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Flexo just linked me in a post about throwing money away from your employer. I’ve got golden handcuffs as well, if I want to stay for the 2009 bonus season, which is awfully tempting.

Thanks to Flexo, I didn’t realize that I’d saved about $17K over the last 18 or so months. That does sound pretty good!

As a trained social scientist, I’ve still got some more footnotes to the information presented, which I left in a comment on Flexo’s blog. I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself here, but I am only human and the things I did to get to this point are things that anyone can do. I truly believe that.

#1 – When possible, I tried to max out my contributions to 20% of my salary. I have had to cut that back at times. Right now, I’m contributing 17%.

#2 – Generous company matching. It’s pretty standard, 50% of the first 5% of salary, which is about what I got at my old company.

#3 – Rockin’ the salary negotiations at the outset when I got hired. There’s no way I’d be doing this great without that as the cornerstone. Then I got a raise, based on the same principles.

#4 – Very aggressive investing. It’s all stock funds. There’s another post on the blog about ROI. I think my worst return over last year was still double digits.

#5 – My company lets me contribute part of my annual bonus to the 401k. My old company didn’t do that. It’s money that never hit my bank account and I never saw it. This is definitely going to help me max out to $15.5K (or very close) despite putting only 17% of each paycheck right now.

One final note is that my 401k plan administrator finally changed their hideous website and it’s a wee bit better than before. It’s a lot stickier and more useful, but still stinky compared to some other sites.

I broke $20K on my 401k balance this week. However, there is a small footnote to it. That is the full balance of all contributions, for which I am not fully vested. I am only 20% vested right now. When I hit the two year mark, I’ll be 60% vested. But either way, it’s still nice to see that number. Warms the cockles of my cold, cold heart. I’m about $1000.00 shy of having all my retirement account balances total up to $25,000.00.

I took a look a few weeks ago at some goals I have for my net worth and if I am work hard at paying down debt and saving, I could break $60K this year. But I have to be very diligent.

Now where is that course certification for tuition reimbursement? That sucker hasn’t arrived yet. It’s worth $3K to me.

I figured out the problem of the returned check fee on my credit card account.

I pulled money into my credit card account for a payment, rather than push out from the checking account. Therein is the problem. In my haste, apparently, I picked the wrong account. I really hate paying on the credit card company’s website. I have no idea why I changed my pattern, other than the fact that I was going on vacation and possibly thought this was the most efficient way to cover the payment. I could have waited a week but didn’t.

Either way, the double whammy of fees is about $79.00, $40 from the bank for insufficient funds and $39 from the credit card company for the returned check. Hopefully there won’t be additional fallout from the overdraft on the checking account. (It’s one I am about to close permanently.)

The plan is to transfer money into the checking account and then once the overdraft is covered, close the damned thing, have a check or ACH transfer to my current account and close it permanently.

Once that’s done and all my moving around of accounts is done for a few months, I want to open a Bank of America checking account and get away from Wachovia and their stupid online banking fees. And now a new rule: PUSH OUT FROM THE CHECKING ACCOUNT. NEVER PULL IN TO THE CREDIT CARD ACCOUNT.

ps- Don’t even ask me about my 401k account. There’s something fishy going on there, but I’ll explain it later when the plan administrator gets back to me. Perhaps I have done something wrong with Quicken to show a cash balance that shouldn’t exist.

Trudy’s in Austin has some amazing food.

I was out in the field camping this past weekend. It was fabulously rainy. I don’t think I ever dried out. Many thanks to SFOrdinaryGirl for her guest post while I was gone.

Anyhow, it was a good thing not to rent a car this weekend. Finding a ride in and out of the airport last minute worked for me so I basically spent about $500.00 for this trip for food, airfare, gas and camping fees. Luckily, I did not buy any new camping gear. I would like to get a new headlamp, but I was able to rescue mine and fit it with a green lens once I lost the clear one. I decided I really hated to spend another $40 for a new Petzl Zipka light.

I have a strange returned check fee on my credit card account. I am wondering what that is about. I’ll have to fix that later tonight when I get home. Troubles me that I have this fee on there since I have been juggling funds with my new ING Direct Electric Orange account and getting the direct deposit set up. Frustrating.

I was trying to be very conscientious but I guess I should have waited a week to pay my credit card. I like to send in my payment as close to the closing date as possible so that it lowers the interest charge calculation. Per the billing method, it’s best to send in the payment early to reduce the daily balance all month long, vs waiting till the payment due date. I figure I save about $100.00 a year in interest by doing that. (I am one of those evil debt balance carriers that credit card companies love, but I’m trying.)

EDIT: I forgot to explain or rather introduce myself as Sfordinarygirl, the guest blogger while the Mapgirl is on vacation during this long holiday. I blog about living in San Francisco on $30K a year and finding my dream job. Thanks to Mapgirl.

And so I wanted to share my crazy dream when I retire - going on a food road trip.

Matt Gross, the Frugal Traveler over at the New York Times has the coolest job. He’s spending the summer on a ROADTRIP! How awesome is that and he’s aiming to spend less than $100 a night.

He’s going from New York to Seattle got me daydreaming about my retirement fantasy.

Mines involves food and road trips. First off I’d like to explore the best bbq joints in the South. I’d start out driving from San Francisco to Alabama and sniff out the best places. That’d be one incredible journey!
Bbq used to be the one word I dreaded during the Memorial Day weekend. My parents asked if I wanted bbq chicken, beef or pork. At the time I wasn’t interested in eating slabs of pork chops marinated in Lee Kum Kay bbq sauces. What I really wanted was to eat a hamburger. But for five years straight, that’s what they grilled during the holiday and so I obligingly ate what I was given. By the time year six rolled around I begged my parents not to make any more bbq. It was getting to taste stale.

But Austin, Texas changed my mind. I fell in love with eating bbq. After one bite of those tender dry beef strips at Ruby’s (bbq sauce is served on the side) and I was in heaven - food heaven. And that’s not even including the pulled pork sandwich slow roasted for 14 hours at the Jackalope. Pulled pork was to die for. As I was writing this, I did a little research and came upon the history of bbq.

A road trip to Alabama is going to be expensive. How much money will I need? I’m going to estimate on the conservative side and say $5,000. I do want to be frugal too but not when it comes to food. I plan on sampling as much bbq until I’m satisfied.
After exploring bbq joints, I need to switch up the palates and hunt down the little Chinese restaurants in the small town cities. I”m fascinated by ethnic restaurants in small nowhere towns and wonder how they survive and most importantly how the food compares. I haven’t explored too many Chinese restaurants in small rural towns recently. But I remember one Chinese restaurant on the way back to the Bay from Tahoe. Let’s just say the $8 lemon chicken didn’t taste so good.

That’s my retirement fantasy - explore and eat food all the time. There’s nothing more satisfying than a juicy steak cooked to perfection or a sweet apple pie with a scoop of ice cream.

What’s your ideal retirement life? Would it be rock climbing? Traveling? Hiking Mt. Rainier?

I got a surprise when I checked my primary checking account. My federal tax refund has arrived! Seeing that it’s over four figures, I am putting most of it towards my credit card debt.

I see that I have netted $400 in reduction on my credit cards this month. Add the additional $1k+ I am paying and it will be close to $2K when I prepare May’s final numbers. I look forward to getting a tuition reimbursement by my company. That will help the numbers a lot! I decided not to take the suggestion of commenters and put the tuition into a separate category since I could decide NOT to take the reimbursement and then quit my job whenever I like, which is something I always think about since I get ants in my pants.

The last note I have to make is that I decided that my car is looking really crappy lately, so I adjusted its valuation down to $5000. That’s $1K less than before. I will probably depreciate it further next year, but will not sell it till I need yet another clutch in 80K+ miles. I think I can stomach new brakes (Again! The last set are really squeaky), a new set of tires (within another year or two), and all the oil changes you can shake a stick at.

There’s only one other thing to say at the moment which is that the studio under my apartment is for sale and has been dramatically reduced. I am mildly upset about this because I think they are letting it go below market value by almost 10%. I know the market is rough out there in Northern VA, but this does not bode well. I have always been a bit smug since my apartment has appreciated in value 20+% since I bought it. I have always felt I had room to fall. But now it’s falling and I really don’t like it! I will be really unhappy if I have to adjust the value of my real estate downward at all since I feel I’ve been pretty conservative with it since tracking my net worth. The current valuation is the official county assessed value. Market value in my opinion a lot higher. We’ll see what next year’s assessment brings.

One of my favorite movie quotes. It makes me giggle every time.

However, I’m putting this up because I think Blogspot blogs are down again.

Thank my lucky stars that Flexo helped me move off it last year.

Endless Gibberish on how much does it take to earn 1 cent in interest each month. He looks at ING Direct and HSBC.

A very interesting breakdown. As you can see, it’s not much money. You probably have three times that amount sitting in a coin jar somewhere.

Now the question is, will you deposit it for interest?

As of last week, I am $10.00 richer because my current boyfriend asked me for an ING Direct referral. Of course, I was glad to give him one. That’s my second for the year. If anyone else out there STILL doesn’t have a high-yield online savings account, please email me. I’ll be happy to assist you. My email address is mapgirlsfiscalchallenge at Google’s mail service.

Savvy Steward asked me about putting money into a Roth IRA. Currently I do not have one, and with my Debt-O-Meter as is, I am not sure where I’d squeeze out the extra cash to put money there. I backed off on maxing out my 401k contribution so I could have a little more money to throw monthly at credit card debt and put cash into my pocket.

I am seriously considering forgetting getting laser vision surgery next year. If I cut back medical FSA spending to only $1000 to cover new chi-chi glasses with all the fancy coatings, a flu shot, asthma/allergy meds, various other teeth stuff and other prescriptions, I would be able to bring home another $3k in cash to put into a Roth. As it is, I REALLY want to see without glasses and because I put my teeth before my eyes, I really was looking forward to finally having surgery done next year. (pun unintended, but it works here.)

If you total my 401k, Medical FSA, Traditional IRA and random cash savings, I save about 27% of my gross paycheck. Mind you, I can only do that because I have some side income coming in every month from blogging and this and that. If I had no other side stream of income, I’d go back to working at the yarn shop.

In calculating statistics, I figured out that I only need to bank away an extra $110 every check to round out to a 30% savings rate. How cool would that be?

But I HAVE to get out of debt first. I MUST.

FMF is going scold me for getting a pet, but I got a pet. It just sort of happened to me.

My co-workers were smoking outside when a parakeet landed on the shoulder of one of them. Apparently this little guy is trained and very social. He likes to perch on your finger. They decided to bring him inside because a hawk was circling overhead. For some reason bright turquoise parakeets make easy targets. Go figure.

I told the woman who had him on her desk, “It’s going to eat through that box in a hour. Let me know and I’ll go buy it a cage.”

Sure enough, by 10AM today we were at a pet store getting a whole rig for the damned thing. $70 bucks of little blue joy. The lady at store told me to come back in a few days once he’s stopped freaking out and she will clip his talons and wings for me.

I DON’T NEED A PET!

I’m too nice to let him get killed by a hawk or live in a cardboard box. The plan is to leave him in the office till Wednesday when I can take him back to the pet store for his grooming and then home on Wednesday night. (I HAVE PLANS FOR DINNER TONIGHT! I AM TOO SELFISH AND IRRESPONSIBLE TO KEEP AN ANIMAL WHICH IS WHY I DON’T ALREADY OWN A BUNNY!)

I have seen other parakeets. I am a sucker. I bought a large cage for it so I can get him a friend in a few weeks. Birds are social animals and I don’t want him to get too unhappy being all alone in my apartment for hours when I am out with my singleton social life.

I AM GOING AWAY THIS WEEKEND! I DON’T NEED A PET!

Thank god one of my friends is a pet sitter. She doesn’t really sit for birds, but will refer me to her friend who owns a bird.

THIS IS TERRIBLE.

But he’s kind of cute, even if he’s already pooping all over the cage.

Once he gets settled, if the pet thing doesn’t take with me, I will give it away free to a good home. I want to make sure he’s healthy before giving him away to another family. Wouldn’t want it to infect any other birds they might have.

*sigh*

I am a sucker. I think it’s tattooed on my forehead.

Oh sweet Jesus, please don’t let me turn into a pet/cat lady. I really don’t need this.

(It does not help that a family in DC on Craigslist is giving away their parakeet because its mate was “murdered” by the family cat. I’m thinking in a month, that might be a good one to rescue and keep mine company.)