Update from Ashley

I guess it's been a while since I've said hi.  As you know from Dave, we've been awfully busy.  Every weekend has been consumed with painting and spending money and painting and spending more money and moving and spending more money.   In the past 5 months we've purchased:  A *new* car  A *new" house *New* living room suite *New* washer and dryer 3 *new* scooters A *new* motorcycle New dishwasher and new fridge for the *new* house. We cash flowed everything except the mortgage on the house.  We've also dumped $1800 into the house getting it pretty.   I'll try to update with pictures, because the transformation of the house has been amazing.  The house had been recently painted/wallpapered before we bought it, but in hues of burnt orange and pepto pink.  There was a room that had alternating green and blue walls.  And one with the darkest brown allowed by law.  Ugh. And did they do a good job?!  Noooo... most of it stopped 3-5 inches below the ceiling.   So many a'weekend has been wasted tearing down wallpaper and painting walls and picking out the best $5 Oops Paint and I bet we've spent more on brushes and rollers than the paint itself.  But you know what?  It's been worth it. Most of the house is a nice beige with white trim.  Andrew's (formally poop brown) room got a few coats of a nice grey/blue and we loved it so much, we painted a bath that color.   We still need to do "something" with the floor there.  I thought I wanted hardwood, but after cleaning the existing hardwood, I think I've talked myself into laminate.  We put the laminate down at the lil house ourselves, so I know we could do it.  But for now, we want to get moved in and enjoy our house.   Our commute is changing.  50 miles a day vs. 10 miles a day I've been enjoying.  Dave's is about the same.  One of our cars gets pretty good gas mileage: 30-35 mpg.  The new one is about half that.  And it take premium gas.  Being the crunchy granola tree hugger that I am, it's killing me a little inside every time we get gas.  And being the frugal bargain hunter that I am, I have to close my eyes when I pump.   I am hoping the bikes get an average of 75 mpg.  Scooter should get more, bike probably gets less.  But those are the numbers I'm using. If we can avoid using the car we nicknamed Harper, we are saving 16.5 cents per mile.  We save 5.5 cents per mile if we ride a bike and keep Echo (the gas saver).  So every time Dave rides his bike to work, it costs $8 less.  If I take my scooter instead of Echo, we save $2.75.  So if we can manage to ride bikes 5 days a week, we save a whopping $55 in gas.  We are trying to evolve from a 2-car family to a 1-car family.  Insurance is pretty expensive for 2 houses, 2 cars, 2 bikes.