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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October 23, 2010
My letter of doom arrived on October 15th. It was a Friday. It was a payday. It was, in all other ways, good. Then the letter arrived.
A thin envelope from Chase which had no business being here, no rewards check having been ordered recently, no changes to terms or conditions anticipated. No reason at all for this surprise delivery from the postperson.
That envelope contained a missive from my former favorite bank/credit card stating that my go-to credit card, my Chase Cash Plus, 5% cash back on all gas, groceries and drugstores card was being converted into a Chase Freedom card.
FREEDOM. Freedom they call it. Freedom to go …. never mind. Freedom it is, then.
Freedom to earn a paltry 1% cashback on all purchases and a bonus 5% for three short months on their select categories of the season. This winter (Oct 1-Dec 31st) will be groceries, department stores and movie theatres. Never ye mind I don’t shop at department stores or go to movies more than few times a year, forget during these three months of the year. The pink French washed sea salt in an already searing wound? A customer is now required to sign up every three months for the categories for which they desire the bonus % cash back.
O bitterness! There was much rending of garments and remonstration.
**For the record, PiC was puzzled and unmoved. He clearly has some conversion to the world of personal finance left to do. Now I have to find a better go-to card. Bischla.
October 16, 2010
This was fun until I realized 1) I can’t really remember where I’ve been anymore, and 2) I really haven’t explored the States very much.
visited 13 states (26%)
Create your own visited map of The United States
visited 5 areas (2.22%)
Create your own visited map of The World
Fabulously Broke, Asian Pear, Financial Catastrophizer and Shelley all had far more interesting maps on their blogs.
My Travel Wish List
Greece
Italy (again)
Scotland
Ireland
England
Austria
Spain
Australia
New Zealand
Maldives
Galapagos (like Well Heeled)
Maine
Vermont
Tahiti
Jamaica
Morocco? (as I get older, my sense of adventure changes)
Argentina
I’m taking at least several months’ break from taking days off to hoard vacation days and will only hit the road again for business, but it’s fun to dream in the meantime.
What’s on your list?
{————Carnivals————}
My belated thanks …..
to Tom Drake for hosting this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance and including my post How will you earn that raise?
October 14, 2010
I was just contemplating my windfall philosophy and the fact that I don’t think I can do the “do 1 nice thing for yourself and save the rest” that so many people recommend as a compromise. While I have incredible self control in most anything else, if I start spending a little chunk of money from a larger chunk, that always primes the mental spending pump and gets me thinking about e-ve-r-y-thing else that I want.
Then I was surprised with a small bonus from my organization to thank me for my hard work and key participation in a major project these past months. Now, I had absolutely no expectation of any such thing because I work for an organization that’s not known for paying market rates or year-end bonuses, much less merit bonuses.
But it’s too late. I’ve started to think about the things I want like the delightful OMG Books t-shirt:
Comic books
Secret Six, Volume 3: Danse Macabre
Usagi Yojimbo,Volumes everything after 2
Lone Wolf and Cub, Volumes everything after 13
Furniture
New bed
Bookshelves
Desk
Travel
A big 2-week trip to some combination of Greece/Italy/Cambodia/India/Vietnam/Laos/Singapore/somewhere else next year
An unlimited SDCC with RUTH this year!!
*ahem* Didn’t I tell you, “if you give a mouse a cookie”? Anyway, clearly I ran out of bonus money way up the list. And so this is why I’m stashing the whole of the check away and not getting myself one single solitary thing. I’m a lot happier when I just hoard the money and have it when I decide there’s something I really truly want. Life’s a lot more organized that way.
October 13, 2010
Let’s start with the ugly-money, shall we? Transportation
PiC paid a little over $400 for each of our tickets. *urk*
Other costs: $66 for shuttles, $107 for taxis. *urrkkk*
* The cabs were because we chose not to destroy me trying to walk 3+ miles round trip to and from our various destinations. He could have done it easily, but I would have been wrecked. The subway and buses didn’t really service the areas and times we needed, unfortunately.
Lodgings
Our hotel for a two-night stay and with an extra hour late checkout (requested at the last minute when I realized PiC wasn’t going to make it back from the marathon in time: Free (thanks to points redemption)
Food
Friday was our travel day and we subsisted on travel snacks we packed, plane snacks and then had a dinner covered by his gift card, tip not included: $68/$11 out of pocket.
Saturday – we had a free breakfast provided by the hotel (PiC had two), and a really late lunch that basically became dinner from 3:00 to 4:30 pm. Again, covered by the gift card: $92/$10 out of pocket. Yes, tip was far less because service was absolutely awful that day. Food was still good, but the server was terrible.
Sunday – it was free breakfast again separately and a nice lunch outdoors together after the race: $33/$6 tip.
Entertainment
We walked the park everyday, watched tv in the evenings while stretching and recovering from the very long walks, and to rest up for the race, there was a big ole country music festival going on in Millenium Park all weekend: all free (minus the cabs to get us the rest of the way to the convention center). All free.
Mini Photo Gallery
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| We’re in love with this heirloom tomato salad accompanied by burrata cheese, smoked sea salt & aged balsamic vinegar. |
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| Mediterranean octopus … something. It was good. |
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| Best sea scallop appetizer I’ve had in years. Perfectly cooked! |
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| Marathon food: Walleye pike on kale. |
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| Not Marathon Food: Turkey burger and a thousand french fries. |
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| Also Not Marathon Food: asparagus and caramelized onion pizza. |
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| Tagliatelle! |
Signs that made me laugh
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| What you can’t read at the top: Hot Asian Buns. *snicker* |
Sightseeing
October 12, 2010
For the longest time, I’ve been converted to a wholly electronic tracking system for all my transactions and cashflow monitoring. It seemed to be the best option for my highly mobile life, but of late, I’ve neglected the Excel sheets so shamefully that I have whole two-week chunks missing from my financial life.
In terms of my spending, that’s bad enough, but as payments due to me slow to a crawl, they’re likely to be forgotten and fall off the radar. We can’t have that happening now!
I’ve dusted off the trusty old notebook and started scrawling notes of every transaction for which I expect payment so that I can follow up again. And again. And again.
[Yes, this was in part motivated by the horrified fascination of watching money flow out on recent travels.]
I often find that I revert to pen and paper is like the mac and cheese of my finances, the favorite blanky a kid snuggles in. It’s comforting stuff, pen and paper financials.
October 10, 2010
Did you guys see that incredible sprint to the finish? That’s absolutely crazy. This year’s winner crossed the finish this year in two hours and six minutes and some odd seconds.
PiC and I have spent the last two days wandering Millenium Park and generally trying to take in as much of the city as possible while not overtaxing his pre-marathon legs, or breaking my non-marathonable legs.
It’s been positively gorgeous here, probably closer to 75 degrees with a light breeze. At least seven brides lucked out as well, sashaying through the park with their bridal parties of 12 or more, taking photos near the Bean, on the steps, amid the crowd of spectators in town for the marathon, for the country music festival or just out and about because the sun had re-emerged.
I thought we managed a nice balance between our two wildly different levels of fitness, considering he had to keep it very mellow and I pushed myself to walk between 3 to 5 miles per day in my quest to enjoy downtown and spend less on cabs.
We should have used more public transport to keep costs down, but we didn’t plan carefully enough to take that into account and were focused on staying in the lovely weather while it lasted. We’re definitely paying through the nose to enjoy that luxury. (In retrospect, all that walking was also foolish, I ache.)
Anyhow, we’ve got a few more hours in the Windy City before our shuttle picks us up. Pictures and a cost round up when we’re back home!
October 6, 2010
I was reading an article that makes the point that your raises depend on making specific kinds of contributions to an organization.
Sara suggests that there are five categories of people who make themselves seem indispensable to a company, and therefore more valuable: The Learners, The Pushers, The Changers, The Builders, and The Teamers.
The Learners gather and store institutional knowledge; the Pushers are results-driven; the Changers are problem identifiers and troubleshooters, tinkerers; the Builders are visionaries who can do everything to launch a new project; and the Teamers are consensus builders.
Offhand, I can clearly identify at least one key management individual who happens to be highly capable in each of the above areas, except for Learning. I think that the value of institutional knowledge in some organizations will vary. For myself, I think I’m still naive, green or young enough to think that I can be strong in all those areas. It may just be phasic, though.
Several years ago, I was definitely a Learner. Now I’m cycling through the other four sorts of skills, nearly on a daily basis, depending on the project and I wonder if it wouldn’t be more valuable to focus on one or two skills. Is this similar to multi-tasking, am I just diluting my ability to be effective because the brain can really only manage one task at a time? Or is it a case where the more skills the better?
Do you see any of these traits in yourself? Do you think that growing any of these abilities or tendencies would benefit you in your current organization or your future plans?
