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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June 5, 2013
One of the perks of my current job… wait, no, the perk of my job is that as long as my responsibilities are covered, I can take time off whenever I’d like and as much as I’d like. The reason this perk is offered is because we’re “such a cool company” but in reality, in such a small company, coverage is harder to manage than you’d think.
Since much of my work is currently a combination of deadline work and “staying on top of things,” well, that’s as variable as it sounds. But I swore not to let an unlimited vacation policy go to waste, especially since there isn’t anything to accrue, and pay out at the end of the job.
Not terribly long after this resolution, the opportunity to test my workaholic self came up: friends were getting hitched in Hawaii and I have friends in Hawaii and I have friends going to Hawaii … what’d be more natural than a long (working) vacation in Hawaii?
I made my peace with leaving Doggle behind for two weeks, booked my flight and wrote up a budget.
Transportation: The flight was $415 RT. Not the best price I’ve ever seen but certainly quite as good as we were going to get booking that far in advance.
We needed a rental car and rental companies on Hawaii tend to be ridiculous. After stalking them for a while, and CarRentals.com, I scored a major deal.
The flight over was some kind of miserable. A mother behind me actually encouraged her bratly darlings to kick my seat and slam the tray behind me for four and a half hours. Apparently it kept them from screaming the whole way, or so she implied. It was about a miracle that I didn’t scream by the end of it when other passengers exclaimed about how “good” they were. So much for napping!
Housing: I shared lodgings with a dear friend for the first part of the trip and we experimented with AirBnB since all the hotels for around $100/night were … questionable. A bit sketchy, really. Part of that was because we stayed in Waikiki but I suspect that might have applied to just about any hotel on the island.
Splitting a $530 bill to stay at a host’s condo, complete with adorable dog, was an excellent alternative. I don’t know how people choose unreviewed places for the first time but I’m so glad someone took a chance on these hosts before us. We had easy walking access to the beach, grocery stores, a thousand ABC stores, essential dining like restaurants and malasadas. The only thing that was a bit frustrating was the parking situation but in the heart of Waikiki, we couldn’t be upset about having to pay for parking a few days out of the stay. At least we got 24 hour worth of parking out of any $15 parking fee, that salved the wound a bit. Plus I’d budgeted for $10/day originally.
Food and Dining: We ate breakfast at home, saving our pennies for the delicious snacks and meals later. Since I’m not big on breakfast anyway, a light bowl of cereal and fresh fruit enjoying the breeze was a perfect way to start any day. You’ll be treated to a rundown on the dining out later.
The thing that we always ruminate on when we go to Hawaii (“always”, like we go there regularly) is how expensive everything is – especially the food. Groceries are hardly more frugal than eating out, in some cases, and we’re not even talking about the Whole Foods type good stuff.
I brought my Honey Nut Cheerios from home, intending to eat it on the plane 🙂 but realized too late that I’d just make a mess. Saving it for later made it sting a little less when we had to pay astronomical prices for the milk to go with it: $4.60/half gallon, $9.60/gallon.
It’s common wisdom that you should always bring snacks and a water bottle from home to get you through the airport wait and flight, but I’ve been spoiled ordering snacks and meals on a few all-expenses-paid business trips. Those aren’t prices I’m willing to pay out of pocket by any stretch, especially considering what you get, but my palate forgets that it actually likes processed, packaged food when we get on a plane. Actually, I have to confess the biggest part of it is being both lazy and distracted before travel days so I don’t pack healthy fruit and nut snacks. Oh well, we can’t do what we should all the time, right?
In the end …
I couldn’t leave work behind entirely so I made the most of the trip by (oh so generously) sharing out part of my workload and only taking the most critical parts. I probably averaged about 2-3 hours of work a day, across a 7 day work week, and kept on top of just about everything that needed doing. The time zone thing was a bit of a challenge, though, so as usual, I reverted to nocturnal working hours to get the jump on my overseas colleagues. That worked well: play all day, work some at night.
The budget was roughed out at $70 of spending per day, though I had planned to spend less on my solo days. The two week trip came out to approximately $50/day (spending, not including transportation). Not too shabby considering the generally high cost of living and touristing.
Our biggest savings:
1. Staying with friends: we participate in the cycle of “crashing” life by offering our spare room to visitors pretty regularly, and so take up the offer of spare rooms from good friends without guilt. It also means that we spend time with the important people in our lives too. Win, all around! It’s not always possible of course, and we don’t impose if we can tell that they’re too busy or it’s a full house.
2. Being picky about being picky: We didn’t need to do anything fancy like dine at four or five star restaurants all the time. We like great food but we’re happy with unfancy good food too. Whether it’s a cheap plate lunch or a chef’s tasting, we enjoyed our meal and the experience for what it was. And there was no need to fight the crowds to find the “top-rated attractions” if there were other fun things to do, like the swap meet! We picked one or two important themes and stuck with it: Relax. Two beach days.
3. Not checking luggage: Aside from not paying extra fees, the limited baggage space kept us focused on only buying necessary souvenirs like thank you gifts and no more than one thing for ourselves. Of course, we did buy one extremely heavy thing that was an absolute bear to carry … best laid plans, hm?
Edit: Sunblock, guys. I forgot to say: never forget sunblock when you’re going to be out in the sun. Third sunburn of my life and I only just stopped peeling.
Over to you! Vacations and travel, what’s on your mind?
And follow eemusings as she continues her honeymoon around the world!
May 30, 2013
I love Vanguard. I love their service, the easy user interface, the fact I’ve never had to talk to anyone just to get simple things done. Most of all: I love their low expense ratios and the option to buy Admiral Shares to lower the expense ratios even more.
My accounts have mostly been lying fallow for the past few years as my employer sponsored plans were with another, much more expensive, company. It was, for a saving junkie, a pretty depressing sight: fund changes fully dependent on the whim of the market and not on my active saving. And my savings rate was dismal: I only put away enough to maximize the match because my cash flow needs were awkwardly high.
Three years down the road, my contributions, match and any gains totaled about $19k in the new account.
Time to clean house
1. We finally processed the rollover IRA paperwork, months after I should have done it. Stupidly, I couldn’t just take care of it myself, my former employer had to be involved. But: done.
2. Three years ago, my very first sub-$3000 401(k) had no place to go with Vanguard’s $3000 minimum to open any normal account. My only choice was a STAR fund. It had a whopping 0.34% expense ratio but that was still better than those other firms that charge nearly 1%. Into the STAR fund it went.
3. The new Rollover IRA money went into the STAR funds account and the whole shebang was used to buy up new Admiral Shares.
Voila!
I now have $74k split into three accounts across a variety of funds:
- 70%: split between a large blend (large cap and a blend of growth & value) and foreign large blend index funds.
- 20%: split between an emerging markets index fund, a mid-cap growth fund, a small cap investor fund, and a total stock market index investor fund.
- 10%: in treasury bonds. (Roth)
It’s no $100K saved by age 30, despite putting something away every year since I was 21, so I’ve got some catching up to do. Also, my current employer doesn’t yet offer a retirement savings plan so it’s time to research ways to put away money on my own.
On the plus side, we arranged for PiC to max out his plan this year to make up for my lack of a plan so that’s great.
How’s your saving for retirement or just plain savings going?
April 25, 2013
Do you remember the first six months of your best relationship?
Full of newness, and discovery, questions and sometimes “terrible” decisions.
We remember sitting on LA freeways for hours. Both ways. At completely, utterly unreasonable hours. Very scheduled phone calls post-9 pm to take advantage of those unlimited night minutes and lasted hours about nothing. Flowers every month, just because. Overly fancy restaurants (for us, at the time) the better to bat our eyes at each other. Cramming in one social obligation after another, stacked with work and school obligations, because sometimes, that’s the only way we could see each other without abandoning our friends or family. I’m sure there were more foolish decisions, and a lot less eye batting than I assume, but I can’t remember now.
A mutual friend laughed at our rueful reminiscing: the first six months don’t count! You do stupid things in your first six months together.
This is true, we did do stupid things to be together. We spent stupid money sometimes. Things that my normally pragmatic self would laugh at now, or even raise an eyebrow over wondering if this was setting ourselves up for a lifetime of impulse buys and trips. [I did (politely) ask PiC to stop bringing flowers every month around month 6 or so. I loved the thought but hated the idea he was spending so much.] And the first six months theory is a handy “it’s ok!” dismissal of it all. But you know what?
The first six months did count.
We spent time frivolously and had a great lot of fun. We enjoyed each other’s company without undue worry, which was a huge thing for me in my early 20s otherwise weighed down with worry and pain, and learned how to communicate. Even before we became a long distance relationship, we learned how to disagree and even fight efficiently and effectively, if you can believe it, and as much as talking about fighting wouldn’t seem like the most positive thing about an early relationship – it was how we learned to communicate better and waste little to no time on dramatic flounces.
We enjoyed each other as people, and made stupidly grand gestures to show it. We also chose to share the utterly mundane to share, like the Costco hot dog dinner. There was, as it turned out, plenty of time to be 90% sensible later. We are sensible now. But those short six months were full of laughter and learning how to care for and about each other. Rather priceless.
And the silliness of the first six months didn’t just end there. We still consciously make “stupid” decisions for each other, to make each other happy or laugh, despite being a boring old married couple. But it’s ok – we’re not wearing blinders when we do it. 😉 We have a budget.
What do you think of the six months theory? What were your first six months of a solid relationship like?
Did you travel unnaturally long distances to see each other? Spend hours on the phone? Sit in traffic forever just to see each other?
April 17, 2013
We’re a little more than three months into living on a combined budget. And even though this is the first time PiC’s lived on such a detailed budget, we still seem to be doing sort of ok.
I say “sort of” because:
+ we’re not fighting tooth and nail over living by a budget (yay!)
+ we’re not fighting over anything budget at all (yay!) (yes, I assume there’s going to be some amount of disagreement and conflict when you’re learning to live in new boundaries)
– we’re not exactly ON the budget in some places (boo!)
– we still need to discuss how to offset some of the early spending highs (boo!)
It’s a wash, as far as operations go.
As far as execution … we’re having a touch of trouble staying in our budgeted amount in certain categories and not yet doing a good job of pulling back in specific areas to make up for it. This goes against the grain. I’m a money hoarder and I would much rather spend on the low side of any budgeted amount throughout the year and have some left over. This is, of course, not PiC’s style. 🙂
Nearly four months into the year, I’d expect that our spending should be at about 33% of the budgeted amount across all categories. I’m seeing spending as low as 3 and 7% (less regular/essential categories) and as high as 47 and 53% (ahem someone’s allowance).
Overall, though, we only went over our monthly total once in the last three months and the monthly averages are very close to what we expect to be spending each month. That helps ease the sting of what feels like budgetary failure.
Management is….
a bit complicated right now: we primarily use my American Express, and his Southwest Visa when it’s a non-American Express establishment. Then we have the odd cash or check expenditures. It all gets tallied into a spreadsheet on a (we try) weekly basis.
We’ve also finally opened a joint checking account to pay the bills from so that’ll help smooth out the problem of taking it turnabout to pay bills. And, happy day! I may be able to start closing out some of my other banking accounts. I’ve got accounts across four banks right now.
Admittedly, I’ve been refusing to close my oldest checking account because it’s the one I opened when I first turned eighteen and was allowed to open my very open checking account. (PF sentimentality!) And I enjoy the freedom of having the choice of accessing ATMs for two B&M banks… but considering I have two branches of the other bank nearby and go to the ATM about 6 times a year, that’s not a good reason.
Observations …
We eat a lot. Or rather, we spend a hell of a lot of money on not terribly fancy food. We don’t even buy beer (except once in several months), we only get basic (but good IMO) cheddar, we have a regular rotation of relatively “cheap” food & recipes around things like whole chickens but it’s more than offset by the handful of convenience foods that we buy for my fibro-body benefit.
Saving Money …
I’m over the moon about changing our cell phone plan with T-Mobile. SingleMa and I got into a conversation on Twitter about cell phone plans. Next day, we found the new contract-free plans and each saved a ton! She reduced her bill by $40/month, ours should be less by $50/month. Woot! That annual $600 will go a long way to making up for buying a new phone a bit earlier than I wanted to. I hated dealing with the nonsense of their customer service which has gotten pretty iffy these past couple of years. It used to be rock solid but not so much anymore. A shame. I also finally sent in Mom’s death certificate to cancel her phone line, something I’m trying to be totally pragmatic about but I have to admit gives me a bit of a pang.
And after a couple months of paying too much for internet ($43) when our last promotion lapsed, I surfed AT&T’s promotions for Internet without a Phone Line while signed into my account and lo! They still pulled up the cheap-cheap plans! I experimentally put it in my cart, put the live customer service chat on, and found that I could indeed switch to the $20/month plan without cancelling service. Check. That. Out. AT&T, making life easy for an existing customer. Unbelievable. And I love it.
Total to be saved this year (8 months of each line being cheaper): $400 + 160 = $560!
Tax Time …
We got bitten by AMT this year. Sonnuva … it wasn’t terrible, insofar as the money’s concerned. My headache was another thing entirely, trying to learn everything specifically relevant I could about AMT on the fly. There was definitely cursing associated with this year’s taxes.
I managed to get all the forms in for an April 14th filing but then found out afterward that one of the forms was an estimate and the “responsible” (@$$shole) accountant didn’t bother to say so until well after the fact. Again: cursing. Bitter? Yes. Now I have to file amendments for this year as soon as those new forms are in. Another hour and a half of my life re-committed to doing unnecessary taxes. Still, the bulk of it’s done and that’s something to be grateful for.
::How are you folks doing with your money these days?
April 12, 2013
Bacon pasta. Does it get better? (Not really, no.)
Back by special request this week for PiC’s carbing up pre-MAJOR NEW RACE, I get to make an enormous batch of this amazing new recipe. As race support staff, I (so modestly) rock.
One of my favorite things to do is experiment with new recipes if I 1) don’t screw it up and 2) have an appreciative audience. Number two is a given with PiC. Our diet tends to get staid and boring which, for such a health-oriented eater, is a surprising thing about him, but he does appreciate and enjoy anything I cook even when I think it didn’t turn out. So all that’s left to do is Not Screw It Up. No pressure.
After reading Eat and Run this week, I’m also inspired to experiment with the recipes shared in the book to see how that helps PiC’s running. And maybe it’ll have a positive effect on my health too. Guinea pig-dom!
Also happily, a now-local childhood friend is close enough to visit with us once in a while and we’ve found that we love cooking and eating together. We try to share new or new-to-each-other recipes each time.
This was the first time I’d ever cooked with crushed red pepper and boy howdy! Did I ever screw up. I normally always follow new recipes as exactly as possible (ahem, except every other recipe where I substitute one or three ingredients because our cupboard’s too lean. Including this one, as you’ll see.) and as it turns out, even our fire-mouth SE-Asia-travel hardened friend thought the first batch was eyewateringly spicy. Whoops.
We had this with an amazing kale salad and leftovers were just as incredible. The next time I made a batch, we two greedy-faces ate up the whole skillet in one meal. Good grief. Not totally recommended.
Bucatini All’amatriciana
serves 2 greedy-faces or 4 normal people.
Ingredients
1/2 pound thinly sliced pancetta, coarsely chopped*
1 red onion, thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper*
12 ounces prepared tomato sauce*
Kosher salt
1 pound bucatini*
1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves*
Grated Pecorino Romano cheese, for serving
*I use regular bacon instead of pancetta since it’s faster and easier to find.
HALVE the red pepper for the love of your taste buds.
Just used jarred sauce to spare my hands.
Bucatini is remarkably hard to find! So I use linguine instead.
I pretty much never have parsley.
Directions
1. (I trim at least half the fat off the bacon first.) Then, in a large, deep skillet, cook the pancetta over moderate heat, until lightly browned. Cook about 6 minutes.
2. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the pancetta to a plate.
3. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the fat in the skillet.
4. Add the onion, garlic and crushed red pepper and cook over moderately high heat, stirring occasionally, until the onion is lightly browned. Takes about 6 minutes.
5. Return the pancetta to the skillet. Add the tomato sauce, season with salt and simmer until very thick. Cook about 10 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, in a pot of salted boiling water, cook the pasta until al dente. Drain the pasta, reserving 1/2 cup of the cooking water.
7. Add the pasta to the sauce along with the parsley and the reserved cooking water and stir over moderately high heat until the pasta is evenly coated, 2 minutes.
8. Serve the pasta in bowls. Parmesan if desired.
:: Have you ever seen bucatini in a store?
:: If you’re a runner, how do you like to dietarily prepare for races?
:: Or are you more like me and just like to make yummy food?
April 10, 2013
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
–The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett
I’m absolutely prepared to swear that I’m not the one who snores. [Admission: I used to sleepwalk, sleeptalk and sleep fought back against nightmarish intruders that have turned out to be … PiC. Oops. In my defense … well ok, he didn’t even notice so do I need a defense?]
PiC and I have put a lot of money into a fantastic new mattress, bigger and better than ever!, and really need to replace our pillows. But every so often PiC wonders if we should have gone our separate ways for sleeping since his snoring keeps me up or wakes me so many times in the night.
Katie recently asked this same question about Separate Bedrooms.
The thing is, except for those nights when a literal earthquake couldn’t wake me for the exhaustion, my body’s become attuned to having him around and startles awake if he’s not there. This probably stems from those many nights when he’d have one or another thing to do before bed and would end up falling asleep where he sat. Around 2 or 4 am, something would trigger in my brain and I’d get up to fetch him. Can’t win for losing!
It’s like Mind-Reading (but worse)
While cooking the other day, I heard the scrape-scrape-scrape of the dog food container we’d just gotten to prevent any bug infestations. Not a problem now and not a problem ever, we hope.
Unhappily, the touted stackable container that should hold greater than 40 lbs appears to have all it can do to hold about 25. Other than that, though, we quite like the container. Until I heard PiC’s cursing: “why can’t I close t— oh. Never mind ….. ”
“Because you were turning it the wrong way?”
“YES. How did you know?”
simultaneously: You/I just did that!
*burst out laughing*
Learning to make the best of things
Talking to my dad about trying to start to plan a wedding reception has uncovered a whole pot of simmering tensions. He’s holding firm on some pretty unreasonable expectations, in my opinion, and basing it on fairly illogical logic. *sigh* It’s hard to say how we’re going to navigate to the other side on this but I’m having a hard time wrapping my brain around how, frankly, selfish he’s being about this.
I’ve willingly sacrificed pretty much everything I wanted in the past ten years for them. And now when it comes to the wedding, instead of working together to figure out how to compromise, he wants his way or no way at all for the sake of his reputation. Those are my choices. I can have all the family he “has” to invite, or none of them. Which is no choice at all in my book. And utterly ridiculous when he keeps insisting that we have to have 300-400 family members minimum, before we even look at non-family we would choose to have there for either side.
By virtue of distance alone, we won’t be able to return the invitation to a great many people he feels he “owes” an invitation to (by the backwards logic of “they expect to return his wedding gift to them or their children”), a great number of our family are overseas… and a great number are in SoCal too. Based on the criteria “because I have to save face”, there are still a hell of a lot of people who can’t be invited. So why is it we can’t just invite the family that I actually know, keep in touch with or care about, and include a reasonable number of his-choice invites? That’s still a large number by itself.
This has me quite annoyed on principle. Quite frankly, his priorities shouldn’t only be his standing in the community or how he looks. This isn’t entirely, 100%, about him. He’s not paying for one cent of this and saying “don’t worry about it, I’ll handle all the details” doesn’t make it better. You can’t just push me out of a core part of our wedding and expect that I’ll be ok with that. I’m all about including his input, but I am NOT about rolling over and giving him everything he wants.
I’ve lived my whole adult life focusing on what would be best for my parents, isn’t it time he stepped up and cooperated?
/rant.
So I asked a pretty-exasperated PiC what he’d like. Guest list and other BS aside, what would he actually LIKE?
An Enchantment Under the Sea, a la Back to the Future theme, says he.
[headsplosion] Seriously??
Yes. {starts singing the song}
[hilarity ensues]
We can’t have a DeLorean because if no flux capacitor, then no DeLorean. Authenticity dammit!
Costumes? Sure. But for other people.
Wonder if we can get the local high school gym?
{text old high school friend who still FBs with high school administrators}
We’ll see!
How about Enchantment Under the Sea in the gym, and luau outside?
ROAST PIG. YES.
This could be expensive.
Or … not? Hm. Yes. It could be. If we’re going to do it, I’d like it to be cool, not slapdash. Also, I stipulate that I must have Wolverine something. If we’re going geek, I want something of mine represented.
Deal.
Being married and getting married. Two strange states of being when cast simultaneously.
April 9, 2013
[Warning: possibly a little spoilery]
Sometimes I do it to tweak PiC, or at least he thinks so, but this time I picked up the book he chose because I’ve already finished all my library books and his looked moderately interesting.
I’m not a runner and certainly don’t ever see myself marathoning but I love a well told story, particularly one of achievement, so even though I had never heard of Jurek, the book flap sounded promising enough. I’m so glad that I did.
It gave me insight into a person who knows how to endure because he learned long ago that sometimes, that’s just what you do. This resonated. It gave me insight into a journey of growth and coping, of discovery and delight in pushing yourself. This resonated. It gave me insight into the life of a runner, then an ultra runner, and how they endure through their races. This… suggested ways I could support PiC in his bid to be an ultra runner.
Written with Steve Friedman, in Eat and Run, Scott tells the story of his life as an elite athlete and as a vegan starting from long before either of those things were relevant in his daily lexicon or the running world. He was a meat and potatoes Midwestern kid managing a difficult home life who found the world of running almost unintentionally, derisively dismissed as “the flatlander” on his entrance into his first major 100-miler, and slowly transformed himself, step by step, into the elite athlete he is today.
Honestly, I say again, I’m not a runner, never was more than a sprinter in my best days, but reading this about made me rise up and go out for a long run.
Never self-effacing, Jurek also doesn’t sound like someone wrapped up in himself. He doesn’t sound like anything but a remarkably human guy who’s managed to figure things out one step at a time, painfully sometimes, and with all the steps forward and back that comes in a normal life. It’s not all about the wins, though there were those, it’s about the experience of the runs, what he learned from it, who he was at the time of the race.
That might be what struck me the most: he was incredibly focused on the running in his life, perhaps sometimes to the detriment of his personal life, occasionally giving rise to self-doubt over whether he’d made the right choices years down the road.
He doesn’t succumb to the doubt but he acknowledges it, he acknowledges that he wasn’t necessarily 100% sure of the choices he made in his life and he acknowledges the possible mistakes. I really identified with that as I’ve wondered many times in the past year how my actions failed my mother and whether she would have been better had I this or that.
Then there was a period of time he lived in debt to run those races and of course, as I’m highly allergic to debt in my post-debt life, that made me cringe a little. Still, I understood. Given the results, I mean. I would have loved to hear more about how this part of his life came together. Because I’m nosy …
The recipes he discovered, developed or loves are seeded throughout the book, linking into his forays into healthy eating and ultimately veganism, and his narration includes notes of what worked best for him during races. Once, the idea of dispensing with the medication entirely would have sounded like a pipe dream to me, living in chronic pain, but the timing is good. I’ve given up my medications this year as a regular routine and instead only take them when I can’t endure any longer. Incorporating more healing foods into our diet sounds appealing and he shows how easy and delicious it can be.
There’s precious little ego in this book, so long as you don’t think that telling your own story is ego (I don’t), just a hell of a capacity for endurance.
He sees himself as an Everyman, and sees in everyone the potential to achieve just about anything. Whether anyone can run an ultra (looking in the mirror skeptically), his modest and welcome all-comers approach makes me want to get to know him a bit more.