October 16, 2013
Everyday life has been mortally exhausting of late.
See Maryville which makes me sick;
See the debates that sprang up around the unprofessionalism directed at @DNLee5;
See the outing of a respected science blogger as yet another person who has harassed and the resulting discussion about that:
See the unending BART union talks/possible strikes:
See all the ripple effects from the government shutdown.
For a start.
In reaction, I’ve been casting about for inspiration and positivity to offset it. Not to pretend that the horrors and horribleness of the world doesn’t exist, I can hardly hear myself think for the din, but to balance out the sinking feeling in my gut every time I hear the news, or see an update or new hashtag of some thing going wrong.
There are still good things and worthwhile people and I just need a solid reminder of it.
Tim O’Reilly on his experience in management. Hat tip to Wandering Scientist.
Also, Wandering Scientist has a neat new site called Tungsten Hippo. I love stories and things that promote growth and stories.
I believe in investing in myself but $2000+ for a conference purely to satisfy my curiosity is a bit steep. It’s still intriguing though: Women 2.0.
Men have to be part of the drive for diversity & equality in leadership said Vivek Wadhwas.
Identity by books, Nicole & Maggie. I love books.
Leigh doesn’t NEED her job to pay the bills on a paycheck to paycheck basis. I Really Like This.
Clare breaks down the cost of Bringing Up Boris. Our neighbor just brought home an adorable new pup and from the slightly dazed look on the faces of the family, I suspect that this would be helpful to them. Think it’d be weird if I printed this up & taped it to their door?
I love dogs and elephants. They’re awesome, and even more so when they’re together. I love other animals too, of course.
Open Forum: What’s been awesome to or for you lately?
October 14, 2013
I was previously concerned about the cost of our venue: location, food and alcohol are big ticket items when you’re looking at set prices and a big guest list. After quite a search, we finally found a place that’s pretty flexible about the packages they offer, so with a lot of fat trimming and decisions to DIY where it’s manageable, we’ll be much closer to an acceptable budget.
The last “final” choice, a really pretty outdoor venue, surprised us at the end of the selection process with a quote that had an additional fee for the ceremony, and required that we hire a licensed DJ. We didn’t want no stinkin’ DJ! We weren’t planning on having a big music-oriented thing, and I don’t particularly want to have a stranger presiding over the music and talking up a storm. Yes yes, trust issues, sue me. But more than that, I didn’t want to have to shell out another thousand or so dollars before we pinned down a photographer taking our total to a blasphemous near-$30K. We didn’t just back away from that venue, we RAN.
Our final-final choice has been much better: flexible services and responsive vendor contacts. They call when they say they will, they don’t drop out of contact then make excuses about being busy during the wedding season, they’re upfront about scheduling around their ongoing commitments and accommodating my schedule.
We’re choosing to pay a premium for a hosted bar throughout the entire event as neither PiC or I are comfortable with the notion of a cash bar. Not only is that unheard of in my culture’s traditions, neither he or I are ok with asking my guests to pull their wallets out when we’ve invited them to an event that we’re hosting. If this was a DIY potluck, maybe. But it’s not, it’s a celebration that we’re inviting them to. So, hosted bar. End of.
In trade, we’re opting out of:
1. A fancy wedding cake. Their custom wedding cakes, while potentially gorgeous, will cost something like $300-400. Far too much. We wanted to choose our own cake and budgeted about $200-250 to have plenty. Unfortunately… we underestimated how many servings sizes we could get out of our original plan, so I contacted the shops to ask for high volume discounts. We wanted delicious cakes and our savings too, but instead of savings, we’ll take having multiple options for the cake instead.
2. Fancy centerpieces. We could have a florist managing the centerpieces for $600 or we could do it ourselves for about $150. That’s my budget for it anyway.
3. Invitations. They would have cost $200 from the package. I did them myself for under $100, even with my cardstock goof. The postage costs are about the same as they would have been w/the venue, of course.
4. Champagne toast, house wine, cider. I’m not a wine snob but what’s the point of also paying for house champagne and wine (read: average tasting) for the tables and toast (that I don’t really feel the need for)? Save $550, against the premium cost we’re paying for the hosted bar.
5. Discounts for the asking, off season. Scheduling this in the winter months gave us the opportunity to ask for some discounts. We got the ceremony site and the day of organizer gratis, and were offered free decorations as well, but I asked to have their value to be applied against the alcohol fee as well. Can’t have it if you don’t ask!
6. Discounts we didn’t ask for. Booking within a week of our initial query snagged us a fat discount as well.
In total, we’re taking $4141 off the bill for the venue which offsets the added premium bar, and the money we’ll lay out for the DIY stuff. After the offsets, we’re actually saving $841. This makes a difference when it comes to tax and service fees as well.
Another chunk of discount will come out of the total once we figure how many of these heads are children. Kids under the age of 11 are discounted, kids 3 and under are free; I’m guessing we’ll have a fair lot of tykes but won’t count on anything until we get closer to the time.
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As I listen to the PF community comment on and chat about the topic of wedding planning and budgeting, I have new thoughts. I never wanted to spend a boatload of money on a single day; it was never that important.
In the past 2 years, I’ve come around. It’s not all about me and what I want or don’t want. It was important to my parents, to my husband and to my friends to celebrate this, and with us. And while peer pressure plays little role in my daily life, neither do I live in a void. And in that context, and in memory of my mother who really wanted to be there for this day, I can justify spending what would otherwise be categorized as an obscene amount of money for a single day. We’ll do it our way, catering only to my health, a respect for some cultural traditions, and the comfort of our guests.
That’s not to say that there won’t be moments of plannerly insanity, there already have been, but I suspect it’ll be minimal compared to what it could be.
October 9, 2013
Katie started me on one of my favorite topics ever: saving and earning more. It’s not her fault, we were talking about the government shutdown and she triggered one of my Happy Dreams buttons saying that she didn’t feel the need to save obsessively. This, of course, catapulted me into the nearly ranty but really excited tirade on why I love saving.
It used to simply be a matter of pride and survival. If I didn’t keep increasing my earnings, I’d never get on top of my parents’ debt, and stay on top of the monthly bills, never stop hunching over the checkbook under a dim desk lamp trying to make the numbers work out, never put a penny of my very own away safe and sound against a rainy day. It was hellish, as anyone who’s squarely faced a mountain of debt can tell you. Powered by the energy of youth and gritted teeth, it only took several years of broke-style living and working 100 hour weeks to pay down near $100K in my parents’ CC debt accumulated over many years of self employment and car loans.
That hasn’t been my life for the past few years though. We’ve been comfortable. We can afford our needs and some wants.
So why keep at it?
It’s not just that I’m coasting on the momentum of the past that I want to continue to earn at high levels and save as much as I can. After all, these days “as much as I can” doesn’t mean what it used to. Once, I couldn’t spend more than $75 a month outside of regular bills: Rent, car loan, insurance, utilities. My friends teased me, calling me the Coupon Queen. Food was nearly optional: I couldn’t afford to eat out so if I didn’t grab some food at home before work or school, I’d eat 1 meal a day, around 6 pm. If I did eat at school during the day, that was it for the day. There certainly wasn’t any money for hobbies or buying books.
Now? I have a $100/month allowance which is purely discretionary, our budget already includes all the essentials AND categories for gifts and travel. That’s just luxurious. (Though when I’m running errands during the day and get hungry, I still refuse to pick up a snack or a meal out. It can wait until I get home. Old habits die hard.)
So why do I still get Warm & Glowy when I think about maximizing income and savings? Because I do. Having escaped from hardship, knowing that it could have been so much worse and I have been incredibly lucky to have all my hard work pay off, I’m still dedicated to saving and earning in a very visceral way.
For me, there’s so much more to life than just my feeling comfortable. (Obviously, this is unique to me, most other people don’t have some or all of these considerations.)
Family.
My mom’s last ten years of life were miserable. I couldn’t afford to buy insurance for her, not without stopping paying for rent or some other equally essential thing, and it killed me to see the shoddy care provided through Medicare. It was awful, she struggled to get appointments, she struggled to get adequate medications that didn’t interact badly with each other, her dentists were so horrible I had to pay thousands of dollars later to fix the butchery they inflicted on her poor teeth (she didn’t TELL me any of this until later).
Being poor SUCKED. (echoes of Scarlett O’Hara here)
Now I’m looking at somewhat similar circumstances with Dad. He’s planning to take early retirement so that he has some income and can stop relying quite as much on me, and so that he can get some health coverage. But I remember what utter crap Medicare has been for our family. It doesn’t prey on my mind nightly anymore, and maybe I’m a terrible daughter for that, but he’s still in relatively ok health at the moment so it’s on my To Do List rather than a Why Haven’t You FIXED THIS list.
And further down the road, he’s going to need a place to live, probably with some assistance. I’d feel better if he had access to drivers and nurses like they have at senior communities. This could all cost upwards of $60K, easily. If I were talking no holds barred, cost is no consideration: I would love to be making enough that another $60-80K a year on Dad was no problem.
I know some people think I’m insane. I know some people say that their parents are responsible for themselves and don’t get involved in decisions about their health care or their livelihoods, etc. That’s fine. That’s just not the way I’m built. My peace of mind comes from knowing my loved ones are safe, healthy and taken care of. That doesn’t mean I will break myself or my own family’s budget to do so but I would be much happier if that were possible. Realistically, I’ll probably have to settle for something less than my ideal. But why not shoot for the moon?
Dogs.
I love them. I love them more than I like the people I have the misfortune of being related to. For most of my life, I’ve done rescue and rehab in my own small way but I’m hugely energized to increase my earning power to open up the possibility of doing some serious rescue and rehab work. Whether the money is spent on the animals themselves, or whether it gives me the freedom to work for money less and work for the dogs more, doesn’t matter: I just want to help dogs. And other furry animals, too.
And of course my own dog pack may not be spoiled within an inch of their lives, but any dog I adopt needs to be well provided for: food, health care. A few toys. 🙂
Travel.
This one’s purely selfish. I enjoy doing certain things on a budget but someday (and not some day, far far away) I’d love to have the option of traveling in serious comfort and enjoy all the most delicious and fancy foods I want. I won’t do it all the time, I’m sure, but the option is awfully appealing. And I don’t want this to eat up all of my income: this should be easily managed without denting my savings goals. Katherine (Feather Factor) is my muse in this area: She’s amazing! Travels in style AND saves huge.
Charity.
For a die hard fiscal conservative in some ways (I firmly believe in bootstrapping), I’m also very much about helping people. I’ll earn my own way because I can now. But I had a helping hand, or a mentor’s kind words along the way. Sometimes, some people need a hand before they can make bootstraps or learn how to use them. Kids need to eat regularly to learn, people just need to break the cycle of poverty. And I want to be able to extend that hand.
Security.
Money doesn’t solve all the problems, but it sure helps. And more than the money itself, the relationships you cultivate in the making of it are likely going to be the linchpin to continued success. Feeling secure isn’t JUST about money in the bank. It’s knowing that you have helped people, and that other people will help you, in some big or small way, should you need it. It’s knowing that you have options. It’s knowing or learning how to create those options. I’d like more security.
***
When I think about the scale on which I want to indulge myself, and I could probably think of a few more things to add to this list, I’d need to more than quadruple my income. And rather than depressing me, or obsessing me, I’m uplifted. It’s motivating to think that there’s so much more good that can be done and that the simple act of conscious choices will take me there: committing to Savings as an integral part of life, looking for ways to stretch a dollar or at least not wasting the dollars spent, learning and earning a little (or a lot) more each day.
PiC says he doesn’t need to be rich, I joke that I do. But it’s not a joke. It’s a quiet little mantra that someday, I want to be that slightly eccentric lady who can get things done somehow. I don’t want people to KNOW that I’m rich, I just want to make it happen so that I can make other things happen.
This always surprised my dad who assumed that I wouldn’t know what to do if I won a lottery. Are you kidding? I save like this so that I can spend the way I want! Of course I could spend millions quite easily. I couldn’t afford to dream when I was poor. Now, there is a sky and it is boundless.
:: What are your motivations about money?
:: What would you do if you were earning ten times your salary? Assume either the same level of happiness or more.
October 5, 2013
KHAAAANNNNNNNN!!!!
Yes, we just watched Star Trek Into Darkness.
How many ways can one procrastinate? Today alone I’ve: designed new address labels unnecessarily, read personal emails and wrote a few back, tried 2 new recipes (roasted beets and braised baby bok choy), activated a new credit card, organized and labeled files in my Administrative Stuff box, started planning Thanksgiving dinner (we’re hosting for the first time!). Then ate 2 ice cream cones and pondered what was for dinner.
Hence, the beets. They are surprisingly gorgeous when cut and peeled. I’ve only ever seen them a solid red, and this makes me wonder whether I did something wrong, bought the wrong kind, or how the beets I’ve eaten before were prepared. On the other hand, baby bok choy is a much-loved vegetable so that’s familiar at least, even if I failed to learn how to cook it well into adulthood. This recipe was a-ma-zing.
Also I did a lot of work, but I’m avoiding the Big Important Thing. Wait, there are 2 Big Important Things. It would be nice if I snapped out of this silly avoidance of things I don’t feel like working on. Still these moods are good reminders that I’m only human and can’t take on everything in the world. It’s a good thing I didn’t go back to school though, I can make myself be productive and check things off a list but studying would be a dismal failure.
To be perfectly honest, part of my restlessness has nothing to do with not wanting to work – I’m perfectly happy with my work and work situation. It’s just that, at the moment, my spirit wants to be doing something else. Creating. Making things that are pretty or useful or interesting … odd for me, really. I’m not a creative person. I’m not an artist and with my slightly shaky hands I’m not crafty. So there are really only a few ways I can channel this desire for creation: on the computer or in the kitchen.
I’ve had a long run of making address labels for the wedding invitations but I think we all know you can only have so many address labels before it’s ridiculous.
Recipes:
Roasted Beets
12 beets
3 tablespoons good olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves, minced*
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons raspberry vinegar*
Juice of 1 large orange*
*Skipped ingredients. They were still good.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Remove the tops and the roots of the beets and peel each one with a vegetable peeler. Cut the beets in 1 1/2-inch chunks. (Small beets can be halved, medium ones cut in quarters, and large beets cut in eighths.)
Place the cut beets on a baking sheet and toss with the olive oil, thyme leaves, salt, and pepper. Roast for 35 to 40 minutes, turning once or twice with a spatula, until the beets are tender. Remove from the oven and immediately toss with the vinegar and orange juice. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and serve warm.
Braised Baby Bok Choy
1 cup chicken broth
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 lb baby bok choy, trimmed
1/2 teaspoon Asian sesame oil
Bring broth and butter to a simmer in a deep large heavy skillet. Arrange bok choy evenly in skillet and simmer, covered, until tender, about 5 minutes. Transfer bok choy with tongs to a serving dish and keep warm, covered.
Boil broth mixture until reduced to about 1/4 cup, then stir in sesame oil and pepper to taste. Pour mixture over bok choy.
Beet Greens with BACON
1 pound beet greens
1 strip of thick cut bacon, chopped (or a tablespoon of bacon fat)
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 large garlic clove, minced
3/4 cup of water
1 Tbsp granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/6 cup of cider vinegar
As I cooked these, I wondered, am I going to hate this? I have no idea how much my beet greens weighed (maybe half a pound?) since I bought them atop the beets I really intended to cook but when in doubt, use bacon. I doubled the bacon and onions since I love them and just winged it. Wung it? I shouldn’t have worried. It was amazing!
1 Wash the greens in a sink filled with cold water. Drain greens and wash a second time. Drain greens and cut away any heavy stems. Cut leaves into bite-sized pieces. Set aside.
2 In a large skillet or 3-qt saucepan, cook bacon until lightly browned on medium heat (or heat 1 Tbsp of bacon fat). Add onions, cook over medium heat 5 to 7 minutes, stirring occassionally, until onions soften and start to brown. Stir in garlic. Add water to the hot pan, stirring to loosen any particles from bottom of pan. Stir in sugar and red pepper. Bring mixture to a boil.
3 Add the beet greens, gently toss in the onion mixture so the greens are well coated. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 5-15 minutes until the greens are tender. Stir in vinegar. (For kale or collard greens continue cooking additional 20 to 25 minutes or until desired tenderness.)
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This is all well and good of course, but there comes a time you just have to get your lazy butt in gear. This comes after having spent a whole other day running errands with the burst of energy I got from sleeping a whole lot of hours and not rushing into work…..
Aiy, alright, to work!
September 30, 2013
Whether it’s an aging thing, or a post-surgical complication, Doggle is now on a chronic drug to keep him right and tight. At least he doesn’t need a chronic maintenance pain medication, that would make my heart hurt.
A 30-day supply from the vet costs 42.10, or $505.20/year. That’s a good chunk of his annual medical allowance! So off I went, online shopping as is my wont, and found that my original drug supplier (1800PetMeds) had it for a good $51.86 for a 2 month supply. A 20% savings with an 8% cashback from Fatwallet is good, but I got it in my head to try shopping around anyway. And lo, I found two competing suppliers offering the 2-month supply for $34.
DrsFosterSmith has been around for a while and I’ve never heard of the National Pet Pharmacy but I did my due diligence.
NPP just seemed a bit ridiculous in that I couldn’t get a straight answer from their FAQs how they work and their policies suggested that not only do you have to mail in a written script (slooowwww), they’d also need to get an additional approval from the vet. Delay+delay = annoyance. Even though their price was nearly a dollar less and they didn’t charge shipping (total savings of $7) than DFS, buying from a place that couldn’t get its policies written out clearly wasn’t appealing.
DFS offered free shipping for orders over $49. They charge the same per pill price between the 2 month supply and 3 month supple volume, but while it wasn’t cheaper per pill to buy a 3-month supply, the greater amount did get me within $1.50 of the free shipping limit. That means Doggle gets a new rawhide. If I’m going to pay extra, it’s going to be for a thing, not for shipping thank you very much.
In the end, we’re paying just $51 for a 3-month supply of medications plus a new rawhide, rather than $128 and a handful of free treats whenever we pick up another bottle of meds. 60% savings? Yes please.
While I spend a good amount of time working on maximizing my income within my energy limits, it still behooves me to do a little bit extra work to keep recurring costs down. A $300 annual savings for an extra 20 minutes of work is a fair enough ROI.
September 27, 2013
I’ve always used my own health insurance/other benefits through my own employer, but when PiC and I got married, it made more sense to go and add myself to his instead. His (health/dental/vision) insurance was more comprehensive and “premium” for either the same or less money.
We never went with the really premium PPOs, the HMO was good enough for the past few years, but we kept an eye on that as a cost we’d accept later on if we could find a really good chronic pain specialist elsewhere or if we started a family and they had better coverage or better healthcare providers.
We’ve both been using his employer’s health benefits this past year while I worked a new job at a smaller company without healthcare; I’d negotiated an increase in salary contingent on my continuing to use PiC’s benefits which would go away if I started using the company benefits (when we had them).
The company’s notified us that they’re now going to start charging for us dead-weight partners. We’ll be charged $600-900/year for my previous free ride and while their explanation sort of makes sense on the surface, that rankles a little bit when I look at my budget.
*grump*
It does make sense I suppose. I’ve worked for a few other employers who actually paid us back a nominal amount for using our spouse’s insurance, or for not using theirs, basically. I didn’t take advantage of PiC’s insurance until recently so I didn’t benefit from that until recently either.
The amount that I negotiated was multiple times more than the amount that we’ll be charged so it’s covered, in principle, but I’d been looking forward to saving more than just 25% of our salaries plus retirement next year. Between this, and the reduced FSA limits, health care just keeps getting more expensive.
With my chronic stuff, with Mom’s health history and horrible experiences with healthcare as an uninsured cash-only patient, I’ve always pushed myself to work a full time job with solid employers in order to stay covered by an employer plan. Despite the increases that I resent, I’m grateful that we’re still in a position to have relatively affordable health care, all things considered.
Does anyone else expect a hike in costs and know what they are?
September 24, 2013
Tomorrow is our inaugural session of the alcohol and finance meeting wherein PiC and I sit down once a week with a glass of wine or beer to discuss the state of our union as regards money, financial accounts, and things to do going forward.
He likes wine (alcohol) and I love money (a lot) so it made sense to combine the two to dull blunt rein in my overwhelming enthusiasm while making it less onerous for him.
You wouldn’t think that we’d need to schedule time to manage our finances after this many years together (nearly a decade of togetherness, a couple years of being married) but we do. Or we need something like it that works well for us.
We managed a marathon session creating our 2013 budget last Super Bowl Sunday, and without drawing blood on either side!, but I’d much rather get our affairs in healthy working order without falling back on such a dramatically exhausting effort.
This is an experiment to see if we can meet on a good middle ground from which we best manage our money without driving us both crazy. It’s my passion, not his, and while we generally share common goals, our ideas of how and when to reach them diverge sharply.
Even as we plan our “wedding”/reception, I’m reminded that marriage is not an opportunity to change the other person. We influence each other, we rub off on each other, but equally, we bounce off each other. It might be for better or for worse, but how it feels is a whole other ballgame.
A saner person might question whether starting this weekly meeting while we are planning a major event and running like hamsters with work. To that I say, what better time to start a good habit? If we work at this in bite-sized chunks, it’ll be more likely to take root.
And this is the point of all of that. There’s little to no point spending time and money on the wedding day if we’re not spending time and energy nurturing important aspects of the marriage itself.
I don’t know how this will go but I’m hoping for the best and looking forward to making inroads into clearing up our money landscape. It’s been one of the things in marriage that makes me feel complicated: finding a balance between respecting each other’s autonomy while charting a roadmap that works for our family. As I said on Twitter chatting w/@nofearingthemon and @singlema, it’s very much like a waltz. We take steps forward, backward, forward, backward, all the while learning to listen and communicate to the other. Toes have been stepped on in the making of this marriage.
Tomorrow’s agenda
An Overview: identify and log all our existing financial accounts (banking, investing, credit cards, shared/individual).
Log the accounts, amounts, and beneficiaries.
Next week’s agenda
We’ll decide from the overview sheet which accounts still need beneficiaries, need changing, closing or combining.
Our finances may be combined but we don’t intend to shut down all our individual accounts.
I’ll be recording our progress, of course.
