The Dog Ate My Wallet

The Dog Ate My Wallet

Personal Finance in a World of Excuses

Article

The Thing About Budgets

I am very excited to be participating in Women’s Money Week 2012. I am breaking from my usual posting schedule to post everyday this week in support of this project. Today’s post is about Budgeting. Click here for more posts on this topic.

 

There is a part of me today that just wants to cheat and point you to my earlier posts A Budget is NOT the First Thing You Need, A Budget is Not the Second Thing You Need, and Creating a Crash Budget. But I don’t think that really falls in to the spirit of what I am trying to do this week, which is publish new content every day.

 

So here’s the thing about budgets, at least to me- once you have tracked your spending (so you know where you’re spending your money), and you have figured out your priorities (and how money fits in with those), you can create your budget. But (and this is a big but) that budget is not written in stone. In fact, I’m not certain it’s even written in pencil yet. The first budget you create is almost certainly written in beach sand at low tide. As soon as the tide starts coming back in, it will be washed away.

I know, I know. You went to all that work. You have your budget, and gosh dang it, you are going to stick to it. You know you are. Except that you aren’t. Especially not when you first go on a budget.

Budgets are like science experiments. You should plan them out, do everything in your power to give you the best chance of success from the start. And then you accept that it’s well, an experiment, and trial and error are the ways most of us learn best.

I mentioned late in my post yesterday about the perfect being the enemy of the good. That is just as true in creating a budget as it is in saving. If you wait until everything is perfect, you will never do it. If you instead agree that your budget is not perfect, but you are going to give it a go anyway, then you start.

To go with another cliché, a journey of a million miles starts with a single step.

Just know going in that your budget will change. In the beginning, it will probably change monthly (if not more often), and even as you get better at understanding your expenses, prioritizing your money, and living within your budget, there will be times when you still need to change it.

 

Your goals will change. Some things will be sped up. Others will be pushed back. Sometimes you will give up on ideas. Other times, opportunities you never even dreamed of will come across your plate. Your budget is not meant to restrict you to only the dreams and goals you had at the time you created it. That would be lame.

I revisit our budget every quarter. That’s right, every three months, I look at how we’re spending, what we’re saving for, and make sure I think it is still in alignment with our goals. If it’s not, I send a note to C. And then we have a conversation about how we can change our budget to meet our new goals.

At the same time, when I do those budget reviews, I look to see if our spending is within budget or not. A one month anomaly can happen, but if we go three months in a row over spending in a category, we need to figure out why. Sometimes we need to cut back, and other times, we need to allocate more money to the category. After all, how far we have to drive to school and work is not going to change, but as the gas prices keep going up, we need to adjust a car budget to reflect that reality.

 

So that’s the thing about budgets. They are never written in stone. In order for them the work, they have to be flexible; they have to change as you change, and they have to conform to reality. Otherwise, they will never work.

Date: 08/03/2012 Author: Tags: , Category: Budgets, Everyday Finances, Getting Started, Inspired by Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Something is Better Than Nothing

I am very excited to be participating in Women’s Money Week 2012. I am breaking from my usual posting schedule to post everyday this week in support of this project. Today’s post is about Saving and Investing. Click here for more posts on this topic.

In high school government class, we had to pick some stocks and follow them for a semester in order to see (kind of) how the stock market worked. I had to do a similar project in one of my MBA classes.  Because I’m an excel geek, for that class, I created all sorts of charts that showed how my stocks were doing over time, compared to each other, compared to the market at large, etc. I found it fascinating. But I don’t have an investment account anywhere. The closest I’ve ever come to “investing” money was to put it in a CD.

That’s not to say I don’t have investments. I have an 401(k) that became and IRA, and I have my current 403(b). I know that technically, those are investments, but I don’t think of them as such. My 403(b) is all in one of those targeted funds. However, because I have a pretty high risk tolerance, it is in a fund targeted for 5 years after my expected retirement date. (I’m a real wild child, I know.)

The old 401(k) cum IRA is where my risk tolerance is really visible. A couple of years ago I changed it from being in safe money market account to be purely invested in foreign real estate markets (or something like that). It was only a couple thousand anyway, so I figure if I lose it all, it won’t make that much of a difference in my retirement, but if it goes really well, it might pay for one full month in a nursing home. (That’s probably a bad joke that doesn’t make sense to anyone other than me. We have learned that one month in a nursing home costs upwards of $7,000.)

There is a part of me that want to be an investor. I have joked that C should become a day trader. It just sounds fascinating, but we’re not there right now. Our savings- and we do save quite a bit per month, is all pretty much earmarked for things like paying for C to be in school, car repairs, home improvement, vet bills, and adoption. So yes, we save, but the money is all pretty much spoken for.

Our only true long term savings are the retirement accounts. (I should note that C also has an old 401(k) from the company he got laid off from. I have no idea what mix of investments he has in it.) I keep saying that once C gets a job, or at least stops costing us $850/month, we can put all of that money into a mix of retirement savings and other projects. But with plans to bring a child in to our family, there’s a good chance that money will go elsewhere.

In order to ensure we have something in our retirement (because I do not believe social security will be there when we retire, not am I certain it should be- but that’s a different post), I do one “good” thing. No, it’s not max out my retirement savings. I cannot afford to do that. What I have done, though, is set my savings to go up by 1% automatically every year. It happens in April, which is the same month raises go into effect in my company.

That means that come next month, I’ll be contributing 6% of my income to my retirement account. (Max company match came at 4%.) At the same time, I’ll get a raise of roughly 3%. What this means is that I still get the joy of seeing a the bigger paycheck that comes with getting a raise (emotionally this matters to me), but at the same time, I’m increasing my retirement savings in a way where I never see the money and therefore never miss it.

Someday I’ll open an investment account. At least that’s what I like to tell myself. But for now, I’ll stick with savings for the expenses I can see coming up and putting money in my retirement account. We have still have 30+ years before retirement, so I am going with the long view that while stocks are down now, they will jump back up and we will see significant gains by the time we retire.

Perhaps I should be doing more to ensure a better retirement, but that’s what I have the energy for right now. And something is better than nothing. The perfect is the enemy of the good, and if I did nothing, waiting until I had the time and energy to do more, then we’d be really behind the ball. For now, something is better than nothing.

Date: 07/03/2012 Author: Tags: , , , , , , Category: Everyday Finances, Inspired by, Retirement Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Layers of Complication

I am very excited to be participating in Women’s Money Week 2012. I am breaking from my usual posting schedule to post everyday this week in support of this project. Today’s post is about Relationships and Money. Click here for more posts on this topic.

 

If you are new here thanks to Women’s Money Week, welcome! So glad to see you. If you have any questions about what I’m talking about, ask. I’m always happy to answer.

 

Just the two of us: Money has never really been a big deal between C and I. It was one of those parts of the relationship that came easy to us. Maybe it’s because my student loans first came due while we were living together, or because, in those early years of living together, we both suffered bouts of unemployment. I don’t really know, but we never sat down and had a money talk, and yet we’ve always been able to talk about money.

We combined our finances at least a year before we were even engaged. We closed on our first house almost two months before the wedding. It seems like financially, we have always known where the other stood.

As a married couple, our view on finances remains in sync. We both know we would not be where we are if we hadn’t had family and friends help us out, so we have made loans and given gifts of cash to family members. We have let friends stay with us rent free. We don’t do it without checking in with the other first, but it has never been an issue between us. (Don’t worry, we are not perfect. We have plenty of relationship issues. Money just doesn’t happen to be one of them.)

 

And MIL makes three: That isn’t to say that money has never caused a problem in our relationships, though. As regular readers know, we took over managing my mother-in-law’s finances back in late 2008. Managing someone else’s money adds a layer of complication to most other relationships.

First, there is the complication with the person themselves. It is the MIL’s money, and yet, we gave her an allowance and did not allow her access to it. That’s not comfortable.

Second, there is the complication of other family members. MIL would sometimes call her sister to ask her to buy her something because we told her “No”. Often that would then mean a conversation between us and C’s Aunt explaining why we had made that decision and what we were doing. That then added another layer of complication between the sisters.

And third, there is then an additional legal relationship you have to be aware of. We are specifically not on any of the MIL’s accounts. If we were, that money would be considered ours as much as hers, and legally that would mean we could do anything with it. That would also open us up to lawsuits from the family or state if it appeared we were mismanaging her money or using it for us instead of her. Having a DPOA gave us the legal responsibility of managing her money in the way that was best for her. Even though we can access all of her accounts as if they were our own, we know we need to be able to justify every expense. It creates a relationship of a fiscal guardian.

It also makes things more complicated now that the MIL has become truly mentally incompetent, and we are moving her to hospice level care. If someone else were in charge of her finances, they could gift us some of her assets, to keep things out of probate. But since we are the financial DPOA’s, we can not gift ourselves any of her assets and remain legally above board.

Does she have enough that it matters? Doubtful, and certainly not after long term care expenses eat up what she does have. But it adds one more layer of complexity to the family relationships.

 

Communication is key: Money is one of those things we all like to say doesn’t matter. But that’s a lie. In our modern society, you need money to buy food to eat, to put a roof over your head, etc. Money is required to live our daily lives. We can not pretend it doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter to our existence, because it most definitely does.

Sometimes you are lucky, as C and I are, to be on the same page as your partner financially without it ever having been a big deal. But just because you are that lucky, do not think that money will never have an impact on your relationships. It will.

The only thing to do is to keep talking, to each other  and to anyone else who the money relationship touches. People may not like talking about money, but they like it even less if they think you are mismanaging the money of someone they love.

Date: 06/03/2012 Author: Tags: , , Category: Inspired by, Other People's Money Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Job vs Entrepreneurship

I am very excited to be participating in Women’s Money Week 2012. I hope to have a new post for you every day this week. (Ambitious of me, I know.) Today’s post is about Entrepreneurship and Making Money. Click here for more posts on this topic.

 

(Sorry this first post is late. With everything else going on in my life, I kind of forgot that this was Women’s Money Week. Posts for the rest of the week should go live at 5:30pm PST.)

 

Making Money: I am not an entrepreneur. I’m just not. I am a little too risk adverse for that. I don’t think that has anything to do with being female. I think that’s just me. I know some amazing women who are filled with the entrepreneurial spirit and embrace the risk. I think that’s fabulous, but it is not for me.

So I want to start with this. Starting your own business, being your own boss, it’s not for everyone. There is nothing wrong with that. I know the wisdom we hear a lot of now is that instead of going to college, young adults should instead become entrepreneurs. Or we hear that the only way to achieve happiness is to be your own boss. Or that they only way to be “rich”, or at least a stress free retirement, is to have your own business. I do not believe any of that.

I am not saying that it is a bad path, nor am I saying that no one should go that route. I am saying that it is not the right path for everyone. For some of us, getting a good education, working a job, one where we have a boss, but also benefits, for some of us, that is the right path.

I’ve written before that I do not believe in the dream job. I believe in the dream life and a job is just one part of that. But that doesn’t mean that I think you have to be miserable at your job. I don’t think you have to sacrifice happiness in your work on your path to making a decent amount of money.

 

What Works For You?: I work in healthcare. I care about the nature of the work my company does. I hope someday to move to a major global health organization, a non-profit whose work I fully believe in. But my skills, those are administrative. I could take my skills to any company and be successful. I chose to work in an industry I care about. That means that even on busy work days, I still have buy in to the overall mission.

I am ambitious. Don’t let me telling you that I don’t want to have my own company make you think I don’t want to be the boss. I started in my current company as an administrative specialist at the end of 2004. In mid-2008, I got my MBA. In July 2010 I started my current position as a manager. I intend to stay in this position around three to four years, depending on our overall life situation.

But right now, I make enough money to support our family on my income alone. When I leave this position, I don’t intend to go anywhere without taking a step up and getting a substantial raise.

I like making money. I like making decisions. I am comfortable with responsibility. I am just not comfortable with the risk involved in running my own company. I like that someone else is responsible for paying me, that I get benefits. That works for me.

 

Find Your Path: The true secret to making money, no matter how you make it, is to find what works for you. If you want to be an entrepreneur, do it. If you want to work for someone else and rise to the top, put your energy there. (Even Jack Welch worked for a company.) And if you want to have a day job for benefits that isn’t too taxing, and work on your passion on the side, then that is fine too.

There is no one right path to making money or being a success. In fact, there are as many right paths as there are people, because everyone’s journey is going to be slightly different. Embrace that difference, and make the path go where you want it.

Date: 05/03/2012 Author: Tags: , , , , , Category: Everyday Finances, Inspired by Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Sunday Evening Post #32

Day

Amount

Place

Category

Monday

 $  50.00

Gas

Car

Wednesday

 $    5.00

Cafeteria

Allowance

 $  32.00

Old Spaghetting Factory

Eating Out

Friday

 $    6.50

Cafeteria

Allowance

Saturday

 $  25.00

CostCo

Groceries

Sunday

 $  26.00

Qdoba

Eating Out

Under $150 this week. That seems really nice, though it is a little deceptive, since we got our CostCo refund check (of over $100) and used that this weekend. Still, a week of not too much spending, even though I ate at the cafeteria at work twice.

It was a rather stressful week. It started with a call on last Sunday night saying the MIL’s heart rate was off and they thought she might die. She “got better”, but a talk with the doctor on Thursday said she’s slowly getting worse and she doesn’t see any chance of her actually recovering. So on Thursday night, we made the decision to move her to hospice level care.

We also filled out the application for Medicaid coverage for her, as a month in the nursing home she’s at now costs $7,000+ and hospice care does not cover room and board.

As such, we also gave notice to vacate her apartment, put in an order to forward her mail (which I really should have done when she went in for surgery), and then started moving some of her things out today.

I can see the C got his tendency to hoard from his mother, and it is going to be an uphill battle to get him to throw out some things. (And I’m talking about tape dispensers, not memorabilia).

So, I’m going back to the positive things. We got our tax refund this week. And we spent less that $150.

 

 

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

2)      Make money publishing my next art/fiction book

This is on hold for now.

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

My current balance is $45. I have already bought the ticket to FinCon12.

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.

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $18 (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100)

6)      Be healthier

I’ve felt terrible pretty much most of the week. Monday night I had an ear ache that felt like a migraine in my ear. It kind of went downhill from there with the emotional stress of the week. There were some big things going on at work, so I couldn’t take a sick day. That meant I spent most of Saturday lying in bed watching bad movies. It was exactly what I needed.

On Monday I did make turkey chili (all meat) and then tonight we once again used ground turkey for a curry dish.

Turkey Chili over Rice with Corn Bread

Date: 04/03/2012 Author: Category: Sunday Evening Post Bookmark: Permalink
Article

What I’m Reading: I’m Sick and Whiny Edition

Normally the dogs barely wake up when C leaves for class on Saturday morning. But not today. Today they are up and barky and wanting to play tug with my clothes. Foster dog Howie keeps asking to go outside. Finally, on the fourth out, the one I have to put on shoes and a sweatshirt for, he does something.

And, this all seems worse than it really is because I feel like crud. I have since Monday night, but there’s been work to be done, hard decisions to be made, and now, when I have a Saturday in front of me, where I could do chores or I could just curl up in bed after finishing my morning blogging, the dogs won’t let me be.

Yes, I’m whining. It’s my blog. I get to do that. Now on to this week’s links.

 

I got my tax return this week. Funancials tells us that almost 75% of Americans getting tax refunds are putting it toward debt or savings. Ours went to a combination of savings, allowance, and adoption fees.

This is also the time of year my company looks at raises. Over at Wealth Informatics, Suba gives us some tips on how to negotiate a raise, even in a tough economy.

Money Beagle has slowly been doling out his history to us in small doses. This week we got the story of the only time in his life he has been let go.

I just recently started reading Step Away from the Mall. This week, he asks us “What’s your worst money habit?” That’s easy- if I have cash, it gets spent. I got $5 last weekend. I spent $1 every day at work on junk food I didn’t need. (I’d blame the facts that it’s been a stressful week and I don’t feel well, but even if neither of those things had been true, the money would have been spent.)

Given that’s my worst money habit, I also thought I’d link to this older post from The Finance Geek (partly to nudge her into posting again) about her buyer’s remorse for an unplanned meal out.

Also this week, we got our yearly email from the power company that tells us what our commitment to pay more for our power use green energy has done for the environment. We helped prevent the release of 18,001 pounds of carbon dioxide into the environment. And the fact that we do pay extra also apparently helped create jobs. Why am I telling you this? Well, this is one easy (if not inexpensive) way for us to support sustainability. It works for us. And as Jeff at Sustainable Life Blog reminds us, in the Tenets of Sustainability, doing what works for you is always your best option.

 

And now, because I need a reminder of serenity, here is a picture we took near sunset from Land’s End in Wales (the western most point in England) looking out across the Atlantic.

Land's End, Wales

Date: 03/03/2012 Author: Category: Round Ups Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Assests? What Assets?

Here’s my advice: If you have a family member who you might become responsible for should they lose the ability to care for themselves, get the Power of Attorney documents now, and get involved now. Know what they have out there.

 

The More You Know: We are in the process of applying for Medicaid for my mother-in-law. It has become increasingly clear that she may never leave care again. And even if she does, it will not be before her 100 days of Medicare covered care are up. And that may end even before 100 days because Medicare covers rehab care, not custodial, and if the MIL doesn’t start improving soon, there’s no rehab.

The Medicaid application itself is not a problem- IF you already know someone’s financial picture.

WashingtonState’s application can be done online, and since we have had financial DPOA and have been managing her finances for years, most of the information they are asking for I have at my fingertips.

I am the one who set up all of her online accounts, so I know her checking and savings balances. I know how much her monthly rent is. I know what her social security disability and other disability income amounts to.

I know how much her condo is worth, how much rent she receives, the mortgage payment, and the HOA dues.

But let’s be clear- I know this because I have been managing her finances for over 3 years. I know this information, but she wouldn’t.

For information I don’t know off the top of my head, like property taxes, I have all the information I need to go look those up, too.

In all honesty, given our particular situation, this was turning out to be a fairly quick and easy process. Until…

 

Hitting a Roadblock: The MIL has two whole life policies with Physician’s Mutual. She used to have three, but she missed payments on them during the months before we took over her finances and they refused to reinstate the third.

Since then, I’ve stopped making the monthly payments and just do one big payment at the beginning of the year (and it isn’t even all that big). That way, there’s really not a danger of missing it.

I even went on to the Physician’s Mutual site and set up an online account there, so that we could access the information relating to the account without a problem.

Problem- the site doesn’t anywhere tell you what the account is worth. I know that we make a payment to the life insurance every year, but I have no idea how much her policies are for.

So I called Physician’s Mutual.

First thing you need to know- C and I have made a conscious decision that I never misrepresent myself as her (except in dire circumstances- happened once back on 2000, which is a different story). So I called and identified myself as me, her DIL and DPOA.

I explained that the MIL is currently mentally incapacitated and that we’re trying to get the information for the Medicaid application. I just needed to know if I was looking in the wrong spot online to find out the value of her policies, or if they could tell me the value.

 

Let’s be clear here. Even if we did not have DPOA, given his mother’s current mental state, C would have the legal right and responsibility to manage her finances as well as her medical decisions. We would need this information for the Medicaid application, regardless.

 

Here’s what I was told. They could not even tell me how to navigate the site knowing I was not her. They would not give me any information until I had faxed in the DPOA, and they had time to scan it into their system. In addition, the fax with the DPOA must include any policy numbers associated with her account. It would take up to 72 hours after I faxed the information in before it was associated with the account.

 

Random wedding picture since you guys like pictures and getting married is what got me into this in the first place

What Happens If…?: Do you see the problem? If we hadn’t had the POA paperwork already signed, they wouldn’t talk to us at all. If we hadn’t been involved in her finances and known her policy numbers, they would not associate the POA paperwork with her account, and hence, they would not talk to us.

 

How do people manage this process when they aren’t already managing these processes? I’m frustrated by the fact that they won’t even tell me how to navigate the site, but at least I know that in three days, they will have the paperwork that says they legally have to disclose this information to me. But what about for people for whom their loved one’s medical issue came suddenly?

C was once declared his mother’s temporary guardian- back in 2000. That takes time and a lawyer.

 

We are honestly the best case scenario for this kind of issue. And yet, we still find it frustrating and somewhat time consuming. (In all honesty, if it weren’t for having to wait for the life insurance company, the Medicaid application would have taken me at most 30 minutes to fill out, since I have or know where to find all the information they are asking for.) I can not imagine what it would be like if we were not so well prepared.

 

Be Prepared: For your own sanity, I repeat my advice from the start of this article. If you have a family member, who is not your spouse, for whom you would become the medical/financial decision maker should something happen, get your POA done now.

That saves you the time and expenses of having to go through the courts to be appointed guardian and lets you start moving on the process right away.

Get involved in their finances now. Or at least, get the information you would need to access their finances- account and policy numbers, user ids and passwords for online accounts.

Even if you don’t have to manage their day to day finances like we do for the MIL, the quicker and easier it is for you to obtain their information, well, the quicker and easier the process is in general.

And let’s be honest. When you are dealing with the fact that someone you love is no longer capable of taking care of themselves, your energy and patience for dealing with all the bureaucratic is next to non-existent.

Date: 01/03/2012 Author: Tags: , , , , , Category: HealthCare, Other People's Money Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Putting Yourself First

Are you one of those people that always puts others first? That no matter what you have going on that needs to be done, you take care of everyone else’s wants before you even consider making time for yourself? This is a trait often associated with women, but I know a number of men who have it, too. (Including roomie J.) I struggle with this trait, and yes, I call it a struggle, because I don’t actually believe it is the best trait to have. Is it better than always putting myself first, yes, but always putting myself last isn’t healthy either.

I Choose Me On Presidents’ Day, I went and got a massage. Technically, I don’t have the money in my allowance for it. We’ve just started the adoption process, which is not inexpensive. We plan on replacing our windows this summer. We are paying for C’s school out of pocket. The $70 I spent on the massage could easily have been a week’s worth of groceries. I got the massage anyway. Why? Well, partly because I couldn’t turn my head, and time was making the pain in my neck and shoulder worse, not better. But also because every once in a while, I have to put myself first. Let’s be honest, if I don’t, who will? C is actually very good at taking care of me, if I ask (or when I’ve been drugged, like when I got my wisdom teeth removed), but if I don’t ask, he assumes I’m fine. When I am sick, he still assumes that I will do everything I normally do, unless I tell him differently. And guess what? It’s my fault that’s the way he treats me. Because that is how I’ve trained him to treat me. In the past, no matter how sick I’ve felt, I’ve still tried to do everything I would normally do. Because that’s what I do. And it’s not healthy. I am sick longer than I should be because I push myself. I get sicker than I need to because I don’t give myself a break; I don’t ask for help. So what happens when I get truly ill? I cannot take care of other people unless I am capable of taking care of myself.

It Applies at Work, Too This is a financial blog, you may say. Other than justifying why you spent $70 on a massage, what is the financial point of this? Well, let’s take roomie J’s scenario. J is incredibly intelligent and has a very strong work ethic. He is probably underemployed in his warehouse job, but warehouse is what he knows. He’s a big guy (6’4”, 300+lbs) who has always done physical labor. When I met J, he was essentially a human forklift at a pillow factory. He spent his work day moving around pallets of pillow fiber. It paid well enough that it covered all of his bills and he could think about things that actually interested him while he was doing it. It’s years later, and J now works at a factory that makes memory foam beds. (Yes, I have the total hookup, and it is awesome.) He was hired in as one of the warehouse guys- loading trucks and all that good stuff. But J is incredibly intelligent, and now that he’s no longer in his 20s, he’s not content to sit around and just follow orders. It didn’t take long at his current job for him to start getting noticed, and promoted. Very good things, indeed. But then he got promoted in to the highest position he could have without a college degree. He started taking night classes so that he could continue moving up the ladder. And then, one of the other people at the company who reported to his boss was let go. This was a person in a position that J technically can’t be given because of the lack of degree. That didn’t stop his boss from giving him that person’s duties, but with no promotion or raise. J was so busy at work, and doing so much overtime that he had to drop out of school. And then, his boss went out on extended medical leave. And guess who was now doing three people’s jobs and being paid as if he were only doing the lowest level of the jobs? J is one of those people that takes care of others first and puts himself last. He did the work of three people without complaining. He stopped his education, for the good of the company, even though the company didn’t appear to be all that interested in what was good for J.

You Have to Take Care of You With the urging of friends, J finally talked to his bosses. He made a point of reminding him that he was doing jobs the company said he can’t do because of his lack of degree, and doing them better than his boss had been. (The company let his boss go after his boss returned from medical leave.) He works at least one day every weekend, and works late most nights when he doesn’t have other plans. He brings work home with him, and is essentially on call at all hours when the warehouse is staffed. Just a few weeks ago, after more than a year of this, J finally got a raise- a nice one, 14%. He’s still probably under paid. So now J is taking one more step at achieving a life/work balance. He has set as one of his goals to work 50% less OT than last year, but not to let any of his tasks suffer. He wants to work smarter, not harder, as we’re all told we should. But here’s the thing, he’s still doing the jobs of three people. He has to not only look at himself, he has to ask for help. He has trained his company to treat him one way, and now, he has to ask for the support they should have been giving him all along. It is their job to hire the number of people the work demands. It is not his job to work the number of hours demanded by the work. He has to decide that he deserves a massage.

Edited to add: Because everyone seems fascinated by our trip to England 4 years ago, here’s the view from Castle Tintagel. My favorite thing about England was the bathtubs- all were deep and long bathtub. Baths every night were a requirement to taking care of ourselves after climbing all over sites like Tintagel.

Date: 28/02/2012 Author: Category: Lessons Learned Bookmark: Permalink
Article

Sunday Evening Post #31

Day

 Amount

Place

Category

Monday

 $  70.00

Massage

Allowance

Friday

 $300.00

Adoption Agency

Child

Saturday

 $  80.00

Safeway

Groceries

Sunday

 $    2.00

Starbucks

Allowance

 $  50.00

Gas

Car

This was a good week, spending wise. Yes, I got myself a massage on Monday. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to turn my head the entire week. I put that expense under allowance, but on some level, it is medical. I have a very messed up shoulder, and while my insurance covered massage therapy when we were treating my tendonitis to get full range of motion back, they won’t cover maintenance. That usually means that I go in for a massage every 6 months or so, but it has been closer to 8 months this time round, and it was needed.

The other big expense was on Friday. The “super secret” application I mentioned earlier this week- that was our application to an adoption agency. Were we ever really in danger of not being accepted? Probably not, but about the big things, I worry even when I don’t need to.

Lest you all think I am copying Money For College Project (I’m not, but this is a really cool thing to have in common), this is something C and I have been discussing for years. We originally looked at working directly with the state and adopting from foster care back in 2010. After taking some of the training, we realized that was not going to work for us. For various reasons, this was put on hold until this year.

We are very excited to be working with the agency we are, but we also know this is a very slow process and we’re still at the very beginning of it. But I promise, I’ll be doing a post on the economics of it soon.

 

As a note on our gas costs, we noticed today at one of the cheap stations that diesel was $4.19/gallon. We’ve been paying $4.00/gallon for our bio-diesel (B99) all winter, but figured that the price would be up today. Nope. Our bio-d was still $4.00, but at the place where we buy our bio-d, regular diesel was $4.29/gallon. You’d think that the prices would even out a bit, but not this winter. This winter our bio-d has been consistently cheaper or the same price as regular diesel. I guess it’s nice not to be so dependent on petroleum.

 

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 had a short story accepted into an anthology! I got notification on Tuesday. There is no guarantee I’ll be paid- the anthology is run like a contest. Two editor’s picks will get paid $100 each, and one contributors’ will get paid $50. (All contributors will have a chance to read all stories accepted and vote.)

So I may not get paid, but I will have a physical book that my work is published in. Quite excited about that. (And I promise to let everyone here know when the anthology is available.)

2)      Make money publishing my next art/fiction book

The artist I plan to be working with has been really swamped with her new job. I saw her for about 2 minutes earlier this week. Once her schedule gets settled, we can sit down and discuss the book.

As for using my dog park pictures for a dog park/Life by Pets version, I need to go through my pictures and make sure I have enough that are decent enough quality, and then work to get a web page for them put up.

Update: I’m rethinking the micro-fiction Life by Pets idea. I’ve put up a couple of pet pictures as inspirations on Fiction in 50, and by far, they get the fewest submissions (they rarely get any). I don’t know if I’ll really need to hit up the pet blogger faction for entries or if it’s just going to be a no go. It costs around $100 to publish one of these books in a fashion that makes them widely available, so this time around, I don’t want to wait over 2 years to get a $22 check.

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

My current balance is ($194), however, I’ve already bought the FinCon12 ticket, so I only need to save $500 more.

The $250 I get from the tax return will put me in the positive.

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

It was announced this week that the Epsilon class application will go up in August. I plan to be a member of that class. 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.

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $18 (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100)

6)      Be healthier

We went to the dog park yesterday, but that’s it.

I don’t even remember much of what we ate this week. Last night, C did make the sausage tortellini soup that he made for our very first date, only without the sausage. It’s quite healthy (tortellini, zucchini, carrots, tomato base) and that will be dinner again tonight, as well.

But since I took it, here’s a picture of my turkey noodle casserole from last week.

Date: 26/02/2012 Author: Tags: , , , Category: Sunday Evening Post Bookmark: Permalink
Article

What I’m Reading: Still Paying Comcast Edition

While I ponder whether or not I’m going to do anything about Comcast charging me $90/month for internet and one channel (the Discovery channel, everything else I get is a broadcast or PBS station and could be picked up without cable), here’s what I ‘ve been reading this last week.

 

Over at the Money Principle, John talks about being a baby boomer, and what that means to him in these uncertain financial times.

Super Frugalette shares why they are opting to fund their retirement over paying down debt faster. (I agree with this decision.)

Me at Stonehenge - be jealous

Jana of Daily Money $hot is one of my favorite bloggers and people in general. Besides her own great work, she features so wonderful guest posts, including a great one on Thursday from S at American Debt Project. So, yes, I will admit it- I am jealous of you, Jana.

Hank, from Money Q&A takes a moment to tell us about himself. I’m going to have to do one of these posts, soon, I think. But let me say three things to Hank. 1) Thank you for sharing. 2) Thank you for serving- my father and brother both served in the Army (armored cav and space command respectively), so I have a soft spot for Army guys. 3) Dogs are wonderful, and I have never met an English Bulldog that wasn’t sweet as could be, but please, please, please, contact me or do lots of research before you get one. They (sadly) have lots of health issues and can be some of the most every day work intensive dogs to own. (And by this I mean they need their bottoms wiped after potty breaks.)

My father, sometime in the early 70s

While I knew Jana before joining Yakezie, I’ve also met some wonderful bloggers since then. Average Joe and Money for College Project have become two of my favorite sites because I enjoy their writers so much. I have quite a bit in common with both of them, and love what they do.

This week, Average Joe finished up his College Planning series with Why He’s a Upromise Fanboy and Money for College Project talked about Financial Aid for Older Students. Given that C is in school for the foreseeable future, I should maybe be paying attention to these things.

 

And finally, I want people to know that I pay attention to where people find my blog. I noticed last week that I had gotten some folks coming over from a place called the Mr. Money Mustache forums- in fact, I was listed as one of the blogs someone over there follows. (Thank you, DC, whoever you are.) This made me happy (it really doesn’t take much), and I decided to check out the Mr. Money Mustache blog. I must say, I really enjoyed the compare and contrast between MMM and Tim Ferriss (author of the 4 Hour Work Week, in case, like me, you had no idea who that was.)

Last Sunday's dinner- made by J (now really be jealous)

Date: 25/02/2012 Author: Tags: , , , , , , , Category: Round Ups Bookmark: Permalink
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