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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January 4, 2008
While formulating my financial plan for 2008, I said that I ran into a series of walls and needed a break. I’d crunched the number every which way to Wednesday, and still couldn’t stretch my income to cover my savings AND expenses. Know why? Because I was turning a blind eye to what I was really doing: ignoring the expensive drain on my cash stash.
The huge barrier to my ability to save and plan a new year is my inaction regarding selling the truck. It was identified as a problem months ago, but the convenience of a third car, especially after Ma bashed in the front of the second car, has been luxurious and I let myself get complacent.
Well, no more o’ that nonsense!! I’m running short a full $400 per month just because of a danged car payment that I didn’t want in the first place, and it’s stupid to let it affect my plans for the year and then get in a funk when the numbers don’t work. Of course they don’t work, dummy, it’s time to get rid of that thing! Hmph!
This year, I’m taking the financial planning back to the basics.
Part 1: Reduce Expenses. Part 2: Increase Savings.
Stay tuned.
Every so often, I ponder removing the ads on this site because at this rate of earning, I’ll probably hit the minimum payout requirement in 13 years. I never do it, though, because I get a kick out of seeing how many pennies or nickels I’ve scored each given month.
Today, I discovered that the Adsense account site shows the earnings history FOR ALL TIME, so I got curious. It turns out that my first four months of Google Ads-ing were the most profitable:
August 2006: $1.35
September 2006: $3.69
October 2006: $8.94
November 2006: $11.05
Earnings dropped off sharply thereafter … reaching an anemic $9.76 for the year of 2007. Again, November was the peak earnings month. I wonder why that is? We love clicking on ads during Thanksgiving? Pre-Black Friday talk? Did I even post about Black Friday?
January bids fair to possibly match last year’s earnings, clocking in thirty cents as of end of business today.
Good thing I wasn’t planning to quit my job, though I think that Flexo could, if he chose, to rake in the online-business income full-time! (Good on you, Flexo!)
January 3, 2008
I’ve been crunching the numbers for my 2008 financial goals all week, and every time I think I’m close to publication, they change. Usually this is a fun exercise that keeps me happily occupied for HOURS, but I’ve hit a series of walls and am frustrated.
RX: Crawl under the covers for a break and try again tomorrow!
January 2, 2008
I had to use 25,000 miles for BD’s short haul flight the weekend of the wedding that would normally only “cost” 15,000 miles, but the trade-off is almost $200 that BD can put towards paying down his debt, so it’s worth it.
Ya hear that, BD? $196 —> debt repayment! 🙂
(Just kidding, he doesn’t actually read this.)
January 1, 2008
Most shops are closed today, New Year’s Day, and I’ve already managed to spend $14 on groceries: cough drops, OJ, milk and eggs.
I was going to review the week’s spending because I’d forgotten that A) it’s Tuesday, and B) it’s already next week. Yeah, I’m totally ready to go back to work tomorrow!!
Last week’s spending, then:
Monday – spent the morning at the cemetery, no spending in the afternoon or evening.
Tuesday – Christmas! Spent the day family-hopping, eating too much good food, and opening way too many presents. Loot: three books, a lovely necklace, two cute bead bracelets (one of which snapped the next day, doh!), a fantastic, made in Florence, journal. From BD: A Maxtor external hard drive, and a Green Lantern ring that’s hugenormous. I love it.
Worked on Wednesday, and forgot to eat breakfast or bring lunch, so I spent $4 on lunch.
Thursday – most of the day was spent at the cemetery visiting A’s grave and eating lunch with the family. No spending.
Friday – used some SW credit to purchase one leg of my flight to see BD for our 3-year anniversary. We then went to Ikea and spent about $220 on office supplies that I’ll be reimbursed for, and $25 on a bathroom rug (for Ma) and ergonomic pillow for me. That was a great $8.65 spent on the pillow, I’ve been getting GREAT sleep. I treated BD to Pho at a restaurant my family frequented when I was a kid: $18, tip included.
Saturday – no spending!
December 31, 2007
Ah yes, the neverending saga that is BroDucky. He’s delusional. Is there any other explanation? After our knockdown, drag-out, earsplitting fight two weeks ago in which he declaimed all sorts of morally reprehensible things such as the rightness of his decision-making, etc., etc., after telling me in words, actions and behavior that our family means less than burnt beans to him ….. he wants to move back home.
He says that he’s tried and tried, he’s hit rock bottom, has nowhere to go, nothing left, no friends, and on and on. Says he wants to come home and help our family, help our mother, help me. Can I believe a word of it? Certainly not.
Yep. It’s been a very merry week of strife.
After much agonizing, I still have to stick to my guns: he needs to get a job, he needs to get his act together on his own, he needs to pay me back, and needs to own up to his mistakes and actually physically try to make things right on his own. Not by mewling to me about how he knows that he’s hurt me multiple times, and then having me save him from his mistakes so that he can go right back out and do it again.
Families are, in so many ways, so very complicated. Parenting seems more impossible than ever, if this is any example of the results.
I’ve begun to search for a new abode. His pigsty habits aside, I don’t believe that he’ll truly strike out on his own and try to make his own life so long as his family is accessible to beg.
For tonight? I wish everyone a very happy New Year, and plan to hunker down indoors, take no calls, make no calls, and generally hide from humanity for just one evening.
December 29, 2007
Egads, but this year flew by! This Ducky’s fiscal travels were all over the map this year. I covered the balance tranfer/App-o-Rama adventure, the lending money debacle, the frantic savings race, and the monthly bills marathon. So let’s take a look and see what kind of shape 2007 turned out to be.
Originally, I decided these were my goals:
1. Mini e-fund: 3200 (01/07-04/07)
2. House fund: 6400 (05/07-12/07)
3. Roth: 4000 (1/07-12/07)
4. Car: 2640 (01/07-12/07)
= 1353/month
= 16,240/year
while budgeting 28,320 for bills and rent and increasing the pre-tax 403(b) contribution to 500/month.
What really happened:
At the time of last year’s goal-making, I didn’t make any special note of the regular emergency fund, because it was full. These are the major highlights:
- February: I had the emergency trip to Vietnam. Cost: ~ $4200
- (Feb) Made the biggest financial mistake I’ve made to date, and lent BroDucky $20k. I received $4k back midyear, and haven’t seen a dime more since then. He also stopped his car and insurance payments which were $700/mo. Total Cost: $16,000 + $4200 = $20,200. I had to foot the rest of the auto-related bills and the $16k. [*ow*]
- In July, I got the word that a major raise was coming my way. Only the first 5% kicked in at that time, as well as a small quarterly bonus and cell phone stipend, the rest of it came in a lump sum later on.
- October: all OT ceased and my income went down to an absolute base amount. Again, ow. That costs, on average, $600/month. Cost: ~$1800
- Received the fat supplementary-income bonus check, split it up into taxes/savings/spending deposits. Did the same with my Christmas bonus. Plus: $16,500; setting aside $4465 for taxes.
I sure wish that I had a Day of Reckoning for 2006 for comparison’s sake. There was so much upheaval, though, that it’s going to take way too much time to figure it all out manually. Instead, I will create the starting point for whatever information I can access now, similar to the monthly snapshots, and that’ll be my baseline for next year.
|
2006 |
2007 |
| Cash |
$15,000 |
$14,800 |
| Retirement Investments: Roth |
$0 |
$3,601 |
| Retirement Investments: 401(k) |
$0 |
$2,217 |
| Retirement Investments: 403(b) |
$4,238 |
$12,245 |
|
| Wamu: Rollover IRA |
$1,385 |
$1,497 |
| Investments and Loans |
$17,630 |
$17,630 |
| Total |
$38,253 |
$52,190 |
What the table doesn’t tell you
Cash Savings (not income meant for bills): Unexpected Expenses – $28,600
I saved enough to nearly refill the emergency fund and to cover the lost $16,000. Originally I was going to use the rest of the e-fund, but saved really diligently to try and cover as much as possible out of this year’s income instead. I’ll be paying the saved $16k back out in a month, so the year-end cash total I’ll be keeping is a shade less than I started out with this year. *one last sigh for lost savings*
Retirement Investments:
Vanguard rescued this disorganized PF idiot by providing year-end balance comparisons. They don’t break out the contributions versus earnings, but I guess that doesn’t matter.
A huge driver for the increase in retirement savings is the fact that I received a great deal of untaxed bonus money to supplement the shortfall of income. Saving that much pretax money also saved me approximately $2000 worth of owed taxes.
