38 posts tagged “money”
My credit card has started providing a little chart that sums up that month's expenses. I laughed to see that airlines make up the vast majority of my spending:
That's a VERY cool chart and I look forward to future reports!
Man, this news of the recession is getting old. I don't have as much empathy as I ought for people in bad real estate situations - one of the reasons I was willing to leave Portland was that I was bitter that I was priced out of the housing market, so I'm not feeling it for people who were part of the great bubble that cut me out. (I guess maybe I should be grateful to them.)
But the recession is a bummer, nonetheless. My job is intact and my life hasn't changed, but I've noticed that all is not well around me. My favorite little pen/stationery store went out of business. A cute little French restaurant down the street went away. And my very favorite second-run movie theater (that sold beer!) closes tomorrow.
The loss of the Parkway Theater hits me the most. I admit I didn't go often, but I was proud that it was an option, and often made a note that I'd like to see a certain movie there. It was certainly my preferred option when I DID go to see movies in the theater. Should I now feel guilt that I'm not a good enough consumer to keep these places in business? My focus has been on getting out of debt - my car is paid off and my credit card balance has been paid off almost every single month since August 2007 (with a couple of little lapses in the interim.. just keeping me on my toes!).
Even better, I've been saving consistently so I can pay for my big trip to the UK without incurring any debt. Of course now I've got an unanticipated trip to New Orleans throwing a small wrench into the paid-for vacations scheme, but I'll pay it off quickly after I return.
I do keep eyeing the real estate market here, which is dumb. Although I have no plans to leave, I also don't know that I'll be here for the 5-10 years it really takes to make a mortgage make sense. And since I'm stubbornly insisting on keeping my housing expenses at 31% of my gross, and that includes insurance, taxes, and maintenance, I can really only afford about a 200k mortgage. And guess what, my friends? In this part of the world that doesn't go very far at all.
Plus, ironically, I love my apartment! The neighborhood is great, I have the top floor so no one walks on my head, and the view out my windows is of a green hillside.
Still, I keep watching to see things go down in price. I dunno, it may happen, but realistically I am going to go on my trip and keep saving money. I'm sorry for the pen shops, French restaurants, and Parkway Theaters of the world. I'll spend a bit, but I don't think I can save them all.
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?
I get paid twice a month, and I've developed a ritual. Every time I get paid, I note the various balances in my accounts - both what I owe, and what I have. Today I looked at my cashflow for the month of October (not bad, I spent less than I earned, which is always my primary goal), and wondered how I was doing, big-picture, compared to last year.
So I looked! And it was easy math: I looked at the cash in my various accounts, and the balance on any debt, and calculated the difference. (this is called net worth - though it doesn't take into account anything I could raise by selling my stuff, nor does it count my retirement funds)
The bad news: I still owe more than I have on hand. My net worth is a negative number! -$1,539.86
The good news really is good: this time last year my net worth was a much larger negative: -$6,494.12
I'm torn. On the one hand, yay, moving in the right direction. On the other - I've been working for 15 years and feel like the above is a pretty sad state of affairs - I really should have more money in the bank than that. Or, conversely, I should have a mortgage and therefore OWE a hell of a lot more than that.
However: I vow to be in the black by next Halloween, even WITH the vacation I plan to take in the spring. Here's hoping everyone I know is doing better financially than I am.
[The above numbers do NOT take into account my retirement savings. I consider that the sacred sacred holy holy money - 100% inaccessible to me for another 25-30 years.]
[Also, at first I wrote this draft with the real numbers, what's in the bank vs what I owe, but in the end, that felt like too much information to share with the internets.]
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.
Last August, I paid off my credit card. Earlier this year, I paid off my car. So, yay!! and all, but I have one more big hurdle, which has a higher balance than those two debts combined (though a low rate): my student loans. In January, when I realized that nearly 30% of my loan payments were going to interest, I came up with a plan to double up on my payments.
Then I realized that just paying ahead wasn't getting me out from under the interest load, as they were probably applying the overage toward future payments in general, not to the principal of the loan. (That whole concept is vague to me, so I even got a second opinion.)
That pissed me off, so I changed my school loan repayments to the minimum required, figuring I'd deal later.. or something.
Well, no more, my friends. I again looked at my monthly payment and how much of it goes toward interest (26% of last month's payment!). I have just pillaged my travel and emergency funds and will be paying almost half of the loan off next week. (I was going to go for a straight 50% but that last few hundred felt too tight.)
That means that my Christmas plane tickets (when purchased) will not be paid in cash immediately, but will probably be paid off before they start accruing interest. It also means I won't be able to do some fun warm trip next winter, as I'd thought I might. But it ALSO means that if I really kick ass, I can pay off the loans this year - and more likely that I'll have them paid off by next spring, or a year from now at the latest.
I wanted to get money in the bank for a down payment, but let's face it: it ain't happening in this market on a single salary. And the stuff I could MAYBE afford is crap. So, let's do the thing that makes the most sense big-picture, and get rid of my very last debt.
I'll keep ya posted.
I've been tracking my spending in pretty good detail for quite a while now - since last Sept or so. I started doing some math while on transit yesterday. I started on groceries, and looked at the last six months.
I got the answer to these questions:
- How much do I spend on groceries?
- What percentage is at an independent shop or farmer's market, vs how much is at a chain?
- Of the chain spending, how much is at Trader Joe's (which I consider not as bad as the big chains.. I haven't analyzed that further)?
- Of the independent shop spending, how much is at my neighborhood grocery store vs. the neighborhood green grocer vs the farmers' markets?
- How much do I spend on car payments?
- How much on insurance? (I'm lumping renter's insurance in here b/c it's the same bill and I'm lazy)
- How much on gas for my car?
- How much on gas for others' cars?
- How much on local transit?
- How much on travel transit (subway/cab/bus, not airport shuttle or other full-on travel expenses)?
Whee!! There's a new baby in my life. Welcome baby Kaelyn, and thanks for cooking fully, rather than coming early like certain older siblings. I can't wait to see her in the dress I made for her, and gave to her parents last month:
Aside from new-baby, not much to report. I'm feeling tired, and am now blaming it on the dirty air we have (fires in the region) rather than on, I don't know, going to bed too late. For the last few weeks.
I started watching Battlestar Galactica with Kristin - we're on season 3 now, but it's been ages and ages since we finished 2.5, so I'm finding that I don't remember too much about it. I should've re-borrowed all the seasons from my sister.
Money spending is going well: I'm about to close in on the second month in a row of spending sharply less than I had been. Which is great, but it also means I'm putting off buying my two December plane tickets (Portland & RI) until July, which means I'm pre-hosing that month. Ah well.
I made my best lunch ever for lunch group yesterday, both recipes courtesy Mark Bittman: SPICY chilled mango soup
and radish salad (which I used as a topping on salad greens, along with some garlic-rosemary white beans). We've been doing lunch group for over a year, and I've kept a list of everything I've brought in. Cool stuff on there!
Finally, I'm over 500 miles for the year so far. Which is only half-way to my biking goal of 1000 miles by August 24. eek.
I really like the blog Get Rich Slowly, and today's post is particularly interesting: He's part of a group writing project wherein various financial writers look at how they were doing financially ten years ago.
Naturally, it got me thinking. Ten years ago it was spring 1998. I'd moved to Oregon less than two years previously, was 5 years out of college, and was finally working the first job that felt like it could be a career.
Job:
In October 1997 I'd gotten hired at a small software company, and already my job was changing and growing a lot. I got hired making 27,000!!!!! Considering I had no direct experience, and it was a small company, and the start of the tech boom, I think that was probably reasonable - and it was the best money I'd made by far. I'd broken through the 20k barrier! I was working a tech job! I was traveling all over the country for work! It really felt good.
Career prospects:
Better than having broken through shattered the 20k barrier was the fact that my job was really engaging and challenging and fun. I had great coworkers and we enjoyed each others' company (two of them are among my very closest friends - I'm still in touch with them nearly daily). Also, the money improved quickly - I jumped to the high 30s, then the low 40s, and by the time I was laid off in June 2000, I was making 60k (for a short period of time before the lay-off... and ironically, one of the main reasons I was cut was my pay level). After working there I got another software job, then changed my life completely, went to grad school, and took a massive (50%-ish) pay cut. But, the job was a great experience and really set me on the path I'm still on today.
Retirement savings:
Financially, things were pretty good too: I started saving for retirement (and since I was 26 at the time, it felt good to finally get started). I've managed to pretty continuously save for retirement ever since - I lost some time because of layoffs and not being eligible at new jobs, and I took some time off of saving for retirement when I thought I was going to buy a home (and instead wound up moving to California). I'd say of the last ten years, I've been saving for retirement for almost eight of them.. and I've never tapped the sacred sacred holy holy retirement account. Better, my retirement saving rate has been good from the start, never dipping below 10% of my salary and more often hovering around 15%.
Living situation:
Ten years ago, I was sharing a house with three other friends and paying $275/month for rent, and I'm sure my share of the utilities was equally paltry. (I'm remembering we had a complicated phone system: two phone numbers, and if one was busy, the call would roll over to the 2nd line, then to voicemail. It was excellent, especially if we had friends calling on both lines at the same time.) We didn't have cable tv (in fact the tv was in the basement and almost never used), and internet from home was nearly non-existent (one of us may have had dial-up.) I hadn't acquired any expensive habits like eating out a lot, although I was just starting to get into biking.
Debt situation:
My debt situation was pretty good, too. I paid to have my dad's old car shipped cross country, and then when it didn't pass the emissions test, I gave it away and paid cash for a thirteen-year-old Honda. I loved that car and kept it for seven years, until it died an untimely (to my mind) death. I again bought a used car, though this one was only a year old, cost 6k, and I financed it for three years.
I graduated college owing my parents $9,600 at zero interest, so I did have that debt, but I paid it regularly and paid it off in the late 90s. I had some credit card debt - never extreme, but as I recall, it seems like it was often hovering around 3k - never enough to be really worrisome, but too much to easily pay off. I finally got smart and in 2000 cashed out my stock investments (since I was guessing anyway) and paid off my debt.. right before the market tanked and I got laid off!
How things have changed, and stayed the same:
Today I'm back to making decent money. My living expenses are a lot higher, though (my highest rent ever before here was $650, and my average rent over the vast majority of my years in Boston and Oregon was $375... my current rent is nearly three times that amount). On the one hand, I hate having such a large chunk of my income earmarked in a way that I can't control or change much, but on the other hand.. that's pretty much the way it goes. I could trim two or three hundred dollars by sharing, but after 13 years with roommates, I really enjoy my own space.
I do have school loans from grad school, and loathe them. But, the biggest thing that hasn't changed, that I really don't like at all, is that no matter how much I make, I don't seem to accumulate cash in non-retirement savings. That is my biggest financial weakness - it was then, and is now. No matter if I was making 20k or 45k or 60k... I never had lots of spare money sitting around. I guess my nature is to expand my spending to the size of the container, much like a goldfish, and now that I've got my car paid off, my biggest priority is to get more money in the bank in normal savings.
Still.. an interesting trip down memory lane!
I use PayPal, and it's a handy way to transfer money from my checking account to various online vendors. However I've also used it a few times to receive money from friends for group purchases, and I think it sucks that they charge a fee.
Enter Revolution Money Exchange, who say they will NOT charge fees. Better than that, they'll give you $25 to register (as SOON as you register, no hoops required (for a limited time only)). Further, if you use this link, you'll get me an added bonus as well. Let's try it!
