<$Tuesday, April 24, 2007$>
Plans, frustrations and useful papercrafts
| I'm having a blogging slow-down this week as I catch up and get some stuff squared away at my job and work on finding a better work/blogging/writing balance. In the spirit of getting organized and setting goals, though, here are some topics I'd like to tackle here once my workload lightens up a bit: ~~~ That's what's on slate for the future. Meanwhile, between not being able to make a significant impact on what's left of my highest-interest credit card this month, and having to dip into our savings to get us through this pay period, I'm feeling a tad discouraged. It's not really putting me in the mood to talk about my finances. Part of the reason I'm focusing this week on getting on top of things on the job front is so that I'll have more time for some of my extra-income pursuits, such as writing for Associated Content (or referring people to sign up and write their own articles; do it through that link and I get a little referral kickback). I have plenty of article ideas, as well as things I want to add to my Etsy shop, not to mention promoting said shop; but I'm too distracted by things piling up around the office, and all of the guilt that goes with neglecting them. I think I'll be more motivated and productive on the extra earnings front once I'm not feeling quite so overwhelmed in my actual job. Which will be a very good thing, seeing as how we really need that extra cash to help us get ahead. Without it, we're just treading water. ~~~ Want to save money on what you carry it in? Check out this Instructables on making a paper wallet. I whipped one up on my coffee break a little while ago. I've been looking to replace my bulky and worn-out wallet with something less apt to weigh my purse down, and while this might not be the most fashion-conscious choice I could make, it's perfect for containing my money and credit cards without any bulk, all for the cost of a sheet of paper. As one astute commenter points out, it also doubles as a scratch pad to jot down grocery list items, and it's easily replaceable when you run out of room to write. And it's recyclable, too! Very nifty. Labels: extra income, freebies, goals, personal, random |
<$Friday, April 20, 2007$>
Payday decisions
| Today is payday. That doesn't just mean I get paid today; it also means everyone I owe money to for this half of the month gets paid. Crazy as it sounds, I usually look forward to doing my bills on payday. It's actually fun when there's money left over, and I can watch my debts shrink and my savings grow. Today, though, was not so much with the fun. Despite this being the first paycheck to include my new raise, it was unusually small, being that it only covered ten working days, and it was a rare earning period where I didn't rack up any overtime. In a word: stress. We had enough to cover all of the bills and necessities, but only just. Once I deducted the tithe, rent, all of the bills, and food budget for the next two weeks, we had about two dollars left over--not enough to cover cost of living expenses until next payday. I have a little money in my Paypal account, but not that much, and I don't have another payment scheduled from PayPerPost for another six days, plus I'm counting on that money to cover my car insurance bill that's due next month. So what to do? I considered just doing without. I really doubt we could both make it, though, and we'd be too tempted to use the credit cards. Besides, since this would also mean my husband had no spending money for the next two weeks, I was worried that this might just set us up for two weeks of fighting. I next considered not paying the full amount on our rent. Since our landlady is my mother, I'm pretty sure I could have gotten away with this; but then it would have felt like borrowing money from the bank of mom, and I'd not only have to worry about budgeting the remainder into the next payday cycle, but I'd also have to deal with all of the emotional interest that went with it. Then it occurred to me that we could borrow from our savings to carry us through until next week. I'm so unused to even having any savings that I forgot it was even an option. Even when I did, I debated taking any money out of it. I wasn't sure this constituted enough of an emergency to justify touching it, and I'm so gung-ho about adding money to it that it hurts me to take anything out of it that I don't have to. In the end, though, I did just that, borrowing enough to cover miscellaneous expenses for the next couple of weeks. It didn't put that big a dent in the savings, so now that it's done, I'm at peace with it. I guess this is one of the things we have savings for, isn't it? Labels: money management, personal, spending |
<$Wednesday, April 18, 2007$>
A matter of perspective
| It may seem (and often feels) like I'm starting at the bottom, but financially I've come a long way from where I started a year ago. This time last year I was out of work. The longterm temp assignment I'd been working for the past year ended about six weeks prior, the temp agency wasn't coming through with any new assignments, and my hunt for full-time employment turned up a few nibbles here and there, but no actual bites. The savings I'd built up in anticipation of my assignment ending were about to run out, and I was stupid enough to assume that since my last job had been temporary, I didn't qualify for unemployment benefits (I found out later that I was wrong, and I did; that's what I get for trusting my assumptions instead of checking out the facts, and let that be a lesson to you), so I was starting to borrow money from my mom to help cover my bills. It wasn't quite the lowest point in my life, but it was definitely in the bottom five. I was also trying to plan a wedding. I still had my job when we started, and with my mom agreeing to pay a fixed amount, we decided to keep up with the planning, and to try to keep the budget within the range that my mother was willing to pay. Planning a wedding is stressful under the best circumstances. Add it to the stress of being unemployed in a crappy job market with a mountain of debt already looming over you, and you can pretty well guess that I was a basket case. A month later, I finally, thankfully, landed my current job. My husband-to-be was absolutely miserable in his low-paying customer service call center job, and, truth be told, it was making him a little miserable to be around. So I prayed hard for a job that would pay well enough to afford us to live on my income while he went back to school. My BS in social science wasn't good for much other than either low-paying social service work or more schooling, but I had enough administrative experience under my belt that, combined with my degree, made me eligible for a pretty high-ranking and decent-paying administrative job. Since starting this job almost a year ago, I've gotten married, learned how to budget for two, and figured out how to live in such a way that we're fairly comfortable on just my income while still managing to pay down my credit cards and build a savings fund. I also started making a small amount of money from my knitting and related craft projects--not much, but enough to finance my knitting habit; and I also monetized my journal, which hasn't exactly made me rich, but has done a lot for our savings fund and provides a comfortable cushion between paychecks. Since the sucktasticness of a year ago, I'm now about a month away from paying off my highest interest credit card, we've got just about enough in the bank to finance our move once we find a new home we're both happy with, I've got a decent start on a retirement fund, and thanks to my discovery of personal finance blogs, my financial education has grown exponentially. We've still got a ways to go before we achieve financial freedom, but compared to where I was a year ago, I already feel like I've struck it rich. Labels: personal |
Finance Fundamentals
| Blueprint for Financial Prosperity culled all of the personal finance floating around the webs to gather together Ten Fundamental Concepts in Personal Finance - some of which are pretty common sense, but I guess that's what makes them fundamental. (Via Get Rich Slowly.) Labels: advice, finance+blogs, money management |
<$Tuesday, April 17, 2007$>
Web Tools: FICO Credit Score Estimator
| Lifehack.org (via DumbLittleMan) posted a link to a handy FICO Credit Score Estimator. I just tried it out, and it appears to be pretty accurate. Guesstimating within a range-span of 50, it estimated the range in which my credit score fell the last time I checked it a couple of months ago. It wouldn't be my go-to source if I were getting ready to apply for a loan, but it looks like a good bet for tracking my score as I work to improve it. Labels: credit cards, freebies, tools |
<$Monday, April 16, 2007$>
The Tax Man Giveth
| My husband and I did our taxes this weekend. Actually, we went and got them done, and it made for two firsts for us: the first time we filed jointly, and the first time either of us has let a professional prepare our taxes instead of doing it ourselves. Overall, it was a great experience, and I think it just might become standard procedure. We decided to have someone else do our taxes this year because, between getting married and me having three W-2s from last year, plus a small but taxable payout from a class action suit against a former employer, plus 401K dividends and student loan interest and other stuff that we were pretty sure wouldn't go on a 1040-EZ, we thought it best to just go ahead and pay for someone who knew what they were doing, because we definitely didn't. We waited so long because we both just assumed we'd owe, or if we did get a refund that it would barely be enough to cover the preparer's fee--which goes to show exactly how much we know, which is, not much. Never having gone this route before, neither of us knew what to expect. Since it was the last weekend before the deadline, and since we didn't have an appointment, we expected a long wait. I packed up my current knitting project to take along, and Matt and I each brought a novel to get us through the wait. So imagine our delight (mostly; I admit to being slightly disappointed over not getting in any knitting time) when we signed in at reception and were told to go right in. We didn't even have time to take advantage of the free coffee and donuts, which is probably a good thing for my diet, although the penny pincher in me cries whenever I pass up free food and/or coffee. The rest was pretty painless. We handed the preparer our paperwork, he entered all of the relevant numbers, and in less than ten minutes he informed us that we were getting a pretty sizeable (for us) federal refund (we owe the state, the greedy sons of monkeys, but it's a small enough amount to be pretty well rendered painless by the refund we're getting). After that he led us out to another desk where they took care of all of the administrative processing, physical preparation (printing, attaching W2s, envelope stuffing, all that fun stuff), and made sure we paid them their fee, which took about another ten minutes. That's twenty stress-free minutes to get us back what the government owes us. TOTALLY worth the fee. So what are we doing with this windfall? Mostly, we're being responsible and applying it to credit card debt, although we're debating using part of it to pay for things we keep putting off because we don't have the money, like taking our dog for various veterinary treatments that could really improve the quality of his old age, or getting Matt some new glasses. But the vast majority of it is going straight to the credit cards, which should lower the minimum payment on the highest-balance card, which will mean more of my monthly payment going toward the principle, which ultimately means a faster pay-off. All of that definitely works for me. Labels: credit cards, extra income, money management, personal, spending |
<$Friday, April 13, 2007$>
Free Stuff: SparklePeople.com
| Yesterday in my journal I asked my readers to help me decide whether to keep my Weight Watchers subscription and shell out the membership fee. I was considering doing so, because after 4 days into my free week-long trial membership, I was impressed with their Points Tracker and how well it was keeping me motivated and on-track. A friend commented to point me to SparkPeople.com, and after signing up, looking around the site and trying out their Nutrition Tracker and Fitness Tracker tools, I immediately cancelled my Weight Watchers membership, because, you guys, this is almost EXACTLY THE SAME THING, and it's 100% FREE. Note that I said ALMOST exactly. SP doesn't use points like WW, I suspect because the Points program is proprietary and probably has all kinds of copyrights and trademarks and patents and what-not associated with it. Instead, SP's Nutrition Tracker tracks the actual nutritional value of your meals, including calories, protein, fat and carbs. Instead of a daily points value you get a daily caloric range to shoot for. Lest this sound daunting, I've been tracking my meals and snacks all day and I have yet to have to go look up a nutrition label or do any math. They have a pretty extensive search database wherein all you need to do is look up what you're eating, enter your serving size, and it calculates all of the values for you. SparklePeople also gathers health information beyond just your weight and daily activity level to tailor a diet and fitness plan to your specific needs. The web site also has a HUGE community, complete with a message forum, and teams that you can join for added motivation. They also offer a points incentive in which you can rack up points and earn "trophies" simply by sticking to your plan and accomplishing your goals. This mainly amounts to a gold star system, but, well, I'm enough of a nerd that I'll work pretty hard to get a gold star. So color me impressed. SparklePeople gives me everything I was hoping to get out of Weight Watchers, and then some. And did I mention the part where it's FREE? Labels: freebies, healthy living |
<$Thursday, April 12, 2007$>
3 Things You MUST Do To Get On Top of Your Finances - and HOW to do them
| The big three hindrances inherent in Attention Deficit Disorder are impulsiveness, distractedness, and disorganization. This combination can be hard on the social life, and can wreak havoc on the job front; but nowhere does it tend to do quite as much damage as in the area of finances. Adults with ADD tend to be impulsive shoppers. They find it difficult to pay their bills on time and keep track of their money. There are scads of books and web sites full of financial advice aimed at this population, but the advice usually tends to fall short in one respect: it tells the reader WHAT to do without telling them HOW to do it. As someone with ADD myself, I entered into adulthood with no workable money management skills, despite my parents' best efforts to teach me how to balance a checkbook and drill into me the importance of saving money and making timely payments. I knew that all of these things needed to be done, but I just couldn't do them. Eventually I realized that my parents' methods just didn't work for me. It wasn't because I lacked the discipline to do the things I knew were necessary to stay financially afloat--it was because I simply wasn't wired to do them the way that I had been taught. What I needed was a system, one tailored to my own unique needs and ways of processing and tracking information. I needed to throw out all of the old, established rules and methods and create my own. Since then, I've formed three habits that are essential to living in financial harmony: paying my bills on time, knowing how much money I have at all times, and keeping track of where my money is going. What's more, I found ways to do them that work consistently for me. In a three-part series I'll share my methods here, in the hopes that you'll either find something useful in helping to stabilize your own finances, or gain inspiration in developing methods that work for you. Part One: Paying On Time There is no faster or surer way to damage your credit than by paying your bills late. This holds true for ANY bill, not just credit cards and bank loans. Grace periods might save you from paying late fees if you miss the due date by a few days, but the fact of your lateness will still show up on your credit report and lower your score; and regardless of grace periods, paying late will cause your interest rate to go up and cause you to bleed money--and that's not even counting late fees you incur if you miss your grace period. Few things are more essential to gaining control of your finances than learning to pay your bills on time, every time. Think of this as your first step toward financial independence, remembering that first steps are HUGE. They might not seem that way to those who are already running marathons, but to one just learning to walk, the first step is everything. If you miss it, you fall on your cute little baby tushy. But if you keep trying, eventually you'll make it. Make that first step, and know that eventually, you'll be off and running, too. My own failure to pay my bills on time wreaked all kinds of havoc on my life, from getting my phone shut off to, eventually, having to give up an apartment that I loved because late fees, high interest rates and high minimum monthly payments--all due to late payments -- meant that I could no longer afford the rent. Before I could conquer the problem and start paying on time, I had to examine the reasons I couldn't seem to pay anything on time. Forgetfulness was certainly part of it, but that wasn't the only reason. Procrastination was also a key. I procrastinated because the way I had been taught to tackle my bills--my mother's way of keeping them in a box, dragging them out once or twice a month, and spending what felt like forever going through paper statements, writing checks, stuffing and addressing envelopes, etc.--felt like pure torture, so I put it off. It was easy, because the bills were stashed in a box, and for me, it's out of sight, out of mind. That helped me to forget all about them, and with the tortuous process involved in paying them, I didn't feel particularly motivated to remember. I found online bill pay to be a Godsend. It took everything I hated out of the process of paying bills. However, that still left the other half of the problem: forgetfulness. Online reminder services are a good way to conquer this (and are easy to come by; a quick Google search on "reminders" turned up several such free services)... for some. For me, they worked at first, but eventually I got to where my eye skimmed right over them while reading the contents of my inbox, and then they were quickly forgotten. I needed something more tangible, but still quick and easy. It also occurred to me that I tend to derive a lot of satisfaction and motivation from keeping To Do lists with items that I can check off as I accomplish them. I thought it might be a good idea to apply this to paying my bills, and my Bills To Pay calendar was born. It's really very simple: in a calendar that's large enough to write in legibly (I started out using Outlook printouts; similar printable calendars are available at no cost from both Google and Yahoo), I mark all of my due dates, and I also list all of my bills for the month, along with due dates and payment amounts, in a checklist on the side. I keep this near my computer, where each payday I take it out, go down the list, and make online payments for every bill that's due that pay period. The entire process takes me five minutes, and then I can feel free to forget all about it until the next payday. Having bill payments tied to an event--in this case, payday--helps me remember that it's time to pay them without needing to rely on any external reminders. This method won't work for everybody, and there is plenty of room to tailor it to suit needs and personalities other than mine; but since I started doing my bills this way, I haven't been late once. A word of warning: automatic payments might seem like an even better way to ensure timely bill payments--after all, it's automatic. Set it up once, and you don't ever have to think about it again, other than to make sure that the money is available. And therein lies the rub. Until you have such a strong handle on your finances that you can be a hundred percent certain that you'll have the money there on time, I would advise against signing up for automatic payments. Overdraft fees can be even worse than late fees. Which brings me to my second habit, which will make up Part Two: Knowing How Much You Have. Do you have a system that helps you stay on track financially? If so, I'd love to hear about it, as well as your thoughts, in the comments. Labels: ADD, hacks, money management, systems |
<$Wednesday, April 11, 2007$>
Site Maintenance
| Well, here's the new template. I'm not really sure how I feel about it just yet, but at least it looks more professional than the original. It still needs some tinkering here and there; some of the tab links don't go anywhere yet, and I'm not crazy about the fonts, and the description definitely needs work. I'm out of time for today, though, so those will have to wait a bit. While I was at it, I updated the blogroll with a few new finance blogs, but I'll save you the trouble of clicking that link and just copy the new additions here: Free Money Finance - This is an openly Christian finance blog that uses Biblical principles as a foundation for financial management. If you're wondering what scripture has to say about a particular financial issue, this is a good place to start looking. Money Changes Things - I'm brand new to this one, but I like the idea: once those debts are paid off, those finances are all straightened out and you've arrived at "enough," then what do you do? This blogger looks for creative ways to maintain your newly accomplished wealth, and reminds us that there's a lot more to riches than money and possessions. Gen X Personal Finance - Another Gen-Xer tailoring financial info and advice for my generation, in easy-to-understand terms. Labels: finance+blogs, site maintenance |
<$Monday, April 9, 2007$>
Bad blogger!
| Color me lame. I have an excellent excuse for not blogging, though, as you already know if you follow my journal. My husband and I both came down with some kind of bug on Wednesday (which hit him harder than it hit me), and I was home sick on Thursday, which was followed by a long holiday weekend. Generally speaking, with a few exceptions, if I'm not at work, I'm not online. One of the many drawbacks of not owning a working computer. I spent today catching up and getting back into my routine. Tomorrow, I'll pay this poor, neglected baby blog some much needed attention. I have plans for it, which I hope to carry out this week and which mainly involve a redesign. I have articles planned for it, too, though, so stay tuned. There WILL be content here. In the meantime, a quick finance update: I got paid Thursday, and judging by the amount (I haven't seen my paystub yet), it looks like my raise kicked in earlier than scheduled, so there's some good news. I was able to make another dent in Chase card, as well as loading a hundred into savings. That may not sound like much, but for me that's a pretty big deal. This isn't really a general savings fund, though--it's all earmarked for when we finally move. We still need to get going on that emergency savings fund. That's going to become top priority once the moving fund is fully loaded. I did a little more personal spending on Friday than I should have, what with wanting to build myself a laptop fund and all, but it wasn't really that much, and it was my birthday, so I refuse to feel bad about it. I took advantage of a sale at Ulta to stock up on makeup items I'm about to run out of; ditto a tee-shirt sale at Target. I also found a couple of cute tops at Ross for under $10 each, and I love them, so no guilt there. The only really frivolous spending I did was stopping at Petco to pick up a treat for my aunt's poor, bored, oft-ignored budgie, and while there I bought a toy for my cats on impulse. But it was a pretty cheap toy (just some feathers and sparkly ribbon on a stick), and they love it, so I don't feel too badly about that, either. I wanted to leave off with some links, but I didn't really have time to surf around today, because I was mostly too busy obsessively playing with all of the calculators and tools over at Weightwatchers.com, where I just signed up for a free trial membership that's good for a week (long enough for me to learn all I need to about the points plan). Oh, look, there's a link, and it's for free stuff, too. So there you go. |
<$Wednesday, April 4, 2007$>
Quickie
| My job is keeping me too busy to do the posts I had planned for here today, but I wanted to quickly point you to my journal where I posted a short article about earning extra money through Associated Content. Of course, I get a referral kickback if I can get anyone to sign up using the link there, but who doesn't love to make extra money? Labels: affiliates, extra income, self-promotion |
<$Monday, April 2, 2007$>
National Financial Literacy Month
| According to Get Rich Slowly, this month is National Financial Literacy Month, and JD is marking it by posting a series of short videos about the fundamentals of saving and investing. I need this. I realize I'm way behind where I should be, but until now all of my extra money has gone toward reducing debt and saving toward short-term goals (like our wedding). My husband's been in the same boat. We're only just starting to come to a place where we can think about saving and investing for the future (beyond my 401K), and I realize that I know pitifully little about this stuff. That bothers me, and it bothers me that we don't have any savings to speak of. I opened a high yield savings account a week ago, and I plan to start socking away whatever I can into it. If there's one concept GRS and other personal finance blogs have helped me grasp, it's that little things add up over time to make a huge difference. I struggled with this concept before, thinking that if I couldn't make major contributions to savings, then there was no reason to bother trying. But I have learned the error of my ways, and I know even if I can only save a few dollars a week, that's better than nothing, and it will start to build to significant amounts before I know it. Labels: saving+investing |
The "About Me" Post
| For those just joining us, I might as well tell you a few things about myself. So, randomly... I think that's everything relevant, and probably more than you really need to know. But now you know where I'm coming from, as well as where I'm (hopefully) headed. |
Not gonna Prosper today
| My Prosper listing just expired, with only 6% funding. Bummer, though not surprising. There were about a dozen messages in my inbox this morning from Group Leaders inviting me to join their groups and relist with their backing. Some of them seemed sincere, and some of them made it obvious that they never so much as glanced at my listing. I'm still dithering on whether or not to relist. I think I'm going to do some research on my chances of getting a bank loan at a better rate, and I'm going to research some of these groups, and then I'll make up my mind. There's certainly no reason to rush. Labels: Prosper |