Even in Kyoto

There are a lot of good outcomes from that financial planning webinar. One was that the people who led it presented a useful heuristic for budgeting. This, again, is an arena where I've heard various bits and pieces of things from various places over time, but for a long time my financial circumstances were so volatile and variable that it was tricky to implement what I was hearing. Anyway, the heuristic is, 50/15/5: plan to allocate 50% of your income towards basic necessities (housing, food, utilities). Plan to put 15% of your income towards retirement. If your employer offers any form of matching retirement contribution, that can count towards the 15% total. And put 5% of your monthly income in savings for emergencies (unemployment, repairs, unexpected healthcare expenses).

When I got hired into my current job, I had my employer set aside 15% of my income, but without having much context for that number. It just seemed like a sweet spot, mathemetically. My employer does match set-asides up to 10%, but I also have to figure that I have gotten a late start when it comes to retirement savings, so I'll leave that allocation how it is. It's just comforting to know that it's on the aggressive side of the equation.

I *do* have one lingering task on that front: for the 4.5 years I was in Texas, funds went into the Texas Teacher Retirement Services, but if a person then leaves Texas, the account goes dormant and they stop paying interest. So I need to figure out my options for transferring those funds somewhere else that will earn interest. I also need to figure out whether I need to do anything with retirement savings from my 2 years in Berkeley. All those funds are kind of a pittance, but still, they're MY pittance!

With knowledge of the 5% heuristic, I was able to configure my checking and savings accounts to start a monthly automatic transfer. Yay! I'd had a different savings system in place in the past, but it was too motivation-based. A systematic arrangement is ideal.

With the 50/15/5 taken care of, one can view the remainder of one's income as discretionary spending. However, before I can really do that, I need to go back through my finances to figure out where I actually am with regards to the 50% towards the basics. I can already tell you that The Rent is Too Damn High, and I suspect I'm above the 50% mark already. But I'm ready to get back to more detailed financial tracking, because I am actually much happier to work within financial constraints as compared to not having a good idea of what constitutes realistic spending expectations. And if I can point to The Rent is Too Damn High, that's helpful for thinking about house-hunting or moving or doing any of a number of other things.

So then, the next part of the webinar that was great was that they provided a bunch of curated budgeting resources, including both some free expense tracking tools, and recommendations for which of the paid expense tracking tools are the most worthwhile based on their experiences (yes, with a shout-out to YNAB, for instance!).

There, again, I've tried to create and maintain my own spreadsheets for expense tracking in the past, but without much context for a lot of my decision-making. If I use something made by other people who have already done a lot of the thinking and calculating for me, well, that sounds great.

Anyway, I really appreciated twoeleven's comment about how refreshing it was to hear about something like this seminar, in the context of working with a lot of autodidacts who often wind up with a weird combination of tunnel vision and blind spots from the assumption that many/most things can be self-taught. I mean, sure, *some* things can definitely be self-taught! But again, I think this post illustrates how the right sort of seminar can be tremendously useful.

And with any luck, some of the other courses you'd like to take will get put together and offered, somehow. I feel like I need to keep a list of those things. My local library does try and offer some of these sorts of courses, at least.

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.



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.



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

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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.

...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.

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.

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.

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 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

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...

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.

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 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.

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.