Financial recap and other musings

So, I haven’t said much about savings, retirement planning et cetera. In fact, all that stuff seems trivial in the face of the real depression-style era that is looming ahead of us if things continue as they have in the US lately. The economy is in a free-fall as more people and investor panic and yank their money out of the system. I don’t blame them, but it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. *shudders* Anyhow, I’m not retiring anytime soon so I hope that my investments will stand the test of time. I’m sorely tempted to do the usual trick of investors i.e buying stocks at low prices, but what if they never recover? Well, that was not the sole focus of this post. I was going to talk about our energy usage and brag a little bit even about how two of us are keeping a low energy footprint in our apartment in the face of a hot summer and now, perhaps an unusually cool winter? Here’s a chart I whipped up in Excel:
As you can see, we haven’t even cracked $42 in bill payments yet! Clearly, we’ve shot up during the summer, but not enough to get me worried. My guess for this winter will be that we won’t hit $50, but I anticipate running some standalone heating elements because I’m really anti-cold. πŸ™‚ According to M, reason number 2001 to have more body fat. Here are the actual numbers:
Now, if only other areas of expense resemble our energy costs! In fact, our utilities are the most stable liabilities we have i.e. internet and energy. Food and Gas are the current major money guzzlers and we are working on a means to cook at home more. We are paying the price of eating out and constantly having excuses for not cooking at home. Heck, I can’t count how many items have gone bad because we didn’t cook them in time.

Payday is nigh and I’m already feeling pinched! Here is a quick breakdown of some of the pre-programmed expenses I have:

Jane’s expenses
HP Laptop Credit Card $500
SunTrust Credit Card $100
Roth IRA $200
ING Direct Savings $250
Rent $275
Cellphone $50

Now, in a sick and twisted way, seeing the expenses laid out gives me courage to keep going on because I know that my aggressive strategy will pay off! For instance, after another such $500 payment to the HP laptop fund, I’ll have an extra $500 to “play” with. We have slowed off on the SunTrust payoff, but I’ve been snowflaking little amounts to it so I fully expect to have a balance of zero by the end of the year. I’ve been making little contributions to a christmas fund so that I’ll be able to get little tokens of appreciation for people. Overall, I don’t think our financial outlook is dire. After I got my laptop, things got thrown off kilter a little bit, but I definitely don’t regret that purchase. In a couple of years, I see myself upgrading the laptop i.e. giving Matt this one and getting the next OS upgrade that Microsoft has to offer. On that sombering note, I’ll sign off and I bid you all a good night!

A Good Feeling

Things have been moving along even more smoothly than I hoped for. All I can say is God works in mysterious ways.  I had the chance to visit and I got along fabulously (in my humble opinion) so I hope, as M said, they make the right decision. πŸ™‚ Now, it’s just a waiting game. In other news, I might just get my wish to rollover my current 401(k) account. My first choice is Fidelity because it seems they have a good customer service base and generally better at providing guidance for first time investors. I’ll need all the help I can get, preferably for free.

I’ve been getting progressively better on the bike. I finally learned how to stand properly in order to power up hills. Apparently, I had been doing the stand wrongly so I was putting too much stress on my knees which will need to recover from the abuse. πŸ™‚ He’s taking his tutoring seriously and has gone as far as ordering the Mountain Biker’s bible in order to put me on a training regimen. lol. I don’t mind one bit because biking is a great way to stay in shape! My legs and arms are proof of this and all for going out for at least 30mins daily! M’s class is going along well although I’m a bit of a nagging wife in that respect. He’s got his learning style and I’ve got mine. They don’t overlap and I need to respect that.

With respect to financial stuff, nothing has gone towards the SunTrust credit card debt yet. Thankfully, nothing is being spent using the card so it’s stagnant. I’ll be sure to see some movement before the month ends i.e. sending some snowflakes towards that. Savings are also growing slowly, but surely. Even if it’s $10 a week, that’s still something. The point is that I am actively making the changes which will come in handy for when a larger source of income comes my way.

In yet other news, I find that I get bored online once I’m away from my feed reader (FeedDemon which I paid for, but turned around to become free!). I would use the online Newsgator service which has my feeds, but it’s painfully slow. I’ve resorted to constantly refreshing the pages of Google News in order to get my news fix or hunt for information. It doesn’t help that my science reading material is not at my apartment. πŸ™ When I get the new job, it should hopefully allow me to indulge in purchasing more books to increase my knowledge. Continue reading A Good Feeling

Putting the brakes on and being focused

I’ve been having a blast on the bike. Definitely not overdoing it so that I am not overly tired. I’m thinking of putting the kibosh on a few things and I’m mulling over it to make sure I’m doing it for the right reasons. In any case, I think that I will be fine with whatever decision I make. I’ve made the first steps and I feel good about that. I’m attending a shower (my first ever!!) for Mrs. J and I’m excited about that. I’m planning on busting out the camera and taking tons of pictures. πŸ™‚ It makes me wish that I could also be around my own sister who’s got visited by the stork too! One of these days… I know I keep saying that, but it will happen. Little drops of water make puddles and puddles turn into ponds and so on.

In financial use, our usage of the credit card is down to 25%. I recently got them to increase the limit purely to inflate the credit to debt ratio so that our credit scores don’t nosedive. As a matter of fact, I’ve cracked past 710 on Transunion and Experian! Equifax reads a bit lower, but I’m not bothered. Again, you do not want to up your spending simply because your limit has been increased. So nothing has changed except that we’re waiting on a certain buyer to pony up money so we can send a relatively large snowflake to the credit card. I’m also committing to savings and I’ve been treating it as a ‘debt’ that I have to make payments to. So far, it’s working. I was so close to not making a payment this month, but I reminded myself of my goal for this year which was to have an emergency fund. I have to say that we had a month of some large expenses, but Uncle Sam’s tax rebate helped buffer a lot of it without us having to dip into our emergency fund. Not to mention that we have been consciously keeping tabs on spending. Nevertheless, I still think a budget will go a long way in curtailing things further.

In other news, I just wooted this morning and got myself a Garmin Mobile 20 Portable GPS receiver for $54.99 which is $10 less at Amazon. If you recall, I upgraded to a Treo 750 (refurbished) for the princely sum of $100. This smart phone can become a GPS device. All it needs is a receiver which is what the garmin thingamabob is. Of course, this was an impulse buy, but it is currently at a low price than I’ve been seeing all year. I can’t wait to play with my new toy. πŸ˜€ Speaking of toys, I still haven’t gotten proper bike gear. Right now, I’m wearing the pants off my shorts. As I’m doing more challenging trails, I will need to get biking gear so I’ve started a sub-account to fund the purchase of my biking gear. I’m glad that I’ve stopped thinking about simply charging things to the card. It’s a Ferris wheel that’s hard to get off once you get on it. My other goal for the year besides building our emergency fund will be clearing the credit card balance.

In other other news, I just got done watching a performance by Pilobolus at TED (a conference) which is awesome. I just downloaded the movie file to my computer to watch again to ponder its meaning. Right now, I would willingly pay $100 to see a live performance. I’m sad they won’t even be visiting Georgia (based on their schedule on the web). Right now, I’m obsessively going through their videos. Very impressive.

Just some thoughts

I’m sure you remember (or not) that I had a brief impromptu meeting with my boss. Well, it was very interesting. I am reticent about 80% of the time and that makes me be perceived as "still waters". Actually, his words were he "doesn’t have any idea what my plans are" and it was in a good way i.e. he didn’t think I was aimless, but that he didn’t know what was going on in my head. Lots of things. Today, I heard RS tell me that I didn’t want to be a techie forever. Amen to that! It is not financially possible to do what I’m doing at my current pay scale. However, he said that I was "doing it right i.e. talking less and doing more". That made me glad that I want to be felt and not just heard. I want people’s first words about me to be that I’m a hard and honest worker. Now, I understand that I will have to (and I do want to) receive additional education. Right now, what I ideally want is some experience and I mean, varied experience. I’ve been doing the research on several programs and a lot of them are sadly not in my current state of domicile! Now, you understand my seeming reluctance to do "anything" just yet. On the good side of things, I work at a school and obviously, it would be a seeming no-brainer to transition from worker bee to student. I’m blessed to have the kind of bosses (a husband and wife team) that I do because I know that despite misunderstandings, they will work with me whatever route I choose, just as long as I pull my weight. My 6-month anniversary for my place of work is coming up and I’m excited because I will be eligible for a tuition assistance program should I choose to take any classes or pick up a course of study. Now, I’m obviously limited as to what I can actually do because I will be juggling school and work, but it’s a nice thought to have.

In other news, thanks to our refund, we’ve been able to accomplish several things. Firstly, we took care of some pressing business. Next, M fixed up his car and his trunk now actually is secure! lol. He got his other car out of hibernation and with a new battery and a replaced fuse, it works like a charm!! He says he gets better mileage on this other car so sometime soon, we should be riding around in this other car and give "Old Faithful" a rest. πŸ™‚ Also, we gave our SunTrust credit card debt a hefty dose of relief. πŸ™‚ to the tune of almost $600. Let me take that back. We actually put $300 towards the credit card, but then when I logged into the website to see my balance, it was thisclose to a certain figure that I decided to go ahead and pay a certain figure to see it reach a certain balance. More for symbolic reasons. So that made it almost $600 put towards the credit card in just this month of February. I’ll be done paying for that sucker before summer rolls around and boy! will it feel good to not dedicate money towards credit card bills!

I am still socking money away in my ING savings account. I am still trying to convince M that saving is a good idea. πŸ™‚ Just  kidding. He obviously knows that already. He just really doesn’t like dealing with online banking. Additionally, I’m frustrated with ING’s slowness in taking funds from my checking account! I mean, how long does it really take? With my SunTrust credit card payments, I’ve been learning to fine-tune how I time my payments so that it gets withdrawn or posted to my account right away i.e. in a day or two. Thus far, I think if I make payments before the end of the month, it gets posted asap. Anyhoo, no sweat. I’m learning the fine art of juggling my payments and knowing when to hold off on any spending so that all pending charges are through and then, resuming the madness. J/k. I meant being the responsible saver that I am. πŸ™‚ 

Finally, I’ve got a fun weekend planned. Take a guess, people. Actually, don’t. I’ll be working. I don’t mind. It’s for a good cause. I got some bad news about a protein I’m working on which I "purified" and that we sent in for sequencing. For the lab’s sake and my sake/sanity, I hope to high heavens that the ball wasn’t dropped in my court. I am quite positive that I did things right, but like one of the bosses always says, it’s the simple things. My fingers and toes are crossed.