January 20, 2014
Possibly there should be some shame in the fact that I didn’t do ANY net worth roundups in 2013 (or 2012), but honestly, I hadn’t made my peace with the reality of combining finances with PiC. Nothing against him, I’m just a control freak when it comes to money and having to put our money together on paper like that went against the grain. Aside from that, it felt weird putting up our net worth on the internet because this isn’t his or our blog, it’s mine – how would he feel about revealing that information?
However, I don’t really believe in money-shaming or forcing the issue when it doesn’t feel right. While I operate like a sledgehammer in most other aspects of life, forcing things when it comes to money and marriage is NOT a good idea. Not for us, anyway. Slow and steady does the trick. Or will.
This year, I’m in the mood to do Net Worth roundups again. I need to have them for my own peace of mind and to know we’re making progress. However, since I’m not sure how PiC would feel about airing actual numbers (he tends to shrug when I ask), I’m going to err on the side of caution.
After a good amount of debate on Twitter, Evan suggested his method of only sharing percentages. The question came up a few times about whether there was any point to doing this, but conversely, is there a safe way to share actual hard numbers? Particularly if there’s any chance at all of our identities being revealed or our sites being discovered? (Your opinions are welcome, of course).
For the moment, I’ll always have the hard numbers behind the scenes, and I can resurrect them if this method just doesn’t sit well.
1. The net worth will be calculated midmonth, after the first paychecks are in. Just because.
2. Our Assets column will include:
Checking and savings accounts
CDs
Money Market Accounts
Stock Portfolio value
Retirement accounts
3. Our Liabilities column will include:
Mortgage
1 month of budgeted spending
We never carry credit card balances so it makes sense to me to account for the money that will come out of the checking accounts by offsetting it with a monthly spending estimate. We don’t have car notes, or any other kinds of debt, so that sums up the story!
What this means, though, is that while I’ve compiled our total Net Worth, for the intents of these updates, we are saying that as of today our
Net Worth is: 0.
Next month, theoretically, we’ll see a …0.5% increase maybe? OH GAWD. This is going to fuel my desperate need to show progress and save more, I just know it!
~ ~ ~
As for our 2014 Budget, after last year’s disappointing performance, we have negotiated an amortization scheme. Rather than forcing ourselves to make up the difference between last year’s overspending out of this year’s budget, which would suit me very well indeed, we’ll make up half the difference this year, and roll over the remaining deficit to 2015. That makes me a little antsy (job security concerns), but it’s a reasonable compromise given our natural dispositions. I don’t want our budget to turn into a bone of contention between Stingy Tightwad and LaissezFaire Spender.
January 6, 2014
Well, it’s over, and thank god for that. 😉
I’d say I was kidding but then I’d be lying – it is a huge relief not to be planning, worrying, checking up on or otherwise managing some step of the wedding process. And in a more positive light, there’s an unexpected sense of fulfillment after going through a small part of the familial traditions. We’ve been legally married more than two years, it’s a surprise to realize that the ceremony truly had deep and significant meaning and I’m now glad that I insisted on retaining that much of it.
The Funny:
1. The morning of, my hairdresser/make-up/friend got so fed up with my damnable eyes refusing to STOP BLINKING while she applied make-up that she slapped fake lashes on me and said: Deal with it. Never having worn fake lashes before I scrubbed them off that night thinking that was it, and went around with a leftover clump obscuring my vision the whole next day. What IS that?
2. There was a costume change and before I could get into the big puffy dress, 7 girlfriends hollered at me: GO PEE!! Talk about peer pressure.
3. Both PiC and my dad forgot what to do during the ceremony. We got to the top of the aisle and they just looked at each other. Bossy Mcbossypants (hi) had to coach them: SHAKE HANDS. Now HUG ME. Now you go there, you come with me this way.
4. Rehearsal. I’ve seen the tea ceremonies conducted in many variations, and figured we’d do whatever worked for us. Um, no. How could I forget that Dad would have OPINIONS THAT ARE FACT? At that point I just didn’t care how it was done, but I’d like to say for the record, I have video evidence that my perfect perfect cousins did it the way I was going to. So there.
5. We bought PiC a bowtie. Neither of us knew how to tie it. Ooops.
The Favorites:
1. Our ceremony music. I hated hated hated the idea of walking down the aisle. But there was no way around it with our venue, I had to come out SOMEHOW. So I insisted playing awesome music that I loved and that would MAKE me smile. No sappy classical for me. And sure enough, it made me grin. If you were there, I was absolutely grinning at you guys. If not, I was just tickled to death by my music.
2. Not having a bridal party. I had reasons. Asking a group of people to dress up in color coordinated clothes they’d never wear again (alert: I own 7 bridesmaid dresses. No, you can never wear them again) seemed like the opposite of keeping a low profile. Instead, I thought I’d just let it go and anyone who loved us enough to help on the day of, would. And it’s true. We were absolutely blown away by the level of help on the day before. My cousin commented somewhat enviously, with a touch of puzzlement, that I had really good friends. I do. For all of my antisocialness, I am Very Lucky in my friends.
3. Our photographers. We paid a LOT for them, and while we haven’t seen their finished product yet, they themselves were fun and easy and not weird at all to work with.
4. Doggle wore a bowtie and laid on my dress every chance he got. And he was such a good boy, just hanging out, even when being swarmed by a horde of cousin children.
5. Things we got done. We were working literally up til 1 am the morning of, and I was fine with tossing everything if it didn’t get done. But I was really happy that we found gluten free cupcakes for celiac friends, that the cake buffet was gorgeous and I have a whole cake left over for myself. That we made little gift bags for visitors. That we did hire a photobooth and I made up a lot of a scrapbook ahead of time.
The Suck:
1. Some of my obnoxious family kept monopolizing my time and getting into photos they weren’t asked to be in. Very very annoying.
2. Thanks to the above, we ended up wasting double the amount of time outside taking pictures, missing a huge part of our reception.
3. If I weren’t so damn sick, I could have asserted myself more. But my brain was stuffed up and on drugs, I was just faking my way through it. Well enough that people didn’t know I was sick, so huzzah for that, I guess.
4. The food. No wait, the food was good. Or at least I think so. I was surrounded by all that lovely food and literally did not eat more than 7 bites all day. Stupid stupid sickness taking away my appetite.
5. I pretty much collapsed after we saw off the out of town guests. Turns out I was fighting a losing battle against both the flu and an infection curiously like pneumonia since Christmas. No wonder I was just holding it together the whole day.
The Money:
We spent a fairly significant amount of money on the event – another thing that baffled my family. Normally, you do the ceremony at a house and a cheap (comparatively) banquet dinner, and the monetary gifts are enough to pay for the whole wedding and a vacation on top of it. My aunt advised we get it over with and have a vacation – her daughter had enough left over after her wedding to go to Hawaii fully paid for.
I was paying for convenience (full service location), entertainment, and getting my own way. It was enough worth it that I’m not upset about spending a bit more than twice the usual: I was pandered to just enough to keep me from starving or coughing up a lung, the entertainment kept people busy so that I didn’t have to be on my feet and talking to them the whole time.
We cashflowed the whole thing, out of the incidental money I’d set aside in the last couple of years and stretching our paychecks a little more; it might be a family thing to pay for the wedding out of gifts but I’d been determined to foot the bill myself rather than hoping the gifts would pay for it. Our friends and family were terribly generous but it wouldn’t have covered the bill so I’m glad we did it my way.
We haven’t totaled up all the costs but we probably spent $21K for the whole thing and will come out of it with: 2 suits that Dad and PiC can wear for years, enough candy to last til next Halloween, a fun scrapbook and set of photos we’d never have gotten in a normal setting, a set of professional photos, and most importantly: a strengthened relationship with each other and the family and friends who showed up for us. I wouldn’t recommend it as a means to reconciliation specifically, but for me, it became a means of rebuilding a once-treasured relationship thought to be lost years ago.
The Summary:
As PiC retells it, I “kept him honest” with the division of duties. We split a long list of things to do, but after a spat over when to get things done, I backed off. Instead of giving him grief over the things he committed to, or his version of time management, which were both giving me anxiety, I cleared the critical items and let him get on with it at his leisure. Of course, his frustrated late nights and slow progress were then entirely his burden to carry. Fair’s fair. 🙂
The wedding was just one day, but it was the culmination of a lot of days where we learned, even after ten years together, how to work as a better team even when sometimes that means not working together at all; how to accept help from loved ones; how to be reasonable; and how to take care of each other when we’re both stressed out by circumstances and each other.
October 3, 2009
First up, Quizno’s Coupons, exp 10/16/09:
1) Buy one sub and a regular fountain drink, get one sub free.
2) $1 off one sub, $2 off two subs, $3 off three subs.
I don’t like Quizno’s anymore, but I hope that any fans out there can use one of these deals.
Second, the silver lining to recent overspending mean that credit card rewards redemption time rolled around much more quickly than usual. My Chase Cash Plus check arrived in the mail: +$50
Third, slow and steady email clickthroughs have finally yielded a $25 gas gift card from MyPoints. That’ll defray a bit of the recent and upcoming driving.
Fourth, FINALLY redeemed Swagbucks for a reward. Would have gone for Amazon GCs except my savings accounts begged for a cash infusion. $5 is better than nothing. HOW is everyone accumulating ‘bucks so quickly? I feel like I’m the slowest earner ever.
Now that I’ve settled up the bill for Dad’s tickets, I’m on a mission to get lower auto insurance rates. Wish me luck!
November 29, 2008
You wouldn’t know it to look out my window, but winter is fast approaching, as is the end of the calendar year. (As opposed to the fiscal year.)
A few things to consider before December 31st:
- FSA allocations: I know my deadline for using and claiming the money is March 31st, 2009, but not if that was a universal change. Be sure to check your deadlines and balance. Have you used it up? Are you on track to, or do you have a ways to go? I still have a surprising $250 left in my account and am fresh out of painkillers so I’ll be picking up some Tylenol. Not $200 worth, but a couple large bottles should do it. A big part of the allocation was meant for my massage therapy, so it’s time to schedule a couple appointments there.
- Charitable donations: If you haven’t already made your planned contributions, didn’t plan any and are able to give a little, please remember to do so! Charities have quite a difficult time
- Tax related receipts/records: I hope that everyone’s got a sorting and tracking system they’re happy with because even I, with my new found love of Google Docs, find entering receipts a little onerous and tend to forget to do it routinely. Gather up ye receipts and organize them now so Q1 2009 doesn’t thoroughly stink!
Anything else?
Oh, also, check out Budgets are Sexy for a few more end of the year tax tips!
July 28, 2008
Back in my room after 9 hours of meeting, through a working breakfast and lunch. I had about half a day’s notice that this meeting was going to be centered around my area of expertise, at least for the first day, and given the amount of miscommunication and animosity surrounding the area, I was very concerned about how this would go. It went ok, though, considering.
Felt compelled to clean up work emails for the next hour and half since I’ve got some time before dinner, but it occurs to me that I’ve also got a week’s worth of personal finance and blogging, reading and commenting, and news to catch up on. I’ve not touched financial stuff for days and that makes me antsy. Also, my work email account is acting crazy and rejecting my password; I think it’s a sign to just do my own thing.
I almost don’t know where to start, so I’ve got about 7 windows open and the WSJ spread out on the desk in front of me.
Ah yes, and the retirement account balances have declined yet again. Not much change, then.
Am raring to complete an expense report for the San Diego trip, but not enough time. Have the feeling that this will be the state of affairs for at least a few more days.
October 23, 2007
My file maintenance leaves much to be desired. There are no regularly scheduled purges or reviews, I don’t have an actual plan for when papers are to be destroyed. I just go by the “I can’t fit any more in this old desk drawer” method.
I’ve been thinking that for the past several months as I winced pulling out the hefty 4 inch files, and again when I crammed them back in, hoping that the drawer rollers wouldn’t fail me each time. Finally the thought occurred to me that I still need to order my annual credit reports and that when I received them, it’d be a good time to go through the drawers and make some decisions about which credit cards to consolidate and kill. Also, which records to pull and shred.
That highly logical thought was followed by an OCD-like reaction: no, let’s just go through it now. Just a file or two. Just the ones you have to pull out anyway. An hour later, surrounded by piles of papers to shred, cards to shred, paper clips to reuse, and a few more files to go, I’m struck by reminiscences of my first forays into finance.
They’re all right here.
“DO NOT USE UNTIL PAID OFF.” Printed in large block letters on the paper that new credit cards come in, my first balance transfer was in 2004. I used a Citi Dividend Select Platinum card to pay off two Capital One balances for my mom. Back then, I only had a $5000 credit limit on that card, and it was only the first $5000 of many thousands of dollars worth of debt that I would ultimately pay off for them. I remember being nervous and excited, chock full of my discoveries on Fatwallet Finance, and so full of optimism and youth. Maybe I couldn’t save the world, but I was going to rescue my parents, dangit.
Careful records of credit card statements, with every single associated receipt clipped to each statement. Color coordinated highlighting to distinguish between household charges and personal charges.
An application to enroll in the Citi Driver’s Edge Drive Rebates program. One of my many failures to take advantage of a program that could have netted me a LOT of rebate cash. *sigh* I still feel stupid about letting that slide, month after month. It looks like I still have $78.94 worth of Driver’s Edge rebates to use. That’s good to know.
IngDirect, 2004. My first online savings account. Oh, how I loved it. The stack of orange statements eventually become intermingled with the white statements of Emigrant Direct, slowly, gradually. Now it’s mostly Emigrant Direct, even though I don’t think I’ve gotten a paper statement from them since 06/30/07. I can see when I started getting careless, too. May 31, 2006 was when I stopped hole punching and filing the pages. Just slipping them in atop the previous statements was good enough for this gov’ment’s work.
A Notice of Action or Payment from the dentist. ARGH! I still haven’t gone to the dentist this year! *ashamed* I have dental insurance, I’m payin’ for it, and haven’t used it once this year. Shame on me!
Cell Phone: I’ve had my 1000 minutes/month plan for at least 2.5 years. I’m spoiled, even though I haven’t paid more than $50/month at any point.
There’s also a page ripped out from an Entertainment Weekly 2000 Year-End Special featuring a 21-year-old Kate Hudson on one side, and 32-year-old Hugh Jackman as Wolverine on the other side. I love them both, so that’s staying in the drawer. ’til we meet again!
Trends: Credits to my accounts. I’ve flipped through about 4 files containing at least 8 credit cards’ worth of statements. Sure as the sky’s full of ash tonight, I’ve made some dumb mistakes but it appears that I’ve not really hesitated to ask for a credit on my account, deserved or not. The credit card companies, Citi, Chase, American Express, have all obliged.
I’m really selectively organized. I’ll update all these files from years and years ago without missing a single one, but keep small piles of things to file on my desktop for weeks. It annoys me, but there they stay, gathering dust, until I’m good and ready to put them away. And then there are times like now, when I can’t find my darned paperclip box to put away the pile of reclaimed paperclips.
It’s hard to believe that I started this crusade 3 years ago and many a harsh and bitter lesson has been learned. Some of the lessons are quantifiable: I’ve paid tens of thousands of dollars in rent. I’ve paid for just as much debt, not my own, but still, debt. I’ve finally learned to pull back and stop throwing money at the problems, especially since I never made that much, and started throwing it at my savings. At investing, and at the future. That’s resulted in a healthy sum of retirement funds, and a humble pile of emergency savings. That’s progress. Other lessons aren’t so measurable: don’t trust BroDucky farther than you can throw him. Don’t don’t don’t! lend money you can’t afford to lose. Stop blindly trusting your parents, when they’re out to protect you and you just need the truth: you will clash.
I’ve been scaling this edifice of familial duty for 7 years, and I still haven’t learned that I can’t save my family. To be honest, I have to laugh at myself for thinking that I could. How naive! Things have changed, yes, but more for the worse than the better. But, maybe it’s not a lesson I’m meant to learn. After all, families are messy. They’re demanding, they’re character building. Most compelling of all, they’ve been my motivation. Without them, I bet I wouldn’t have felt the call to explore financing, to cut bills down to the bone, to really bear up under all the needs of a family and find a way through. These are all skills that have contributed to my growing up. Like Reba McEntire said, “How was I to know I’d be ok?”
It’s been 3 years. I’m still doing alright. I’ll be ok. I think I have what it takes.
Oh, but I still haven’t ordered the dang credit reports. I’ll get right on that.