Get MINT.

I can’t recall who introduced me to this website (I think it was VT), but I can’t thank them enough.

Mint.com is a FREE money management website service that makes staying on top of your expenses, credit cards, bank account, and all assets fast and easy. Automatic updates, phone message alerts, bill payment reminders, email notifications and weekly email account updates, all for FREE and it’s incredibly easy to set up and use.

It is SAFE. The site does not store your account numbers, and even if someone managed to get your passwords, they would simply see all the money you owe, they would not see your account numbers. No money moves through the site. (Does anyone want my VISA balance? Don’t rob me, I’m not rich enough.)

Mint.com has been named the best online personal finance tool by Money Magazine, PC Magazine, and is PC World’s Editor’s Choice…In five minutes or less, you’ll see where you’re spending your money, understand how your investments are performing, and set up realistic budgets. Set up email and SMS alerts and you’ll be automatically updated whenever there’s an important change in your finances. Only Mint.com finds you personalized ways to save money, using patent-pending software which analyzes your current spending. The typical Mint.com user finds $1,000 in savings in their first visit.

Set up your budget and see where your money goes with easy to follow graphs. You can also compare your spending to that of other people in your area, or nationwide. You can tag expenses by category, and Mint will automatically list them and account them for you. You can download Excel spreadsheets of all general expenses or by category, and this will make your year-end accounting a breeze.

Since I got MINT there hasn’t been a day I haven’t used it. I love being able to see EVERY SINGLE financial asset and debit and bill due date listed on one page. No shuffling different accounts, no pesky stacks of paper. And every day my balances and expenditures are automatically updated. Every bank or credit card purchase listed and tagged by category. I’ve yet to see MINT make a mistake. If something isn’t categorized, no worries. I just hit a button, and it’s tagged and properly listed, and I can program MINT to tag every purchase from a particular vendor via that category, or as a one-time listing.

MINT also has a handy blog with lots of useful info.

Remember, this service is 100% FREE. There’s no catch.

Try it.

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Since the big name garden catalogues charge about a dollar a bulb (or more) for some varieties of spring flower, I’ve been economizing buying bags of bulbs from Sam’s Club and Costco, which can go for as low as $9-$13 for 100 bulbs.

After three years of dedicated planting, I noticed something funny.

Some of them will bloom the spring after they are planted, but some don’t. I expect that from cheap bulbs. The second year bulbs taunt me with leaves and no blooms to accompany them.

Daffodils are the easiest thing in the world to grow, so what the heck was I doing wrong? Well, isn’t the internet just dandy? Found this info at the Daffodil Society website.

Transplant shock can cause daffodils to skip a year of bloom. So can improper storage. Even if you get blooms the spring after planting, daffodils will take the next year off and then come back the third year, blooming regularly each year thereafter.

I know a few folks who dug up their cheap bulbs, thinking they were diseased, but bulbs which did not perform for me at all last year have sprung up as winners. So, with a little patience, you can have that showy garden, but you’re going to have to wait at least 3-5 years to get it going. I am relieved to know all that. That’s a lot of digging that didn’t go to waste.

The cut-rate hyacinth bulbs: a real deal. Three years later, we have 4 times as many as we planted and the scented blooms are glorious. The only problem with them is they are such a tasty temptation for the critters that many disappear after planting, only to spring up 40 feet away in the middle of the yard next season.

Ditto for the crocuses. At $10 for 100, even when the squirrels chow down half, they are a bargain. And the squirrels do some interesting redecorating.

The only sad performance is from the narcissus, which were planted too early. While the packaging recommended October, we have to plant in late November for best results.

My annual membership costs at Costco and Sam’s are paid for in the savings on bulbs alone. And I save enough to buy at least a few of the high quality bulbs every year from garden specialty sources. So if you shop at Sam’s and see those big boxes of cheap plants, give them a go, but know you won’t get good performance for a year or so.