March 5, 2009
Planning
~
What’s your Plan B? asks Free Money Finance. I continue to job hunt, though I’m taking breaks in between resumes now. Going gangbusters is good for staying in motion, but it’s also quite exhausting on top of stressful work and family environments.
~ Play my “How long can you go?” version of limbo: continue to save every penny (Just found this motivational article by PT Money about Saving Like a Madman. I don’t need the extra incentive, but it’s funny.)
~ Use my free plane ticket to treat myself to a short break for the sake of sanity. Anyone want me to come visit? š I think it has to be within the 48 contiguous.
March 3, 2009
While still employed
~ Complete as many Professional Development classes as possible. I might, if I stay employed through April and get off the wait list for one set of classes, manage to get enough classes in before the layoff to complete my Certificate in Management. *cross your fingers for me!*
~ If there’s space, or I get de-waitlisted, I’d like to take Excel and Illustrator classes. We’ll see about approval.
~ A friend’s fiance is a freelance web designer who is willing to teach me web design and programming skills. Whoo! I’m calling it an “apprenticeship” for now, I’ll do work for him, he’ll teach me how, and maybe when I get good, he’ll hire me on! We’ll see. For now, I want to learn some basics since I’m pretty clueless. It’ll come in handy here and professionally.
~ In other good news, when they changed our retirement plan last July, we were automatically vested. So whenever the axe falls, I get to roll whatever little money accrued from my first two years into my existing retirement plan. Since I didn’t contribute anything, it should be qualified for a relatively hassle free rollover. It’s good for a few hundred, I figure. I just hope that it can also be sent into my 403(b) as well. (Hope hope hope).
~ Do the math. Well-Heeled reminded me that if I do that math, unemployment will cover a good amount of my household expenses, even with 3.5 people. So I can breathe a little easier knowing that my e-fund will last longer than previously anticipated. (Now I have to do the math to see how much longer that means.)
~ Need to settle the final details and applications for: renter’s insurance, long term care insurance, life insurance, safety deposit box, my will. Whatever I can get employer rates on (LTC, for one) and is portable is a priority.
March 2, 2009
At the worst of times, I prefer to be proactive more than reactive. Yes, it’s a control thing. It’s also an attitude and optimism thing. Or maybe just an attitude & control thing. Whatever, instead of just fruitlessly moping and hoping, I’m running a little mini-series of things under my control.
This week, I’ll be publishing daily lists as a reminder that there’s always something productive to do rather than sinking into depression. I refuse to let worry and fear dictate my agenda, career and life. The weighty concerns of the economy, at macro and micro scales, are not being dismissed, just given their due measure of consideration and no more than that.
Some of these I’ve actually managed to complete already, so I already have a sense of accomplishment! Nothing like loading the die in your favor. š
Organizing Money and Life:
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Reviewing my system for money management
~ Converting my one solitary paper bond
~ Roll over an old Rollover IRA from WAMU to Vanguard, eliminating a $25 annual fee
~ Opting out of creepy search/indexing sites. Thanks to Little Miss Moneybags for the heads-up about some of these sites. I hate the fact that there are kids ten+ years younger than me, with my not terribly common name, posting on Facebook and MySpace so that if you Googled my name, you’d get the impression that I’m a 19 year old lacking in all common grammar and syntax capabilities. The idea that my name, age, address, phone number, and family members‘ names can be searched and paid for? Oh no. No way, buddy.
On a similar note, Frugal Zeitgeist’s Faceoff covers many reasons why I neither Facebook nor MySpace. I do use LinkedIn because it’s primarily professional, but am cautious about what I post there as well. Friends think I’m paranoid when I won’t let them tag my photos, or share my personal info online, but there’s a good reason for it. You’ve all heard of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, right? Well, it’s the same concept: so many of us have widespread networks that it’s inconceivable that all my personal-life photos would remain personal, and out of my professional world.
Perhaps I work with a larger population of creepy people than most, but I’ve had coworkers who would window stalk me whenever I stepped out for lunch, and eavesdrop on every conversation. One dude would literally run from one office to the next at the sound of laughter, determined to find the source of conversation and join in even when it was private. If people are comfortable doing that in person, how much more convenient would cyber-stalking be? The notion that someone can easily access information about me, whether I know them or not, for personal amusement or gain, is far outside my realm of comfort. I also know someone who sits around and Googles names to see what information they can find. I’d rather keep available information to an absolute minimum.
With the job search, I’ve considered a professional Twitter, but I doubt it. The benefits have to far outweigh the cost and risk of having more personal information floating out there on the web.
March 1, 2009
Not only is WAMU still charging the stupid $25 annual fee for 2009, they’re also charging a $75 distribution fee, costing my already depleted IRA fund a total of $100 in fees. Unbelievable. At this rate, I’ll be lucky to retain half the value of my original contributions. Then again, I only had several months to contribute at that employer after I turned 21, and before I quit, so it wasn’t a huge amount of money to begin with.
I would have balked, and did mentally, but sting though it might, this is the smarter long-term choice. Paying a hundred dollars now to roll the remaining money into my current employer’s plan under Vanguard is the equivalent of 4 years’ worth of annual fees. That money better be sitting in the retirement account for much longer than 4 more years! That’s my breakeven point.
This should have been done as soon as I established my retirement plan with the current employer, but I didn’t realize that it could be incorporated into my 403(b) without tax implications. In retrospect, it’s already cost me more than a hundred dollars in fees (a $40 distribution fee was charged when I first rolled it over). This is for keeps because I’m signed up for Vanguard’s emailing service which eliminates annual fees on my accounts and I have enough money in Vanguard to just keep it there once I leave this employer.
Just another stupid tax from back when I didn’t know to look out for fees charged for moving my money around. Come to think of it, I was shocked by the $40 distribution fee back in 2004, and could have sworn that I asked about it, but cannot for the life of me remember what the answer was. The cost of naivete and inexperience.
February 28, 2009
| Retirement Savings |
Rollover IRA: $948
Roth IRA: $4,079
401(a): $4,629
403(b): $10,759
Total: $ 20,415 (22,027)
|
| Emergency Savings |
Catastrophe: $ 23,816
Problem Cushion: $ 1,000
Total: $24,816 (22,291)
|
| Short Term Goals |
Car Maintenance: $517
Car Insurance: $1,474
Travel/Con: $400
Taxes: $3,522
Moving: $1,465
Total: $ 7,278 (7,229)
|
| Long Term Goals |
House Down Payment: $101
|
| Investment Loans |
Prosper-ish: $12,630
Personal Loan: $4,000
Savings Bond: $362 (current accrued value)
Total: $ 16,992 (17,998)
|
| Total Assets |
Illiquid: $ 20,415
Semi-Liquid: $16,992
Liquid: $24,816
Expense Acct: $9,039
Goals Savings: $7,278
Total: $ 78,640 (74,072)
|
| Debt and Liabilities |
AX: $183
Citi 2: $122
Chase: $142
Rent: $1,360
Total: $ 1807 (2,525)
|
| Net Worth |
$ 76,833 (71,547)
|
This month’s net worth brought to you by A Series of (Un)fortunate Events:
1 truck sale, rather nice, actually.
1 car crash and totaled car, rather unfortunate.
1 set of nervous willies wherein I call in the loan in $1000 increments. This doesn’t affect the net worth as it’s just moving the money from one asset class to another. Slowly relieving stress here.
The most significant factor was the truck sale. It simultaneously removed the rest of the loan (liability) and supplemented my raided expense account.
Salting away money into the emergency fund helps, but there may be a bit of a drop when I pay my taxes. I have to review the paperwork one more time, because I kind of think (hope!) the accountant did something wrong for me to owe as much as he says I do. Either way, I should start emotionally letting go of that money saved for taxes. Probably shouldn’t have included it in the net worth to begin with, since it now feels like it’s “mine.” Well, it is, but you know what I mean.
February 26, 2009
As I whined on Twitter, thus shall I whine here about the conversion of my paper bonds to electronic bonds:
1. Treasury Direct’s log-in process is not unlike physically accessing a sealed vault, complete with codes on access cards, little remembered clues to the password you can no longer remember, and a virtual keyboard that doesn’t obscure a single thing.
2. I am just as much of a dolt. My idea of a password hint? A string of words that rely on free association and a particularly on-point pop-culture memory. *shaking head* Honestly. I can hardly remember my name or the name of my company these days. The worst part was that as I reset the password, the last word I couldn’t work out finally made sense. Dangit!
3. The conversion involves opening a Treasury Direct account. That took three weeks. I couldn’t log in without my Access Code/Master Key card, after all.
4. Skip 17 months in which I completely forget about the card, the bond, the account and the password. [This step is optional, for the not completely dumb.]
5. Open a linked conversion account. Don’t register yourself as an owner of a something-or-other twice. Upon registering twice, don’t try to delete your original registration, it won’t stand for that kind of behavior. Delete the second one. (Can you tell the difference? I couldn’t.)
6. Register your bond by entering the serial number and issue date. This also shouldn’t be as difficult as my brain made it out to be. If you have many bonds, do it all at once, up to 50.
7. Create a manifest. There’s a button that allows the site to do this for you, actually.
8. Print and sign the manifest, keeping a copy for yourself, drop in mail with your unsigned paper bond.
9. The conversion should take three weeks. They will not notify you in any way of the completed transaction but are probably still more trustworthy than those Cash4Gold guys who also ask you to drop your valuables in an envelope and post it to them. After all, their website is a virtual Fort Knox. Ok, that doesn’t prove anything at all, but it’s worth reiterating.
February 25, 2009
On Twitter, @debthater asked: For all u personal finance peeps, is your 3-6 months of living expenses savings SEPARATE from your “emergency” fund? Curious
My answer was that my living expenses account (“cash cushion”) and my emergency fund are totally separate.
Most others (@singlema, @wellheeledblog) keep their money all in one pot to keep it simple.
Is everyone else is more organized than I am?
My expense account was initially deliberately separated out so that it would be easier to track during the effort to break out from the paycheck to paycheck cycle. It’s really sad to get misled into thinking there’s more than there really is because of the bigger numbers of the emergency fund!
Now that the cash cushion is healthy, am I just complicating matters by maintaining two sets of accounts?
It’s partly psychological, partly record-keeping. E-fund money is untouchable: it’s for real emergencies ONLY. The expenses money is intended to be used for monthly costs and unexpected non-emergencies. If I keep it all in one pot, it seems like the whole pot is accessible, not just a portion of it. Also, there are enough miscellaneous transactions (deposits, usually) that it seems easier to keeo them separated.
What think ye? Should I just simplify matters and combine all the accounts? (By “all,” I have to admit that my emergency fund is spread across 3 banks because I was worried about accessibility, low rates and the bank failures. I wanted to have access one way or another to some of the money I needed in case of problems.)
How do you handle your accounts? Do you simplify/complicate things?