Housing, Credit Cards, and Time Management!

The House Hunt
Tomorrow night I'm going out to look at another duplex. I drove by the property, a big red-brick building with nice trim, but it's not in the greatest section of town, and they don't seem to be making that much in rent so I wonder what the inside looks like. We'll see. It's only about $230k, which (with taxes and insurance) would come to about $1,700/month in payments. They only get $750 per unit, each of which has two bedrooms. That's pretty cheap, even for the area. Most two bedrooms seem to go for around $1000, so one thing I want to determine is if there's something seriously wrong inside, or if they've just miss-priced things.

Credit Card Update!
So, in about a month and a half, I should have my credit cards paid off! Okay, not ALL paid off, but the rest of the money floating on the cards is accounted for. I have about $3.1K in school loans that my company will reimburse, $2K in house earnest money that's sitting in my bank account for when I need it, and $800 for my sister's plane ticket to Singapore. The earnest money will be rolled into my home loan and returned to me when I buy the house. I'm only buying at well-below market value, so while I know this is a risk, it's calculated, and I'm willing to take it. I'm alright floating my sister the money for Singapore--it's at 0%, and she's paying it off at $120/month. She's getting BETTER with her money, but she needed some help for the trip. She works 80-100 hours a week, so she really did deserve the trip. She's 35, and as a resident in Boston, she doesn't make that much money.

May should be a good month, financially. It's one of the two "magic" months in the year where my bi-weekly pay period affords me three paychecks. That, and the big tax reimbursement will be coming, so there's another $600.

Time Accounting
I was sitting around thinking of how I've never been that good at making schedules and sticking with them. If I set a date for when something has to be completed, I procrastinate horribly, and I spend too much time worrying about the process. This has gotten worse at work because I'm in charge of several groups and multiple projects, and I don't feel like I get anything done, anymore.

I've decided to look at my time more like I look at my finances. I used to run into the same problems with finances as I do with time: I set goals as to when I wanted to be debt-free, but I never just sucked it up and started paying the debt.

At work, I'm no longer going to give people "completion" dates, because I ALWAYS blow by these. I'm just going to tell them how long I'll work on a project, then I'll hand back the project after that time has passed, no matter how far I'm into it. I think, in reality, that I'll finish up more work this way, and I won't beat myself up and spend to much time on any one assignment. I think it's going to make me more efficient. I haven't worked out the details, but I'll update you as to how this new method works for me.