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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April 16, 2008
I’ve been spending a lot of time with coupled people lately: newlyweds, married-for-three-years, expecting, family planning, long-term relationships, the works. It’s a little intimidating, truth be told, because it constantly reminds me of where I am in my life and relationship, or where I’m not. Or maybe “intimidating” is not the word I’m looking for, perhaps what I mean is “unsettling.”
In any case, that leads to my pondering how other people juggle their personal needs versus couple needs. Considering how difficult it is to carve out time for friends when busy with work and home priorities, I often wonder if their together time is also adversely affected. Does the romance get prioritized above all, or does it get pushed below the surface because it’s been subsumed into a category of personal life that has to wait?
This resonates even more strongly when BoyDucky and I try to schedule time to see each other. Figuring out when we’ve time to see each other, much less romantic getaways, is no joke when every weekend is struck off the calendar because of a litany of other obligations. There’s also definitely a need for us to balance the costs of an LDR and seeing each other by keeping dates during our visits low-key. Communication, in the meantime, via calls, emails or I love you letters keeps the wheels turning.
At the other end of the spectrum, my friend lives with his girlfriend, and I keep hearing that she constantly feels as if he doesn’t spend enough time with her. They live together! He doesn’t go out without her, ever, and she drives him to and from the train station. I can’t fathom a couple being more together. It may be that her expectations are simply misunderstood, or just too high, but regardless of rightness or wrongness, they’ve got to balance each other’s needs just as much as anyone else in a relationship.
It’s a bit of food for thought. How does one get from *here* in a relationship to that point where you’re ready to be committed, to live with another person, for the rest of your life and make it work? The path’s different for everyone, so I’m sure there’s no one answer, but it’d be great if there were a few more signs along the way about whether to turn off, or go straight for another ten miles!
It’s always irked me a little that my retirement contributions don’t appear in my Vanguard accounts until two days after payday, but it’s at least been consistent since I opened my accounts a few years ago. What really gets my goat is that this last pay period’s contributions didn’t show up until this morning, a full week after we were paid.
What’s up with that? I’ve sent an email to our benefits people to get an explanation because I do NOT want to see that happen again. My money has places to be, folks, don’t hold it up!
Does anyone else have to wait a certain number of days before they see their contributions? And that does fluctuate for any reason?
Am I just extraordinarily neurotic about my every penny?
April 15, 2008
There’s nothing on the Linens’n’Things website yet, but I hear they’re about to declarebankruptcy. C3 had mentioned hearing about the possibility a few weeks, but since I couldn’t find any news on it, I didn’t think anything of it.
After waiting months, using our old yucky vacuum that spits up, to earn enough points to redeem for all the GC I want, the master plan to spend nothing out of pocket may not work out.
On Saturday, I spent part of the morning at LNT doing some hands-on research with their floor models, and had finally decided on the two models I liked best for lightweight maneuverability, and nice attachments. The next step was to order my $100 GC from Thank You points, and bring home my new vacuum baby!
Now I’m hesitant: I’ve already got a $50 GC on hand, but that’s not enough for either vacuum I want. If I get the $100 in time, I’ll have too much money left over since I’ll also be stacking the GC and sale with a 20% off coupon. That’s assuming they don’t stop accepting their own GCs like Sharper Image did! Yar. I hate being thwarted.
For whatever reason, I cannot seem to get my mind focused on anything but investing or travel tonight. The first is simple: I finally read my Rollover IRA prospectus last night, figured out that I have a little over a thousand dollars invested in an REIT mutual fund that’s made roughly $200 in the last four years, and I don’t want to pay another $15 annual maintenance fee because I’ve been too lazy to get my butt in gear and roll this over to my Vanguard accounts. Then, too, I’ve been talking stocks with a friend who is actually quite experienced in investing and I’ve been feeling completely out of my depth, so I want to start dipping my toe into the market. Kind of reminds me of Sistah Ant’s comment about being jealous of a teenager with her own stocks 🙂
The second? I’m desperate to get away. For a change of scenery, of pace. Just to get away from this life and my job and the bad management and frustrating workload and passive aggressive BS. I can’t move out until I have the money covered for first and last, start up costs, maintenance just in case money. Oh and a roommate. I need a roommate. So now I’m overwhelmed by this need to go somewhere exotic like Bali, the Bahamas, Mazatlan, Los Cabos.
This might be a need to shed my feathers for the summer, now that we’ve ridden through our first heat wave and an oppressive fog has rolled in to mock us, but whatever it is, I’m going stir crazy tonight. [Wait. Feathers? Shed my feathers? Look at that, I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. Shed my winter coat! That’s the analogy I meant.] I’m itching to grab someone and just take off for a weekend. Reminding myself that I don’t actually have cash to spare isn’t helping tonight, especially not when I know that I’ve got the e-fund covered and throwing a couple-few hundred dollars at this getaway wouldn’t break me. It wouldn’t be good for the budget, but it wouldn’t break me. *sigh* I should let this run its course, and hope that I don’t accidentally find a really good deal tonight 🙂 Like a three day cruise to Mexico for a couple hundred dollars. Hmmmm……
Ack! Quick! Snap out of it!!
Walking out of my office yesterday afternoon, I realized that I’d been a bit of a poster child for vibrant colors lately, and had crossed the line over to far too much brightness for one person.
Behold, my 4-year old $3 bargain bag from Target:
And my cobalt (aka: Cookie Monster) sweater that I’d meant to get in forest green:
Separately, they’re not too bad, though I should really get a grown-up bag that fits the same amount of stuff that the pink bag can hold, but together? Whoo! What was I thinkin?? I definitely feel like a kid carrying around that pink bag. 🙂
April 14, 2008
With all the recent car troubles, I’ve been slacking off 100% on the sell-the-truck front. (And in the face of our troubled economy, I’ve got a sinking feeling that, perhaps, I’ve waited too long to sell.)
Anyway, since I’ve been pretty overwhelmed with life, I’ve broken it down in wee tiny little steps that even I can handle:
1. Check for Kelley Blue Book price ranges. This involves getting all the information on the truck including current mileage, features, conditions. I also want to set a baseline price in comparison to the KBB price that takes into account the amount still owed, and the amount I’ve been putting in out of my pocket since last July. Check! Done on 4/5.
2. Go to CarMax to see what they’ll offer. This is just in case they actually offer me a decent price and I can skip the trouble of private sales. Check! Done on 4/12.
Since CarMax only offered me $2000 less than my bottom line selling price, I thanked them and walked out of there. It also took two hours to get the appraisal, which was twice as long as I’d been told to expect, so I wasn’t thrilled about that either.
3. Take pictures of the car.
4. Write a description of the car, and post on Craigslist.
I’ve started #4, but was far too lazy to do the photos today. Tsk. Ah well. Baby steps.
April 13, 2008
Since Ma and PaDucky are champing at the bit to replace our microwave, I’ve been doing a lot of research online about microwaves using MoneyDummy‘s discovery: Consumer Research.
It doesn’t seem like there’s much consistency in microwave quality between brands, and there definitely doesn’t appear to be correlation between cost and quality. Since that’s the case, I’m just looking for a product that satisfies our needs in terms of size, power and features, and a better than average sense of satisfaction from previous buyers. There’s not much else I can do about it. Oh, and availability from a merchant for whom I can redeem Thank You points. Spending as little out of pocket as possible is crit-i-cal.
I’ve finally settled on redeeming $100 for 10,000 TY points for Bed, Bath and Beyond. They would have to order the Sharp R-305KS and have it delivered to my home in about 5 business days, but the advantage of ordering in store, instead of online, is that they’ll allow me to use their 20% off coupon on the purchase in-store. I’d already tried to have them do a store to store transfer, but the employee who tried calling other stores didn’t have any luck, apparently they don’t carry it in this region. Unfortunately, that’s the drawback to BBB, in my opinion, they don’t have in-store pickup for many of the products I looked at, unlike LNT.
Comparison shopping revealed that Amazon.com has the same product, with free shipping, for $99. BBB has it listed for $120. With the coupon, plus $11.95 shipping (nope, couldn’t weasel out of that charge either), the oven will cost $108, plus tax. Using the $100 GC, I should only be out of pocket about $20. I was shooting for 100% “free” via GC, but I won’t redeem more simply because I can’t redeem for a 1:1 ratio on less than a $100 GC. I believe the next step down is $50 for 6000 points, and that’s just a waste of 1000 points. Also, I practically never shop at BBB so there’s no reason to tie up more money there. I’d just gratuitously waste the excess GC later on stuff I probably don’t need. Unless …. I might need stuff for the new apartment next year …..
