March 16, 2007
In typical Fatwallet fashion, I tend to comparison shop, check for free shipping, coupons, cashback from the site and from the credit card I use. But there’s always one more element that comes into play when I want to make a purchase: what is this costing me? Not in the dollars and cents sense, though that’s certainly always considered, rather, in the sense of what am I giving up by spending this amount of money on this item? If I spent $15 instead of $10, I have effectively sacrificed $5 of spending ability in another area. No surprise there.
Five dollars is usually the equivalent of a third of a trade paperback comic book, two thirds of a paperback, or an emergency lunch when I’ve forgotten to bring lunch to work.
March 15, 2007
A few weeks back I finally tried out Bloglines and as a reader, I love it for the convenience of knowing when someone has updated. As a blogger, though, I wonder if the convenience of Bloglines or any other blog aggregator has any negative effect on the responses from the readers? I’ve a small handful of subscribers (yay!) but I don’t know how long you’ve been subscribers and if that encourages you to drop by more often or speak up less? Do you find that you comment more or less when you use a feed aggregator? Have you experienced a drop or increase in dialogue on your blogs?
March 12, 2007
This category deserves a whole section to itself:
The job: Underpaid, overworked? Me! Me! Little boss says that I’m the star performer and am already doing the job of an assistant to him, which is a management position, but is ridiculously vague about when the change in position would be forthcoming. No matter how much I push him for a firm answer, I’m sure that it’s at Big Boss’s whim and he may balk simply because I was just promoted to the current position back in November of last year. This fact doesn’t take into account the fact that I had been doing the higher position’s job for several months at that point as well. I’d like to take the conversation to Big Boss when I’ve got my salient points worked out, but I’ve always felt like that would be going over Little Boss’s head. Maybe I should speak to him though, if only to present the information that I think that he should take into consideration when discussing our fiscal year raises with Little Boss. What say ye?
It’s 2:45 pm, and it’s gorgeous outside. Sunny, blue skies, a light breeze, a pleasantly dry heat, fresh(ish) air, and I can hardly keep my mind on my work. My work that I abandoned for more than a week, mind you, and what kind of sorry excuse for a workaholic am I, that I can’t keep my mind from wandering to other things? I need ice cream to squelch the little kid in me.
There are multitudes of things I’d rather be thinking about, all long term goals, and none of which I can afford if I don’t corral myself, git to work and earn my wages!
House? Condo? There’s every reason to continue waiting to purchase any kind of real estate. I want to have between 50-100k for a down payment and be ready for the commitment of a home.
Marriage: Even though there are still a thousand considerations [who’s going to take care of my parents? Or rather, how much will I be able to continue helping them when I’m married? Can I be sure that they’ll be in a good place before I leave?] I can’t help wanting to move on with my personal life. Then again, I still feel really unprepared for making that leap into marriage.
Travel: This is one of those times in which finding a sugar daddy would be SO convenient: going wherever, whenever, without having to worry about having money saved up? Great! But since BoyDucky’s not ridiculously wealthy and he’s the one I pick, .
School: Same old same old. I’m antsy at the job and feel like I’m not getting paid enough, but I still can’t afford to quit and go back to school yet. And the idea of going to school while working fulltime (50-60 hours a week)? Ugh. I’ll probably have to do it, I just haven’t reconciled myself to it just yet.
We were driving behind one of these in Los Gatos, and I’m convinced that someone driving a car THAT outrageous can totally afford it. As a PF blogger, I know that I should be more skeptical before assuming that the person behind that wheel is wealthy, but come on! A Lotus? I can’t imagine a Lotus salesperson wasting their time on an unqualified buyer.
That made me wonder, what is the profile of your average Lotus owner? Does a six figure income get you into the club? Edmunds lists the Lotus starting around 46 grand so it’s not as ultra-luxurious in the world of cars as I would have guessed. It’s still a pretty flashy car, though.
but I keep waking up in a panic wondering, what happened to my mosquito net?!?
And then I slowly realize that I haven’t been eaten alive yet, because I’m back in America. *whew* Small favors, I tell ya.
I’ve already listed a few of the expenses of this trip, but I wanted to lay out the total for an overall look:
$2787 – airfare for two
$ 170 – visas for two
$ 200 – initial cash exchanged
$1000 – for PaDucky’s expenses
——-
$4157 total
I actually spent, of the initial 200, approximately $100 on cash gifts to my cousins, another $40 on cash gifts to a temple that my family has been donating to, and about $25 on clothes and shoes for myself. [Check out the shoes! They were about $6/pair. I decided I needed a pair that looked like heels for work, though it doesn’t, and the other pair was pure greed because they were so cute.]
I actually had about 750,000 Vietnamese dollars left when we were at the airport, so I left that with my dad for expenses and for my favorite cousin.
We probably spent about $75 dollars at both the Ho Chi Minh airport and the Hong Kong airport on almost a dozen gifts and souvenirs. Not too shabby, actually, considering the most expensive things were a book for him and a little mother-of-pearl handbag for me at $13 each.
Considering how much I thought it’d cost (~5k/person), less than 5k for 2.5 people isn’t half bad. Granted, I didn’t use my pocket money for lodgings as we stayed at Grandma’s, and food and transportation came out of the money I gave PaDucky, but I think the 1k that I gave him covers it.
There is one thing I wish I’d spent some money on before the trip, though. An extra battery for BoyDucky’s camera! Or a camera of my own (*drool, Panasonic DMC-FX07S*). An extra battery for him would be more affordable, though. We had his camera and my cousin’s little Fuji that used AA batteries. As usual, low-batt’ry problems kicked in by the fourth day and we had to be conservative about the photos we took. My cousin’s camera was just an evil piece of crap that would turn on, and then turn off when I tried to snap a photo. And it drained AAs like they were juice! No more than 5 pictures into a new set of batteries, it would start the shut-off-shenanigans again. My aunt will be disappointed, she wanted me to take at least 200 photos before I returned. I managed about 40, and another 20 on borrowed batteries, but it was incredibly frustrating. That camera’s a jerk!
Here’s the question: once I pay off the credit card with the airfare expenses, we’ll see how much the e-fund has been knocked back down. Should I wait until the end of the year to start refilling it again? Or should I reprioritize the house/wedding funding goal to start after this one? The mini-e is almost full, but the house/wedding fund is up next in line.
My feeling is that even though the gaping hole in the efund really bothers me, I should just let it be until the end of the year, and continue with the original plans for the year. If I get any windfalls in the last quarter or if I’ve accomplished any of the other goals and have extra money left over, it can start refilling the efund.
