When you have two income streams, with one being irregular ... and uncertain, to boot ... you need to have some funds on hand for cushion. For example - I was leaving a village, bound for the city, driving on a divided highway a month or so ago, just passed a gravel truck and pulled into the outside lane ahead of him ... when I saw a couple of guys who looked as though they might be setting off an a rather long walk ... thought that it would be considerate to offer them a ride, as it was rather cold, began to pull off of road - when BANG! the gravel truck caved in the back end of my station wagon. No one hurt. Vehicle's a write-off. I haven't had message from the insurance co. yet, but went out and bought a "new" car (an old 5-speed one with small engine that sips gas). Wrote a cheque for the $2,500. without having to sweat over where to find the money. You have some regular expenses that must be met. Perhaps you can cut down on some of them, perhaps not. You have some other expenses which are important, but you have some flexibility as to timing and amounts. First thing - sit down and write out everything that you spend money on, and keep itemized record for a time - at least a month, two or three is better, a whole year better yet. Keep them - they'll give you guidance, next year. Also, record the amounts of your irregular distributions: perhaps, over time, you can see a pattern, e.g they're small in spring, larger in autumn. More infrequent, later in the year, etc. Dig up former records of the distributions, if you can, to get some earlier information which may assist you in observing those patterns. If you have credit card debt, it's important to try to get that whittled down, especially storee-issued cards, for most of them charge about 25 - 28% interest - I call that drawing blood. Regular cards usually charge about 15 - 18%. I have a fully secured (by stock, mutual fund certificates) Line of Credit at my bank - that I'm not using at the moment, but when I use it, the interest rate (was recently) 6.25%. I like that rate a lot better. Would you rather get a $100.00 raise in employment income, or save $100. on a purchase, without interfering with your lifestyle? You must earn $133.33 more employment income, for when you share your annual income with your partner in crime, the income tax people, if you're in 25% marginal tax rate, that'll leave you with $100.00 in pocket to go out to buy stuff ... assuming that the stuff that you're buying, as usual for most of the stuff that we buy, isn't deductible. Learning more about where the money goes usually helps people get the feeling that they just got a raise in pay - for when they see their expenditure patterns on paper ... ... they decide to change some of them! Good wishes for success in your enterprise. ole joyful

I use online bill pay (through a small local/regional bank) for everything except a few things paid-on-the-spot, like car registration. Had a similar situation with a magazine subscription. Bill pay submitted a printed check, not an electronic transfer. After a month the check had not cleared and the magazine sent notice of suspended service pending receipt of payment. I contacted the magazine, they suggested waiting a couple more weeks, as payments submitted without an remittance coupon take longer to post (the CORRECT magazine account number was printed prominently on the check). Two more weeks, still no payment posted or cleared. The bank suggested putting a stop-payment on the presumed-missing check (at no cost to me), and resubmitting the payment. I was tired of waiting and wasn't particularly missing the magazine, so I canceled it with them. The payment posted the NEXT day after my cancelation. That triggered the magazine to send a REFUND check, which I knew I was not due because the check would be refused when presented for payment (stop-payment on it). I held the refund check without cashing it. A few weeks later I got a card from the magazine advising the payment had "bounced" and that subscription service is suspended until cleared. So I had to CALL the damn magazine AGAIN to get the situation settled. They said everything is OK from their end, the subscription shows to be canceled, and I can simply destroy the refund check. Point is that I had properly submitted the online payment, so my bank took responsibility for the mishap in doing a stop-payment at no charge to me. You need to get in contact with Citibank billpay customer service, outline the time-frame of your events, confirm that you have submitted the online payments correctly (assuming you DO have the correct remittance address and account number on them), and have the bank investigate why your payments are not getting posted properly to the gas company. It could be that you're setting the trigger date for the payment too close to the due date of the bill, considering the payments are being done by the billpay service mailing a printed check .... in which case that may be your responsibility, not the bank's. By the way, I was previously with Washington Mutual, using their online bill payment service. They also deducted the payments immediately on the trigger date, for both electronic funds transfers and printed checks. The community bank now does not deduct the funds until 1) an electronic transfer actually occurs, or 2) a printed check is cleared through my checking account.

I'd say that buying stock is like buying ownership of a company's booster club. Stocks go up and down based upon the changing human emotions of the investing public concerning the given company, not actual results. The shares of troubled companies can rise, and those of successful companies fall. The old cliche is that market prices are driven only by greed and fear. Dividend reinvestment plans are just like dollar cost averaging, they are non-strategy "strategies" created in the interest of financial advisers and brokers, not the investors themselves. Outside of a retirement plan, you need to come up with cash from other sources to pay tax on the dividend. How much sense does that make as a strategy? You do know that brokerage firms and advisers usually receive payments from fund advisers (or customers) based upon account balances. Why distribute a dividend to the customer, when you can retain the funds and have a bigger base for payments? Or, in the case of direct stock holdings, the dividend paying company can avoid paying out the dividend and just keep the cash. Issuing more shares is free. Oh, I have an idea, let's call doing that a Dividend Reinvestment Plan. Like it or not, that's where this "strategy" came from. Tech stocks are volatile, there's no take-away lesson to be learned from that fact. Do as you like, keep your eyes open. Good luck.

FlyLady was an inspiration for me, for sure. I also found the Speed Cleaning books and there was a couple other organizing books that I found useful, a lot just for motivation. FlyLady kind of took it to the basics and reminding not to obsess over it, just start, anywhere, since you'll come around to it. And if you miss one because you're sick, on vacation, death in family or something, again, no big deal, you'll make it up next time. I tried the chore cards thing that another place recommended and I liked it but I didn't have the cards organized enough. I wound up just making lists, similar to what mc_hudd does. I had my wake up, mid-day evening and before bed routines worked out that I was able to do them (pick up dirty dishes before bed, etc. The shiny sink thing sounds so stupid but it REALLY made an impact! Try it for a month and see how it works. Then there was the normal daily things that eventually just plain are habit anyway, sort the mail before bringing into the house, the weekly that you might be doing on certain days, garbage to the curb one day, etc. Then there's some that should be every couple weeks, monthly, bi-monthly, annually, semi-annually, bi-annually, etc. Don't be afraid to modify it if it doesn't seem right. My gets constant revision. My biggest modification that works for me is using a reminder program in the computer. Reminds me to pay the bills between the 8th and the 12th of the month, put out garbage/recycling the night before, certain TV programs that I treat myself to watching so have the work done beforehand, pay property taxes and income taxes on time, etc. So I have a modified system and it works for me. I was getting a very organized and respectably clean house. I was very proud. Did you notice the "was"? Well then I got laid up for 6 months. Well everything went to pot. It took years to get back on track. I still was able to keep up on bills at least but the housecleaning suffered. But I went back and read some things at Flylady and here in the forum and got some motivation to start back in. Getting more organized. Can't physically clean as much but do priorities. Try to get something done on certain days and well, it's getting better. I work a strange schedule. Some days, like this last week are long days and I'm exhausted when I get home. So many things get pushed to the weekend. Tomorrow I'll get some more done and spend some more time doing the 15 min in the kitchen and just make it better. Once I realized that even just 15 minutes means 15 minutes that don't need to be done later so it's still an accomplishment. My mantra became doing SOMETHING, no matter how little, accomplishes far more than doing nothing. (if for nothing else than the satisfaction of doing something) The one routine that needs to be included and made a difference for me was to pat myself on the back and feel good for doing something instead of beating myself up for what I didn't get done. The world didn't come to an end because the steps weren't dusted last weekend. I did them today. Now I need to get out the vacuum..... Good luck!