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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August 13, 2011
Our open enrollment provider’s been beating the tribal drums for WEEKS. There was this big run up to the open enrollment period with fancy brochures, posters, flyers, emails, and presentations.
It was exciting for the first few seconds except they wouldn’t let me log in when they first announced it. I have a short attention span for things that are routine these days. Since they were just doing it up big for a two-week period when they would actually let you in, I was exhausted long before launch. I want in when you tell me about it, not three weeks later.
There are only two changes planned for the upcoming year: calculating my FSA contributions and upping my commuter benefits by about $15/month because I have to take the BART more than usual and it’s expensive. I’ll double check that I’m not getting screwed on medical/dental plans but nothing is changing with them that I saw on the changes/no changes comparison table.
And our possible upcoming marriage in a few months (civil, we’re thinking) would upend the changes anyway so I’m even less fussed.
*****
What you shouldn’t forget when Open Enrolling
Medical: Did anything change? Do you need more coverage? Less coverage? (uh, doubt it?) Can you afford your premiums and copays? Do you know what they are?
Dental: Same as above
Vision: Same as above
“Extras”
Flex Spending Account (FSA): Do you know approximately what you will spend next year? Do a calculation of your copays, your medications (if any), any projected major procedures you can anticipate before you set your number. It’s a little tricky because of the use-it-or-lose-it aspect – you don’t want to overestimate and lose any money by the end of the year but it’s rather annoying to find yourself just paying out of pocket as well.
Commuter Benefits: Do you use public transit and have the option to pay pre-tax? Use it. Save yourself a bit of money and automate to boot.
Employee Assistance Program (EAP): This rarely costs anything or requires enrollment. You just need to use it if you need it. They offer all kinds of stuff: counseling for personal, family and work-related concerns, legal and financial advice, online resources, health and wellness information. You should at least check it out to see what might be there.
August 8, 2011
I grew up on a steady diet of books like Margeret Sidney’s Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (available free on Project Gutenberg!), Gertrude Chandler Warner’s The Boxcar Children, and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. (Also all the sci fi and fantasy I could get my hands on, but that’s irrelevant to this conversation.) I wondered if I’d romanticize the notion of families and raising children under less than rosy circumstances as a result of that early brainwashing.
I do think families should pull together and do whatever needs to be done to get through tough times, and I do think families should take care of each other. Obviously. But econo-philosophically, I developed in my teenage years a much more “I will never be poor again!” determination a la Gone With the Wind than any willingness to try to lead the loving but impoverished lifestyle.
That’s not to say that I think money is the answer to a good childhood or a happy home life. I grew up poor, as a first generation immigrant kid. My parents arrived on these shores with nothing but the clothes on their back and a babe in their arms. But we were, in my opinion, still relatively well off: we didn’t have to beg, dig through bins for leavings to put food on the table. Mom and Dad found just enough opportunity to work incredibly hard, and we kids pitched in as well, we used hand me downs and didn’t shop new until I was a teenager so our basic needs were always filled. But we did live on the edge of poor, spiral-dancing that line between not having much and poverty.
And we can’t deny that money is one of the major factors that may have significant impact on the outcomes of a child’s life. While I suspect that much of my sibling’s manipulative and attentive seeking behaviors were natural, I did also see that he was quite affected by having less than others, and not having our parents around enough during those formative years to instill the sense of confidence and gratitude for what we did have certainly didn’t help. If I’m having kids and there’s any external factor that I can influence to prevent the development of risky behaviors, it’ll be my job to do it.
From a purely practical standpoint, there’s no question that having financial freedom does make life more manageable these days. Leaving aside the luxuries, being able to easily make ends meet and still have time to spend with your little ones are core requirements of having them to begin with, to my thinking.
The thing that was missing from my childhood, though, was a chance to spend real time with my parents. Time “with” Mom and Dad was helping them at work, or doing chores with them at home. Or the talks at night after dinner if they weren’t too busy or tired. While I didn’t precisely resent it at the time, I was always sad we rarely did much as a family. I definitely do regret it now that I’ve lost the chance to truly enjoy their later years with them.
***
When I envisioned that stage of my life, I simply could not see choosing to start a family at a low-earning point in my career knowing that I would have to miss key years of my childrens’ lives while fighting an uphill climb of long hours and probably political battles to advance. Looking forward, it was just unlikely that our generation was going to be settled into a single and easy career straight out of college. So far, that’s definitely been the case.
***
Now that I prepare to move into that stage of my life, it seems like whether or not I’ll be having a family of my own is a question I should have an answer for. But I don’t.
I don’t know if I want children.
That’s basically blasphemy around some of these parts. I’ve caught the lecture that “children are the reason you get married.” Because you couldn’t possibly want to have a partner without procreation following quickly thereafter. That was a disconcerting moment, coming from someone nearly ten years younger than me. I expect it from the (specifically judgy individuals of the) older generation: we’re selfish, we’re lazy, and we’re [fill in the blank] if we don’t have kids. But it’s weird when a youngun judges you for maybe not wanting kids.
I don’t know if I don’t want children, either.
As a teen, I was certain that they weren’t in my future. Other people’s children were adorable, but every child has obnoxious mode. I babysat them all the time and most of them were cute some of the time but they invariably turned into Gremlins and they did not wait for a predictable trigger like feeding after midnight or being splashed with water so it just wasn’t worth the effort. And I mean: childbirth. Ugh.
More than ten years later, it’s not the idea of children that is shudderingly bad but rather the concern about motherhood that looms. My health issues aren’t getting any better so how could I be a fully present, fully capable mother? And I worried enough about my sibling, could I take on the challenge if I had a kid like my sibling? With no intentions of projecting that expectation on my spawn, I still have to be aware that there is a chance that one or more children might inherit whatever combination of whatever led to that mess, and do my best to guide him or her out of it before it became a real disaster.
To further complicate things, I can’t be certain that I’m capable of working full time and managing a pregnancy or raising a child. The responsibilities of taking care of Doggle alone, who is fairly low-key, are enough to take up my limited reserves. And I can’t count on getting better. It hasn’t happened yet.
Adoption was always my go-to option but again, children deserve time, attention and require energy.
I wanted this to be my decision, and the right decision for me and my spouse. But it’s one of those I’ve not felt strongly for or against, other than not making a mistake. When do you know you’re ready for kids? How do you know that you know, if you were never completely certain from the very beginning that you wanted to have them?
Once in a while, I find myself second-guessing my decisions. Should I really have waited this long, even though I’ve never felt that driving urge to have children? PiC really wants a family and perhaps I could have physically handled it earlier? I certainly thought I was making the wisest choices at the time, but was it really?
Once upon a time, I swatted away the cautionary notes, the “there won’t ever be a good time”s, the “if you don’t now, then when?”s like annoying gnats. But I’m finally there. On the cusp of my thirties, I’m at the point where I have to admit that for childbearing, I’m not getting any younger. It’s time to make some real decisions, even if not yet time to commit.
August 7, 2011
It’s been a while since I’ve posted one of these. Over six months, in fact. I have been keeping track of some months but it’s been sporadic. Life has been consuming.
In the past six months I’ve ….
– been traveling which still hasn’t been fully documented.
– loving my Doggle (talk about for better or for worse!)
– started, stopped, got sick of planning, budgeted for (on paper), and started saving for a wedding that I still haven’t actually started planning again.
– consolidated all of our phones onto a cheaper cell plan to save money.
– gone to My Mecca (SDCC) with bloggy friend.
– generally worked on surviving the master plan of earning my way up the ladder. I need a new plan, this one is beyond exhausting and doesn’t leave any time for real life.
There was far more spending than saving in the daily scheme of things but in the background, the automated investing and savings allocations are ticking along, doing their jobs. I had a glance over my Vanguard funds’ performance the past four months to find that they’ve horrifically lost all their gains of this year:
Huge losses. Just huge. Given the turmoil in the government this month, I can’t say August’s losses were a surprise but it’s an eye-opener.
And except for that last item (working my tuchus off) which, though it paid off, has me pondering those workaholism tendencies, infiltrating all corners of my life again, it’s not necessarily the worst way to have spent many months. More rest, though, would be wonderful, and I want (nay, need) to see far more progress in the savings ledger in upcoming months.
With the state of the economy, the uncertainty of the jobs market, the recent downgrade of the credit rating, it’s time to do massively better.
This isn’t just prompted by general concern for the state of the union or personal insecurity, though. I’ve done that “what happens in case of a layoff” exercise a thousand times. And I’ve done it in real time. This isn’t that faux-planning; this stems from wanting to grow beyond the rat race.
When I start making choices in the near future, I want real choices, not just be limited to picking from the limited array that my employer at the time is offering. Which means that if we want One Frugal Girl’s flexibility if we decide to start a family and get thrown a curveball in the process, or if we want to consider adoption, or we want to move out of the Bay Area, we definitely need financial security in multiple forms.
Besides, working into an early grave isn’t precisely the endgoal, and staying in this routine, driven by my need to achieve in the confines of a traditional environment, is setting myself up for that very thing.
August 6, 2011
After nearly three weeks of frustrations, run arounds, failed attempts and unanswered requests, I finally managed to get a prescription filled at my local Kaiser pharmacy.
To add insult to injury, it cost an extra $10. I nearly said something but before I could, the clerk ringing up my order mentioned casually, “you know, it’s cheaper if you order online.”
Wait, what?
“Yes, I noticed that this was more expensive and was just about to ask about that since I normally always order online. This was just thanks to all the trouble I’ve been having in getting this particular order filled.”
Not in the mood to explain the whole thing, even though he asked to hear the story, I glossed over the details and got to the good part: why exactly was the online order cheaper??
He explained: to encourage people to use the mail order service, when they order a 3 month supply, one month of the regular co-pay of $10/month is discounted.
!! You mean to tell me that the price I’ve been getting when I ordered online wasn’t a regular price, it was a discount?? (You had better not tell me that they’re going to take it away at some point, either.)
Honestly.
I’m happy that my busy life + laziness has been saving me at least $20/every three months for the past couple of years but if they wanted to change behavior shouldn’t they have been trumpeting this little detail from the rooftops instead of handing out tote bags when people say they’ll try ordering with mail delivery?
Would a 33% discount plus the added convenience of having your medication delivered by mail be incentive enough to convert you if you normally physically pick up your own prescriptions?
And in this day and age of having groceries, baked goods, and just about anything else you can think of delivered, why on earth would you need to be incentivized to have your medication delivered?
Who LIKES sitting in a creepy pharmacy smelling of astringent and urine waiting for their prescriptions to be filled? (Maybe that’s just mine. But still. Every pharmacy feels slightly creepy.)
August 1, 2011
It’s been over a year since my big move: the new job, the new home, the new life.
And I’m reflecting on the career part of it now that we’ve passed the big milestone: the performance evaluation.
Having to pull together a comprehensive report of my own accomplishments was a chore. I hated it. I shouldn’t. It’s my opportunity to toot my horn because I work incredibly hard, well and above my job description with three times the number of people to manage and many more times the amount of work to shoulder than most, so I should have been jumping at the chance to rectify the salary situation.
You see, when I accepted the job, I wasn’t offered an amount that was commensurate with my level of experience and history of performance. While peeved, I wasn’t terribly surprised because HR doesn’t make offers based on performance unless you’re long on obvious achievements and come highly recommended by people they know. At least not this HR, as far as I can tell. While I’m a high-performer, it’s not obvious on paper, nor does my youthful appearance do me many favors in this department. As well, the industry, the role and the company I was dealing with isn’t known for a generous offer at this level. I did negotiate and came away with a single concession, but they wouldn’t budge anywhere else.
In such a situation, I used some of the following variables to figure whether I should stay or go:
Leave it:
– You’re confident you can close the deal elsewhere in a short enough period of time that giving up this offer won’t hurt you (financially, reputation/burning bridges)
– The offer is below your baseline (you should always know your baseline lest you take an offer below that and find that it hurts you more than it helps you)
– You have a competitive counter/other offer on the table instead
– The culture is a poor fit
Take it:
– Decent alternate offers aren’t forthcoming and the money is enough to live on
– You know there is room for growth (financially, the people you’d make connections with)
– The culture is a good enough fit that it’s a good stepping stone for the time being
– It’s a good company to work for and the experience will be valuable on your career path (in combination with the money not being so bad that you can’t live on it)
My considerations: it was near PiC, the offer wasn’t so low that I couldn’t knock their socks off and bring it up to my standard fairly quickly (I thought it’d be sooner), the job was bound to be interesting and blow the rust off my skills so I could more easily find something else if I weren’t happy there, and from my read of the economy, I was still looking at a prolonged job hunt over several thousand dollars a year if I was at all unsure about moving to the East Coast.
So I took it. (Little realizing the angst those dollars would cause my psyche.)
Several months ago, my boss and I had a conversation where we reviewed my goals, achievements and expectations, and performance to date. I broached the topic of an increase at that point and while they weren’t willing to budge at the six-month mark, they were on notice that I wasn’t letting the salary matter lie. That was Step One.
Throughout the year, I carried more than my weight and became the go-to person on several fronts. Aside from the incredible challenges within my own team, and there were oh-so-many, I worked across departments and with upper management on a regular basis. After several months, my role expanded far beyond the original scope and I’m now active at a higher level than any of my peer group who have been with the organization as long as or longer than I. None of this was easy, of course, and very little of it was fun, but I was bound and determined to win back my salary.
At judgment time: the value of recordkeeping
With that in mind, when my annual review came around, I drafted a self evaluation that laid out the expansion of my assumed responsibilities. It took weeks to get it right (the price of doing a stellar job here is you never have personal time) but that was critical. That was Step Two.
We had a conversation about my performance over the year after my boss reviewed and responded to my write-up and no surprise, was very positive about everything. Step Three: Boss then wanted to know my expectations with regard to salary. Because of Step One: On notice.
The end result of that conversation was that, on the basis of my performance and my initiative throughout the year, using my write-up which was fully Boss-endorsed and the assurance that I expect them to Make Right, Boss secured a very healthy raise for me bringing my salary up to a less embarrassing, and more liveable level.
I still can’t afford to indulge, I’m still budgeting carefully and half that increase will be going to bills, the other half will be going to savings but it’s a step.
*****
I’ll admit that I still have been second-guessing myself a bit ever since, thinking that I should have stated a number or pushed harder for a better increase. I feel like I dropped the ball when asked what my expectations were. I didn’t give a number and I should have. I know why I didn’t; I was asked but it was phrased as “will you quit if you don’t get [insert outrageous number here] raise” and so my response wasn’t to set an expectation as a number, it was to say that I expect I will get a better than average raise but I’m not a hostage taker. (After discussing with a mentor, this was somewhat close what I was advised to say.) Still, second-guessing a bit. Also, I do wonder if that careful phrasing works differently coming from a male to a male VS. from a female to a male VS. from a female to a female VS. from a male to a female boss.
And part of that second-guessing is an emotional reaction because I’ve gone a year on a lowballed salary.
I’ve been alternately angry and embarrassed all year about accepting that original number even though I thought I had made my peace with it in the first place. In feeling the pinch, I felt like it reflected poorly on me in so many ways: that it diminished me as a breadwinner, that it prevented me from carrying my weight in this household, that I was a poor negotiator, that I’ve failed in my career aspirations and taken steps backwards. That has been a difficult cycle to handle this year on top of my health spiraling and needing to prove myself at work. I’ve kept it to myself until now, but I’ve not liked feeling this way one bit.
Objectively, what played out is not poor at all and in this economy, really good, in fact, and I’m appreciative of the effort Boss must have gone to in order to make that happen. And I have my sights set on the next goal.
So that’s Year One down. Hello, Year Two.
July 30, 2011
The sticker shock has worn off a bit, thankfully. I was just sweeping up Doggle’s fur and thinking about how it probably seemed like I was dwelling on the money of it, rather than the fun of the weekend.
A few reasons … this is where I talk about my money, I don’t talk about it anywhere else really. So I talk about the money first and foremost to get it straightened out in my mind where I stand. And when I’m tired, I worry. I worry in general, and I worry about money specifically. There was also some guilt associated with: how dare you spend money on fun? Which is, considering how hard I work to save all year, prioritize not-fun and everyone else in almost all other cases, etc., pretty silly.
I was particularly exhausted going into that weekend having worked something like 15 days straight right before so there was not a moment to prepare for the trip mentally. Obviously I had paid for some things in advance (airfare, 1 night of the hotel, our badges) and already had money saved for it so we didn’t come away in the red. The travel fund is whining, but only because it doesn’t like going to empty. (I hear ya, Bob.)
*****
This was also an unusual year. I’ve never started an SDCC so worn out in my life. I’ve been running at about 10% energy levels, now, and still push myself to do almost everything at 80 or 90% pace. I couldn’t do that in San Diego this year. I couldn’t be up and about at 6 or 7 am every single day, Wednesday through Sunday, and be on the go through sundown.
We spent a lot more time meandering at a much slower pace. We didn’t force ourselves to go to every single interesting panel, we didn’t get out of the hotel by 7 am like I would normally have insisted, I didn’t hit every single booth in every single aisle and browse every single discounted comic booth as normal. (I’m a little sad about that.)
But we met up with very lovely internet people, we met random other (famous or familiar) people, we collected very cool stuff, found a pile of excellent presents, every single one of us had at least one Very Cool Moment.
I must have had at least three.
Robert Starkings and Gabo of Elephantmen were extra excellent, sketching and signing all of my books at their booth and then giving me a hug when I was bouncing with excitement over the deliciousness of the art, and then taking a photo with me and their entire crew.
w00tstock was incredible. I was quite sad I didn’t get to see all of it but duty called to keep PiC from freezing on his quest to save me from heartbreak so I had to dash out. By proxy, though, the Sunshine Cthulhu that I doted on that weekend went to Wil Wheaton as thanks over the stolen e-book debacle & I was pretty tickled to hear that. [Not really my moment, it was just a Very Cool Thing.] I will definitely want to go again and enjoy it in all the glory.
I met up with an industry veteran I think I’m allowed to call a friend, and had a very good long chat with him. I was thrilled to pieces that he was honored that weekend with an industry award.
Pia Guerra, one of my favorite artists, was hanging out on Sunday and drew a fantastic sketch of (as requested) her favorite characters from Y: The Last Man. I’ve loved her work for years. Incidentally, also my favorite character.
Also, David Peterson, creator of MouseGuard drew an adorable sketch for my wee book and was a fabulously nice dude. He then won an Eisner that evening so it was really cool to be able to come back around and give him our congratulations.
Twitter made it possible to have a very random and sudden meet-up with people I’d wanted to see but had missed all weekend previously. That was Brilliant.
I loved how Ruth had never been to SDCC but so many more people knew/talked to her than me. It was fantastic fun having her as a Con buddy. Loved. It. I’m really going to miss having her. I want her back for next SDCC! I need the budget to make this happen, folks!
*****
Having home base to come back to was, as always, key to the decompression stage each night. That was different, too, and I think we could have used earlier nights but it was definitely the better choice for most of us rather than going out to all the night parties that were going on. I don’t think I could have survived Con Night Life this year. Watching it on Twitter was good enough for me!
Such party animals! 😉
Maybe in a few years … when I’m not … so old?
P.S. I almost caught a DebtHater this year! Next time ….
Adding:
July 27, 2011
 |
| The creepiest biggest Smurf ever |
Boyoboyoboy.
For weeks leading up to this mid-July jaunt I kept picking up pretties, and putting down pretties. I knew I wanted things, but I couldn’t sustain the wanting enough to buy them. It was just not there. As it turns out, this was A Very Good Thing.
My annual pilgrimage to Comic Con has never been such a banking bruiser. As usual, by planning ahead, we saved on our airfare a fair amount, using award tickets one way and sale tickets the other way. This was a hotel year as well, shared with two friends, with parking at both ends (hotel and convention site) coming out to $500 for five days and four nights for the two of us. Free cookies coming and going, though! *_*
Tickets for next year were bumped up a huge amount. Four day passes with Preview Night for adults are now going for $175. That’s up from $105.
This year, the officials held back a huge amount of tickets to be sold online due to having sold out entirely onsite last year. That makes sense – I think it was really unexpected and unfair for people who were not attending this year to have lost the chance to buy a full weekend pass for next year just because they weren’t on-site. But then they also set specific times and restrictions on how and when and who could purchase tickets for next year. In combination with the memory of an online ticketing system that fell on its face not once, not twice, but multiple times last year, that sudden perception of extreme scarcity led to a run on the tickets and people freaked out.
Lines formed at midnight for tickets that were being sold at 8 am, hell, lines formed the full day before the rest of the weekend because people didn’t trust the online sales system even though the whole point was to reserve tickets for online sales. It was ridiculous.
Even though I love this annual event, considering the insane hoops we were put through just to buy the tickets, I seriously considered taking our chances online because I hated the idea of letting the spectre of next year ruin this year. My crazy fiance was selectively deaf to my input on the matter even though this isn’t even his event.
Resentful of the crappy choices of camping out or risking not even getting tickets if the online system crawled up a drainpipe and died again, I even tried to tell myself (and PiC) that we could just choose not go next year. But the words wouldn’t creep past my throat and he wasn’t having any of it. Apparently, he could feel my future/potential heartbreak as well. Bless his heart, he even camped out overnight to make certain we would be able to have those badges in hand for next year before leaving this year.
 |
| Camping. Sweet butter, there was camping. |
We didn’t both stay out the entire night, I just stayed late and he stayed the rest of the night but we were toast the rest of the next day.
I did ever so much more shopping than I’ve done in years past, loading up on 60% off comics pushing myself right over the airline weight limit, and that after I’d emptied clothes out of the suitcase. All told, comics and various other goodies ran to the tune of $253.55. Nearly 20 gifts of varying sizes were in that batch, but for the first time, a few presents for us as well.
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| Wee Street Fighters! |
Considering I went in saying I wasn’t going to spend “much” but didn’t think about my budget beforehand – totally lost in my haze leftover from working days upon days upon days – and didn’t keep an eye on the running tally only recording my purchases as I went, it would seem we escaped relatively ok. Except. I count pre-registration for the following year in the year it was purchased ($350).
We spent, then, $603.55 at SDCC this year. Also, we purchased tickets for w00tstock, another $100, and contributed another $150 to the food budget for breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. Holycats, guys. The spending was spread across many months, starting from last year through this year,
Total: Way So Much. ($1500)
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| Oh, and I met Bruce Campbell! |
Plan for Defraying Next Year’s Costs
I’m reeling from sticker shock. We’ve never had to spend that much on a Con before, it’s always been under $600 including the next year’s tickets.
The airfare and hotel costs are the easiest targets. Between now and next year I can either concentrate purchases to earn hotel points or (probably the better plan) concentrate on earning points where I can redeem for hotel gift certificates which substitute for cash. Doubtful that reward bookings will be available during that seriously high volume time so the latter would be better.
The other option is to find a way to make $3500 over and above my usual income. $1500 for Con, $500 for taxes, $500 for savings and $1000 just to make myself feel better about this year. 😉
