The Dog Ate My Wallet

The Dog Ate My Wallet

Personal Finance in a World of Excuses

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What I’m Reading: Graduation Edition

Normally I put these posts together sometime on Saturday. But this week this is being prepped on Friday and just scheduled to go up on Saturday. Why? Because believe it or not, this is going to be a busier than most weekend.

I know, I know, I always make it seem like we’re running around like chickens with our heads cut off on the weekends, but the truth is, I’m married to a true introvert/homebody. C absolutely needs downtime at home in order to function properly, which also means I get downtime at home. This weekend, however, is graduation weekend.

If C had decided to get his BA, he would be graduating tomorrow. Since he has decided to go on for his combined BA/BS, we’re now looking another two years out, but a number of his class mates, people he has grown close to over this last year, are graduating. So, we’re taking part in a number of activities, in addition to trying to get some more work done around the house. (We are so close to being ready for the home inspection, so close.)

That means I’m planning on having very little time at the computer Saturday or Sunday.

It also has me thinking about how our lives change, and stages in our lives. Which is kind of the theme for today’s What I’m Reading.

 

Over at Another Housewife, Mr. & Mrs. C finally let their daughter attend sleep away camp this year. As you can imagine, it was a bittersweet moment for Mrs. C, wanting to hold on, but giving her girl enough room to spread her wings.

And while high school seniors dream of going far away from home for college, a lot of them are choosing to stay close to home. Yes, I Am Cheap looks at the reasons behind this.

Of course, once you graduate from college, it’s time to find a job, and not just a job, but a Dream Job. (We all know how I feel about that.) But dream job or not, I think Corey at Life and My Finances actually has a really good list of things to consider when deciding whether or not to take any job.

Once you have a job, any job, it’s also time to start taking care of yourself, especially little things that you may have let slide- like dental appointments. It can be frustrating, and painful both physically and financially, but your health really needs to remain high on your priority list. So join me in celebrating with Bog of Debt now that she is done with her much needed dentist appointments.

And finally, you’re now situated in a good job. You’ve taken care of your health. Next comes the big question- Do you need life insurance? Money Crush takes a look at what life insurance is for and what it’s not for.

 

This week, we welcome Money Smart Guides to the Yakezie challenge, but he’s been doing this for a while- long enough that readers write in to him with questions. When will one of you write to me with a question?

Date: 16/06/2012 Author: Category: Round Ups Bookmark: Permalink
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A Dozen Money Saving Tips for Gamers

Today’s post is inspired by the awesome 7 Financial Hacks to Avoid from The Free Financial Advisor (also known as Average Joe’s Money Blog) and the beyond generic and boring 29 Ways You Waste Cash article from MSN Money. I am so tired of the same old advice on how to save money. What about those of us who already cut cable and don’t have a morning latte?

At the same time, most of us cannot live with the extreme hacks Average Joe talks about- I mean, really, give up internet at home? Library internet access doesn’t cut it- and this is coming from someone who logged 20+ hours a week in her college computer lab when she couldn’t afford her own internet access. Most libraries can’t give you that kind of time.

So today we’re looking at money saving tips for gamers. Yes, these are specific to a certain group of people and not applicable to everyone- but you know what, that makes them much more useful. (And I bet you could apply them to non-gamer things, too.)

 

Massive Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games

1: Limit your subscriptions. How many subscriptions do you need to have active at once? Do you really need active subscriptions to World of Warcraft, Star Wars Online, and Eve all at once? Do you really play all of the games that often? Or could you get away with maybe not playing WoW for a month, or 3 months, while you try out Star Wars? (We all know you’ll be returning to WoW, eventually, but why pay for it while you’re not playing it.)

1a: Do you really need a subscription at all? If your budget is really tight, there are some great MMORPGs out there that don’t have monthly subscriptions- Lord of the Rings Online and Guild Wars come to mind. You only have to buy the game. Online play is free.

In addition, WoW and STO both now let you play the first 20 levels for free. If you need a fix and can’t afford the monthly cost, then take this opportunity to try every race and class combination in the game.

2: Buy in bulk. But what if you can’t give up your WoW subscription, even while you’re enjoying playing a Jedi? J is part of a WoW Guild that plays every Tuesday night. Even if they only play that one time a week, they all play that one night. In that case, don’t pay a stupid monthly subscription fee. There are discounts for paying for your subscription in 3, 6 or 12 month blocks. For goodness sakes, get the bulk discount.

3: Do NOT automatically renew. And one more money saving trick? Do no set your account to automatically renew. Make it send you a reminder. Yes, this takes 30 seconds of your time to click and authorize the new transaction, but it also means you won’t end up paying for another 3 month subscription 2 weeks after you decided to take a break from the game.

 

Pen and Paper Role Playing Games

4: Split the costs. Sure your gaming group will probably want more than one copy of the Player’s Handbook, as that speeds up making characters, but remember when you first started playing games, when you were a preteen or teen with very little extra money to spend? You didn’t own every 2nd Edition AD&D book ever made. Your gaming group as a whole might have had every book, but you did not. Go back to that. No one needs to own everything. I mean really, how many copies of the Psionics Handbook do you really need floating around the table?

5: Don’t give in to the latest fads. It started with White Wolf, and Wizards of the Coast has embraced it fully. There’s now a publishing schedule, and planned obsolescence for each edition. I mean, how many years did we all play (or stop playing) 2nd Ed AD&D? Then 3rd Edition came out. And slowly, Pathfinder/3.5 formed. And then there was 4th Ed (my favorite, I’ll be honest), which barely had time to find it’s legs before there was D&D Essentials, which I don’t know that anyone played outside of Encounters. And now there’s playtesting for 5th Edition. But do you really need to go out and buy all the 5th Ed books when they do come out? Or can your group be perfectly happy playing 4th Ed- even if there’s no longer company support?

 

Miniatures Gaming

6: Remember what I just said about not giving in to the latest fad? You do not need to buy a whole new army every time Games Workshop updates your army book. Unless you play in sanctioned tournaments every weekend, it really does not matter if your Terminator model is the one released two weeks ago or two years ago.

7: Buy off brand. You don’t need Games Workshop brand paints. You don’t. Sure you then get a color called Blood Angel Black (I made this name up, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a real GW paint called this), but GW paints tend to come in smaller sizes than most other modeling paints, and, unlike GW minis, aren’t always of the best quality. Hit a local hobby shop instead of the GW store, to buy your paints.

 

Collectible Card Games

8: You do not need to “catch them all”. They call the card games “collectible” to make you think there is some sort of value in just having the cards. There’s not. The only value comes in playing the game. Do not try to get a complete collection of all the Ventrue cards in Vampire: The Eternal Struggle. Get enough cards to make yourself a Ventrue deck you like, and have fun with it. Even the Magic Grand Champions only own as many cards as they do because WotC gives them cards for free.

And think about how much fun it is to play in sealed deck tournaments? You don’t even know what kind of deck you’ll be playing, let alone what cards will be in it.

 

Board Games

9: Learn to use what you already have. If you have a wall of board games that means you could play a different game every day for almost 6 months without repeating, stop buying them. Stop buying the expansions, stop buying the latest game from your favorite intellectual property. Play the games you own- more than once. Figure out which ones you actually like. Just like with the cards, games are meant to be played, not collected. What’s the point of owning all those games if you don’t get a chance to play them?

 

PC Games

10: Shop the sales. If you don’t have a Steam account, get one. C and J split a Steam account and have gotten some amazingly fun PC games for great prices. Yes there’s a trade off that only one of them can be playing on the Steam account at a time, and that you have to be logged in to play (instead of having the game on your computer), but that seems to be the future of PC gaming anyway, at least of the Diablo III model is anything to go on.

11: Spend money where it matters. For PC gaming or MMORPGs, or even just Facebook games, your internet connection matters. If you have a slow or bad internet connection, you will feel like you’ve wasted any money spent on your computer or your games. Buying new games or upgrading your computer won’t fix the problem. So don’t be afraid to spend money where it matters.

The same with your computer. Most geeks build their own now, and it’s less expensive than buying a pre-built, but know what matters and what doesn’t. Know where your dollars are best spent for maximum enjoyment.

 

Play Your Games

12: Don’t go out, stay in. Maybe this isn’t as common anymore, but we used to go to a game store to play, or sometimes a Dennys- places where we were tempted, even expected, to pay money. Why? Stay in. Have your friends over for a game night. Make it a pot luck, or even a bring your own snacks event.

And trust me, you will have more fun sitting around your dining room table playing Cards Against Humanity with your friends than just about any other activity you could think to do. (And honestly, you don’t want to play Cards Against Humanity in public.)

Date: 14/06/2012 Author: Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Category: Everyday Finances, Inspired by Bookmark: Permalink
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Bits of Ephemera

Hi, my name is erin shanendoah, and I’m a Bejeweled Blitz Addict. What this means for you is that my addiction, combined with an inability to think of real content today, results in the following tidbits of information, and nothing really coherent.

 

  • Assuming my estimates of what the cars are worth and that our bank’s home value estimator can be trusted, C and I reached 6 figures in net worth last month.
  • As of July 5, we will owe less than $35k in non-house debt (all student loan debt).
  • I keep forgetting to figure in J’s rent and grocery money when I do my monthly cash flows. That means that once a month, I get a nice little boost to the balance in the account.
  • Over the last few weeks, we have sold books and movies for over $100. That money has not been put toward anything useful, but has basically become off the books allowance money, used for various things, including buying me two new pairs of jeans.
  • My brother has begun paying us back the loan we gave him. We have convinced him to take 6 months to pay us back, instead of three, so that he can build up his cash reserves.
  • C is officially done with school for the quarter. He could have graduated with a BA this year, but has decided to stay on to get his combo BA/BS. We thought it would only take one more year. We were wrong, it will take 2. In fact, there are almost no classes he needs offered at his school next year, so he might end up taking classes as a special student from a different state school.
  • I have a new logo for The Dog Ate My Wallet, but I haven’t gotten it scanned in yet. It may need some sharpening, as it’s a pencil sketch. Or I may go back to the artist and ask her to go over it in ink. We’ll see.

 

My friend Jana over at Daily Money Shot always has a Money Tune Tuesday. I love this idea, and while I won’t steal it, I thought today I would share with you a video of our favorite local band singing a song that is all about money- Pound a Week Rise – about coal miners asking for a raise.

You can find their facebook page here

 

Date: 12/06/2012 Author: Category: Everyday Finances Bookmark: Permalink
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Sunday Evening Post #46

Day

Amount

Place

Category

Monday

$5.00

Cafeteria

Allowance

Tuesday

$48.00

Lowes

House

Wednesday

$57.00

Azteca

Eating Out

$10.00

Dentist

Medial

Friday

$6.00

Cafeteria

Allowance

Saturday

$57.50

CostCo

Groceries

$20.00

Cash

Allowance

$130.00

Target

House

Yes, I bought jeans yesterday. No, it’s not on this list. That’s because before we ended up going to Penny’s (turns out the Levi’s store doesn’t carry jeans for actual fat people), we swing by a place called BuyBacks and with some of the MIL’s DVDs that Half Price Books didn’t take. Well, they took a little over half of what we had left, and explained why they didn’t take the rest, and paid us $50 for it. I hve to say- for DVDs, this is where I’m going in the future to sell. They took maybe 20% of what we sold to Half Price Books and paid us the same amount.

Anyway, that $50 cash then bought me two new pairs of jeans.

At Target we got some more bins (then proceeded to empty a number of our old ones today), a portable wardrobe, and some space bags. The wardrobe is up in the basement and full of C’s rarely worn clothes- like his suits and business casual wear. The space bags are filled with extra pillows and quilts.

On Saturday, we also got the new bookcase I’d bought a few weeks ago put together, and it’s pretty much filled with books already. We still have at least one more box and one more bin of books we’re keeping to find room for. (Of course, that could be on the bookshelf in the baby’s room that we emptied- once we find a place for it.) We do also have another bin and box of books to take to Half Price Books.

I live an exciting life, don’t I.

Junebug and Larry in search of excitement

I have six goals for 2012. As part of the Sunday evening posts, I am tracking those goals, kind of like I do for spending, in order to hold myself accountable.

1)      Be paid for publishing one piece of fiction

Submissions so far: 2

Responses: 1 rejection 1 acceptance

The anthology I had a piece accepted to is now available to buy on Amazon. It’s called Conquest Through Determination.

2)      Make money publishing my next art/fiction book

This is on hold for now. However, I did have a chance to talk with the artist I want to work with on Friday, and her life has settled down, so there’s a good chance we can start work on this sometime in June. (When my life settles down a bit.)

3)      Attend FinCon12. Pay for the trip with money from allowance/side projects saved/earned BEFORE the conference starts. Goal: $600

I’m in the negatives allowance wise.

Plane ticket prices have gone up, so right now, with credit card points, it would cost about $30 out of pocket for me to buy my ticket to FinCon. However, we’re still putting quite a bit on the card each month, and I don’t expect prices will go up much from where they are, and might even go back down again. (Sweet spot for prices out of Seattle tends to be around 4-6 weeks before the flight.) So for now, I’m still holding off on booking the plane ticket.

4)      Become a member of Yakezie (6 month anniversary is Jan 21)

I plan to be a member of Epsilon class when the application goes up in August. I do need to make sure I’m still connecting with new challengers, though, because a lot of the challengers on my list this last time will be Yakezie Delta class members.

In order to develop relationships with new challengers, I have decided that each edition of What I’m Reading on Saturdays will now include a new challenger.

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $22.01 (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100.) Views on this blog (and all my blogs) have been going down lately, and I know that’s because I haven’t been as active on twitter or commenting in the last few months. As I pick up my activity I expect activity here will pick up and my AdSense income will pick up, at least a few cents or so.

6)      Be healthier

I’ve spent most of this week feeling somewhat better than last week, but not 100%. I had a cold that made me feel pretty crappy on Monday and Tuesday, but otherwise I felt okay. We went to the dog park on Wednesday and Saturday. I mowed the lawn on Friday and Saturday. And there’s been a lot of up and down stairs these last two days as we’ve worked on getting things a little more organized.

I don’t know how healthy it was, but C tried two new chicken recipes this week- chicken adobo and peanut mint curry. Both were good, the second was definitely the best.

And for the record, apple mint steeped overnight in apple juice is absolutely delicious.

Date: 10/06/2012 Author: Category: Sunday Evening Post Bookmark: Permalink
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What I’m Reading: I Need to Buy New Jeans Edition

I realized this week that I need two new pairs of pants. First, I need a new pair of black slacks. I have two pair, but one has really wide legs, and I nearly kill myself every time I go up or down a flight of stairs. I really like having two pairs of black slacks (to go with my one pair each of gray and tan), but I do not like falling. So, I really need to take that pair of slacks out of my closet.

Even worse than that, the new jeans I bought last summer decided to rip right along the seam- a huge rip –last weekend. This leaves me with one pair of jeans that don’t fit well. They are two big and I’m constantly having to pull them up.

I hate clothes shopping, especially pants shopping, but the jeans, at least, really need to be replaced. So C has decided that we should go to the Levi’s store in downtown and get me “real” jeans (you know, actually made from cotton instead of spandex). Plus, they’re having a major sale this weekend.

Sale is good. Shopping, not so much. Shopping downtown even less fun, but I think that’s going to be what we end up doing with at least part of our day.

That means I really need to get today’s links out for you to all enjoy.

 

Dr. Dean over at The Millionaire Nurse Blog asks When is a Cough Not Just a Cough? Washington is one of the states currently being hit by the pertussis (whooping cough) epidemic, so it’s a pretty big deal here. In fact, as part of our adoption process, we know have to provide the state with proof that we’ve had our Tdap shots.

Given what my Tuesday post was about, I think it’s appropriate to highlight this entry from Well Heeled Blog (congrats on getting married, btw) wondering Is Travel the New Way to “Keep Up with the Joness?” We have friends who plan big group trips every couple of years, and yes, we’re slightly less a part of the group because we’ve never gone along. But honestly, we’ve always had other financial priorities, and if people want to hang out with me less because I don’t want to go on a cruise to Alaska with them, that’s their problem.

The US Canadian border

Instead of traveling, perhaps you could become a hermit. I know C would be perfectly happy if I let him hermit say 75% of the time. Andrea over at So Over Debt gives us 5 Reasons to Consider Becoming a Hermit.

Where I'd live if I were a hermit. Credit for this picture goes to my brother

I can’t hermit. I have a job. In fact, I have a job that I get to at 7am. I do this because I am most productive before the office is filled with other people. A lot of my job simply requires me to be present- that means I get interrupted a lot. So if I have something major I’m working on, I like to follow Money Beagle’s advice and Take Advantage of [My] Most Productive Times.

But what if you don’t have a job, or just want a better job? A Blinkin from Funancials gives us that great piece of advice on How to Get a Job and Girlfriend. And he’s right, men, at least, become more attractive to women when they are in a happy relationship and treat their current woman well. C even has a classmate who would totally be interested in a relationship with him, if I approved. (So not happening.) But the point is, our good friend A Blinkin is right. It’s easier to get a job or a girlfriend when you already have one.

 

Being a sidewalk juggler is someone's dream job

And finally, this week we welcome Well Kept Wallet to the Yakezie family. I’m still of the mind that you should find a job that lets you live your dream life, but Deacon makes the argument that you should love what you do.

Date: 09/06/2012 Author: Category: Round Ups Bookmark: Permalink
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Money and Emotion

I want to tell you about the day I cried after paying off a debt. These were not tears of joy or relief. I was not looking forward to what having that money freed up could do for my budget. I was crying, tears of loss and grief, as one final connection was broken.

I’ve said a number of times during the adoption process that logically understanding something is not the same as emotionally accepting it. On that day, the logical part of my mind knew the loss had come nearly a year before, it knew that we needed the money that had been going toward that debt to go toward other things. Logically understanding all of that did nothing to stop the tears.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about the day I paid off the Care Credit debt we had taken on to pay for our Australian Shepherd’s intestinal surgery. The card that they had charged his final care and cremation to.

My Moree angel had died nearly a year before, after his surgery site when septic. It had been a sudden, heart breaking loss, that still causes me to tear up over 2.5 years later.

And there had been anger and frustration about the bill before that- there I was paying a vet bill for a dog I no longer had. How depressing is that?

And yet, the day I made the last payment, I cried. It was like losing my boy all over again. It did not make logical sense, but somehow, that bill was like one last piece of him. If I was still paying for him, he could not really be gone, could he?

And then, I was no longer paying. He had not been in my daily life for almost a year, and then, with that last payment, he was no longer in my monthly life, either. Gone. Just absolutely gone. And I was devastated all over again. 

My first baby

As humans, we attach emotions to just about everything in our lives- and that includes our money and our debts. Many people who have successfully gotten themselves out of debt find themselves drifting and at a loss now that their money doesn’t have a prescribed destination. Some people even dig themselves right back into that hole, because they aren’t quite certain how to cope in a debt free world.

 

There are no right or wrong emotions. Sometimes it can be hard to be excited about paying off debt. Sometimes we feel no guilt at taking on new debt. And sometimes, instead of feeling relief and happiness at getting rid of debt, we feel a deep sense of loss.

There is nothing wrong with that. You feel what you feel. The important part, as in so many things in life, is how you act.

I had no idea I would react to paying off Moree’s vet bill in the way I did. But that sadness did not throw any wrenches into our life because we had a plan. Like with all things, we had looked at a lot of different options for what to do with that money once it no longer had to go to Care Credit, and we knew, before the last payment was made, what would happen with that money the next month.

 

Money is an emotional subject. Accept that. Embrace it. And have a plan in place. It really does make everything easier, even losing your dog a second time.

Date: 07/06/2012 Author: Tags: Category: Debt, Pet Finances Bookmark: Permalink
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Don’t Let Money be the Reason You Never…

I randomly have thoughts about what I should write a post about, but by the time I get a chance to sit and write, the ideas are all gone. I need  to start writing them down, to seize the opportunities that present themselves, because they may never come this way again.

Which is actually what I want to talk about today.

So often, we, especially the “we” that write personal finance blogs are all about the saving or something, the not doing it until the money is right. Unfortunately, sometimes the right money and the right timing don’t mix. Other times, an amazing opportunity falls into your lap, but you don’t currently have the money to pay for it. I say, seize the opportunity, anyway.

 

Stonehenge, in person. Priceless

Not Letting the Debt Monster Hold You Back

Back in 2008, I was in grad school getting my MBA, and paying for it completely with student loans. You could say the money certainly wasn’t right- perhaps I even should have put off grad school. But I didn’t (and I’m glad), and as a requirement for my degree, I had to have an “international experience”- generally a weeklong trip hosted by one of the program professors. This trip was paid for as part of our tuition. You read that right, the trip was already covered by our tuition.

The school was smart enough to realize, though, that for a lot of us, this would be one the few times in our lives we would get to travel to these locations, so they had no problems with students making changes to their reservations, or even booking their own flights and getting reimbursed. Because I chose the Ireland trip, this was a chance for C and I to go to Ireland/England for essentially half cost. My plane ticket was already paid for, so we just had to pay for his and for lodging. Lodging was covered by doing a timeshare exchange.

A tree in a park in Bath

So we were paying for my masters with $40k in student loans. We had credit card debt and an $800/month car payment. And you know what- we went to England for a week, and didn’t worry about what we spent. And neither of us have any regrets.

It was indeed the trip of a lifetime. And while we hope to make it back to England, and get him to Ireland, I will always be glad we took that opportunity.

Carn Euny was, hands down, the most magical place I will ever visit

Paying Last Minute Prices is OK

In 2010, the Winter Olympics were being held in Vancouver, Canada. We lived in Seattle, but knew how hard it was going to be to get tickets, so we didn’t even put our names in the hat. But a friend of ours was working in Vancouver at the time, and he did put in for tickets to some events. He was down visiting the Seattle crew one weekend and mentioned that he had an extra ticket for a hockey game that Thursday. The friend who would normally go with him (also living in Seattle) couldn’t get the time off work. Did I want to go? Did I? An Olympic hockey game. You bet.

Olympic hockey? You betcha!

I went home that night and booked Amtrak tickets from Seattle to Vancouver. I had to take the Amtrak bus on the way up, and the train back only had 1st Class tickets left (they were only $20 more expensive than regular tickets so it wasn’t like with flights). I booked it.

I went to work on Monday and told my boss- I have the opportunity to go to the Olympics. I need Thursday and Friday off. She agreed that it wasn’t something I could turn down, and we made sure everything was set for my last minute trip.

Finland vs Belarus didn’t have very many NHL stars. It wasn’t a hugely attended game. But it was fun. And simply getting to spend time in Vancouver during the games was worth it. Plus, I can totally now recommend paying the little bit extra for first class Amtrak tickets.

Belarus fans going to the game

Life Doesn’t Happen on Your Schedule

Opportunities often don’t ask you when would be a good time for you. They come at their own pace, on their own timelines. Sometimes they will come at the perfect moment, and sometimes at the worst possible moment.

You do not have to take every opportunity that comes your way. But I ask that you consider it, and that you don’t let not being in the perfect place, financially, not be what holds you back. Sure if this is something that will come again, skip it, but if it really is a once in a lifetime, or even once in a decade, opportunity, see if you can make it happen.

Human being are wired a funny way. We will always regret not taking action more than we will taking action- even if not doing anything is actually the statistically best option.

That means that even if the smart and prudent choice is to stay home and keep saving, or plugging away at debt, you are much more likely to regret not taking the chance than you are to regret the added time to meeting your financial goals.

And you know what, I think that’s fine. Live life. Seize Opportunity. And have a hell of a great time doing it.

The Olympics! Never turn down a chance to go

Date: 05/06/2012 Author: Tags: , Category: Budgets, Debt, Everyday Finances, Lessons Learned, Major Financial Decisions Bookmark: Permalink
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Sunday Evening Post #45

Day

Amount

Place

Category

Wednesday

$17.50

Safeway

Groceries

$16.50

Safeway

Groceries

Saturday

$90.00

Gas

Car

$88.50

CostCo

Groceries

$16.50

CostCo

Allowance

$18.00

Office Depot

Allowance

$35.00

Taste of India

Eating Out

Talk about feeling in control, we only spent money from the bank account two days this week, and less than $300 total. On Friday C used some of his allowance cash to take a classmate out to dinner, and today I used a gift card for Starbucks, but since money didn’t come out of the account for those things, they don’t really count.

It has been a bit of an odd week as I hurt my back over the weekend, thought it was getting better, and then suffered a major muscle spasm on Wednesday evening- bad enough that I worked from home on Thursday so that I could take frequent breaks to lie on a heating pad. To go along with that, C started getting sick on Tuesday night, with what we thought was a sinus infection. But by Friday, I was sick too. Of course, he’s almost completely better, and I’m still stuck in the head cold phase. Hopefully I’ll be feeling better soon.

As it is, though, we barely did anything yesterday and yet I felt exhausted. Today, I was able to be productive only in spurts with much needed breaks. However, C and J did put together our new locking cabinet this morning while I was at critique group, so we’re working on getting everything that needs to be locked away locked away.

We still have books to be sorted through and some organizational work to do, but I’m happy with progress of any sort right now.

The other big thing for me right now is the Stanley Cup Finals. I’m a major Devils fan and have been for over 15 years. Thrilled to see them back in the finals after missing the playoffs completely last year, but they’ve lost the two opening games. Both went to overtime, so it’s not like they’re playing badly, but they can’t seem to close.

Not the Stanley Cup Finals, but a picture from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, when I got to attend the Finland/Belarus game

 

I have six goals for 2012. As part of the Sunday evening posts, I am tracking those goals, kind of like I do for spending, in order to hold myself accountable.

1)      Be paid for publishing one piece of fiction

Submissions so far: 2

Responses: 1 rejection 1 acceptance

I will let people know when the anthology I’m in is available.

2)      Make money publishing my next art/fiction book

This is on hold for now. However, I did have a chance to talk with the artist I want to work with on Friday, and her life has settled down, so there’s a good chance we can start work on this sometime in June. (When my life settles down a bit.)

3)      Attend FinCon12. Pay for the trip with money from allowance/side projects saved/earned BEFORE the conference starts. Goal: $600

I’m in the negatives allowance wise, but didn’t spend much in may, so I think my June allotment should get me back in the black.

Plane ticket prices have gone up, so right now, with credit card points, it would cost about $50 out of pocket for me to buy my ticket to FinCon. However, we’re still putting quite a bit on the card each month, and I don’t expect prices will go up much from where they are, and might even go back down again. (Sweet spot for prices out of Seattle tends to be around 4-6 weeks before the flight.) So for now, I’m still holding off on booking the plane ticket.

4)      Become a member of Yakezie (6 month anniversary is Jan 21)

I plan to be a member of Epsilon class when the application goes up in August. I do need to make sure I’m still connecting with new challengers, though, because a lot of the challengers on my list this last time will be Yakezie Delta class members.

In order to develop relationships with new challengers, I have decided that each edition of What I’m Reading on Saturdays will now include a new challenger.

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $22.02 (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100.) I appear to have made 8 cents in May. I know I should probably find another way to make revenue from the blogs, but at least for now, I do this for fun, not money, and I’m okay with that.

6)      Be healthier

Given the way I’ve felt this week, I think you’ll find it unsurprising there hasn’t been much exercise. We did take the dogs to the dog park on Saturday morning.

Food this week has mostly been leftovers from what was made for last weekend, so pasta salad, homemade mac and cheese, ribs. J brought home pizza one night, and on Saturday we had mango curry.

Goal for this week- eat some salad. I like salad. I should eat it.

Date: 03/06/2012 Author: Category: Sunday Evening Post Bookmark: Permalink
Article

What I’m Reading: Favorites Edition

Today has not been super busy, and yet I am exhausted. I guess that’s because what we thought was a sinus infection for C was a cold, and now I’m sick, too. The only things we’ve done today have been take the dogs to the dog park, go fill the car with gas, eat lunch at one of our favorite places, and go to CostCo and Office Depot. That’s really not much in the scheme of things, and yet, it’s already after 5pm and I’m just now getting to the What I’m Reading post.

Because I am sick and running late, I don ‘t really want to think. So this week, you’re getting posts from my favorite blogs. I don’t read every blog I follow every day, but the ones you’re seeing today are the ones I check in on the most. I always know that there will be something good.

This picture was taken about one year ago.

Let’s start by wishing two of my favorite bloggers happy one year blogiversaries. I’ve been friends with Jana since before either of us started our current blogs, and I can’t tell you how much I have enjoyed watching her really find her comfort zone and come into her own over at Daily Money Shot this year.

Also turning one is American Debt Project. I only recently (say in the last 4 months or so) found her blog, but it has quickly become a favorite (as you can tell by the fact that I’m in her top 10 commenters). To celebrate, she’s giving away prizes.

I hope you’re able to head on over to both these amazing blogs and wish them the best of luck in their next year.

Aloysa of My Broken Coin is approaching a year, and I have been reading her pretty faithfully since early on. This week she explains why blue jeans are so important to her.

This is a bar in Dublin, Ireland

I know I started reading Average Joe’s Money Blog sometime before Christmas. We’ve developed a friendship based on board games and other geekery. Now, he’s an actual former financial advisor, so his advice is actually worth taking, at least sometime. This week, though, he’s talking about all the years of perseverance and hard work it takes to become an overnight success– which is something we all dream of for our blogs.

Talking about geekery, Crystal from Budgeting in the Fun Stuff did exactly that last weekend and went to Comicpalooza, even though she isn’t a comic geek. But she had a great time and even got to get her picture taken with Kevin Sorbo.

My dog has laser eyes

As many of you know, my other obsession comes in the form of dogs. And as always, I love presenting to my personal finance readers a blog that does a much better job of tracking the cost of pets than I do. That’s right, it is once again time for The Cost Of Things from The House of Two Bows.

Junebug's super power is cuteness

And finally, because I was doing the Carnival of Financial Simplicity last week, I didn’t get to highlight a brand new Yakezie challenger. Of course, that worked out ok, since according to the board, there weren’t any brand new challengers last week. However, there were two this week, so I am thrilled to introduce you to them.

Money Watch 101 has a post this week about negotiating tactics for a car purchase. I had to take a negotiations class for my MBA. And I’m at the point of wanting a new to me car. (Meaning we’ll get a brand new car for C in about 3 years, and I’ll start driving the VW on a regular basis. This is how car buying works in our house. I want a new car for a really long time, and when I finally convince C, we get a car for him, not me.) Anyway, when that far off day comes, I bet Money Watch’s tips will stand me in better stead than my class.

The Empowered Dollar decides to introduce herself to us by telling her story. I’m probably about 10 years older than she is, but considering I graduated with my MBA in 2008, I can relate.

This is what it felt like graduating into the recession

So there we go. That’s what I’m reading. Now I think I’m going to get off the computer and be a vegetable until the pressure in my head subsides. (Hopefully my brains won’t leak out through my nostrils, but at this point, I’d take it.)

Date: 02/06/2012 Author: Category: Round Ups Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Getting Closer

Because I know you’ve all by dying to know how getting our home ready for the foster licensing has been going, today you’re getting an update.

We’ve made progress. I’m not certain anyone besides us can tell exactly how much progress we’ve made because the house, the downstairs and baby’s room, especially, is still a disaster. I think our basement isn’t currently fire safe because we have so many boxes stacked in passageways that it would be really hard to get out of the basement in case of fire.

There are things I don't like about where I live- like the blackberries

However, a lot of stuff has moved to the attic. We’ve decided to put family pictures in the cedar chest, and it’s now in place. Extraneous mattresses are gone. In fact, the finished room is a lot emptier than it used to be, though the boxes that remain are mostly junk boxes that we may or may not go through right now. (We’ve gone through a lot of junk boxes already.) We have a few more things to go in the attic, and then we’re really down to organizing.

See how thick and thorny those stems are?

We have a locking cabinet that’s ready to be put up upstairs in which we can lock away all medications and vitamins. We have one more bookshelf for the basement that needs to go up and books we’re keeping can move out of boxes and bins.

We have a few more runs to Half Price Books and Value village to sell/donate items, but we’re actually close, really close.

I do make the Holly tree fend for itself, though

Sadly, we had hoped to do more over the last week, but C hurt his back when we were in Portland in a fall. Then I pulled a muscle in my back on Saturday that led to us pretty much doing nothing on Monday. (Sunday we had a bbq with one of C’s classmates, his wife, and their baby.) Then on Tuesday evening, C started coming down with a bad cold/sinus infection. It’s moved really fast and yesterday he was on the head exploding part and today he’s on the losing his voice part.

My back was getting better, but last night I had a major muscle spasm. (It’s feeling much better right now, though.)

Also, this tree. We've killed it like 5 summers in a row now. It's too close to the foundation. But it always comes back.

Still, we’re hoping one or two more productive weekends and we’re ready for the inspection. We’ve got a few more things to buy- a couple door knobs for the closets so they match the other new ones we’ve installed, the latches for drawers and cupboards to make them “childproof”, and maybe even a new fridge. (If the locking cabinet is big enough to hold some dishes as well, we can get rid of the cabinet above the current fridge and finally have a space tall enough for the full sized refrigerator we’ve both wanted since we moved in.)

We have decided that to reward ourselves for passing the foster license home inspection, we will take a trip to Goldendale, WA, where they have a really cool observatory and a replica Stonehenge.

But I still love my wild roses

So that’s where we are- close, getting closer, at least for the foster home license. We still have to pass FBI background checks (waiting to be contacted to go in for finger printing) and then we have to put together some more documents for the social workers, but we’re getting there. Or at least, getting to the part where there’s nothing more we can do but wait, and maybe work on decluttering more of the house.

Was this post supposed to have something to do with personal finances?

Date: 31/05/2012 Author: Category: Home Improvement, Organization Bookmark: Permalink
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