Despite what you might think about the rash of posts this week, I haven’t had a lot to say. I’ve been ignoring my finances, just trying too keep my head down low and appreciate the silence in the office at work. I’ve been working pretty late into the evening and I appreciate the quiet while I’m coding.

There hasn’t been much scrutiny I’ve placed on my expenses, except the budget review. All I know is that I’m not going to travel as much next year and I’m going to keep fixing my teeth.

Things I’ve planned for next year:

1) Finish the dental work.

2) Take only 2 or 3 flying trips. One to go camping and one to visit family. I reserve the right to take one more trip beyond that, destination unknown. Since I haven’t received any more save the date cards, I think I can get away perhaps with just driving to the one I did get.

3) Fork over my bonus to help my parents put new windows on the house. The windows are drafty and rattle in my old bedroom. The rising price of gas hasn’t been good on the family business.

4) Keep adding to my Emergency Fund. I had ambitions of saving another $4K in it in 2007, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. Read the next point to find out why. I hope to add about $2K in 2007.

5) Halve my credit card debt. That means taking it from $18K down to $9K. This represents over 10% of my salary. Coupled with my 10-12% savings in my 401k, the maxed out $5K for Medical FSA, and a little automated savings with every paycheck, I’m saving over 30% of my income. (I consider paying down debt to be a form of saving.)

I don’t have a target net worth number. I am still a neophyte at savings, even in my early 30’s. I’m still curbing my spending habits and questioning why I buy what I am buying. I think my goals reflect that. I’d love to say that I’ve changed my spending habits a lot since starting this blog, but I don’t think so. I consider myself still in the category of a young saver since I’m still trying to jumpstart my savings and move towards maxing out my 401K to a 20% contribution.

I don’t think I’m going to need any new clothing next year except for one or two pairs of more stylish shoes, a new skirt, and perhaps a new stylish party shirt. My friends are probably sick of the shirts I have because I wear them all the time. (I hate looking at party photos. You start realizing you’ve worn the same clothes for the last 3 years. Timelessly fashionable, but eventually you can’t tell which party is which by the clothes you’re wearing.)

After reviewing my budget again, I realize that some of these goals are a little unrealistic. If I am lucky and don’t have an emergency, I’ll be able to save another $2k, but I’ve really kind of screwed myself by saving extra money in my FSA, a necessary evil. I also don’t really think I will be able to halve my credit card balance, but definitely knock it down by quite a bit. Absolute fixed number not yet revealed to me on my spreadsheet pages.

So the question for SingleMa, is did you arrive at your lofty financial goals before or after looking at your budget?

Usury is unChristian. It used to be a sin. In our current economic state of affairs, is it still a sin or a necessary evil?

I avoid religion in my blog, and that’s as far as I’ll go. Think of it as a philosophical question instead of theological and continue forth with the rest of the questions I am going to pose.

Boston Gal points us to an article about ‘auto title loans’. I’ve never heard of such a thing. But whatever it is, it can’t be good since it’s aimed at keeping poor people poor.

The first thing that came to mind while reading BostonGal’s pull quote is just what is the interest rate being charged? Looks like 200+% in some places!!! Three digit interest rates? Surely you are joking!
Shopping for credit is just like comaparison shopping for clothes or shoes, the products are the same thing, but embellished differently enough to charge you crazy rates across the spectrum. (I want to know who the heck gets 1.9% APR financing for car? NOBODY. That’s who.)

I shop for credit, and just like shopping for anything else, I say to myself, ‘I’m not going to spend more than X for it.’ For credit, X is your interest rate. (Formally, this is what’s called your reservation price.)

When I shopped for a mortgage 3 years ago, I knew I didn’t want to pay anything more than 6% for my primary loan. I had looked around at various places for interest rates in my area and got a feel of what I should be able to get and what was too high. I didn’t really know what I qualified for, and I played it pretty conservatively. I did ok with that. But the HELOC on the house climbed to 10+% before I figured out how to convert it to a lower fixed rate loan without penalty. Yeah, I didn’t think I should pay 10% APR for a home loan. Not at all.

Recently, I looked into refinancing so I could consolidate into one single payment per month. (Drives me nuts to track a second account for a single thing.) But my reservation price tells me it’s not worth it at today’s credit rates, high 6’s and low 7’s.

Lately I don’t like to pay more than 15% APR for a credit card. I know I’m borrowing money for a shade more than that, like 15.9%, but as soon as it hits 16%, I give those guys a call and ask them to lower the rate. I’ll call every 6 months if I have to.

I don’t think there is any reason in life to pay more than 20% interest on anything. No payday loan, no direct deposit advance, NOTHING. Even when my credit card rates were high about 5 years ago, I got that stuff consolidated down from 17-21% to 15%.

Ask for a Truth-In-Lending sheet from the loan provider. I got one when my mortgage papers were sent to me. I didn’t understand it, but none of the interest looking numbers said over 6%, so I was happy. TILA also covers credit card companies as well, so read your fine print. Even if your rate is variable, it should give you an example of the current rate and even sometimes how to find the rate in the Wall Street Journal.

I gotta learn to make a poll. What is the highest interest rate you will tolerate for a credit card? What about a mortgage?

Sidenote: OMG!!! I just figured out how to cut my posts with a MORE tag. No more lengthy posts! I have sneakily figured out how to make you suckers click more for greater page views. MUHAHAHA!

I netted out about ~$14,000.00. I was hoping to net ~$18,000.00, but I’ll take it. I can genuinely say that my Save-O-Meter, FSA and 401K totals that $14K, so I think I’ve accurately hit my personal goals for 2006, despite going over budget.

I drafted up a recap of 2006 with some goals for 2007, but now I see I’ll have to revise my goals for 2007 based on a new budget plan. I have to be realistic about what fits into my budget in terms of savings. (Oh wait. I think I’ve just written my dream goals…)

I suck at sticking to a budget. I really do. I don’t track every nickel and dime accurately especially when it comes to dining out and items paid with cash. But I can definitely see that I benefit from budgeting by being able to do a quick and dirty analysis.

Even if you blow your budget, make one anyway. It’s a navigational guide for your spending and saving, but don’t cry if you miss your turn. Just regroup by revising your budget to be more realistic, and get back on the proper route. Knowing what I might spend or have spent in the past allows for me to make adjustments. Another surprise was that my vacation travel, i.e. all those weddings, was overbudget by ~$300.00, the cross-country airfare of one wedding. If I hadn’t budgeted my whole year, I never would have foreseen that I had to cut my personal vacation to pay for those wedding trips. You regroup. You adjust. Even if you are damned lazy like I am.

How lazy am I? I probably only look at a budget report once a quarter. Quicken lets me see a montly income/expense graph when I log in. However, it’s pretty skewed due to quirks in my graph settings, based on accounts and budget categories to include. It’s messed up and I don’t think about it that much. I literally just count which months I haven’t spent more than I earned. (For the record, on the small graph it’s 8. On the full graph, it’s 9. See what I mean about it being kind of screwy?)

Quick digression: Most PFBloggers probably don’t have formal accounting training or work in accounting. (I should probably figure out how to do a poll. If you want, please comment with a yea or nay.) I would encourage everyone to take a basic college-level financial accounting class for a few reasons. A) You’ll learn how to make an income statement and a balance sheet, which is really all you’re doing for yourself when you prepare your net worth statements or budgets. It’ll make numbers less scary. B) You’d be surprised at how much money executive education programs make by teaching financial analysis to non-finance managers. It’s a marketable skill for your resume. C) You don’t have to major in it or be a CPA, just one single 101 course. I took mine after I graduated from college and found myself doing lots of accounting stuff at work. D) And it’ll help you see the importance of budgeting and why companies do it, even if you don’t do it for yourself.

Budgeting does not exist to set you up for failure. I don’t feel like I failed even though I missed my budget. Not at all. I am proud that even though I overspent, I hit two important savings goals I set for myself.

Please let me know if you don’t have a budget and if you’re going to try one for 2007. It’s a pretty good new year’s resolution if you don’t have one already and semantically, note that I wrote ‘TRY’, not ’stick to’. It’s an evolutionary process, which reminds me to ask Madame X, how long have you been budgeting and how do you get such budgeting perfection?

Surprisingly, there were some good things in my budget.

On the income side, because I made an effort to save, I made ~$100.00 in interest by doing nothing but saving! I like that! I don’t think 2007 will see a comparable number unless people want ING referrals from me. The ones I got from 2006 were categorized as interest income. (Email me at mapgirlsfiscalchallenge at Google’s mail service.)

I saved money on my car insurance, and the savings is approximately the cost of my new homeowner’s policy I had written this year. I expect this savings to be eaten up by a rise in premiums next year.

I don’t know about you, but I plan out what I’m going to pay in credit card interest. For some reason, I paid ~$100.00 less than planned this year. I must be some kind of pessimist!

Though I splurged on a ridiculously expensive skirt this year, I was under budget by ~$900.00. I think Frumperella can reassess this figure completely for 2007.

My crack habit, er, excuse me, my YARN habit was under budget by ~$100.00. Thank god I quit my second job at the crack house, i.e. yarn shop. I spent most of my budget in two purchases during their annual clearance sale at the beginning of the year. I think I realized what I was doing and made sure not to buy anything else unless I REALLY needed it. Now I don’t feel so bad buying high quality kid mohair as a year-end gift to myself.

My gift budget looks like I was under ~$300.00, but that doesn’t seem right due to a weird little transaction I did with my sibling to buy wedding presents for my cousin. I was probably under by only ~$150.00. The other thing is that I tend to buy lunches and dinners for friends as treats for their birthday, and I put that all into my dining out category. Remarkably, I wasn’t ridiculously overbudget by dinging out, which is why it didn’t make the BAD list.

Before you chide me for dining out a lot. I was totally on budget with my spending AND I grossly over estimated my grocery budget by ~$1200.00. It’s not like I overspent on a generic category of ‘FOOD’. This also will have to be reassessed for next year, including another $250.00-$350.00 case of wine. My wine rack is empty and needs replenishment.

I don’t understand Quicken sometimes and I think this has to do with my screwy allocation for healthcare benefits from work, but I was under budget by ~$1800.00 for a generic ‘Insurance’ amount.

Surprisingly, my medical expenses were not way out of budget. I was under by ~$200.00. But I will have to carefully plan 2007 since I bumped up my Medical FSA and I still have a mountain of expenses to cover. My dentist was very clear on how much stuff will cost me for each item I’m having done which allowed me to change my FSA allocation. Make sure you ask yours for an outline of charges. They really should be able to give you one if you ask.

Last interesting category is my taxes. I got refunds from DC and VA, but only after overpaying VA due to their weird auditing practices. If you don’t include my property taxes on the car and condo, I actually over budgeted by ~$1000.00. I think this is primarily due to ramping up my pre-tax contributions and deductions.

How did I do? Not very well. I overspent on my budget by ~$3000.00.

I was about $1000.00 off on my income due to my budgeting healthcare benefit expenses off my old employer and not adjusting it to actual costs with my current employer.

Specific category notes:

The rising price of gas definitely shows on my budget. I spent ~$300.00 more than planned.

My car repairs were a budget killer at ~$4000.00, because I track that as a separate item from fuel expenses. This single budget item explains away the entire budget deficit.

Buying a motorcycle was *VERY* unplanned and it shows. I could blame this as the budget killer, but it cost me less that the deficit total.

My entertainment budget was over by ~$300.00, but almost that entire amount represents pre-paid tickets for 8 adults to the once in a lifetime Tutankhamen show in Philadelphia for 2007. I hope to recoup most of that from my friends next year when the show takes place.

The ‘household’ category was over by ~$250.00, which is about what I spent on a home warranty service. It sounds crazy, but I renewed it since it’s a one-stop service for household applicance repair. I actually ended up using it to replace my garbage disposal in 2005. I found the convenience to be a worthwhile expense. I sleep better at night knowing I have a number to call. (I was a total wreck during my first home repair crisis, which is a buyer’s remorse story. I know that am a panicker in a crisis, which is why I obsess about being prepared for stuff. I freak out less.)

I am not sure what to make of this one. I overspent on mortgage interest in 2006 by ~$900.00. But since I capped my HELOC to a fixed rate and I can take almost all of mortgage interest amount as a deduction, I can’t call this all horrible since I’ll actually get back some of this category when I file my taxes.

I grossly under estimated my property taxes by ~$500.00. That represents what I paid for my condo and for my car. In VA, there is personal property tax on your vehicle. Now that I know what a full year of taxes are upon my car, I should be able to budget this better. But due to annual real estate reassessment in VA, I might still be way off again. Since markets are flattening, I should be alright. (This may require another post to explain.)

I have the good stuff in another post. Though the overall budget picture was that I overspent, I did a lot better on a few things which surprised me. Stay tuned.

Some thoughts on Christmas without presents.

A feature on Eli Broad, philanthropist. Listen to how he kept his college expenses down. Good advice, even today. I like the idea of his underfunding of projects to encourage participation.

Marketplace has a great story about balancing development with quality of life in Thailand.

They also have story on an really unusual retirement strategy. Heavy on Volkswagens. The cars, not the stock. It’s not what I recommend, but I like that he’s giving himself a livelyhood in retirement as well as an investment.

Marketplace’s round up of stories from the past year. I especially liked Hillary Wicai’s story on post-nuptial agreements. I thought it was pretty intriguing.

The History of Happiness. My favorite part is about Croesus himself. After all, a man with such riches ought to be happy, yes?

I heard this story about champagne and instantly I wanted a glass. I’m posting this second online story about holiday wines (no audio) because you don’t have to spend $40 a bottle for Veuve Clicquot to find a tasty champagne. I’m a big fan of Domaine Chandon NV Blanc de Noirs ($16) and other sparkling wines made with methode champenoise. One of my fondest memories is sitting with my mother in the tasting room of Chandon with a glass of champagne and some caviar, taking in the autumn sun over a vineyard of reds and orange. It’s an exquisite memory.

Another Chandon memory: Having a romantic weekend of camping at Half Moon Bay. We stuck the opened and half-drunk champagne bottle into a parka pocket, grabbed our sleeping bags to watch the waves and stars. As we walked, the jiggling motion on the bottle made the cork fly off in the dark and we laughed hysterically down to the water. Strangely we found the cork the next morning and it sent us again into giggles.

Sixteen bucks is cheap to drink in memories.

My absolute favorite quotation by Madame Lily Bollinger of the House of Bollinger. She was asked “When do you drink champagne?”, and replied:

I only drink champagne when I’m happy, and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company, I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I am not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it - unless I’m thirsty.

Oh and please do listen. The story of champagne has a remarkable feminist quality to it, after all Veuve means widow in French. Think Veuve Clicquot, Veuve Fourney and even Madame Bollinger was a widow as well. They inherited their husband’s wealth but nurtured it to prosper instead of having to sell it all off.

I finally got around to adding some folks I’ve been neglecting. I really had the piss taken out of me with the migration last month and I haven’t wanted to diddle anymore with PHP or OPML till now.

Ricemutt!

J.D!

Savvy Steward!

We’re in Debt!

Hooray!

Meanwhile, Rob can stop bugging me to add him back to the new site. Dude. You’re on there again.

Several people have asked me for links and it seems a good time to reiterate my blogroll policy.

#1 is that the blog has to be around for 3 months.

#2 I have to like it and read it. I have a philosophy about the internet, which is that I don’t do quid pro quo linking. Either I like your blog or I don’t. Either you like my blog or you don’t. I never ‘trade’ links because I share stuff with my readers whenever I think it’s valuable, not because someone has done me the favor of linking. (I noticed the other day that Madame X gave me an asterisk and I am extremely flattered by it. It’s a genuine endorsement and that’s the same quality endorsing I strive to maintain with my blogroll.)
#3 It has to look good, which I know, is horribly subjective. At least consider some basics to make a site readable. If it hurts my eyes, it’s a no go.

This one is old, but overlooked. Assets & Liabilities has it spot on. Strangely, I did this for one of my doctors and found a coupon to a restaurant I will have to try. This goes back to that fatally awful meal at Wild Ginger in Seattle.

Lifehacker on DIY giftwrap. It clicks through to Curbly. I am all about tissue paper with stuff drawn on it. Rubber stamping works fine too. Newspaper and markers works for me as well.

David Pogue at the NYT, basically he explains why my comment policy is the way it is. I am sure he realizes his name is that of one of my favorite Irish bands. Oh and now it’s time to offer you my Christmas greetings, courtesy of said band. Try not to get too depressed, ok? (RIP Christy McColl. Yes, that is Matt Dillon as the cop in the beginning, all black Irish hotness. My god has he aged well.)

Networking for Introverts at Dumb Little Man. I’m telling you it’s very important. I had to drag out a new employee for the department holiday party last week. I told him to sign up for the pool tournament and schmooze a bit. He hates schmoozing and I kind of see why, but I refuse to let him ignore it all since we work with people in different offices around the country. He’s got to learn to schmooze and network and develop relationships with people over the phone if he wants to get stuff done. Sometimes networking isn’t just about meeting new professionals outside of work to get ahead. It’s about greasing the path to getting stuff done more efficiently at the place you already work.

Udandi’s birthday party. This one is about holiday cheer and not personal finance. But check out those sweaters!

Jim on the essential reason for having a one-page resume.

Minister Johno, who still owes me a photo from Christmas LAST YEAR, fancies himself a singer. Check out this song, but don’t listen at work. It’s not very work friendly unless you’ve got on headphones. I laughed. It’s fun stuff for the curmudgeon in you. Sometimes, chuckles at work are in order when you are finding yourself coding till 7pm every night the week before Christmas. (Hey! It’s Silent Night and I get a lot of stuff done!)

I’m going to have to get a copy of it for airplay for TheoryRadio.

ps- Johno, I gift you a scarf for the missus, and still yet no photo of her wearing it. No more hand knits for you! boo! I am hoping this public shaming will encourage a ‘thank you’ photo.

EDIT: Thanks Savvy Steward. I just fixed it. I’m going to get the hang of this blogging stuff one day.

Kira writes about sacrificing a kidney for a relative (theoretically, not literally). I find it a really interesting question.

A dear friend gave up a kidney for her hairdresser. And she doesn’t regret it at all. She’s a bit older, without children, and for her giving this person the gift of life was an incredible thing to do, and the right thing. Her hairdresser started living life completely differently now that he actually had a future to live. He could make plans, live a life without feeling like it was going to end at any minute. It was the amazing gift back that was her great reward. She got to watch him really live life in a manner consistent with her own values of living life to its fullest.

For me, the question as posed by Kira isn’t valid, my grandparents are all dead. However, would I do it for my parents? I don’t know. I’d have to ask them what they wanted. I could see my parents saying yes. I could see them saying no. I know that I’d be willing to do it, but only if that’s what they wanted. I wouldn’t force it on them. I know for my sibling, nephew, or cousins, I would absolutely do it without question and I’d make them do it. I would have no regrets.

It gets into the question of the value of a life. Is it the life as lived, or the income potential of that life in the future? I try to value my life by living it to the fullest. I want a life without regrets, full of love, life and vitality. How do you put a value on fear and how it cripples a life?

I see stuff like Oprah Winfey’s TV show, Dr. Phil, and all those feel-good TV shows. It makes me so sad that the world hurts so much that people are always seeking happiness outside of themselves instead of from within.

I’m not smugly happy over here. Not by a long shot. But Taking Care of Business has always been important to me. I get a good feeling everyday from watching my net worth grow in a measurable and specific way. My self-esteem does not rise and fall with my net worth, but it is very important to me. I see a lot of my friends feel crushed by life and I watch with helplessness as they tell me their financial woes. I’ve had that feeling, but it’s so hard to watch them stay stuck in the rut of their lives with the same plaintive whine about their finances. When’s it going to change? When are you going to do the thing to change your life now? Not tomorrow. TODAY.