<$Tuesday, September 25, 2007$>
Payday Report for September 21st, 2007
| Payday was last Friday. It was a smaller-than-usual check, reflecting a shorter-than-usual pay period, with hardly any overtime. The budget worked out okay as far as there being enough to cover everything for the next two weeks, but only just. There wasn't any left over to help build back up our savings. We're still waiting on Husband's student loan check to replenish our emergency fund, but it bothers me that we haven't been able to contribute any steady income to savings lately. Even with cutting back on our food spending, with insurance bills and other medical and health costs hitting us this month, we're still pretty much living paycheck to paycheck, without much room for extras. Nosir, I don't like it. With the blogging revenue, at least I'm making some slight progress paying down the big credit card, so that's something, I guess. I just know I'll feel about a kajillion times better when that emergency fund is filled back up. Labels: money management |
Networking for the Fearful
If you read my post on being held back by fear, then you can probably guess how much I suck at things like networking and marketing. I'm never short on home-based business ideas, but they never seem to get off the ground because of that whole "too shy to go out and tell people about it" thing I've got going. I figure internet marketing is my best bet--I get to hide all safe behind my computer screen, and my writing skills are MUCH better than my verbal skills. So I'm thinking about signing up with Direct Matches. It's like LinkedIn for small business owners, a way to network with other business and get your name out there, safely, without having to deal with all the scary face-to-face or phone phobia. Their free membership looks like it has everything I need to help get the word out, and they even provide opportunities to get paid for advertising your own business--which means more cash in the debt-reduction kitty. I might as well go ahead and sign up my knitting shop--what have I got to lose? Labels: disclosure, entrepreneurship, marketing, PPP |
<$Thursday, September 20, 2007$>
Carnivals and Coming Attractions
| This week has been a bit insane, work-wise, and it doesn't show any signs of letting up. But I want to pop in and give a quick carnival shout-out -- my "Cost of Fear" post was featured in two carnivals this week: the Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted this week by Money, Matter and More Musings, and the Festival of Frugality, over at No Credit Needed. Thanks for all your work, guys. Next week, things will hopefully settle down enough for me to give a payday report, as well as an update on how we're doing with our food spending (the short version: better, but there's still room for improvement). And that's probably it from me for this week. Labels: carnivals |
<$Friday, September 14, 2007$>
Of course, Buffy was anything BUT frugal with all those leather pants...
| If you read me over at Sparkle Motion, then you know I'm a huge Buffy fan. So when I come across an article titled 11 Things Buffy Taught Me About Frugality And Simplicity, I've got to give a shout-out, natch. |
The Cost of Fear
| I finally took care of my financial housekeeping errands today. I succeeded in lowering my cell phone bill by $10 by switching to a plan with fewer minutes (I couldn't switch to a lower text-messaging plan, though--turns out the ones advertised on the site are for single plans and we would have had to buy one for each line. The unlimited plan we've got is the only one that applies to multiple lines, so we've still got the best available deal there). The only drawback is that we had to agree to a new two-year contract, but we've been pretty happy with T-Mobile, so that shouldn't be a problem. I'm also having paperwork sent to us to add my husband as a joint account holder (as opposed to an authorized user) on all of my credit cards except Citibank--they "don't do" joint accounts any longer. That's probably a good thing for us, though, as that's the one with the largest balance, and that might negatively impact Husband's credit score instead of helping it. While I was at it I asked Discover to please stop sending me convenience checks that I have to shred. I wish I could blame lack of time for me taking so long to take care of this stuff, but that wouldn't be honest. The truth is that I kept putting it off out of fear. Fear that I wouldn't get the answer I wanted. Fear of rejection, I guess? It's silly, I know. The worse that could have happened was that I'd be told no, and nothing would change. The best was that I would get everything I asked for, and save money. In actuality I didn't get everything I was hoping for, but I still knocked a significant amount of money off my phone bill, and made sure my husband's credit score won't be negatively affected by the new FICO policy. It all turned out well. So why on earth did it take me so long to just do it? I've always been shy by nature. I'm an introvert, and I have a tendency to feel like it's just too much trouble to stand up for myself or ask for what I want. I'm aware of this, and aware that it's often a silly reason not to be my own advocate, and am usually pretty good at not letting this stand in my way. When I do, like I did this week, it's infuriating. Putting it off didn't really hurt anything this time; T-Mobile made my new plan retroactive to keep my billing cycle current. But it makes me think about all of the times it did make a difference. How many fees have I been charged simply because I waited too long to take action? How much money have I lost over the years because I was too timid to haggle, or simply to ask for a better deal? I have a feeling that knowing the answer would make me sick. If this tendency affects you, too, it's not that difficult to overcome, if you really want to. Just remember this: the worst that can happen is that they'll say no. And that affects you how, exactly? Other than causing a moment's worth of irritation and frustration, that passes, and you're right where you started. It's not like you actually lose anything, other than maybe five minutes of your time. The worst that could happen is that nothing happens. Is that terrible enough to keep you from trying, when the best that could happen is that you'll get your way? And the reality is that you usually end up somewhere in the middle? For me, it's not. And telling myself this is usually enough to spur me into action. Usually. This week, I'm not sure why that took so long to work. I guess I was just too tired to battle myself. Battling my own irrational fear is the hard part. Once that's conquered, the rest is pretty easy. Labels: advice, credit cards, money management |
<$Wednesday, September 12, 2007$>
Free Sporting Lessons
| *Sponsored* I've never been much for sports, as either a spectator or a participant, but with four nephews (and a fifth on the way!), you can be sure that I've attended my fair share of Little League games, and I can recognize the positive impact that involvement in team sports has had on each my nephews' development. I also understand the desire parents' have to do everything they can to give their kids a leg up in the game and help them go as far as they can in their chosen sport (and with things like possible college scholarships and potential multi-million dollar professional sports careers in the offing, who can really blame them?). Parents who can't afford private lessons might feel that their kids are at a disadvantage, but now the playing field is a bit more level. Play Sports TV is an instructional guide for sports that offers hundreds of free videos and other instructional content, including a blog with even more tips, interviews with coaches and athletes, and other kid-friendly content. They emphasize character and sportsmanship, and even offer sportsmanship training for parents, who often tend to have more at stake emotionally in each game than their kids do. All in all, this looks like a great resource for parents and young athletes alike, and the best part is, it's FREE. Labels: disclosure, freebies, PPP |
A Tale of Good Drive-Thru Service
| Decent customer service is rare these days, especially at drive-through windows where it seems that if the kids who man them have even HAD any customer service training, they can't be bothered to remember it any more than they can bother to say "Welcome to McCarl's King" or thank you for your order (or make sure you get what you ordered, for that matter). I'm not a huge fan of Starbucks, but this time of year, when the temperature dips below 65 in the mornings and actually stays below 90 all day and fall is so close you can practically smell it, I fall prey to the Pumpkin Spice Latte the same as anybody else. With yesterday being the first truly fall-like day of the season, I was jonesing for one by the time I got off work, so I went to Starbucks and placed my order at the drive-through. Now that I think of it, the kids at the Starbucks drive-through window usually are pretty courteous and thorough with the customer service. So score one for Starbucks Corp., that they actually care about such things in this age of entitlement enough to properly train their staff in the ways of treating customers like they matter. But I digress. Back to me at the drive-through yesterday. There was a line of cars in front of me, such that after I ordered I couldn't pull forward for a couple of minutes. After about half a minute passed, I realized that it was still warm enough that I'd prefer a Frappuccino, so I called out to the box and asked if it was too late to change my order. "No problem," said Taylor the Latte Boy, and adjusted my price accordingly. A few more minutes and I made it to the window, where were Taylor's dazzling All-American good looks not enough to make me fall for him while he rang up my order and handed me my beautiful cup of frozen pumpkiny, spicy goodness, I would most certainly have been done for when he then held up a lidded paper cup and said, "We already made your latte, do you want it too? No charge." And that's how I got to sip a re-heated free Pumpkin Spice Latte on the way to work this morning, filling me with a warm and happy buzz that has yet to wear off. Thanks, Starbucks. That kind of service at the very least deserves a mention. |
<$Monday, September 10, 2007$>
Stupid interest rates, stop sucking up all my money!
| *Sponsored Post* We've got our debt down to two credit cards, one of which is a 0% rewards card that I use to buy our gasoline (this amounts to the occasional free tank of gas, which is pretty nice). Last time I did my financial housecleaning I managed to get the interest lowered on my other card--the one with the biggest balance, naturally--but it's still an uncomfortably high rate. My attempt to get my 0% card to raise my balance high enough to transfer my balance over was a complete failure, too. I'm still determined to get that interest rate down somehow. I need to compare credit cards to find good offers on 0% credit cards, preferably ones that also offer 0% balance transfers. I don't want to make the mistake of just applying for whatever and crossing my fingers, like I've done in the past, since that won't do my credit score any favors. But if Citibank won't lower my interest rate any further, then I think it's time to start looking for someone who's willing to take my money at a lower rate. There's got to be somebody out there who'd be happy to do that. Time to explore my options. Labels: credit cards, debt consolidation, disclosure, PPP |
One year down; a lifetime to go.
| Friday got busy, and didn't leave me any time to do any of the financial housekeeping I was planning. Hopefully I'll be able to get to it today, or at least this week. I'll keep you posted. We had a pretty low-key, low-cost first anniversary celebration. We went out to a matinee, and had plans to go to a mid-range ethnic restaurant afterwards, but when we got there we found that the place was closed for business, and Husband was stressing about the ton of homework waiting for him back at home, so we called it a day and went home, where the next day (our actual anniversary) we opened a bottle of Korbel that I'd bought the night before our wedding and had an obligatory bite (or several) of surprisingly tasty freshly thawed year-old wedding cake along with our toast. We didn't spend a lot of money making a huge production out of it, and we didn't need to. It was a perfectly nice day spent simply enjoying each other's company. And cake. Labels: personal |
<$Thursday, September 6, 2007$>
Payday Report for September 6, 2007
| The bills are paid and the rest is budgeted. I realized that I need to spend a month tracking my expenses more thoroughly before I'm sure how much to allocate to each grocery category, so I've still got a main grocery fund, but I did separate out pet costs and supplements. I also set aside a separate restaurant/take-out budget, so that'll neither cut into our groceries nor create any resentment if either of us have to cover this out of our allowance. Our individual spending allowances shrunk, but I think it's an amount we can both live with. Now we just have to make sure we stick to our budget, remembering that if we go over, it comes out of our allowances, not out of savings, and definitely not going on credit cards. We also had some medical and automotive costs to cover, so I couldn't add anything to savings this time around; but we're still waiting for Husband's student loan check, which should more than adequately cover everything we borrowed from savings last month. So I'm not stressing about that. All in all, it could be better, but it could also be a heck of a lot worse. Now I just need to sort through my coupons and see how far I can make our grocery budget stretch for the next two weeks (and change). Labels: money management, personal, spending |
Affordable Web Hosting For Your Small Business
| *Sponsored* A lot of people on the debt-reduction and financial improvement trail run small businesses on the side in order to bring in extra income. For a lot of people it's either that, or get a second job. I know for me, after putting in long, exhausting hours at my full-time job, the last thing I want to do is go stand on my feet for several more hours flipping burgers or hawking somebody else's merchandise, so I've found online business endeavors to be ideal for bringing home that extra that lets us get ahead. Of course, the thing about running an online business is that it can get expensive, which pretty much defeats the purpose. It can be a challenge to find small business web hosting at prices that don't cut into your profits; but it can be done. Concentric offers a basic web hosting plan that has everything I could possibly need if I decide to move my knitting shop off of Etsy, for an affordable monthly fee. They even offer a free domain name with every hosting account--AND they let you have up to ten domain aliases, which means you could feasibly run up to ten different business off of a single account. That's handy, especially if you're ADD like me and have about ten different business ideas a week. I'm bookmarking these guys for future reference. Labels: disclosure, entrepreneurship, extra income, PPP, tools |
Making over my budget and cleaning house
| It's payday, at last. I still need to do my bills and set my budget, keeping in mind what I said last week about budgeting everything, and not just setting aside a blanket grocery fund like I usually do. I've also been gathering coupons, and I'll go through the sales fliers before I make my grocery list. I've also talked to my husband and we agreed to limit our shopping at Wild Oats to only organic produce and any must-have items we can't find anywhere else. I'll also try to budget some fun in. With all of the homework my husband has this semester, if we don't get some fun I'm afraid his brain will explode, and we can't afford to have the upholstery cleaned. Also, this weekend's our first anniversary, so I need to leave room for something special. I'll post a payday report this afternoon, and let y'all know how it goes. Also also, it's about time again to do some financial housekeeping. Every few months I like to review all of our bills to see if there's anything we can let go and stop paying for, or any costs we can cut, and also take care of any other financial chores I've been putting off. This round's To Do list includes making sure my husband is a joint account holder on all of my credit cards, and not just an authorized user, so that our low credit balances will still count toward his credit score. I'm also going to make another stab at trying to lower our cell phone bill. When I tried earlier this summer, I was told that we already had their least expensive family plan, and since I was still under contract I didn't really have any negotiating power. If I'm correct that I only signed a one-year contract (I need to double check this before I do anything), then it expires this week, which coincides nicely with a special that T-Mobile is currently running for a family plan that costs about $10 less than our current plan. We've also decided to downgrade our unlimited text messaging package to a 1,000/month package, which will knock about $5/month off of our cell phone bill. If I'm successful in getting them to downgrade us to their less expensive family plan, that's a total of $15/month we'll save, or $180/year. Sweet. I'll let you know how it goes. Labels: money management |
<$Wednesday, September 5, 2007$>
Tiny Dog Threads
| So one of the secret things I've alluded to in recent weeks has achieved reality and doesn't need to be a secret anymore. I just made over my Etsy shop and added Tiny Dog Threads, hipster fashions for tiny dogs. I only have two designs up right now (pictured over in the sidebar): the Jolly Roger sweater and a Union Jack coat; but I'm working on more. These are customizable and made to order. I figure I can handle two a week at my current schedule. I don't expect them to sell like hotcakes, but I know from experience that it's hard to find sweaters for teeny, tiny dogs that fit properly and aren't too frou-frou, so I expect them to do better than my stitch markers have, at least. Proceeds, minus the cost of materials, will of course be added to the debt reduction kitty. Coming soon: jack-o-lantern purses! And possibly jack-o-lantern tiny dog sweaters, come to think of it.... Labels: extra income, fun, pets, self-promotion |
<$Tuesday, September 4, 2007$>
Energy Policy TV
| *Sponsored Post* I have a confession. Throughout most of my adult life, I haven't been very politically-minded, nor have I made it much of a point to stay informed on what's going on in the world around me. I've always been pretty content to keep to my own little corner of the world, and it's hard enough for me to keep up with that, let alone with a global conscience. But all of that seems to be changing as I get older. On a selfish note, much of that has to do with my position among the indebted and indentured middle class, and looking to help effect changes that will improve my class condition. I've been making an effort toward going green, but a big incentive is that "going green" often lines up nicely with "being frugal." That it's also better for the planet is just a side bonus. I am making attempts to be more proactive, though, and to be aware of the bigger picture and ways that I can help to change it for the better. Energy Policy TV is helping me out with that by hosting video footage of press conferences, senate and congressional hearings, board meetings, and other gatherings of politicians and other people in power discussing climate change and what they're trying to do about it. This is information that will come in handy come election time. Right now I'm watching a video of the CEO of the Electric Power Research Institute giving an economic analysis of alternative energy resources. It's interesting stuff, and is helping to ignite an interest that sparked in me a few weeks ago, that being the possibility of going solar once Husband and I get our own home. It seems like it might be a costly investment up front, but one that would pay dividends in the long run, not only by cutting our energy bill, but also by helping reduce strain on resources. It would be great if discussions like this helped to make solar generators and other alternate-power sources more readily available to the general public. Labels: disclosure, green, PPP |
Carni-fest!
| I made up for my dearth of carnival submissions the last few weeks by submitting to three carnivals for this week: When Just Enough Is Good Enough made it into both the Carnival of Personal Finance (hosted this week by Advanced Personal Finance) and the Carnival of Debt Reduction (over at Debt Free Revolution). And my Food Problem: Link Roundup post is listed in this week's Festival of Frugality, hosted this week at Bean Sprouts. I haven't had time to go through any of the lists and pick my own gems, but a skim through each of them looks promising. So head on over and check them out! Labels: carnivals |