August 18, 2008
A whole pile of old clothing that I was sure I’d Goodwilled last year turned up in an older suitcase that I haven’t used in years. It’s a backpack zipped onto another backpack style, so I use that one for international or very long lengthy trips. (*sigh* Memories of my trip to Italy so many many moons ago.) As it turns out, that purple dress I was lamenting the sacrifice of was part of that pile, and I sorted through the clothes juuuust to be sure that there was nothing in there that I regretted purging. There was just one pair of cargo pants I’d outgrown, but strangely fit again, that I need to take needle and thread to, and a very light blue and white dress I might just want as a beach cover-up.
The rest of the clothing definitely needs to go to another home. Good grief, I found clothes in there from junior high and early high school years and I can’t believe I wore that stuff! Nothing was completely-and-totally hideous, but they were all slightly ill-fitting. I was too small for regular sizes and hadn’t discovered the tailor; that didn’t happen until after college. Yes, I am a total late bloomer. Heck, I’m still not sure I’ve bloomed completely! Also, it seems there’s physical evidence that I used to believe in buying things that were a bargain because they were on sale. Thank heavens I’ve outgrown that phase. I just wish that my mother had taught me not to do that in the first place, y’know?
It’s a huge relief to understand now that it’s worth paying a bit more for something higher quality, that’s very close to my size, and paying a bit more on top of that to have it fitted to my body. Let’s face it, I’m never going to be a standard size, very few of us actually are, so it just makes sense not to buy a whole lot of junk in search of a few good pieces.
Lessons learned.
August 14, 2008
Our tomatoes, while subject to a few cracks and holes early on, have been a most satisfying crop so far. It’s not just that they fruited so quickly, but they’re ripening very sedately. I was expecting a long wait, a sudden ripening and a rush to eat all the produce before they went bad. Instead, at most, one or two are ready for picking at a time, a few days apart.
I just picked a newly blushing one, and a still yellow one on my way into the house to make dinner. There are two very light yellow/orange tomatoes still on the vine that’ll be ready in a couple of days, with a multitude of green tomatoes varying from a wee thumb-sized one to a double-fisted behemoth.
I’d say we’ve picked an average of three to five tomatoes per week for the past three weeks. They’re no more than one or two pounds’ worth depending on when we pick them, so that’s about an average of $3 per week since our supermarket sells them for about $3/lb.
Considering the only expenditures we made were labor in replanting the poor vines several times thanks to the dog’s romping, and watering, I’d say this was well worth the trouble. (I don’t know if my dad’s doing anything them while I’m gone to make the vines produce so well and so quickly, but I’ll assume he’s not.)
August 8, 2008
Either I should look at my portfolio with an eye to rebalancing as necessary or just, as my bio teacher used to say, “Shut my eyes and cover my ears and it’ll all go away.” *grump* It’s probably really going to all go away as it’s profusely bleeding red right now.
Yodlee makes it so easy to take an unnecessary daily peek at the balances bouncing all over the chart; I’m going to make it a point to scroll right past my portfolio on a daily/weekly basis because there’s no point in fretting if I’ve made my choices. June was the worst month with a depreciation of $1,710. The losses have been exponentially less since then: July (-344) and August (-169 thus far).
It’s a little sad because just the month before (May) it was doing pretty well and the value of my investments was actually above the net investments. Now they’ve traded spots on the graph.
I’ll be giving it some time to ride out some of this market volatility. Since I’m taking a very long view with this money, and am not contributing a significant amount right now, it behooves me to be patient and educate myself about the market in the meantime.
July 25, 2008
Aside from not ever having a possessed phone when I was their customer, their service just seems to get more and more excellent. My parents have a T-Mobile family plan and I just called to change the family plan to a cheaper package with 700 minutes instead of 1000.
One, they offer a callback service. Instead of making you wait on hold, they ask for your name and number, and they call you right back, if you prefer.
Two, the CSR didn’t go through any rigamarole when I inquired about the minute usage and told her about my intention to change plans: she immediately offered the plan I knew would fit best, noting that there was one other option but that it wouldn’t save as much money.
Three, she quickly backdated the change of plans so that it would take effect for the current billing cycle rather than having to wait until the next one, saving me $10 for this bill effective immediately.
Four, she also corrected the contract dates from the botched up replacement phone fiasco where my mom had insisted to ordering phones that I couldn’t afford, without waiting for me to help select phones they could use. Those phones were sent back a few months ago, but I’d never called to make sure they’d made any necessary corrections to the contract dates. All fixed!
Five, she gave me all the information she had on the T-Mobile Home Service (I asked), and offered to get me to the folks who had more information if I wanted it.
And all of the above was completed in five minutes. I LOVE T-mobile’s customer service.
July 18, 2008
Now there’s a funny title. Not such a funny article, though.
According to this article, for my age (25 is such a nice cut off), I need to have between $119k to $282k right now if I were to stop investing in order to maintain a 1 million dollar portfolio by age 70, assuming an 8% annualized return and inflation between 3-5%.
Alternatively, assuming my goal is to have a portfolio of 1 million dollars by retirement, and the chart isn’t clear if they’re using age 70 here too, or if they’re using age 65, I’m going to need to save $8,985,008 assuming 3-5% inflation. I guess they’re also assuming an 8% annualized rate of return?
I’m not sure, there seems to be a whole lot of assuming going on here, and you know what that means!
Means we don’t really know what-all’s going on.
To be perfectly honest, I haven’t decided what magic number I’d be comfortable with. I don’t think there is one. After all, I’m 25 and while I’ve been saving diligently, there are a whole lot of other factors that I’d been focusing on. My savings and retirement numbers are just that right now: numbers. I’m doing my best to maintain a higher rate of savings for as long as I can, but that’s because I’m playing catch-up.
If I had to pick a number, I’d ballpark about 2-3 million by the time I’m ready to retire, or go part-time. It seems like enough to provide for a relatively comfortable lifestyle. Nothing terribly extravagant is necessary, but I think it’s good enough for me to be self-sufficient with regards to medical care and daily life, and some travel.
Ultimately, though, I want to enjoy the journey to that point as much as I expect to enjoy life from that point on. I plan to enjoy the next forty years, not spend them anticipating how much fun I’ll have after these pesky in-between years are over!
July 16, 2008
*arms raised in victory* I have reached my first milestone: my first hundred dollars earned for my House Down Payment Fund! The money hasn’t quite reached my account yet, so I’m pre-celebrating but I’m really really excited. These haven’t been easy months, and it’s so nice to be able to have reached one goal without sacrificing another one.
It actually feels like I’ve made progress despite all the other obstacles in way, nibbling away bits and edges of my salary, and that’s always good for morale around here.
The next hundred will now be cycled to my Travel Fund, and the next fifty after that will be for the Suit/Clothing Fund. I might add a Laptop Fund, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, and I don’t want to dilute this source too much. Obviously, as Blunt Money just pointed out, saving IS addicting.
July 15, 2008
Thanks to Karen for this tip:
The Hotels.com “welcomerewards program” is simple. After you use the site to book 10 reservations over the course of a year, you’ll get a free night’s stay at your choice of one of 45,000 hotels. What’s simple is that there are no blackout dates and no restrictions on the type of properties, either for earning a chance at a free night’s stay or for redeeming a reward for a free night’s stay.
Sounds pretty cool! I’ve never used Hotels.com myself, but I may look into this when I need more travel booking options.
