Monday Q&A | Saturday Posting, Blotchy Spray Paint, and ING Checking Accounts

Every Monday, I answer a few of the questions that my readers send me. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future Q&A post, just leave me a comment here or email me (thefrugalgirl [at] gmail [dot] com) and put Q&A in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you!

Did I miss something? Are you taking Saturdays off now or this is a temporary thing? Either way is a-okay, I just wanted you to know that your absence is noticed and your presence missed!

-Diane

Ha! No, not officially. My spotty posting on Saturdays has been a result of Mr. FG’s schedule change. For the last two years, he’s been working Tuesday-Saturday, and that meant that doing a Saturday post was easy because I was up early.

He’s now working Monday-Friday, though, which is great. It does make doing Saturday posts a bit more tricky (plus, this past Saturday I’d just gotten back from my Chicago trip, and hadn’t had any time on the computer).

However, that should improve this week. He’s received a promotion at work (yay!), but this promotion has come with a schedule change. Instead of working really early, he’s working really late. In fact, his workday will now start when it used to end (2:00 pm).

So, instead of blogging early in the morning, now I’ll be blogging late at night when the kids are in bed. I plan to write my posts ahead for the next day, so I’ll write the Saturday posts on Friday night.

This is a really big change for our family, but honestly, we’re so, so sick of getting up at 4:40 am, we’re up for the challenge of adjusting to this unusual schedule. Even if it’s just as hard, it’ll at least be a different kind of hard.

Though we’ve been on a M-F schedule the last two weeks, this is our first week on the late schedule, so we’ll be trying to figure out how to best use the time we’ve got with Mr. FG before he goes to work. I’ll keep you posted!

I tried to paint a bedroom suite. I sanded a little, primered then spray painted. I wanted it to have that nice finish that some of the black furniture has now. It looks really good, but is has dark spots like where there was more spray here and there. Is there any way I can fix this or prevent it when I do the dresser. I’m doing it for my newly married grandkids and I wanted it to look really nice.

Thanks, Teresa

That’s a typical problem with spray paint, unless the paint is a flat sheen. The only solution I’ve seen for that is to spray with a flat paint and then use polyerethane to provide an even sheen.

I personally do not prefer to spray paint my furniture because of the blotchy sheen issue, so I use the brush-on Painter’s Touch paint, just like I described in my post about how to paint wooden furniture.

It’s also possible that you did get more spray paint in some areas than others. To prevent that issue, you can do thinner coats, and try to be more even when you spray. Really, though, I think it’s a lot simpler just to follow my brush-on method, and I’ve been SO much happier with the results. Give it a try!

I’m recently married and my husband and I are trying to organize our bank accounts. We want to have joint checking and savings accounts and are considering ING, partly based on your strong recommendation. Our only hang up is how much of a hassle it seems to deposit checks into an ING account. Direct deposit is easy enough but the options for depositing personal checks don’t really sound that great.
I know you have ING savings accounts, do you use ING for checking? If so, how do you feel about their approach to depositing money?

-Elspeth

I do maintain a checking account at our local credit union for that very reason. Mr. FG’s income almost always comes in the form of direct deposit, but I have lots of small streams of income, and those typically come in the form of a check.

I opened an ING checking account to get the bonus they were offering, but I haven’t used it much. It has come in handy for my PayPal account, though…Mr. FG and I both needed checking accounts to link to our PayPal accounts, so it was nice to have two!

So, yeah…mostly I’m a fan of ING for savings accounts. I love those with all my heart

(If you’re reading this and haven’t experienced the fabulousness, go read this post about how I use my ING accounts and then open one. Or two. Or three. It could change your life!)

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Today’s 365 post:I was trying to take a picture of Sonia and Mr. FG

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