No, not talking about politics here. I get enough of that in DC just be living here.

I’m talking about my credit cards and this year’s goals. The bathroom renovation was a major setback for me. But I ran some numbers and I’m *slightly* better off than I initially reported on my Net Worth IQ graph ($200, not enough to change the graph really.)

I knew deep down that the main thing for me is that I can pay installment credit off very well. My problem is the revolving credit. I use one credit card regularly. The other one is a balance transfer card and sits in my desk. It’s never been swiped, ever. So while I’m great at paying off the balance transfer card’s mega balance, the smaller balance on my revolving card never seems to disappear completely. I have some regular subscription charges that go on it, but that’s not really why. On a day to day basis, it’s the card I use for regular purchases, like books or clothes. One thing I learned from one of my girlfriends is never to buy food on credit. Thus I also never purchase gas on credit either. (Too bad I only learned that since I started blogging.) All consumable items are paid in cash or debit. This strategy has definitely helped, but I need something more.

I need patience.

I figured I can pay everything off, but I also figured out it will take me about 2 years. And I’m REALLY impatient. I have no windfalls coming towards me. I have two CD’s about to expire that will cover about 2/3rds of the balance on the small card, and then I can put that one away by October or November.

Hooray for handy boyfriends!

Several months ago, boyfriend’s dog accidentally peed on my laptop. Instead of paying the ridiculous $750 fee to repair my laptop or buying me a new one, we decided that he was going to try fixing it. eBay has a ton of MacBook parts on sale from other damaged laptops that weren’t worth fixing.

For about $250, boyfriend got a new logic board, another $42 for a new battery and probably another $30 for some other parts and tools. Boyfriend spent a lot of evenings working on my laptop and now it’s back!

Was it worth the wait? Yes. Absolutely. I bought the laptop used from a friend who left me about 72 hours of music on it. She’s a world traveler so she had many songs and genres I would never seek out. The cost savings is more than half of the fee I’d have to pay Apple for their insane policies. Luckily I wasn’t totally out of commission with access to other computers around me, either at home or at work. It’s good stuff.

Hooray!

If so, please leave a comment with your results so Johno can read them all and I don’t have to forward them.

Problems? Try Baking 911. It’s an informative troubleshooting site.

Thanks!

With permission, my blogpal, Johno from the Minstry of Minor Perfidy, has allowed me to reprint his original recipe for whole wheat bread. Try baking it on the weekend. Start in the morning and have loaves ready by dinner time! It is a commitment, but it’s worth it. Lately I’ve made it with a cup of regular whole wheat and a cup of white whole wheat in the first part and a cup of white whole wheat in the dry mix. It’s the King Arthur brand flour and it makes a lighter but still tasty bread.

Also, if you take his advice and work with a wetter dough, it will be lighter with bigger bubbles. It’s worth varying the wetness to figure out what kind of texture you want in the final product.

(more…)

Today I have $24 in my pocket. I’ve been more parsimonious with my cash lately. I just spend less on lunch. At any rate, I have $24 for the next two days. Since lunch will be provided on Friday by my office, and I’m not planning on having dinner out on tonight (maybe a beverage though after the Frugal Duchess book signing).

$24 is more than plenty till Friday. I started out the week with about $25 in my pocket (meaning last Friday when I usually give myself pocket money). I had a bagel/cream cheese for a snack on Saturday and a really delicious Chinese dinner Saturday night with a friend. I paid by debit card and she gave me cash ($18). I took out another $40 at the grocery store on Sunday and stayed home all day to bake bread for dinner on Tuesday. I bought lunch Monday - Wednesday at work but have managed to eat at home or at a friend’s all week. Most weeks, I would have dined out at least three times, and I have. But two times were at the home of a friend. (Cost, 1 loaf of homemade bread!)

There’s half a tank of gas in the car and I usually pay that by debit anyway. Knowing I have a bunch of social events next week, I will probably take out my usual $140, but I wonder how long I can make that last…

It’s an apples to apples thing. My friend is a long-time quilter and I’ve been looking at quilt fabrics a lot recently. Together we went to the Quilt Patch in Fairfax, VA over the weekend.

I had recently been shopping withMrs. Micah at G Street Fabrics. We also walked over to a nearby JoAnn’s Fabrics. I invited Mrs. Micah out to G Street because they were having a 30% off sale on fabrics and notions. There was a lot of fabulous stuff there. It was hard to resist, but I walked out only with some quilt batts for a quilt for my nephew and some spares.

There’s a couple of things that I’ve noticed.

1. Fire retardant batts are really expensive. Like twice as expensive. This is important for children’s stuff, but not so much for adults. Next time I make a quilt that’s not for a kid, I’m going to stay away from the batts that cost twice as much. (One $100 of materials, that can be as much as a 15% savings.)

2. Just because JoAnn’s has it cheaper, doesn’t mean it’s the same thing. I didn’t even know there was a JoAnn’s Fabrics behind the G Street store. The quilt fabrics are about $7 a yard. G Street is usually $10. The Quilt Patch, about $8-9. Now here’s the catch, the fabrics may not be the same. They LOOKED the same, or so I thought. My quilter friend advised me to be careful because the fabric might be from the same manufacturer, but ‘diluted’. The print may have one less color, or less saturated dyes, or be of slightly different weight fabric, i.e. thinner. Have you ever bought something thinking it was exactly the same thing? I am slightly wary of generics at the supermarket for this reason. The quality might not be there on something when it really counts. (I find generic cereals just aren’t that good.)

3. I like independent stores better than chains, but let me tell you, I felt pretty bad when Mrs. Micah picked up a spool of serger thread at JoAnn’s and it was cheaper. But JoAnn’s didn’t have the colors she needed anyway, so whew! There are things for which you shouldn’t pay a premium for. Because the thread was packaged and from the same manufacturer, shopping for the best price made a lot of sense. The crazy thing is, the totally independent, single store quilt shop had the uber fancy quilting thread for just under $9, whereas G Street had it for $10. (FWIW, JoAnn’s didn’t have it at all. It’s the King Tut variagated thread.)

So I got sucked into a new hobby if you can’t tell. I’m trying to keep myself from building up lots of extra stash with this hobby. I might even have to buy an iron and ironing board for this one. Maybe sell off the motorcycle to buy a new sewing machine. Who knows where this path to crafting hell will lead me? But so far so good:

This quilt was for my friend who got married in Puerto Rico. I made it for her baby born this spring. She told me the nursery was going to be jungle themed.

I signed up to buy company stock with automatic deductions. They were supposed to kick in this week. However, there were problems with my enrollment forms. That’s ok though since it leaves me extra money this month to put towards my credit cards. I was trying to bump up my savings but I was a little worried I was leaving myself too little in cash.

So, I guess it’s ok that the forms were screwed up. I’ll try this again. If it doesn’t work, then I’ll just bump up my 401k contribution and just buy more of the company stock fund. (Which doesn’t distribute dividends quite the same way as actual shares.)

Classes for volunteers are October 11th and 18th this year. It’s about 8-hours a day for two Saturdays. They would like a 30-hour commitment out of each volunteer. I’ve been doing it for the last few months and I’ve learned a lot about myself, financial management and where to get local help for a variety of issues when you have little to no income.

There are a lot of ways to volunteer!

1. Teach the federally mandated financial counseling course for bankruptcy filers.
2. One-on-One financial counseling/training for individuals and families.
3. Organize financial literacy games for kids.
4. Help out with seminar courses offered.

Contact Jennifer Abel at jabel at vt dot edu.

I bought a chair. It’s used slightly. It was expensive, but it was a good deal for an ok price. It was $300, but I wish it had been cheaper. I’ve sat in a lot of chairs now. My tushie is tired. The one I really wanted was navy leather and cost $1000. It’s discontinued so it was never a temptation.

But since I’ve been looking for an armchair for the last four years, it’s what it is. It’s the chair I’ve got now.

I really wanted another chair so I could have a real sitting group in my apartment and entertain people. Right now your options are to sit side-by-side on my couch or sit in a hard kitchen chair. (No cushions.) For hours and hours of knitting, a real armchair/side chair is much better. And now I have one.

Goody!

No. I’m not some kind of gazillionaire on WoW. But I did have lots of PoE on Puzzle Pirates at one time. Enough to buy a ship. But alas, my pirating life has fallen prey to the ravenous beast known as blogging. Yarr, matey, ’tis true. Blogging be a harsh mistress.

My financial fantasy life is a bit more mundane than pirating and stealing money from computer-generated ships. The only booty I’ve got is my own backside.

My 2008 goals are mere stepping stones to the things I really want to do. I try not to be too focused on the big picture so I can work on the small things, chip away at them and in the process, get the bigger things done effortlessly. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the big things, especially when your targets have lots of zeroes behind them.

Another reason why these are fantasies instead of goals is that they don’t meet the S.M.A.R.T. goal metric. Click the link to read more about SMART goals. I don’t want to rehash them here.

1. I would like to have a net worth in the millions.
2. I would like my housing to be cheap or free.
3. I would like my credit cards to be paid off.
4. I would like to remodel my condo.
5. I would like to save 30-40% of my salary.
6. I would like an emergency fund of $15K in cash.
7. I would like pre-tax rates of return in the double digits to make up for taxes and inflation on my retirement accounts.

Doable. All very doable if I stay focused on the small things. For instance, the best way for me to increase my net worth in these sagging times of ours is to pay my credit cards down. All those liabilities eat into my assets, and even though my assets may be falling, they will rise again once more if I hold down my spending and reliance on credit.

If I save 30-40% of my salary and push some of that into my emergency fund, then having $15K stashed away somewhere is not a problem.

If I am wise in my investments and get double digit rates of investment, then I could easily have a net worth in the millions down the road. Asset allocation and portfolio rebalancing is the key thing to look at periodically to make sure I am on track.

But you know, there should be less thinking and more doing.