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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February 10, 2009
MSN Money’s 6 financial milestones before 30 seem a little…. well …. blah. They really don’t light up the fire of my imagination, really.
1. Scale back the credit cards.
2. Own a home — or have a plan.
3. Have skills.
4. Give money away.
5. Know thyself.
6. Know smart people.
It’s not bad advice, it’s just kind of vague and run of the mill.
Then again, who am I to complain in this economy, right? Let’s see what we can do to personalize it a little, instead.
1. I don’t have credit card debt, and have canceled a number of cards that I don’t use. Where possible, the credit lines were transferred to the remaining cards to preserve the illusion of higher credit available. This inadvertently messed up my insurance premium refund, unfortunately, because they credited an account that no longer exists! We’ll see if I can get the insurance company to cut a check.
2. Um, I have a whole hundred dollars put away in lieu of a plan. So a plan might be a good idea. In fact, this will regain line item status on my next budget whenever I land a new job. More concretely, I would like to have my down payment (20% of course) and house maintenance saved, apart from my emergency fund. That’s a lot of cash!
3. Oh, I have skills. They’re good ones, too. But they could use some flair and I do have a plan for that. Girlfriend of mine has the Adobe Creative Suite with extra downloads and she offered one set to me when the new laptop was up and running. It is, now, so it’s time to take her up on that offer and start learning how to Photoshop and maybe even InDesign. And a friend’s friend is a web designer who might be willing to teach me some of his awesome designer skills; that would come in handy in any number of ways. Can you say (watch out, corporate speak!) value-add?
4. I’m guessing that giving money to the landlord, the electric company, the city, and gas companies don’t count, huh. Nor does feeding my family. I could and must do better here. In the past, the NYC medics were recipients of my generosity, as best as I could afford, as well as my extended family. My goal is to comfortably afford to give an average of $50/month. I know it’s not much, but it’s a start and y’know, family to feed and house. Another budgetary line item.
5. Ok, this one is a little tougher than it sounds. For me, anyway. It’s easier to know my goals, my challenges, and my shortcomings than myself as a whole person. It’s been years since I’ve asked myself what I wanted or dreamed, and I’ve only just begun to explore that area this year. Turns out that I’m a bit more complex than my finances: I am not my money, nor am I my family or my job. So what am I?? This could take a while ….
6. Yep, I know all of you smarties, and my high school friends are no mental slouches either. I like being surrounded by smart people, and sometimes even smart people who disagree with me. š This is great advice because I firmly believe that you rise and fall to the levels of the people around you; so you can only rise naturally if you’re learning from wise people in a learning environment. It’s a tough climb, and lonely to boot, otherwise.
Items 3-6 are all actions I can begin now and should continue well past my thirties. I’d love to be well on my way to achieving Item 2 in the next three years, and have a more developed career plan on the table by that time as well.
Let’s not limit this to your thirties: what’s on the horizon for you? What does your five or ten year plan include?
February 9, 2009
It just occurred to me that I should take a look-see at my Thank You points: earnings rates and redemption value.
The rate of TY points accrual depends on two things: my spending and my use of Citi products. The former is dictated by monthly expenses and needs, so it ebbs and flows naturally. The latter is dictated by whether or not I remember to pay at least one bill from my Citi checking account. When I remember, I earn 400 points a month, when I don’t, it’s only 200. With the addition of a Citi CD, though, I’ve been bumped up to the 600-points-per-month tier. Miniscule, but still points.
Looks like my Diamond Preferred card is still earning me two points per dollar, that’s cool. The double points promotion was a result of my cancellation spree last year, who knows if I can sweet talk them into giving it to me for another year.
On to the rewards!!
I just want a GC that will defray my everyday costs: nothing frivolous and at a 1 point: 1 dollar redemption ratio.
Gas cards are my first choice now …. and completely gone. No BP, no Shell. Dang! Oh wait, they have a Sunoco card, but I don’t think we have that here in California. After checking the site, it looks like their cards can only be used at Sunoco stations, unlike BP cards which can be redeemed at Arco stations. Ah well.
Retailers:
If that no-wrinkle ladies’ shirt from Brooks Brothers truly doesn’t wrinkle, it might be worth picking up a $100 card. I used to like ironing, but not anymore. Bed, Bath and Beyond and Macy’s are still going for $100/10,000 as well.
Amazon: $50/6000 – handy for ordering birthday and Christmas gifts
CVS: $50/6000 – if I wanted to start doing the CVS Extra Care game, this could get me started without using cash of my own.
Banana Republic: $50/6000 – nice to have one or two GC for BR around in case of awesome clearance sales.
It’s a shame that the redemptions are getting both scarce and … sort of pathetic. It’s the ongoing entropy of any loyalty program, though, they always tend to reduced value over time. Meantime, I’ll keep an eye out for newer, better programs, like Chase’s Cash Plus card which gives me five points per dollar at gas stations, grocery and drugstores. That gives actual cash back.
Note: The WSJ just ran an article on the banks’ pulling back of rewards.
February 8, 2009
Mostly a small change weekend. On my part, anyway.
+ Received a $1.10 refund from the loan company. I guess I overpaid the payoff?
+ Treated myself to a 33 cent cup of Lime Chicken Maruchan ramen – So(dium) delicious!
+ Had some really good (and cheap) dim sum – Less than $14/person including tip.
+ Tank of gas, $18
+ Paid a $1 Fandango service fee for a free movie ticket at Regal. Exchanged for a free movie voucher because my parents smashed up their car right before the movie started and I had to leave and pick them up. They’re bruised and sore, but I think they’re alright. No other cars were involved, either, thankfully. Put them both to bed with Tylenol and dinner, and stayed home to watch 2 more episodes of Firefly and House. Free TV via Hulu is a blessing and a curse!
+ Finished two of three loads of laundry. Waiting 3+ weeks to really do laundry meant I could finally sort into lights and darks! Smaller loads than usual, but I’ve been worried about the agitator in the machine and its ability to handle the big loads lately.
Big bills, pending:
+ Trying to decide what to do about a rental car. Just a weekend rental for them since they can use my car during the week? Or a weekly rental with unlimited mileage?
+ $500 deductible, family car. Sadly, my auto maintenance fund is not quite there yet so I’ll have to steal from the expense fund again.
+ Rent
Back to hanging up laundry, and plotting which errands to run today. All week I’ve been fighting off the office creeping crud that everyone else harbored, and ran out of Day/Nyquil doing it. Without it, the cough and sore throat are developing. Must. Not. Succumb!
+ J. Money’s got His and Her money combined and things look really good. See? I guess marriage IS good for the pocketbook.
February 6, 2009
JD at Get Rick Slowly’s post on luck and the associated article from Newsweek “What it takes to survive” really struck a chord with me.
In the last several years, there’ve been challenges in droves: health, family, bankruptcies, debts, tragedy. You name it, we had it. We managed, sometimes by the skin of my teeth, but the toughest recurring theme throughout was the devolving relationship with my mom.
Once my biggest inspiration and help, she changed dramatically as the difficulties ate away at her self esteem and faith. When faced with a new obstacle, she began insisting that “bad luck” was to blame for all our problems. At one point, she began to blame the house and its “bad karma” for the bad luck. I wanted to scream/cry: this is the person from whom I learned to pick up and solve the problems, no whining. (Or rather, no whining unless you’re multi-tasking. That was ok.) What was this madness?
In the article, Professor Wiseman states:
“Luck is not a magical ability or a gift from the gods,” Wiseman writes. “Instead, it is a state of mindāa way of thinking and behaving.” Above all, he insists that we have far more control over our livesāand our luckāthan we realize. Going back to the Italian Renaissance philosopher NiccolĆ² Machiavelli, great thinkers and writers have argued that 50 percent or more of what happens in life is determined entirely by chance (or Fortuna, the Roman goddess of fortune). Wiseman says no way. He believes that only 10 percent of life is purely random. The remaining 90 percent is “actually defined by the way you think.” In other words, your attitude and behavior determine nine tenths of what happens in your life.
I absolutely believe that life can be mostly determined by your choices. It drove me nuts that my role model was trying to convince me, the last person standing, that there was nothing effective I could do to turn around our situation.
Her mindset meant that she was handing off all responsibility for their/her decisions. With it went the ability and willingness to learn from the mistakes and effect change.
She chose to resign herself to my brother’s irrational and selfish behavior, to allow him to run roughshod over them, instead of standing up to him. He was only nice to her when he wanted money or help.
She would choose to forgo medical treatments to give him money, and he actually took it! (*banging head against wall* This. Is. NOT. OK!)
She railed against the whatever-you-want-to-call-it for my dad’s stupid decisions instead of refusing to bail him out. If she wanted to shelter her money from his failing attempts to make money, all she had to do was give it to me.
She had some nominal control but gave it all up because she couldn’t control other people and the outcomes of her decisions. Instead, everything went wrong because of “bad luck.” I finally realized that the sense of helplessness had overcome her ability to see solutions. I totally understand, sometimes I feel helpless, lost, whatever, you all see it here. But there is always something that can be done. Always.
~ work to build my professional reputation,
~ reduce expenses,
~ protect & preserve my emotional sanity,
~ take care of my family to the best of my ability,
~ establish firm boundaries with each family member,
~ scan the horizon for more opportunities to learn, build and flourish.
I’m sure that luck has its place – getting the prime parking spot when you least expected it, coming into a windfall, etc., but it should not be granted the power to dictate your life, not if you have any aspirations at all. That’d be the greatest tragedy.
I found this paragraph particularly interesting:
Third, lucky people persevere in the face of failure and have an uncanny knack for making their wishes come true. They’re convinced that life’s most unpredictable events will “consistently work out for them.” Their world is “bright and rosy,” Wiseman writes, while unlucky people expect that things will always go wrong. Their world is “bleak and black.” When Wiseman gives lucky and unlucky people a puzzle that is actually impossible to solve, the reactions are very telling. “More than 60 percent of unlucky people said that they thought the puzzle was impossible, compared to just 30 percent of lucky people. As in so many areas of their lives, the unlucky people gave up before they even started.”
While I do tend to expect things can and will go wrong, and spend plenty of time figuring out how, when and why, I think of it as disaster planning. Even if I think something’s impossible, I’m still too obstinate to give up before I start, unlucky or no.
February 5, 2009
No? How about a gentleman? Still awkward? Yeah, I don’t like getting caught in that “Well, how old do you think I am?” trap. For the record: I cannot accurately visually judge age, race, weight, or even, embarrassingly once, gender. [That last was NOT entirely my fault; the guy’s friends admitted that it’d happened to him before.]
But, you may ask about my credit age! Er, you could if I hadn’t already proudly posted it up top, there. Clever Dude posted about his credit age recently and I popped in to try it out.
It’s an online quiz that asks several questions about your credit and spending history, try it out and let me know how old you are!
February 4, 2009
Just cancelled the rest of my business credit cards: Chase Freedom & CitiBusiness (2). They’d cancelled the Citi Premier Pass card product, so my beloved Premier Pass was changed to a CitiBusiness. Exercising my right as a consumer not to accept the inferior product, I decided to get rid of the rest of my unnecessary business cards at the same time. It’s only about 10k worth of credit lines, I’ve eliminated all debt in my name, and still have quite high (enough for me) consumer credit limits. Last time I checked, less than a month ago, none of the business cards appeared on my credit reports either.
*dusting off hands*
Another part of clean-up taken care of. Slowly getting everything in order!
Next up: scheduling life insurance medical exam, revising the will, organizing a How-To guide with account names, numbers and necessary information to all my finances to be included with the will for the executor. Or whoever. (And a medical instruction letter in case of incapicitation. Is it strange that I’m considering appointing only friends to these responsibilities, not family? I just don’t trust family to follow my wishes.)
February 3, 2009
Found this article: More families move in together during housing crisis over at Boston Gal’s.
This made me laugh that I’m completely poised on the edge of the diving board, just waiting for my chance to move OUT.
It’s so ironic in that I’m finally emotionally ready, and more than ready, to stop (mostly) coddling my family, spread my wings, and discover the world on my own, right when the economy is swirling down the drain and I can’t find a job to suit my next career move.
Yes, I’ve always had good timing.
In keeping with BG’s other post recommending that we try not to focus solely on negativity, though, I can be grateful that I’ve had some darned good training in Financial Savvy!
Can’t beat the School of Hard Knocks š
Here’s an excerpt (hee):
I’m not one of you. Okay? I can’t relate to who you are and what you’ve been through. I graduated from the University of Life. All right? I received a degree from the School of Hard Knocks. And our colors were black and blue, baby. I had office hours with the Dean of Bloody Noses. All right? I borrowed my class notes from Professor Knuckle Sandwich and his Teaching Assistant, Ms. Fat Lip Thon Nyun. That’s the kind of school I went to for real, okay?
……
[SINGING]
Now don’t hang on, nothing lasts forever but the Harvard alumni endowment fund.
It adds up, has performed at 22 percent growth over the last six years.
Dust in the wind, you’re so much more than dust in the wind.
Dust in the wind, you’re shiny little very smart pieces of dust in the wind.
I particularly like the song. š
The experience of moving out, whenever it actually happens, may not look anything at all like I envisioned, but that’s not necessarily a Bad Thing. It could be better! (As a perpetual realist, that’s my biggest concession to optimism, ever.)
