October 13, 2008
on Major Announcements: we’ve had a wedding, a new baby has been born, another baby is in gestation, and two engagements have been announced. That’s this year alone. At least all the actual events will occur next year. In the meantime, I have to be sure to have travel money to attend the baby’s birth, vacation time for nannying (this is my best friend/practically sister, after all), and travel money for at least one of the two weddings to the MidWest which looks to be $500-$700 for airfare alone. My pocketbook weeps. At least it weeps in a lovely new bag?
on all things lips: no more lip gloss, lip color, lip stains, lip balms, lip anything may be purchased, acquired or brought home. Not even if it’s free. Not even if it sits up and begs, with puppy dog eyes. Which would be weird, and all the more reason to leave it there.
on negativity: Monday is bring the dog to work day, summer weather is leaving us for a whole five days before we see the 90s again and I have a brand new fuzzy sweatshirt for just the occasion, I’m having delicious chicken-pasta-tomato basil soups for lunch. Also, ten fingers, ten toes, full mental (ok, arguable) capacity, and enough mobility to get around. I have every reason to be happy!
on cruising slickdeals.net “just looking” at electronics deals: duh.
October 12, 2008
My darling friend is curled up asleep as I scan my next to last batch of files. I’m calling it quits here because I feel bad that she’s been hosting me for the last 3.5 hours on Leg Two of the Scan-a-thon. Planning on treating her to dinner, if she’ll let me. In the meantime, a seven-day spending report:
Monday: $6 lunch, necessary but unsatisfying. A shame, but I hadn’t any time to grocery shop over the weekend. C’est la vie.
Tuesday: Managed some leftovers, and received both the latter half of the $400 I loaned my dad, and another $130 in reimbursements for some of their spending. Notice that he’s been a lot more on the ball with that sort of thing.
Wednesday: $3.79 sandwich, quite satisfying. There’s a place we can get enormous burritos and sandwiches which are totally worth the price [the sandwiches even come with sprouts as part of their extensive veggie selection] but if I eat there too often, my stomach gets accustomed to their serving sizes.
Thursday: office lunch to belatedly celebrate my birthday. That evening, shopping [$17.68, two white tank tops] and a dinner to see an out of town friend cost and $11 after tax and tip. I had a coconut veggie curry at PF Cheng’s and was pleasantly surprised. Was also quite pleased that my friend “stole” my order option of the Szechwan tofu and broccoli because it was hothothot. Received another lovely purse, this time a green and olive tote by NineWest that I cannot locate a picture of to share. Nonetheless, it’s lovely and holds everything I need in a day, and is smaller and lighter than the red leather behemoth I’ve been toting. Note on the tank tops: I probably could have gotten them at Old Navy for cheaper but I already knew that these tops fit perfectly. Coupled with the need to find skirts for friend before dinner, we didn’t have time to waste. Y’all should be impressed: we checked three stores, bought two items each, and were on our way to dinner within 20 minutes.
Friday: Leftovers for lunch, went straight home after work and stayed there: no spending!
Saturday: Lots of spending – $11, eyebrows: they look smashing now. Previously: awful.
$13, hair cut: not so smashing. She cut it too short and didn’t manage the bangs well. Am glad I have nearly two weeks before anything important.
$9, soups and pasta at the grocery store. These will make for some very cheap lunches this week. The Progresso veggie soups will be bases, combined with penne pasta, either in the soup or separately, and chicken. We’ve been getting whole chickens for about 79 cents a pound, so for a dollar/can of soup, and < $1 per serving of chicken, the lunches will be something like $3 per. I might get some broccoli to throw in the pasta or soup midweek as well.
Sunday: No spending of money, spent time working on work-stuff, helping a friend with homework, and scanning. I’ve a pile a foot high ready for shredding. Sweet!
All in all, about $71 in personal spending all week. And the eyebrows were totally worth it. The hair? Not so much.
October 8, 2008
So if colleagues are wearing something like this (no sparkles, though):
or this:
Is it really so bad that I want to wear this? (It’s a t-shirt.)
I know, I know. One unprofessional outfit should not beget another. But my new shirt is so cute. Can you see the radish that was ninja-starred right in the “head”?
September 29, 2008
Some months ago, a friend and I discussed how buying banks is currently A Bad Idea. Considering Wamu had dropped to about $12/share, it definitely seemed like banks were in for a wild ride. Friend recently confessed to buying more financials: more Wamu, Citigroup, Wachovia, Amex. Given our conversation and conviction with which “banks are bad” was previously stated, I couldn’t resist ribbing Friend today.
Revanche: Did you hear about Citi + Wachovia?
Friend: Don’t remind me about Citi + Wachovia.
R: Why, isn’t this a good thing? Doesn’t this mean at least one set of stocks won’t be worthless? *blink blink*
F: I hate you.
R: Hey, good news: current bailout plan voted down! (Friend was unhappy about the bailout.)
F: Hm, modified bailout (less money) will probably come up for vote soon. Maybe they’re waiting for my financials portfolio to become insolvent first.
R: That’s not going to take long. Are you really going to hold on to them?
F: What choice do I have?
R: Do you have a good reason to hold on? “Hope” isn’t really a strong strategy.
F: Locking in my losses isn’t a good strategy, either. Any other advice, Ms. Buffett?
R: My logic sucks less than yours, Wamu.
F: Grrr…..
I wanted to point out that selling at a loss and having a tax credit seems better than having more worthless stock (a la the Wamu shares) at the end of the day. Buuut I think Friend was no longer in the mood to chat. And what do I know, anyway? I don’t play in the stock market.
September 19, 2008
What does it say about my sense of money when my reaction to this was: ooh! A bowl of ramen? Yummy!
Ohhhh. Pack of ramen. Bad raise. I get it.
September 18, 2008
An exercise in thinking like you’re rich.
I had a financial conversation with a colleague recently. ’twas random, we don’t usually talk money. He was on his way to open a new account over at Wells Fargo so that he could move his money out of WAMU, and I dismissively joked that as long as he had less than $100k in there, he’d be fine. Stressed, he said that he DID have more than that in there.
Yipes! I immediately, reflexively, scolded him, and then asked, “why Wells?” After all, they’re the one bank I remember as consistently charging the most and highest fees of all the major banks. It turns out, he says, they’re one of the few banks doing relatively well.
We chatted for some time about banks, online and B&M, and I had a hard time believing that he knew nothing about online banks. He’s understandably nervous, since he apparently isn’t very financially involved, so he just wants protection for his money. I can understand wanting to protect yourself, but I cautioned him not to settle for the first thing that seems safe just because he’s desperate for safety. Also, that’s what causes bank runs!
I advised him to look at INGDirect, Emigrant Direct, HSBC Direct, and FBNO Direct to get an idea of what kinds of online banks and services are available to him.
He wanted to know how I know that ING is safe. Well, darlin’, no bank is ironclad safe, but I don’t see any evidence that ING was offering the kinds of creative, “exotic” mortgages that all the big (B&M) boys were. At least it appears they didn’t participate in the bad-debt-generating feeding frenzy, so we know that’s good. Their primary business seems to be savings vehicles like their Electric Orange and savings accounts, CDs, and basic mortgages.
After we hung up, I realized: what am I doing giving somewhat superficial financial advice to someone has actual money to worry about? My net worth is less than his small change in the bank! Good grief.
I know he started picking my brains, but I felt a tad irresponsible for not assessing the situation more properly, asking more questions, and working with some actual data before making suggestions. Who’s to say I’m ready to play with big boys’ money?
All of that got me thinking: What DO you do when you have that kind of money (in the six figures)? What should you do if you had upwards of $100k in cash at the bank? I wouldn’t imagine that it would all be cash sitting in a savings account, right? My immediate reaction would be that some of it should be locked up in some high-interest bearing CDs, and a certain amount would have to stay in liquid cash savings accounts, but what about the rest of it?
The main goals would be 1) maximizing interest earnings while 2) keeping the money as safe as possible. Both conditions would have to be fulfilled when picking banks. Part of keeping that money safe is diversifying banks so that if one fails, I still have access to money at another one that is (I hope!) still functioning. Another part of that is making sure that all assets are insured by the FDIC: this means keeping the balances below the 100k limit. Theoretically, this isn’t playing-with-stocks-money, this is all savings.
If you had $150,000 in cash, how would you divvy it up and where would it go?
I’d keep $30K in savings accounts, at ING, for emergencies. Next, ING has an 18-month CD at 4.5% APY so I’d take them up on that for $50k, leaving myself a $20k FDIC cushion. After that? I’m not sure. Another $50 would probably be stashed at ED, at 3% APY. That leaves me with $20k. Without doing more research, I’d be tempted to leave the remaining $20k at Emigrant, but I still don’t have a regular B&M in this plan. So I could leave most of that $20k at ED, and a few thousand in a checking account like my Citibank account for paying bills.
I would also consider the Charles Schwab Bank which seems to have solid financial footing right now, and very little credit losses.
If I wasn’t certain about the amounts I already had in the banks, if I wasn’t just-now divvying up and depositing my money which is a more likely scenario than suddenly finding a sack of hundreds of thousands of dollars, I would use EDIE the Electronic Deposit Insurance Estimator to determine how much I had in FDIC covered banks, and make my moves accordingly.
Whew! There’s a whole lot of work involved in managing wealth. I guess it might be true what they say: the more money you have, the more time you have to spend thinking about it. Or at least, you definitely have to have a plan if you want to protect that hard-earned money.
What if you had $150k? $200k? $250k?
Shenanigans!
The work computer and iPhone officially hate each other. If it’s not a failed Sync, it’s a failed backup. If it’s neither of those, iTunes refuses to acknowledge that iPhone is plugged in. If it deigns to acknowledge iPhone long enough to perform any sort of task, it’s sure to kick the phone out of its digital system the second I turn my back. Before it does that, though, it wipes out all my alarms and music so I’m stuck without music and don’t know my alarm won’t go off in the morning.
This feels like trying to get two belligerent three-year-olds to cooperate without smearing peanut butter all over the walls, in their shoes and hair, and anything else they can reach.
Or is it just me?
