Responsibility, frugality, and saying no
Being the responsible one in the relationship has the potential to cost me money. I’ll give you a prime example. I have a ’98 Nissan Frontier truck, which I got to transport art (most artists I know own a truck or vanagon-type vehicle for that very same reason), or to go camping/sleep in on long trips. It’s also my primary commuting vehicle. Not the most fabulous gas mileage, I think it gets between 19-22 average. But it’s the only vehicle I’ve got, so I have to use it. I can’t afford to own two vehicles, nor would I want to.
J has a very inexpensive, very old Honda. The thing is perpetually on the edge of falling apart/needing to be retired. The latest issue is the battery – it has outlived its usefulness and needs the occasional jump. But it’s a great frugal gas-sipping machine. And until it actually does break, J can’t afford to buy a new vehicle (nor is he beginning to save up for one, though I have repeatedly recommended he do so).
This weekend J wants to go to Portland (2.5-3 hr drive) for an event. We’re going to keep it to 1 day, and avoid a hotel (and having to bring our cats, which for the record, you should consider them as dogs – they cannot be left alone, they need daily walks, yes I am serious, and they are major attention hogs. Their feelings will be hurt if we leave them beyond 7 pm alone and bereft without company or heat until we return; an overnighter is simply out of the question). With my gas mileage, that’s a tank and a half of gas, about $60. That’s almost double what J’s car would cost. But since my vehicle is much more reliable, in good working order, and is up to date on any repair issues, we’re taking the truck. I mean, who wants to get stranded hours from home??
J knows that I make more money, and while I can afford it, that I am being very frugal in my spending habits (outside of food, liquor, and restaurants that is). This is something that he wants to do, with me accompanying him. So he has offered to pay for it. I’ll probably pay some of it of course, since I am attending.
I get asked all the time if I want to do certain activities. My answer is always “how much does it cost?” or “if it costs money, no.” I’m not always the most fun, but those activities (a day at the firing range, taking a boat ride, gas to Portland for a quick jaunt) can really add up. I’d rather save up and do something unusual every few months, like rent a cheap cabin on a deserted Oregon beach for 3-4 days or splurge on a big underground dinner at $125 a pop (our splurge kitty is at $120 and still unused!), or buy a high-end ice cream maker just before summer ($240, I’ve priced them out!).
I want to buy some household items for our new rental house, and now that the xmas recovery period has ended (ie, all of January), and now that the new rental deposits are done hemorrhaging my checking account, I can get back to spending limited amounts on necessities that I’ve been putting off (IKEA curtains here I come!)
Overtime during hard economic times
Things have been a bit shaken up at work lately. Performance reviews, a bit of a big reorganizational shift, a bit more formal rebranding (for a company that has been moving away from old-fashioned mom and pop methods), and the economic slowdown is hitting us pretty hard right now.
Work has been a bit difficult, with emotions running high, raises not meeting some employees expectations, and even in some cases, changes in managerial responsibilities (ie, they have been removed) from one of our longest employed people. There have been good opportunities for me during this big time of change. I mentioned that I got a higher than expected raise (twice the average for the company), and that’s not all. One of the manager’s responsibilities that was removed was closing the building one day a week. The person that was supposed to take it over was not very interested in doing it, and I was. I offered to take an extra day closing, it was okayed, and now I have 2 nights a week of guaranteed overtime, instead of just one. This doesn’t take into account those days that I pick up from other people that have made other plans, are out of town, sick, or working super late out in the field.
I feel fortunate that I’m able to have so much overtime, in comparison to my coworkers, many of whom (of those that I manage, in jobs that are client service based) are being asked to stay home once or more per week lately.
I had 11 hours of overtime last week, and 8.5 hours the week before. Next week I have an extra 4 hour overtime job that I’ve scheduled myself on beyond the 2 days that I now close. It’s only because as a manager, I have responsibilities that few others are able to meet (staying until the last crews come back on the nights that I close, or staying late to receive a shipment, or the occasional after-hours service call). Ours is a secure facility, and there are limited amounts of people that have access to the entire building or that are able to open or close.
My last paycheck, for 10 business days, had 99.5 hours. Some of my employees had hours in the 60-70 range, and the worst was 34 hours (though several days were requested off). I’ve been working hard to get those overtime hours and be available for them. At the same time, all the emotional upset has taken its toll, and being at work so much and so often, makes me more susceptible to it, both being around the drama and attitudes, plus the additional tiredness. I have been emotionally burned out more than I ever have before. Also, for the first time, this week I almost dreaded coming to work. I’m tired of the drama (much worse than most industries); I wish people would act like adults and treat the job like a job, not high school, and not a social club. In the long run, however, it’s worth it. I’m getting as many hours as I possible, and I plan on making large payments to debt this month, now that my security deposits are paid in full.
It’s off to a rocky start so far, but I’m still hopeful that this year will bring great things.
Family Obligations, Guilt, and Money
I don’t talk much about my family on this blog. I’m not super-close with my parents, and most of my family lives 3,000 miles away on the east coast, from Vermont through Florida. I’ve also kept my journey out of debt pretty quiet. While it’s not a secret, I don’t really talk much about it, even though it consumes so much of my life.
During xmas, during the required family phone call, I spoke with the extended family, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc, since my parents went to visit family out of state, and my grandparents flew in to visit. I was taken aback by my aunt, to whom I have not spoken in something like 6 or 7 years, trying to force me (while not being all that friendly about it) to promise to visit my parents this summer. She promised to come visit at the same time. I himmed and hawed and didn’t actually promise anything, and I was given a really hard time about it.
Recently, my mom has been going through some difficult times with family. During out last phone call she talked about visiting some places around the state this summer. I told her that while I would love to, I am trying very hard to pay off a lot of debt I incurred about 5 years ago, that I am trying hard not to spend lots of money on travelling or trips (which can easily run $600-$1000 going to the east coast, rental car, restaurants, etc). She’s having just as many money problems as I am. She mentiond helping me out and somehow paying for the ticket. That’s not why I brought up trying not to spend money!!
I love my family, don’t get me wrong. But there’s always that guilt and obligation that almost forces you to travel and make vacation plans to see them, even when you don’t want to.
I don’t know if I will travel to see anyone this year, but if my family had my way, I’d already have the tickets booked. No one has leverage like family.
I want my 10 years back
Do you ever feel like you wished you could do it all over?
I’ve learned my lesson. I know I used credit unwisely. I know what I need to fix it and while I’m on the path to do so, I wish it would take less time than 4 more years. I’ll be 42 before I can start investing heavily in myself. Oh, sure, I have $45K in 401K/Roth/IRA investments right now, and I’m investing 4% of my salary (I plan on increasing it a percentage point a year until I’m out of debt). But to really make good on that compounding interest, I should have started doing this 15 years ago. D’oh!!!!
While I don’t feel intensely stupid, it’s disappointing that I’m so late to the game. All I can see is how unprepared I am compared to what I could have been. How far behind I am. On top of that, my $43K salary ($50K if you include my prodigious overtime) is ok. It’s certainly not minimum wage, but when I compare myself to people around me that are the same age and have tech degrees, or masters in sciences, they are making twice or more what I do. I know I’m smarter than that, but I’ve been lazy and have been resting on my laurels quite a bit (see how I got into debt). I excelled in the sciences in high school. I’ve got a pretty analytical mind. I should have stuck it out and been an engineer, or gone into computer science.
At this point, it’s probably not worth going back to school to get a degree – I’m not sure how valuable that is, unless it’s more vocational training, with specific job skills. J is a few months away from finishing his paralegal training. Most positions run about 75% to 150% higher than my current salary. It is possible to do the training in 2 years, possibly 4 if I take night classes. But am I interested in the legal field? Doesn’t matter. Must focus on getting out of debt. I can’t take any detours until it’s gone. No big vacations, no new car (unless my current one breaks), no buying a house (bummer, this is the best opportunity ever to buy, will probably not have the opportunity again), no higher education or art workshops.
There’s a lot of if onlys above, and a lot that go through my head outside of this post. I’m not defeated by it, but kinda disappointed. Where’s my control-z for the last 10 years?
Weekend frugality & homemade vodka
I always find it hardest to not spend on weekends. That’s when I have more time, when I’m not working, and when I’m planning either big activities, errands, or things to do. It can be hard for me to stay on budget when out and about buying things that I don’t have time to get during the week, due to a full-time job.
What is especially difficult is my habit of not making breakfast, having my morning coffee, then dragging myself out of the house to Do Something. Once I’m in the thick of it, I get really really hungry. That is one of my biggest budget busters of all – going out for lunch on the weekend. It chips away at my restaurant spending allocation, more than I’d like. It may only be $10-$14, but multiply that by several weekends per month and you begin to see the problem.
Yesterday, luckily, played out just fine. We made an effort to go food shopping early, in an effort to stock up on some staples that were very much on sale for this week. With some frozen food that would have melted had it remained in the car, we *had* to take groceries home, and that was an opportunity to have lunch (Mmmm, $2.99 safeway frozen pizza! Plus a little salad on the side for something healthy).
My will power has been good this month. I’m buying staples and necessaries. I stopped myself 3 times from buying that interesting bottle of eau de vie made with douglas fir tips (I’m so curious about it) from the liquor store. At $55/bottle, I’ll just have to stay curious about it. Maybe I can just get a sample at a local bar, next time I go out (which isn’t very often). Part of the problem is my interest in getting an ice cream maker later this year. (Trust me, this story will make sense soon). I’ve been listing to J talk about all the flavors of ice cream he used to make when he was a private chef for this couple many years ago. I’ve decided that we’re going to get one later this year. As part of the anticipation, I’ve been reading up on various recipes and such that people have been making. I came across this one recipe blog that was talking about the eau de vie in question. The blog mentioned several restaurants that use that as a flavoring agent in their home-made ice creams. You can see the problem, I hope? Not only am I curious about the eau de vie, but someone else corroborates that it makes fabulous ice cream. I want to make ice cream too. That doubles the strength of my desire for that $55 bottle. But I’ve been virtuous and have declined.
Well last night, an old neighbor (from the art studio) invited us over for dinner and movie night. The aperitif of the evening was his homemade vodka – he distills it himself. It was one of the things I missed about living in that building, tasting his yummy vodka. After talking to him about it, I’ve decided that I’m going to make my own as well. It’s basically a $600 investment. It involves a heater for $200 and a still, which is between $300-$400. Once you have that, all you need is 25 lbs of sugar, water, tomato paste (for the nitrogen), and yeast. It’s very inexpensive. Apparently, a bottle ends up costing $3. I figure that within 2 years it will pay for itself. If J goes in for half, and he is a much heavier drinker than I am, it won’t be so bad either.
We’ve been talking about making our own infused vodkas for a while now (Mmm, pineapple/habanero!). We’re already trying our first batch of vanilla extract (made with vodka of course). And I just came across a recipe for homemade limoncello (a very tasty and interesting digestif if you’ve never had it!). This would also be handy for making lots of homemade xmas gifts – who wouldn’t want a ginormous bottle of homemade distilled/infused vodka for xmas (and trust me, it tastes incredible!).
So now it’s Sunday morning. I’m sitting down and enjoying my extra-large coffee (steaming hot inside an insulated mug, the only way to go!). I have a dose of irish cream liquor in it and I keep thinking about this recipe for making your own. I’m sure it is much cheaper and I’ve been meaning to try it. Maybe this is the month that I do.
So enjoy the rest of your weekend, get enough sleep, plan healthy and tasty food for the week (I’m making a big pot roast tonight with the sale roast and free potatoes and carrots I got on Friday). Get some projects done, and recharge your batteries for the rest of the week! I’ll leave you with some scrumptious alcohol-based recipes I’ve recently collected. Take care everyone!
Homemade limoncello
Homemade Bailey’s Irish Cream
Homemade vanilla extract
December 2009 budget
December was a bit of a mess. Lots of bills came due, including that November car breakdown and my ballooned first rent payment with half my deposit and half my last month’s rent. Plus, it was christmas, so I had a lot of payments that came due. The real reason it was a mess was that much of my money was spent as cash. I don’t have a system set up to handle recording cash payments, since I never use them!
So I’m going to wash my hands of December, since a lot of payments were unrecorded, and there was a lot of activity of “borrowing” from my emergency fund to pay for basic bills, then paying it back when I got paid later on by J, my little bonus, and my second paycheck. This problem won’t exist anymore now that I’ve opened up my multiple savings accounts on BECU – I’ll be able to withdraw electronically and easily, and track it all at the same time.
I won’t be publishing the full budget, but I’ll give some highlights below:
My food spending was a little out of control. This was attributable to buying a little bit more for xmas – I bought an expensive ham with some fixin’s for one big meal. I also spent a good chunk on some wine, had to buy quite a few bottles to get the case discounts, and I overindulged during most of the month on wine everytime I went to the supermarket, so my $411 supermarket spending actually included about $75-100 in wine, I’m guessing. My restaurant spending on the other hand, was excellent, $40 under. I’ve been getting much better about not going out to eat since moving into my new place (which I enjoy staying in at!).
I’ve also been extremely good with my coffee spending habits. I did purchase a $20 pre-paid card at the local coffee hacienda by work (since I hate going there and having him put my drip coffee through the credit machine – I know that’s expensive to a small business, so I thought I’d buy a bunch “all at once” and save him some fees). But I’m still under my coffee spending, which means I did exceptionally well in December! January looks like a continuation of this trend. I don’t know why, but I have been diligent about making coffee at home before going to work, and when I’m out, I rarely get a second coffee anymore, nor have an urge for an extremely large overdone coffee concoction at Starbucks (yummy as they are). I haven’t been denying myself or stopping myself, I just haven’t been buying any!
My liquor spending (in which wine is not included, since I buy that with my other groceries) was a little over, and I’ll have a big jump in January, since I bought a bunch of cocktail fixings in December which I put on my credit card, so they’ll be showing up a month late.
My gifts category is the biggest mess – I bought some online and paid with my credit card (always fully paid off as usual), and quite a bit I paid in cash, since I had my xmas fund savings at home. I didn’t include that spending, again, since a lot of it was in cash. Bad, debtmaven, bad! I promise I’ll set a better example next year!!!
And this is the month that I splurged $304 on a pair of ceramic figures from my absolute favorite artist in the entire world (my biggest downfall). I also bought something I’ve wanted for a few years now, a 5.5 quart le creuset enamaled pot that was $75 off any other available price (they *never* go on sale, EVER!), for $155+tax. I do not regret this purchase – it has made french onion soup, marmalade, and onion confit already. This is an absolute requirement for anyone that likes to cook!!!!!!
I received a small honorary $300 bonus at work (since we didn’t meet our targets for the year, our larger/real bonus did not materialize), and I managed to pay $553 extra on debt, beyond the minimum payments.
Overall: I cleaned out a lot of my cash mini-savings this month due to car spending and gift giving. I dipped into my EF a bit to cover some big bills, then paid a bunch of it back, but some of it was used up for unexpected bills like my car and big security deposits. I indulged quite a bit on myself, but am reining this in quite a bit in January. It was a crazy month, but it’s getting back to normal now that it’s January and the holidays and the frenzy is over. Time to switch over completely to BECU with my checking account next week. I’ll also be building up my EF back to $1000 and being diligent about saving in my mini-funds.
A creative day, cooking at home
Nothing special happening today. J and I are spending the day unchristmasing the house (bye bye tree, thank you!), reorganizing our basement to make enough room to walk into it (we haven’t done this since moving in with all the boxes and crap we each have), cleaning up the pantry area (half of the first coat of paint is up and drying) so that we can unpack all our foods and canned goods we made last summer, and hanging out at home.
We’re finishing up making bitter orange/tangerine marmalade and will can that later tonight. Right now J is making this yummy onion balsalmic confit recipe that I found online that we are going to try and can later (we may have to break out the pressure canner for that one). We cleared out some of our garden space (removing all the big rocks we tilled up). We’re also dreaming about having an underground supper later this year, out on our outdoor back porch. J is busy planning his menu: his killer creme brulee, my infused habanero pineapple vodka, homemade ice cream (I plan on getting an expensive ice cream maker by summer) with maybe cognac/cardamon/pepper flavor, crispy crostini baguettes with chevre/goat cheese with some kind of savory or sweet home made jam and herb sprigs, and who knows for the main course. J wants to do a french/american bistro theme. Mmmmm. I’m getting really hungry!
We stopped ourselves from going out for sushi ($50-$60 savings, easy), and are staying home being creative, listening to The Swing Years (best music all week) on our local public radio station, and planning all the yummy things we are going to cook, can, and grow.
I didn’t drive anywhere, didn’t spend any money, and am having a blast. Pierogies and carmelized onions for dinner with salad and homemade balsamic dressing. Yum. Now if only I can force myself to make scones (never have) so we can have the marmalade on them tomorrow for breakfast!
My most difficult decision – should I open a bottle of red wine or make myself a cosmo (I made my first one last weekend and have been on a tear making them almost every night since), or a dirty martini???
Enjoy the rest of your week!
Raises, the economy, and a rant about work
It’s been a difficult week for me. I’m in the midst of doing performance reviews for my 11 employees. I’ve written before about the people I manage and work with – it’s not a professional company, and many of the folks there have not worked in a corporate environment before. There’s a huge sense of entitlement by most of the people there (most are in their 20s and for some, this is the first “real” job that they have ever had).
I’m sure it’s no news to most of you that our economy is not doing so great. Simply having a job is something to be thankful for. I’ve had some reviews that have gone very well and pleasant. However, in a few of them, that entitlement has reared its big ugly head. Raises are not guaranteed, not when the company I work for lost money in the last 3 months. We have had no layoffs, but have had periods of 4-day work weeks. One division of our company has been on that regiment for 3 months (they are a retail branch of our business).
In fact, “coasting” or doing the minimum requirements of your job and nothing else will and has resulted in no raise at all. I’ve given a raise to every person I’ve reviewed so far (one was delayed for not doing regular required weekly paperwork – doing it every week in January will delay his raise by a month). I’ve had 3 tense, difficult reviews dealing with that feeling of being unfairly treated by not having adequate compensation. I wish they could understand that with an average 3% raise across the board, that some people just can’t be given a larger raise – the company just doesn’t have enough money to pay for it!
I have 5 more reviews to do in the next 2 business days, and 2 of them are going to be among the most difficult. But I guess that is why I get the salary that I have – managing is not all fun & games – there’s actually quite a bit of stress involved, at least right now. I just wish people would have more reasonable expectations during this economy.
This is partially why I haven’t been posting as much. My brain is a little fried after this week. I should be back to normal in another week.
My FICO score + get yours free!
Thanks to the Dad over at Climbing Out, I found a place that offers a way to check your FICO score, for free! They offer a lot of site advertising, which is how they pay for the check. It’s nice to find a place that offers full disclosure!
Ever wonder what your credit score is? Do you get annoyed when someone checks your credit (sometimes in front of you, at a business for example), yet refuses to share that number with you? Have you tried to get your credit score from one of the 3 big reporting agencies and pay for it, only to find out it’s not an actual FICO score but some trumped up “consumer” version that is absolutely useless and based on a different numeric scale (note: yes, I did this, buyer-beware!)?
Well, fret no more! Not 100% sure how secure and safe it is, but I was too curious to stop myself.
I’ve always heard that I had excellent credit. I may have a ton of debt, but I have always paid the required minimums, if not more, and even if I am late and have late fees (in my past pre-pf blog/pre-budget days), they were never reported to the credit agencies. I have a good debt-to-income ratio, and I use a lot of debt responsibly. So I was happy to find out that my score is *794*!
I’m happy! Care to check yours? Go to creditkarma. And if anyone has any comments, positive or negative about them, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me know!
I’m part of this week’s Festival of Frugality!
My posting on The Frugal Drinker is part of this week’s Carnival of Frugality. This is my very first contribution to a festival, so please enjoy!
Check out the other articles at YesIAmCheap. I haven’t had a chance to read any of them, but I hope to later tonight.
