Finances

I almost never talk about finances because I HATE finances. I hate thinking about money. I hate dealing with money and I've often said I'd be better off if I gave my money to someone else to dole out an allowance to me. I suck at money. BUT since I'm quitting on Monday I need to figure out where to cut expenses and how I'm going to live while I finish my degree and find a new job. Long term blog readers may know that it took me almost a year after moving to Seattle to find a new job I liked and that didn't make me want to drink heavily.  I would rather not repeat that experience. So in an effort to figure out how to best handle my about to be new found unemployment, I took a look at what I spend my money on.  After bills, I'm ashamed to admit I spend a shitton of money on food. I am embarrassed at how much I eat out. It is ridiculous.  $180 in a month in eating out alone.  That's $6 a day I'm throwing away. Even worse is what I spend in groceries. (Although it may be skewed slightly because I also get my gas at Kroger and my debit card doesn't show the difference but really I put in about 30 bucks every 2 weeks so mostly it isn't gas).  I spent almost $600 in groceries last month.  I'm one person. What the hell am I buying?  And, I don't even know how much rotten food I throw out because I don't eat it.  Clearly I can cut back a lot on both of those items.  Oddly enough, I spend very little on other things.  I spent about $100 on gluten free baked goods.  That's a lot but it is also an anomaly.  I don't think I usually buy that much in a typical month.  And once I'm unemployed I won't buy that much at all. 

Next I'm going to do something I know is a very bad idea. I will pay a penalty for it which is a waste of money.  I'm going to cash out my retirement plan with the University and pay off my credit cards and my car so I'll have no debt during this period of un/under employment.  I will then call my credit card co and not cancel the card altogether but reduce the max to a very minimal amount.  My student loans won't start coming due until December/Jan and hopefully by then I'll have a real paying job in a library.  And I'll get another job but it will be primarily mindless. Contract or temp work would be ideal.  Something that will allow me to pay my bills and perhaps still eat.

Hedging my luck

I bought 4 lottery tickets tonight.  Two for Lotto and two for Megamillions. My fingers are crossed. (I know I know I know) In order to encourage my luck, I used my last dollar to buy an MDA shamrock. That's good deed right? So that means I should win right?

One of the harder things about moving to a new place (besides having to make new friends, don't even ask me about that at all) is finding new products and brands. I have lived on the west coast for so long the only brand of cheese I like is tilamook.  I love tilamook cheese.  It is very very difficult to find it here for some reason.  (You know not being on the west coast and all that).  However I've found something that makes me just as happy (or maybe happier)... Cabot cheese is available here! I first had Cabot cheese in Vermont visiting Katie girl (Hi Katiegirl!).  I do love me some Cabot cheese and even better it is "president's choice" (the generic Kroger brand). Yay! That's a happy thing to find.

I'm easy, but don't piss me off

I'm changing car insurance companies.  This is kind of a big deal for me because in general when I sign up for a service, product or whatever I stick with them.  Short of a huge issue I'll stick with a company indefinitely.  Of course some of that is just sheer lazyness.  Once I've signed up for something I don't want to have to go through the huge project of researching information and then changing to something else.  So finally deciding to change car insurance carriers after months of spending a ridiculous amount of money took an act of extreme bad customer service to make me switch.  I called my guy several months ago and asked how to get off the high risk program.  He did some checking and thought he could and my new rate would be x - much cheaper than I was paying.  Ok great, sign me up I say.  And then nothing.  I called pack a good 6 - 8 times in the next two months with assurances that I'll get a call back.  With a "you haven't gotten the change paperwork yet?"  With nothing.  So I get a new insurance carrier and called to cancel my current policy today.  Again I get the "we're not in the office so call the 800 number" message.  Bye bye my guy.  Welcome new girl. The worst part is that I originally told them I would understand if it couldn't be done in this initial six months.  All they had to say was "Oh sorry, we can't make that change until your renewal" and I'm lazy enough to have stuck around.

Adjustment

I wonder if Peruvian food is good? That annoying guy from Diners Drive-ins and Dives was at a Peruvian restaurant tonight and it looked good. Sort of related - the Peruvian delegation just went by on the Opening Games. The flag guy lives here. I find it kind of fascinating how many people in the less than winter countries have delegations to the winter Olympics because they lived and trained someplace cold. It is also fascinating how many NHL players are able to play for their various countries. I know in the summer games the basketball players are the same way. Somehow it seems unfair a little bit. (thank heavens for auto-save. I almost lost this entire post. That may not be a bad thing. ;) ) How awful this must be for Georgia. They want to be happy and proud and yet there's such sorrow and tragedy for them. (Am I really blogging about the Olympics? What's wrong with me? I don't like the Olympics and never really watch them.)



This use cash only thing is working out pretty good so far. I slipped last week and used my debit card to buy pizza. I took out my $100 today and I'm down to $25ish for the rest of the week. I know... that's bad, right? That's the whole point of this exercise though. To force me to rein this all in. I did buy $45 worth of groceries so that's a big part of it. Spent 10 on a movie and 16ish on dinner. I'll get better at it. If I don't get a new job before the new boss starts I'm going to have to figure out how to live on less.

I did use it also to order tickets for 2 different events. Next weekend I'm going bowling to support the Human Rights Campaign. Big R wanted to go and I'm down with it. In March I'll go to Gay Bingo again. It should be fun. With any luck it'll be one of the last things I do here for fun.

I have received 4 calls on possible jobs in this past week. After months of hearing nothing, I'm really stoked about that. My coworker told me about indeed.com. It is a crawler of some sort so it pulls jobs from all sorts of sites that you may not think of. (If you're interested in the search part put in title:(job title you want) ) Three out of 4 jobs I've gotten calls from I found using indeed. One of those jobs... (KATE in VT pay attention!) is for a large college hospital in New Hampshire. I know New Hampshire isn't on Michelle's list, but I really liked the VT, NH area. (Nelly Furtado is from Canada?) (Also this song's lyrics are rather cheesy aren't they?) I like that I could live a small town life like I think I want to. Plus, New Hampshire doesn't have state income tax. :) We'll see how it all pans out. I may not get any of them. (Actually Murphy's Law says I'll get offered the worst most lowest paying choice that I would only take out of desperation even though I know that's a bad idea). (NO Positivity! I will get offered the best one and it will pay handsomely and I will live happily ever after!)

At the moment it is a good time to be me. (That's subject to change at any moment so I shouldn't get too cocky about it.) :)

Hmm... not what I had in mind.

So this new money thing I'm trying... I took out my $100 on Sunday. I have $15 in my pocket until next Sunday. Now, I did use $35 on my water aerobics class for the next 8 weeks and that's a one time charge. But still... oh and I owe $8 to Lyndsy. I may not make it this week on only $100. :) (But, luckily, I'll be paid for some focus group study on Wednesday so I'll have a random $200. :P )

A New Theory

I'm trying a new thing. I read somewhere that if you are trying to get a handle on your money, you should only pay in cash. So that's what I'm going to do. I am going to take out cash each week and that's what I'm going to use for groceries, eating out, incidentals, etc. Bills, of course, will continue to be paid electronically, but everything else will be cash and carry. Hopefully it will reign in my spending.

A tale of insanity

Once upon a time, Michelle and I were sane, rational people who did enjoy the holiday known as Black Friday and would be up to shop at about 4 AM. We made it a point to not go to Best Buy because that place is just madness. Madness I say! This year, those sane, rational people were replaced by lunatics. This year... we braved Best Buy. Starting at 8:30 on Thanksgiving night Michelle and I were camped out at Best Buy. There were about 30 people ahead of us in line which we figured gave us pretty decent odds at getting what we were looking for. I wanted a cheap cheap laptop and Michelle had her eyes set on a netbook.

Armed with a kindle each, blankets, some snacks and my Nintendo, we braved the California cold and set up our chairs for the long winter's night. At about 11:30ish I started to doze off. I can sleep anywhere apparently. I was just at that place between awake and asleep when some jackhole drove by in his big truck and honked his big truck horn loudly. I jumped out of my chair and when the nice young man behind me asked how I was doing I assured him I was fine and went about arranging my blankets as though THAT was what I was doing.

At midnight we got cold. Really cold. Michelle went home for more blankets. She came back with what must have been every blanket in their house: 2 quilts, more afghans, jackets and mittens. Warm and toasty I know I dozed off for like 2 hours. I think she did too. I woke up at about 3 when things were starting to shuffle around. We did our shopping. Michelle got her netbook and I did not get my laptop. (That's okay my mom picked one up for me at Staples so it all worked out in the end... the advantage of tiny town life). We did the rest of our shopping and were done by around 11.

The problem with the all night Best Buy adventure reared its ugly head later. We got home about 11ish and almost immediately fell asleep. I think I slept until like 3 and was pretty much wiped out the rest of the day.

The rest of the visit was good. Michelle's kids Kay and Oh are so big. Kay cracked me up most of the weekend, however I could tell I'm totally used to living by myself because Kay would sing. And initially I was fine with it but the longer she would sing the more I would cringe. Michelle pointed out that eventually you tune it out.

No More!

99% of the time I do not use store credit cards. I have one with Lane Bryant and one with Macy's. I used them in either November or December and now am reaping the headache of doing so. Since I never use them, I never remember to pay the damn bill. Hence both have dinged me in the past month or two for non payment. Lame Giant got me because I missed December (since I never use the card I never remember) but when I got the first dunning notice I went online to pay. BUT since I wasn't paying attention I set up the payment to go out on the due date of the next bill not immediately. Grr. I'm not using either card anymore. I can't have my awesome credit score jacked due to two stupid store cards. (Vaguely interesting, I don't have a catagory for money. Must be because I work hard to avoid it at all costs.)