Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

To elaborate a little more about my job and what I hope it will be:

1. I wanted to reduce my carbon footprint. I know it sounds cheesy, but I will be able to commute via public transport for my first engagement with this consulting firm. I find that pretty exciting to get a portion of my life back so I can read or knit while commuting. My corporate offices had moved in the last year and the new drive was killing me, especially when it takes two hours to drive past Tyson’s Corner at Christmastime. I wasn’t going to do that again next year. If you want to know more, listen to this Diane Rehm show episode about Happiness. The number one thing that destroys happiness is a long commute to work.

2. I hope that I can stay and grow with this firm for the next 5 to 10 years. I really loved my team at my old company, but to stay there for 5 years would have meant a transfer to the Midwest in a place where I would only have co-workers for friends at the start. (One of the reasons I spent so much on holiday presents for my teammates was because I knew I was leaving and I wanted to give them a token of my appreciation for their friendship over the last 4.5 years through the thick and thin times with our previous totally sh*tty employer to the awesome team we built at the new place.)

3. I am excited that there are great benefits with my new company. My old firm doesn’t even compare. Tuition, training, health insurance, 401k plan, corporate social clubs, everything. Discounts on cars, cell phones, computers, EVERYTHING. I bet I can join a warehouse club at a discount even. Hm. Must look into that.

4. The money is great. It’s a 6% raise over my total compensation from my last firm, but I know that I am more likely to become a 6-figure employee with the new employer. Whereas my old employer wouldn’t give my senior manager a 6-figure salary, though he deserved it, they’d never give me one as a technical minion. It’s actually more like a 16% raise over my base salary, and though I am losing my bonus money for 2007 and a tiny bit of 401k vesting, the present value of money on the checks between January 1 and bonus season payouts have more value. No, really. I can do the math on that since we were notified that we weren’t going to make our targets to get the full 10% bonus. So why should I have waited till bonus season.

That is all. Really, are there any other better reasons to change jobs? Someone asked me about changing jobs and the job hunt. Hang on. I’ll get to that later this week.

Please stay in your lanes. I watched an SUV swerve into my lane several times this evening. I suspect, the driver had been to happy hour, or else was totally clueless about the size of his vehicle. If you think I’m slamming SUV’s, guess again. That silver Mitsubishi Eclipse got me on the 495-Port of Wilmington split today. I was passing on the right (I know, that’s bad, but the lane was totally free and clear!!!) between the middle lane and the Jersey wall. For some reason, Mr. Sport Car Idiot swerves into my lane without turning his head to check to see if I am there. I nearly crash into the wall! Thanks bub.

At any rate dear drivers, today was an Almost No Spend Day. I only bought gas this morning and spent money on tolls. Gas at the local independent retailer in VA was $2.98 this week. I got gas on Tuesday morning. I stopped in again today to fill up and it was $3.01. The Citgo was $3.08. The DE rest stop I like was $2.99 STILL!!! However, I’ll fill up on the way back. Mom let me fill up tonight for free, otherwise it costs $3.13 at her station, per the nightly news, that’s about the norm here in PA.

The luggage I bought for Mom went over well. It was a $220 Samsonite 26" spinner bag in light blue. The link is for the “Aspire Lite”, but it was marked “Silhouette 8″ at the store. (It appears I could gave gotten a better deal on Amazon, however, I didn’t know what I wanted till I was at the store getting it. Bummer, but there is time-value to factor in. She needed the bag before our trip to CA for Christmas.)

Mom was very happy with the lighter color. She hates confusing black bags on the luggage belt at the airport, so blue suits her just fine. I think the bag is from a discontinued line from the outlet store. Along with the bag, there was a special deal on a huge sturdy tote bag for one penny so I got one for myself. However, I gave mom the penny tote too since she seemed to like it. I told her the roof was a no-go next year and that it’s very possible I won’t be getting any bonus since I haven’t heard from my director if the numbers look good. I will assume the near worst for now. (Worst being a RIF, but no word on that either and I’d be the last to go. Someone has to shut the servers down.)

Please expect light posting since I’m actually going to have some no spend days or almost no spend days this weekend.

CELEBRATE BUY NOTHING DAY THIS FRIDAY!

And with all that, please have a happy and safe Thanksgiving holiday weekend!

How long is your commute?
Do you sit in traffic for long periods of time?
Does it bug you that you’re idling away all that gas and therefore money?

Well if it does, try this trick to save some money.

1. When you’re stopped, wiggle your wallet out of your pocket when it’s safe to do so.
2. Pull out your highest rate credit card and call your credit card company with your hands free cellphone.
3. Ask them to lower your rate!

Commenter Dean did this while driving home yesterday. He talked to one agent and asked about lowering his rate. They transferred him to a second agent who asked him what other card companies were offering him. He told them 2% lower APR. The second agent said they could do better and beat it by another 2% so in about 5 minutes he reduced his APR by 4%!

Give it a try! I might have to do this with my 15% APR card even though I don’t carry a balance on that one. Why not make all my rates as low as I can?

Who else can you call in 5 minutes to TCB? My sibling calls me while driving home all the time. Due to the 3 hour time difference, it works for us because I’m usually safely at home and they’re on Hwy 101 looking at pretty, pretty brake lights.

I love NPR. Today on Car Talk, they had a caller who had a dilemma about the car he drives. (It’s Call 4 on the link provided)

Leland is recently married and his two teen stepdaughters don’t like his dusty old pick up. He’s trying to get a Mazda Miata with a dent on the right door panel and a check engine light that comes on. He’s wondering if it’s worth fixing it up and getting it for himself and the approval of his style-conscious kids.

The priceless thing about the call was his philosophy on acquiring cars. He likes to take a drive in the country, find something by the side of the road, buy it for $500 cash and have it last for 3 years! I love it!

My Altima is going to die in my parking lot. I am not going to get rid of it. I can’t. I’m trying to squeeze out every last dime of value on the thing. My baby turned 7 years old yesterday. She shares a birthday with the US Marine Corps!

Wednesday was a great day. I sent out a large check to my dentist. My car is clean and pretty with a new set of engine mounts. It’s in tip top shape for this weekend’s road trip. However, I certainly wasn’t expecting to replace an engine mount today since I JUST REPLACED TWO OF THEM.

Turns out the 2001 Nissan Altima has 3 engine mounts and 1 transmission mount. The yahoos at the dealer replaced the rear two engine mounts earlier this year, but not the upper mount. Why did they not tell me that I had three? I would have done preventive maintenance then and put in a new one back in the spring. Geez. Does no one do anything thinking anymore? I like to think long-term on maintenance. I realize my opal blue baby is turning 7 on November 10th, but I’m not getting rid of her anytime soon. I am annoyed that they had to charge me twice for the labor when it could have all be handled once.

The total damage was ~$1220.00. Along with the mount, the battery was low, and the left axle was leaking fluid. Because I’m road tripping with a good, but very pregnant friend, I wanted to make sure the car was 100% is great condition before we left. Her husband is a bit paranoid and I wanted to make sure he had nothing to complain about. Otherwise, I would have just done an oil change and not bothered with the full check up on 120K-mile-service. I had a coupon for 10% off parts and labor, so the damage could have been worse. The freebies were the car rental, car wash and my next oil change gratis. I also paid $30 for them to order a new part for my interior molding since it’s coming loose. They promise not to charge for the labor when they install the molding in November, when I come back for inspection. At that time, I might also do the free oil change since I am entitled to one and I’m about to put 1000 miles on the car this weekend alone.

As for the dental bill, Single Ma, I am making progress. I never did get the payment plan agreement in writing as you suggested, but I did call them today to make sure they got the first payment of $500. They said they did and that my current balance is $2366.50. I let them know a check was being sent to them today for $800.00. The balance will then be $1566.50. Just two more payments and I’ll be done with it by the end of the year.

Why is it stagnating progress? Well, I was going to make some progress on the credit card front, but because I’m throwing cash at the dental bill, the auto maintenance charges went onto my credit card. I have no spare cash right now. Zero. Zip. I am not going to abort my road trip this weekend because that would be a failure of commitment on my part to my friend showing her goats in competition and to my pregnant friend for one last yarn show before the babe arrives. I will have cash in hand though and shouldn’t come away from the road trip with much in the way of credit card charges.

I acknowledge being a crappy budgeter. But again, I’m not suffocating. It just means shifting a bit. I did pretty good this month cooking more often at home, etc. Last night I bought a can of SPAM on the way home and an orange bell pepper. I am really digging fresh homemade fried rice lately. Cheap and tasty.

I forgot to tell you guys that the new TripleTred tires drive really well in the rain. They have a better feel on the road and I’m really glad I sank the money into them. Yes, they do corner better and I feel like they improve my handling at higher speeds. They were worth the money.

Even better is that there was an offer for a $40 Visa card as a rebate on my purchase. (It’s a promotion that’s still going on. I saw a sign for it again today at the Goodyear store.) I came back from the holiday weekend and found that my Visa card was waiting for me! WOO HOO!

So the plan is to use it to buy a trickle charger for my motorcycle, which I ordered from a small repair shop that was highly recommended to me. (I hope he takes Visa. He actually might not. I didn’t even think of that. Who doesn’t in this day and age?)

I spent my extra day off going to banks in VA and MD, ordering the charger, getting a car wash, buying a new shredder, catching up on blogs, and cleaning my apartment. Wednesday was a good day.

The ding is that the shredder was a lot of money. But I think it’s worth it since I’ve broken two home office shredders already, and the tall industrial shredder at work doesn’t like me either because I dump fistfuls of paper into at a time. Who has an hour to wait for shredding? I am Fawn Hall on steroids. (Please God, I hope my readers remember who she is. I’m not *that* old.)

The other ding is that I used the local car wash place ($14) that’s ‘touchless’. Honestly, it’s not that much better than the car wash place ($8) at the gas station by my office. The wheels are a lot cleaner, but still dirty. They don’t do the greatest job, so I was still wiping them down with Armor All and hitting up the windows with Rain-X when I got home. There is getting a good value from an awesomely powerful new shredder, and then just wasting your money between two things that are roughly the same. Now I know. I won’t use the place near home. Always get a wash at lunchtime instead.

Alrighty. This was drafted at a ridiculous hour, so pardon me for poor thought processes.

The main thing is that August was a three paycheck month. I’m holding a lot of extra cash right now and frankly, it’s skewing the numbers. My car’s valuation came from the county assessor’s office. I still have a lowball valuation. They think it’s worth $5,550, but they haven’t seen the dent from the hit and run. Somehow, the market rebounded slightly at the end of the month to put me over the $50K mark. That’s nice. Kind of nutty if you ask me. I missed my goal by $453.29.

I am barely making a dent in the credit cards. GRRR. Since I’m taking an extra day off of work this week, I am going to close a languishing credit union savings account and throwing that money at my credit cards. I should have done it a long time ago, but for some reason I was sentimentally attached to the credit union for giving me a credit card consolidating loan all those years ago. For a long time, this $400.00 represented all the savings I had. It was my mini-emergency fund. If I really needed it, I’d have to run to Baltimore to go get it. Well, that day is here. I’ll have to adjust the Save-O-Meter, but the Debt-O-Meter will get adjusted as well. (After all that transferring around is done.)

I need to stop being so emotional about money and get this debt paid off. That’s all there is to it.

Free Money Finance has the latest Carnival of Personal Finance available. It’s edition #115!

While he’s got his editor’s choice picks, I am skipping them in favor of what else is out there that caught my eye.

Pinyo at Moolanomy asks what money wasters do you do? I do 1, 2, 6, and 10. But I definitely don’t do 3, 8, 9.

Saving Explained with the contrarian advice on emergency funds. I’m a big advocate of them, but I like to keep an open mind. Read the companion article he references about keeping small savings subaccounts assigned for specific financial goals. What do you think? Good idea? Crazy idea? I still think emergency funds are a great idea for anyone with a home, car, or unpredictable job market. I know that I just covered like 90% of the people out there, but that’s why I think an emergency fund is worthwhile for nearly everyone. It’s really only a question of how much, not if.

Clever Dude with the skinny on Carfax used car reports. Read to the bottom and follow the Consumer Affairs link from Super Saver as well.

Make Your Nut has advice on how to have a big party on a small budget. I don’t think 20 is really a big party, but the advice is still great for entertaining on a shoestring. The main thing is, your friends will bring you more beer than you will ever drink if you don’t stop them and assign them something else to bring. ‘Bring chips!’ ‘Bring salsa!’ ‘Bring a salad!’ ‘Bring some bread!’ ‘Bring some dessert!’

Grad Money Matters on the Joys of Homeownership. HAHAHA. Damn if I haven’t been there, cursing myself at buying a condo. “What was I thinking?!” is an unfortunate thing to say to yourself after the mortgage is signed.

After sleeping on it for a night, I called three places for tires. NTB, Merchants and Goodyear. Specifically I was looking for Goodyear Assurance TripleTred tires, which were the top-ranked all-season tire for regular driving by Consumer Reports. They were ranked in the middle for performance tires.

I called all three shops and only the Goodyear store had them in stock. I decided not to go with patching the tire or replacing just two for several reasons.

1) I hated the old tires. I felt like I slipped a lot on curves.
2) There was a blister on the tire with the puncture.
3) “Plugging” a tire isn’t done by shops as often anymore because of liability reasons.
4) The tires were almost out of warranty.
5) Getting two would only confuse me later about rotating and which ones were the ones to replace, etc.

I still haven’t really had a chance to try them out. The new VA traffic fines are making everyone drive abnormally [or normally]. I did take one curve at a higher speed than I normally did in the old tires and was able to stay with the turn a lot better. I think once it rains, I will really feel the difference.

Currently there is a deal that if you buy four tires in a set you can get $20-$100 in a Visa gift card. You have to mail away for it, but that will bring my total down under $700.

I know Jim is a fan of buying tires at Costco, but I didn’t see the point of a membership and driving all the way out to the suburbs to find a Costco with a garage. (The Pentagon Costco is a crazy zoo. You pay for parking and spend 30 minutes just waiting for a spot to open.) Again, like the library, their hours weren’t what I needed, but Goodyear opens at 6:30am and I was in the door by 8am because I needed a little more sleep. (I did call them at 7am when the NTB opened and called the Merchant’s last because I was calling them before the store opened.)

My tires told me ’screw you’ last night. Literally. I have a screw stuck in one of the tires. I *THOUGHT* I heard something funny driving from work to happy hour last night but I wasn’t sure. As I was leaving the restaurant, I needed to fuel up so I stopped at a Shell (and got gas for $2.93).

My father was an auto mechanic and taught me very little about cars, but the few things he taught me are these:

When you stop for gas:
1) Check your oil and top off if necessary.
2) Check your wiper fluid and fill that too.
3) Walk around the car, check your lights, look for new dents, dings/scratches.
4) Look at the tires to see if you need air.
5) Clean your windows.

To do all this, my dad gave me paper funnels, a jug of wiper fluid and my very own squeegee! My daddy loves me! Of course, I only do these things some of the time, but I do it when I am likely to need it, i.e. check the oil level when I’ve gone over 2K miles. But I always, always, ALWAYS walk around the car while it fills up. I have had bad luck with my tires from the get-go because my car was installed with the infamous Firestone tires that were recalled.

(more…)