61 posts tagged “2008”
Ah, looking forward to a new year is always so fun! I have BIG PLANS, my friends. huge.
As per usual, much of my plans involve travel. The big! exciting! one is that I'm going to the UK for three weeks in April/May. Friends are getting married in Belfast and are being incredibly gracious in allowing this C-list-friend (at BEST) to crash the party. Since I'll be out that way, I'm going to spend a week circling Ireland, 2-3 days being wedding-focused, a week exploring Scotland, and approximately 4 days in Wales or something. I spent 2 weeks in London in 1999 so don't feel the need to dip that far south this time.
I'll also be going back to Ashland for the Shakespeare Festival. I may be going in Julyish this time - partly so we can experience a different season, and partly because I may be crewing for crazy bike friends on a weekend event outside of Portland. I figure I can head north to Ashland, head further north and do the bike race support thing, and then come home. They're not sure they're doing the ride, though, so it may be only Ashland, which is fine, as I'll have thoroughly pillaged my vacation time already.
Other travel: Florida to help my sister move/see her new place at the end of January. Portland and Rhode Island in December. I've heard rumblings of some friends maybe hiking Half Dome, possibly this fall, and I would love to do that (though... it looks scary hard). Every year I intend to camp and hike more than I actually do, so maybe a trip to Big Sur or Shasta is in order. Then of course there's wine country day trips, some biking, and hopefully I'll have visitors this year (though none booked yet!), and there you go: 2009.
What else does the year hold? Most importantly, I'm going to pay off my final scrap of debt: my student loans. Right now I'm saving aggressively so I can pay for all of my big trip as it occurs (I already paid for my ticket), but after that, Sallie Mae is getting the giant smackdown. And I will be 100% out of debt for the first time since I got out of college! (of course then I start saving for a mortgage.. but that'll take ages before I nerve myself up to purchasing real estate)
Well, I learned to knit. 12 scarves, 9 hats, 5 pairs of fingerless mitts, 4 pairs of socks, and 1 baby dress later, you might say I jumped enthusiastically into the deep end. I like knitting because it lets me sit in front of tv-on-dvd for a LONG time without feeling horrifically unproductive. I like making pretty things and giving them away. I like learning a new technique and having something to show for it.
I also traveled: to Key West, NYC, Boston, my college (for a reunion!), Rhode Island, Lake Tahoe (day trip), Yosemite (twice!), Ashland, Oregon for the Shakespeare festival, Portland, Oregon (twice! for miscellaneous hanging out), and did Cycle Oregon for the third time.
I was physically active: I hiked, snowshoed, and biked over a thousand miles.
I had visitors: my parents, siblings, and friends from Boston, NYC, Seattle, and Portland all stayed with me over the course of the year, and I had the pleasure of meeting several people for lunch or dinner as they passed through town.
I also cooked! My lunch group is going strong, and I think my favorite meals I provided this year were two recipes of my invention: a) Winter Mix: quinoa/wheat berry/barley, combined
with mushroom, roasted sweet potato, and two types of roasted beet; b) Masala lentils & black beans, served on a bed of mixed grains: brown rice and wheat berries, cooked in light coconut milk & water.
So, it's a really satisfying year to look back on. I think this is one of my favorite pics from Christmas at home:
yep, it's been ages since I posted. Addressing that may be a new year's resolution.. we'll see. I've been busy at work and at home, so the blog, she suffers.
But at this time of year there are lots of things worthy of updating: what tracking my spending reveals about my year, notes about my travels, plans for the coming year, all manner of good things. Today I'm working on a few posts and will dribble them out over the next couple of days. We can call that my Christmas gift to you, okay?
First off: charitable giving, 2008!
Last year I did the majority of my giving in the last few months of the year. I donated to my local public radio station, and to two food banks (one in Oregon, for old times' sake, one local). At the time, I resolved to donate more often, and to have my 2008 giving surpass that of 2007.
Well, I certainly didn't donate as I went along - I gave a pitiful $82 from January through November. That left me with some last-minute decisions to make! Here's who I donated to, and why.
Alameda County Community Food Bank - because I have never gone to bed hungry. I have never wondered where my next meal was coming from. Because I'm so grateful for the lovingly-prepared food my lunch group gives me every week!
Hope Line - because I read Post Secret every week, and because that page's founder won't accept donations.His preferred cause is Hope Line. I donated because Frank asked me to.
Chicago Public Radio/This American Life - I subscribe to the free This American Life podcasts, and love listening to them when I travel. They've asked for some support this year, as providing the podcast costs their parent organization money.
Doctors Without Borders - because I am a happy reader of the Yarn Harlot, and this is her favorite organization. Read about her Tricoteuses Sans Frontières/Knitters Without Borders idea here and, even better, here.
To forestall this rather uncomfortable feeling I'm having - I really didn't have that spare cash in my budget this month! - I'm planning ahead for next year. I'm going to set aside just under 1% of each month's income, and will either donate as I go along in the year OR will have a specific pool of money to use at this time next year! My giving ranged from $20 to $100 and I am confident that every little bit helps.
So, what's important to you? Can you share a little bit of love and money?
Okay, I bit the bullet and looked at my retirement accounts. All in all not so great. As you might expect, absolutely everything is down.. some of it quite a lot. Here's how my funds are doing:
If you zoom in there, you can see some of my funds are down as much as 44.62%! Holy smokes!
A year ago I took a look at my accounts and figured out two things:
1. my portfolio was hugely weighted toward large-cap companies, and
2. I didn't have any bonds.
3. Oh, I also figured out what types of funds my retirement accounts were in: 60% large blend, 10% small growth, 16% international large value
I decided that my first order of business was to get to 20% of my account in bonds. (I don't think I still agree with that, but I'm just reporting the facts.) I made some calculations (you can read them on the original post) and concluded that to get to 20% bonds in 3 years I'd have to put 85% of my ongoing contributions to bonds. (!)
I didn't do that - I have been putting half my contributions into a bond fund. Thanks (ha!) to the crappy market, I'm already at just under 10% of my portfolio being in bonds. I think I want to keep bonds as 10% of my portfolio, so it's time to look further at what I have, and where I want to go. Here's the current breakdown of my combined funds (thanks to Morningstar's Instant X-Ray Overview, found on this page):
So, bonds went from 0 to almost 10%. The 'other' and cash allocations are pretty much the same. My US stocks holdings were about 80% of my portfolio, and are down 8.36% to representing 73%. Finally, foreign stocks were 17% of my portfolio, and are down 20% to represent 14% of my holdings.
Is that good? No, not really, but I don't think it's terrible either. It's pretty clear, when glancing at the pie chart, that the vast majority of my holdings are in US stocks, and I think we know how that's been going! Instead of selling anything I have (heaven forbid, at this low state of the market), I'm going to alter the way my contributions are used. I'm going to keep using half to purchase stocks - I really do think things will pick up eventually, therefore I'm buying at market lows right now - and now I have to decide what to buy with the other half of my regular contributions.
1. get international back up to 20% of my holdings; keep bonds at 10%
2. consider buying into a REIT (real estate investment.. I'll have to think about this given the Current State of Things)
3. work on getting a better sense of how my US stocks cover the market. I think I'm still way out of whack there: fully 50% of my whole portfolio is large cap; 15% is medium and 6% small cap. Figure out how to alter my purchasing to fix that.
I've just adjusted my contributions: they were 50% bond, 50% large cap stock fund. Now they're going 20% each to large-, medium-, and small-cap stocks, 30% to an international fund, and 10% going to bonds.
Since my contributions are going to be so hacked up, it'll take a while for any rebalancing affect to show up, but I think I'll sit on it and see how it goes.
I've learned that I'm an excellent decider, but not a very good ranker. Give me options, and I'll happily, quickly, and easily select one. There won't be any second-guessing, and minimal gnashing of teeth. However, give me a group of things and have me rank them in my order of preference? That's harder. I like something, or I don't like it; apparently fine-tuning that is not my best skill.
Examples:
Friday night I went to a wine/food thing, with six bottles of pinot noir covered with brown paper. I could identify one that wasn't nice at all (turns out I've now had a truly corked bottle of wine), but the other five were all.. good. Yummy. Drinkable. Ranking them was a near-arbitrary experience.
Saturday I went on a great hike with a friend, then we swung by the legendary Berkeley Bowl to browse & shop. We were intrigued by the massive range of apples on offer, so selected seven different varieties to take home and sample. We also got a nice manchego and some natural peanut butter, and in a burst of brilliance, opened some bottles of beer, too.
So, seven apples. Turns out you can use the same adjectives pretty consistently when describing apples: crisp, sweet, tart, and juicy are words that frequently came into play. Granted, they had ranges of these adjectives, but still.
My least-favorite were the Sonya and the Winesap. Then came Jonagold, and the final four were all lovely and hard to rank. They were: Ambrosia Clipper, Arkansas Black, Jazz, and Pacific Rose.
It was a pretty perfect afternoon.
Last night I had a total hissy fit when trying out a new knitting cast-on. In my defense, it's quite tricky (it's the Lighter Cast On at the bottom of this page). That can't really justify my near-tantrum when I couldn't get it! I realized that I'd accidentally gone off the sauce (caffeine, that is) that day - I had some tea in the morning, but that was about it.
So, for the good of all mankind, and particularly for any gift recipients in the next few months, I'm back on. It's really the least I can do!
I continue to have a mix of hope and dread as election season comes to a close. Two weeks from tomorrow I hope and pray it will be firmly resolved. I've been invited to an elections returns party but I don't think I can do it. I vividly remember going to a friend's place to watch the returns in 2000... when I left work, Florida was declared going Democratic, and by the time I got to her place, they'd taken it back. I don't think I can sit through something like that again!
People, for the love of country, VOTE.
Well, my trip is over. I'm sad, because it was great, but I'm happy, because I loved every minute of it. I even had a tiny bit of love in my heart for the twelve-hour day spent biking on Day 5... hard and long as it was, it was beautiful. Here's my mini photo journal:
Our hats were SO great, but unfortunately Ken & Lisa stayed behind due to Hideously Infected Cat Bite:
And the biking buddies I was traveling with were great fun.
And by the .. 12th or so day of vacation, I had no idea what day or time or date it was. It was perfect.
So it's been, I dunno, let's say a while since I posted here. Sorry, Faithful Reader!
I'm off on vacation starting TOMORROW! I'm unreasonably giddy, but I think the last time I had 2 weeks (and three weekends!) off was the summer of 2001 when I was unemployed. (Then I had a total of 20 weeks off, which was awesome.. but a little stressful too.) .. Edited to add: I realized I had a chunk of time off before this job, a month maybe. Of course that was full of conference travel and packing and driving here and unpacking... so it wasn't very vacationny.
I'm excited! Road trip and hanging out in a cool small town with smart great people, seeing plays, having a picnic, and relaxing. Another little road trip and almost a week in one of my favorite cities, visiting people I don't get to see NEARLY enough, and having a tiny bit of down time too. Then yet another little road trip and a WEEK of camping and biking with great fun lovely people. Then another trip back to the city, and the next day an 18-hour train ride back to work. Yeah, the train ride is a wee bit long, but should be a nice chance to decompress and stare out the window and nap. And since it drops me off across the street from work within 15 minutes of my start time (..except I'm expecting it to be late as usual), it's so efficient it makes my little heart sing.
See yaz. Pics on my return.
Sorry Loyal Reader, I kind of had the feeling it'd been a while since I posted, and lo, it's been two weeks!
I'm still knitting bike hats - I cast the fourth one on last night. I realized that the first one is pretty skimpy. If I have time, yarn, and motivation after finishing all six, I'll revisit # 1 and rip off the top and add some more sky to it. Otherwise... I'll just give it to whichever biking buddy has the most cro-magnon-like short head (i.e. not me... I have enormous brains & therefore an enormous forehead and skull).
I've been biking in preparation for said trip, but I spend a lot of time thinking about it, then procrastinating, then finishing earlier than I ought, then castigating myself. At least I get a vocabulary workout, but it gets pretty annoying being in my head. I'll be glad when vacation gets here (three more weeks!) if only so I can stop fretting about training, and lack thereof, and get on with the vacating.
I'm getting caught up on Culture (of a sort): watching BSG season 4 (what episodes are currently available), and have also picked up the 2nd season of Doctor Who at the library. It's taking me a while to warm up to # 10, but I have hopes that I will.. soon. Please? I really liked # 9 and didn't expect him to be swapped out so soon.. and was very sad when it happened.
My birthday is approaching! There will be a very fun co-gathering on the 16th (yet another day of minimal biking) to celebrate my day (the 25th) and neighbor-T's (the 12th). I am going to be .. older, and still in debt. *sigh* I know I'm making strides and all, but when does the day come when money feels positively abundant?? Don't tell me never.. please don't say never.
Well, I feel whiny about my busy-ness, and broke, but I suppose all in all things are great. I've got 750 miles under my belt so far this year, and plans to get more in. I'm going to have TWO! weeks! off! and it'll be here sooner than I know it. Before then I've got lots of fun things to distract me. So, I'll try not to let it get me down. I realized that the last time I had a day off was 2 months ago, when I did my NYC/Boston/college/RI/NYC tour - so it hasn't been so long that I can justify being this whiny! Therefore: back to it.
Well, as I said the other day, I sent a great thwack of money to Sallie Mae. It's so exciting to see the relatively low balance! And how sweet of them: my next due date is in October 2012. Thanks, Sallie! you're a pal.
What I'll do next is figure out how much I want to commit to paying per month. I want to get it paid off by next August, but I may commit to paying a bit less than that would require, because it's a good idea to leave wiggle room in my budget in case something (anything) crops up. Whee!!! I can test that zero balance.
