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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December 24, 2008
Even if I’m awake at 6, 8 or 10, my brain doesn’t seem to really be IN until around 11. No wonder I’m routine-centric, I’d waste half the day waking up before getting ’round to anything useful, otherwise.
It’s the 11th day of Christmas!
I only have 11 of the 12 steps in my post about pending resignation and layoffs written.
And that’s all the elevenses I’ve got. It’s Christmas Eve and, ensconced in a quilt from my best friend’s mum, heater at my feet, I’m trying to transfer all my files from a Mac to the new PC with Vista in the most tedious manner possible. Not that the goal was to find the most tedious manner possible, it’s just that all the methods of saving data (to external hard drive, to memory stick) tha are most efficient are not compatible between the Mac and my Vaio. Sooo I’m burning CDs. Uh-huh. I’m burning CDs on the Mac, unloading the files to the Vaio, clearing the disk, repeat.
I’d complain but I don’t want to. It’s forcing me to learn my way around Vista, the new programs, and shortcut keys, and awful as it sounds, that’s how I learn best. Involuntarily and out of necessity. And, I’m discovering what’s on all my unlabeled CDs. Only in one case was that sorta exciting — found some old music from my college years! š
Possibly the best part about this is that it’ll allow me to discard more clutter, set up the new computer, clean up the work compy of anything personal, and motivates me to copy over my language CDs to the computer and discard those boxes and CDs too! Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Chinese, here I come!
I must admit, though, while I’m not an Apple Addict, the Mac is So Much Simpler when it comes to this basic organization of files. It really is. But that’s why I bought the PC (other than the much more affordable price tag), I’d hate to become so attached to one platform that I forgot how to use the other.
December 23, 2008
Just now realized that my decision to give my dad a chance to sell the %^&*^% truck at a higher price than the dealer’s offered $4000 was stupid stupid stupid. As if I hadn’t already experienced the burn of not selling earlier in the year, that extra money would have defrayed the most recent car-related crisis by giving me a little extra cash and eliminating the existing truck note.
Baugh.
Ok.
Made the decision to give him a chance, just have to make the best of it. And not dwell.
Um, on the bright side, I got a friend’s opinion on the new suit and thumbs up! So I will only have spent $11 on a quite nice new business suit. Let’s hope I don’t outgrow this one in two years.
The month and the quarter is just about over, and it’s only just occurred to me that I haven’t divvied up the last check of the year.
Just goes to show how busy it’s been; deciding where to allocate incoming funds is one of my favorite financial exercises.
It was a little harder this time because it’s been so long since my last go at it, but let’s take a look. I’ve finally got a handle on properly supplying my expense account, so the proper amount for that is taken out first. That’s about 47% of the check.
To even things up, I’m putting 13% in the insurance account which is transforming from the auto insurance account to an everything insurance account. I’m going to look into buying my own life insurance, so I’ll need some money for premiums. Might also need renter’s insurance. *grimace* Yes, I haven’t gotten that yet.
20% goes to savings, and that leaves me with 20% to go. I was going to refill the travel fund, and plump up the neglected moving fund, but auto maintenance is running on empty. Should I divide evenly between the three, or pick two and make it more substantial for the lucky two?
Hm, I know I have registration coming up again, soon, so it should probably be 9/9/2%: AM/Moving/Travel.
Way more complicated than it needs to be, I know. š I just don’t like any account to be empty!
December 22, 2008
My new laptop: is pretty much wonderful. All but the part where I can’t figure out why it will no longer let me make my recovery disks. Just because I started installing/un-installing stuff that I didn’t want? Oh shoot, was it related to Windows Live OneCare? Because I junked that as soon as Avast was up and running. Darned Vista, I still haven’t learned my way around it. Oh well, new tech, keeps me young.
Wire transfers: despite costing $18-stinkin-75, are not guaranteed to transmit immediately. Citibank’s website is a liar. I read the fine print, there’s no mention of an up-to-48 hour review. Which, btw, takes me right up to Christmas Eve, and Christmas. Sure can’t wait to pay double the expected fee for “storage” because I was misinformed and didn’t just set up the wire transfer on Friday so that it’d have gone through by now. *sigh* I should just expect things to go wrong like this and you know, see into the future to prevent this sort of thing. Among others.
Escape Brooklyn: makes me even more trepiditious about living in New York. But then again, I only wanted to live there for a year or two.
Business suit: Is an all black suit too conservative for SF? I’m not a hugely fashionable person, so I tend to stick to the basics, and because they practically never have anything but basics in my size.
I found a close-as-anything-fit 0P Tahari suit yesterday for $140 at Macy’s. Twasn’t on sale, but I had my good friend look up coupons as I sat miserably in the dressing room with 4 suits that didn’t fit. He found a rumor of a $25 off $100 purchase so I trekked to Barnes and Noble for a copy of the paper and found THREE of those coupons! That gave me an extra burst of energy to check the racks one last time, and I lucked out big time.
I can’t find pictures of it online but they had two options: a skirt or pant suit. Both were two button jacket with rounded lapels on the pantsuit jacket, and thinner, sharper lapels on the skirt suit.
The skirt suit, after coupon, and after a fatty $113 gift card, cost $11 out of pocket. Just have to decide if it’s impressive enough. As I was told that I barely looked 18 at dinner on Saturday night while our 21 year old guests weren’t carded, I’m going to need all the help I can get to look legal, much less highly competent and employable.
I’m still horribly embarrassed about the whole car situation. But I’m dealing with it, and this is what I did:
1. Called my dad and had him authorize me to call the financing company. Very very important: they were refusing to deal with me at all, even with his authorization, until it became clear that they would only get money from me.
2. Took down their phone number, account number, SSN, balance to bring the account current, charges for the towing company.
3. Spoke to the company asking them for the procedure to bring the account current or to pay it off entirely.
A) to bring the account current, the owner must:
i) fax verification of employment/income
ii) fax proof of residence
iii) fax three references, one of which must be a family member not living in the household, listed with names, phone numbers and relationship to owner.
iv) fax proof of insurance
v) send payment of the late balance including a $125 repossession fee via money order or wire from the bank: $1932
vi) pay the towing company ($140 for four business days, Fri-Mon)
B) to pay it off entirely, the owner must:
i) wire the payoff balance (good until 12/29): $5611
ii) wait for the paperwork to be processed and sent to the towing company, then make arrangements for pickup for the company. Also ($140 for four business days, Fri-Mon)
4) Apparently our local police department gets in on the deal and has to issue a release costing another $15 before the towing company in another city will release the car. (Of course, why not?)
Thoughts and other obstacles: the timing of this on a Friday works to the towing company’s advantage because they charge $35 for every day that the vehicle is in their lot.
Just because the financing company says that you have 20 days before the car is moved to the auction lot, doesn’t mean it’s true. If the company has a pickup of other vehicles scheduled before your 20 days are up – and that’s calendar days, folks, not business days – then they’ll take your vehicle as well. The financing company rep warned me of this when I asked her, “is there anything else, at all, you think I should know? I’ve never dealt with this before and want to make sure I cover my bases.”
The towing company only has specific hours for releasing towed vehicles, so if your paperwork and payments don’t hit the financing company, and their paperwork isn’t released and received by the towing company, during the specific window, you wait another day, and pay another $35. This company closes at 4 pm sharp, which is another great way for them to make money. Who gets out of work before 4 pm?
Finis: I’m going with Route A because I’m not ready to dig out over 5k worth of cash. I am dismayed at the prospect of not only NOT taking the truck off my balance sheet, but adding the responsibility of another vehicle, but right this moment, I don’t have a choice.
One quarter of the cost will clean out my auto maintenance fund, the rest of the money will come out of my expense fund. It’ll wreck my cushion, for the most part, but psychologically, I’d rather raid the cushion before the emergency fund. I might have to hit that with moving costs soon.
And lastly, I had a serious discussion with my dad. On Friday, upset, I told him that if this happened again, I was leaving and never looking back. I realized that wasn’t good enough, and told him on Saturday that I’m not waiting for it to happen again. He had to promise he would never lie to me or hide important things from me to “protect” me, when he’s really just protecting his wounded pride, or I was outta here, permanently. I can only pray that taking a hard stance will shake him enough to take me seriously, but I’m also serious. I’m not strong enough to continue living my life, looking over my shoulder, waiting for people to lie to me because my own family can’t do better than that. All or nothing, folks.
December 19, 2008
After another patted shoulder “don’t worry,” I literally bite my tongue. It’s the only way not to completely lose my good traditional training of not talking back to my elders. Or in this case, “raving at elder.”
Why, on the eve of a very important, very early, phone interview was I up, running outside barefoot over an hour before scheduled alarm? Hi, it’s still me here, still the girl who gets up only ten minutes before departure. That’d be because I woke to the sound of an unscheduled alarm. The car alarm.
I would have ignored it; I usually do as sleep is precious beyond words. Something stirred me to go see this time, though, to possibly do our neighbors the courtesy of silencing an errant alarm. What I saw, peeking out the blinds, however, was no errancy except that of a flurry of indistinguishable human activity. Startled, I raced outside barefoot to watch the family sedan driving away backwards. Towed.
Are there even words for the sheer fury that swamped me? I woke my dad hoping it was a mistake. Suspecting that it was not.
It wasn’t.
He hasn’t been able to keep up with the payments lately. What an innocent sounding statement until combined with the towed car.
I am positively furious and humiliated. Above all, betrayed. It wasn’t more than a month ago that I’d told him our communication was poor. I couldn’t trust their judgement and sensibility. He seemed surprised, he protested my characterization.
Well, surprise! I can’t.
This wasn’t a sudden, unexpected thing. (At least not for him.) This is what happens when you don’t pay, pay in time, and keep paying on time.
So what now? We’re down to my car. That’s it. It’s Friday morning, if I don’t throw cash at the situation, who knows how much, we’ll have to share my car for the weekend and I have a very full weekend. Heck, who knows, if I’ll have enough? Tow truck fees, plus whatever else. I don’t know. All I know is I’m losing more precious sleep because he can’t take care of business, can’t learn to tell me before something is about to become an exponentially larger pain in my ass so we can alleviate the situation. No, because “I can’t keep running to you.” No? But you think it’s right to wait until it’s a disaster before telling me that there are dark clouds in the sky?
Edit: Above written at 4 am.
Update: It turns out he’s over a thousand dollars behind. Deep breath.
It’s not that I can’t shake the money loose from somewhere. It’s that I have to because he won’t learn. That I have to tell my own dad that this is why I have trust issues, why I don’t think we have good communication, why I have to be anxious. That I told him months ago that my work situation was B.A.D. and last night that we’re all going to be laid off. That, in this lousy situation, he thinks it’s better to hide this situation and let it go into arrears!
“Why Mom is slowly losing her mind,” a part of my mind whispers disloyally, quietly, “this is why she’s losing her grip on reality. Living with him and letting him ‘handle it’ is, for her, to expect failure and disappointment. If it weren’t for me, would they be on the street in a matter of months? Weeks? How long would it be?”
It’s going to cost at least $1300 just to catch up on the payments. They’re waiting for a manager to review the file on Monday before they release information on how to get the car, according to him. That’s unacceptable but I’m stuck at work now and can’t follow up on my own.
I’m so mad I could spit.
And after this bailout, then what? Do I scrape up the cash to pay off *yet another* car since he obviously can’t afford this monthly payment? Call in my personal loans to free up cash and pay off all possible debts that I’m aware of? Create a blank slate for him while I try to support two households? If I don’t, he’s going to keep on trying to make two ends that are too short meet without telling me when he’s run into a rough patch, until we incur extra stupid fees. If I do, will he learn? Or will this just happen again?
Job hunting wasn’t challenging enough?
Forever and a half ago, FB (who is no longer broke) of Fabulously Broke in the City, discussed storage and organizing extensively. One of the problems she and several of her readers, including me, encountered was a way to neatly store electronic debris such as cables, boxes, etc. Unfortunately, I can’t find the original post I’m thinking of. This is a substitute post/link from FB.
I, for one, can’t bear to throw away boxes that my gadgets came in, as though I’m ever going to gently place the item back in its original packaging. It’s been ten years since I had my first electronic doodad (a pager, remember those?) and I can’t recall a single time the item has been boxed up. In my packratty mind, there’s always the standard “but what if you move?” protest. What? Like I’m going to repack my cell phone if I decide to move to a new apartment? My iPod, perhaps? No.
Nevertheless, I keep the boxes. One might feasibly blame it on Apple for designing such sturdy, attractive boxes that a packrat cannot resist; one might blame it on an evil mind that thinks it’d be perfect to wrap a completely non-iPhone gift in the box for someone. Whatever. We’ve established that I’m crazy and have to keep all electronics-related paraphernelia. Given that fetish, I’ve finally arrived at a nearly-great solution.
I’ll admit it doesn’t meet the standard of being easy to see at a glance like you could if they were say, in Ziplocs and hanging on a sales rack. Not that you would do that anyway. You would have to access the storage unit to see what’s in there, but I still like it.
I don’t have cables that need storing right now, but the aforementioned Apple-branded boxes and packages are currently my problem, and I’d like your thoughts on the solution:
