<$Wednesday, April 16, 2008$>
Is Lifelock worth it?
| I don't tend to worry too much about identity theft. It's possible that I don't worry enough. I take all the reasonable precautions--I shred everything with my personal or financial info on it before throwing it out, my passwords all contain numbers AND capitals AND lowercase and are sufficiently obscure terms that would be tough to crack even without the number/caps jiggety, I protect my PINpad during transactions like a straight-A student protects her test answers, I don't carry my social security card around with me--and so far, I've never had my identity stolen. So it would seem that what I'm doing works. But with all of the scary statistics and the alarmist media constantly carrying on about this problem, I sometimes wonder if, so far, we've just been lucky? I've also been hearing a lot lately about lifelock, which sounds like a good idea if, like me, you are an unpleasant combination of busy/hurried/tired/lazy/ADD and are perfectly happy to pay experts to do complicated things for you. $10 a month seems a pretty reasonable fee to set this and forget it and let other people worry about it for you. On the other hand, if you are (also like me) frugal and (SO not like me) have time on your hands, I don't think they do anything that you couldn't do yourself for free. My finances being what they are, I tend to opt for the latter; but really, I think it's a relief to know that, had I the funds, I would never have to take on this headache by myself. Labels: credit cards, financial planning, money management, organizing, product love, tools |
<$Tuesday, February 5, 2008$>
I hate cleaning.
It's getting to be past time for another financial housecleaning session. There are several things that I need to carve out time to take care of over this week and the next, including:
Hrm. The first part of the year is always tough. Those tax rebate checks (and any refunds we might be due for '07) can't come soon enough. At least if I can tackle all of the above, I'll know we've got a good foundation to build on for the rest of the year. Labels: money management, organizing |
<$Monday, February 4, 2008$>
When automated systems fail
| There's a lot of talk these days about automating your finances. Basically, this means setting automatic transfers, deposits and withdrawals according to your payday and billing schedules, and then forgetting about it. This "set it and forget it" approach would seem to be an especially ADD-friendly way to manage your finances, but I've never had enough trust in automated systems not to go wonky to do this for my own finances. This weekend I got confirmation that I was right not to do so. Since my big problem when it comes to paying my bills is simply remembering to do so, I go halfway towards automation by setting up reminders for everything, usually by taking the option for my creditors to e-mail me reminders that my statements are available. Woops! It turns out that I didn't get my monthly reminder for my Paypal Buyer Credit account in December, and as such I completely forgot about it--until I got a letter in the mail on Saturday telling me that I missed a payment and my account is past due. *facepalm* Of course, I immediately signed online to make a payment (for twice the minimum they were asking for), and I spoke to a customer service rep to explain why the payment was late. Now all I can do is hope that this won't put a ding in my credit score. I've been working so hard for the last several years to raise my score, and my last late payment from six years ago is close to falling off of my credit report. The last time I ran my credit through the FICO Score Estimator, it estimated that my credit rating has finally jumped from "Fair" to "Good"--pretty important considering we're about to apply for our first house loan. This is a pretty good lesson for me not to put my trust in those to whom I owe money to do the work of reminding me to pay them on time. Time to set up some external reminders, like Outlook pop-ups and the alarm on my cell phone, to keep me on track. And I'm now convinced more than ever not to trust computers to handle ALL of my finances. The outright scariness of what would happen if any part of that system should ever fail far outweighs the convenience factor, as far as I'm concerned. Labels: bills, credit cards, money management, organizing |
<$Monday, August 13, 2007$>
"Now I'm having a plan."
| This weekend I managed to tackle the small mountain of clutter that had accumulated beside my bed, and ended up tossing out an entire kitchen-size garbage bag's worth of crap (as well as identifying a stack of books that I need to either sell, swap or donate) on the way to unburying my nightstand and making it functional again. 'Twas awesome, and now I'm inspired to do more. Husband and I have been trying to get ourselves motivated to reduce our amount of useless junk for a while now...pretty much since we got married and moved in together to a space that was barely big enough to fit all of my stuff in the first place. Besides being overcrowded, when we move to a bigger place (which I'm sure will happen someday), we both really want to have less to have to deal with packing and moving. With Husband's disability, unless we can afford to hire movers--which seems doubtful--the bulk of the carrying will fall to me, so you can imagine that I'm especially eager to have fewer things to have to carry. With all of those motivating factors, you'd think we'd be living like Spartans by now (except without all the artful slow-motion. Or the togas); but with less than a month to go until our first wedding anniversary (which: whoa), we're just now beginning to make some headway. My two biggest obstacles, it seems, are time and emotional attachment. Husband, on the other hand, has the time, but after his first attempt at ruthless decluttering left me upset with some of his choices for things to throw out, which were oddly weighted toward my side of the bathroom ("You threw out my allergy eye drops?!" "You never use those!" "I use them almost everything morning!" "I never see you use them!" "Because you're still in bed!" "Well... oh yeah. Sorry."), he's wisely decided to leave "my" stuff up to me to deal with. I think with summer winding down and school starting this week, the time problem is about to solve itself. Husband's homework should keep us from going out as often on the weekends, and will also keep him distracted and occupied, leaving me time to myself to deal with said stuff. That leaves the emotional hurdle to overcome, and that's a big one. I know I kept more stuff this weekend than I should have, because I simply couldn't bring myself to get rid of it. So I'm developing a strategy: I'm making a list of my emotional priorities, from greatest to least, and I'm going to refer to that list as I sort through my stuff. If it doesn't relate to one of these priorities in some way, it goes. Of course, each priority will have a limited number of things I'm allowed to associate with it and keep, otherwise I'd be able to shoehorn just about everything in somewhere. I'm still figuring out this system, but basically, it goes something like this: Mementos from my wedding: important. Mementos from the height of my Buffy the Vampire Slayer fanaticism: not so much. Wedding mementos I get to keep: all (for one more year, at the end of which anything I haven't gotten around to either scrapbooking, displaying or otherwise preserving can go). Buffy mementos I get to keep: anything with an autograph, a couple of choice items that were handmade by friends, my comics, and my Spike action figure. Okay, and my Buffy figure, so Spike won't get lonely. But that's all. I know it still sounds like a lot, and like I'm not making progress, but believe me: that leaves a lot of Buffy-related junk that's gonna go. All right, so the system isn't really so much a system yet as it is a vague plan. But it's a step in the right direction. As I hammer out the details and work out the kinks, I'll keep you posted on my progress. On a related note, Get Rich Slowly has a good decluttering tip that I might have to work into my strategy: Purge Clutter with a De-Accumulation Bag Labels: organizing, systems |