Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

I’m learning how to be more ruthless throwing stuff away. I’ve watched my boyfriend clean up his house. He’s extremely tidy. He doesn’t keep paper around. He shreds it or throws it away immediately. He does not sweat the small stuff. I think the only receipts he saves are for taxes. If it’s not tax deductible, returnable or otherwise important, out it goes. It makes me wonder why I keep every single damned receipt I ever got.

While I’ve been happy in some instances to go back 4 years to dig up a receipt for something, I think I’ve only ever done that to research the original cost of an item for my blog. So why on earth do I keep it? I just don’t know and now that I know I don’t know, I can throw it out. (Or file it away so I can throw it out in 3 years?)

There are a great many things I’ve been looking at in my apartment, wondering why I have them or have so many. But that’s a revisit of some of my old hoarding posts.

Questions to ask when cleaning stuff up:
1. Are you going to need this within a month?
2. If you get rid of it, will you regret it? Why?
3. Can you replace it and will that cost you a lot?
4. What is the utility of this item? Has its usefulness expired?
5. Can you sell it or donate it?
6. Do you want to give it away on Freecycle or send it to the dumpster?
7. Are you really going to do something with it? If so, you have 30 days. Do not lie to yourself here and make up a future possible reason for something.
8. If I were moving cross-country, would I take this with me? (Done it twice and it does crystalize priorities.)

I find those seven questions to be useful when I’m feeling merciless about cleaning and throwing stuff away. What kinds of questions do you ask yourself when you are cleaning up?

As we head into the holiday season and enjoy today’s holiday of gluttony, I just wanted to take a moment and reflect on the abundance in my life.

During my regular knitting gathering this week, we were talking about S.A.B.L.E., Stash Acquisition Beyond Life Expectancy. For those of you who don’t knit, ’stash’ is your yarn stash from which you can pull to make projects. It’s your warehouse of yarn. For many women, building stash is a comfort. It’s saving yarn for use in the future, like a quick knit baby sweater when you don’t have time that week to run to the store to buy a baby shower gift or pick up a specific baby yarn. For other women, it’s just plain old hoarding out the wazoo.

In 2007, I’ve purchased very little in the way of new craft items. I think I’ve spent less than $150, whereas I might spend $400 in a typical year. Last year I realized that I needed to stop buying yarns and fiber because I spend a lot of time blogging and no longer craft like I did before starting MFC. My stash is overtaking my small apartment.

One of the knitters, Lanea, is on a book buying moratorium this year because she realized that she and her husband have way too many unread books in the house. I know that I could read every book I have in the house and not buy a new one for at least 2 or 3 years, if not more. And that doesn’t include what’s still at my mom and dad’s house. That’s probably another 2 years’ worth of books.

A friend called me one night recently and I started to futz around and clean up my closet. Ostensibly, I was looking for my sweaters since we had our first hard frost of the season on Monday night. But really I was culling my clothing. A storage box of sweaters turns into a box of t-shirts and shorts for the winter and that means a quick inspection of my drawers and closet racks for things that can be donated to Goodwill. I realize that I have lots of spiffy clothes for work, but I was choosing not to wear the silk shirts and sweaters because I didn’t want to spend the money to dry clean them. And yet, I am loathe to get rid of them. Finding them was finding a new wardrobe for work. What is the cost of cleaning them when it saves me money on buying new clothes?

My friend on the phone asked me how many pairs of shoes I had. I thought this was a trap because he’s a guy and I’ve been accused of being Imelda Marcos. But I felt better when I guessed 30-40 and he said he had the same. (I am now going to have to inventory them for my own satisfaction.) As I told him my guess, I was staring at a pair of boots, thinking of the Baby Phat pair that Single Ma wants. My boots are old and out of style, but they’re still in reasonable condition. They will last me another year. Frumperella isn’t going to mind since these boots won’t turn into shoeboxes at midnight.

If you look around your life will you find what you need within the possessions you have? Think about that because at its core is an assumption that you can discern your needs and wants and separate them like sheep from goats. Do you have unacknowledged abundance in your life? Will finding it help you re-prioritize your spending in the next month?

During the winter season there’s all kinds of propaganda about peace on earth and goodwill towards man. There’s pap about transcending material things and putting other people first. It’s all b.s. since everyone goes into a gift buying frenzy. Everything seems like such a damned good deal so it’s ok to spend on yourself a little while you spend on everyone else. But that’s a false correlation. It’s not ok to spend on yourself if it’s going to break your shopping budget.

If you think before you shop about what you really have in your life, you will see that you probably have plenty. I write about material things, but I know the same principle of hidden abundance counts for immaterial things as well. I have my life, my family, my supportive friends. For the first time in many years, I can say have good oral health. My cup runneth over and I didn’t even know it till I stopped to think about it.

Yes indeedy. I did it.

I am cheesed off with Wachovia for charging me to download from within Quicken, but not so cheesed off as to kill that account. I really do feel more comfortable with a brick and mortar bank locally. So this means my Philadelphia based checking bank is going the way of the dinosaur. I feel so bad because I opened that account in 2003 at the bank branch I used to go when I was a little kid with my piggy bank. I still think of it as my bank, even today, though I don’t even take cash out of their ATM’s when I go home. Screw the sentimentality, let’s talk brass tacks on why I chose ING.

1) I already have a relationship with them: I really didn’t want to go through the annoyance of learning a new GUI with Virtual Bank or NetBank. It was extremely easy for me as an existing account holder to click a few clicks and open a checking account.

2) It’s paying 4.00% APY: My old checking account paid no interest at all and was free with direct deposit. Seems to me, for the $1000+ deposits I would make there for my fixed expenses, I might as well earn some interest on the float while the funds were still in the account.

3) It uses Quicken! Sounds crazy, since all banks pretty much have an interface with Quicken. But for some reason my old bank in PA was really behind the times on this and did not integrate well with it. I had to get crazy stuff set up by calling a rep, etc. It was phenomenally stupid, so I didn’t bother with transaction download. Because this is a low-traffic account for fixed expenses. I could pretty much balance it once or twice a month with Quicken’s reconcile feature and it would work just fine.

4) My girlfriend did it first: One of my local friends was asking me about it. I told her I really didn’t know much about it, but then she decided to do it because of Reason #2. She seems pretty happy with it and has no serious complaints other than the fact the ATM card hasn’t arrived yet. But for me, I won’t even use the ATM card since I have my local brick-and-mortar bank which is convenient enough to home and office.

5) I think there is a hard credit pull: There is an overdraft protection feature that offers you X dollars of credit. I am pretty certain this means they’ve done a hard credit inquiry. Yes, I realize this possibility may drop my credit score, but I don’t really care since I haven’t opened a credit account since June 2006 and have no plans to open another for any reason whatsoever in the next 2 years. EDIT: Per Reader Dave, there is no hard credit pull, via the ING FAQ. THANKS DAVE!!

I haven’t done anything yet with it. I am in the process of transferring over my direct deposit from work. I did set up some of my regular outgoing expenses and that was fairly easy. I don’t like going entirely paperless, but I don’t think this transition will kill me, and perhaps it will help me tame “the paper tiger” around the house. I keep too much paper crap and it’s bugging me. I actually spent some time de-cluttering the mess on my desk and I am happier as I write this post.

PS - I just noticed that the DST change has effected the posting of my posts since March 11th. I just added an hour to the time on this post to reflect the accurate time.

This woman is selling everything. Or darned close to it.

I think this is amazing. I often think of doing something like this. I don’t know why I have half of what I own. I have a few things still boxed up and my mom and dad’s house, but I can live without it daily. I can live without it forever.

It’s still effing chilly here in DC, but I think about doing spring cleaning soon and getting rid of everything. I wonder why I have the clothes I have, especially corporate logo stuff from a job I despised. (That dress shirt has got to go!)

Just a thought.

I know a lot of PF bloggers are selling their books through Amazon or eBay. Great. Good luck to them. I’d rather not wait in a post office line.

Today, with a friend, I donated books to a non-profit literacy charity and used book store. It was awesome. They took every book I had. I made back $4.00 of value for every hardback book I bought on sale for $7.00. How’s that? I donated them to the charity and that’s the fair market value the clerk quoted to me. The paperbacks, trade and regular, were $2.00 a piece. I did include an audio book, which I also valued at $4.00, for lack of a better figure. (And to be rid of it completely.) The total donation was valued at $68 for a 5 minute errand. Well worth it.

1) I got rid of everything. Even at used book stores that give you credit or cash, they don’t take everything.

2) It was uber-efficient. It took 5 minutes! I didn’t even have to park the car, but leave it in the alley/loading zone with the blinkers on.

3) I didn’t incur a cost to do it. No posting an ad. No postage. No shipping materials. Nothing! It was a teeny diversion from our final destination.

4) I made a charitable donation, which is tax deductible.

If you’re living in the DC area, go to Books for America at 1417 22nd St, NW, Washington, DC 20037. It’s a few blocks west of Dupont Circle, just one block south of The Brickskeller. They also take audio books and CD’s. Take a look at their donation page for a full list of items they accept and pick-up services.

Consider donating your used books to your local library. They can sell them to raise funds for the library.