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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December 12, 2014
Saying “challenge” was always like waving a red flag in front of me, or firing the starting gun at a race. It’s nigh on irresistable, that knee-jerk Get In There! reaction.
These days, though, my contrariness has decided to take a new turn: if I tell myself I can’t spend or have something, it’s more like telling me not to think about the pink elephant in the room than a wave-off. Instant fixation (just add water…).
Is this a bad thing? It depends. What’s the point?
It’s a useful tool for someone who’s new to getting their spending in hand to really see how easy it is to spend, day in and day out.
It’s a handy way to harness the power of solidarity. Like Tonya’s Health and Wealth Challenge (which I think sounds like a lot of fun), knowing you’ve got others out there working on the same challenge helps.
It can spark some creative approaches to getting through the challenge period. Theoretically you’re not just waiting on making purchases until you can buy them all at the end of the challenge, you’re learning how to make do or learning what you truly need versus just what you want. (On the other hand, it can wonderfully focus your mind on that thing you really really want.)
It’s not the worst way to force yourself to consciously spend only on your bills when you don’t have disposable income.
My problem is …
Other than the fun of doing a challenge with other people, I don’t need to remind myself not to spend for the sake of spending. There have been plenty of lean months and years to train that right out of me.
What I really need to learn is how to spend in moderation, not bouncing from the one extreme to the other.
I have disposable income now. In the grand scheme of things, I have a TON of disposable income. Rent, utilities, groceries, eating out, gifts, and travel are already covered by the household budget. My allowance is just for me. As in, to spend at will. On anything. ANYTHING. Ten years ago, my allowance was for any groceries, eating out, gifts, charity. It never stretched to paying for things I wanted.
When my broke college student mentality is in residence, that allowance tends to be hoarded. Then I break out in “I want everything” hives. You’d think it wouldn’t be such a problem figuring out how to spend in some normal, moderate, way.
Or I could just keep on either spending $0 or all the dollars. One offsets the other, after all.
December 10, 2014
After several years of hiring, patterns inevitably crop up with every round of applications. In the latest round of hirings: Awful cover letters.
I’ve spent more time as an applicant than as a hiring manager and always hated writing cover letters so I know very well how much it sucks. So at first, I was feeling motivated to write a really helpful post about all the things you should and shouldn’t do in your cover letter, but Ask A Manager has that covered and really, knowing what not to do is NOT the same as able to give advice on what to do.
Then too, the letters were so bad, well, something in me just broke. A misstep here or there is no big deal but each letter was chock full of eye-twitch inducing goodness.
Why didn’t you get the job? Well ….
Dear Applicant,
Please don’t use “Greetings”. I feel like I’m being contacted by aliens. (Yes, personal preference.)
If it’s not the cultural norm, please don’t send me your photo. I do not want to be biased in any way or distracted by what you look like. Or wondering why you sent me that picture with that background, and what’s going on with all that there?
Please don’t use “Let’s cut to the chase”. Aside from being annoying because you never actually do, we’re not buddies and I’m not trying to buy something from you.
Please don’t say “I don’t want to waste your time”. It has only ever prefaced several long paragraphs, chitchatting about your daydreams, inevitably wasting my time. Again, you’re applying for a job, we’re not having a coffee and biscotti on a Sunday afternoon.
Speaking of biscotti, please don’t offer your skills at baking cookies or fetching coffee in lieu of relevant skills, when the job has nothing to do with baking or fetching. Frequency: 20% of cover letters. 100% of them were written by unqualified candidates.
You cannot claim to have AMAZING (stellar, unbelievable [well maybe unbelievable], fantastic) attention to detail when your resume has seventeen typos in the most relevant work experience section. The evidence does not support the claim. That isn’t how you spell those words and you didn’t even finish that sentence right there.
Please don’t do written choreography in your resume. I just need stuff relevant to the job. Not your personal philosophical journey, the length and breadth of which spans the globe, that got you physically here to this location.
The different colors and font sizes thoughout? Please please spare me. Some of us are old and our eyes are tired.
Only apply to this job IF YOU KNOW WHAT THIS JOB IS. It’s right there in the title. I’m not playing job Mad Libs or Mystery Job. The cover letter is not the place to speculate (fantasize?) what the job might be. The ad actually tells you what it is.
If you have a disproportionately different (far more or far less) amount of experience than the job requires, tell me that you actually noticed that and explain why you still want the job. Otherwise I have no idea if you know what you’re trying to apply for.
Telling me that you’ll follow up in a few days to answer any questions I might have is not showing initiative. It might suggest that you think I’m too stupid (lazy? incompetent? these are valid concerns but maybe don’t be so obvious about it) to hit “Reply” on the email to ask those questions I might have. More importantly, if you nag me within 3 days of sending in your application for consideration, it’s just going to suggest that you don’t respect my very limited time. Alison agrees with me, see Letter #3!
It is common for the same job to be posted at more than one website. We do not mean for you to apply to every identical posting.
Don’t include an objective if you can’t be bothered to customize it to the job you’re applying to. Everyone‘s objective is “get a job that pays me money”. It’s cool.
Saying “Call even if you don’t think I’m a fit. You won’t be wasting my time since I am interested in finding out more about your company…” doesn’t sound like “enterprising individual” so much as “not aware that hiring isn’t the time to play publicity person and also didn’t notice that you have a website that tells you a LOT about us”.
*Deep Breath*
I had a handful of good cover letters and a few ok ones.
I took a chance on one of the ok letter writer-applicants as I do from time to time, but true to experience, that candidate was the worst of the lot: barely qualified, completely disinterested in the actual job, just looking for a pitstop sort of thing on the way out of town.
Don’t get me wrong, all jobs are temporary stays over the length of a career. But! There has to be some match between what you want and what the job requires of you. When the role is doing A, B and C long term, and you intend to get out and do X, Y and Z as soon as possible, it’s kind of pointless for both parties.
The cover letter doesn’t tell you the whole story about a candidate but it has been a decent indicator of whether or not the applicant is worth speaking to.
As an aside, I do agree with Suzanne Luzas on hiring people who make typos when it’s not relevant to the core job.
December 8, 2014
I love the little things…
Office supplies: awesome pens, planners+calendars. Sometimes it’s nice knowing what day it is.
Mailing supplies: labels.
Brown kraft paper: for wrapping parcels. Also, I love that word. Parcels.
Foods I’m Missing
(Obligatory disclaimers: Yes, these are the “not-recommendeds”; yes, I know I don’t have to religiously adhere to it; yes, I’m choosing to do so anyway. I love food but given my craptastic and unpredictable medical history, I’d rather avoid even minimal risk for LB where possible for some months. I’ll be grumpy but it’s still my choice. I have no judgment or opinions on what other pregnant choose or don’t choose to eat. And I reserve the right to have a wee whine about it.)
Brie.
All the runny eggs. Poached. Sunny side up. Soft boiled.
Raw fish.
Sprouts for my sandwiches.
Rare roast beef.
Steak. Medium rare.
Salami.
Prosciutto.
Corned beef.
Albacore tuna. Cooked. Raw.
Where’d you go?
My Toes: I know they’re there, and I guess basically everything else is still there too, but I can’t really see the rest of myself below the top hemisphere of this globe I call my belly.
Dexterity: As if there was much before but the toppling over like a felled tree is happening more and more often. Falling off curbs is nothing new.
At least once a day, trying to work: In the chaos of cleaning and purging, I can’t figure out where anything lives anymore.
Feels like…
I have been congested for six months straight.
I’m smuggling a globe/There’s a madly spinning rotisserie in my midsection/I’m hosting a swim meet.
There’s a squirrel nesting in my head, occasionally taking my brain off for a stroll.
We’ll never finish this organizational kick.
We may actually get a winter around here… Maybe?
It’s time to wrap All The Things. For Christmas, for birthdays, for anything! Send me your parcels, I will wrap them!
12 am to 2 am snacks
Half an orange.
Two string cheeses.
A basic quesadilla.
Cheesy toast.
Popcorn. (479 degrees may be a pretentious-ish brand but I loooove their sea salt caramel flavor)
A fried egg on toast.
Things I say a lot now…
What is going ON?
I’m going to squish the dog now. I can’t squish the dog now. I shouldn’t have squished the dog, I’m stuck.
Seamus, stop licking!
I need a quesadilla.
Geezus, Wesley! #AngelRewatch
Aggravating person, I HATE YOU.
If I were to create a new job, what would that be?
None of these are productive lists, really.
December 5, 2014
Food is life.
And unlike my teen years, cooking is now one of my favorite ways to unwind. Normally this is a win win and PiC benefits from the messes in the kitchen.
I don’t want to admit that I can’t keep up with everything but let’s just pretend, as an intellectual exercise and a nod to moderation, that cooking after delivering Little Bean is not super likely. I used to cook most nights, now I’m down to 1-3 nights a week. Add a potentially squalling, but definitely feeding every 2-3 hours newborn to the mix and I think we all know the real end of that equation.
But who wants to rely entirely on take-out or delivery? It’s a nice treat on occasion but I get tired of restaurant food faster than it takes to outspend the grocery budget.
Like squirrels, we’ve been stocking the cupboards with the basics: pasta, rice, quinoa, boxed broths, and KIND and Luna bars for days when I just can’t face a meal or just need an easy boost. Flour, sugar and brown sugar goes on sale a lot around the holidays so I’ll stock up on that for prep as well.
We don’t have much storage or a very big freezer unfortunately, so my plans to prep/precook some food that should be easy to throw together later have to be modest.
I’ll be:
Poaching chicken thighs and freezing them whole,
Poaching whole chickens and shredding it for use in soups, quesadillas, with rice, whatever. I tend to throw together really haphazard soups so we’ll just prep ahead whatever of the standard ingredients freezes well. I know onions do fine, but I’m not sure about carrots, potatos and celery yet. I know for darn sure I’m not going to be up to peeling and cutting up potatos, though.
Attempting premaking pizza from scratch for freezing, toppings and all, and a lasagna recipe (also intended to be frozen). I always want lasagna and rarely make it so that’ll be really nice to have a few premade.
I’ve also written up a detailed list of our local restaurants that are good for either delivery or take out, including all our usual orders so that if it’s that dire, we don’t have to make any real decisions.
We tried Munchery.com for some real food delivery as we have mostly Asian take-out around here and most don’t deliver. They do more American style foods, though in smaller portions, but it’s a reasonable cost per meal with discounts so that’s on our list of go-to food choices.
This should be helpful to out of town visitors who might be here to help with LB too, they won’t have to ask or figure out what’s good that’s also nearby. While I’m at it, I’m including grocery stores as well. That bit’s purely for convenience.
Notes: I always crave cake and most especially cakes from Nothing Bundt Cakes. Failing that, (anyone who really loves me and wants me to be stocked up on cake, take note) we’ve discovered the Super Lemony Lemon Cake Bites from Trader Joe’s and I nearly demolished the whole package in one go. They’re not the absolutely most amazing thing ever, but they are close enough for me. Yes yes, I should be eating my veggies but I also need my cake, y’all.
December 3, 2014
Accidentally saving hundreds
Disclaimer: This bit isn’t a tutorial, it’s really a tale of my lapse of judgement.
Having always been so petite that I have historically spent just as much money on tailoring clothes than on the clothes themselves, I suffered from a self-induced delusion that I could pretty much avoid buying maternity clothes.
I’ll just transition to clothes a size larger, I thought.
I can make do with my own stuff, I thought.
A couple long shirts and unbuttoned pants will do, I thought.
Why waste the money for such a temporary thing? I thought.
So wrong.
For a few weeks, nothing was showing. Smugly calculating my savings, my reckoning crept up on me. It was a bit of shock to realize one day that sure, the pants didn’t have to be buttoned to stay up but good luck actually getting them on in the first place. The body does some WEIRD stuff when it’s creating a human and the thing that weirded me out the most was this protrusion. It wasn’t long before my belly was entering the room before I was and let me tell you, that’s just confusing.
I liked SaverSpender’s general guidelines; I didn’t want to spend a log of money or have a ton of clothes I couldn’t wear for more than three to six months, so with that in mind, I hit Target and Old Navy for a few basics (free shipping, cashback rebates, you know the drill).
The prices weren’t bad at all. Thick leggings were less than $20, soft extra-long tees were about $12. I even picked up a couple blousey things for about $15. All told, between sales and lower prices, I spent about $100 for two pairs of thick leggings, a tshirt, two tank tops, a long sleeve blouse and a long, lightweight coverup-type sweater.
Unfortunately, targeting (hah) only really comfortable things meant that I was just casually presentable in public. Definitely not professionally as I don’t believe leggings are pants and I hated the maternity jeans offered but I figured I had time to deal with it. (AKA, ostrich it out for a while longer).
Also wrong.
The weather turned on me in so many ways. It was too cold and wet for the leggings which soaked up water like it was dying of thirst, got really dirty in the splashing about, and then it was too hot for pants entirely. For warm weather, I tend to turn to dresses but all but one dresses stopped fitting. After getting so stuck in one of them that I needed to be rescued, I wasn’t about to try again. Alas, pretty much everything in the closet has been tailored to fit (my pre-pregnancy self)!
Then a friend swooped in.
I’m not proud of this. I hadn’t been complaining, to the contrary, I’d been insisting that I was fine but did admit to caving and buying an emergency pair of maternity jeans. Friend wasn’t having any of my frugality; ze insisted that I needed some nice things and nice things I was going to get. I didn’t realize that this didn’t just mean we were going to take on the chore of shopping together, which I hate and so won’t do alone, but that ze was also going to insist on BUYING the stuff for me.
Honestly, I can’t remember the last time anyone except PiC bought clothes for me, maybe when I was 15? But friend was so insistent, and thoroughly prepared to make a scene if I didn’t graciously accept the gift, that I bowed to the inevitable and accepted a handful of really nice clothes that were comfortable and professional. They’ve been wonderfully comfortable and nice enough quality for work. Though I don’t have to dress up, it still requires something way better than my Target buys, and I’m both grateful and embarrassed to feel “dependent” on the generosity of others.
If they’d been hand me downs, it wouldn’t have felt so weird. On the other hand, as someone who really enjoys giving people gifts of practical things they’d like and would use but wouldn’t buy for themselves, there’s something to be said for accepting gifts from people who truly wish to give them. It’s an odd feeling, and reminds me again of what Mutant Supermodel just said about being on the receiving end of thoughtfulness.
Later I found out that this was something ze had been wanting to do because it’s how ze bonds with another long time friend.
Spending some cash
The emergency maternity jeans, though somewhat oversized because I hadn’t gotten the best advice from the shop assistant, actually still get a bit of play. Turns out that while everyone tells you to buy your pre-pregnancy size, the discrepancy between that and my size now is so significant that jeans that fit well 3 months ago would require the use of tools and an assistant to engineer a way to get them on. So that wasn’t $45 wasted, I have jeans I can still wear.
I did recently go crazy in the underwear department, though. I got a $50 off $150 coupon from Destination Maternity and laughed at the idea of spending that much on anything there, but then, of course, things changed. And by things, I mean the massive circumference of the globe I swallowed. I like to do laundry weekly now, but post-LB, no one’s going to have that kind of time.
In the end, I bought 4 bras and 2 weeks of comfortable underwear for $112, after free shipping and coupon. Pretty sure most of it will fit but we’ll see once they arrive. Even though hitting 3 digits made me wince, remembering how expensive regular bras are for me normally (upwards of $60), this isn’t a totally outrageous expenditure.
As it turns out, I’ve had to emerge from my slapdash-dressing hermitage many more times than I expected during these past few months, and will continue to need to, so it’s not completely out of the realm of sanity to own more than one bra that fits.
The Grab Bag
An unexpected bounty arrived the other day. For me, not for LB! That was exciting. Someone had asked PiC if I’d mind getting some clothing that might fit – of course I wouldn’t mind! – so he schlepped home a HUGE bag full of lightly used clothes. Rummaging through a bag of preselected clothes was a kind of fun I haven’t had since I was a kid. Most *nearly* fit, so I have a bit of an unruly look about me with sleeves too long and collars too wide. Nevertheless, adding a couple shirts and a few dresses to the wardrobe more than doubled it. I like going minimal but it’s been a little bit *too* minimal here for being (nearly) presentable in public.
Fun fact: I didn’t know clothes were purchased in actual stores until grade 7. All my clothes were yard sale buys, hand me downs, or made by Mom. This was a random act of niceness that brought a wave of nostalgia. Also, now I have a couple coats that fit around my wide berth!
Continuing the cycle
I don’t know if LB is going to be an only child or not, but I’m already thinking of who I can pass along some of this bounty to when the time comes.
December 1, 2014
Our 2013 taxes were finally stowed, just ahead of the October filing deadline, and I’m staring down the barrel of prepping for 2014’s filing in just a few months.
I thought this might be super boring but Anne asked so I’m sharing!
I like to think I’ll have my paperwork in order for the CPA but this whole new investing thing introduces a whole other tangle so, lest I lose my ever-loving mind trying to figure it out as deadlines loom, the spreadsheets and IRS.gov have been cracked open. Feels somewhat like being a junior in high school, prepping for the SATs, again!
There’s a ton of documents to wade through but these were the highlights for both immediate and long-term planning:
I had to decide what reporting method to use between Cash Method or the Accrual method. Reading up on the two, it’s not clear whether there’s any benefit to do one over the other, tax-wise, but the cash method seems most straightforward.
Cash method. You are a cash basis taxpayer if you report income on your return in the year you actually or constructively receive it, regardless of when it was earned. You constructively receive income when it is made available to you, for example, by being credited to your bank account.
Expenses paid by tenant. If your tenant pays any of your expenses, those payments are rental income. I don’t expect to see any of this crop up but it’s good to know. I’d hate to accidentally under-report income for not knowing it was considered income!
Long Term Income: Do not include a security deposit in your income when you receive it if you plan to return it to your tenant at the end of the lease. But if you keep part or all of the security deposit during any year because your tenant does not live up to the terms of the lease, include the amount you keep in your income in that year.
There are a myriad of expenses I’m recording on my spreadsheet: maintenance, insurance, taxes, interest, commissions, management fees, legal and other professional fees, repairs.
The value of the rental property is depreciated based on the date it is ready and available for rent, this is called the date it was “placed in service.”
Next Steps and Final Numbers
The CPA and I will need to put our heads together and sort out how it looks once we run the actual numbers.
November 28, 2014
All our “we should, someday” projects are coming home to roost.
Personally, and this approach with my clothes is all too often to my detriment, I usually wait til things are worn to a literal thread before replacing them. The Curse of the Broken Pants still holds because of this: every time I start a new job, I break another pair of pants. (Pretty sure it’s hilarious when it’s not happening to you.)
We’d put off most of it, inertia is a budget’s friend sometimes and overstuffed rooms give me claustrophobia, anyway. LB’s impending arrival has upended this complacency. All too soon, we’ll need every bit of organization and babyproofable furniture we can get to offset the chaos.
The “we should”s are turning into “holy crap, we should really do this now!”
PiC and I react to this totally in line with our usual styles of course: I mentally rank each new idea as a now or hold for later; for PiC, it all goes on the same list. Obviously, we’re now having a LOT of discussion about which are truly priorities and which are Nice to Have.
On hold:
That rattling vent that just sounds awful but works fine.
Our dream trough sink (guesstimate: $3000 for the sink and installation. And the inconvenience – I assume installation would be a huge pain).
The shower head (guesstimate: $200-300 for the replacement but installation also looks like a bear).
Do It Now:
Furniture is the biggest thing right now, literally, and of course the most expensive even with thrifty Craigslisting.
Minimalist or no, we will be adding a fair amount of stuff. Purging the place has been productive but getting things out the door can only make space for the somewhat inevitable pile of stuff, it doesn’t get us organized with the incoming baby stuff.
1. I need an actual workstation. My current workspace is open to the public and the mess is counterproductive.
2. LB has a bed now but we need decent storage for LB’s stuff: feeding, diapering and bathing supplies, clothes, books, a few toys. A car seat and stroller that I can manage. (It’s odd that such a small creature needs about six times more stuff than the enormous Seamus.)
3. The inefficiency of our closet. Meditating on the problem hasn’t brought on any genius so we’re resorting to The Container Store, that scary heaven, to provide some answers. PiC has gone there six times, I’m staying the heck out in case I buy everything. And some IKEA, that den of somewhat affordable home stuffs.
4. The tiny closet. PiC has organized the HECK out of it, managing to find a whole pile of things to sell. Defraying costs? YES PLEASE.
The funniest thing? PiC genuinely thought that he had 3 to 4 years before he had to worry about childproof furniture. I don’t think he’s been paying attention to how much a crawling or newly walking infant gets into, we’ll be lucky to be havoc-free for more than 10 months!
So, no more open-face furniture, doors on everything!
Related: Jana tackled organizing in November