About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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September 9, 2008
I’m mustering some optimism about the next couple of months. It’s not just because my August net worth managed to hold steady with a miniscule increase despite the market and my doing very little to save.
That most definitely helped, but last night I charted my expected income/expenses for September and found that if I stick with the plan through the month of October, I should be able to finally build that paycheck cushion I’ve been wanting. There are only a thousand articles about not living paycheck to paycheck, and while I’d made progress over the past two years, a few setbacks had punted me back into a check-to-check reality.
I can’t for the life of me find the blog article that I had printed out and still keep in my folder, so I can’t give credit where it’s due but there was a great post simplifying the transition from using this month’s money for this month’s bills to using last month’s money to pay this month’s bills. If anyone knows the blog post I’m talking about, I’d love to credit and link them!
That was what I originally had in mind when I instituted my current billpay system: I give myself a biweekly allowance for expenses, and that money sits in an interest bearing account while I pay bills from it. In fact, I wanted to do one better and have a two-month cushion so that I could concentrate on other savings goals, both long and short term, and be ready in case I ever needed to say “I’m outta here!” My emergency fund is more of a disaster and medical emergency fund. (With my family? Can’t be too safe.)
Back to the point.
At the end of September, assuming there aren’t any more surprise bills, and my supplemental income is paid on time, I should have approximately $900 left for expenses. Thanks to getting my insurance money back, the expense account is finally out of the red.
Second, I expect to log at least 40 hours of overtime this month, and I’m splitting all overtime income between expenses and savings, 50/50. I don’t have a dollar amount for that income, but I’ve set the total cushion goal at $3300. I won’t depend on “windfall” money to pay the actual bills in the future, it was just the weird way I get paid and the other expenses depleted the original cushion. [The flip side of that negatroid coin is that I had the funds there to use in the first place. No debt, whoo!]
Third, October is my three-paycheck month. By September’s end, I should have enough in the cushion to cover half a month’s expenses. I’ll take that entire third paycheck and split it between expenses and savings as well. But, if I hit my $20,000 emergency savings goal before October’s third check, then the entire third check can go towards the expenses fund!
If all of the above happens on schedule, without any hiccups, I can get off this paycheck to paycheck cycle by the end of October. How cool is that?
September 7, 2008
I’ve sent emails galore, one for every category:
* Queried friend of a friend about her work environment
* Finally found a lost email, sent to deprived friend
* Sent two networking base-touching emails from the networking event I attended last week. (Two weeks ago? Aren’t you supposed to send those out a day or two after meeting people? I know, I’m a slacker.)
* Sent love to sick friend
Still to go:
* Find a scanner. Perhaps I shouldn’t be trying to buy one, though I’m enamored of those multipage scanners for about $200 on newegg.com. Will check if my friend has one that I can use.
* Use aforementioned scanner to clear out tons of paperwork.
* Online research. Of the life changing kind.
* Applying results of online research.
* Engage Dad in conversation about Mom’s health care, health care providers, health care visit, dietary needs, budgeting, saving, and future plans. Make that conversations. We’ve lightly touched on the subjects, but desperately need to sit down and make actual, concrete plans.
* Get some sleep between now and next week — I need to rest up before this lack of sleep makes me look like a 13-year-old. Between hormones and tiredness, I’m starting to break out. Yikes!
September 5, 2008
Oy. No, no I don’t. But because I clicked on the link … I found that I do, perhaps, need ….
Women’s Xhilaration® Susan Plaid Mary Jane Pumps – Black: $22.99
Women’s Mossimo® Viviana Pumps – Black: $24.99
Ok. So here’s how I’m going to talk myself OUT of them:
1. I have too many shoes. I don’t like having too many shoes, and have actually gone through and donated three or four pairs recently to start paring down.
[Except, I only have one pair of black pumps and they’re so scuffed now. All my other shoes are open toed, or a leetle too shiny for business purposes. My mind is still on interview styles.]
2. And I’m not supposed to be buying cute things just because the price is low and they’re cute. They have to be good quality as well.
[Objecting voice has no objection to this.]
3. I’m not allowed to spend money right now. I have this whole PLAN set up. A plan that I’ll share once I confirm more of the details.
[Oh. Yeah.]
Dangit, Target!!
I love this little tip for a more positive, productive approach to addressing an underperformer. It acknowledges past performance, if there was any, and emphasizes communication which is so much better than just imposing a top-down decision meant to “fix” the employee without actually interacting with him or her:
Budgets are too tight, margins too close. You simply can’t tolerate underperforming employees. But replacing deadwood is arduous and time-consuming. Plus, successors need months to start producing value.
So, take a shot at improving unsatisfactory performance–especially if the employee has shown value in the past. One common cause of poor performance is confusion over expectations. Ask the employee to list the three most important things he’s paid to do. Do the same exercise for him. Most likely, the two lists will differ dramatically. Use them to align expectations more clearly. You can then help your employee focus on doing the right things.
Adapted from “Will You Help or Heave Your Underperformers?” by Paul Michelman, Harvard Management Update, March 2004.
It’s not anything so nuts as actually running the numbers, precisely. Sort of. I just decided that in the spirit of getting ready to pick up and fly where the winds may take me (am I mixing my metaphors?), it’s more than time for me to get more of my financial paperwork online.
Also, my receipts were all hanging out in a single envelope, and that’s unsightly. While I’m not ready to go all out like FB’s scan-a-thon, oh but I would LOVE to, I did want to get started.
So, I grabbed all my receipts, and sat up organizing them into several categories for the Schedule C portion of my income: Gasoline, Business Clothing, Business Gifts, Cell Phone, Dry Cleaning, Travel and Office Supplies. Then, I opened up a new spreadsheet and a kajillion new sheets on Google Docs. The dates, amounts and any applicable notes for each receipt were recorded in chronological order. It only took about two hours to sort, create, and enter the data.
Now that all of the amounts are in a single place, I can easily PDF the whole thing, and take them to my friend’s house to hang out with his dad and learn how to really do taxes next year.
My next step? Getting a good deal on a scanner and scanning all of the tons of files that I’ve got in my room. Offhand, I have files for:
~ auto insurance, maintenance and registration records for three cars
~ Rollover IRA statements
~ FSA records
~ old BT credit card records
~ airline and hotel rewards membership numbers and information
~ tons of credit card statements from the past few years
~ household bills/statements
~ cell phone records
~ payroll records
~ past three or four years’ worth of tax returns
I could recycle some serious paper!
*Now I’m oogling multipage scanners. I don’t need that…. I need to save money more than I do time. Then again, hmmm……*
September 4, 2008
One of my best buddies in the world invited me to his new house that he bought with his brother for a BBQ on Monday. I know he’s splitting the cost, and the house is in the boonies, but I’m so proud of him for having achieved my goal of buying a house first in the group. (Why would I have that goal? I don’t know. For having worked so hard for so long, I wanted something to show for it.)
Unfortunately, not 20 minutes after the grand tour, another guest was fixing a burger when the mustard bottle exploded all over the guest, the island, the new tile …. and the brand new cream-colored carpet.
*Oh. My. Lord.*
And can I tell you? Boys have the worst cleaning reaction time, ever. I was on my knees, dabbing up the mustard without rubbing it in within thirty seconds. Two of the boys were oblivious, and the other three were wringing their hands, in shock. And of course, of all the cleaning tips I could think of (listed below, I think courtesy of DebtHater), dealing with mustard stains in the carpet was not one.
I used plenty of water once I got the mass of mustard dabbed up and all that was left were the stained fibers, then used dish soap and more water. One of the three splotches disappeared completely, and the other stains became light enough to be mistaken for pee stains instead of mustard. Small favors, yes?
What should I really have done?
_______________________________
Other useful cleaning tips, not applicable to the above situation:
Problem: Ink on clothes
Solution: Spray the ink stain with copious amounts of hairspray (the cheaper the better). Then take an ordinary bar of soap (no dye, no perfume) and rub it into the stain. Then hand rinse it in cold water.
Problem: Melted candle wax out on carpets.
Solution: Put a folded paper towel over the wax and then press down on it with a warm iron (no steam). After about 10 seconds, lift it up, turn the paper towel to a clean spot and repeat, over and over until the wax was absorbed. If the wax was colored and left a stain, pour rubbing alcohol on it (make sure the carpet is colorfast) and scrub it out with a toothbrush.
Problem: Ugly yellow water stains in the bathtub.
Solution: Hydrogen peroxide and cream of tartar. Mix them together into a thin paste, then pour it onto the stain and rub it in with a sponge or cloth.
[Click on image to enlarge]
September 2, 2008
This weekend, I tried every which way to put together an outfit appropriate for making an excellent first impression in a business-casual encounter. Not for quite a formal Interview, call it a prelude to an interview sort of dealie. I wanted to establish a (preferably black) trouser, crisp button down shirt and belt combination as a go-to staple in my wardrobe.
Unfortunately, my attempts to look sharper at work on a daily basis have reduced my best black pants to second-best. They’re still nice, but they’ve lost that sharp, crisp look that gives off *professional* so well. Alas, they’re a bit worn. That’s what happen, y’understand, when you actually wear things on a regular basis and possibly also when you’re most frequently shopping bargain bin. At my size, bargain bin and quality don’t always go hand in hand.
In my frustration, I groused to a dude friend about the pants I didn’t think would be tailored quickly enough, and he convinced me to go shopping.
Macys, I decided. Macys would have a grand Labor Day Sale and I was armed with a coupon and gift card. To Macys!
To Macys we went, and seven pairs of trousers later, my attention span somewhere between my heel and the tiger bandaid on my foot to fend off a threatening blister, I was about to give up. I had, for once, been smart enough to wear heels of the approximately appropriate height that would normally be worn with the pants. Smart, I say! Except my feet were tired within twenty minutes and being somewhat less of a shopping maven as, say, my dude friend, I was ready to give up. He refused to hear anything of it, “we haven’t even gotten started!” and chivvied my lazy bum out to the next stores.
Le sigh.
It was a good job he did though because we hit the jackpot at Ann Taylor Loft. I only had a $30 gift card there, but I found three pairs of pants, all 00P, and promptly sent him to scour the sales racks while I found the dressing room. Had not yet gotten my hopes up since the price tag I saw was $79, when I tried on the first pair and my jaw dropped. They FIT. Perfectly. Seriously, they fit absolutely perfectly. Waist, length, tush, rise, everything. The only possible objection was that the fabric looked like a softer, heavier cottony material, instead of that more coarse, crisp polyester blend that’s commonly accepted as the more professional look. It also buttoned across the front, so it didn’t have belt loops. The next pair was the preferred material, and just about a perfect fit as well. It turned out they were the $79 pair, though, and for more than eighty dollars after tax, I’d like to see some lining in the pants. The first pair were *only* $60, machine washable, ever so comfortable and once again: fit perfectly.
I bought them immediately. So, chalk one up as a win for the wardrobe, and a $30 hit to the pocketbook. Overall? No blister = a good day.
Caveat: I would normally never advocate the immediate, impulse purchase of a nonsale item, but … it happens. And it happens more often because the good quality 00P sizes don’t occur very frequently in nature. This is an unfortunate, incontrovertible fact. I promise to take very good care of them.
P.S. I suck. There was a printable 20% coupon online valid this weekend. Drat. Should have checked before I left.
