Boston Gal has written extensively about her use of an energy meter around her home and ‘phantom’ energy losses.

I got this really awesome graphic of Vampire Energy Loss* from a friend of mine. I think it’s brilliant. It shows which appliances use the most energy in two types of standby modes and the approximate dollar cost. I can guaran-damn-tee you that I’ll never get a plasma TV after looking at the graphic.

As it is, I run only a computer, LCD monitor, Sony Dreamcube alarm clock, rice cooker (when I’m cooking and leaving it on warm setting), fridge, and a regular microwave. Even my toaster is unplugged on the counter and I use a regular toothbrush, though I’ve thought about getting a Sonicare one since my college friend, now dentist, recommends it.

Just some thoughts for you in the battery-laden, blinky holiday light season about your energy use. I mean, after all, I’m going to California for 5 days and you know I’ll be shutting off my computer and monitor, but my alarm clock will stay on. The thermostat is going down to 55 as well.

* Formally, the data is from the ‘2005 Intrusive Residential Standby Service Report’ from the Dept. of Energy. Your tax dollars at work.

EDITED: To include a link about the Lenten piggy bank.

Oink! Oink!

I still have my Lenten piggy bank, and for most of the year, it’s empty. For some reason, this year, I decided to throw small bills in there and much to my surprise, sometimes I have a nice stash of about $40. It always sort of surprises me how much is in there when I bother to count it up.

When I am running out the door to go somewhere and I don’t have enough time to hit the ATM, I will reach into my piggy bank and grab some money out. Saves me time and usually saves me money because I don’t use a non-network ATM or charge dinner. $40 is more than plenty for dinner and movie.

The other night, I decided to count it up and found out I had $30 in it. I pulled out half because I was running low on cash for the week and consolidated the rest into larger bills. ($1’s for $5’s, not so large, eh?) I ‘topped off’ my wallet, which is good because I needed $10 to park at a downtown parking garage while I went to the theater. I would have been caught short if I hadn’t done that.

This blog has really transformed me. I don’t think I would be using cash as often as I do without realizing through blogging that cash is king. My experiments during Lent to save some petty cash around the house has turned into a small habit of tossing money into the piggy bank all year. It’s helping me avoid using credit for buying food, which cannot be returned or resold. Heck, even just withdrawing wads of cash in $100’s instead of $20’s has left me with small bills to toss into the bank. That’s a major change for me because I never used to pull out that much money at once. It was always twenty here and twenty there.

What about you? Have you changed your small habits with blogging? Can you point concretely to something that’s different about you since you started your involvement reading or writing a PF Blog? Has it stuck with you?

I got a political email from some PF Bloggers. I was slightly surprised to find it in my email box. I read it thoroughly as it’s from someone I respect. Otherwise, I’d just delete them without reading.

I am not a single-issue voter, and if I was, I know what that single issue is, and it’s not about the fiscal prudence of our executive branch. If anything, I am greatly alarmed by the erosion of civil liberties in the US. I personally don’t really give a crap if someone wears a seat-belt. If they’re that stupid, I’d like them to exit the gene pool quickly and other such policies that beg me to tell our legislators to “leave me alone please.” I’m not a Libertarian, but I am starting to feel like one in my crochety old age. Color me a curmudgeon.

I’m sorry, I’m feeling a little crass as I write this. I just finished a vile, yet hilarious book by Tucker Max. Yes, that horrible, don’t click the link it’s NSFW, Tucker Max guy.

And another thing about politics or rather, labor practices and the power of unions, what do you guys think of the writer’s strike in Hollywood? I don’t watch TV so I could care less, but now that its making a problem for my creative, non-writer friends in LA, I worry that this is going to be protracted and greatly impact their income.

Just curious.

The burn is healing well. I thought it might be a third degree one because there was a dark ring around it, i.e. scabbing to prevent the rest of my skin being damaged. However, the dark ring has sloughed off and my burn is doing fine. I made all my friends look at it this weekend, especially the ER nurse and the EMT I know. They said it was looking pretty good and should heal well without a lot of scarring. Lucky me. I was really counting on having a sexy elbow for finding a husband. WHEW! I guess I’ll have to rely on being Miss Moneybags instead and beef up the retirement fund in 2008.

I was at an A.J. Wright this weekend. It’s over near the Brentwood mail facility in DC. (Yes, the anthrax one.) My friend was looking for a cheap hair dryer so he could do the plastic shrink wrap window insulation at his house. Because we happened to be in there, we decided to check out what else they had. I mean, I saw a really nice ceramic curling iron near the hair dryer and other brand-name stuff so we figured it was worth checking out the whole place.

I ended up with a set of Cuddle Duds thermal underwear, new kitchen tongs, and some baby shower presents. My friend left with a $10 hair dryer, 22oz bar glasses, nested bakeware, present for his friend’s kid, and all kinds of other stuff.

For me, the best find was the Cuddle Duds. I got a set for Christmas a few years ago and love them. I really wanted some more thermal underwear but hate paying full price. These were on a rack of slightly irregular stuff. Which leads me to Advice #1: Scrutinize your item for minor flaws. Look for pulls, holes, bad seams, ink spots, other poor construction. This is important, since that’s often why it’s in a discount store in the first place. Each item was $3.99, but $8 bucks if it was perfect. I went through the entire rack and found a matching top and bottom, even though the top is sleeveless (less preferred). It doesn’t matter to me because it’s a cream color, just like my existing set. I got an entire set for $8 instead of $16 or regular retail of about $40.

Advice #2: Noisy children toys must have removable batteries. My friend got this really cool fire truck for his friend’s kid. However, the siren on it will get annoying. I reminded my friend that to stay friends with this family, to tell the parents to remove the batteries when it gets to be too much. Otherwise he’ll be tagged as the annoying toy giver and they will look upon him less fondly.

Advice #3: Be open to what’s in the store. Sure, you could stick to your list, but often, to get a really good deal, you have to be open to what the store has on that particular day. For instance, I *ALMOST* bought an iron. I don’t own an iron at all and the price of the Black and Decker irons was very good. I decided to skip it, but had I been open to having an iron, that surely would have been my best price compared to a regular department store. (I had just seen the same types of stuff at Macy’s last week.)

I was pretty open to the barware that had gold dollar signs on it too, but figured I didn’t really need them. But they were pretty funny.

I suspect this year my Month-Over-Month net worth growth will wind up being negative in December. There’s just too much going on for me right now with my medical expenses and overspending. I have had one too many splurges over the holidays.

I had a nice comment the other day asking me to update the NetWorth IQ graph, which I have done. I haven’t been home a lot, and that means I have been spending money out the wazoo. Because I waited so long to do it, November represents a very accurate picture of my finances. Usually I do not wait for my HELOC statement to come in before doing the update. I often just estimate it because it arrives so late.

I ended 2006 with a net worth of $34K, even. This year, I will end up around $48-49K, $50K if the market does better. Like most people, I took a serious hit this November as the S&P stagnated. However, I did use this as an opportunity to buy up a little Citigroup stock as a long-term hold generating dividends. It does not appear that they will cut their dividends any time soon, so I am relying on the depressed price to bring me good yields over the next decade. Yes, I hope to have it that long.

Examples of my holiday splurges:
1. Theater tickets
2. Super nice Christmas presents for my co-workers. Over $20 each.
3. Shopping with my friends and realizing, “Hey, I need that too.”
4. Baby shower gifts

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Do you ever spend time networking within your own company? If the answer is no, ask yourself why not?

Two stories:
1) My sibling was working in the R&D group of a software company when they happened to be chatting with the Development Lead for the core application they built at that firm. Turns out they were short staffed and hard-pressed to meet a deadline. My sibling says something about being slightly bored and underutilized at the moment. Next day, my sibling’s desk is moved to the core application team and they meet their future spouse. Go figure. All that from a conversation they had by the water cooler.

To elaborate further, this put my sibling on the path to a senior development job within their company and positioned them well for future work. Otherwise my sibling might have ended up a research monkey writing white papers all the time and generally being an academic pinhead in Silicon Valley. Nice work if you can get it, but the money just isn’t there.

2) This week, I get a COMPLETELY random phone call from within my company. This is a really, utterly, most sincerely, random call. I only pick it up because it’s internal and I think they might have misdialed. I have never, ever seen this person’s name before. He says, “Hi! I was searching LinkedIn.com on Subject XYZ and I saw you have expertise in it. I’d love to talk to you.”

Next thing you know, he needs me to act as a consultant/resource on a development project he has going on. I’m referring him to my boss so we can nail down what kind of level of effort is needed and how much of my time my boss will allow me to use for this project. If all goes well, my team will have an additional high profile project and we will look like awesome team players within the company! That’s really exciting stuff. It’s what I like doing best and I am really looking forward to 2008.

I hope these two vignettes show how talking to other people within your company can create new opportunities for you. Sure, it helps to make friends, but what’s more important is to make allies who are on your side. I could have ignored the call that came in or said, “Sorry I really don’t think I can help you.” I admit, I did hesitate at the notion of being sucked into something in which I don’t think I am an expert. However, he was desperate for any information and it turns out by answering with “Let me see what I can do,” it gave me time to dig up some informational resources and brainstorm how I could help this guy out.

Let’s just say, I have a feeling that there are going to be some monetary rewards for this. Not only a one time Above And Beyond award, but my annual performance bonus as well. Having people all over the company say good things about you is good stuff. Your reputation is just as important as your actual merits and talents. Be sure that all of them are solid. You never know what kind of opportunities might come your way by talking to people within your firm.

Single Ma’s reputation as a valuable asset has brought her more work-life balance that she was seeking. If the right people think you are worth keeping, they’ll keep you. They’ll seek you out.

I had another opportunity this week to make a new friend at work. She’s working on a project with me and stopped by my cube to meet me in person. A long time ago she was told to send me a monthly email. But we never actually talked. Since she recognized my name, she came by my desk. She’s young and energetic. I think I could learn a lot from her about scripting and I can teach her a lot of Oracle stuff. It’s a two way street and I think because of it, our shared project is going to work better.

Talk to people in your company. Say hi. Don’t be a jerk and ask the CEO who he is though. I did that once at a company cookout. It was humiliating, but that’s what they get for not having corporate bios with photographs on our website. My only saving grace was that I was asking about waiting for the Redskins football ticket drawing and trying go back to work, thus signaling my good brownie behavior.

Sorry for rambling along, I wrote this very late at night, but I hope you get the point about professional networking within your current employer. There are benefits to it that can be harvested later if you sow the seeds now during the holiday party season!

Hi! Does anyone have any advice about divorcing and money? I got wind of a situation where the family is living paycheck to paycheck and the wife wants to get out of an abusive situation. All I could recommend was that she open a separate account and start squirreling away some money into it and then use it to find her own apartment.

I also recommended that she put a credit freeze on so her husband couldn’t ruin her credit by open card solicitations that came to their house after she leaves it. Was that the right thing? I know that after a divorce sometimes people end up in bankruptcy, so it’s worth it to protect her credit now, right?

Not sure what the best strategies are here. I’ve only had one close family member go through a divorce, which was pretty smooth all things considered, and fortunately, all my college friends are still happily with their spouses. The people I do know who are divorced aren’t close enough to me to ask these kinds of questions or else it’s ancient history to them.

Anyone?

FWIW, let me lead off by saying my cousin works at PayPal. As far as I know, I don’t know anyone at Prosper.

Those things said, PayPal was one of the few things I adopted early. They gave me $5 bucks! What’s not to like?

The thing is, I don’t really like PayPal anymore. I thought it was great for moving money around amongst friends, but the fees went really high once I tried doing eBay. I used to always wait the 3-4 days for free transfers in and out of my bank account but once I did eBay, my account was “upgraded” against my will and the transaction fees are killing me. I sold two pairs of hockey tickets and a pair of tickets to the King Tut show in Philly this year. All told, it was about $130 worth of transactions and I paid out $4.67 in fees. Because I usually use my PayPal account to send money to friends in CA for things like group birthday presents, I have only earned 76 cents in interest this year. But I note, PayPal is paying me 4.7% in their money market account, which is slightly better than ING Direct.

I’ve concluded that instead of holding $48.16 in the account, I’m going to move $40 of it over to Prosper so I can add it to my $19.xx balance and then make a $50 loan to someone. I will have a better return on my money and I won’t be tempted to spend it.

I realize that Prosper is essentially a $50 3-year CD, but so far, I’ve done ok in picking my loans. My first loan is a year old now. I have three others I made this year and all four loans are current, none of which were ever late or wonky in any way. My estimated ROI is well over 14%. Way better than the S&P this year. (YTD Up 3.2% on the adjusted close reported by Yahoo for Dec 4th when I drafted this)

Just thinking out loud right now. I have a lot of stuff on my mind.

Because the market has taken a dip, I put back my 5% 401k plan contributions to get the match, rather than get the match after the January lift the market experiences.

It will ease the blow of the $2-3K in losses I took in November to my retirement account balances. OUCH.

I am going to have to stretch out my dental bill repayment and for some irrational reason, I decided to buy expensive tickets to a show for me and my new boyfriend because I really wanted to go and I sense he does too. Plus it makes a really easy Christmas gift because I’m still figuring him out. (Everybody wave “Hi” because he reads this!)

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