Since I’ve been running around for my family every weekend, I haven’t been buying groceries or dining at home. I generally keep my fridge empty because empty doesn’t rot and need a cleanup. I was inspired to actually shop for food on Monday, likely because I am completely out of everything on the pantry shelves. Even my non-perishables have perished or I’ve consumed them.

I bought only loss leaders and stuff I could realistically plan on eating while I am home and not traveling for weddings. I am proud to say I packed my leftovers from Monday night and ate them for a 10am pre-lunch today. However, I was still hungry at 12:30pm and went to lunch with co-workers. I just ate my leftovers from dinner out last night, but I will again be buying something to eat while I’m out with friends this evening. For some reason, my stomach will not be satisfied with these bits of food and still demands more.

But at least I remembered to pack and bring my lunch today. I forgot the leftovers yesterday and to remind myself this morning, I put my cellphone and headset in the kitchen after I woke up so that I wouldn’t forget my lunch. I am surprised that my trick worked, but it did and hopefully I will spend less than $15 on food today.

I can’t believe this article.

I have friends who work for AOL. I’ve been a customer of AOL. I’ve personally never had a crappy time with them trying to cancel, etc. However, this is just insane.

BTW, Buckethead of The Ministry of Minor Perfidy has a running joke there about zombies, so if you don’t think zombies are funny, ignore this post. If you do this zombies are funny, please go watch Shaun of the Dead. It’s right dead hilarious.

LPKitten has an updated post. Please give her a visit and some encouraging words.

I know what it’s like to take a gamble on a job and come out with a losing hand. It’s terrible. I was underpaid that year because I was under-employed and ended up owing $5K in back taxes. It was an awful financial setback when I was 26. (Maybe if readers want to hear the story, I’ll share it after the weekend.)

LPKitten is really close to meeting her goal. If you are interested in helping her, please go and donate. She’s taking donations via PayPal. I’m contemplating putting up a donation button myself, which is another post I’ll elaborate upon at another time. The main thing is that she needs a little encouragement now after her bad job experience.

Thanks!

Gentle Readers, I would like to have a ‘Best of’ section, but I’m not sure what to put there. Are there any particular posts from my blog that have called out to you? Anything that you’ve gone back to re-read at a later date?

Posting will remain light as I jet off this week for a wedding. Thanks for all your patience and comments!

Make Love Not Debt has a mystery for you. I love mysteries, but I am afraid I am not sure what this is. I suppose this is some sort of joint investment account of some sort which allows Her’s Grandmother to receive an income, but if so, why does Her pay the taxes, or do you think her Grandmother pays some of them too?

Speculations are welcome either in the comments here or at the original post.

Flexo, the carnival founder has it available now. The colors on table are looking spiffy and he’s asked carnival submitters to review their past submissions for their favorites to highlight. Yours truly is again a participant and I’ve featured my insurance buying post and The Lenscrafters Mall Conspiracy.

Posts that caught my eye:
Jane Dough, my Boston Gal, discusses her 5 year plan. Her road map is very interesting to me since she’s only a few years older than me. I’ll have to consider my 5 year plan as well.

Nicole, my Budgeting Babe, discusses volunteering and its rewards. I cheer her on!

Single Ma, my local lady, discusses how people react to financial emergencies and her Emergency Fund. It links back to some of my favorite posts of hers. If anyone out there needs an ING Direct referral, please email me and ask for one.

Cap tells us how we can get free personal financial information. We’ve already paid for it with our taxes, so let’s take advantage of it! He walks through the packet and offers us a good review.

Financial Reflections discusses Google spreadsheets. I’m an Excel junkie, but I am curious about Google. Personally I use MS Works at home and find that it does most of the calculations I need for personal finance.

Family CEO makes a connection to Mary Hunt’s new book.

Lately with the skyrocketing prices of homes in urban meccas, the thing to do has been to calculate whether or not it’s worth it to buy vs. rent. When you do that calculation, you’re figuring out opportunity costs of buying vs. renting. An easier example of this has been the price of gas. The First Fuel Bank in St. Cloud, MN, takes advantage of this. You buy gas at one price currently, with the right to getting gas at that price in the future. The opportunity cost is lost interest and the present value of that cash to you. But when you weigh that against the price of gas in the future, you may have saved yourself a lot of money.

I find the process of homebuying has an intangible element which isn’t easily quantified by worksheet calculations. Sure, you can run a set of numbers to find out if, over time, renting is cheaper than buying. Kiplinger’s has a good calculator for that.

When I asked myself the rent or buy question, I looked at my reservation price, or price point when I’m sick of paying rent and want to buy. My story is that I had a reservation price on housing at about $700.00 a month. Once I couldn’t find a place to rent in DC that I liked for that price point, I told myself I would buy a home. That’s how I ended up in Virginia, since it was what I could afford. Keep in mind, that my housing payments are actually far more than $700 per month, but I honestly felt that places I wanted to live in DC for less than $700/month were horrible hovels, or else not worth paying $800 or 900/month.

The intangible aspect is the value I placed on where I lived based on price. I loved living in Upper Georgetown where I had on-street parking, (’Doris Day style’, right in front of the house) grassy lawn, bars in walking distance, quiet neighbors, convenient bus and commute, etc. I also shared that house with 4-5 other roommates, and every once in a while, I’d get boxed out of the shower in the morning and have to go to work unbathed. It was very unpleasant to decide between a black mark for lateness, or filth. That pretty much sealed the deal. I wasn’t going to live with roommates ever again. My reservation price was the price of having a shower whenever I wanted that shower without queuing up or risking disciplinary action at work.

Owning is better that renting usually speaking, but you still have to ask yourself what you’re willing to put up with. I can’t stand having an HOA or noisy neighbors. But I tolerate it all so that I don’t have to mow the lawn. Factor all that stuff into your reservation price if you decide to set one because that does play a part in all this.

I’m not a hard and fast by the numbers kind of person. If I was, I probably would still be renting and living in suburbs closer to my job.

I lost my ATM card for a little while this week. I didn’t freak out because I’m sure I had misplaced it in one of my jackets or pants. Sometimes I slip it out of my wallet when I go to the cafeteria for lunch and forget to return it to my wallet right away.

I was worrying a little since it hadn’t turned up in the last few days as I rifled through my laundry hamper and hung up clothes. I raided my Lenten piggy bank for some cash the other day because the man at the parking garage booth didn’t like that I gave him $2.00 in change. (Nice of someone to tell me when I made my doctor’s appointment that I should have cash for the booth attendant. I thought all these suburban places had free parking?!)

Today I found it on my desk at home. This week was definitely a lesson in how and what I spend my money on. I learned that I rarely have a need for cash. Nearly every place I go takes credit and I hardly make purchases for just $2 or $3. It’s easy for me to forgo the small purchase completely if I don’t have cash in my pocket. I am certain that if I had a fiver on Tuesday night, I would have had a second drink at Starbucks, instead of the one drink and sandwich. (I was meeting my crafty friends.)

I learned that I am capable of making large payments to my credit card and charging less upon them than I paid, netting a smaller balance for the month. While I loathe charging on my credit card, I still do it. I am trying very hard to make sure that balance shrinks instead of grows. We’ll see how bad it gets after the next three weeks.

A collection of articles:

Kiplinger’s: Where it starts

FMF discusses it here and throughout the week.

Friends finding your PF Blog

The original conversation at It’s Just Money. (Hello LAMoneyGuy!)

You can read my comments on some of these posts. I don’t have much else to say about it right now, just be honest with your friends. And if you find your friends can’t handle it, re-evaluate. My best financial role models are my friends, not people I read about in CNN articles. I watch how they spend their money on the minutiae of their lives. They’re better examples for me than anyone else I could read about.

Frank, the Financially Savvy Atheist has a rockin’ spreadsheet for a payment amortization schedule. He walks you through the formulas you need to set up and it’s actually pretty useful if you are a spreadsheet jockey at work. It’s definitely intermediate to expert level skill.

It’s been quite fun to noodle around with it. Of course, I don’t like what it’s saying to me. Pretty much, I need to scale back my life even further and start tripling my 2nd trust payments if I want to be done with them anytime soon. (About $30K in 2 yrs = ~$1350/mo.)

I suggest everyone give it a little whirl if you have Excel. I haven’t yet tried it with MS Works. I’ve been busy reading another PF book which hopefully I’ll find time to review soon.

Thanks for being patient with my light posting. I am still trying to serve up something hot and fresh every day.