8 posts tagged “sept2007”

One of my favorite personal finance bloggers, Trent at The Simple Dollar, is going to be doing a month-long online discussion of one of my favorite books, Your Money or Your Life (I've already posted about it briefly).

Ironically, I bought a new copy in order to participate in the discussion. Amazon was going to take three weeks to ship (give me a break!), my library doesn't own it (I'm still reeling from that one), and I lent my copy to N a long time ago (I'd forgotten; he mentioned it last time I saw him. N, keep it, maybe even read along with Trent!).

You can read about the plan for the discussion here - basically he's going to read 10-15 pages a day, post his thoughts, and encourage others to post as well.

It's been a while since I posted about money. Good thing I'm tagging the posts appropriately - frankly, reading some of them, especially this one, is kind of surreal - I don't really remember the money crunching session and results very clearly at all! So it's a good thing I wrote it up so tidily and left it where I could find it. Actually I think that's pretty typical librarian behavior - I don't keep much in my head, but I know how to find the information when I need it. Or, I'm becoming senile already!

Debt
My credit card is still showing a zero balance (hurray!) but I HAVE been using it - I donated to my local public radio station, and I bought a plane ticket for a December Portland visit (2nd saturday, cookie party, stay tuned for more!), but I've already paid the balance off. I'm still doing double payments on my car loan so it'll be paid in full in May. I've pretty much resolved to pay the basic payment on my school loans forever - the rate is low and the monthly payment isn't a hardship, so though it's tempting to try to get aggressive and pay it off, it makes more sense to get money in the bank for non-retirement needs and goals (house down payment (ha!), travel, better-funded emergency fund, etc.).

Spending
I'm working on tracking all my spending, and have a spreadsheet from uncagedbird that I'll use to get a visual representation of my spending. Things already of note:

...food spending
I think I'm going to do a special version of the spreadsheet to cover grocery spending only, just out of curiosity. I pretty much shop at four places: Trader Joe's, the farmer's market, a full-fledged but small and somewhat upscale independent grocery store that is two blocks from me, and a small and somewhat-scrappy market that is on the same block.

I like Trader Joe's for reasons that probably don't need elaboration (fairly inexpensive, interesting options, close to work), but I don't like it because it's a chain, it's always CRAZY-busy, and all the food is quite packaged.

I like the full-fledged grocery store because I can walk there, it's been in that spot for over a hundred years, it's a locally-owned non-chain, and their food is all high quality. On the down side, it's always really (really really really) busy, and the prices on the food can add up. But... see high-quality. And SO convenient. And not ridiculously huge.

I like the somewhat-scrappy market because it's NEVER busy (at most I have to wait in a two-person line... an extreme rarity in the bay area), and because the owner and his wife work there, and because it almost always has what I need (except meat, but I don't buy that often). Plus, they're newish at the business and I feel like they really need and appreciate the support of my meager dollars.    
 

Gas/transportation
I bought gas the other day, at $3.059, and I have no idea if that's good or bad because the last time I bought gas for my car was in early August! (I love my short commute and the fact that I can bike it, or walk a mile and take a free shuttle.) I'm also going to track my public transportation and other transit spending - although it's been six weeks since I bought my own car gas, I kicked in gas money for the road trip to Ashland and to the Ren Faire, so that should get noted as well.
 

Retirement savings
I decided to just aim for 10% in bonds for now, and changed my retirement contributions to go half into a bond fund, and half into an index fund. Since we use Fidelity, the funds I am in are fbndx and fusex, respectively. I had my choice of two bond funds, but frankly I couldn't really figure out the differences...the allocation, fees, and returns were near-identical. Eventually I just picked the one I'm in. So far the bond fund is about 1% of my total retirement plan, so there's a while to go before I need to revisit it.

I haven't done any other allocation or consolidation work. In this post I laid out some pretty bubble charts that showed how my accounts are set up. I thought I might consolidate my various retirement accounts that aren't linked to my current job. Haven't touched that one yet. In one case, I'd have to deal with the state of Oregon's retirement people and I am afraid. The rest of my most-recent-job's money is in a 457(b) account, and I recently read something that indicated funds in a 457(b) could be withdrawn without penalty. I have no intention or anticipation of ever needing to do that, but it was news to me and bears investigation before I close out that account. And, turns out the other account I have with a former employer has me in a fund that at least one online personal finance writer loves, and it's an international fund, so I'm leaving it alone for now. So I guess I did make some decisions! (except the part about fearing the state of Oregon people...)

Non-retirement savings
No progress on this front. I have a sense of what I think is a reasonable monthly goal, but I don't think I'm going to make it this month. I blame the credit card charges listed above (radio donation and plane ticket), but in truth I know that "something" could come up every month. What I really need to do is figure out if that amount I have in mind is reasonable, and if so, get it out of my account as soon as it hits, not set it into my local savings account to send away IF it makes it to the next payday.

I have the good-but-bad habit of allocating all my money elsewhere. The structure until recently was: retirement savings, bills account, great thwack of money to credit card, little bit to easily-accessible savings account, spend the leftovers. It's great in theory but the problem was I was leaving myself a couple hundred bucks per pay period to cover all food, gas, entertainment, and clothing expenses. Guess how well that worked? Well, it obviously worked for a while, since I did pay off the credit card, but now I want to strike a better balance between saving well, and having a reasonable spending expectation.

I have goals I want to meet, but I don't want my life in the interim to be one of beans and rice and no going out with people who I really enjoy seeing.

Dang that was long. Oh how I long for a way to just post SOME of my natterings, then hide the rest under a cut. Anyway, makes you glad I don't update about money more often, I'm sure!

Last night Stretts and I went to see this version of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode - it was done Rocky Horror-style, with actors lip syncing the songs in front of the screen, and audience participation in the form of singing, yelling at the screen, etc. It was a midnight showing, sold out (of course!), and when we got there at 11:30 the line stretched around the block. Fortunately it wasn't a huge theater and we were a) able to sit together and b) see the screen!

Anyway, after the show we went back to close down an apartment warming/birthday party. And I got a parking ticket!

Herewith, I bring you The Parking Ticket Song, from the musical episode:

                   PARKING TICKET SONG.

                   I've been having a bad bad day
                    Come on, won't you put that pad away?
                    I'm asking you please, no!
                    It isn't right, it isn't fair!
                    There was no parking anywhere!
                    I think that hydrant wasn't there!
                    Why can't you let it go?
                    I think I've paid more than my share.
                    I'm just a poor girl, don't you care?
                    Hey I'm not wearing underwear!

... and why is he going to get a month named after him at some point in the future?

I had the weirdest dream last night - I was somehow stranded on some abandoned island or similarly out-of-the-way place, with one of my friends (who's a handy guy, fortunately!). It seemed like we'd been castaway for a long time - at any rate, we were being rescued, and I was going through the possessions I'd accumulated to see what I wanted to take with me. Not a lot, as I recall.

Once we were rescued (which wasn't as exciting as you'd think) I saw that we'd been gone from June 2007 to Pete 2027.

So whoever Pete is, he's gotta be pretty important to have his very own month!

So far I don't have much to show for the LOVELY day we got. Okay, I pledged to my local NPR station, and I renewed a magazine subscription. I started to clean out my closet but only pulled out one thing; I guess I did a better job than I realized when I worked on that a couple weeks ago.

I did some libraryland committee work and drank coffee, but now I've gotta get out there. It is lovely! But I have no particular plan or vision for my weekend. I pulled some movie times together; I could go to the library; I meant to go to IKEA (but now that I spent money on NPR and a magazine, I'm feeling less flush). I do need to get the zipper on my tent's rain fly fixed before I go camping next month. I might go see live music at the local Irish pub tomorrow night (Stretts, any interest?). I could clean my apartment...

I'm feeling pretty aimless.

Last night I went (solo!) to see a band I know from my Portland days, Pink Martini. I calculated that I'd seen them at least four times - probably a couple of times at the zoo concerts, once at a Starbucks in the Pearl district when I worked nearby... I assume that was part of a cd release, or something. All I really remember is that I was running late, but I realized that the big ol' car in front of me was being driven by Thomas Lauderdale, the group's leader, so I wasn't going to miss anything. Incidentally, seeing a band that has up to 13 members and a ton of instruments all crammed into a Starbucks? ...challenging, to say the least.

Anyway, that would have been spring 2001, and I know I saw them one more time at a different summer concert series in the summer of 2002 - but that's probably the last time I saw them. They have a big following in Portland, and their shows sell out, and they aren't cheap in the first place (and I tend to be!).

I realized they were coming to my area, and were going to be performing a couple of miles from my place at a very classic-seeming venue, the three-thousand seat 1931 Art Deco Paramount Theatre. (Let me note that I use the "-re" spelling of theatre reluctantly. I hate that spelling convention.) At first I was reluctant to go alone, but no one I talked to at first had ever heard of Pink Martini, and I didn't feel like trying to sell anyone on the idea of springing 60 bucks to see an unknown-to-them band. At the (repeated) encouragement of a coworker, I bought one ticket for the show.

And I am SO glad I went. I've been telling people the show was SO AMAZING OMG. Their sound was rich and full, the energy was excellent, and the music gorgeous. I've been working on a description for them and have settled on Retro World Music. They do their own stuff, but also excavate songs from, say, a 1930s Italian movie about a nun who used to be a lounge singer. They offer songs in English, Arabic, Japanese, French, Italian, and Spanish - and I may well be missing something.

Anyway, at the risk of getting all Fan Girl, I will say: I will definitely make every attempt to attend future shows, and I hereby offer a 100% guarantee that anyone who catches a Pink Martini show will leave the venue elated.

It's been the week of "I never" it seems...

I never thought I'd cook with zucchini.
I never thought I'd dress up to go to a Ren Faire (pics if I get any, and if I look good in them!)
I never thought I'd go see a concert solo.
I NEVER thought I'd be kicking ass in not one but TWO online Scrabble-like games.

woop!

As I've probably mentioned in the past, Peter Mulvey is one of my all-time favorite musicians. I've been seeing him almost annually since I first saw him perform in 1994. And now there's a video on You Tube of one of my favorite Peter Mulvey songs, Shirt: