Update

A few small pieces of news about the TBH coffers.

House

Our house doesn't have termites after all. It does, however, have serious water damage under the siding in the front, and a scary problem with the roof. The roof problem is made even more scary by the fact that we need to convince our next door neighbor to do her roof as well if we want our house to be immune to future water damage. Our relationship with our neighbor is cordial but not friendly, and she's retired. I think she has a city pension, and I know she owns a house in another part of the city and rents it out. But she doesn't seem to be rolling in money any more than the rest of us, and she absolutely refused to consider that her roof needs replacing when I talked to her about it the other day. She does have an adult daughter who lives with her and works full time, something in health care, I think. But the daughter seems to spend all her money on having a new car every couple years, and on fabulous outfits to wear to church (she's one of those Christians that seems to always be out-Christianing other people). So I'm a bit freaked out and trying to stay calm til we get a second opinion on the roof. In the meantime, we will soon have a gorgeous new facade on our house, which is costing buckets but will make me much happier since I've always hated the aluminum siding.

Work

I wrote months ago about the possibility that I'd be writing a weekly column for, um, a periodical that you've probably all heard of. There have been delays upon delays, and for a long time I was happy that it wasn't starting yet because I have too much on my plate as it is. But it looks like it's starting soon, some time in the next few weeks. The pay is mostly settled at $600 per week for a column of about 600 words, give or take. This means I need to knuckle down and finish another freelance article assignment I've been working on very slooowly. I have another small freelance gig scheduled for the middle of June, so things might be a bit crazy around here if the column starts before the other two are finished. When I first heard about the column it seemed like a huge amount of extra income. Now, with the house repairs taking a huge bite out of our emergency fund, and the increase in other expenses mean that I'm now looking at the freelance income not as extra money but as necessary if we want to fix our house, rebuild our emergency fund, pay all our bills, and still save the same percentage of our income.

Taxes

I sent in my application to get a business license from the City of Philadelphia. I am not happy about this, but I decided that rather than pretend my freelance business just started yesterday, I'd fess up and pay the back taxes and the penalties. Luckily my freelance income was always under $1000 a year until 2007, when it was bout $5000. The city taxes on freelance income are around 6.5%, so my tax bill will be hundreds of dollars, and the penalties for paying late are steep. But I don't want to wait and see if they catch me before I pay those back taxes. If I did that, not only would I be a shit, but the penalties would keep getting higher and higher the longer I waited to pay up.

Family

Everything else is going well. My kid's school lets out for the summer in a couple weeks, and I'm looking forward to having a break from the preschool parents' political dramas. We have a few trips planned, the first time I've travelled any significant distance since I got sick last year. And I've managed to cut down on some of my volunteer work. If I can only keep saying 'no' to new commitments....

Dangerous ideas

Great news!

I've figured out how we can afford my dream house right away, without significantly altering our quality of life OR increasing our income. All it will take is just one tiny adjustment, a change of attitude, really.

Currently, our house payments are $600/month. We have around $100,000 equity in our house. We are very close to having $100,000 in retirement savings, too.

So, that's a $200,000 down payment, right?

And if we stop throwing $800/month into our retirement accounts, we'll have that much more money to spend on housing. Sure, sure, we'll lose the tax break of contributing to our retirement plans, but we'll have a bigger mortgage with higher interest so that will be a big tax savings right there, right? And we don't need that silly $200 per month we're putting in our emergency fund either. I mean, come on. What could happen?

So, $200,000 down payment.
Say we now have $1500 per month to spend on payments.

We're not far from being able to afford that $400,000 house!

And all I have to do is convince myself that we'll be able to live on Social Security in our old age.

See? Just a minor attitude adjustment, and voila. My dream house is within my grasp.

Simple greed

I had pretty much decided to kill my blog, for various reasons, but before I got around to it I suddenly got an increasing number of advertisers wanting link placement on TBH, both directly and through Linkworth, which is the only third-party ad network I use anymore. Some of the new direct advertisers are from Australia or the UK. Maybe the weak dollar makes sites like mine cheaper for them? Who knows?

I'm not strong enough to resist the mostly passive income, so the blog lives on, with infrequent posts and a stale template. I still think it needs a major overhaul if I'm going to keep it long term, but for now it will continue to limp along as it is.

Thanks to all the readers who keep coming back.

City taxes on self-employed income

Every person desiring to engage in or to continue to engage in any business within the City of Philadelphia shall, whether or not such person maintains a place of business in the City, prior to engaging in such business, procure a business privilege license from the Department of Licenses and Inspections.

Crap.

Crap crap crap.

I need to get my butt down to the Municipal Services building and get a business license right away.

Just what I needed. More taxes to pay.

Mayor Nutter, help me out here.

Stimulated!

I got my stimulus payment today, all $886 of it for myself and my little dependent. I am trying to figure out how to pay my credit card bill and preschool tuition before M gets paid next week and before I get reimbursed for some work expenses, but I am going to leave that stimulus payment burning a hole in my savings account for a couple more weeks. I'll need it when we RIP OFF THE FRONT OF OUR HOUSE later this month. The excitement is starting to fade about the pretty new facade we'll have, and I'm fretting about the four-figure estimate.

M will be stimulated later because I don't think he elected direct deposit.

Money, money, money. What a headache.

Feeling the pinch at last

Back in January, I wrote that I didn't anticipate feeling much impact from the economic turmoil. My employment is pretty secure. I can fairly easily afford my life as I have been living it. I'm one of the lucky ones.

Now, only a few months later, I'm beginning to feel a bit more strain from the state of the economy. My list of complaints sounds pathetically minor when I think of all the people losing their homes to foreclosure, losing their jobs and their health insurance, watching the revenue from their small businesses plummet, etc.

But still. My favorite kid-friendly neighborhood restaurant recently raised their prices by $3-4 dollars per entree. My small Japanese car is starting to seem like a gas guzzler to me, since it costs me almost $30 to fill the tank these days. And for the first time in my life, I'm seeing concrete examples of inflation, especially at the grocery store. Some of our staples have gone up so much that I'm often coming home from the store without buying them.

Take avocados. We consume a lot of them in our house. I'm from California, and avocados really make life worth living, as far as I'm concerned. And my spouse uses them to replace other, less healthy things. For example, he spreads a thin layer of avocado on bread when he's making a sandwich, instead of using mayonnaise. So avocados are one of the things that gets added to the grocery list when we see that we're running low, and that might even occasion a late-night, mid-week trip to the store.

In the Northeast, I expect to pay $1.50 at the high end, but usually closer to $1 per avocado.

Now, I can't find them anywhere for less than $1.79 each, and most of the time they're over $2. For the non-organic kind! It used to be I'd only buy one at that price, and wait til they dropped closer to a dollar before I'd stock up.

Artichokes, too. They're not a staple. They're a treat. But every time I go to the store I check to see if they're affordable. Affordable means two for $3. Now, they're usually $3.99 each. Recently they dropped to two for $5 and I pounced.

Don't even get me started on asparagus. Or milk. Or yogurt or spaghetti sauce or bread.

Again, I realize that my money problems aren't truly problems, not even close to what other people are experiencing. But I hate it that our income keeps going up, and our quality of life stays pretty much the same.

I'm no longer looking at the upcoming economic stimulus checks from the Feds as gravy. I'm now looking forward to getting the money because it will help me catch up a bit, so I'm not always playing a cup game to pay my bills.