Yet another month of credit card debts racked up. This is frightening. I haven’t had this much credit card debt ever. Some of it was a balance transfer of other debt which is sitting at 0%. But most of it is not. Most of it is from 2006, traveling, dental work, automobile repairs and overall just letting everything slide into a horrible mess.

I reposted a Debt-O-Meter balance and hopefully this will be the last one while I keep focusing on building back my cash reserves. I am making one final huge deposit next week to my ING savings account which will put the Save-O-Meter back to the full level on the left. (If anyone wants an ING account referral, please email me at mapgirlsfiscalchallenge at Google’s mail service.)

ps - I’ve turned off the commenting registration setting. I put it on to prevent comment spam, which I received on the 2nd day this site went live.

I’ve been exhausted lately due to work and a busy social calendar. This means I haven’t been able to devote much to reconfiguring this blog till today.

I have quite the To Do list. Namely, turn off registered comments, or else Jim will never visit me again, and I need his traffic spill-over. I also need to put archives on and tag everything. For now, if you need to search the blog for an old article, please use the Technorati Search box in the bottom of the left sidebar. Or you can use the embedded search box on the bottom of the right sidebar.
What I have changed:

I put in a new feed count chicklet from Feedburner. I’m scared of deleting my old feed, so please, if you are an individual subscriber, consider picking up the new feed.
My tagline is no longer the WordPress default. It’s back to the old one I came up with in about 30 seconds of brainstorming panic. It’s not that great, but I’ll have to spend more than 30 seconds on the next one.

My sidebar fonts are now 8 point size, which is more to my aesthetic liking.

My Technorati ranking snark reflects the new domain rather than the old one. I dropped in rank from about 79,000 to 400,000 by moving domains. However, I still appear very high when you Google search me, which is rather nice.

I took Jim’s advice and I put in CrazyEgg, but for some reason, I think the test I am running is not working properly. For those of you thinking of starting a new blog, please read the link above. It’s fantastic advice for new and veteran bloggers.

I recognize that I am having a hard time letting go of my old blog. This isn’t like knitting a gift for someone, knowing it’s not going to stay with you forever. For some reason, it’s like obliterating a recognizable part of myself which I like. Sort of like plastic surgery, but presumably people do that because they didn’t like what was being cut away/enhanced.

Make it easy on me and please relink to the new site if you can. Another item I have to do is contact bloggers personally with requests for the link change.

Hat tip to Madame X. This one is great. Why people leave their jobs.

Boston Gal on Identity Theft. It’s usually done by family members who are privy to your details.

Hat tip to Amanda at Young And Broke for pointing me to this article about a ‘Potemkin life’, and generally regretting overspending and keeping up with the Joneses.

Savvy Saver is traveling on business. Her advice on expensing things is wonderful. I admit, I’ve gone overboard in the past when I had an expense account. I also admit, that I also have saved my company money by staying with friends instead of at hotels, done the Saturday night stay to save on airfare etc. Then I didn’t feel so bad maxing out the per diem and paying the rest out of pocket to take my host out for an excellent meal. Using her criterion, was it a place where I would have spent the money anyway? Yes it was. I wish I could name the place in NOLA I went with a friend. He had a La Crema Chardonnay in hand where we went and dragged me to Pat O’Brien’s for a Hurricane. (He gave me no choice but paper cup or souvenir glass. The restaurant was past Audobon Park and was called something like Nat & Jenny’s.)

Free Money Finance tries his darndest to convince me that moving out of a major city is the prudent financial thing to do. He may be right working the numbers, but I’ll never, ever, forget going to hear Kiri Te Kanawa in recital. She sang a Puccini aria for her encore and I got chills. The ticket cost me about $75, but was worth every thrilling penny to hear her sing. Yes, you can get opera on the cheap. There is Opera in the Park, student recitals at conservatory, etc. But a superstar, well. That was worth the money.

Milton Friedman has passed away.

I’m not a huge fan of his. I’m not sure that the free market rules all, but I did find him very charming in a recent Wall Street Journal interview with his wife, Rose.

On a different note, I am sorry that I don’t have searchable archives posted. It’s one of the many things I am working on. (Like tagging my posts with categories. I must tell you something of which I am really proud. My sibling is a programmer and worked on a research project at Columbia University one summer. It suddenly occurred to me today that “tagging” is exactly what the project was about, so that you could search articles with XML.)

This post started as a comment at Boston Gal’s blog.

I keep two checking accounts. I split them up and do direct deposit at work. I first set them up like this after calculating my fixed payments every month. I leave about a $50.00-200.00 cushion every month so I don’t over draw the account. That was serious problem I had before. I did it twice this year out of sheer ditziness. Now that I am more watchful again (goes in phases), it hasn’t happened since. Part of the reason I overdrew it is that this account is out of state and I can’t just run over there with cash if I think I’m going to run out. The flipside is that I’m spoiled and used to call my parents to put money in it if I was falling short. I don’t do that anymore because I don’t need it. (That’s what it means to grow up. TCB.)

The second account is for discretionary spending. I haven’t overdrawn this one in a while either. I pull out an extra savings amount from here because when I set up the amounts for direct deposit, I did not include an extra amount to save. After I got serious about having an emergency fund, there wasn’t room to pull it from the first account, so I pull it from here. It helps that I got a raise around the same time. This account is in a local bank so if I do see it falling low, I can run over there and make a deposit from the home piggy bank.

I tend to use my debit card as a credit card account and try to withdraw everything electronically, instead of as cash. I simply do a poor job of tracking cash spending. Everything is set up in Quicken, and the cash account is miserable for record keeping. I usually dump any discrepancies into the Dining category since frequently I spend cash as lunch money.

Cash to me is monopoly money. I cannot hang on to it. Because I’m spending a dollar here and there for a soda or vending machine snack, I think I waste more, and eat more junk food/calories than I should. Since I am frequently without any cash, I feel like a mooch when I have to bum $5 off a co-worker or friend for this or that. I realize that we can’t be entirely cash-less, but till my car starts doling out money like an ATM, it’s just not convenient for me to divert 1 or 2 miles on my commute to get cash from any bank or ATM. (Have you seen DC in rush hour traffic? It’s horrible!) Therefore I never have any.

This week I had some cash (group farewell lunch at work, put on my card and everyone paid me back) and I noticed I am shameless with it. Madelines and tea for a snack in lieu of dinner, coffee, soda, vending machine snack. HORRIBLE. I wouldn’t eat those things if I didn’t have cash. (Well maybe the tea and Madelines because I really had to eat.)

I wrote a description of myself as ’struggling with finances’ and I think I’m still doing that. I’m not starving. I’ve got a retirement plan set up. I try to save. But I am still trying to curb my spending and get myself where I need to be. I wonder when I’m going to really freak out and realize I need to change everything. While I don’t want to actually experience it, I need to figure out what that is.

Wow. I’ve really wandered off. That’s what I get for writing posts late at night in sleep deprivation. But I guess that’s the thought I want to leave you with today. What would it take to really get you to radically change your spending habits to be more frugal? I haven’t been out of work in a year and I wonder why my frugal habits from unemployment didn’t last long into my current employment.

This just plain stupid of Capital One. My cousin is deaf. Fortunately he can hear a little with his hearing aids, but his wife is profoundly deaf, i.e. cannot hear anything. ADA has been around for over 10 years and it’s amazing that a financial services company does not know what to do with a relay call, or offer TDY for the deaf.

The protesters from Gallaudet University should unleash themselves upon Capital One for being idiots. I bet during the first week of the semester, Capital One sends reps to sign them up too.

I said I’d write these Frozen Dinner Reviews and then promptly stopped. I have no idea what number we’re on, so I’ll stop numbering them now.

Since I am on an effort to stop dining out so frequently, I stocked up on frozen food again. With a loaf of bread and some salad, frozen dinners aren’t so bad if you are lazy like I am.

I really like Stouffer’s line of frozen meals. They’re small, but salty. I love salt. I love the cheddar potato bake with bacon bits that are the starch for this meal. I absolutely adore potatoes in any form, so this really makes the dish for me. I wish they would make a whole entree of it. It’s no different from mac and cheese. The carbs are just potato instead of noodle.
The chicken tenderloins themselves are somewhat small. It’s the recommended pack of cards size of meat, however it’s drowned in a really sickly sweet BBQ sauce. To get all 430 calories out of the meal, they expect you to eat the sauce, which is kind of gross because it’s too much. However, with a nice piece of bread to lightly mop it up and balance it out, it’s ok. I still tend to leave a bit in the dish though.

For $2.00 on sale, I would definitely buy it again so this one gets four stars. * * * *

I don’t consider myself an audiophile. I don’t buy CD’s. But lately I’ve been obsessed with my little iPod Nano, I won from a blog contest at IndexCreditCards.com this fall.

I just prepped a post about opera. I love the opera. I love live music performances. But how do you get a good show on the cheap? I’m not sure, but these are the things I do.

1) Buy tickets early if you can.

2) Buy direct from the box office instead of Ticketmaster, etc.

3) Become a groupie for your friends’ bands. (Another plug for Dead Men’s Hollow. No really. I can’t believe it, but I like bluegrass.) Usually they can get you on the guest list, or some freebie.
4) Find the little places, like Jammin’ Java or Iota, where the cover runs as low as $5-7. Think of what CBGB’s was before it became THE place to catch up and coming bands. Dive joints that play local are a great way to see new music cheaply.

5) Find the local music conservatory and get the master class recital schedule. That’s very important. The master classes are filled with students who are going to be the next generation of symphonic players and concert recitalists. You aren’t going to get a child prodigy, like Sarah Chang, but it will still be a stirring performance. (Yes, I still think Joshua Bell is a cutie.)

6) Free summer concerts abound! Look out for free concerts sponsored by corporations and civic organizations.

7) What about a nice high school musical? I loved hearing my friends sing and Gilbert & Sullivan shows aren’t as popular as they used to be. Ah! To be a pirate! Almost as good as a zombie.

Just a few ideas to get you started. I just paid all sorts of money to hear two bands this month, but I would have been just as happy going to sing karaoke.

NPR ran a story this morning about Christian values investing. I found it rather fascinating. I certainly believe in spending your money on things you believe in. I think voting with your dollars is important. Buying power isn’t just about how much you get for your dollar, but moral values you support as well.

However, I’d like to thank all of those smokers and SUV drivers over the years. You put me and my sibling through college by spending money at our gas station. You bought my folks a nice house in the suburbs and their retirement. They drive a nice car and live the American dream. I am grateful.
I’d love to think that I embody the idealism of the first paragraph and how my money gets spent. But as I get older, I realize that we all compromise ourselves over this issue of money. We wear our monkey suits, tie nooses around our necks with a Windsor knot, don hose, pumps, and happy faces to pull down a corporate dollar.
All the same for variable returns between 3-12% in these special values-based funds, I’ll stick with generalized index funds averaging 7% annually.

That is the question.

If I can figure out how to put up car photos with WP, I will.  I took some photos this morning of the damage. You can clearly see the silver paint scratches on the car. It’s technically on two front panels and I’m lucky he didn’t take out the headlight.

I have a high deductible and have never been in an accident before, and now I’ve been in 2 minor incidents in the past month. I don’t know what kind of karmic payback this is, but I sure don’t like it. The question is if I should file to fix it or not. I’m lucky that it’s not serious. I can drive the car without a problem.

Even though this is bad luck, I keep thinking how lucky I am that it wasn’t worse. Because really, if it was a terrible accident, I’d probably be freaking out. As it is, I’m trying to calculate what’s going to cost me more? 1) My ego, driving around a car with dents for the next 3 years, which costs me nothing. 2) My insurance rates if I file the claim, which could cost me thousands over the next 5 years. 3) Lost interest on the cash I will have to pay for the deductible, which is not that much, say $40-50 per year for the next say 5 years. (Because that’s what an Emergency Fund is for! Thank the gods I committed myself to replenishing it.)

What would you do?