rebeccmeister: (Default)
It's the end of the year, and I'm trying to have a low-key day, so it's a great day to count up all of the lucky pennies for the year!

Drumroll, please...

...

...$20.62.

I went back to look for records from previous years, but my records are scattered, I believe in part because of the period when the Ubuntu-machine was my main machine. When I got this computer 1.5 years ago I mostly only transferred over crucial working files from the Ubuntu-machine.

And it seems I didn't blog about lucky pennies last year or the year before, interestingly. Probably because this time of year is often hectic with travel and spring semester prep.

I eventually tracked down that our total for 2023 was $18.96. The best year on record is still 2021, when I found a $100 bill, giving us a total of $110.68. And the worst year is still 2020, when we only found $10.68, in part because of lockdowns, but there was also a cash shortage, you might remember. When there are cash shortages, fewer people drop money on the ground for us to find while we are riding our bikes around.

I should note here that [personal profile] scrottie and I pool our collected lucky pennies together.

We did find 3 bills this time around, a $10 bill and two $1 bills.

Lucky penny money all goes straight into long-term savings. The actual cash goes into my wallet, where I then try to use it to give people exact change when paying for things. Some places humor me more kindly than others.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
I was finally able to pick up the new rear wheel for Frodo Thursday evening, but didn't have the time or energy to install it until this morning. It is a Velocity, per our local bike shop's recommendation, as they know my riding habits pretty well by now.

New wheel, same salty winter

The rear cassette got a good cleaning as well.

Then I rode in to work for a student recruitment event, and then graded papers for a couple hours. I'd almost forgotten how much easier it is to ride a full-size bike instead of a Brompton.

Even though I tried to do a thorough job of rinsing off the road salt, I missed some spots.

New wheel, same salty winter

If anyone ever asks me about winter bike commuting, remind me to tell them that the post-ride rinse is mandatory after EVERY ride.

-

Meanwhile, I am trying to think about how to plan out upcoming expenses. There are some dilemmas and things that aren't ideal.

Car expenses: I need to get an EZPass set up. I should buy one of those windshield ice scraper things. Probably a half-dozen other convenience items. Eventually, buying a hitch and having it installed. Possibly next winter, snow tires. All these things make me look at the money I spend on rowing and think, yeah, rowing is the hole I'd rather throw money into. I am going to postpone dealing with most of these things for the moment, because I don't really need to drive anywhere right now, and I'd rather not get the car covered in road salt.

My heart rate monitor died recently. It is not at all urgent to replace it, it is just annoying that I can't check it easily during rowing practices. I'll deal with it eventually. In the meantime, there are plenty of other training tools and metrics at my disposal.

Bicycling: Even after I take a look at S's Bianchi and then haul it in to campus, I am still going to be 1 bike short for my bicycling class this spring. I may have a lead on a possible bike that won't be horribly expensive, but the cost is still coming out of my own pocket. I realize this is pretty silly, but on the other hand I firmly believe this class is important for getting more people out on bikes, which is a big deal for the long term. It's just hard to shell out again, at a time when I know I'm looking at an expensive summer and fall. And this is an expense that can't really wait.

There are a couple of things for the cats that aren't strictly necessary either, but could be / will be improvements.

I have had to reluctantly conclude that some dress shirts I bought online in the fall are too small, to go along with a wool cycling jersey I bought last year that is way too small. I hate shopping for clothing online. Meanwhile, two of my older dress shirts have finally died. So I went ahead and bought the same shirts again, a size larger. They are all kind of niche designs (ants, bicycles, rowing) and come from overseas so I am not sure of what to do with the too-small ones now. Probably they will go to a thrift store. I have become One of Those People. My losses will be someone else's gain.

...at the end of the day, First World Problems, let's face it. There's plenty of food in the fridge, the bills are getting paid on time. The other things just take time, creativity, and patience, and more often than not, there's satisfaction to be had from finding clever solutions instead of just throwing money at every small problem.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
I have grown lax about tracking my spending over the last couple of years, and that needs to change, because last year, this year, and next year have involved / are likely to involve a series of fairly large financial decisions. For instance, what to do with this house during my sabbatical travel this summer and fall.

So I started by fairly carefully going through last year's expenses, trying to figure out how I want to categorize everything, so that I can think about where I'm okay with maintaining the status quo, and where I might want to make some changes. As one does.

In doing this, I have to note that I got very annoyed at an online payment method that adds an additional layer to figuring out who I actually paid for a good or service. And also at the Jungle website for how it incentivizes people to group order items, such that I had to go back through to ungroup according to different expense categories. Harumph. Hopefully now I will do a better job of tracking this going forward.

Unsurprisingly, both rowing and brevets were major expenses in 2023. I am definitely going to dial way back on randonneuring this year, and I will also wind up dialing back on rowing as well. It is time. I do love and enjoy rowing, but it's expensive and I want to leave room for other things.

It was also interesting to note the mixture of reimbursable work expenses, versus things bought for work that aren't reimbursable. The updated office water boiling-system, for example. Not reimbursable. Very important for personal sanity, just, not reimbursable. Also, almost a third of the grant that I got to help pay for the bicycles for the bicycling class wound up going straight to taxes, because the only way I could receive the grant was as taxable income. Sigh.

More than anything, I appreciated the chance to think again, about how to structure my spending. I keep a couple different "list of things to acquire"s but haven't really had good standards in place for myself for what's reasonable and what should or should not be a priority. It worked far better for me to look back over the year's expenses and figure out categories for everything, rather than trying to come up with an anticipated set of categories for upcoming expenses.

Hilariously, when I started to do internet searches on how to establish spending categories, I kept encountering examples with about 20 different aspects of motor vehicle ownership and maintenance. That just helped me to understand that there are a lot of personal lifestyle choices associated with how one structures one's spending.

In any case, helpful to have mapped out my recent behavior. Now to work on making some changes.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
...of course, another benefit of working from home this morning is that I was able to FINALLY call in and close our account with our irritating big-business ISP. It is the only game in town, and the local paper keeps on reporting about how it is raising rates yet again. Infuriating. As direct evidence, the rate we were paying DOUBLED over the span of one year, and that is more money than I want to hand over to this particular big business in any given month. I also resent that they make their customers call in to either beg for a reduced rate or to cancel the service.

I know this is all just the car insurance business plan to punish loyalty, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. I also resent that I don't feel comfortable making this type of phone call while at work, and of course these companies know it. We are switching over to using a wireless hotspot instead, because preliminary tests suggest it is sufficiently fast for most if not all of our uses, and it looks like I can use mobile phone tethering as a backup.

Harumph.

A couple months ago, I encountered an ad for an app that (for just a low low price, presumably! Ha!) will supposedly crawl through your financial info and identify for you all of the subscriptions that you don't use that are bleeding your wallet dry. I personally have very few things set up on auto-pay, so I'm already routinely asking myself if I want to continue various subscriptions. But it will probably never cease to amaze me how cavalier other people might be with these things.

This is going to be a weird and different year, financially, what with sabbatical plans.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
Back in July, the NYT ran an article about how hard it can be to cancel online subscriptions. Ironically, in the past, from what I recall, the only method to cancel a subscription to the NYT was to make a phone call. I've been meaning to tackle this project for a while, but as the article notes, having to make a phone call is enough of an impediment that I haven't been getting to the project.

But guess what? Just as I got ready to finally make the phone call and shut down this bit of money drain, I looked, and they now make it possible to cancel online. They will still try to keep you using all of the legal tricks in the book ("How about a lower rate?!"), but you can indeed select the correct configuration of checkboxes and make it happen.

I still need to deal with our current internet service provider shenanigans, but this is at least one small victory.

Actually, this leads me to wonder: do most of you just keep a schedule for changing your insurance providers, so that you aren't constantly getting bilked/punished for being a loyal customer?

Maybe this is the model I need to adopt for our heinous ISP. They effectively have a local monopoly here. I just need to figure out the best time of year to plan on making a phone call to them, to tell them to cut out the nonsense. Not in the middle of the semester - I'm too stressed to deal with it then. In a matter of around 2 years, our monthly internet bill has almost doubled, from $45/month to $85/month. Ludicrous.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
It has been on my agenda for a while to sit down and read through Michael BlueJay's How to Buy a House guide. Over the years, I've found various resources on his website to be tremendously helpful, and so far this case is no different. In any case, being trapped in the Quarantine Room yet again, with insufficient brainpower to do more substantive things, turns out to be a good time to tackle this project.

Interesting things learned so far:

-The "how much house can you afford?" calculators inform me that, unsurprisingly, even with a decently large down payment saved up, at the moment with my current income, I can't really afford all that much house. This calculation may start to change once I'm through the tenure and promotion process, but it's not going to change dramatically. My colleagues and I are advocating for cost of living increases, but our college is reluctant to provide them because of the squeeze that tuition increases put on students. (I'm not even going to get into the tuition "discount rate" games here, ugh). The reality is that it's pretty unusual in this day and age for any single-income person or household to be able to afford much of a house, even with all of the existing "First time homebuyer" resources that are out there.

-I'd be much more inclined towards a 15-year mortgage compared to a 30-year mortgage. If you do the math, I'd be in my 70's before I'd be finished paying off a 30-year mortgage if I only made the minimum payments. In general I just HATE the idea of giving away money for free, anyway.

-It looks to me like current mortgage interest rates are maybe about as good as one could ever expect, moving forward. This graph of long-term trends for 30-year rates is interesting, although I'm not sure why it cuts off at 2016, and from what I understand, 2016 is as astronomically low as one could ever expect: https://www.hsh.com/mortgage-rates/30-Year-FRM/

Collectively, this all has me thinking that my best short-term financial strategy is to focus on continuing to stockpile funds. At the same time, I'm thinking I should do at least a little work to scout out rental opportunities that are closer to campus. My current total daily commute time is at least 20 minutes over Marchetti's Constant, and the effects of the extended commute time have been cumulative over the years I've been living here. And that's on non-snow days. On snow days, it can easily take me an hour and 15 minutes each way. Ugh.

I am still very much committed to bike commuting. I would not trade this longer bike commute for a shorter auto commute. That just sounds terrible, and expensive.

Anyway, time to try and work on other things now.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
Finally counted them this week. That tells you something about how my life has been going. $110.68. It would have been an abysmal year if not for that $100 bill.

I have this feeling that 2022 may not be much better. We shall see. I have been finding it hard to get myself to stop, bend down, and pick them up. Again, largely a sign of the times.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
Over the past week or two I've been having feelings that are reminiscent of those early days in Texas, when I first arrived, knew no one, was broke, and lived by myself in a dump of a house in a neighborhood with exciting police activity, heavy traffic, and occasional sounds of gunfire.

There isn't nearly as much exciting police activity or gunfire immediately near here, so I suppose that's a general improvement.

That was just over 10 years ago.

My commute to work here is longer.

Back then, I made less money, had zero savings, and had student loans to repay, but even when I was the sole occupant, the total rent cost half of what the total rent costs here, and was 33% of my take-home pay. After I got a roommate, that dropped to 16%. Between then and now, I have managed to pay off my student loans and have accumulated some savings, mostly during the time when I was living in California.

Out here, my monthly rent to my 'Lord is 41% of my take-home pay, and I seem to be lapsing back into financial habits that cause me to fritter away enough money that I'm not adding appreciably to those accumulated savings: rowing, vet bills, bike upkeep, computer replacement, plane tickets. I think what frustrates me the most about this is that I just don't like the idea that so much of the blood, sweat, and tears shed at work just gets sent off to someone who does little more than own the property and pay taxes on it (although believe me, things could be FAR worse as far as 'Lords go!).

A cursory Craigslist search of the area doesn't suggest much room for improvement on that front, unfortunately. My current hard-earned savings only constitute enough of a down payment for a ramshackle shack next to the railroad tracks, and even though I could probably stand to downsize my accommodations, rents have gone up, so there aren't any actual gains to be realized.

With what has happened to natural gas prices and cold weather this winter, turning the thermostat down 7 degrees (F) and not being at home using as much electricity at least helped keep utility bills to the same amount as last winter. Many other people are really feeling that pinch this year. Of course, the big-name ISP did also decide to hike that bill back up again by $20/month, and I've been too exhausted and overwhelmed to mobilize the energy to try and change that.

It's going to be a long while before I can consider getting another cat, at this point. Ethically, I really can't justify it if I'm not at home, and I'm not seeing ways to change that much. The biggest way would be a shorter commute. Those 90+ minutes every day start to add up over time. But it seems the best I can do right now is just try to keep myself in this holding pattern. After all, I do at least have a roof over my head and I know where my next meal is coming from, and that's far more than many people in this country can say anymore.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
Today I was finally able to finish repaying myself for expenses in 2018 - the costs of moving plus those 6 months of adjunct underemployment in Arizona. So that took 21 months, altogether. That's where I put the weird Covid money from the federal government, too.

Towards the end of last month, faculty at my college voted in support of an emergency financial measure to deal with our Covid-related spring budget shortfall. The emergency financial measure was to temporarily eliminate the college's contribution towards our retirement. That has been accompanied by a range of other measures, including temporary furloughs of employees who (supposedly) cannot do their jobs while students aren't present.

Our administrators are also putting procedures in place to allow pretenure faculty to opt to delay the tenure clock. On the one hand, that might be helpful, but on the other hand, that's a delay to a pay raise.

I feel fortunate to be among those who are currently still employed, and I feel like I have a reasonably comfortable income, all told. I might feel differently if I had children or ambitions of retiring in a timely fashion. The unemployment numbers at the moment are staggering and I remain furious about the state of wealth inequality in this country.

I guess perhaps this is how we find ourselves getting into politics as we get older.

2018 still wasn't as bad as 2011 because I did manage to build up a financial cushion as a postdoc and was even able to pay off all my student loans.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
This month, it finally, FINALLY looks like earnings will outpace spending, for the first time since the start of 2018. Recall that 2018 was when I moved to Arizona to teach adjunct for 6 months* before moving to New York. The New York move itself was really pricey, compounded by such things as buying a guest bed and a new fancy commuter bike, flying myself and [personal profile] scrottie to Washington a couple of times, and rowing.

Based on my own complex financial algorithms, I still owe myself a pile of money (I withdrew money from savings to pay for Arizona and moving to New York). It's not a trivial pile but by now methinks if I'm careful I can repay myself over a span of about 10 months.

Meanwhile, maybe I can finally actually give myself some small bit of permission to revisit my List of Things to Acquire.

Whenever I go through this kind of transition, there's a lag period where I'm still really hesitant to get anything off of my List. There are multiple reasons for my hesitation. There's the emotional shift of going from financial restraint to giving myself permission to buy things.

But there's also the hesitation to pursue the materialistic agenda. Not having money to spend is actually a creative challenge: if I REALLY shouldn't buy ____ new, what could I do instead? Do I really NEED ____? Could I repair my old _____? Could I find _____ used? How much of a royal pain in the posterior is it going to be to move ____ during the next inevitable move?

And also, will ____ involve a whole heap of packaging? Will it involve compromising my ethical stance with regards to certain companies' labor practices?

And also, analysis paralysis: which thing to get first??

I could go on. But in the meantime, what a relief to finally be transitioning out of the financial pinch.

From what I remember reading, it apparently typically takes about 6 months to recover financially after making an interstate move. So if I moved twice in one year, perhaps it's natural for this recovery to take longer.

* At a reasonable rate for an adjunct, really

Two-step

Sep. 11th, 2014 01:22 pm
rebeccmeister: (bikegirl)
When I hear music that I like, I would like to be able to own copies of it and also support the artist(s) who produced it. I don't need hard copies (CDs), but sometimes that's the most straightforward option.

Recently, I listened to Interpol's latest album, using NPR's First Listen thingy, which had a link towards the bottom to purchase the album while also benefiting NPR. Well, there's a way for me to show support for some of the NPR programming I continue to appreciate (I am grateful for print-versions of topics they cover, even if their coverage is simplified and watered-down relative to other news sources). PLUS it won't give NPR my most recent home address, so they can't send me junk mail. Great.

The only two purchase options are through Amazon or iTunes.

I got pretty peeved recently when I discovered that recent Apple operating systems have started using the App Store as the sole method for distributing software and updates, in particular because Apple was requiring credit card information as part of the process. I try very hard to maintain barriers between my personal financial information and online purchases because they take financial interactions to a new level of abstraction and make it too easy for corporations to drain money out of my wallet. As an example, I keep separate eBay and PayPal accounts.

So, no thanks, Apple.

Here's the Amazon purchasing workflow, which makes me think twice before actually purchasing any music through Amazon (I already try hard to avoid ordering material goods through them because I disagree with their predatory pricing practices and labor practices):

1. Put music in virtual shopping cart
2. Attempt to check out, get error message because my account does not contain any automatically saved payment information.
3. Enter in payment information as part of "updating account info."
4. Make purchase (click!...that was fast, with minimal confirmation windows)
5. Attempt to download music, get error message that I need to install the Amazon music downloader installer application.
6. Download downloader thing and install it.
7. Download music.
8. Delete credit card information out of Amazon account.
9. Move downloaded music into separate directory.
10. Delete Amazon downloader application and associated Amazon directories.
11. Listen to music.

Alternatively, I could pirate music and then try to make a direct payment towards bands/organizations of interest.

Sigh.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
Hey, it's June. How did we get here? I certainly don't know, but I have a feeling that the whole summer is going to fly by and it will be August before I know it. I am both excited and nervous about August. I'll head to Portland for the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America. From there, I'll go up to Seattle to spend about a week with my family, and from there I'll go to South Korea for the International Congress of Entomology. I'm toying with the idea of taking an indirect return route from there, flying back to Seattle and then maybe heading over towards Minnesota on the train. Minnesota, I owe you a visit, bigtime. I suspect if I do so, I'll be very tempted to jump off the train in Montana and stay there. Montana is a glorious place to be in the summer. We shall see about these plans.

August plans are tied to a consideration of my finances. Funding for academic work can be a tricky beast, sometimes. While my expenses are covered for the trip to South Korea, I'm not really in a position to get financial assistance to cover the conference in Portland because I'll be presenting work from my dissertation. However, this conference is a really important one from a career standpoint; I haven't attended any ecological meetings in the past, but enough of my work is ecological that I'd like to get feedback from an ecological audience. Plus, given that the meeting is in Portland, I'm hoping that there will be a larger contingent of colleagues from the Pacific Northwest with whom I can network.

So that expense is going to come out of my own pocket. It's not the first time, and probably not the last time, something like this will happen. Getting to be an academic is quite the privilege, eh?

My student loan repayments are also due at the beginning of each month. Today, while looking over the numbers, I discovered that I'm close to the one-third mark for paying back both my parents and Sallie Mae for my undergraduate education. I started to work on paying things back about five years ago, while still enrolled full-time in grad school, and have been trying to accelerate repayment ever since then. I cannot complain as vociferously about my student loans as current students are entitled to complain, as some of my loans were subsidized while I was in school, I was able to consolidate them at a fairly reasonable interest rate, and some loans were interest-free from my parents. Still, talk about pushing a boulder up a hill. It's hard to feel free while still in debt.

These days, I'm reading a book called Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis, by Kim Todd. One of the faculty members from ASU gave me a copy of the book. I find the narrative style somewhat annoying, but the fascinating qualities of the story shine through well. Merian was a painter and natural historian in the 1600's who documented caterpillar metamorphosis in Europe and in Surinam. One of the more unusual elements of her story is that she was a divorcee; her distaste for her ex-husband was strong enough to drive her into a religious sect, and caused her to flee from Germany to Amsterdam. A divorce in that era was financially catastrophic for a woman, and so it's pretty amazing that she was able to hang on and make a living while continuing to do the things she loved, studying insect natural history. So, a worthwhile book to read, overall. It's also making me itch to draw more, especially as I still owe my little sister some cricket drawings. So many projects, so little time...
rebeccmeister: (Default)
How does being careful/conscientious about how you spend your money affect your relationships with the people around you?

This question comes up a lot for me. Do I want to spend money to go to bars or restaurants and spend time with friends or loved ones? Should I spend money to travel and visit friends and loved ones? How much can I afford to spend? What's the quality of that spending? Can I figure out how to show my appreciation and encourage community in ways that do not stress me out, financially?

Interestingly, my closest friends here (and hey, even my best friend and siblings) prefer to do things that are inexpensive or free, in contexts that give a person a lot of freedom to decide how much, and what, to contribute. In a lot of cases, this is a conscientious decision. In some cases, it's driven by necessity (e.g. lack of a steady income).

Here's a case to consider: the Scrabble Society used to meet at a local coffeeshop, which would provide a relatively cheap drink and dinner, as needed (as opposed to a more expensive restaurant). Eventually we went further than that, switching to home-cooked dinners. Things still get fancy on occasion, with fancy desserts or fancy drinks. But we don't have the potential for the same kind of public interaction when we gather at someone's house.

I'm in that state, right now, where I am looking around myself and figuring that most of the people around me make more money than I do, or at least, spend money more freely than I do. Perhaps I'm wrong, though, and this feeling is a widespread misperception. In any case, I know that I personally must continue to be careful about how I spend my money, wherever I can.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
In further reference to yesterday's post, it looks like I am going to continue to see a pay reduction for the course of the fall semester. This wasn't a complete surprise, given that my program only guarantees funding for five years and we're looking at year eight for me. But it's still cause for concern, given that I'll be paying for health care and tuition out-of-pocket. Time to explore some financial aid options.

Whenever I reach this state with my finances (see last summer as another example), I inevitably think back to my first summer living in an apartment, before my junior year of college. My summer internship didn't pay me until the middle of the internship, so I quickly went broke right after the move, and had only ten dollars to my name for about 2 weeks. (I'm ignoring the student loan debt in that case, and in the current case).

This time around, well. Step one is to create a budget, based on my knowns: income through August (after that, ????), rent, utilities (pricey in the summer in AZ), cell phone bill (overpriced), general expense categories (food, animal care, "play money," etc.). Then it's time to get creative: where can I slim down? Well, I can't sleep if the thermostat is set above 87 degrees, so there won't be many changes to utilities - electricity is the most expensive part. Groceries, well, it's time to start checking prices much more carefully than before, to do more comparison shopping. I'll have to let go of my organic standards. Fewer fancy items, more basic staples. Animal care, well, there's not much I can do there. About the only other thing I can do is stop spending money on is coffeeshop expeditions and any miscellaneous item that I can live without.

Well, so it goes.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
I think this is what it must feel like to own and operate a small business.

Because of my travel situation this summer, I have some random pockets of money to manage - money that I can't quite treat as my own, given that some of it is provided as reimbursements. I applied for three separate funding sources for the conference in Copenhagen this summer, and received funding from all three sources. Two of them can be effectively treated as a bundle, because they are both managed through the Giant University. The third is slightly more complicated. I have to be sort of strategic about which sources I use as funding for different aspects of the conference, too, considering that one stipulation of the third funding source is that I should visit research laboratories while I'm there to make connections for potential research projects.

Then there's the Bay Area trip in July. I'm fortunate in that there's a conference happening during the week before my brother's wedding, and we actually have funds to send me to the conference. But I didn't want to fly there, I wanted to take the train. Our business office will let this happen, but only for as much money as it would cost to fly there, plus I have to write an additional apology letter explaining why I'm taking the train (Dear Account Auditors, Airplanes release too many greenhouse gases and give me motion-sickness, whereas trains are efficient and allow me to work while traveling.).

I'm not even going to write about funds for my bridesmaids dress for the wedding other than to note that it has been fully paid for by funds provided by other parties (but I still need to deposit that check).

Then there's my summer funding. You know, rent and food, and maybe some clothing or bike parts. And the laptop fund. During the school year, we are paid on a schedule. Summer funding is not guaranteed in our program, and it's structured differently, so it's provided to us differently. As with last summer, it's a reduced rate compared to how much we are provided during the school year. They give it to us in lump sums, and frankly, I'm just not as good at dealing with lump sums as I am with scheduled pay periods. My general plan will be to act as if I do not have spare spending money. However, I will need to have some sense of how much money I have by the time I go to Copenhagen so I don't have to be as much of a tightwad as I was on the last trip to Australia. Plus, trips to visit other research laboratories might end up being an out-of-pocket expense, so I need to budget for those.

Umm, yeah. I think that's it? I'll just be glad when everything is over with and paid for and reimbursed.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
Well, last night I found out that my grant application for composting-related projects was not funded. The committee wanted me to find a place on campus to do the whole thing. My point is that on-campus endeavours are going to fail because of poor oversight. So boo to that, although I can't say I'm all that surprised. I can just point at the program and label it as greenwashing. That program already funded a different composting project on-campus that failed. Instead, I will persevere with my current efforts and will thumb my nose at the university. I have enough other projects to tend to.

But! In other news, my funds for purchasing a replacement laptop for the one that was stolen last June are finally growing, albeit slowly. It took longer than expected to finish paying myself back for the trip to Australia, but by now I only owe myself $3.03. Hooray! It sure takes a lot of self-control to be deliberate about how I spend my money, and how I spend time with [livejournal.com profile] scrottie so as to not spend a lot of money, heh. I also finally wrote my annual check to my parents to pay them back for the funds they loaned me for my undergraduate education, and my annual check to the Giant Student Loan Corporation for those loans. They're deferred, yes, but some of them accrue interest, and I'd rather not have my interest accruing interest.

This year's sum was paltry relative to the last couple of years, but the balance was at least high enough to pay off more than just the interest on the Giant Student Loan Corporation loans. In percentages, it was about 0.6% of last year's total. I suspect this year's figures will be similar, because I will probably have to teach over the summer, and the associated summer pay is less than what I'm given during the school year. Ah well. Incentive to wrap things up here.

The best news of all comes from last Saturday: as I was riding my bicycle home from the farmer's market, I spotted some money that had been thrown in the road by somebody. I went back to collect it up, and came away with a whole $0.72! Not too bad for some free money, just lying in the road.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
I generally don't get into hair-pulling moods, but trying to work out a nonprofit's budget in a coordinated fashion with seven other people is a real pain.

In some ways, though, it's interesting to discover "real-world" applications of a lot of the tutti-fruity things I've learned as a graduate student. I'm thinking mostly about a discussion that took place in a class I took on grant-writing. We spent one of the classes talking about collaborative writing, and how to do it successfully. The professor who was advising us said that one of the worst possible things that can happen in a collaboration is if one of the involved parties basically takes over and hands the other parties the almost-complete final version. That's because collaborations need to involve interactions during all stages of the development of a project, from the initial vision through the building and structuring to the final polishing.

I feel like I'm being a bit cantankerous through this whole budgeting process, because I have a particular vision of an appropriate process. Step one, come up with expense categories, both for previous expenditures and anticipated expenditures. Present categories to other involved parties, get input, and revise based on input. Step two, calculate total categorized expenses for previous expenditures. Step three, use previous expenditures and detective-work to structure the final budget according to the expense categories. I also think that it is my role as Treasurer to drive this process forward.

One of the other parties involved in this project seems to have a conflicting view of the relevant expense categories, but hasn't quite caught on to this fact, or is attempting to brute-force an alternative set of categories by preemptively doing parts of the process. That puts me in a difficult situation, where I either have to undo all of that work, and then do things how I envisioned doing them, or just give up and stop trying to make things happen my way.

But in any case, I think I'll move on now to update my own finances. At least in that case I get to make all of the decisions. And I don't budget specifically, anyway; I simply keep track of expense patterns, and use that information to make future decisions.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
Well, one nice benefit of not spending much money is that it's much easier to keep track of what I have actually spent. My brother and sister learned this lesson really early on, back when our parents would make us keep track of our finances every month. They basically decided to not spend any money. Me, well, I just did a crappy job of keeping track at that point, and spent however much I earned or was given.

Anyway. I've been relatively diligent about monitoring these things since 2006, the year I resolved to keep better track of my finances so I could start paying off my undergraduate loans (deferred through grad school, yes, but accruing interest pretty quickly, to the tune of $330 per year). So there are lots of numbers to play with (I can't do a thorough job, though--ants beckon again already).

So altogether it turns out that I spent a grand total of $814.61 in June. That's mostly rent ($450) and groceries ($165.70). Utilities and my cell-o-phone make up another $100. It helps that I haven't had any of those semi-regular big expenses this month (ceramics, CSA subscription renewal, plane ticket purchases, bike ride registration). Those will return in July, I'm sure. But I figured many of you, my loyal readers, would be kind of interested in these figures so that you have a frame of reference for my spending habits, and maybe a frame of reference for your own spending habits. I just wish I'd kept better track as an undergraduate--now that would make for some interesting comparisons. My rent and utilities were pretty comparable then ($437 and $80/month, respectively, my senior year of college), but I can't remember how much I averaged on groceries (probably around $160, in fact).

For most of the remaining months for which I have readily available data (that's January 2009, and January, February, August, September, and October of 2008), that's about $400/month less than what I've been averaging. Spending on eating out is way down ($30, mostly spent on the mountain biking expedition up north, versus at least $150/month in most prior months), and groceries have been halved, probably because I stopped going to the farmer's market and stopped buying more expensive organic and pre-processed foods (crumpets, soy lunchmeat, avocados, etc.).

Anyhow. Ants.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
On Friday morning, I got the call from J that her parents' apricot tree was full of ripe apricots. That led to an abrupt change in my morning plans. I high-tailed it up to south Scottsdale and immediately collected up the available fruit. J's dad had devised this really great apricot-collecting system--he created 4'x8' frames that were on 2' tall legs, and then stretched bedsheets across them. Then he arranged the frames beneath the tree. With the help of a small rake, we gave the tree a shake or two, and all of the ripe apricots fell down into the apricot stretchers.

The poor apricots suffered a bit of a bruising on the ride back to school, but nothing *too* serious.

The real adventures then happened yesterday. I woke up bright and early to go and check out [livejournal.com profile] faisdodo's garage sale, and came home with a pair of awesome bar stools, some bike shorts, knee-warmers, and my favorite Zadie Smith book (White Teeth), all for $19. I love garage sales, and I was happy to help J at least a little with clearing things out before she and R move to Japan (!).

After that, it was time for the farmer's market. For some reason or another, everyone at the farmer's market was determined to give me at least a little discount yesterday. The bread guy undercharged me by a dollar, the stand selling bunches of basil accidentally put the wrong price up ($2 instead of $2.50), and the big farm that sells the most produce (=line wrapped around the corner 30 minutes after the market opens) gave me at least a small discount, too (every 10 cents counts!). I know that much of my disposable income goes towards the purchase of quality cooking ingredients, so I'm going to have to cut back on those, too, as I continue to save up for Australia. So it was a bit of a relief to realize that the market salespeople look out for their regular shoppers every once and a while.

I avoided further temptation by skipping my usual jaunt up to Lux after visiting the market, and instead headed straight home, and then headed back out the door to the grocery store to stock up on staples and pick up some canning lids. When I got back, I turned the 6 cups of apricot pulp into jam, and canned it. There's something so satisfying about making jam and canning it. I love it. I am thinking it might be cool to do some sort of jam exchange with those who have access to different sorts of fruits, but I'm not sure if I have much surplus to offer, yet.

After that, I went over to the ceramics studio to check up on some pieces, and ended up throwing some new awesome pieces as well. There's something to be said for twice-a-week ceramics time. Then I returned home once again, and set about making some more of those tasty vegan ocean cakes for a birthday party in downtown Phoenix--it was P's girlfriend, C's, birthday. She lives with her mom in one of those old houses in downtown Phoenix that feels like a real place, with real character. Their pool was an old, funky, geometric shape, and the house was furnished in such a way that I really just wanted to spend a few hours poking around through all of the cupboards.

By the time I rode home, it was close to midnight, and I was tired. I think I put in at least 50 miles of riding yesterday, between the market (~20 miles), the grocery store (~7 miles), ceramics (~7 miles?), and the party (~20 miles). All signs of a busy, full, Saturday.
rebeccmeister: (Default)
Yesterday morning I took a few extra minutes to update my monthly financial records and assess my funding situation for the summer (since I finally got information about what I would be paid). In that whole process, I discovered to my dismay that across those pay periods I will be earning only 3/4 of the amount I usually earn during the school year. Goodbye, easy life. After scrutinizing my spending records, though, I think things will be okay in the long run.

On occasions like this, I always like to think back to the summer before my junior year of college, when I had only $10 to my name for about a month before I was finally paid for my summer internship at the Joslin Diabetes Center. Now *that* was stressful--my first time living in an apartment, managing all of my expenses. This time, I should at least be able to afford rent, groceries, utilities, and cat ownership. The real issue will be my plans to go to Australia for the World Masters Games in October. I will still be able to afford that trip, provided I am more careful about my spending habits between now and then. If all else fails, I have been diligent enough about setting aside money for savings and undergraduate student loan repayment that I can borrow from myself in the short-term. But I'd rather not.

Instead, it will be time to get creative, and to practice even more fungality, as the Scrabble Society calls it--the art of enjoying oneself without spending money. Sadly, that is going to mean fewer visits to coffeeshops, no new garden gadgets, and probably cutting back on fancy foods. But I'll survive, and am still bound and determined to keep paying off those undergraduate loans. In the long run, I think I will enjoy the trip to Australia even more if I go with the knowledge that I had to do absolutely everything in my power to earn the trip.

Having less money always means that one must be more conscious and conscientious about where one's resources are spent. That's not always a bad thing. And that concludes this personal pep talk. Back to science.

Profile

rebeccmeister: (Default)
rebeccmeister

July 2025

S M T W T F S
  1 2345
6 7 8 910 11 12
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 13th, 2025 06:46 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios