Alright. I give up. Last month, I did ok. My credit card payments totaled $1200 which went a long way to paying stuff down, which let me move the Debt-O-Meter just a wee bit.

But if that was so successful, what went wrong?

I got a call from my mom. I promised her a new dishwasher for Christmas because her current one is 10 years old and broke. It really helps free up her time to run it overnight after dinner’s over. But there’s also been a lingering problem with the fridge. It leaks water and I hate walking downstairs in socks and step into an icy pool in front of the door. It stinks.

Since the dishwasher is kaput and the fridge rather crappy, I told me mom to get a matched set. In a couple years, I figure we’ll replace the stove and range hood later. But I need to have a chat with mom. I’m not an ATM. There’s something going on, and I’m guessing that the market is a little too wild and wooly for her taste and she’s worried about being unable to retire within 2 or 3 years. Therefore, she’s asking me and my sibling for money for all kinds of stuff. She’s sneaky and she alternates between me and my sibling so it never seems like much. However, we figured out what she was doing. My mom isn’t financially illiterate. She runs her own business and has for years. I think she’s just exhausted from taking care of my dad after his stroke two years ago and finances aren’t at the forefront of her mind. Now that it’s time to retire, it doesn’t look pretty with the current economy.

So fine, I’ll be sending her a check for an extravagant present this year, with the caveat that there will be no present for Mother’s Day next year, and that she will have to keep waiting for help on a new roof for the house. Much as I’d love to take care of it now, it’s just not possible. Even if I had a full emergency fund, a new dishwasher for mom isn’t an emergency if you ask me. I just worry how long the roof is going to last because I can tell it needs some work.

Is it me, or are you struggling between your goals and reacting to little crises? Would a fat wad of cash in the bank help or not?

This isn’t for me. I wasn’t even going to post this, but the kind Ministers at the Ministry of Minor Perfidy thought I should even though, it’s kind of painful. I don’t do this very often, but I think there are a few things you should know.

1. If you are a victim of a violent crime, many times you can be assisted by a victim relief fund run by or affiliated with the local police department. Often they will cover the medical bills and some lost wages, up to a maximum.

2. If you are an immigrant who is the victim of a violent crime, there is a U visa you might be able to obtain which may allow you to remain in the US up to 4 years. (But the law that created it applies mostly to women who are victims of domestic violence.) (First link goes to the DHS regulations, the second to a national advocacy group’s FAQ.)

Ok, *DEEP BREATH* so the story goes like this. My cousin from CA came a few weeks ago and drops a huge bomb on me. My aunt with the developmentally disabled child was beaten while working at her store. It was so bad she was in the hospital for a while. This explains her being ’sick at home’ while her sister-in-law was visiting from Korea, an occurrence which I thought was really odd.

Later on, I press my mother about this and she tells me that my injured aunt is home from the hospital and is doing fine and the police victim fund has taken care of the medical bills. Then she quickly changes the subject. I am flummoxed and scared. My aunt lives 3 blocks from her store. This means that whoever did this also did it near where she lives and could further victimize her and my cousin who may or may not know how to react.

What I really want isn’t sympathy though. A crappy thing happened to my aunt, but she is alive and well as far as my mother will tell me. (I am kind of distant from my aunt since her English isn’t very good.) What I really want is some DC area PF bloggers to consider attending a fundraiser for the DC Crime Victims Compensation Program The event is called Music is Bulletproof, on 10/2 at Red & Black on H Street at 9pm. Yes, I know it’s a Thursday.

If you are thinking of your end-of-year charitable donations or just feel randomly generous, look to your local police department for a similar fund.

Thanks & peace out,

mapgirl

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Now that I’m keeping track of what I’m spending again, the lunch spending has gotten better. I’m definitely feeling lucky because work has provided some great free meals for me, but the caloric intake is kind of high. We’re having an end of summer BBQ next week, which is pretty cool.

Unfortunately, I still spent $45.75 last week. I ate dinner out last week with one of my girlfriends who is a former co-worker. She’s a big fan of beer and so am I. I was good because I only drank one, but we were at a popular Irish bar and the fish and chip dinner was beckoning me. If I had skipped out on seeing her, I would have spent a lot less for dinner that night, but I hadn’t seen her in a while and there was a lot to dish about in a career-impacting positive way. Can I consider it an investment in my job and networking instead of ‘Dining’ as a line item?

Let’s not even include what I ate for dinner on the weekend. I spent $30 on dinner for two, bringing the total for the week to $75.75. Times four, that’s over $300.00 for a month. Is that still too much for one+ persons? (Frequently I pick up the tab for me and boyfriend when we are out and he will pick up mine. It sort of evens out. And I tend to treat some of my younger colleagues and friends to lunch or beer because they are still struggling with student loans.)

Mind you, I don’t spend a lot on groceries either. At most, maybe $200 a month, but I doubt it’s that high. Quicken’s told me in the past that I’ve spent as little as $125 a month on groceries. Let’s say it’s $150 a month currently.

Consider these points:
1. I dine out in a lot of fast food, delis and fast casual places where there’s no need to tip.
2. I live in a high cost of living area. Tipping is best done at 17-20% vs the 15% norm.
3. I spend about 2 evenings a week at my own home for dinner. Either I am out with my friends or out with my boyfriend (meaning at his house for dinner or out out.)

So is $450 a month on groceries and dining out too much for a single person? Where do you live and how much do you estimate you spend monthly? Are you single and social, or do you stay home most nights?

Snowflaking is a derivative of the Debt Snowball. I’m not a formal snowflaker. Silly names don’t mean much to me. But I did pull a classic snowflake maneuver this week.

I put away $200 more into savings. And I looked at my money for the rest of the month and decided that I could put $100 towards my credit card debt, bringing my total payment to $1100. Sure, I could have put the saved $200 total towards my debt for a total of $1300, but I’m still edgy that my Save-O-Meter is low.

At any rate, I think I’ll end up doing more snowflaking till the end of the year.

What strategies do you use to save money on interest and pay down your credit cards faster?

1. Closing Date - I pay as close to the closing date as I can. That way I have the lowest balance I can all month and pay less in interest.

2. Extra Payments - I try to send in extra payments when I can. Budgeting lately has been helpful in finding more money to send. (I use the term ‘budgeting’ loosely. It’s more like being mindful of what I spend.)

3. Use Balance Transfers judiciously - Not all offers are created equal. Watch out for one-time transaction fees and expiring low rates. The best offer you can find is a balance transfer offer with no transaction fee and a low rate that lasts until the transferred amount is paid off. I never see these anymore, but I don’t shop for them either. Lately I’ve pushed all my balances onto two cards incurring a low rate till January 2008. That puts my rate around 6.5% and 7.2%. I now pay off the balance on the other three cards I have. Those include some recurring subscription fees and the occasional big ticket item.

4. Don’t charge any more - Cut up your cards if you have to. Learn to pay off your balances each month. (see above)

What else do you do to save money on credit card interest and snowflake/snowball your debt?

I spent last Friday talking a friend out of selling his Bank of America shares. (FWIW I hold BAC indirectly via BRKB.) My friend had bought it at $29 and rode the roller coaster on it all week. He was looking to get out of it at around $36-37 a share for about 20-22% profit, but I was never sure why. I think he wanted to get out of it to buy some other stocks.

We play a little intellectual exercise on why to sell or buy something. He floats a stock ticker at me.
I end up playing devil’s advocate and doing a quick and dirty analysis of it for him, mostly to give him a different perspective on things. He does the same for me and occasionally it leads to some interesting investments. (Like BRKB. I never would have thought about buying it till he mentioned it to me.)

Some of the questions we ask ourselves:
1. What’s the 52-week high/low?
2. What’s the volume? Are you going to be able to sell it when you want to sell it?
3. How long are you going to hold on to it?
4. What’s the dividend and yield? And will the period you keep it make you lots of cash from the dividend?
5. What’s noteworthy about this stock? What’s the long-term picture look like?
6. In terms of BAC (what he was looking at), how smooth was the merger going to be? Was it going to be a big cost and hurt the firm in the short term or keep lingering into the long term?
7. Is there something better out there where you could park the same money?

What other questions do you consider when you make an investment? Do you have a regular sounding board for your investment thoughts and ideas? Would you join an investment club?

“You’re not a man. You’re not even a good sample.” - B. Stanwyck

OR

“10% dividend on $5 billion”

Warren Buffett is buying preferred shares of Goldman Sachs. The messenger of this news is an old friend of mine who turned me onto BRKB, but did not buy any himself. Go figure.

Everyone needs to try! Tricia started and now she gets why it’s so good.

Here’s links to:
Johno’s amazing whole wheat recipe - I’m sold, even though it takes a while. It’s worth it to breakdown the whole wheat flour into amazing flavor. Some things are worth the wait

A post with some of my newbie bread baker lessons learned

Another post with more lessons learned and helpful advice from Johno

Have you ever heard this phrase before? If you have, it was probably in Economics 101 at school. I heard it over and over again in Macroeconomics 101 my freshman year of college and frankly, it grew tiresome.

However, the other concept I learned that year which I really like, is Utility. What is the utility of an item and how does it give it value?

Take the current price of gas and people driving SUV’s. Or any expensive car for that matter.

A few years ago, I really really really wanted a BMW 318ti. The ti is the Touring International model, a coupe with sunroof, appropriate for me to buy used and trash on camping trips. They don’t make them anymore and you can only get them used now. Pricing was about $13K for a certified used model back then. However, I decided against it for several reasons.

1. The current car still had a lot of life left in it.
2. Spare parts would be expensive on a German car vs. my Japanese sedan.

ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL, there really wasn’t a point in buying another car. It’s because things were inherently unequal that the coupe was looking like more fun than the sedan I had. (and still have. I still run this conversation in my head all the time.)

All things being equal, a car is a car. Its main utility is to get you from Point A to Point B in relative safety and comfort. All the extra bells and whistles don’t really add to the main point of the car. The car is a people mover. That’s it. Stripped down to its core, all you need is to get from one place to another with a car. So why spend more for it?

Well, people were looking beyond the utility of the car. They stopped making all things equal and discriminated on all the features of the car and came up with the SUV as a better choice. For some reason, being in a light truck mattered. I don’t really know why since they tend to rollover more in accidents. They consume more gas. There are luxurious sedans with GPS. What was it that made SUV’s no longer equal and thus more desirable? It certainly wasn’t the price tag, or the cheap gas. Because gas at $3 is not cheap when you remember it being 99 cents.

Still not sure why an SUV is so great. I don’t begrudge people who take theirs off-road (like the Hummer driver at work who actually had mud on his car on Mondays) or need 4WD and lots of cargo space or high clearance. (Goat farmer friends, friends living on the side of a mountain in the woods, etc.) But when all things are truly equal, why an SUV?

When all things are truly equal, why a new TV? A new car? A new cellphone?

I’m just sayin’. It’s something to think about when you’re buying something new. It’s not just ‘Do I really need this?’ It’s also, ‘What is the point of this? Can I get the same utility out of what I have already or a cheaper model?’ Sometimes you have to ask yourself what sufficient is, rather than the outer limits of your desires.

Kiplinger’s has a fantastic, concise summary of the events surrounding the financial crisis and what might happen in the future.

I have to agree with the last point. Don’t lose hope. I’m a horrible pessimist and extremely negative about most things in life, but truly I think the markets will recover. Just keep on doing regular savings and we’ll all be ok.