Going to play in the woods

I'll be away for the next few days, camping with the fam in Delaware.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Family-friendly workplaces

What makes a workplace family-friendly? This is something most people don't consider until they have kids.

Here are some of the things I see as most important to workers with young children.

Benefits. This one is the most obvious. How much does it cost to have your kid(s) on your workplace health plan? Does your employer offer Flexible Spending Accounts to help you pay for childcare with pre-tax dollars? Better yet, is there a subsidized childcare center on site? (They do exist.)

Sick leave. How much do you get? With young kids, you can scrape by on 10 or 12 days a year. Any less and you'll find yourself using vacation time to stay home and care for a small grumpy person with lice or pink eye. Not my idea of a vacation. And are you even allowed to use sick leave to care for a sick child, or must you be sick yourself in order to use it?

Travel. In many jobs, you have to travel to get ahead, or even just to do your job reasonably well. But how much is too much? I'd think twice about a job that took me away overnight more than 2 or 3 times a year, unless i could find a way to bring my family with me.

Hours. Is it a 40 hour work week? Or are you expected to work 50, 60, 70 hours a week? How often will special projects keep you from being able to put your kid to bed? Even the question of whether you have to take a lunch break off the clock can be important. A 9-5 work day gives you time for daycare dropoff and pickup. 8-5 just means the whole household has to get up earlier.

Flexibility. Must you work 9-5, M-F, or can you work a swing shift to accomodate your spouse's schedule? Can you work your 40 hour week in four 10-hour days, to give you one day at home with your child or one day to get errands done during the week? Is there a history of employees dropping down to part time? (And are the benefits pro-rated for part timers or simply gone if you don't work full time?) Does anyone telecommute? And if there are part timers and telecommuters, are they able to advance in their careers? These options will make a huge difference as you try to juggle work and childcare and school schedules.

Family medical leave. Companies with more than 50 employees are required to give workers up to 3 months off to care for a sick family member or to welcome a new member of the family (a birth or adoption counts for both parents). FMLA leave is generally unpaid, but your health insurance continues during your absence from work and your job must be held for you. If you can't get FMLA leave at a minimum, how will you take maternity or paternity leave? Can you use banked sick and vacation time so that some of your leave is paid? Better yet, a very few companies offer paid maternity leave. Yes, it's true. I worked for one (but alas, didn't qualify for paid maternity leave since I was a contract worker). So ask your employer if they offer it. They'll probably look incredulous, but they should know that some companies out there actually do this.

Commute. It's not the company's fault if you live far away. But it's something you absolutely must consider when you take a job, especially if you have kids. If you get off of work at 5, and live 45 minutes away from work, what time can you realistically have dinner on the table? And if you have to take public transportation, how reliable is it? What's the penalty if you're late to pick up your kids from daycare or from aftercare? Calculate what a typical morning and evening will look like before you take the job. If you'll have to get your kids up at 4:30 in order to get to work on time, maybe you need to look for something else.

Kid-friendly culture. Are there pictures and fingerpaintings up in people's cubicles? Does anyone ever bring their kids to the office? Warning bells would go off if I learned that children weren't allowed in the office under any circumstances. I'm not talking about having your 3 year old with you 40 hours a week. But I think it's healthy for kids to visit their parents' offices once in a while. If you have to keep your work life and your personal life completely separate, chances are you're going to have to make tough choices about your priorities more often than you'd like.

Community building. Are there annual workplace gatherings that bring workers and their families together? A company that throws holiday parties or summer picnics without inviting workers' families would have less appeal for me than a company that was willing to spring for enough eggnog for my spouse and my child each December.

How many people have kids? Does your boss have kids? If her kids are grown, does she seem to remember what it was like? If she doesn't have kids, does she seem sympathetic? Plenty of people who don't have children are great allies for parents. You just have to learn how to suss them out. You will be much happier working for someone who understands that it's simply unavoidable when you have to miss work because of a snow day, or leave in the middle of a meeting because you've gotten an urgent call from the school nurse.

General stress and enjoyment levels. Do you like your work? When you think about it during the weekend, does it make your stomach tie up in knots? A happy parent means a happier child. If your work is draining you emotionally or physically, you're not going to be able to summon much enthusiasm to help your 4th grader make a diorama of the pleistocene age on Monday night after dinner. This is one of the big shockers of parenthood--it's not just about you any more. If you're miserable, it's going to take a miracle to keep your kids from feeling the brunt of it.

The financial responsibility of being a parent means you can't always choose to leave a bad work situation. But if you can learn to spot family-friendly workplaces you might just find yourself a really great situation. And as you climb the ladder, have pity on your underlings who are where you were not too long ago.

And to all the heads of HR out there:
Being perceived as family-friendly by your employees is a great retention strategy. Give a parent a good, part-time, flexible job with pro-rated benefits, and they won't leave no matter what you do to them.

Related posts:
The biggest gift I can give my son
Contemplating a job change

Submit your frugal best to the Festival this week

*Tired but happy* will be hosting the Festival of Frugality this week. Let's make it a good one!

And please do me a favor and submit early if you already know what your contribution will be. I'm going camping Saturday-Monday, so it would be nice not to have too much coding to do when I get home Monday night.

I must admit I'm glad that Conservative Cat no longer has a blog carnival submission form. It will be easier to have submissions coming from only one place, because then the formatting will be the same for all submissions.

What's your favorite cheap snack food?

Popcorn!

A bag of popcorn kernels is less than $2. A single bag makes at least twenty batches in my electric air popper. At only pennies per batch, it's one of the least expensive snacks I can think of. I like mine with a lot of junk on it--salt, Spike seasoning, and yeast. Some people use powdered sugar and butter. Some people use grated parmesan cheese.

I learned this snack habit from my father. When I was a kid, I would usually be sent to bed before my father made his nightly batch of popcorn to eat while he watched television. I'd wait til I heard the air popper go off. I'd give him three minutes, or maybe five. Long enough that he would have seasoned the popcorn and gotten comfy on the couch. That's when I'd come out of my room and say "Daddy, I can't sleep." Most of the time he'd let me get away with it, and I could sit with him for ten or fifteen minutes and share his popcorn while he watched Cheers or the news.

Now my dad and I are both too health-conscious to do this every night, but I still make a batch of popcorn in the evening about once a week. Sure beats chips. Better for my health and better for my wallet.

What's your favorite snack food?

Free house value assessment

I recently signed up for a free house value assessment through MyPoints. I mostly did it for the 25 points, but I was also curious. Several weeks went by, and then I received via snailmail a 3-page house value assessment. It consisted of a letter telling me my house is worth $150,000-$200,000, with a long explanation for why the range is so big and how it could be totally off depending on various factors such as condition. It also included a couple pages of comparable sales and listings on my block and the next block over. This was interesting, altho it was nothing I haven't gleaned from looking at MLS listings, the city property tax website, and from gossiping with another value-conscious neighbor. Still, the assessment came from a real, honest-to-goodness realtor. Of course she wants my business, but I thought it was a decent service, for a free service, and I could see doing it again next year just to see what they say.

Considering we bought the house about 2.5 years ago for $70,000, and put about $20,000 into it getting rid of leaks and smells and hazardous wiring, I think my investment is paying off nicely. However, the value assessment confirmed what I already knew. Houses are sitting on the market for a loooong time on my street. I could probably get $150,000 for my house if I wanted to wait six months to get it. If I wanted to sell it in time to close on another place, I'd probably have to take less. I seriously doubt I'd get $200,000, especially without a finished basement and with my stanky old bathroom.

I am not planning to sell any time soon, but still, it's fun to speculate.

Related posts:
Is your house a starter home?
Landlords sharing profits with renters: Part 1

On being a straight, unmarried couple

I have a guest post up at Queercents this week about being part of a straight, unmarried couple.

Check it out:

Straight Partnerships: Saying No to Marriage

I have referred to our choice to remain unmarried many times on this blog, but I've never laid out all our reasons before. This was one of the most personally meaningful posts I've written in my year of blogging.

Thanks to Nina for giving me a chance to share some thoughts with her readers, and thanks to Madame X for the most flattering blog comment I've ever gotten.

Even though things have been mighty quiet at *Tired but happy* lately, this looong guest post proves that I have been writing (and working, and parenting, and entertaining out-of-town guests, and and and)! Things are so busy lately that I haven't even had time to research campsites for the trip we're allegedly taking this weekend. To top it off, some evil creature has been taking over my sweet toddler between the hours of 11 PM and 5:30 AM, causing him to wake up SCREAMING every half an hour for the past 3 nights. WTF? Is it nightmares? Tummyache? Night terrors? All I know is that M and I are barely functional. If the little darling doesn't sleep tonight I'm going to seriously consider letting them go camping without me this weekend just so I can sleep.

For more on my blissfully unwed state, see this handy index of posts about being unmarried.

Edit: Check out the comments on this post over at My Open Wallet. Some folks really didn't like my unmarried partners post and I kinda let myself get defensive. I should just shut up and let the comments go by, but I love me a good fight.

The three-hundred dollar day

Today cost more than I thought it would when I woke up this morning. It started off innocently enough, with blueberry pancakes, followed by yard work. In the afternoon, we laid down the plastic at the Plymouth Meeting Mall, but overall I think we got off pretty easy.

1. Morning crisis. The DVD player was broken. L drove us crazy watching Bob the Builder, the Wiggles, and Pingu in slow-motion. I frightened myself badly by deciding that the yellow-shirted Wiggle is actually kind of hot.

Solution: $80 at Best Buy for a VCR/DVD combo that someone returned. The offensively flirtatious sales guy ("love the eyes, beautiful") tried to sell me an extended service contract for $59.99, 75% of the original cost of the item. I resisted the sales pitch. I got a pretty good deal and Bob the Builder played at normal speed when we got home.

2. Afternoon crisis. The friend who is supposed to go camping with us next weekend (and who had promised to loan us a tent) may not be able to go. We will not be able to delay purchasing a new tent until next spring after all.

Solution: $100 Eureka dome tent from Dick's Sporting Goods. M wanted a tent by Jeep (who knew they made tents?) that looked like it would withstand a hurricane and that I was sure would have zero ventilation. "But it has a vestibule," he said. We discussed (not argued) while L hid the balls from the foosball tables in other games, tormenting future Dick's shoppers. I inadvertently wandered into an area of the store called "The Lodge", which means I'll be having nightmares about camoflaged hunting rifles. I always forget that Pennsyl-tucky exists just outside the Philadelphia city limits.

3. Life is just plain expensive. We make a short stop at Target to get loratadine (generic Claratin) for my fall allergies, the usual mega boxes of size 4 diapers, gummi bear vitamins for L, a clipper to cut L's hair, shampoo for me (the generic version of Pantene Pro-V), and to stock up on Oral-B Essential floss which our neighborhood CVS has broken my heart by ceasing to carry. I also succumbed to temptation by buying a new cheapo sleeping mat (I've been using one my father bought when I was in the first grade) and a folding captain's chair for $8 to take camping next weekend. The damage? Over $100.

4. Hungry, tired, hungry, and hungry, we stopped for dinner on the way home. The middle eastern place, where all three of us can eat like kings for $15, was closed. L threw a fit because they have a big box of toys there. I had to hold him up to the restaurant's window so he could see that the lights were out and the chairs were on top of all the tables. We made do with the not-as-cheap and also toyless Mexican place across the street. We resisted their delicious but spendy deserts, and got out the door for $28. This included an unusually large tip to make up for the lake of salsa on the table and the ear-splitting demands for foods that are not typically served at Mexican restaurants.

It was a good day, even though I'll have a stroke when I log into my accounts tomorrow and see all those extra purchases on the credit cards. At least my raise will finally kick in this Friday.

Wow, I'm Queerspawn!

I learned a new word this week.

Queerspawn. Have you heard that before? I hadn't. Apparently it means someone raised by one or more LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender) parents. Even though my mother came out when I was already out of college, Abigail Garner assures me that I am real, honest-to-goodness Queerspawn. She's added me to her blog aggregator, Oversampled, which publishes feeds from Queerspawn bloggers.

I am bemused to find out that I am something I've never heard of before, but of course I'm happy to find a new audience for my blog and a new group of like-minded bloggers to read.

Thanks, Abigail. Hopefully some of my readers will wander over to Oversampled, and Alison's blog, Damn Straight.

I can't rock and roll

This evening I was sitting on the couch with L in my lap, watching a DVD. It has some suspenseful parts that scare him, so he demanded that I hold him while he watched. I read a book. He clung to my neck during the scary parts and climbed on me the rest of the time. Then I asked him if he wanted to watch the selection of sing-along songs. He did.

Me: Why don't you hop down and dance, L?

L: Okay. Yes, I will dance.

He climbed off my lap, and executed a series of jumps, spins, and shimmies, falling down a few times.

Me (trying not to laugh): Shake it, L. You're a good dancer.

Suddenly he stopped dancing.

L (sadly): I can't rock and roll, Mama. (shrugs) I tried, but I just can't.

Must. Leave. House. NOW.

Today I am going out to my old workplace so the "new me" (my replacement) can show me what he's doing with the digital library project I built several years ago. I'm speaking about the project at a conference in October and need to be reminded just what it's all about. I'm having lunch with an old friend while I'm out there, and will join the entire staff for the morning coffee break ritual. I am excited, and nervous, because seeing old colleagues always means that I'll be silently scrutinized:

"Hmm, looks like she lost weight. About time."
"She looks tired."
"I heard her job situation is really dicey."
"Wonder if she still drives that old beater."
"Jeez, she still won't stop talking. Some things never change."
"I'm glad she left cause I got her office chair."

And of course the scrutiny goes both ways. I'll be thinking:

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Who designed this new web interface?"
"Look at how frayed Anne's sweater is. I guess they still pay peanuts around here."
"Mm-hmm. More men have been promoted. This place is still so sexist."
"I still can't tell if the director is gay."
"Sniff. I loved the view through my office window at this time of year."
"It's so peaceful out here."
"There's so much parking. And it's free!"
"I wonder if they miss me."

Because I'm driving and have no train to catch for once, I am having a hard time getting my butt up and away from the breakfast table. I'm having coffee, checking email, mapquesting a route I know well to the old office just to laugh at how Mapquest mangles directions, checking email again, reading blogs.

LAZY.

I'm leaving. Now.

Well, maybe just one more cup of coffee.

Twice is nice

Coffee makes my mornings brighter. But I am way too cheap to buy a cup in the train station, and I also get tired of having to schlep my reusable travel mug to and from work every day. I've figured out a way to give myself a break from carrying the mug.

Once in a while, my spouse and I give in to the urge to buy a coffee at Starbucks or similar. I'm always thrilled when they give me two cups instead of using one of those little paper sleeves. Why would I want the more waste-producing second cup? Because it's brand spankin' clean, that's why. I wash out the lid, save the unused second cup, and voila. I've got a to-go cup to use the next time I want to make coffee at home before work.

It works for me.

(Also, I like watching my neighbors at the train station, who know there is no Starbucks for miles around, wondering where I got a Starbucks coffee so early in the morning.)

After the pink slip

A great post from Single Ma asks, what would you do if you were fired today?

Well, after I did a happy dance and called the unemployment office and my spouse and all my friends who are tired of hearing me bitch about work, and after I skipped all the way home, I'd probably come back to earth with a bump. Wait, holy crap, there are NO JOBS. I know, because if there were, I would've gotten one months ago.

Then I'd do the following, not necessarily in this order.
[As usual, I was unable to keep my list to a reasonable, readable five or six items. C'est la vie.]

1. Sit down and take a long, hard look at my spending. That would take a while because my budget is about ten months out of date. I'd probably have to start by finishing getting Quicken configured, which for some reason I have been procrastinating.

2. Figure out exactly how many months I could last with just my second job and my spouse's half-time job. With some belt-tightening, I think it would be nearly a year, but I'd be stressing out after just a few months.

3. Call daycare and tell them we're dropping little L down from 3 full days a week to two half days. I wouldn't pull him out entirely if I didn't have to. Talk to them about whether our new lower income qualifies us for aid.

4. Call the two temp agencies who place workers in my field in this region. I've been registered with them for five years with only one or two bones thrown my way, though, and they weren't very juicy bones at that. I wouldn't hold my breath.

5. Try to pick up extra hours at my second job. I probably couldn't do this immediately, but I might could get more hours whenever the next semester started.

6. Tweak resume. Call contacts. Scour job boards. Press interview suit. Brood about my poor interviewing skills. Think about getting some coaching. Do nothing about it, as usual.

7. Call, email, and otherwise pester every person who's ever indicated they might some day have some freelance work for me.

8. Do some marketing of my freelance skills. Problem is, marketing would probably take months to pan out, by which time I'd hopefully have another job.

9. Do some professional development. Take a free class in accounting or legal research at the college where my second job is. Write articles or review books for some professional journals to get my name out there. (Like I'd ever be that bored.) Go to professional conferences and peddle my resume. Volunteer for some potential employers so I'd be well positioned to apply if anything came open.

10. Relocate. Somewhere in here I'd probably start looking for jobs in one of the other four cities that I could drag my spouse to without having to knock him out first. I wish there were more than four cities on that list, but it's taken a long time to get him up to four.

11.. Blog lots. Get a better template. Migrate to wordpress. Become one of those multiple-blog, twenty-posts-a-day, ads-up-the-wazoo kind of bloggers.

12. Apply to grad school. Reread my novel draft a few times. Think about maybe finishing the 8th chapter. Do nothing as usual.

13. Start some of the more time-consuming money games like 0% balance transfers and paid-to-try offers that I've never been able to bring myself to mess around with.

14. Make curtains, refinish the floors, paint, and garden. Maybe even exercise.

15. Travel! If I wasn't feeling too strapped for cash, I'd hop in the car and take L on an extended tour of his grandparents, aunts and uncles. Except he's got an uncle across the Atlantic and a grandparent across the Pacific, so the car couldn't make the whole trip.

16. Put on my trendiest clothes (which were trendy in about 1999) and go down to the local coffee shop to see if they'd hire a barista with no experience.

17. Become a mystery shopper.

18. Start hauling my blonde-and-blue-eyed son to child acting auditions. (Joke)

19. Pillage his college account. (Bigger joke)

20. Pillage my retirement fund. (I hope this is a joke)

21. Call my Daddy. (Joke. Sort of. I'd ask for a parental loan from one of our 3 sets of parents before I put the house on the market, that's for sure.)


And here's the second tier of drastic moves after all the above failed:

1. Stop the $75 monthly contributions to our 529 accounts, even tho it would mean we'd have to eat $70 worth of annual account fees.

2. Stop the $25 quarterly automatic contributions to our favorite charity.

3. Stop paying a whopping $25 extra per month on our mortgage.

4. Stop autodepositing 10% of the paycheck from my second job into our short-term savings account. Even tho we'd be tapping the short term account in the event of a job loss, it would help psychologically to be putting a fraction of it back in.

5. Stop giving even my usual fairly modest birthday and Xmas gifts to my family.

6. Get a retail job or a childcare job (both things I do not miss about my pre-professional life).


And here's what I would not do until I was really desperate:

1. Stop or reduce workplace retirement contributions for my spouse or for me at my second job.

2. Do a cash-out refi on the house.

3. Carry a credit card balance.

Do you have an F.U. fund?

Sure, we all know the importance of having a healthy emergency fund. The numbers I've heard lately say that you should have a small E fund of $1000 if you're in aggressive debt paydown mode. When the consumer debt is gone, you should inch up to 3, then 6 months of living expenses.

But what about having enough cash that would allow you to say "F*** you" to your employer and walk out? How much liquid cash would you need to feel that you could voluntarily walk away from your main income stream without another one lined up? I've been thinking about this lately, as *cough cough* a very close friend's employer finds new ways to demoralize, devalue and dehumanize the workers in her department. My friend is getting near the breaking point, and she's thinking about quitting.

In my case, I'd be able to stretch my six-month emergency fund a lot longer than six months if my spouse or I walked away from a job. That's because our crazy schedules have one major advantage: we're well diversified, with 3 part time jobs between us. The most devastating job loss would be my main part time job, because that's the job that provides health coverage for me and for our kid. When the whole family was on my spouse's health insurance for a few months after the baby was born, we found out the hard way that it was crazy expensive. I wouldn't want to be forced to go back onto his plan.

I really don't know the answer to this question, though. It would seem so irresponsible to quit without something else lined up, especially since jobs in my field don't exactly grow on trees. Quitting just because I was unhappy doesn't really seem like an emergency, so it seems like a frivolous reason to deplete my emergency fund. Of course, circumstances could force my hand. Off the top of my head, here's a list of things that would make me feel justified in quitting with no other job lined up and no possibility of collecting unemployment.

If I was being asked by my boss or someone else in power to do something illegal or to lie. (It's not that bad, my friend is only being asked to answer direct questions evasively, and the situation I'm, er, she's being asked to cover up is not illegal. Just akward.)

If I felt threatened by someone at work and wasn't getting protected by HR, I'd get the hell outta there, calling my lawyer on my cell phone as I exited the building. (Thankfully that's never happened, altho I did have to work in a building with inadequate security for two plus years.)

If the stress was so bad I felt my health and sanity was seriously at risk.
(It's debatable how close I am to this point. And am I really closer to that point now than I have been most of the time I've worked here? When is enough enough?)

If work-related costs like commuting, clothes and childcare became so expensive that it wasn't worth it to keep the job. (We could really get away with having a full time stay-at-home parent if we were willing to stop saving money completely. Can't do that. So for now, it's worth it to work just for the benefits.)

If the repetetive stress injuries I've been flirting with for years got so bad I couldn't work. (What's that you say? Disability insurance? But will they cover pre-existing conditions? Doubt it. And any employer I tried to stick with the bill could pretty easily find out I've been treated for this off and on for years before they hired me on.)

If my kid needed me to quit. (If little L started having major behavioral problems or other issues I'd probably say, see? see? My job stress is even f***ing with my kid's life. I'm done.)

If I got a book deal. (Yeah, this is really, really unlikely to happen, considering all the writing I'm not doing and all the book proposals I'm not sending out. But if somebody every stopped me on the street and said, hey, aren't you that promising young(ish) writer? Can I give you a three figure advance on a book or books? Sure, I'd quit my day job. Wouldn't you?)

Frugal gift idea number 1: Gift cards

This is the first post in a series of frugal gift ideas that I'll be running as we approach the major gift-giving winter holidays.

Recently, I've discovered that one trick solves several of my problems.

Problem 1: I'm part of all kinds of rewards programs, but most of the rewards stink. Often, you can get a better deal if you'll take a gift card instead of cash.

Problem 2: I have a hard time thinking of gift cards as real money, and I'm liable to waste them on things I don't really need.

Problem 3: I am really, really bad at buying gifts because I don't have that knack for guessing people's sizes, tastes, etc. I have a sister who is like a magician in figuring out what people would want, but she got all the talent in that area. Whenever I can avoid it, I do.

Problem 4: I'm keeping my spending under control, but just barely. I don't have a lot of extra cash right now for gifts, but fall and winter are my family's birthday season (three this week alone!).

I have 3 birthday gifts to come up with this week.

1. For my oldest nephew's 17th birthday this week, I'm sending him a $25 Barnes and Noble gift card that I got from cashing in MyPoints rewards. It's not the most generous gift I've ever given, but my syblings are a fertile bunch so I have a rule that I don't go above $25 or $30 for neice and nephew gifts. Because I got off so easy on the gift, I splurged and bought him a nice card for $2.99. Luckily I think his parents have explained to him that Auntie just doesn't make as much money as the rest of the adults in our family, so her gifts are more modest. I'll get a priceless thank you note in his perfect cursive, addressed and mailed by his mother. It will go into my "letters to keep" folder and I'll be getting the best end of the deal, but so what? I will have fulfilled my Auntly duty without breaking the bank.

2. For my mother's birthday, I used a $20 Amazon gift card that I got from participating in a usability study at work. Someone needed guinea pigs to evaluate a new web interface. I would have been happy to do it for free (especially since I was on the clock anyway) but I was even happier to do it for $20. Well, one of my favorite authors, who I've gotten my mom hooked on also, came out with a new book. She got it a week early (oops) but she was thrilled. Today I supervised a whirling dervish of construction paper, glue, and glitter, so I'll be able to mail off a card to "Grammy" from my little son, and feel that her birthday was well observed.

3. For my father's birthday, I couldn't think of a way to use gift cards, but I'll sure as heck make sure I get a click-through kickback. Evreward tells me I can get 8% back from Ebates (referral link here) when I buy my father's present from Kodak Gallery. I am finally going to send him that book of grandchild photos for his coffee table that he's been asking for. I've given up on the lovingly hand-crafted scrapbook idea, and I'm going to content myself with ordering a photo book premade from Kodak. Here ya go, Dad. Hope you like it. More glue, glitter, and some sparkly star stickers went into a special card for "Grandpa". I know Grandpa will be horrified that his only biological grandson selected pink construction paper for his birthday card, but Grandpa will have to just get over it.

Related posts:
Gifts to family: Unconditional but not unlimited

My credit score and report

I just pulled my credit report from Equifax, and also splurged and bought my credit score from them as well.

My score? 780, up from 756 this time last year. Woohoo! My credit is excellent. That must mean it's time to go borrow lots and lots of money at great low rates. Kidding.

There weren't too many shockers in the report. I've been pulling one every four months for the past year, ever since they became free from AnnualCreditReport.com. Here are just a few random observations.

My "last reported employment" is the first job I ever held, which was a work study job in college more than 10 years ago.

My Citi card is still showing the status "dispute resolution pending", probably from the time nearly a year ago when I tried to make that freaking behemoth of a retailer, Sears, give back $60 they overcharged me in a store. Sears has already refused point blank to cooperate, my irate letters to various VPs all came back "no forwarding address", and I have vowed never to pay Sears a dime again. I guess I should call Citi and get them to take the restriction off my card.

I just noticed that my first card, an American Express I opened in like 1994 and closed in maybe 1997, isn't on here. Cool. So my two other closed accounts will fall away eventually too.

I've been a homeowner for over two years, but I still feel a little special pride when I see that word "mortgage" and the words "pays as agreed".

My longest card history is my Chase United card, which I barely use now and keep it open for the purpose of improving my score. I actually got it in 1997, but because of various corporate mergers the history only goes back unbroken to Oct 2001.

My shortest card history is my Fidelity 529 MBNA card. I've only had it since May.

Hard credit pulls--not too many this year. The only surprise was Sharebuilder. I opened an account with them in June for a combined $70 in bonuses and I had forgotten that would be a hard pull. There's also a mystery one. Anybody know who Teknowledge Corp is and why they pulled my credit report?

Last year I opened too many new accounts. I've done better this year about keeping up old histories and not starting new ones.

I still haven't dabbled in 0% balance transfers. It's tempting, and I do love free money, but it's hard enough keeping on top of all my credit lines and making sure there's no monkey business.

Anybody else care to share their credit score?
Which of the three credit bureaus is your fave to get reports from?

Related posts:
Credit cards: Rewards, credit histories, and more

Another interview with my fabulous self

Help Your Money is running a series of interviews with various PF bloggers. The interview with me is posted here. If you want to find out all about me, don't waste time in my blog archives! Head on over to Help Your Money.

Other interviews in which I reveal way too much and blather on way too long can be found at Money Blogger Podcast and Blueprint for Financial Prosperity.

Hint: Don't read both the Blueprint interview and the Help Your Money interview. They ask some of the same questions, and I give some of the same answers. Next time I get interviewed I'll try harder to come up with some new dirt.

Cheap treats

My family has developed a frozen treat habit this summer, but it's not going to send us to the poorhouse.

The corner store on our block has its drawbacks. Last fall, my little son and I got to witness the tail end of an armed robbery there, and I have never been able to go in since without peering cautiously through the window first to make sure nobody is holding the place up.

But they have a dreamy frozen treats cooler. Usually we buy creamsicles, fudgsicles, and ice cream sandwiches for 25 cents each. I run over there after dinner a couple of nights a week, and come home with four treats for a dollar that we share between the 3 of us. If the grown-ups are feeling greedy, we wait til the baby's in bed before we eat them.

Tonight, though, we went all out. We bought two pints of ice cream for 99 cents each, and a box of cones for $2.25. Little L couldn't believe that for once his plaintive nightly cry, "I want ice cream," actually got results.

Sure, the ice cream comes in a box and isn't really top quality, but it's low fat, and it's so cheap, and the Asian couple who runs the store is friendly. By now, the regular guys who hang around the store start making room for me at the ice cream cooler as soon as they see me coming. The teenage girls across the street are jumping double dutch, and we stop to watch on the way home. I pause in our front yard to pick a couple of tomatoes, and knock on the next-door neighbor's door to give them to her.

Cheap ice cream, nice neighbors, what more do I need? Maybe I could stay here happily for a long, long time after all.

Landlords sharing profits with renters: Part 2

In this post, I'm going to explore several different ways to be a landlord who shares profits with renters. The first post laid out some background on why my partner and I are thinking of becoming landlords, and the reasons we want to find an ethical way to collect rent from other working people like ourselves.

Here are a few rough ideas. I welcome comments, criticism, and suggestions.

1. Charge less. Our first idea was to simply charge much, much less than market rate if we could afford to do so. If we had bought a property intending to use the rent to cover the mortgage, this would not be feasible. However, in our case, we'd simply be renting out our primary home while we lived elsewhere. We aren't out to make a big profit, but simply to cover costs on the house, and yes, continue to benefit from the growing equity that regular mortgage payments provide and also hopefully a little long-term appreciation. Our first choice in this scenario would be to rent the house to someone we know, and treat them more like caretakers than renters. We'd collect only enough rent to cover the mortgage payments (about $600/month, or about two-thirds to half of the going market rate for a rental of this size). In exchange, our friend would do some of the minor maintenance that we, as homeowners, would normally do. I imagine that we'd draw up a list. They would be responsible for mowing the (tiny) lawn every other week in the summer, and for shovelling snow (or hiring someone to shovel it) on our walk and in front of our elderly next-door neighbor's house. We'd also ask that if something minor breaks, they call a repair person and handle the whole transaction. We'd be available on the phone for consultation, and we'd probably want an estimate before we agreed to pay for repairs. But we wouldn't have as many frantic long-distance midnight calls to the plumber to make.

2. Give some back. That's right. We've seriously considered charging market rate or close to it, but giving a big percentage of the rent back as a rebate. We'd either cut a check at the end of each year, or we'd wait til the person moved out. This appeals to me because it would give us a little more security. We could say that we'd deduct a pre-determined portion of the cost of any unusually large repairs from this fund, but that barring mishaps (or mistreatment of the house) we'd be able to give a departing long-term renter a sizeable chunk of cash--perhaps even enough to use as a downpayment on a home of their own. I see this rebate as being between 10-25% of the total rent, but it could really be any number that was agreed-upon in advance. Some scenarios that appeal to me:

I could charge market rate, but refund ALL money over and above the mortgage payments. So if I charged $850/month, and my payments were $600, I'd be able to give back a total of $3000/year. I'd still be profiting, because my renter would still be making principal payments on my home loan.

If I wanted to provide an incentive for a renter to stay long-term, I could give them a lump sum payment upon moving out, and at that time they'd get a larger percentage back for each year that they stayed in the house. For example, if they stayed only one year, I'd give them a 10% rebate on all the rent they paid. For two years they'd get 15%, etc. up to maybe a 30% cap.

For a really low-income renter who would be using those lump sum payments to just keep their head above water, I could also give them a certain number of months rent free. If I wanted to give them a 25% rebate, for example, they could use it up by having 3 months a year rent-free. If they had big expenses one month, they could call me and say "I want to use one of my free months." And I'd say, "Great, I'll expect your check as usual on the first of next month. Have a nice break from paying rent."

Potential pitfalls abound. Here are a few that I've thought of, and I'm hoping readers will bring my attention to others I haven't thought of yet.

1. Legal complications. I am no lawyer. I have drafted leases, but I am sure they were full of holes. For a complicated arrangement like this, you really couldn't use a cookie-cutter lease culled from an internet or a rental agency. You'd have to customize it. And any time you get non-lawyers playing around with legal agreements, you run the risk of landing one or both parties in hot water. I don't even really have specific concerns, but I do worry about some friend-turned-nightmare-tenant, claiming that I said I'd give him back ALL of the rent he paid, or trashing my house and still demanding the big fat rebate. I think I'd want to find a lawyer who wouldn't turn green at the whole idea to look over my draft lease, at least the first time.

2. Tax liability. So, do I pay taxes on the whole rent check, even the part I intend to hand back to the tenant? Or do I just pay taxes on my profits? How the heck do I report this? Also, if a long-term arrangement was successful, that lump-sum payout might get pretty sizeable. I think you may be able to work it so this was considered a rebate, not a gift, but I'm not quite sure how that would work and I'd be nervous about running afoul of the US Tax Code. So I'd want to make sure I never had to cut a check for more than the amount you can gift someone in one year tax-free. At the moment, there's a $12,000 annual cap, per person, per gift. Luckily, I'm not in this alone. If needed, my spouse could "gift" our tenant part of the rebate and I could "gift" the other part.

3. Muddy agreements. Who pays if the boiler goes? Does it come out of the tenant's rebate money, or does the landlord cough up the whole amount? How much maintenance should the tenant do? What if they paint the living room chartreuse? Some of these questions plague ALL landlord/tenant relationships, but some are specific to a wacky profit-sharing arrangement where the lines between landlord and tenant are drawn creatively. The best remedy for this is lots of conversation to make sure everybody's on the same page, and then a clear legal document signed by both parties.

4. Yucky, paternalistic relationship inspired by self-aggrandizing do-gooder attitude on the part of the landlord. I love the idea that an arrangement like this might make it possible for renters to eventually own homes of their own. I do see this as a small step toward narrowing the gap between the haves and the have nots. But if, as the property owner, I see this as MY money that I'm generously sharing with the renter, and therefore think I have the right to dictate what they do with it, I'm missing the whole point. The point is that I believe both the landlord and the tenant are each entitled to some of the profits (and I'm looking forward to the commenters' take on that :). Therefore, I'm not being generous at all. I'm simply returning the renter's share of the profits to them. It is their money. If they want to use it to buy a house, great. If they want to use it to pay off debt, or get an education, or pay for health care, or take time off paid work to do art or raise a child, great. If they want to blow it all on fast cars and loose women, well, that's they're perogative.

(Note: I think that pitfall number 4 brings up questions that are present whenever you voluntarily give away or share money that society views as "yours", but it's too complex an issue for this post. Look for another post on sharing resources soon.)

A quick web search reveals a discussion of this idea here, and discussion of the idea of Equity Sharing (a related, but different, idea) here.

Now, O Collective Wisdom, tell me whether you think I'm an absolute nutjob, or whether you think this might actually work.

PS. I've never met anyone who did something like the second idea, although I do know people who have rented to "caretakers" or "housesitters" for the cost of the mortgage alone. I have HEARD of people giving back some of the equity to the renters, but I need to collect more stories and talk to some folks who have actually done it. I'd be grateful for any resources folks can point me to.

Where were you on September 11, 2001?

Five years ago today I was on a New Jersey Transit train on my way into Manhattan to go to my internship. Soon after I boarded the train, someone got a cell phone call and it soon leaked through the train that someone had flown a plane into the World Trade Center. There was disbelief, mostly. It wasn't until the word "Pentagon" started getting tossed around that everyone began to visibly freak out. Oh my god, we're actually under attack, I thought. As soon as the Manhattan skyline came into sight, everyone rushed to the train windows to look for the towers. I was new to the area, and had only been doing the commute for a couple of weeks, so I wasn't familiar enough with the skyline to know where to look. I saw what I thought were the smokestacks of a huge factory. It took almost a minute before my brain could comprehend that those were actual buildings with people inside.

A few people bailed out of the train at Newark, but I still couldn't quite believe what was happening. When we got to the city, I got off the train in Penn Station. It was a little after 9AM, maybe closer to 9:15. I was standing there on the train platform in shock, wondering whether to try to get to my internship uptown or whether to go home. I had just decided to find a pay phone and call my boss (an important person in my new field whose support I needed to launch my career), when people started to arrive who had run all the way from the WTC. A man standing next to me in an expensive suit was looking at a monitor to find a train out of the city. His whole body was shaking so hard I was afraid he would fall over. He smelled like smoke. He was disjointedly telling anyone nearby that he'd seen the second plane hit.

Just then a voice over the loudspeaker announced an outbound train, the one that would take me home. I didn't think. I just ran. I even managed to get a seat on what would become an extremely crowded train. I was on that train for a few hours. As soon as we came out of the tunnel, again, everyone surged to the windows. The towers were still burning. Then someone said, "I only see one tower. My god. Only one tower is still standing." I couldn't believe it, so I argued with her--"No," I said, "it's just the angle. Wait a minute and we'll see the other one." Then a clump of trees obscured the view for a moment. When we could see the site again, both towers were gone.

Even then I didn't comprehend how bad things actually were. Nobody's cell phone was working, but someone had a little battery-operated radio and we were getting fuzzy and hysterical news. By the time I got off the train, my biggest concern was that I was in a lot of pain because I'd had a huge cup of tea right before I got on the first train, and I hadn't been able to get to a bathroom. That seems so ludicrous to me now. People had died, were dying, were losing their loved ones, and I was worried about having to pee.

I was also worried about getting in touch with my family. Only my sister in New Jersey and my then-boyfriend (now partner) in Philadelphia knew I'd be in New York that day. My sister burst into tears when I called her. My boyfriend (the son of two New Yorkers who knew the city well) just said, "Why would I be worried about you? I knew you weren't anywhere near there." When I called my father in California later that day, I said, "Dad, I'm okay." He said "Don't worry, I am too." I didn't understand til a long time later that everyone in the country felt terrified. To me, my father in California was in no danger. I felt that since I was so close to the site I was in more grave danger. It seems amazing to me now that I was so self-centered that I couldn't see that everyone, all over the United States, would of course feel vulnerable when the country is under violent attack by unknown terrorists.

Afterwards, the events of that day quickly became a sharp line, a way to define two periods in my own life and in the culture around me. We still say to each other all the time, "Before September 11th..." and "since 9/11..." And everyone, everyone remembers where they were and what they were doing when they found out. It reminds me of the way my parents used to tell the stories of what they were doing when they found out that Kennedy was shot. It was a defining moment in their early life. Of course I don't want to equate the death of one popular (but sleazy) American president with the deaths of 2500 ordinary and extraordinary people, but I think the horrible crystalline way the events stand out in people's minds is similar.

So, where were you when you heard, or even saw, that the World Trade Center (and the Pentagon) had been hit with commercial jets?

Here are others' stories:
All Things Financial
BeachGirl's Budget Blog
Get Rich Slowly
Boston Gal's Open Wallet
Jeff Matthews

Landlords sharing profits with renters: Part 1

I have been collecting ideas and stories about ways that property owners can share equity with renters. I haven't posted about this in the past because my ideas are pretty nebulous and unformed, but I wanted to try to articulate them here and I'm hoping that some readers may have helpful comments.

First, what the heck and I talking about and why am I considering handing over some of my profits to a potential renter?

Here's the situation in a nutshell. My partner and I own a house, our primary residence, that would be a great rental property. The low purchase price (70K) and our subsequent low payments (under $600/month) mean that we could have immediately rented it for a profit. I haven't looked into going rates around here too much, but I'm pretty sure I could rent the house for $800 a month, or even as much as $1000/month.

But, you ask, why would you consider renting out your primary residence? Where would you live? Well, there are two possibilities. One is that we'd eventually upgrade into a different (better?) home in this town. I have written before about the fact that this house is, well, a starter home. The other, more likely possibility, is that we'd move to another part of the country. A long-distance move would probably be a temporary trial move. We'd want to keep our house in case we decided to retreat to the land of affordable housing and friendly neighbors. Even if we never came back, I think it would be great for our bottom line if we could hold onto this house indefinitely.

Sounds like a great plan, right? Take the same road as Jane Dough and many others, and keep the starter home as a rental when you move on to greener pastures.

So why would I be considering handing a large percentage of my profits over to my tenant?

Well, the idea started when we were looking to buy our first house. In the neighborhood where we lived, 90% of the houses were these huge 2500-3000 square foot Victorian showplaces. Most of them were pretty run down, drafty as barns, and cost $500/month just to heat. We knew we didn't need that much space, and that even if we could afford to buy one we could never afford to heat and maintain it. So I hit on the idea of buying a duplex. Here, a duplex generally means a single building or house that has been chopped into two living units. One of these massive Victorians might be split into 2, 3, 4, or even 5 apartments. I wanted to find one that had been chopped into two apartments--one two-story "owner's unit" with 3 or 4 bedrooms, and one one-story 1 or 2 bedroom rental. These do exist in our old neighborhood, and the presence of several large universities means that there is an endless supply of irresponsible transitory renters and also a few responsible long-term renters.

So I floated the idea of being landlords to my fiscally conservative and politically far-left spouse. He balked. He's what they call a red-diaper baby, and his childhood was filled with lots of discussions with his socialist parents, grandparents, and family friends. In socialist circles, the spectre of the landlord was always held up as the worst kind of parasite, who profited from the labor of others and perpetuated the disparity between rich and poor. He was reluctant to be a homeowner at all but was willing because (after several earnest speeches from me) he understood how much it would benefit us financially. A landlord, however, he would not easily agree to be.

Oh. I had never, ever thought of landlords as blood-sucking parasites before. In my capitalist, upper-middle-class childhood, owning real estate was considered a necessary step on the road to financial fabulousness. It was understood among my parents and their friends that you should stop at nothing to own your own home, and many of them went on to buy other parcels of land or rental properties. I hadn't ever considered the moral implications of collecting rent, except that as a long-time renter I had strong opinions about the kind of clean and secure home that landlords have a responsibility to provide. I did have vague ideas that I'd want to keep rents under market value, because it just seemed, well, nicer.

M and I were in full agreement about the other arguments against being a landlord. We agreed that it was a huge financial risk for novices like us. Also, since neither one of us is a plumber, electrician, or general contractor, there would be lots of things we'd need to pay others to do to keep the property maintained. The last problem was the huge purchase price of properties that were in good enough shape to move into or rent out right away.

Instead, we found a single family home in another part of town, left our beloved neighborhood, and here we are. But the possibility of being a landlord still comes up from time to time when we talk about moving out of this house sooner or later.

In the next post, I'll finally get to the point, and talk about ways we've considered to share our rental profits with the renters.

Related posts:
Landlords sharing profits with renters: Part 2

Blogger apathy

I've hit a lull.

I usually have a short list of posts I'm trying to get around to writing, but at the moment, there's nothing on that list. I'm just not having good ideas for posts.

At the same time, I've noticed a significant decrease in the amount of comments I'm getting lately. The page views are holding steady, but nobody seems to have much of anything to say. These two problems are probably related.

Why am I drawing a blank? A few reasons.

1. I'm trying to be more disciplined about not blogging at work. I have always been careful about this, but I would sometimes feel compelled to dash off a post in the middle of the day. I am not doing this any more. It just seems like asking for trouble.

2. Work is...challenging at the moment. My evenings are spent, not blogging, but having long tense conversations with my spouse about whether/how I can change my current work situation.

3. I'm tired--my blog name says it all. The daily wear and tear of caring for my preschooler (big boy, he moved up to preschool this week), working two jobs, and feeding a novel-reading addiction sometimes means that the blog lies fallow for a while.

4. This is probably the biggest reason: Money is bumming me out. I am feeling broke, strapped, strained, and anxious. I'm putting my energy into all kinds of shennanigans to figure out how to cover all the bills without reducing my regular savings. That means it's just no fun to think/write about money at the moment. I'm feeling discouraged, and no amount of perky blog posts about whether to wash out ziplock bags is really helping.

So what am I going to do? The options are,
a.) Kill the blog. Tempting, but I'm not quite ready to do that yet.
b.) Wait it out. Figure I'll be back on my game in a week or two.

I guess I'll take option b, and if that doesn't work, I'll think seriously about pulling the plug. If you don't like that idea, now would be a good moment for some really encouraging comments.

Thanks, folks.

Carnival of PF

Get you to Aridni, to check out this week's Carnival of Personal Finance. Thanks for doing such a great job, Aridni.

Lifetime earnings according to my SSA statement

I recently received that portentous document from the Social Security Administration: Your Social Security Statement.

Every year when I get this thing, I always think, Holy Cow, how have I managed to keep body and soul together all these years? Then I remember that this teeny weeny number that represents my total income for each year of my working life does not include all the pre-tax things I take so much advantage of. For many of these years, there were health benefits, retirement contributions, transportation accounts, childcare accounts, etc. (I'm not really clear on which of these tax-deductable things have social security taken out of them and which don't. I should probably figure that out.)

But even so, these numbers are so, so small.

I thought in the interest of full disclosure I'd list my annual earnings since I started working in 1997, and also tell what I was doing that allowed me to earn that much (or more accurately, that little) money.

Pre-1997: Babysat under the table, had work-study jobs. They don't appear on my SS statements.

1997: $1,494. Graduated from college in July. Found my first retail job in October. It started out part time, and went full time later on.

1998: $9,607. Retail, retail, retail. My rent and utilities in those days came to $500/month. I had no car, no health insurance. Spent nothing except on groceries.

1999: $10,524. Worked full time as a nanny, and moonlighted at my old job doing retail for extra money.

2000: $1,442. Blew off all responsibility and travelled, using a small inheritance. Had a whirlwind romance, visited four continents. It was great. Came back to the states in the fall and started a masters program.

2001: $2,528. Worked 3 part-time jobs and went to school full time.

2002: $26,624. First professional job.

2003: $30,936. Left my first professional job in December to have a baby.

2004: $15,743. Went back to work in January a few hours a week, and started working 25 hours a week in March. Worked 2 part-time jobs, freelanced, and hung out with my kid. Paid through the nose for childcare and family health insurance.

2005: $22,951. Worked the same 2 part-time jobs. Increased my hours slightly, and got good raises.

2006: No numbers yet. Have been working the same 2 part time jobs, but working virtually full time hours. Earnings will probably be back up to pre-kid level this year.

I need to work for 2 more years to be vested in the system.

I heart my union

As of tomorrow, I will be working without a contract at my second job. Our five year contract has expired, and the union is not prepared to settle for the first offer the company has placed on the table. We're expected to work without a contract (which means working under the guidelines of the old contract) for several months, and then perhaps strike in the spring.

This is my first time being part of a union, and I admit that at first I wasn't sure what my $100 plus annual union dues were getting me. Whoop-de-do, a monthly newsletter full of pro-union propaganda. If I wanted that, I could read any of the magazines my socialist sweetie subscribes to. And great, I can get discounted auto insurance. Well, I can get that through any number of other groups I belong to (my professional assocation, my primary employer, AAA, etc).

But over the 2.5 years I've worked there, I've come to appreciate the things the union has done for me. Here are the direct benefits I see to being part of this national union.

1. Good wages. My pay is over 50% higher than industry standard, which means I actually have two pennies to rub together after I pay for childcare, transportation to and from work, and work clothes. This also more than makes up for the cost of union dues (which, BTW, are tax deductable if I itemize).

2. Benefits. I am considered adjunct faculty. This means if I work a total of 20 hours or more per semester (not per week, per semester), I am entitled to the following benefits:

2a. Retirement. After 2 years, a 5% dollar-for-dollar company match in their 403b plan.

2b. Health insurance. They will pay half my premium. Since I have health insurance through my other employer, this employer, under the union contract, reimburses me for my premiums up to $200/month. My premiums for myself (they don't cover my son's premiums or the separately-billed prescription coverage) are about $53 per month, so my secondary employer cuts me a quarterly check for $159.

2c. Sick pay. For each semester that I work, I get the same number of hours in sick pay as I work weekly. That means, if I work ten hours per week in a given semester, I can get paid for up to 10 hours of sick time during that semester.

2d. Tuition remission. I can take a free class every semester.

3. Limited teaching load. The union also stipulates that adjunct faculty can't teach more than one class in a single work shift. As a librarian, I do teach information literacy classes, but it's not my favorite part of the job so I'm glad I never have to do more than one a day.

4. Protection. I like my employer. I really do. I think they do great things for our city. However, they have to be concerned with the bottom line, and sometimes that means prioritzing profits over the needs of their employees. Having a union means that the employer can go on thinking about the bottom line, and the union can go on thinking about the needs of the workers. Each of them fulfills a certain role. And it's nice to know the union's got my back. For a minute there, I was feeling like I was being unfairly penalized because I'm a parent. I won't go into the details. In the end, I was able to work things out directly with my boss, but during the tense moments, I felt that because of the union I had someplace to go if I needed to find out exactly what my rights were.


Anyway, I am hoping we don't have to strike, and I'm hoping they negotiate decent raises (despite the already healthy hourly wage I earn). But even if I have to be out there with my placard and my thermos of coffee, walking the picket line, I will consider it worth it because of all the benefits I personally derive from being part of the union.

Unwired Buyer $20 bonus EXPIRES on Sept. 6

If you haven't yet taken advantage of the $20 sign-up bonus for joining Unwired Buyer and placing a bid using their service, do it now. The $20 bonus is going away on September 6th. If you join Unwired Buyer before the 6th, you still have 30 days to use the service in order to qualify for your bonus.

Unwired Buyer is an end-of-auction alert service and bidding tool that allows you to follow and place last minute bids on Ebay auctions. It is fairly easy to sign up and qualify for the bonus.

Please use this referral link so that you get your $20, and I get my $5.

Uwired Buyer referral link

Related posts:
Inbox full of money
Two sign-up bonuses

Labor Day spending

I don't think of Labor Day as a particularly expensive holiday.

I went to the supermarket tonight to pick up just a couple of things for the weekend, and spent almost $100. I made the lady in line behind me laugh because of the look on my face when I saw the total. Sure, I saved a respectable $31.83 between sales and coupons, and I bought a bunch of staple groceries too (5 boxes of Cheerios for only $8, woohoo!).

But almost $30 of my total bill was for snack foods and veggie burgers for tomorrow's Block Party.

When I came home and told M the total, he said, "Well, think of all the gas money we're saving by not going out of town. We'd be paying for restaurant meals. And road tolls. And lodging. What are a few veggie burgers?"

Yeah, I guess so. But still, it's no wonder I bust through my monthly grocery budget ($400 for 3 people) month after month.

I try, but I'm just not the kind of frugalista I aspire to be.

End-of-summer utility update: Gas

Of course my natural gas usage goes way down in the warmer months, but I also have a gas dryer and gas stove, so the bill does not dwindle to nothing. Here are the numbers.

August: 33.95
July: 45.52
June: 46.65
May: 55.49
Apr: 106.49
March: error in online statement, don't know
Feb: 145.49

I'm on a budget billing plan, and I pay $80 per month. However, at the moment I've got a credit of $130, so I'm hoping my monthly payments will be adjusted downward at the next quarterly review. They'll only go back up again in the winter, but I could use a reprieve for a few months.

Related posts:
End-of-summer utility update: Electric

End-of-summer utility update: Electric

I've been curious to see how the addition of a window air conditioner, a dehumidifier, and a lot of fans has changed my electrical usage. I'm on a budget billing program with my electric company, and I pay a flat rate of $39/month. But I wanted to know what my actual monthly charges were

Aug: 63.48
Jul: 47.94
Jun: 44.07
May: 36.18
Apr: 39.64
Mar: 37.54
Feb: 40.65

So yes, my bill did go up significantly in August, when we added the new appliances. We did install the window AC at the end of July, but we were away for the first half of July, so the bill wasn't too effected. Still, a spike of less than $20 is not too bad.

Although I am on a budget billing system, I'm running a balance of about $30, so I have a feeling they're going to increase my payments the next time they review it.

Please note, also, that my bill includes about $5 each month, which is the cost of participating in a wind energy program, so that all my electricity usage is wind-powered.

Related posts:
End-of-summer utility updatge: Gas