April 16, 2010
It only took, oh, 15 years and 7 months to get myself back into gaming. Not only could I not justify the cost of a new game system, I then couldn’t bring myself to spend money on games.
Thanks to generous early adopter friends, I have an awesome new-to-me Nintendo DS, and San Diego mom gave me games for Christmas. But it turns out that my latest pasttime, being a PF blogger, has ruined me for gaming.
Y’see, the game I’m playing is Ninjatown which is a hilariously cute game based on Shawnimals. It’s a simple tower defense game: you versus a bunch of baddies. The Goal: don’t let them cross the bridge/eat the bridge/otherwise touch the bridge. Defense is accomplished by spending Ninja Cookies to buy and build Ninja Huts which each contain two defenders of varying strengths and skills who deploy to fight the invading hordes.
Personal finance makes me fail on three levels….
Spending
You start every level with a set number of cookies. You have to spend them to build your defenses. As you play through the level, each enemy is worth another 5 or so cookies, and as you earn them you should be spending them to build more, upgrade more, and generally make your defenses more awesome. My first dozen rounds I kept dying because I wanted to save my cookies, not spend them!
No Saving
You can’t save your cookies from level to level, either! They all have to be spent within that level to win because it mocks you mercilessly if you lose. And you get graded, on top of the mockery, so not only do you get scored on how many cookies you earned, you’re judged by how well you used those cookies but not how many cookies you saved! What kind of lesson is that to be teaching kids these days???
Depreciation/resale
You can actually sell your huts and towers if you want to …… at a loss. Which is, in this economy, totally true to life, but it also means that I refuse to sell anything, ever. Even if I placed it poorly, even if my shoulder spazzed out and put it completely in the wrong place and it’s totally ruined my strategy, I refuse to sell it at a loss. Because in real life, I’m a buy and hold investor. If I bought real estate as an investment, I would expect to be in it for the long term and get a renter in there to defray costs, etc. Selling at a loss would be my last resort. In a ten minute game, you don’t have time to buy and hold or reach the last resort.
Clearly I have trouble with suspending disbelief to immerse myself in video games, but at least that means I bring one important skill to the table: TENACITY. I don’t care how many times I get the “You seem to be having trouble defending this area [snerk], would you like to play in Easy Mode [snicker]?”
NO. I will not wuss out and play Easy Mode. I’m defending Ninjatown in Regular Mode because there IS no Easy Mode in real life!
April 15, 2010
As a supervisor one of the responsibilities I’ve got on my plate is approving the staff timesheets. When I was a non-exempt (hourly) employee, I was always on a biweekly system which meant you were paid the week following the pay period closing date. If your work week ended on Friday the ninth, that’s when your pay period ended. Your timesheets were due the next day, and you were paid the following week.
My employees are turning in timesheets in the middle of their pay period. For example, they submit on the 8th for days 1st-15th. As hourly workers, how does that make sense? If they’re out sick or have to take some time off unexpectedly during the latter half of that pay period and the timesheets are already signed, approved and submitted for processing, then you can’t very well charge their sick or vacation time appropriately, can you?
As far as I can recall, California labor law is extremely strict about accurate reporting and timesheets so I’m a little surprised that this is the payroll method used.
Does anyone have experience with the twice monthly method? Am I missing something here?
April 14, 2010
Oh, the excitement of having benefits again!! I’m already a forms + applications geek, but it’s been 9 long months since I had the privilege of drawing a paycheck from whence benefits sprang.
Health
There are about 15 different plans administered by 4 different health care providers. I took the path of least resistance and re-upped with Kaiser for now because I’ve heard good things (via Carrie Actually) and it was the cheapest premium with the most coverage. I’ve never had a problem staying in-network and I hope the healthcare providers in this area are good enough that trend continues.
Dental
I’ll go with the ubiquitous provider here, and this coverage is 100%. I’ll only have a minimal deductible, and the usual $1500 annual benefits max.
Vision
Surprisingly, they’ve got vision covered. I haven’t had a chance to evaluate the plan closely but my vision needs tend to be simple. Thanks to a long-term treatment, I have to have an eye exam every year which I should get anyway. Also, covered 100%.
Life Insurance
The usual 2x salary benefit is covered, and I opted for an additional $200k which will cost me $9/month. I can now cancel my outside coverage that costs quite a bit more per month ($50).
Short term/Long Term Disability
Covered 100%.
Flexible Spending Account
I opted in. Of course!
Commuter Benefits
Also opting in though I’ve never used it before. You can use it for both parking and transit. Even though I have the car, I’m going to take public transit when I can. Wageworks is sassing me, though, so it’ll probably take until next month to become effective.
My monthly cost should be around $250 – mostly pretax. A pretty amazing deal, considering the economy.
April 13, 2010
I discovered that the San Francisco public library has 27 branches. 2-7!! And you can go to any branch, request books from any other branch, and return books to any branch.
I died.
I can even walk to at least one of them so on my “lunch break” I skipped food to get myself a card and started requesting books like a madwoman.
Two Terry Pratchett paperbacks came home with me immediately, and I have three pending requests for management books promoted by Harvard Business Review. If they’re good, depending on the focus and subject matter, I plan to share them with my direct reports who are management material.
Has anyone ever been so excited about discovering the library over the age of five??
April 12, 2010
I could be typing this on the netbook at work on my lunch break instead of frantically tapping on the iPhone on my ride home. My hands are cramped enough already.
More importantly, I can easily carry the netbook to and from work for note-keeping purposes and keep confidential information on my employees secure. The 1-subject spiral bound that I’m using to take notes during every meeting is just not going to cut it because I have to keep taking it home with me and it’s positively NOT secure when I’m at work. I can’t very well put a diary lock on it, now can I?
There’s a touch of concern that it’ll just look uppity carrying a netbook around the office, but frankly? To save myself the time and pain of typing up post-meeting summary translation of my hand-scribbled notes and to be able to secure all employee related files on a flash drive that I can easily pop into my purse? Call me MS. Uppity!
In all seriousness, a netbook’s not in the budget. I don’t even have a new saving plan set up – I’m still waiting on my first paycheck to straighten out my budgeting. But I surely would love to make some room for it.
[small part of me pipes up: “You’ve already spent thousands already, what’s another two hundred dollars?” *smack!!* “Cuz shut up, that’s what!”]
The Skylight’s not to be released until later this summer, and there’s no way it’ll be affordable — ’tis a Lenovo, after all. But a girl can dream, can’t she?
April 10, 2010
The sun’s not shining, but I woke up naturally without a struggle at seven this morning, and had an hour to accustom myself to the odd sensation of painless early rising. That’s pretty fantastic. I was really worried about adjusting to long workdays again because of my weird spates of fatigue. I make it through longer days but am pretty beat at night
Today’s my “sixth workday” – it’s time to do everything I didn’t manage to work on during the week.
1. Log at least 3 hours on the freelance gig.
2. Write ~ 4000 words. (of which, at least some should be to help out Funny About Money)
3. Transcribe notes from work and organize them so I’ll be ready to start a new week on Monday.
4. Take my new employee training courses, plus the one assigned to my staffer.
Accomplished this week!
Counting today’s planned meals, I’ve very proud to say that I’ve only eaten out once this week. It was a little rice curry and sashimi meal (just a few pieces) to celebrate surviving my first full week intact.
I’m working on the dinner menu for next week, starting with some salmon tonight and roasted chicken tomorrow (which becomes at least two meals, chicken stock and delicious chicken soup). I’m avoiding red meats for now because they’re both expensive and less healthy, but am casting about for some good crockpot and ground turkey recipes. Not necessarily in conjunction, but I’m ok with that.
Reading this week
My gleanings aren’t as robust as usual, but I’ve been lucky to squeeze in a post or two, reading on my commute.
The NY Times continues coverage on the Pope’s earlier dealings with abusive priests. This whole thing just infuriates me. How can you look at such an egregious transgression and just say “let’s wait [years!] to conclude this decision”!? If I were Catholic, the sense of betrayal would be overwhelming.
Mrs. Micah ‘fessed up to a pretty big mistake that’s totally understandable and I’m proud of how she rallied after realizing what’d happened.
She also shared this most hilarious site specifically for designers but totally applicable to anyone who has ever dealt with clients: Clients From Hell
Me in Millions wondered why you would throw down a frugality gauntlet. In this case, it was Life as a Purse‘s challenge to herself.
MoneyMateKate had a turbulent experience traveling without her credit card. I’m totally paranoid about carrying much cash so I couldn’t do it unless I’d already phased the cards out of my life.
Having a good weekend, all?
April 9, 2010
In a lot of ways, my motivation for being responsible is because I don’t ever want to look back and wish I’d tried one thing or started another. In my mind’s eye, five or ten years from now I’m going to have certain wishes and expectations for my life that Present Me has to start to fulfill right now in order for it to come to fruition later.
Owning a Home, Having a Family
There are very few inspirations in life that spring full-form from my imagination and bear fruit immediately. Sometimes I just want a McDonald’s apple pie and that’s just a short walk and a dollar away. Other times, I want cute homemade pies and that’s a whole week of buying ingredients, finding the perfect pots, and settling down to business for a whole day.
I equate life processes with construction: you cannot have a house without a foundation; you cannot have double paned glass in your bay window seat if you never built walls. In the same way, you can’t own a home without having first secured a steady income, saved for a down payment, or managed your bills so that a mortgage would fit comfortably among your other financial obligations.
The same goes for having a family. I don’t have a mental picture of who my family “should” be (which means I fail as an Asian parent already) or what we’ll be doing, but I do know that I want us to all be healthy, hearty and whole. That means I have to have built solid relationships, platonic or romantic, to be a stable person with a spouse with whom I can be happy.
People-watching, and listening to colleagues blow off steam, has revealed that while the most unstable individuals certainly had relationships, they were flighty, nervous, insecure and altogether miserable. Sure, they weren’t miserable alone, but that just meant two people (and all their friends around them) were brought down to the same level.
I can’t control other people, but I can make wiser choices and not torture a potential spouse with unfounded accusations and neuroses that spring from previous choices.
And if I want to retire someday, it’d be a much cushier retirement if I had enough socked away 40 years from now to fund all my retirement schemes.
Reach for the stars
Even though my feet are firmly planted on the ground (and heights make me nervous so they’ll stay there), my head can be in the clouds, dreaming up the destination I’d love to arrive at some day, and mapping out the roads I might take to get there.
I won’t lie, sometimes Future Me is a demanding jerk and Present Me hates her for that.
[1. Ph.D.? Are you serious? How the H*&^%^ do I make that happen while working my way up a ladder to make 6 figures??
2. Really? Make your own wedding dress and learn to speak 4 different languages? Bite me.]
But sometimes Future Me has great ideas and Present Me can’t wait to get started.
