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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April 13, 2014
We had a lively Saturday and now Doggle and I are crashed out, me with about 25% mobility, him with wondering why I’m taking five times longer to fill his water bowl while he stares at it, pointedly. Probably I’m the servant he would fire to make a point.
Left to its own devices, my brain wants to know if you’d rather….
Handwash dishes, or use the dishwasher?
Have a robot vacuum, risking a SkyNet/Cylon invasion one day, or just live in a dirty house for weeks?
Use an electric toothbrush or regular toothbrush?
Live with less traffic and few friends to visit or have Carmageddon be your norm with lots of friends?
Have a life of adventure or sense of adventure?
Be able to sing one song really well or whistle anything really well?
Hang out with Laurence Fishburne or Mads Mikkelsen for a day?
Spend 6 months traveling your own country, or 6 weeks traveling internationally? Solo or with the whole family?
April 11, 2014
PiC and I had the pleasure of spending a few days in Seattle. It was his first visit, my third, and we had a whole ambitious slate of things we wanted to explore. Predictably enough, my entire itinerary was foods and comics. His was a bit more high-brow: museums, nature, local sights.
We settled on a melange of friends, geekery, comics, trying great foods, and a little bit of sightseeing. Whatever we missed on this trip was added to the list for Next Time. There will be a next time!
And because I’m a sharing kind of person, some of my favorites:
Taylor Shellfish: Has limited seating, mainly high top tables and bar stools, probably fits about 25 people, if they’re awfully friendly, and their oysters are in open cases right next to the dining tables. It’s great. They have this fantastic chowder bar, offering two kinds of chowder, and for $6.50, you can have your fill of classic clam chowder or spicy geoduck chowder, and amazing dinner rolls.
I had to try their oysters, so that was a bit of a splurge as all oysters were > $2/each, and I think we all remember that I’m the greedy so and so who ordered FIFTY oysters the last time we oystered. No kidding, I broke PiC with that and this was the first time he’d even look at one since.
The Calf & Kid: A tiny cheese shop in the Melrose Market area, we literally stood there and gawked at all their cheeses. Egads I love cheese.
Cupcake Royale: We accompanied our friends to this coffee/cupcake/ice cream shop and good gravy but a regular cupcake priced at $3.65 is too rich for my blood. I had one anyway, vacation y’know, but it was just ok. Still, their designs were awesome.
Seattleites and Seattle experts: Do share any other must eat places that we should try Next Time!
April 7, 2014
I declare a Minor Victory. After wading through 20 forms and itemizing deductions for home, charitable deductions, expenses and so on, I’ve finally gotten the taxes sorted enough to file for our extension. Maybe a numbing effect sets in after the first several hours, or the pain is so unbelievable that you entirely forget what it was like, much like how I’ve heard childbirth described. No kidding, that was torment stretched across 3 weekends and I’ve only just bought us a reprieve until October. On the bright side, I always forget that California grants an automatic extension so all that pain was for federal taxes.
While looking forward to working with a good tax preparer/advisor, I get that weird “I have to pre-clean for the housecleaners” feeling. You know what I’m talking about, right? Friends who had housekeepers/housecleaners (or still do) always spend half a day picking up in preparation for people to come clean. It totally baffles me. But Moom inspired me to sort all the just-about filed paperwork so it’s not a file folder chock full of confusion; everything’s scanned and itemized in a spreadsheet now.
This is the second year I’ve used TaxAct and around Hour 13, I started wondering what possessed me to use them again. The relief of being done with taxes must have overcome all memory of my frustrations in using the software last year. Since I’d already committed, I rationalized that this was just my way of being fair, that the frustration really had to do with the software, not just doing taxes.
Let’s be honest, there was a lot of that frustration:
1. Filing an extension requires an estimate of your tax liability and payment by April 15th. Slog through the entire filing process and then send in Form 4868, Application for Automatic Extension of Time To File U.S. Individual Income Tax Return.
2. Finally filing again in October (instead of January or February at the latest) when the last straggler Schedule K comes in: Form 1040; Schedules A-C, SE; Form 6251; Form 2106; Form 4562
3. Filing amendments because the last straggler Schedule K was wrong – Forms 1040x and 540x.
Human error aside, the linear-but-NOT interface was terrible
TaxAct walks you through each of the forms, start to finish, via their questionnaire. Answer yes to this or that question and it opens up the relevant form. This works if you have all your information at hand, organized, and ready to be flipped through.
The problem is, you can’t easily skip certain questions and then just use their “Back” button to weave your way back up the tree. Go backwards that way and you’re liable to find yourself up a creek instead, lost in some random cul-de-sac of form questions, or rowing your way through a whole series of questions that aren’t the direction you meant to go.
New Stuff
When you have a number of new forms or situations to work into the picture, it’s not necessarily intuitive when you should be adding which forms to which sections if you only know which Schedule it should appear on but not much else. I ended up adding and deleting forms multiple times trying to get things into the correct sections/sequence. It wasn’t until the end where I found the summary page for either the Income or Deductions section where it was much easier to fill things out piecemeal; and I still couldn’t tell you where to find that.
Once I further complicate our financial lives with other investments, I won’t have hair left to pull out while doing taxes. Another vote for hiring a pro!
Stupid inconveniences
If you’d, say, spent 4 hours working and turned your attention away briefly, you get logged out. It saves your work, of course, but when you try to log back in, there’s a 30% chance it’ll decide that you disabled cookies (when you didn’t) and insists that you have to accept them again (but I DO!). It’s an annoyance but let’s be honest, every minute wasted trying to do taxes is as frustrating as those minutes and hours spent actually working on them.
Honestly, the software’s probably halfway decent but for the amount of time I had to waste figuring it out, or figuring out where information should go because they failed to provide enough information, I won’t be using them again.
March 25, 2014
Hell yes.
Happiness is: peace of mind, freedom, security, joy.
I started blogging nearly a decade ago, in what now seems to be the early dawn of personal finance blogging. Many of the early blogs I got to know are gone now, those that remain have grown up and moved out, sold to PF conglomerates of one sort or another. A few are still chugging along steadily, big and small, populating the landscape like old neighbors. I like old neighbors. It suggests a homeyness and the coziness of people who understand boundaries and respect them, not expecting too much and not talking too much. I still read a variety of bloggers: life-money, wealth, debt bloggers; and their stories keep pushing me to do a little better today than I did yesterday.
One of those bloggers, Ramit (of I Will Teach You to Be Rich) who needs absolutely no publicity from me, sent around an email recently about how he was going to take off for a skiing weekend; his business would continue to rake in the cash orders of magnitude more than he spent. That, of course, set off one of my classic “If you give a mouse a cookie” moments:
I’d like to be able to send an email to my good friends suggesting a weekend away, and pay for it. But some of them have kids. They might have the flexibility to go on an all expenses paid trip but it’d be a pain for them to say, fly cross country, with kids and all their associated luggage. So it’d be awesomer to charter a plane. Oh even better? It’d be best to have my own plane that I didn’t have to pilot and … ok, this just got a whole lot more expensive.
That got me thinking: Based on my definition, quantitatively speaking, I would say that I am at least three times happier now than I was nearly ten years ago.
But I can always find a way to spend more money. Always. I don’t live profligately but my imagination has no shortage of ideas of how to do things “better” that just so happen to cost a few hundred thousand dollars. Or more. It’s not like I’m a hard-partier who believes in working hard = playing hard, but let’s be honest, I could certainly see myself positively wallowing in luxury should I manage to find a way to unbelievable wealth.
Wouldn’t it follow that it doesn’t matter how much money I have, I wouldn’t be happy?
It’s 2014 and most of my expectations haven’t come true.
- I didn’t save my parents from themselves. In fact, that was an epic fail as far as what I *thought* was going to happen: happy healthy parents living in the house I’d bought for them, able to travel the world a couple times a year, able to hang out with me and my chosen family.
- I don’t hold a Master’s degree in anything unless you can have a degree in Grit and Perseverance. You really can’t frame that. Over the years, no degree seemed worth the effort of juggling work and school simultaneously.
- I don’t have a pack of rescued dogs, in the house I bought before age 30. Nope.
These were just a few things on my 30 by 30 list if that had been a thing half a lifetime ago. I’d just started out in my first post-college job, making below the median salary for the field, fresh-minted in the professional world, if not the financial world. My parents were in dire financial straits, I was going to save them, and all was going to be well in the world.
If we were grading my life, using that list, I’d be transported back to those horrible days in high school when a B felt like the end of all things, good or ill. So why would I contend that money = happiness?
Take a step back
Life isn’t about a pre-determined list and checking off the boxes. In today’s society, that’s really easy to forget.
In no small part due to tripling my salary in the past decade, happiness isn’t some holy grail. It’s part of everyday life thanks to the things I didn’t see coming, not the stuff I so carefully planned.
I’m happily married….
Can’t say I saw that coming. Seriously, even though I spent the last many years in a long term relationship, marriage was still something that I supposed would or wouldn’t happen but I wasn’t focused on it as an end goal.
Instead I was all too aware of how tightly wound I was about every. single. penny. PiC would never admit it out loud (though, party trick: watch his eyes dilate a little if the subject ever comes up) but I was NOT easy to live with when he was privy to me in full-caretaking mode. I was worried ALL the time. I was worried day, night and twilight about whether I was making enough to make rent, to cover the cost of fixing Mom up again after her latest run-away and fall, how I was going to pay for nursing care, how I was going to pay for her and Dad’s continued costs of living. And was I working hard enough to make the case for a serious raise, was I performing at star levels, 24 hours a day? And my health was terrible. Stress, as it turns out, exacerbates the health problems so I was, as far as things go, a pretty awful partner to live with for a few years. Making a lot more money – surprise! – made huge difference.
We now enjoy some luxuries, we’re able to have both some things we want and all our needs are met.
Money didn’t save my mom….
but it gave my parents a place to live and stability that they wouldn’t have had if I wasn’t paying.
My health still sucks….
but I have an actual support network now. In the last few years, PiC and I have learned how to cope with it together. The first 15 years of living with fibro was incredibly lonely and isolating. With his support and help, I can afford to pay for alternative treatments to alleviate the pain. With friends who understand, I have people to talk to about something that’s both horrible and never-ending. Friends who have never been seriously sidelined have no understanding of what it’s like to live like this, and I’d never wish it on them obviously, but it’s still been incredibly isolating.
Freedom & Security
These go hand in hand. I haven’t reached the magic number or magic solution that would mean I could go without employment for months or years but I do have the beginnings of both. I have the ability to plan for them, not just dream of them.
Money can’t buy talent, “success”, brains. It sure as heck never bought me great health. I suppose it could buy some measure of beauty if I cared enough about that.
But money in the bank is how I sleep nights I’d otherwise spend sitting up working a few more hours of overtime, or trying to figure out how to cover this month’s bills. Money in the emergency fund is how I ward off a few more nightmares about how we’re going to survive. Money in the brokerage, and paying down the mortgage, is how we build our more secure future, brick by brick. Money is how I can help others: frees up time to volunteer, frees up resources for those who need it a little more.
Money may not buy the actual sense of happiness or satisfaction but it goes a LONG way to easing the road. Still, the experience of being broke was as enlightening, perhaps more educating, than having been born to it.
The fruit of being broke
A work ethic.
I probably never would have worked as hard as I did to pay down my family’s debts. I probably never would have learned the satisfaction of making it, on my own terms, making the best of anything that came our way.
Friends.
Believe it or not, any friends I still have are down to my sparkling personality, not my money. (chortles “sparkling”).
Pride.
This goes with a work ethic. What I have, I earned. And I can be proud of that. And I’ve learned to be proud of my work itself; forget being self effacing!
Values.
Some studies say that as wealth increases, empathy and compassion decrease. I can safely say that remembering where I came from, and knowing that you can always give someone a helping hand, will never be a problem. The challenge will be passing along that awareness to the next generation.
Priceless: having a value beyond any price
Naps.
A sense of style.
My dog’s love. (No seriously, I’ve tried bribing him with all manner of treats. I’m acceptable for survival purposes but that’s it.)
Depth perception. (Sure, you say “glasses” but I say: that’s how I first fell UP a flight of stairs.)
Common sense. Sure I have some, but a trip to the department store won’t get more.
Appreciation for the good things in life.
DO SHARE
:: What’s your take?
:: What are your flights of fancy?
Related posts: Miss Thrifty putting the emergency fund to good use.
March 23, 2014
This isn’t a tutorial on saving since the champagne’s a cheat but I pick the bubbly at home. I’m not just frugal, I’m seriously lazy.
We had friends in town recently. The default MO when this happens is we go out to brunch, lunch or dinner before they leave, depending on their travel plans. With some friends (ahem, his), it’s a fight over who pays the bill, with them snagging it more often than we can. This means we end up in a bill-war, vying to pay for the next round, every time we go out. It’s exhausting and a pain in the budget.
At the core, the problem is one of culture. For PiC, eating out is part of his family bonding culture; for me, cooking together and eating at home is part of my family bonding culture. Up til now, we have heavily favored his but it’s time to start observing mine when we’re here at home.
We’ve slashed this year’s food, entertainment and travel budget by 20% because we spent WAY too much in those areas last year. Anything approaching five figures for only two people (and for entertaining) is outrageous, IMO, and I really don’t know how the others do it considering they eat out at least twice as much as we do on their own.
We may not be able to cancel the bill-pay arms race but we’re sure as shootin’ going to approach Quality Time differently.
We’re off to a fine start hosting a champagne brunch where we focused on a couple stars for the meal: the champagne and the best bacon ever. We’re finally cracking open one of two bottles of Korbel that were gifts; they’ve been sitting untouched with only the two of us to drink it. With guests coming, I squeezed grapefruit to make orange and grapefruit mimosas.
And bacon. Oh the bacon! I’ve always been a fan of bacon but most of it’s been run-of-the-mill variety. I hadn’t know real bacon until my friend ruined me forever with a gift of Zingerman’s bacon for our wedding. Now THAT is applewood smoked bacon: aromatic even in the shipping container, cut so thickly that diced for pasta you get big chunks of smoky meatiness, with hardly any fat to trim. Swoonworthy bacon. The only catch is it normally runs $12 a lb. So it’s the special occasion bacon, even if I could easily find (make up) a reason to pop half a pound into every recipe.
The rest of the meal was simple: scrambled eggs with green onions, whole wheat pancakes with maple syrup, and almond croissants.
Bacon: $6
Pancakes and syrup: $3
Eggs, green onions: $3
Almond croissants: $2
Juices: $1
Even paying for and making the whole meal we’re paying less to feed 4 than we would for the two of us at the local diner so that’s nice. The drawbacks, of course, if you don’t like to cook is that you’re cooking and cleaning, and the guests are getting what we choose to make. Sorry, guys. 🙂
On the bright side, we’ll soon be taking advantage of a new wafflemaker to expand our repertoire. Chocolate chip bacon waffles, here we come!
Other breakfast ideas: I may relieve my friends of their smoked salmon (which they’ve been trying to get rid of) to try making eemusing’s potato cakes with salmon and eggs.
I’m good at making dinners but my breakfast/brunch cooking is pretty limited. If you’ve got any delicious and easy brunch suggestions, throw them my way.
March 19, 2014
GUESS WHAT WE DID. Go on, guess.
On a beautiful, nearly Southern California-like day, we went to the Star Wars Special Exhibit at the Tech Museum in San Jose! It. Was. Awesome.
There were dozens of exhibits: many of them interactive, all of them beautiful. I sat and learned about Hoth and the filming thereof, there were great video clips from the creators like Irvin Kershner (who I’ve actually met before!) describing how the crew filmed the Hoth scenes in Norway.
A snowstorm had come through before they were meant to film, so they pointed the camera out the back door of the hotel, and made Mark Hamill go stumbling through the snow alone. The rest of the crew sat safe and snug inside. 🙂
There was even a model landspeeder to drive! You betcha we hopped on that for a couple of rounds. There’s something to be said for going to museums during off hours.
Things I learned: I’m taller than a jawa, shorter than Darth Vader. They filmed the ships using huge models, I couldn’t fit the entire model into the frame there! that took 2-4 people to lift and move. We also experimented with MagLev and programmed those little robots to walk around.
And of course, to take us out….
The view from the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon
I hate to admit it but the Millenium Falcon Experience (an extra $5) was actually kind of disappointing and not just because it cost more money.
Tickets were $48 for two, with a AAA discount ($3 off per admission).
Edit: Sorry, forgot to mention this goes away after March 23rd.
March 17, 2014
Hot hickory doolittle!
I’d decided to start with not sharing actual net worth numbers back in January and I didn’t want to admit it but some of that was shame-driven. I’d worked so hard to get to a respectable, almost-comfortable, net worth. To combine our assets and liability and come up at near enough to zero as I did? It was a little infuriating and a little worrying. And a little embarrassing.
What it should have been was confusing and a red flag to reexamine my math. Turns out I’m simply not as good at money math as I think I am, some days. (This is what fatigue brain will do to you, sometimes.)
I’d set up my spreadsheets to include the name of each financial institution, account, and amounts. Then I added them up by category. But! You know what happens when you don’t double check your equations? You leave out cells. Important cells. Cells that add to your net worth!
There was a whopping big difference.
Suddenly I want to dance a jig and share our Net Worth because I DO have something to show for the last decade+ of working. 🙂
I’ll chew this over for a bit, but I’ll settle for percentages for now:
February: 3% increase
March: 11.7% increase
The big jump in March was that I finally deposited most of the wedding gifts, and PiC’s bonus came through. We usually opt to put most of it into the 401(k) so that we’ll be on track to max out his 401(k) again this year, for the second year in a row. HOORAY!