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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July 2, 2008
| Retirement Savings |
Rollover IRA: $1,452
Roth IRA: $3,688
401(a): $4,085
403(b): $16,095
Total: $25,320
<-3%>
|
| Emergency Savings |
Catastrophe: 17,037
Problem Cushion: $1,382
|
| Short Term Goals |
Car Maintenance: $1,298
Car Insurance: $1,375
Travel/Con: $700
Taxes: $3,465
Moving: $5
Total: $6,868
|
| Long Term Goals |
House Downpayment: $43
|
| Investment Loans |
Prosper-ish: $12,630
Personal Loan: $5,000
Savings Bond: $357 (current accrued value)
Total: $17,997
|
| Total Assets |
Non-Liquid: $25,320
Semi-Liquid: $17,997
Liquid: $18,419
Expense Acct: $373
Goals Savings: $6,868
Total: $64,164
|
| Debt and Liabilities |
Truck: $4,683
Citi: $1,547
Chase: $838
Rent: $1,360
Total: $8,428
|
| Net Worth |
$60,544
|
— Up 7% —
Once again, it seems like the numbers are inflated; the “increased” net worth is due to the recent influx of cash. It’ll settle out soon enough, once the bills are paid off and the “extra” cash goes where it needs to go.
June ended far too soon, with too much left to do. I am happy that I have a bit more in my cushion, though. With the gas prices getting higher every day, I’ve had to readjust my expectations for monthly expenses, and adjust the emergency fund target upward accordingly. Of course, I will continue on my crusade to reduce expenses, but I prefer to plan for the worse (6 months of unemployment at current spending levels) and hope for the best (landing a better, higher-paying job, reducing expenses).
I’ve taken another feature off our landline, bringing that bill down to $30/month, but I want to speak with Tmobile tonight about their new version of a landline service. If that pans out and doesn’t affect my internet service ($14.99/month), I’ll switch from Verizon ($30/month) to T-mobile ($10/month, $50 start-up fee). At that rate, it’ll take 3 months before I start saving $20/month on phone services.
Oh! I added another $10 to my Down Payment account. Current total: $43.00. 😀
And I gave my Moving account a free $5 from my checking account cushion to start. It’s a drop in the bucket, but at least there’s a drop now. That should encourage more drops.
July 1, 2008
Please remember that the hands-free cell phone law takes effect today. If you’re 18 and over, use your phone while driving, you must use a hands-free set, or ….
The base fine for the FIRST offense is $20 and $50 for subsequent convictions. With the addition of penalty assessments, the fines can be more than triple the base fine amount.
The violation will be on your driving record, though you won’t be charged with a violation point.
There is no grace period, the law takes effect today.
Out of state drivers are also subject to the same law.
Be careful out there today (and every other day)!
Edit: Or you could go ahead and get that $20 ticket, and send a copy of it in to get a free, high-end headset valued at $150 by Plantronics. Nice way to encourage breaking the law, Headsets.com.
(ie: Supplemental income)
Ahhh, yes. My second income “make-up” check has come in, and I’ve divvied it up.
Originally this was going to be the All Responsibility Check: 20% to savings and 30% for taxes. Since I’m struggling with cash flow, I took 5% of it from the savings allotment and put it that in the expense account. I might as well. If I run short and have to dip into the emergency fund, I’ll just be really annoyed and I have a policy against dipping anyway. As Sistah Ant and I discussed once, it seems like a slippery slope to tread, dipping into the e-fund for non-emergencies.
I’ve an abundance of Citi and ED savings accounts but they’re all being used for specific purposes (Travel, Car/House Maintenance, easier access E-fund, expenses, Car Insurance), so I’ve finally returned to my old ING Direct account to hold my tax savings. That money is just going to be sitting there until next April, so I want it out of sight. Even better, ING is offering a 3% APY rate, so it’s actually doing better than ED.
I’m considering moving my entire emergency fund over to ING, actually, since it’s a fairly substantial amount. I think the Car/House Maintenance and Car Insurance funds can also be moved because those expenses won’t crop up so suddenly that I can’t wait a few days to transfer the money from ING.
Oh, and I still need a Moving fund; it’d be nice to have most of the sub-accounts in one place.
*thinking ….*
June 30, 2008
Creative funding for the summer weekend trips are not, repeat not, going well at all.
1. BF’s free United ticket only lets me fly out of Portland on the worst Sunday flights (7-9 hours of travel for a 3 hour trip) for any weekend we’ve searched. Friday through Monday is not an option here, I don’t think.
2. I can do a Friday night-Monday night weekend for the Phoenix trip, but we’re rapidly running out of open weekends this year. I’ll push that to September, but work is going to be a major scheduling obstacle.
3. My one way SW voucher that expires 8/14/08 isn’t good enough to get any of my return flights from Portland, so that’s not an option, either, but it must be used soon. There’s always the revival fee option, but I don’t plan to pay $50 for that; it’s nearly the cost of a one way ticket!
So, sadly, the trips BF wants me to take are either set, or nearly so. The trips I wanted to take to visit friends and play? Not so much. There’s got to be a way to be more creative about these trips.
My Shell gas cards came in the mail! Yay! I also got more points deposited into the Thank You account, so I might be redeeming for another $50. I was going to try and squeeze one out of my MyPoints account, but I’m not earning points fast enough there: I’m short about 2000 points. That’s a lot of clicking!
So is my new Verizon bill. 😛 I’m thinking of canceling call waiting and the inside wire maintenance. The inside wire maintenance is a monthly fee that’s meant to serve a phone maintenance insurance. With it, they won’t charge you a service fee if you have problems with the phone, and they have to send a technician out. Without it, I think the service fee is $25/visit, though I can’t find the link to verify that charge anymore. Labor would also be charged. Ok, I’m a little iffy on canceling this service right now, but I’m definitely canceling the call waiting.
In iPhone news, they replaced the phone AND the SIM card. That meant I had to reactivate service, reset everything again, and that also meant that officially, my 2-year contract with AT&T started anew. Argh! Even though I’m only 4 months in, I don’t want to be tied to AT&T any longer than I have to. On the bright side, the phone appears to be, mostly, working better than it was before. I’ll know better in about a week. For the record, my complaints were not unfounded: they ran an incident record retrieval on the phone, and there were 35 dropped calls in the last two weeks. That doesn’t count the number of times that the calls were dropped and the phone shut off completely.
Wish me luck!
June 29, 2008
’tis noon. ‘Tis noonish, and there’s a very light cool breeze gently sneaking through the window every so often to keep my room nice and comfortable, but not enough to do more than jiggle the leaves on the plants in the courtyard.
It’s just about perfect out there. So what am I doing inside??
I just can’t decide what I want to do, and in what order.
I’ve made my grocery shopping list for this week’s lunches: whole wheat bread, some tuna, cheese, salad kit, half pound of sliced roast beef. When I worked out the math, the deli meat is cheaper than the packaged sort, even when it’s on sale. Go figure. I think this week’s lunch list (and breakfast) will run about $15.
iPhone has a new bag of tricks: it claims it has at least 3 bars of reception and drops every single call I make from home. Every. Single. Call. The other day, it just shut off in the middle of a call, and I couldn’t turn it back on. Twice. Visual VM wouldn’t work, half a day. *sigh* I DID get all my contacts entered into Yahoo, so I’ve got to go to the Genius Bar and beg them to give me another one. Or something. ‘Tis a frustration.
Must check on friend. Poor thing has panic attacks, and I spent an hour giving her a massage last night to try to ward another one off. I think it worked! Well, unless she had one after I left, but I think she was ok. My muscles feel like man muscles now, though. At least, what I imagine man muscles would feel like after exertion: all sore and worked out. I shouldn’t mind looking a bit more muscley, I could use some meat on my bones. We watched the track and field Olympic trials last night, and those girls had some very impressive muscles. They weren’t scary and gross like bodybuilders, they just looked terribly terribly fit, with very lovely, toned muscles. I like athletic bodies, they look so healthy! Oh, and if anyone has suggestions for warding off anxiety/panic attacks, your advice would be MOST appreciated. I don’t mind giving massages in the least, but even my fingers and arms get a bit worn out after a few of them. And I don’t actually know enough about it to be really helpful, my approach is just to distract her, make her laugh, or make her relax. That’s sort of a limited repertoire.
Laundry and ironing. Um, I just don’t want to iron. That’s all, just don’t want to. Cause I’m laaaazy.
And I’m awfully tired. It’s so odd, I woke up at 3:15 this morning, convinced that someone had bitten my shoulder. Uh …. noooooo ….. I was so confused, and then confusedly amused, that I couldn’t get back to sleep for about 30 minutes.
I think I’ll take my usual approach: Worst things first. I’ll go iron and start a load of laundry. Go to the Apple store later this evening, take friend along if she’s up for it so she can get out of the house for a short jaunt, and stop at the grocery on the way home.
June 27, 2008
One tomato and cucumber, each sliced.
A handful of chicken breast, sliced.
A handful of pork with a smidgen of onions, sliced.
Orowheat whole wheat bread.
Mayo.
Combine all ingredients in layers on the bread, smush together, and it makes the best sandwich. EVER. I was quite sad when I finished eating because it was so delicious! I wished that I’d taken a picture, too, but that might have seemed a little weird.
And a coworker went on an ice cream run, and brought back a veritable smorgasbord of ice creams: Strawberry Shortcake bar, Raspberry sorbet bar, Drumstick, almond and chocolate covered vanilla ice cream bar, and Dibs! I, of course, went for the Dibs. They were tiny morsels of deliciousness.
Happy Friday everyone!
