Timeout please??

Life has gotten all crazy on me again. I hate it when it does that. I have too many things up in the air and too many things getting in the way.

S and I have both gotten sick. He's been out of work the last two days. I was rather under the weather, felt better, and now feel not so great again. I may ask my boss if I can work from home this afternoon.

Meanwhile, we're in the midst of our great office renovation. We spent the weekend working on that and got everything out, all the furniture in the new layout and the fish tank moved. The rest of our office is still in our living room. Which wouldn't be a huge deal except we're both feeling under the weather and we have people coming over on Saturday.

Of course, the people coming over depends on whether or not I'm working on Saturday. Right now, that's a pretty real threat. Work is much the same as home - too much to do, too little time to do it. All the while made worse by the fact that we've all been passing the flu around at work. Great.

I know I'm whining, (I always do when I'm sick!) but it's just a lot to juggle on top of all the normal stuff life brings AND the holidays are coming up AND I'm trying to plan a wedding AND I'm a bridesmaid for my best friend next year. Oh, and the ever present minor family drama. Remind me to post about why you shouldn't sell your house to your grandson.

Can I have a timeout for life please?

Living Below Your Means is Having More

When someone says they live below their means, or spends less than they earn, it paints a negative connotation. They're giving up something. They have less fun. They don't buy nice things. They're cheap. It makes you think those things. I see it as the other way around entirely.

When you spend less than you earn, you still use every dollar that comes in. The difference is that you don't spend it on day to day living. Maybe you spend it on a boat or vacation or a new couch or save it to spend when you turn 65. Spending less than you earn is really just spending less than you earn today. You'll still spend it tomorrow or next week or next month.

You don't really want to stop spending anyway. You just want to spend less money existing (rent, utilities, food) so you can spend more money on dreams. What's funny, is that when you do that, people don't think you spend less than you earn, they think you're really well off and make more than them.

It's not about spending less or saving hoards of money. It's just about giving up the things that don't matter for the ones that do.

Income Planning

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned my anal retentive budgeting before. I have each month with it's expenses and savings planned out for about the next 10 years. Yes, I really am that crazy. I plan my budget out about as far as my plans go. Currently that's through my wedding, paying off all debts, building a bigger eFund, buying a house, and building a car replacement fund right about the time my current car will hit 10 years old. Lately I've been thinking about expanding the budget out a bit farther to include my new entrepreneurial plans.

An interesting aspect of this is my income. Most people have a steady job and get a raise every year. Most people also don't plan on staying at their current job for as long as I've budgeted. So, how do I manage to budget that far out, right? Well, I just use my current income. Ten years from now, I've budgeted as if I make the same as I do right now. That's pretty unlikely to be true, but it sure does help keep things sane.

If you tried to plan it 'realistically' people would say to build in at least a 3% raise every year, along with some occasional larger increases due to job changes or promotions. But what if that doesn't happen? I got a raise last year, but it was only 2%. Considering there was a hiring freeze and my 401k was canceled at the time, I was perfectly happy with that. Only what if I had planned on that 3%+ raise? I'd have to go downgrade my budget. That's just depressing and annoying. Instead, I get to upgrade my budget each year.

Another advantage is keeping lifestyle inflation in check. How many people plan on making more down the road and take on a bigger house or more debt than they should? And how many people are scrambling right now? Yeah....bad idea. Instead, I plan out how to accomplish my dreams on no more than I make now. That's pretty empowering all by itself. To know that I can get that house and retire early and whatever else making exactly what I make now is amazing for my confidence in my plans. Then each year when I get my annual raise, I get to see how much quicker I can get there and how much easier it makes things.

Above all, it helps keep things grounded in the real world. When I say that I can afford a house payment of $X, I can see how tight that makes the rest of my budget. I see how long it takes to do anything else once I'm paying so much just for housing. It makes me want a smaller mortgage, a bigger down payment and an early payoff. :) It also encourages me to work on some of my bigger dreams even when there's things like wedding and houses to be had. When I know I can do what I want with what I have, it's really easy to funnel any raises I get over to retirement savings and such. That's definitely a good thing.

I suppose most people don't plan out that far in advance, but I really recommend it. It's good to see your progress and when you can use it to keep expenses in check, that's good too. :) So what's the verdict, am I crazy or a genius?

Highlights!

Today I just feel like sharing some random highlights from my life lately. So without further ado....

Yesterday I signed a contract and put a deposit down for my wedding location. It's exciting and nerve wracking!

S got diagnosed with sleep apnea and got a CPAP machine. I slept poorly for two weeks and then suddenly was sleeping better than ever. I've also noticed a decrease in my appetite. Maybe I'll lose those 5 pounds I've gained since I met my fiance. He's experienced a night and day difference to his quality of life and also had a decreased appetite.

My sister in law is pregnant with a baby girl who is due in February. Possible names: Eva, Ella, Lilo. Love the first one, hate the last.

My nephew looks twice his age because he's so tall. This is bad because people think he's a badly behaved 4 year old instead of a well behaved 2 year old! Oh, and trebuchets are a LOT of fun. 10 points for getting your dad in the head. -5 points for hitting Auntie Slinky.

My mum brought over her truck full of dressers to give to me. Turns out that instead of one tall, one wide dresser that she said there was, there was actually one wide dresser, a vanity, two end tables and some sort of hutch thing. We still don't know what that went with. We ended up not taking any of them and sending it all back with my mum. We really only have room for a tall dresser, and they were musty from being stored somewhere so they gave S instant asthma. Can't really sleep in the same room with those! Cost of "thanks for coming out anyway" dinner and drinks: $100 for 5 people and a toddler.

There is a warrant out for my dad's arrest. When my parent's divorced, he agreed to give up his claim to the condo we lived in. Apparently he's changed his mind. This is called "in contempt of court" and leads to warrants, jail time and fines. Generally, all three from what I've gathered. Last known location: Florida

I bought a new desk that is now sitting in my living room. S has yet to find a desk to his liking, but we're going to look again. Since I got a 48" desk, he has a bit more room. We originally ruled out a lot of slightly larger desks. Hopefully, one of these will be acceptable. After that, we just have to find a free weekend to completely redo our office!

I got a plant for my desk at work. It cost $2.50 because some of the flowers had wilted. It gives me no end of happiness. Directions: Keep out of bright sunlight, water frequently and thoroughly. Perfect for the office and a person who tends to over water.

Halloween is my favorite holiday. This year's costumes: Geisha (last minute party costume), Pirate (work/friend's party), Harley Quinn (going out on Halloween). S won't let me wear his sword to work, but I get to borrow it for the friend's party later. He's being John Trent (Do you read Sutter Kane?), a vampire (work) and the Joker (old school, thank you very much). Apparently a lot of people are going as "the new" Harley Quinn from the Arkham Asylum game that is coming out. I'm curious how many people will actually recognize it. The game isn't out yet and the costume is basically "slutty blond goth girl with too many pieces of white clothing." Or so I've heard it described. (I'm such a Harley snob.)

Last but, definitely least, I can now solve a standard rubik's cube successfully. Always good to know. :)

I Think I Have a Problem

I love spreadsheets too much. I have ones for my budget, my wedding budget, my guest list (and catering costs based on guest counts), my portfolio allocation, my networth (which has about 6-8 pages), my portfolio returns, my fiance and my shared expenses, my anticipated income from retirement accounts and planned contributions to them, the list just goes on and I've now added another one to my collection.

This one calculates my progress towards my goal of financial freedom. Apparently I'm 4.08% there already. I broke it down into things I need to do and assigned appropriate percentages to things. For instance, I have a sub-goal of having sufficient cashflow which is further broken into paying down debt and increasing income which are then broken down into goals like pay off car loan which then have monetary goals like paying off $5k, etc. Each sub goal is assigned a percentage of it's master goal, all the way down the line.

It's super geeky, and way too anal retentive, but I love it. I even made it fairly simple to add new goals and everything adds itself up nicely. My emergency funds are 7.31% complete. Hurrah! :)

I Love Paying Off Debt

It's just so darn satisfying. I think it's more so than savings. With debt, the ultimate goal is to pay it all off, but each dollar you put towards it is a victory by itself. That's a little less debt, a little less interest, a little more freedom. Each dollar towards savings gets you closer to your goal, but usually makes little impact by itself. You do get a bit more interest, but the rates are so much lower than typical rates on debt that it's just not the same. They're especially low right now, which is rather annoying.

I was thinking about this because I just took a break from wedding savings to put $2k on my car loan. You have to love those triple paycheck months! Unlike most people, I actually include those in my budget and allocate the money towards my goals just like any other paycheck. It's really nice to get that huge boost to savings or debt repayment twice a year. I sure enjoyed seeing my car balance drop by that much. I've now payed off nearly a third of the amount I owed. I'll be paying off a bit more over the next few months and it should get down to almost half before I put it back on hiatus. That will last until the wedding is past, or at least completely paid for. After that, it's all car loan, all the time. :)

"You’ve settled. And a little part of your soul dies."

I read that today and it made me pause. I've never been able to phrase it so succinctly, but this is the motivation behind the way I live my life. When you give up who you are and what you want and the things you love...you give up a part of yourself too. Sometimes you can get it back, but sometimes you can't.

The thing that is most important to me, is to be myself. I don't ever want to look back in ten years and wonder how I got where I am and when I'd lost myself along the way. I don't care if I look back and laugh at the weirdo I was back then. I do care whether or not I can recognize the face I see in the mirror.

Forming New Habits

I try to slowly change things in my life by changing small habits. For me, it seems to work better than large sweeping changes. It's the difference between cleaning the whole office in one go and filing your bank statements when you get them.

The contrast between the two often helps me as well. I'll gladly do the small thing if I don't have to do the big thing. Conquering the small habits can give me a boost to do part of the big thing too. When I managed to stop accumulating papers on my desk, I was really excited to get rid of the backlog of papers I already had.

Years of keeping up with college reading and homework loads has honed my will power to the point where it's fairly simple to make myself do the one small thing. I have trouble conquering my habits for a different reason. I don't remember that I should be doing that thing.

I've discovered something, that while not perfect, certainly has helped me a lot. I tied the new habit to something already in my routine. To add something to my morning routine I might tie it to brushing my hair. Whenever I brush my hair (most of the time) I will then remember that I need to do this new thing.

I'm not big on having a set routine. I tend to do things in the order I think of them. That's probably why it's so tough for me to remember to do new things. I don't always do them in the same order. My fiance follows a morning routine with an astounding amount of precision. I once thought that maybe that was what I needed, but it doesn't work for me.

So rather than trying to do A, then B, then new thing C and then D, I simply remember that whenever I do B, I must also do C. As long as I make B something that I do as often as I want to do C, life is good. A simple trick, but it sure has helped!

Apparently I've been busy!

I've suddenly realized that over the last week, I've done all sorts of exciting things and haven't shared any of it. That's no fun at all!

First, I actually got all caught up on my budgeting and net worth and everything. August was a bit down since I went on vacation and spent the corresponding savings. Eventually, I hope to have enough assets that such things won't affect my net worth so much. September was up very nicely. In fact, I'm finally above -$10k again. Huzzah! I'm really pleased with how I'm zooming right up. Upwards and onwards!



I also started my sneaky savings plan. I'll be putting about $2k on my car loan this month. It will be nice to see that go down again. I had brief second thoughts about doing this in case I needed money sooner to put down on things. However, S has his part all saved already, and is aiming to save some more so we can split costs more evenly. That means we can tap his wedding savings if necessary.

I was planning to apply my sneaky savings to my student loans as well. The car is higher interest, so it goes first. I also began the consolidation process last Friday. I had one variable rate loan that managed to escape the last consolidation. The statements were going to my mum's and she never told me about them. Since it dropped from the 11% it was at the time I discovered the stack of statements to about 2.5% (an all time variable rate low), now is the time to consolidate. While I have until next summer before this needs to be done, it makes sense to do it sooner. I'm not saving or losing any money by waiting and in return my minimum payment will drop by nearly a third. I'm also looking forward to just having the one loan instead of the three I have now.

The last exciting thing I did was to buy a desk. I wanted to find something on craigslist and there were a ton of options, but there were only a few desks designed for a computer. Most of those were also too big for my space. The site I found had my desk at a suggested retail of $160. Since there were no locations that carried the desk in my area, I had to look at online retailers. I found one that charged $170 with free shipping. I then found a coupon for 5% off which reduced my tax to about $0.52. I'll also be listing my current desk on craigslist, so I might be able to recoup some of the cost. The rest will come out of my newly reinstated household fund which is what it's meant for.

My garage got broken into!

First, some relevant background. S and I have two garages. One is directly behind our apartment and has wooden dividers between the spaces. The other is a three car garage at a duplex my landlord also owns about 2 blocks away. This garage is open with no dividers. One person who also uses this garage has a lot of junk that tends to creep over into our space and endanger the car. The general rule is therefore that the better car gets stored in the garage behind the apartment, and the older car goes in the open garage. Currently, that's my car behind the apartment, S's car in the other.

However, our landlord was having the concrete sidewalks and garage lips redone on my garage. For the last week, we couldn't use that garage and were informed that they would have to have the garage doors open in order to do the lip. Our landlord arranged with the police for us to park on the street (which normally isn't allowed overnight) while this was done. So we did the logical thing. Sam parked on the street, I parked in his garage, and the grill and smoker went in the living room.

So yesterday evening S gets a call from our landlord. The three car open garage was broken into that morning. He hadn't called until then because he assumed that we had taken S's car to work and that it was empty. S quickly informed our silly landlord that my rather nice, newish car was in fact in there. His reply? Oh....you should really park that in the other garage and park yours over here. *headdesk* After S points out that we normally do, but we parked it in there and put S's car on the street instead of mine. Silly landlord concurs that this was a smart idea and tells us we can go ahead and move the barriers and park my car back in my garage. Apparently they just wanted the concrete to cure a little extra long. Gee thanks.

So S had conveniently gotten out of work a bit early and headed home to take a look. Miraculously my car was fine. *huge sigh of relief* This was extra good since I had mistakenly left my iPod plugged in. Normally it goes everywhere with me. Our fellow garage user (not the one with all the junk) was there and we got the scoop.

They broke a window, pulled an emergency release and got the garage door open. From there, it looks like they might have tried my door and found it locked with a car alarm activated (no, I'm not paranoid at all turning my car alarm on in a closed garage.) There also wasn't anything visible to steal - radio covered, iPod tucked away, nothing else even in there except the snow tires in the back. Those are worth good money, but also weigh a ton. Meanwhile, the neighbor that was there had his GPS and iPod touch in full view. They broke his window, grabbed the goods and ran when his alarm went off. I'm probably lucky that he had those things and an alarm, or they probably would have went for my car just to check for anything.

Lessons learned:
Never have windows on your garage doors.

Motion detector lights are apparently not that useful since they just unscrewed the bulbs.

Never keep valuables in your car, or at least tuck them out of sight. I already did this anyway. Having the iPod in there was an accident. Normally, I keep only a crate of tools/car fluids/jumper cables, my car manual, small first aid kit, and a few copied cds. I've always burned cds for my car rather than use the original, although I mostly just use my iPod now. My car also has a little lid you can close over the radio to make it blend in with the console. I do this religiously ever time I get out.

Car alarms won't necessarily stop a thief, but they do help keep them from making a slow, leisurely tour of your car, your neighbor's car, and every garage down the block. This happened two years ago to people who left their garage doors opened and cars unlocked. The thieves just went down the long blocks of apartments, took anything easy and ran with it.

When parked in your garage, you are covered by your homeowner's or renters insurance. When parked on the street, it is covered by your car insurance. Good to know, since my renter's insurance is cheaper with a lower deductible.

Know your car - I knew how to tell when my alarm has been activated by someone bumping it or trying the door. In this case, that didn't help since my fiance checked on it first. However, I still knew that they had tried the door, but nothing else. I knew what scratches were already there from road damage and dumb people in parking lots. There weren't any new ones, but there were greasy finger prints on the door in an area I never touch.