind of boggled my mind, but she figures that if she's probably going to lose a large portion of the money if she puts it in her 401K, then she might as well pay off her car loan. Hmmmm...not a bad thought. But she'd also give up her company matching contribution to her 401K. I told her that that alone would mean that she's leaving some money on the table. And currently, she's only putting 4% into her 401K, so she isn't at the maximum match that he company will contribute.

She's going to stick with the 401K. I think that's a good choice.

Does anyone have a different opinion?

School is kicking my ass right now. I have an exam this week, another one next week, and a 10 page essay due the following week. I really want to be hitting the gym, but it's not going to happen. Maybe once or twice this week. That kind of sucks. I need to be taking advantage of what $65 a month buys me!!

I only take one class at a time, but the classes are only 8 weeks long. That's a LOT to cram into 8 weeks. I never thought that it would eat up this much of my free time. And December 2010 seems so far away.....

Just bitching here. :-/

My boyfriend has decided that I skipped the chapter about style and fashion in the How To Be Gay handbook. So, he insisted that we go shopping for a some clothes. We were going to a restaurant for Restaurant Week in DC on Saturday and I could use some new clothes, so I went along with it.

At Gap, I got a pair of khakis and a sweater. If you spent over $75, they took $20 off, so my total was $67.95. My bf gave me a $15 gift card, so I paid $52.95 total.

At Target, I got a belt for $24.36. It's reversible, though, so it's really two belts in one. For some reason, that justifies the price in my mind.

At DSW, I got a pair of shoes that were about $80 with 40% off, so I paid a total of $50.36.

So, that's a grand total of $127.67 out of my pocket. For one outfit!!!! That seems a little insane to me. And the shoes don't fit all that well. They're a little big, so I may take them back (even though I hate returning clothes).

I got my big fat check from ebates.com yesterday! It's for $61.03. I did all of my Christmas shopping online and most of it was through ebates, so that's why it's higher than it normally will be. And I know that it's cash back on money that I already spent, but it still feels good to get a check.

If you don't use ebates or another service like it, you can sign up with my referral link and we'll both get $5. If you're going to do any shopping online, you might as well get a little cash back for it, right? :-)

I went back to the gym last night for the first time since September. I've gotten soft and it's definitely time to work off some lbs. And those four months I didn't go at all but still paid $64.95 a month was a complete waste of $259.80. Jeeeez.

So, I'm going to go more often. And I figure that $3 per visit to the gym is something that I would pay, so I'm going to shoot for 20 visits a month and not go less than 10 times a month. That way I'll be paying something like this:

• 20 visits = $3.25/visit
• 10 visits = $6.50/visit

If someone wanted to charge me $6 to get into a gym, I would probably just walk away, but I figured this is a good goal for my return to the gym. We'll see how it goes.

I just joined youdata.com. It's a website that let's you earn a small amount of money to watch ads and visit websites. You don't have an unlimited number of ads to watch or websites to view, but they do feed them to you periodically. As soon as I joined, I was presented with a bunch and earned $2.42. Not bad for a few minutes on the couch!!

They pay you the money from your account every week via PayPal. So, PayPal probably takes out their fees which would reduce the amount you get. I'll keep doing it for awhile to see how it turns out and let you know.

I just reached enough points in my account at Opinion Outpost to request a check. You have to have 500 points before you can request money. I got 512, so I'll be getting a check for $51.20. Not bad for just filling out some online surveys, huh?

That made today a little nicer :-)