9/11 - Where were you?

None of us will ever forget 9/11 and many of us remember exactly where we were and exactly what we were doing. Where were you? What were you doing?

I was at home, living on an Air Force base. My mother in law called and told me to turn on the tv. I turned it on just in time to see the second plane hit within a few minutes. I sat there holding my six month old realizing that my husband is in pilot training and we are probably going to war.

Within hours we were told the base was going into lock down. We only had a till a certain time to go get groceries before the commissary closed. I walked through the store that day that barely had any thing left to buy, because there were so many of us living there. I drove home and I had to go past 5 armed soldiers just to get into my neighborhood even though I was already on base. I believe it was three days before we could leave base, but then you had to go through grueling security to get back on. It usually took around three hours. This went on for weeks, maybe months.

Typhoon Lagoon at Disney World

I am a huge fan of waterparks and I must say Disney World's Typhoon Lagoon did not disappoint.   

• They had an awesome kiddie waterpark, complete with sand to play in.  There is a large wave pool, body slides, snorkeling, a lazy river, tube slides and more.  
• You can bring your own life jackets for the kids, but there is really no need to, because they offer kids life jackets for free.  You pick them up in the same area you would get a locker.  
• You can bring in a cooler.  Unlike the other Disney parks where you can only bring in soft sided coolers, there are no restrictions on them here.  We took in a large hard sided cooler filled with food, because we knew we were be there all day.  
• We also brought in the stroller for the baby to take his nap in.  We found a spot in the sand near the kiddie area and set up for the day!

Kid's area at Typhoon Lagoon

 Includes a large ship where you can spray water at people, tunnels, and tube slides just for kids, tiny slides on a splash pad and soft things to climb on.

 

Snorkel Zone at Typhoon Lagoon

Something unique that I had never seen at a water park, was the snorkeling area.  You could check out goggles for free.  The water is quite cold, because there are sting rays and sharks in there!

This is a picture of the bottom of one of the bigger tube slides.

Blizzard Beach, Disney's other water park

Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique

                                     
Disney Tickets - Buy 3 Days, Get 1 Day FREE to Walt Disney World. Plus, FREE Shipping!

Rich Dad Poor Dad

To continue on about my quest to make money or atleast do better at making money and investing, I will start back with the first book I read.  In Rich Dad Poor Dad he make a lot of money through rental properties.  We have two rental properties, but I wouldn't say we are making money on either.  But we are slowly paying down the mortgages and hopefully building equity.....if the market quits dropping!  This is not how this guy would suggest making money.  He recommends getting a house for super cheap and renting it.  We on the other hands bought "homes" both times.  Not rental properties.  If we had bought them with the rental concept in mind then we would probably actually be making money because it would have totally changed what the conditions were when we were looking.  With all that said, we are not going to but another house just to have a rental property.  If you are thinking about this though I would take this guy's suggestion and buy somewhere the market is horrible, Vegas or Phoenix. 

Knowing that this main option was a no go I turned to his other suggest and found a business opportunity.  I am a stay at home mom obviously and a military wife that moves all the time.  These two factors limit what I can do.  So, I went with what I knew I could do.  I could work from home and use the internet.  I looked into a lot of options and settled with Amway.  The start up costs were incredibly low and you could really build a business through it.  I already had a basic understanding of how you could make money from using Ebates.  I realized quickly I could do the same thing through Amway.  Buy the products I was going to buy anyway and get 3% or more back.  The more people I recruited to do the same thing the higher my percentage.  Easy!  http://www.amway.com/meaganshamy  I realized that 3% doesn't sound like much, but it really adds up when you are buying food, makeup, cleaning products....and whatever else it is you buy for your family.  Plus, they have other stores they have partnered with like Best Buy, Disney, Barnes and Noble, Petco....that you get money back on as well. 

Now that I had this going for me I just had to figure out what to invest my new income in.  I knew I no longer wanted to put money in my mutual fund, but I still hadn't come across a better option.  Next up....the best investing book I ever read.