July 4, 2016

A quarterly look back: Q2 2016

What I read

Spirits Abroad, by Zen Cho
I can’t say enough how much I loved this book. It was gifted to me and I’m so grateful I have friends who will insist that I MUST read this or that book because the few from whom I will accept that badgering are always right.

The Darwin Elevator by Jason M. Hough
A freebie from ECCC, this was a mildly entertaining read but I couldn’t help but be distracted by the protagonist’s “attraction” to the standardly beautiful female scientist character that rang false. It was, of course, his motivation for action and felt pretty stupid. As written, I would have been a lot more inclined to believe his motivation if the physical attraction was never mentioned / didn’t exist. I suppose you could say I object to distracting romance but it’s more that I find so much written romance to be unbelievable. (*thinks* maybe I find standard human romance unbelievable too…)

Which leads me to a friend’s book. As a rule, if I am friends first with an author, I often hesitate to read their writing. It’s oddly uncomfortable for me because I’m an alien to know an author as a person and read their works. What if I don’t like it? I’ve evolved beyond grade school is so many ways but not in this: I want to like and respect my friends but I cannot do that if they display a lack of integrity or write poorly. I was, therefore, both relieved and impressed that Erica Monroe’s A Dangerous Invitation was both well written and engaging. Her heroine was both spirited and believable and the research into the language and society of the times blended so well it was a joy to read. Yay I get to keep admiring my friend. (more…)

June 1, 2016

Net Worth & Life Report: May 2016

ON MONEY

I use Swagbucks. Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join and earn.

1. MTurk experiment, total earned: $12.65. I originally planned to try it out for ten consecutive days. Since I can’t stay not-sick for more than a few days at a time, that didn’t work out. No big deal, this is still just an interesting experiment. This will be added to our side money when I cash it out. So far, most of the HITs (human intelligence task) have been very low payouts. We’re talking about less than a dollar. I happened across one that paid more than pennies on a Wednesday evening, completed it immediately, and banked $6. I suspect that, for my purposes, if I just use this intermittently as I have time on weekdays, I’ll build up a tiny nestegg of earnings. This isn’t likely to be a true source of income replacement unless I’m willing to put quite a few more hours into it. If I do get past the beginner’s hurdle, and am offered the more lucrative HITs, it’ll be worth the time I put in. Like I said, it’s an experiment and I’m willing to see how it plays out, picking and choosing the higher payouts from this point forward.
2. I still hate that daycare doesn’t make it easier to automatically pay them. I still refuse to set up autopay at their site because I will NEVER authorize withdrawals of “any amount” from our checking account, are you kidding me?
3. On the subject of being stuck in the Paper Ages, I don’t understand why our new FSA contractor refuses to do direct deposit. They mail a paper check and statement for every redemption. I wish the company had consulted us even a little before changing but it’s done now. What a waste!
4. You would think that offending the stomach gods and being unable to eat for 5 days running would translate into savings, but that has not been true at all.
5. Three notices from TradeKing this month: Dividends paid! Woot! My portfolio is still small enough that three dividend payouts only add up $100 but we’re heading in the right direction. Bearing in mind that my investing strategy is to buy and hold, I also intend to earn income from the dividends with the expectation that they will provide income before retirement age. My body hasn’t done what you’d call IMPROVE with age so we have to plan for the scenario in which I’m still alive but too disabled to work for income at an early enough age that it creates financial hardship. I refuse to be complacent and pretend that won’t happen in hopes of getting better – that’s not yet done me a lick of good and believe you me, I spent plenty of time in denial.
6. We spent money and bought a car. That deserves a post of its own. Especially because it looks like more money is needed.
7. We spent money and refinanced the mortgage. That also deserves a post of its own. Coming soon.
8. I’ve been just as frustrated as you might imagine with all our free time being monopolized by the car, the mortgage, and the estate planning. So much so that I’m happy we spent money and resolved the issue. Mostly.
9. Our net worth is down 0.1% this month. The aforementioned expected, not awesome, spending took us down a tiny peg.

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May 2, 2016

Net Worth & Life Report: April 2016

ON MONEY

I use Swagbucks. Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join and earn.

1. GoBankingRates says CA is the worst place to be for saving money. *looks at consistent 25% savings rate* In your face, California! Or GoBankingRates.
2. Last month’s insurance bills and this month’s travel piled up for a truly horrific/impressive $4500 credit card bill. I’d done my best to mitigate using points and miles, but on top of that horrendous tax bill, OUCH. It’s all expected spending that rises and dips through the year but Mint is totally judging me and my spending right now.
3. As one of the steps in the dang refinancing, we had an appraiser come through here and I updated our appraised home value in my personal spreadsheet. It was off by more than $100K, if that’s any hint about how conservative I’ve been playing this. Call me paranoid but I hate the idea of assessing the value of our home as a part of our net worth, and relying on that number as we progress toward retirement numbers, because I remember the bottom dropping out of the real estate market. It’s not super likely that it’ll hit the SF Bay Area that hard but we’re due for a big earthquake…that would do it! But we did, if I’m going to stop being so paranoid, hit Major Milestone 1! ::confetti::
4. I dabbled in Amazon’s Mechanical Turk this month just to see what it was like. 30 minutes of tinkering yielded a fee of $0.56. *laughs* It’s not going to make up the difference above but you know what I’m about: Every little bit makes a difference.
5. I was saving up for a side table from West Elm that PiC liked and had cashed out a $50 GC from my Citi Thank You points towards the purchase oh, 16 months ago. I earn Thank You points veerrryyyy slowly. But it wasn’t a high priority. Then he found a far cuter cubbything from Sprouts for half the price and $70 is a no brainer over $140 so now I have a West Elm GC that mocks me.
6. Comcast’s internet-only pricing is outrageous. After a promotional rate expired, it shot up to $70/month so I had to talk to them. Unfortunately I had to add cable back to our package to have the price only go up $10/month instead of $30. *grump* What a pain.
7. The numbers: Our net worth increased 16% almost entirely because of #3. We had a total year-to-date increase of 51%. We still have a long way to go but this is good.

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April 5, 2016

A quarterly look back: Q1 2016

In February, inspired by Cloud, I decided it was high time to get back to the business of being me. Life isn’t all about work, money, and family. Life is meant to be lived, and we are meant to grow.

What I read

Winter Men by Jesper Bugge Kold (Courtesy of the Amazon Prime First program where you get to buy one free book per month from their selection.)
The writing was compelling, and maybe that was the problem. The subject matter was too haunting so I had to stop halfway through. It’s rare for me not to finish a book but I just couldn’t do it.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Volumes 1-10, by Alexander McCall Smith
These were fun. I loved the look into Botswana culture, but there was a bit of character development that felt inconsistent and kept niggling at me.

She-Hulk.
I thought I liked Dan Slott’s writing but that must have been a mistake because this was hands down the worst run I’ve read, possibly ever. The flimsy stories were propped up story bits held together with misogyny glue. It felt like they were trying to ape Deadpool’s style but instead come off as a huge ass about women and particularly the titular character. Huge sigh of relief when I escaped to the Peter David run which wasn’t excellent but at least it didn’t reek. (more…)

April 4, 2016

Net Worth & Life Report: March 2016

ON MONEY

I use Swagbucks. Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join and earn.

1. 1. Another handful of annual bills this month: another car registration ($115), earthquake insurance ($1125). I can’t decide if this is annoying or useful to have them come in irregular spurts.
   2. We were told not to cancel our insurance for Doggle’s (RIP) car (RIP) so we could still receive our multi-vehicle discount. It bugs me in that “unfinished business” kind of way.
   3. Meanwhile, the car insurance companies finally coughed up our $500 deductible! That and the reimbursement for LB’s new car seat. (Upgrading to a convertible car set is all kinds of headaches.)
   4. PiC and I use our phones primarily for data. We text each other over the internet during the day because I hate talking on the phone and he doesn’t have reception so between the two of us, we’ve logged 9 minutes of talk time. Dad logged 431 minutes. But I use anywhere between 0.5-1 MB data plus the wifi we have every month for work and play.
   5. Last month I splurged on lotion tissues. A $45 case of tissues. Felt foolish as I stashed the boxes in our nearly non-existent storage space. Fast forward a month and 6, no, 8! boxes later, my nose remains intact and isn’t sporting The Most Epic 1000-tissue Chafe so we can call that my best decision of the year.
   6. The second best decision was listening to PiC: I finally told my doctor again that I was still miserable and three days into a new prescription of antibiotics ($10), a test would verify that this writer is at least 65% human. AMAZING.
   7. Seamus sustained a mysterious eye injury. $230 to confirm it’s not glaucoma, it’s an injury, pain meds and eye goop. It’ll be another $70 to go when we go back for another eye stain to confirm if it’s healed.
   8. I’ve been playing with charting progress on the net worth, it’s so unsatisfying just saying “it went up or down 2%.” For now, we’re up 5.4% year to date.
      

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March 1, 2016

Net Worth & Life Report: February 2016

Change from Jan 2016: 0.10% decrease
0.10% decrease from last month

ON MONEY

I use Swagbucks. Here’s a handy tutorial if you’d like to join and earn.

1. By way of ebates and Swagbucks, our Side Money tally this month went up $118.
2. I knocked serious money off a bill with a phone call which was good because…
3. We had that lovely episode with Seamus.
4. I pick the best Valentine’s gifts. I’m loving this delightfully petite broom and dust pan! When you spend half your snack time sitting on the floor picking up crumbs, tiny cleaning implements are suddenly fabulous. Well, no, that’s not true, tiny gear of any kind is always fabulous. I gave LB a demonstration of how to use it to sweep up counters and got a little chuckle. Laughing at me, laughing with me, whatever. As long as we’re laughing.
   
5. I bought a humidifier in an attempt to not die of the latest Viral Scourge and it came with a free subscription to Better Homes & Gardens. Imagine my tiny triumph when I read the fine print and found we could refuse the subscription and get a check for $6 instead. Yes, that’s small beans. It’s half a bean. But it’ll pay for my postcard mailing habit so it’s mine mine mine.
6. File under credit card churning. I picked up the Bank of America Alaska Air credit card and used it to pay for our car insurance and a couple incidentals to meet the minimum spend of $1000 in 3 months. We netted 25,000 bonus miles (one round trip ticket), a $100 statement credit, and some thousand and change purchase miles. The downside was the $100 wasn’t pure profit – they didn’t waive the first year’s annual fee like most of the cards I prefer to nab so we came out ahead $25 and 25,000 miles.
   
7. Two really sick friends received the gift of food delivery. It was a surprise and the best I could do once I found out how sick they were because I couldn’t run over to help myself. It ran to the tune of $400. That’s coming out of our discretionary spending and I regret nothing. (There were tears, the good kind. I double regret nothing.) Then PiC sold car parts to cover half of it, so I triple regret nothing because it’s always been my instinct to make up for unexpected expenditures instead of just cashflowing it. I’m a good influence, dammit!
8. I’ve been wearing holes into the only pair of jeans that fit after I sized out of the maternity jeans. After weeks of deliberation, and cajoling by PiC, $55 bought me a pair of new jeans (50% off) so of course when I wasn’t looking, I dropped the last 7 pounds to hit my pre-baby weight. DAMMIT. I’d plateaued! There was no reason to believe those lingering pounds were going anywhere. Has unanticipated weight loss ever been so annoying??
9. We are so close to completing our estate plan I can taste it!
10. I’m also very close to completing our tax document compilation! We’re just missing a couple of forms. But I’m maybe not so much in a hurry to file because thanks to something outside my control on PiC’s side, we’re expecting a huge tax hit. Ugh.

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