The Weight of Money

I saved us $59.90 in just two days by paying attention to details and making necessary phone calls.

Saving #1: Credit Card Late Fee (39.00) — Due to the moving madness, we missed a credit card bill. The partner has never missed a bill and I promptly told him to call them and ask to have the charge removed. After almost two weeks of telling him to not forget, I just made the call myself. I explained the situation and reminded them that he has always payed his bill on time. They removed the fee and also reset the APR that had shot up 3% in response to the late charge. I also expressed concern over it being reported to the credit agencies and hopefully that is revolved as well — they were a little less clear on this matter.

Savings #2: Residential Phone Service ($2.98) — We’ve had some very unfortunate experiences in getting phone (and internet) service. After our first failed attempt, we put in a new order on the 11th. However, the line still didn’t work and no one came out until the 17th to fix it. However, our bill still showed charges for the week that we couldn’t use the phone. This call took the longest because they were a little reluctant to provide a credit, but I persisted and got a credit. According to my bill, the credit should have been $3.79 but I decided to give up after 10 minutes on the phone and took the $2.98 credit offered.

Savings #3: Electric Service ($17.92) — When moving into a new place, take note of your meter readings. The electric company overcharged us for almost 200 kWh. While we forgot to take a meter reading the day we moved in, we did take one two days later and then the following week. Those numbers, along with the current meter reading, provided me an average daily use number that allowed me to give the electric company a more accurate previous (initial) reading and reduced our bill. It is important to know your daily energy usage — I knew ahead of time that we were using about 35 kWh/day and that the bill’s stated average of 51 kWh/day was too high. Also, when making the call, be confident and don’t let confused agents talk you out of your savings – the agent told me that I was providing a higher previous reading and that I would be charged more. I had to clarify for her that when considering the difference of the current reading and previous reading, a higher previous reading would in fact reduce my bill, it took her a moment to finally realize her math error and agree.

Each of these calls took, on average, about 6 minutes. The average was driven up by the phone company’s reluctance to give me the credit, but it is worth it. If we had the more expensive phone packages the savings would have been more substantial, but whether it is $3.00 or $30.00 it is still our hard earned money that is being spent.

There are many things people can do to stay on budget. If you have a budget or spending plan already planned out, the best thing you can do is check in with it during the month. Don’t wait until the month is coming to a close; check your budget progress every week or every other week.

I have been lax on my budgeting lately and it is having a negative impact this month. I have not entered any budget numbers this month at all and it has been a busy month. It started with a week at camp, which should have been no-spend days but was quite the opposite, and went through the weeks of moving. I should have been watching where my money was going, but I convinced myself that I just didn’t have the time.

So, I’ve now run the numbers for this month and I am way off budget. By several hundred dollars off budget and I still haven’t accounted for this weekend’s spending or the spending at the grocery store that I am about to do. If I had taken 10 minutes, two weeks ago, I would have known that I’d already spent too much in frivolous categories and had already put a hefty ding in my dining out budget. If I had done this, I would have made some better financial choices throughout the rest of the month. But, I didn’t and now I am looking at numbers that are making me cringe.

Soon, this month will end and the partner and I will start on our financial journey together. I am somewhat disappointed that this move follows a month of overspending and poor budget control. That just isn’t the encouragement and foundation I was to build from. But, I know that I am good at staying on track and that the circumstances of this month lent themselves to poor money managements – something that won’t be happening again anytime soon (I’m far to practical to say “won’t ever happen again”).

I have not fallen off the personal finance blogging bandwagon, I’ve simply hit a major bump in the road — no internet at the new house. It is torture not having access to the world of information at my fingertips. So, I’m forced to travel to libraries and the old house to get connection fixes. However, since I’m in the middle of frantic job hunting, that means all my time internet-enabled time is spent searching and responding to job leads — no time for writing juicy tidbits about my financial habits.

I do open four of five windows full of tabbed pages for reading at home when I need to at least pretend that I’ve got some connection to the real world. I’ve seen things that I’ve wanted to comment on, but I really like that easy print and post option and am less likley to save it somewhere else and publish it later. So, in the mean time, I’ll at least let everyone know:

I’m spending way too much on this move. Trash bags, trash cans, replacing closet systems, improving closet systems, buying books. Well, the book thing is more a habit and the partner put two bookcases in the living room and I couldn’t help picking up a few books at the library book sale to add some of my interests to the shelves (I normally just keep about 30 library books out at a time).

Finally, the partner is of the move-one-day-at-a-time variety and I’ve reached my limit for this time of moving. It feels like I’ve been packing and moving for weeks and when I look at the calendar, I realize that I HAVE! I’ve pretty muched stopped helping and am just waiting for the never ending tide of boxes to stop appearing — maybe we’ll be moved out of the old place by the end of December, I’m not holding my breath though. Sigh.

We are in the middle of moving — packing, getting stuff into the new place, figuring out what to do with the stuff that won’t fit. It is wrecking havoc on my finances focus because there is so little time available to spend focusing on things I care about, whether or not to pay extra toward this card, whether or not to pay off one card entirely, what to do about the two cars that need replacing…

I know this is temporary, but it is still getting under my skin. I want to be working out the plan to get our budget under control and our debt blown away, but I can’t do that when all I’m doing is packing and moving boxes and the partner and I still haven’t combine money.

We made a large purchase recently that I would have preferred having more time to think about it. As I’ve mentioned, the partner has a lot of stuff — tons and tons, literally. He had been borrowing a pallet jack from work for a couple months and it has been very helpful. But, last week they noticed it was gone and needed it back. Somehow, the partner managed to talk me into us buying one. Now, they were on sale — though I hate that rationale for buying things — and it has been extremely useful, but I’m starting to wonder now if I would have said yes if we weren’t in the middle of moving and if our plates were not so full at the moment. Yes, it has been useful but we obviously got along without it. And, while I understand the flexibility it offers over the forklift, the forklift has served that purpose just fine for quite some time now. So, I’m feeling a little disappointed that I didn’t take more time to consider this decision before agreeing to it. Yet, I am glad to see that he felt the need to really consult with me and talk through this idea, even if I didn’t give it much time to consider it.

I think I need to set a date for when all this moving stuff needs to not be taking over so much of the rest of our life and for when we will finally join up all this money thing. August was the plan but with summer camp plans it didn’t happen. So, we must get things in order to start the new budget together by September. And then, when the partner asks me things like “How much should we put toward Chase this month?” — I will be able to answer off the top of my head because I’ll be in the know. For now, it is still just a shrug and a frown and I tell him to make up a number that sounds nice.

I doubt that anyone has really scanned my monthly budget, but if they have, they may wonder why I only budget $20.00 for groceries. This is because when I first went back to school and moved into my friend’s house, I was not buying groceries. My friends paid for all the food and I did all of the shopping and cooking. It worked out to a pretty good arrangement. At the time, I was spending about $100 a month eating out, and $4 a month, on average, on groceries outside of the household spending.

That arrangement eventually fell apart due to busy schedules and soon I found myself with no groceries and no grocery budget. I mostly made up for it by eating out more often and making do with whatever was in the kitchen for when they went shopping. Also, the partner started buying groceries occasionally.

So, I am now budgeting $100 for August’s budget for groceries, a completely impractical number for feeding a family of three, but I won’t be the only one buying food. I look forward to having a real budget come September for food and seeing what I can do to make our limited budget stretch enough to cover groceries.

I have food issues and money issues that are in conflict with each other. I am constantly concerned over not having enough food and not having enough money. I have a very hard time spending money, even when I have it to spend, and will talk myself out of buying things. Seeing as how I’m always worried about not having enough to eat, it seems foolish that I will also talk myself out of buying food items of things because they *cost money* (shock!).

Unfortunatly, It is easier for me to spend money eating out than it is to buy a week’s worth of groceries because it feels like a smaller amount of money though I know that is not true. I hope that I will be getting over this very soon, but if I’m supposed to make $100 provide a month’s worth of groceries, it won’t be happening anytime soon. September will be easier cause I’ll have control/overview of both of our incomes and be able to really see how much we can spend on food and hopefully it’ll allow me to lose some stress over spending money at the grocery store.

I’m anxiously waiting to hear back from a job that I really want. I completed the first interview a couple weeks ago and the second interview yesterday. I feel that both went extremely well. I was told that they would be making a decision this afternoon. However, I never directly brought up the issue of salary — argh!

After the first interview, I was a little annoyed that it hadn’t come up but was comfortable with not asking about it. Now that the second interview is completed, I’m wishing I’d been a little more pushy on that issue. I asked about it in the most round about way possible in inquiring about logistics of the position and got back information I wanted about work hours and also some benefit information — but not a salary disclosure.

So, not only am I on pins and needles waiting to hear if I got the job or not, I’m anxious about whether or not it will pay enough. Currently, I’m looking to make $35,000 a year — however, this is an almost completely fictitious number. I’ve no real basis for why I think that would be a good number, it has just been the one I’ve been most attached to since getting out of school. I know that $30,000 is the minimum I would consider, but I wonder if I would take something that low or not. My last job was $22,000 a year — and I’ve since earned a degree and $35,000 in school loan debt.

So, I’m looking through some job postings on monster and in other job banks to see if I can come up with comparable job descriptions and salary listings. This position was simply listed that pay would be based on experience. I am comforted by the fact that at each interview, they have pointed out that I have considerable experience — a assertion that surprises me somewhat since I feel my scattered jobs don’t reflect experience as much as temporariness.

The position is a sort of mix of duties because the office is so small. The primary listing details it as a Grants Manager and Office Manager, but the interview also established that it really needs to lead into overall Operations Manager for the office. I can’t believe that I am actually excited about the idea of having the title of “manager” since I figured that I’d never want to fill such a role, but it relates to managing tasks, not people, at least not at this point.

Well, I see that looking on monster offers a large range of salaries and duties. Basically, they mostly seem to list anything from $30,000 – $50,000 for somewhat comparable positions. However, I must also factor in the reality that the corporate world and business world differs greatly from the non-profit. Looking at idealist.org, I find comparable positions listed from the upper 20s to 40s. Wow, I’m glad I did this — I just saw that the position I am waiting to hear from finally updated that portion of their listing — it currently lists low to mid 30s. So, looks like I just might get my 35K afterall, and maybe, just maybe, after seeing these other listings, I’ll see if I can push up it just a little higher. :)

I needed to call about consolidating my last two student loans before school let out. I didn’t.
I needed to call about consolidating my last two student loans before July 1. I didn’t.
I needed to do this, I didn’t, and now it will cost me more to pay off my student loans.

I finally called, and despite my mistaken notion, it is not possible to add my two unconsolidated loans to my consolidated loan for without changing (raising) the interest rate.

I must now figure out if it is worth it to consolidate them anyways or not. In all my calculations, I either save or lose about $300 in the life of the loan if I consolidate. My monthly payments would be only a few cents lower, but I would have the advantage of sending one check to one place every month.

My current consolidated loan is at 2.875% fixed — it amazes me to have such low interest.
My unconsolidated loans are at 6.54% variable each year — a little more consistent with current interest rates.

My options, at the moment are:

1) Consolidate all loans and end up at 4.125% fixed and send one check to one place.

2) Consolidate the unconsolidated loans together and then have one consolidated loan at 2.875% and one at 6.54% and send one check to one place.

3) Do nothing right now and wait to see what interest rates are going to do next year and send two checks to two places in the meantime. A lot can change in a year for interest rates.

I’m not sure what I am going to do. I find a lot of value in sending one check to one place and so the consolidation offers a lot of benefit. One benefit to having two separate loans is that it would be easier to make additional payments to pay one off sooner. If I consolidate them, either into one loan or two separate consolidated loans, it will be more work to make additional payments (to pay one off faster) and would allow more room for error on the processor’s part.

Current plan of action: nothing, I’m going to mark my calendar to think about this again in October 2006, a month before my grace period ends.

Oh, good news is that I found out that I have about 5K less in school loan debt than I thought. Looks like my networth will get an instant boost mentally though not actually since I never owed as much as I thought to begin with.

Wow, July went really fast. Maybe because it started with wedding madness or because there was simply so much going on. It is requiring extra discipline to focus and reflect on my budget for July because I’m already all wrapped up in August’s spending and needs. I thought July would be the last month of my individual budget, but since the partner and I still haven’t joined finances and since I was out of town for a week, we’ll wait until September to join forces, I mean, money.

Dining Out – $134.48
Since this is usually a sore spot, I’ll start with it. I’ve seen another decrease in what I am spending eating out — hurrah!. I am very excited about this. Hopefully, this trend will continue.

Transportaion – $111.95
A slight dip in transportation costs. However, I’m betting that will go right back up this month since I’ve made several 70 mile drives to camp and back and there is still one more to make before the month is over. Gas prices have also shot up and I actually paid $3.17 a gallon recently, that is the highest I have paid in many, many months and I did not fill up. So, I need to stop and get gas asap and will still be paying over $3.00 a gallon to do so.

Orthodontist – $100
This has been a recurring bill for over a year now and, huzzah, it will no longer be. This is the bill I spoke of here when describing a bill pay error. I expect that I will get this money back sometime this month, hopefully, since I was not able to stop payment on it without getting charged a fee.

DD – $257.96
This is an unusual month to have such high expenses for the daughter. $31 spent is actually her money — she turned in all her coins from her piggy jar and had to put 50% in her ING account (which first gets deposited into my account which is included under deposits). $100 also went into her ING savings because I felt like transferring more than just $31. It wasn’t planned, so that did take a small bite out of my budget. Also, I had to make her a mattress for camp and that end up costing $116.49 in materials — anyone who still thinks that sewing things yourself is cheaper, is mistaken. That $116 should really be listed under “procrastination” because I could have saved money if I had ordered a mattress several week prior to camp.

Overall, I’m pleased with my budget, even if I did go over somewhat. The mattress purchase and the moving supplies were what really pushed me over my budget.