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
Read MoreJuly 7, 2008
The sales waiting game, that is. Meritline has the iPhone earphone/headphone set with microphone for $10.99.
Combined with a 60% off coupon code [SHEAI60POFF] and free shipping, my replacement headset will cost $4.76. And I’ll get 1% Fatcash, and another 2% back from my CC rewards.
Perfect! It’s a shade below my previous price point, so I’m happy.
July 6, 2008
Whew, I made it. The past two days have been positively crammed full of activities and obligations, so much so that I wasn’t getting to bed until after 1 am. Am I getting too old to hang? 🙂 It’s actually been so busy that it wasn’t until after I checked the fluids in my car and cleaned house for a while that I realized I haven’t posted anything for two days!
Friday was fantastic fun. Hung out with best friend’s entire extended family for most of the day, networked with one of the relatives and may have a project lined up for several months from now. The cool thing is that I’m slowly putting some feelers out, very carefully, to certain acquaintances and friends to explore freelancing opportunities. I don’t plan to go freelance full-time, I definitely plan to keep my day job because I need my health insurance but this is another way of maintaining my sanity for right now.
Also, we went to Sonic Burger. Have you seen their silly shake commercials? I’ve seen a few, but the only thing that actually sticks with me is that they have tator tots. I love tator tots. Handily, I actually had cash on me to reimburse the person who put the meal on his credit card because I keep forgetting to make a bank run ($7).
Saturday was crammed with visiting: with friends for French Toast brunch in the morning ($1.50 for a dozen eggs), had a baby shower in the afternoon ($20 for baby-related gifts), and dinner with the cousins in the evening. I was literally running from one event to the next, and trying not to sweat too much. Ew. Spent the late night hours watching SNL, and gossiping with the kids. I guess I can’t call them “kids” really, anymore, as I was giving college and driving advice …. me? I’m experienced enough to give advice about college? Yeah, I guess so. Welcome to the almost real-world!
Finally hit the sack after 1 this morning, and luxuriated in my well-earned rest.
Today? I meant to work on my car’s lock but my car friend never showed up. Just checked my fluids and loaded the cargo net and emergency kit back in the trunk. All’s well there.
It was good to spend time with people I hadn’t seen in forever. Notably, family friends, friends from out of town, friends who are so busy working that I never see them, friends from former places of employ. There might have been a touch of stress from all the travel and shuttling about, but ’twas nothing a little cleaning workout today couldn’t work off.
I hope everyone had a great weekend!
July 3, 2008
So much for self control. I spent $15 this week on lunch fixings and had been making awesome roast beef sandwiches with fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, cheddar cheese with salad and baby carrots on the side. With only a four day week, I should have been set!
Despite the well-rounded meals, I couldn’t kick this craving for something fatty, or (almost) greasy. Despite having a nutritiously-sound lunch, I was still finding myself needing sweets or snacks and still feeling hungry all day. What’s up with that?
Yesterday, my answer was: pizza. We all chipped in to buy a medium pizza and a few orders of Boneless Chicken Wings. I managed to find a 20% online coupon for a first time online orderer, so that was helpful. We split the bill among the pizza&wing eaters, and just wing eaters, to be scrupulously fair, and I assigned the bill collection to another coworker so I could get the order in. My share turned out to be $9 for three slices of pizza and several helpings of wings.
And actually, guilty though I feel for spending out of turn, I did feel better for having a tummy full of pizza and honey barbeque wings.
July 2, 2008
| Retirement Savings |
Rollover IRA: $1,452 |
| Emergency Savings |
Catastrophe: 17,037 |
| Short Term Goals |
Car Maintenance: $1,298 |
| Long Term Goals |
House Downpayment: $43 |
| Investment Loans |
Prosper-ish: $12,630 |
| Total Assets |
Non-Liquid: $25,320 |
| Debt and Liabilities |
Truck: $4,683 |
| 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.
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