May 19, 2008
I officially declare today, Monday, May 19th a ME DAY. [Fun nerd fact: In 1998, May 19th was our D-Day for an AP test. I can’t believe I still remember that.] The bosses owed me a freebie day off (off the books) since they gypped us before our last business trip, and the way those fellas have been acting, I decided I’d better take it before they “forgot” about it. It’d just be too too convenient.
But, before I go on out and play, I’d better get some of this money madness off my mind or I’ll be distracted all day.
Unbudgeted Spending:
Amazon – Friend’s gift – $32
Grocery store – household supplies on sale – $23
Post Office – few sheets of Forever stamps to last a year – $23
Parents’ gas and grocery spending – way too much. ~ $220?
My personal spending doesn’t seem like much, but it’s outside the budget entirely which throws a major kink in the expense account. And I’m still brainstorming about which tailoring jobs I can afford before the end of July because I need some of my nicer clothes to fit me for another business trip. I’m going to need to get even more creative to pay for these expenses without dipping into the mini e-fund, because I’m already doing that for rent. Grr.
Misc Income:
PayPerPost – I’ve not had ANY new opportunities for at least a week or two now. 🙁 Why am I suddenly unqualified? I am getting the payouts from last month’s posts, though, so I can add $33.50 to my fledgling house fund.
Ebates – A check should be coming my way at the end of the quarter.
Chase rewards – I love my cash plus card, with 5% on gas and groceries, I’m already near my next $50 check! That’ll help cover half of the expenses above. At least something reduces the sting of $50/tank of gas!
Regular Income:
It’s just not cutting it. I was able to make do with creative juggling for a while, but I’m going to have to do something drastic to increase my take-home for at least a month or two. There’s a big ole knot in my tummy as I say this, but I’m going to cut out my contributions to the 403(b). I don’t get a match on that anyway, so I won’t be losing free money, and I’ll start up again as soon as I find out what the heck’s going on with my salary come July 1st. It’s time to be an adult about this decision, and not pout about it. (I’m totally pouting.) My biggest fear is that I’ll get comfortable with the “extra” income and not want to start contributing again, much less contributing more at the end of the year to make up the difference. Also, it’s felt like the retirement contributions were the only goals I was meeting this year.
Alright! So I’m off to find a Macy’s because I have a gift card and I’m not afraid to use it if I find my holy grail of bags. And then I’m taking myself to see Ironman. Yeah! (Prepaid ticket.)
May 18, 2008
I don’t wish I were less organized and more rich, no, no, I’d like to retain my level of organization and be richer than that. I know, apples to oranges. But it’d sure make booking last minute fares for a holiday weekend seem less painful/impossible.
I’d rearranged my schedule and wanted to visit BD in June, but it turns out he has to be here for the weekend. That means no us time. Instead, he asked me to see if I could make a Memorial Day weekend trip happen. Compared to the $600+ prices for just a regular, round-trip ticket, the $300 fare plus an unnecessary rental car on Travelocity almost seems like a deal. Uh, I don’t think so, Tim. And with gas prices, driving would cost at least … $120 each way. Eeep! Even with an awesome 400-450 miles per tank average, that’d still be a doozy of a gas bill. Oh, plus over 8 hours of driving each way.
But if I were rich and had $7000 in my travel fund, not just $700, I would probably go ahead and spend up to $350 to go see him for a long weekend.
Phooey. Times like these, I can’t wait to be financially secure and even well-off.
April 9, 2008
To continue the GN/BN series …..
Good News: It’s been two months since I switched to AT&T. After all my griping and moaning about the expensive plans, and most especially, the lack of minutes with those plans, I was pleasantly surprised by my usage of the past two months. I was going from 1000 minutes to 450. I was fully using those 1000 minutes every month, as well as 400 text messages, so the concern that I was either in for a smackdown reality bill, or wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone at all seemed pretty valid.
Instead, I’ve closed each billing period with a little over a hundred minutes to rollover, so I’m pretty happy about that. Granted, I have been imposing pretty strict limits on my chatting, and it helps that I ride to and from work with a friend most days now so I don’t have to spend an hour on the ride home on the phone anymore. Oh, and he’s on AT&T so even if I did talk to him because we took different trains, that just comes out of my mobile to mobile minutes.
Bad News: I’ve reviewed my latest bill, and there is no corporate discount!! Grrr …..
February 26, 2008
I just remembered that I needed to add my new AT&T Wireless account to Yodlee, after I’ve received and paid one paper bill.
All my other accounts on Yodlee are your basic credit card, checking or rewards accounts. Where applicable, they offer a New Bill Notification, a 7-days until due date Notification, and a High Spending Notification. For cell phones, they offer a “within 60 minutes of your minutes allotment” Notification!
How nice! While I already neurotically check my minute usage every couple of days, this extra notification will give me a nudge if ever I’m too busy and don’t remember to check.
February 22, 2008
Ladies, gentlemen, have you ever been into a store where a salesperson took a look at you, sized you up, and starting excitedly pulling various articles of clothing from racks and the back room for your perusal? And then have him or her create completely unexpected outfits from a variety of shapes and colors to make you look more professional, chic, and I’m-not-really-trying than you’ve ever looked in your life?
Neither had I.
Yesterday, I wandered into a Theory shop just to look at the mannequin outfits more closely and meant to walk right back out. Instead, Bosses both followed me in, chatting about business, and started looking at things too. The salesman must have thought “Score! She’s got two sugar daddies!” and jumped right into chatting us up about sizes. It was the total opposite of a Pretty Woman-esque scene, except more humiliating because that place is v-e-r-y expensive and I had no intention of buying.
Instead of making my escape, I experienced the slightly mortifying transformation from my “twenty something in jeans, nice-ish $25 top, nice-ish on sale for $35 blazer, trying to look pulled together for actual professional job” outfit to a “chic, sophisticated, costs more than I make in two weeks but it’s so sharp!” ensemble. That’s right. We moved right out of the realm of outfits thrown together by a less than discerning eye into ensembles.
I know it’s his job, and all he had to choose from were high-end, high priced pieces to create the ensembles so the odds were stacked in his favor, but it was still disconcerting how quickly he managed to fill a sizable dressing room with pieces that individually cost more than the entire contents of my duffel bag for this trip.
I tried on this lovely beige jumper type dress with a series of buttons down the front and cute little kangaroo pouch pocket. He accessorized it with a pair of flats and a few belts, teaching me the four-square knot because “since Casablanca, no one actually buckles their belts anymore.” I’ve already forgotten how to tie the knot. *sheepish*
Then, there was this knock-’em-over-you’re-so-swank get-up. The trench coat alone cost $495. The tank top underneath that button down shirt cost $90. I can only speculate that the other pieces, the shirt, the pants, and the shoes, in between those two layers were also priced in between their prices because I didn’t dare look. Lightheadedness might have been induced by wearing my net worth in clothes 😉
While I was thoroughly impressed at the salesman’s ability to actually make me look put together, I was equally embarrassed that he was going to all that trouble when I couldn’t afford a single thing I was wearing. Oy! Admittedly, I wouldn’t go broke buying the tank top, or even an entire outfit, but there is no way on this green earth I was going to trash my budget to assuage window shopper’s guilt. I definitely felt bad for wasting his time, but I was still not forking over my rent.
I didn’t take pictures of the other dresses I tried on, but they were gorgeous and $300 each. $300!! Oh, a couple were $265. Little Boss had the audacity to say, “ohhh that’s not bad for a dress! If it were $400, that’d be too much.” As if that man doesn’t sign my paychecks! And Big Boss gave me a lecture on how $365 was a steal for the stunning, single-button, white suit jacket I’d found. A lecture! I wanted to shake them both. There I was, feeling rightfully guilty over a nearly $40 dress, and they were lecturing me on how this or that piece is an investment. Obviously I’d wear that trench coat for 20 years, I’d have to! But I can’t amortize the BILL over 20 years as well. Ok, I’m ranting.
Anyway. I swooned over a few of the pieces I tried, but it’s definitely tempered by the embarrassment of having to walk out because that’s just way too far above my pay grade. I could honestly say that I couldn’t decide what I wanted more because it was overwhelming, but it’s just not reasonable to spend that much in the name of looking professional. Not on this salary and with these troubles at home.
It’s customer service like that that makes it hard to resist the pull of lifestyle inflation and remember how much I love to think to myself “it only cost $not much.00” if someone compliments what I’m wearing. Someday, perhaps, I’ll have collected enough Macy’s gift cards to visit the San Francisco Macy’s and buy an “investment” piece made by Theory, but until then, it’s back to the more pedestrian shops (or no shopping at all!) for simple me.
October 31, 2007
BoyDucky recently caught an erroneous charge to his debit card when he was preparing to pay bills to the tune of $450.
Luckily, BofA is willing to give him a temporary credit because he caught the charge the morning it showed up on his statement, but the onus is on him to disprove the charges, and to prove that the charge was made without his authorization.
If he doesn’t jump through their hoops, however, (returning the affadavit with the correct boxes checked off, the name of the possible perpetrator, etc., within 5 days of receipt; returning a copy of the police report within 7 days of reporting the incident) they’re going to take that temporary credit right back.
On top of being at an out of town hospital with his father 4 of 7 days of the week, he’s had to:
1. Contact the business where he believes the credit card number was stolen by an employee (because that’s the only time the card has ever been out of his sight);
2. Try to get the employee’s first and last names, which means explaining the whole situation to the various Supercuts managers;
3. Wait for the manager and corporate offices and police to review their store tapes. They found that it does look like the employee copied something down onto a Post-It and put it in his pocket;
4. Talk to the police and schedule an appointment to meet as soon as he’s back in town.
5. See if they can track down the charge and if it can be connected to that scuzzy guy who had his mitts on BoyDucky’s card.
I’ve warned him countless times of perils of using debit cards in fraud situations and he’s always shrugged it off. Believe me, I know the pain of dealing with false charges and credit cards are the way to go. If he hadn’t caught the charge immediately, BofA wouldn’t have given him a credit and he’d be out $450 for however long it takes to resolve the situation.
The most work I’ve ever had to do for false charges, like an extra “tip” a restaurant gave itself, was to report it as fraudulent to the credit card company. They immediately sent me verification paperwork to swear on someone’s grave that I did not, and no authorized users, authorized the charge, and then the company had to prove that they were allowed to charge my card. In one case, I had a copy of the receipt with my signature and written tip; in another, I never charged anything to that company so they had to prove that I did. I was never out any money, and the credit card company settled the problems painlessly.
Of course, my fraud problems were directly associated with a business and were obviously due to an employee stupidly trying to line his or her pocket for a whole dollar or so.
We’ll have to hope that the employee conveniently tried to pay on his account or something directly linked to him like that because if not, there’s no way that employee can be sacked based only on suspicion of stealing the card number.
July 25, 2007
Many of your comments to my post on my parents’ possible business venture were great moral support and bolster to my common sense and caution. I truly wanted to hear your thoughts because this is an emotionally driven situation in which I feel a knee-jerk reaction coming on, instead of a carefully considered decision. And as Matt pointed out, if my instinct is telling me something, I should pay attention, whether or not I ultimately choose to listen.
There are a number of issues that concerned me with regards to the money-lending situation:
1. Can I afford to lose this money?
2. Would I resent the loss of this money? Or the waste of any profits, should there be any?
3. Is the business plan and market sound? Is there true long-term potential (we’re talking about years, not months)?
And then of course, Mapgirl came through with an extremely thoughtful and detailed response to my request. She had some great questions as well, a few of which I’ve borrowed for your perusal:
4. Did your parents ask you for the money? Or are you thinking of volunteering the money?
5. Do you want to protect your investment?
6. Do *you* think it’s risky?
7. Have you and your folks done the due diligence and talked to other owners besides their friend and his wife?
8. Do you want a say in how the money is used and when it’s paid back?
The huge red flag here is that I felt the need to ask for advice: if I were comfortable losing this money (or giving it away, since personal loans to family and friends are best considered gifts and repayments as bonuses), I wouldn’t need to ask. That means that I’d better have a very good reason for risking my financial security, if I choose to.
Another factor is that I’ve been retraining myself to stop thinking emotionally: that everything that’s mine is theirs. It can’t be, not if I’m going to make it out of this situation and help them in the long-term. I’m the saver, and they’ve been living on the edge far too long; they’ve lost sight of long-term planning.
I absolutely must be financially secure, and thriving, to be able to support them in their later years. Obviously, that means not throwing money away and not making unwise decisions. The need to help them upon request is born of that old habit wherein I rushed to the rescue in every situation, rather than judiciously, and as English Major pointed out, is probably more enabling than helping. What can I say? I was young and stupid. I’m not young anymore, so I can’t be stupid anymore either 🙂
So, could I afford to lose this money? I don’t include it as part of my net worth, I don’t count it in my savings plans and goals. For all intents and purposes, I don’t have that money until I recall the loan. It wouldn’t really be losing money, in the sense of having a big empty hole in my savings account. But would I resent the loss of it? Yes. Even though I don’t count it, knowing that it’s there and doing some “work,” and could be recalled is another form of emergency fund. In six months, if I really am out thousands of dollars because of my brother, I’ll need and want all the cushion I can get. In protecting this money, I’m protecting all of us against some level of financial disaster. Someone has to pay the rent.
3. Is the business plan sound? Magic 8-ball says: Wait and see.
4. Yes, Ma asked me if she could put some of the charges on my credit card that she’s an AU on. She doesn’t know if the wholesaler takes cards, but she knows that I prefer to use cards over cash, and it’s a good way to track expenses.
Again, I’m not comfortable charging anything that I don’t already have the money for, so I wasn’t in favor of this idea. She also floated the idea of using a 0% BT in her/Pa’s name, but I’m almost positive neither she or Pa’s credit has recovered enough to make that idea feasible. Last time we dug them out of credit card debt by transferring their balances to my 0% card. And eventually I paid off the remainder of the balance for them. Thousands of dollars later, I’m not putting another balance on my cards, even at 0% because I have tons of other savings goals to meet, not just pay-off-others’-debt.
5. I consider this a loan, not an investment, but perhaps there are advantages to thinking of it as an investment? If anything, I just want to give them a start, I don’t expect any profit from it. There are indirect advantages if they regain their financial independence, though, as the daily burden of supporting them would eventually ease. Still, that wouldn’t be expected in the early months.
6-7. My objection is primarily to the lending of money in a venture I don’t know enough about, but more light should be shed on the matter in the next several weeks. Pa is to research the market and plans to discuss the matter with some friends who own the businesses he’d like to supply. They’ll give him a better idea of the services they’d expect if they were to use him, and whether or not they’d be willing to come on board as customers.
8. I expect them to tell me how the money is being used (for inventory) and that it’ll be paid back as they begin to see a profit. However, knowing that Pa has a few other financial obligations that he’s being close-mouthed about, and that he’ll have to attend to those so that he doesn’t have to borrow from me, I’d have to accept that I wouldn’t truly have a say. Again, could I live with that? I’m not sure.
There are a lot of trust issues at play here, and the most important is that I’m not willing to see our relationship further corroded by resentment or arguments over business decisions. And, if I’m smart enough to see that they cannot work with my brother, I have to take a good look at whether or not I can work with them.
Tentatively, I think I could live with this: Ma thinks she can earn enough side money monthly to make a healthy repayment on the loan. Her most insiduous problem tends to be letting that money trickle away to pay Pa’s, or her unexpected, expenses if she doesn’t have a compelling reason to STOP touching that money. She can start giving me that money now and I’ll put it away in one of my high interest accounts while Pa’s doing his research. If enough information supports this as a feasible plan, I will see if I can reasonably supplement the pot with a rational portion of my own money, depending on how much I can save in the interim, and give the whole amount as a loan. Eventually, when they pay it back, I’ll take Ma’s portion of the seed money and keep it in savings for her.
I’ve got to learn when and how to say no, and saying “I can only help this much right now” is a start.
