Finances
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A New Direction For Me
I have been quiet here on the blog recently. I have had ideas for blog posts. I have even written things I meant to be blog posts, but for one reason or another, I have decided not to share/post those. Like with many people, I have spent a lot of time these last few months examining my life- where I am and where I want to go. For the most part, I am lucky. My job has been impacted by the pandemic, but not changed. I work from home right now, but I still do the same work. I am not concerned about losing my job. I did not get…
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Am I really a Personal Finance Blogger?
Sometimes I wonder if I should remain active in the FinCon community or personal finance Twitter, or refer to myself as being a personal finance blogger. At one time, I was. At one time, I was also a pet blogger, and a mommy blogger, and a micro-blogger. Maybe I am a lifestyle blogger now? Even that title does not feel quite right. I am a blogger, in that I have this blog, and I post on it. And since this makes up most of the non-work writing I am doing right now, blogger is probably a more accurate title than writer. So I am a blogger. The odd part is,…
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A New Car
Yesterday, we bought a car. As recently as Monday afternoon, we had no intention of getting another car. That means we went from no intention of getting a car to driving off the lot in about 48 hours. To make it worse, we bought a new car, not a new to us car, but a new car, with 59 miles on the odometer (roughly 20 of which we put on doing our test drive). We purchased a couple of the add-ons, and we financed it all – $0 down, even. If you follow the standard personal finance advice, you may be having a bit of a heart attack right now,…
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How has the Pandemic Changed our Spending?
I am fascinated by the ways in which spending in our household changes over time, and especially now with the pandemic. I am not a $0 based budgeter, but in normal times the cushion is a few hundred “extra” dollars in the checking account at the end of the month (unless there is a specific plan for those dollars). For the last few months, it has been a few thousand extra dollars. (Which I have been sending to savings/investments as I’ve gotten confident they really are extra dollars and I am not missing something.) I decided to take a moment to sit down and look at how our spending has…
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Why I Love our Timeshare
People love to hate on timeshares. I would say especially in the personal finance community, but I honestly do not think it happens more there than in the world at large. There are 10 minute long commercials on how to get rid of your timeshare on YouTube. But I am here to tell you that if you have a timeshare and you LOVE it, or even just like it, that is okay. Remember that all those companies that are helping people get rid of their timeshares are selling them to someone else. I love our timeshare. Is it a good investment? No. Was it a smart thing to buy? Certainly…
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Family Finances: 2008 vs 2020
Twelve and a half years – that is how long I have been writing about personal finance, or at least my personal finances. In January 2008, I started a friends-only LiveJournal specifically for sharing personal finance information and perhaps for generating conversations. I will be honest, I did not keep up on the LJ for very long, though I kept writing on my other LJ until October 2010. I started to write about personal finances on a blog I called Baking the Budget in April 2011. Around the start of 2012, I changed the name to The Dog Ate My Wallet. It was never a big blog, but it’s the…
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Pandemic Diary, Day 131
Today marks my 90th day (does not include weekends or holidays) working from home. Back in March, I commented that I expected to be working from home for roughly 3 months. We are now at almost 4 months, with no real end in sight. Maybe in September I will be back in the office a day or two a week? If campus opens even partially for classes, that is a possibility, but cases are on the rise again, so maybe campus will not open. I do not know. I do not think if anyone really knows, or will know, until September. At the start of this, I had a very…
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Rejected Book Reivew: The Last Queen of Scotland by Ray Barron-Woolford
I read The Last Queen of Scotland by Ray Barron-Woolford in order to do a review for the Online Book Club. The author, I think, was unhappy with how long he had to wait for a reviewer to choose to read it (it had been sitting for at least a month when I claimed it), that he was paying for the review (that is a choice, many authors submit their books for review where the only thing reviewers get is a free copy of the book), and that he did not get to read my entire review before determining whether or not to approve the payment. One thing the Online…
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A Review of My Side Hustle (Part 3 of 3)
Back in May I started writing book reviews as a side hustle via Online Book Club. This is a review of my experience so far. Now that I am done complaining about the scoring system (well really, about how parts of it are implemented), what else am I noticing about Online Book Club? This is a community of book lovers, and like all communities, but especially ones that are monetized in this way, it really wants you to be involved. 20 of those 46 points I mentioned you could get without writing a single review? Those come from commenting on the forums. In addition, most of us do not have…
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A Review of My Side Hustle (Part 2 of 3)
Back at the end of May, I started writing book reviews for Online Book Club. This is a review of my experience so far. My final issue with their system is with the claim that a reviewer could become a level 5 or 6 reviewer in as few as three reviews. Now, the reviewer score is out of 100 points. You need at least 85 points in order to be a level 5 reviewer. A person can get a score of 46 without ever writing a single review. You do have to have written at least one review to get any other points. 14 of those points come from popularity.…
