As expected, my raise came through, 3%… Not thrilled but didn’t expect a whole lot since I got a little over 20% last year. One of the hardest things I have to do as a manager at my company is to review an employee who has been doing a great job and then inform them that they don’t actually get to keep up with inflation that year… :/

It won’t be for long however. (More on this in a bit)

My wife heard from the manager she interviewed with in Illinois. He said he sent her paperwork to HR this morning and she should expect an offer within 24-48 hours. Assuming the offer comes in at a decent rate (which we’re pretty confident of) we’ll be relocating to Central IL sometime in August.

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I’m happy to be hosting the 28th installment of the Carnival of Investing this week. There are nearly 30 posts in this week’s edition and while I haven’t read them all yet, the ones I have appear to be pretty well written.

Special thanks to Jonathan at MyMoneyBlog for keeping the Carnival going. Next week’s host will be Mighty Bargain Hunter.

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A friend of mine has a nice little business providing interactive (web sites, emails etc) to a number of clients. They often get work last minute and are extremely swamped lately. Earlier this week they needed help producing an email for one of their clients and asked if I could help.

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Last night we received an offer on our yearling colt for $10K. They must be serious because today I received a $1,000 deposit from the buyer. This is a bit less than our asking price but still a fair offer.

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28-day T-Bill rates have been dropping recently. Today’s auction’s yield was 4.681% as compared to 4.727% last week and 4.783% the week before. The 91 and 182-day rates by contrast have been rising in the last few weeks.

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Made a few trades last week that both generated some cash and put me back in the black for at least one of my positions. I still have a ways to go however.

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This week’s Carnival of Investing (# 27) is hosted by AllFinancialMatters. I’ll be hosting next week’s carnival here.
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As I had mentioned in an earlier post my wife has been searching for a job for the last couple of months. She’s highly educated (pHd) and has a lot of experience (12+ years) and has not had any trouble getting interviews. I’ve been keeping things kind of low-key since her trip to Arkansas was cancelled but now things are looking pretty positive on two fronts.

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Still getting pummeled by the market but I’ve strengthened my position somewhat. I can’t say we’re at a bottom, I think we’ll continue to have a volatile market until the end of the month when the Fed likely raises rates. The comments made after that will determine the overall direction for the market.

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