Choose wisely

Twenty-four hours from this very moment, I’ll be sitting in my Creative Writing class.

YES! BACK TO SCHOOL!

I’m happy and excited, but also a little anxious– I’m already afraid there will be too much on my plate this semester:

~ A full course load of 16 credits

~ Homework and study

~ My personal writing/blogging

~ A work-study job on campus

~ An off-campus job

~ Care-taking duties at home

I want to really focus on my studies. That’s the most important part. This is the first time I’ve been a full-time student since 1987, and I want to succeed this time.

Financial aid will keep me physically alive, but there won’t be much left over for fun and extras. I am capable of living on very little money, so I’m not very concerned here.

The work-study job will give me a little spending money. I expect it to offer  flexible hours that won’t interfere with classes.

The off-campus job pays pretty well and features a generous employee discount on excellent products. It’s a seasonal position, which means I can make a pretty good amount of money between September and Christmas.

Unfortunately, I’m worried this job may interfere with school too much. I worked there last year, and loved it! However, I wasn’t a full-time student then. I don’t know my schedule yet, but…

Can I work until 12:30 or 1:00am… and still make it to a 9:30am class?

In the last few weeks before Christmas, it’s crazy busy there, with all the available overtime you could possibly want… and that will probably coincide with final exams.

That questionable job starts during my third week of classes, so by then I should have a good idea of how much time and energy my school work will require.I know my limits– I’m not one of those super-achievers who can work 60 hours a week, go to school full-time, and make straight A’s.

Economics is all about the choices we make: when you choose one thing, you must let another thing go. You really can’t have everything. Pursuing everything at once is a great way to make yourself crazy, sick, or both.

I choose to put my education first.  If that means I’ll need to forgo the extra cash (and generous employee discount on my Christmas shopping) in order to succeed in school… then so be it.
Will that be necessary? We’ll find out soon enough!

Hindsight IS clearer than foresight… but it also hurts sometimes

Last night, I was reading Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. Highly recommended, and a great alternative view of personal finance. I actually found it at the Goodwill Store for like 99 cents, so yay me!

Anyway, one of the exercises in this book is to research how much money you’ve earned over your entire working life…. and compare it to what you have to show for it today. I knew this would be painful, but I had no idea how painful.

As it happens– one of those little synchronicities in life that make me shudder– in the mail earlier in the day, I’d received my Social Security Statement, which of course lists how much money you’ve earned each year of your working life!

Theoretically, if by some miracle Social Security hasn’t totally imploded by then, if I retire at age 70, I’ll be getting $938 a month. I also learned that if I become disabled right now, I would be eligible for $1,009 a month in benefits. Great.

Of course, there’s always an asterisk:

Your estimated benefits are based on current law. Congress has made changes to the law in the past and can do so at any time.

That’s just way too depressing. Back to the lifetime earnings.

So this morning, I did the math. I added up the earnings for every year since 1985, when I was 16 and worked at McDonald’s for the going minimum wage of $3.10 per hour*.

My grand total for twenty-two years of work:

$ 341,918.00

Assuming that it’s prudent to save a minimum 10% of your income, this means I should have over $34,000 in savings today… plus heaps of compound interest over the years.

I can assure you I do not have any such thing.

Ouch.

.

* 2004 was a better year: I earned $27,137 while running a photo lab/ portrait studio. As I recall, I was making $12 an hour plus 20% of the studio gross. I made a lot of brats smile pretty that year. 🙂

The Alchemy of Shampoo

“My bathroom looks like a Walgreen’s exploded.”

— My dear friend Eleanor

I once tried (valiantly) to explain to a man why women need so many different kinds of shampoos and conditioners. He didn’t get it.
Men have it easy. They just squirt some Prell on their heads and rinse. They shake themselves dry like dogs, and they’re ready to go.

They just don’t understand the nefarious forces of nature that send women lurching from product to product in an endless zen quest for hair balance.

Humidity and Hormones– Satan’s twin hair gremlins– constantly scheming, levels rising and falling daily in a hellish symphony of frizz and droop, sheen and dullness, dryness and oil.

Shampoos and conditioners are probably my frugality Kryptonite. I’m not even that much of a girly-girl, either.

I economize on hair products where I can, using coupons, store brands, free samples and travel-sizes. I also use shampoo and conditioner very sparingly. You don’t need to use a big dripping handful of shampoo for it to clean your hair.  This conserves on both shampoo and the amount of hot water it takes to rinse!

Still, I’m continually experimenting with different combinations of shampoo and conditioners; that elusive Hair Nirvana remains ever out of my grasp.

Shampoo and conditioner formulas always seem come in matching pairs, but I don’t think I’ve ever had any success using them together. I feel a little guilty splitting up siblings like that, but if I need the synergy of Dry to Normal shampoo with Colored/Damaged conditioner, then so be it in the name of Science.

Heaven forbid I should start mixing brands into some hellspawn hybrid cross-promotional chemistry experiment! Guilty.  These days, in fact, I’m using Equate Totally Clean shampoo with Loreal Vive Pro whatever-it-is conditioner. It’s working very well for me… but for how long?

Even when I find a shampoo/conditioner combination that’s perfect, it doesn’t work forever. My hair sooner or later develops an immunity to that perfectly balanced chemistry. Then I must analyze the problem (less conditioning? more body? less build-up? fewer split ends?) and go forth to seek a remedy.

Fortunately, I’ve gathered a huge stockpile of various hair care products from which I may perform alchemy and devise that remedy. Regretfully, a lot of money has been spent, but I try to see the shampoo bottle as half-full.

How hard is it to count out 51 Goldfish crackers?

Some days, depending on my hormone levels, a trip to the grocery store can send me into a rage. I really get myself all worked up about the sly things manufacturers do to charge more for less.

If the package says “100-Calorie Packs”, “To-Go”, “Ready”, or any other variation on pre-measured single-serving portions, you will be paying too much for it. Not to mention the excessive packaging to burden our landfills.

Today, I read about a study on this very topic. It seems the Center for Science in the Public Interest has determined that Cheese Nips are by far the worst offender– customers pay a 279% mark-up on the 100-calorie packs!

“Hundred-calorie packs are an ingenious way for companies to charge consumers more for less,” said CSPI Executive Director Michael F. Jacobson. “Manufacturers get the best of both worlds–they make more money, and they look like they’re helping people control their weight.”

Link

It’s nice to feel vindicated, although I wonder how much of a grant this think tank received to state the obvious.

Oh, what the heck.

You can’t win if you don’t play, right?

Over at Ashwin’s blog, you will find one crazy blog owner!! You can win $2500!! To enter just copy this text and paste it in your blog!! But hurry, this competition will not last long! So get posting!

I’m playin.

Out of sight, out of mind.

The thing with watching my money is, as with babysitting an unruly toddler, I have to watch it every minute of the day, or else it gets into trouble… quickly and unexpectedly.

As soon as I forget to record an expenditure or two, I feel things sliding out of control, like I’m in a trance of sorts. I have just enough self-awareness to realize I need to keep my finances tightly (obsessively) reined in until I’ve learned discipline.

I also realize that the “unruly toddler” mentioned above is not money itself, but my own reckless spending impulses.

I’ve recently cobbled together a low-tech money-management system, based on my own special set of sometimes-contradictory neuroses and several techniques I’ve read about elsewhere.

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1. Budget Envelopes

When I (finally) got my last paycheck ($400) from THE PREVIOUS EMPLOYER WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED, I skimmed $100 off the top and deposited it in my checking account. Boom. Gone. No touch.
I divvied up the rest of the cash in envelopes, earmarked for specific expenses: Phone (I’m good through the end of October), Gasoline ($10 a week for six weeks into the future), Food, etc.

I even budgeted myself $20 a week for miscellaneous expenses (“Week ending 8/24”, “Week ending 8/31”, etc). I organized the envelopes in an accordion-style file, and stowed it away in a safe place.

My mom always used to say that money burns a hole in my pocket, and I’ve come to realize she was right (about this, and about many other things, too). If I’ve got money on me, I will spend it. It’s so true to say “out of sight, out of mind”… if it’s not in my wallet, I forget it even exists.

2. Dollar dollar bill, y’all

Any loose change and one-dollar bills in my purse or wallet go into a jar at the end of the day… and forget I ever had it. Even if I throw only $1.50 a day into that jar, that will add up to: $10.50 a week, $42 a month, $504 a year.

3. Cooking the books

That semester I took Financial Accounting I wasn’t entirely a waste, because I’ve devised my own half-assed bookkeeping system, and it works for me.

I divided up a notebook (10 cents at Wal*Mart) with colored tabs. Each section is devoted to one area of my finances: Wallet (cash), Checking, budget envelopes (Gasoline, Phone, Food, Weekly miscellany).

Each time I spend money, or move money from one “account” to another (such as taking $20 from the envelope marked “Week ending 8/17″and putting it in my Wallet), I make a note of the transaction, and keep a running total for each category.

At the back of the notebook, I keep a weekly running total of all categories combined, so I have a snapshot of what I’ve got. Not the most professional system, but it works for me and makes sense to the way my mind works. That’s the most important part of any system– that it’s something you can do.

4. Keep a price book

I adapted this from Amy Dacyczyn’s Tightwad Gazette. I keep track of the prices I pay for groceries and other products I buy regularly. I’m getting to know exactly what things cost, and it’s making me a sharper shopper. How can you know what’s a good deal, when you don’t know what things normally cost?

5. Cash only

I have a debit card with my checking account, but I’ve found that (just as studies have shown with credit cards) I tend to spend more recklessly when I’m just swiping plastic at the register.

I try to avoid using my debit card, and make an effort to pay with cash as much as possible. Debit and credit cards make money unreal– disconnected and theoretical… but physically parting with cash is real– tangible and visceral.

I personally need to feel grounded in reality when it comes to money, and that means hard, cold cash. Otherwise, I will just space out and lose track of my finances entirely. Come to think of it, maybe that’s exactly why the powers-that-be encourage debit and credit cards. Think about those check-card commercials that show the lone maverick cash-payer slowing down the entire cashless-transaction-machine robot march.

——————————————–

Overall, the budget is pretty tight around here until school starts and financial aid kicks in. And believe me when I say I will be just as cautious with my grant, scholarship, and Work-Study money, as well!

Congratulations! You’re Pre-Qualified!

Y’know, it’s been ages since I got a credit card offer in the mail.

Maybe it’s because I’ve moved five times in seven years and potential creditors have had trouble finding me.

Maybe it’s because my credit stinks and nobody’s wanted me anyway.

Nevertheless.

This morning’s mail brought a real doozy. Kind of a letdown for someone who, at age 20 had two gold MasterCards, a platinum Visa, and an AmEx….

But we mustn’t dwell in the past.

Anyway, this offer found its way to me at my current street address (a single family residence), but with an old apartment number tacked onto it. I haven’t lived in Apt C-9 since 2001, by the way. Good detective work, guys.

Seriously. I would love to know exactly how many people would actually agree to the terms of the Sketchy Evil Bank MasterCard.

The Offer:

Your available credit line of $300 will be reduced by an annual fee of $150 that will be billed directly to your account. So, your initial available credit will be $170 once you make your minimum monthly payment of $20 to activate. A monthly maintenance fee of $6 will be assessed once you make your first purchase.

In English

Initial credit line: $300

Upon approval, you’re immediately $150 in debt.
Once you receive your card, you must send in a $20 payment.

Once they’ve received and processed your payment, you may activate and use your card.

Once you make your first purchase, they begin charging a $6 monthly maintenance fee.

Now, they don’t mention anywhere that they begin accruing interest as soon as they tack the $150 annual fee onto your account, but I will assume they do.

So conceivably, it could be a month before you can actually even use your new credit card… 5-7 business days here, 5-7 business days there… but they’re already charging you interest on that $150!

Some Numbers

Annual Fee 150.00

Maintenance Fee (12 x $6) 72.00

————-

Annual cost just to possess card $ 222.00
So basically, taking into consideration the cost of possessing this card, you really only have $78 to play with over the course of the year. Thanks, guys. I’ll get right on that.
Oh, and then there’s that pesky interest.

Other Terms and Conditions

19.50% APR on purchases

25.50% APR on cash advances

25.50% Delinquency APR for purchases

31.50% Delinquency APR for Cash Advances

5% Transaction fee for Cash Advances ($5 minimum)

$35 Late Payment Fee

$35 Over-Limit Fee

In Conclusion

In my mind, these terms verge on criminal. I’m still gagging on that 25.50% interest rate for cash advances. That’s just mind-blowingly nefarious.

These scumbags are getting $150 a year (plus interest) just for taking a chance on someone they’re probably hoping will get drunk on their own credit line and incur lots of late and over-limit fees.

I’ve seen “MAXED OUT”. I know how these people operate.

I’m not accepting this very generous offer, by the way.