Mapgirl’s Fiscal Challenge

1. I have 22K in one retirement account.
2. I have another 4K in another retirement account.
3. I have 4K in two other retirement/investment accounts.
4. I own my condo and it has a new bathroom.
5. My car is paid off.
6. I have lots of available credit.
7. I can eat anywhere I want, money no object. (Not that I do.)
8. My closet of clothes is decently maintained. I can buy any clothing I want, money no object. (Not that I do.)
9. I still make regular charitable contributions on a monthly basis.
10. I am saving money by purchasing company stock at a discount.

These are small things. Very small things. But with the market the way it is, I try to ignore the dip in my net worth right now and focus on what has to get done at work. It’s the only way to weather the storm. Losing my job would be the last thing I need. (Not that there’s any danger of that, but I try to do my best whenever I can.)

I mean, I could make a complementary list of the downsides, but who needs being a Negative Nelly right now? I need encouragement, not discouragement.

So no matter how bad it gets, what do you tell yourself in your personal pep talk over finances?

For the first time in ages, I participated in a carnival. Not only did I submit, I got accepted! It feels like I got into college! Ok. That’s an exaggeration, but even so. It’s still nice to get accepted.

So here we go! The 159th Carnival of Personal Finance

A few that I liked:
Harvesting Dollars asks if Getting an MBA is worth it. A question I’ve asked myself a lot.

Single Guy Money pays off his debt and yet his credit score goes down. What gives?

Mighty Bargain Hunter finds a cashier who says that gas prices aren’t all that high since folks are still buying lottery tickets. HA! I scoff at that. Folks will keep on buying lottery tickets for fun. It’s when they stop buying it altogether that prices are high. And HELLO! We’re already there. Folks are trying to buy less gas.

Someone pointed out a budget travel article to me sometime last year, but I didn’t care much for it, so I’m not going to link it here. But it got me to thinking about my last backpacking trip to Europe. This post is an old draft from October 2007. I’m just now getting around to finishing it up for you.

Now, first of all, somehow I scammed a friend into paying for my plane ticket from San Francisco to Paris about 10 years ago. It was a situation where her folks weren’t going to let her go without a companion so the money had to come from somewhere and by golly, this is how it was going to get done. It was her decision to do this, never my suggestion. She made the offer and I merely accepted.

I saved nearly all year for it since my friend called me sometime her final year of college and said she wanted to backpack in Europe for a month. Fine with me. I was living with roommates/family that were willing to let me pay a month’s rent late. I diligently paid down my credit cards, paid my student loans on time, and banked about $800 cash before I left.

To plan the trip we did several things.

1. We joined Hostelling International. That got us discounts across Europe at youth hostels. We used their pre-booking service to reserve rooms. This was absolutely essential in places like Paris, which are extremely popular during the summer months.

2. My friend had an ISIC card. It’s an international student ID card and helped her get cheaper admission to many museums. I was no longer a student, but I would let her pay for us and often the ticket taker would assume I had one too. When they didn’t, that was fine, I paid full price.

3. We did Eurail passes. To get the Youth price, you must be under 26. I think I was 24 at the time. I’m too old now so I might as well get the Adult 2nd class ticket these days. But yes, you can save quite a lot. We went from Paris to Madrid, to Barcelona, to Geneva, to Brussels, to Paris, to Munich to Geneva, back to Paris. Eurostar/Chunnel tickets were separate and I went to Brussels alone since I couldn’t afford the Chunnel. My friend left me alone to pick up another friend in London who couldn’t afford a full two weeks with us.

4. We ate really cheaply. We got breakfast at our hostel every morning without fail. We then bought fruit, snacks, bread, cheese and meat for lunch everyday. We only dined at restaurants at night. Since we weren’t big drinkers, we got vin du pays and shared it at the youth hostel, which is mighty entertaining. Take a pocketknife, bandanna, and canteen/water bottle. You will find them essential on your travels when it comes to dining.

5. We traveled light. I used a backpack that carried about 4,000 cu inches. It wasn’t very much, but that meant I kept my possessions to a minimum and my souvenir buying down. The only things I have from that trip are pictures and a pair of hiking boots because my regular sneakers just weren’t cutting the mustard. I spent a lot on them, and while they were worth it. I should have tried to buy better boots at home on sale. But I had no idea that running shoes were actually terrible for this sort of trip. Chalk this up to serious inexperience about hiking and traveling. Sneakers were ok in the past, but definitely not for this kind of trip.

6. Do your research to maximize your adventure! I got the Rick Steve’s Guide to Museums. I read it and was very specific about which museums I wanted to visit and gave them a priority. I studied art history and my friend has less of an interest in it, so she let me dictate a little of what to see. We had a really good time because Rick’s books are very informative, right down to a walking path through the museum that will take you efficiently past the major highlights. I kid you not. He will be specific about which staircase to take.

On a different trip to Italy, I used The Blue Guide to Rome. That was an extremely wonderful book. Don’t get too hung up on Let’s Go and Lonely Planet. If you are interested in a special location or topic, get the book and do the research since it will enhance your visit. Say if you are going on a wine trip in France, get a book that will teach you about the terroirs so you can figure out if you want to go to Burgundy or Bordeaux.

Rick Steves wrote a really great overview about guidebooks. Having used many of the guidebooks he’s listed. He is spot on with his descriptions of the books. Use this to help you decide between guidebooks. And I completely agree, get the latest copy you can. Absolutely borrow an old one from a friend, but when you are ready to go, get the latest copy for yourself, within 12 months of publication. Guidebooks are periodicals, and just like a magazine their information has time-value.

7. We didn’t have a crazy nightlife. Sure I went out on La Rambla in Barcelona and ended up dancing close to all night. I hit a bar or two with some Catalans I met in a Belgian youth hostel when I was by myself. But I didn’t pack a fancy outfit to wear clubbing and skipped all that entirely on this trip. Hanging out with the kids in the youth hostel was much more fun and conducive for conversation than a noisy club.

8. Work the network. Now that I’m older and have some extremely well-traveled friends, I can leverage those connections into couch surfing for a night or two in far flung locations. I haven’t taken advantage of it, but I have put people in touch with each other and had good reports about the outcome. Be prepared though to take a gift or some sort of thank you for the host.

I stayed with my pen pal’s parents when I stayed in Switzerland. I hadn’t written my pen pal a letter in 5 years. But out of curiosity, I called his parents’ house from Geneva out of the phone book and took a trip out to see them finally. It was really nice. I hope he gets to visit me in DC one day. I ended up sending a present later for his mother when I found out she likes to collect a special type of figurine.

9. Think about working on your trip. I haven’t done this, but I know someone who worked on his grandmother’s potato farm in Finland for part of the summer, prolonging his stay in Europe by a few weeks. I also had a friend who picked cantaloupes in Israel because he wanted to save money and travel longer on a trip around the world. Basically he was a migrant farmer, you know, the kind we try to keep out of the US. You do what you can if you want to keep traveling and since he was with a friend, he said it wasn’t too bad. Obviously, this route isn’t for everyone. But there are more formal work experiences you can arrange as well.

Ok, that’s about it. I hope it gives you some ideas for your next trip.

I’m on the mailing list for HooplaDC where I found a cute dress on sale for $25 this winter.

This only for their Adams Morgan location, which is on the west side of the street.

Clothing samples for men & women
Wholesale prices!
One week-end only
DATE: Friday, June 13th to Sunday, June 15th
TIME: Friday 12-8, Saturday 10-8, Sunday 12-6
LOCATION: 2314 18th Street, NW
MORE: Great savings on one-of-a-kind samples: organic cotton, hemp, bamboo
Jeans, t-shirts, skirts, dresses & more
Mostly small sizes
Shop early for best selection

Hoopla DC
2314 18th Street NW
Washington, DC 20009
(202) 797-0730

But you might have guessed that already as a regular reader.

Via Escape Brooklyn, it’s official. I scored a 17 on the Time Out New York quiz.

I took this quiz about being cheap at timeoutnewyork.com/livecheap, and my cheapness quotient rated as 17.

Here’s what they said:
Finally! A sane person. You’re careful with your money, but never cheap. You know that what goes around comes around and that a thank-you goes a long way.

Try the quiz and let me know how you score:
Cheap Quiz

As I expected, I’ve been shopping for lunch at the supermarket near work. I think I’ve figured out a good pattern.

For about $11-13 I can get a bowl of chili, a .6-.75 lb package of chicken salad, 1-3 whole wheat bakery rolls, a 6 pack of 20 oz Diet Cokes. For about $4 more, I can get a big box of roasted nuts. Cashews are my favorite.

I do this all in one single lunch hour trip. That’s important because part of the reason I’ve been doing this is to cut down on car trips during the week.

I eat the chili the first day with a roll. For lunch the next day, I eat half the chicken salad on another roll, or else bring some of that yummy homemade bread I’ve been baking. The third day is the rest of the chicken salad with homebread or a roll.

However, I think I need to add some bag salad to this so that I can get a few more veggies in the mix. And the downside risk is that a bad brownie might eat my lunch, but so far, there are better things to steal like the team statistician’s homemade pork and spinach dumplings. (OMG with handmade skins and homegrown chives. Delicious!)

The only downside to this is that I don’t get away from my desk on Day 2 and Day 3. That’s part of why I buy lunch every day. There’s no place outside to eat in my industrial park, besides, it’s disgusting out there now that summer is here. (It hit 100 on Saturday, therefore it’s summer.) Also, there something pathetic about the brightly painted cafeteria set in the middle of the industrial work area at my work site. It’s windowless and depressing in its false cheeriness. Plus the vending machine tempts me with candy treats and overpriced soda.

At any rate, going to the supermarket for lunch is helping conserve money. I’ve found that out in suburban industrial park hell, lunch usually runs me $8+, even on the Korean-owned lunch buffet. (Where I get my fix of Korean food the other 2 days of the week.) I rarely go to Chicken Out with the guys from the office since it’s really far away and what I want usually runs about $9. That’s been more of a monthly treat instead.

So what about you? Is this a viable strategy to change the ways of a chronic lunch purchaser? I know it’s been working for me for the last two weeks and I hope to keep it going for the rest of the summer. Are you a chronic lunch buyer and willing to try this strategy out?

Last Friday, I pulled HC out of the office to join me at Artomatic for Craigslist: The Musical.

Artomatic is a free art free-for-all in DC. Basically if you’re an artist with a few dollars and some volunteer time, you can get a display space. Admittance is free, but they ask for donations. Plus happy hour is 6-8pm and beers are $3! Even the fancy Flying Dog beer.

Artomatic 2008 ends on June 15th so this is your last week to attend. (It’s closed Monday and Tuesday.)

Special Events:
* PostSecret Book Signing - Friday, 6/13
* Art in Fashion - A closing event that will combine fashion, art, music and fire. The event will take place in both first-floor music venues simultaneously and begins at 8:00 on Saturday 6/14 and continues until closing.

PostSecret is Frank Warren’s original art project which debuted at Artomatic several years ago and has turned into an amazing confessional, revelatory art experience. At times it’s heart-breaking, humorous, or bizarre. I know Dawn at Frugal For Life was arrested by one postcard about personal finances.

I suspect the fire show will include my friends from Flights of Fire. Some pretty amazing pyroarts of all kinds.

Some of my favorite pieces are the Peeps dioramas, the Jesus figurines, mandala photos by Vick Fisher (a former co-worker with a secret hobby!), and the artist next to my friend Christine Otvos (at 9 NW A2). The artist next to her had little skeleton art reminscent of Mexican Day of the Dead artwork. Great stuff.

Frankly, it’s a lot easier than you think it is and it kind of makes me wonder why I pay $5 at the farmer’s market for a 1lb loaf of bread. Since I haven’t bought a loaf from Grace’s Bakery at the farmer’s market in almost a year, it was time to give it a try. (Plus the yeast sock puppets on Alton Brown’s Good Eats show make me laugh.)

I’ve made one batch of About.com’s Master Bread Dough recipe. It’s nothing to be afraid of.

The top 3 things that scare me about baking bread:
1. Killing the yeast so the bread doesn’t rise.
2. Overkneading.
3. Impatience.

I’ve had some bad experience in Home EC as a kid so I always thought yeast bread was hard to make. But one of my close friends made yeast bread in the dorm kitchen all the time for awesome late-night bread and honey snacks. All of these fears can be overcome fairly easily.

1. Killing the yeast so the bread doesn’t rise: The recipe I used says heat the milk, water and butter till there are bubbles around the edges, which is how people did it before they had home thermometers. But don’t be stupid like me, just BUY AND USE a thermometer and don’t add the yeast if it’s more than 130 degrees F. Trust the recipe. I heated the mixture till there were little bubbles on the edges and it worked just fine.

2. Overkneading: If the recipe says knead it 20 times, or 10 times or 5 times, do just that. If it says knead for 8-10 minutes, do it just for 8. If you want to knead bread for therapy, make a separate batch or divide your recipe in half since many recipes are for 4+ loaves. (NO KIDDING! I read like 10 recipes before I found one for just two loaves, i.e. the recipe above.)

3. Impatience: Ah Grasshopper. This is what timers and internet surfing is for. Give it at least an hour to rise on the second rising, but the dough is forgiving here. Often recipes say to let the dough rise till it’s doubled. But I’ve found it’s actually up to me. I can put the bread on the counter and run a few errands. I can put it on the fridge and get slightly shorter rising time. Or I can put it on the front porch in Sunday afternoon heat and get an even shorter rising time (like 30-45 minutes).

Some other notes:
1. I used Silk Vanilla Soy Milk because we ran out of regular cow’s milk. This is premium soy milk that we usually don’t have at the house. We usually buy Rice or Soy Dream. But the enriched soy milk and extra vanilla flavor was alright. There was no gross vanilla flavor on the bread, just a hint of sweetness that was good for sandwiches and for French toast. (yum!)

2. Time is your most expensive ingredient. I made the recipe knowing I would only make 1 loaf and freeze the other half. That was fine for me. I had a bad headache last week and came home early in the afternoon. It was enough time to make a loaf of bread for dinner. I had no idea when I’d bake the second loaf. I thawed it out in the fridge on Saturday night into Sunday morning. I thought I’d wake up early and have fresh bread for Sunday brunch. But I didn’t wake till after noon and we left the house to hit the farmer’s market. Instead I shaped the dough and put it ON the fridge before we left. When we returned, the dough was still cold and hadn’t risen. I put it outside with a tea towel on top. In the heat of the day, it rose 75% in 30 minutes. Because I was pressed for time to complete another errand before dark, I baked it without the full doubling, but the texture of the bread was equal to that of the first loaf.

How cheap was it? Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. But if Sistah Ant’s statistic of $3.30 a loaf is any indicator, then it was damned cheaper to make my own. Everyone keeps flour, sugar, and salt around. I’m sure it’s not hard to have some milk and eggs either unless you’re vegan. (eew.). If you make a grocery list, getting some yeast at the supermarket can’t be too hard. Remember, a lot of recipes are also for multiple loaves, not just one. So even if I spent the equivalent of $3.30 on ingredients for this recipe, I got two loaves at $1.65 each which were tasty and delicious. (As of this week, Hodgson’s Mill yeast was 52 cents a packet or 3 for a dollar at their website. But I have a preference for Fleischmann’s. I feel like the packets have a longer shelf life.)

The other thing is that I’m much more inclined to eat the whole loaf if I make the bread myself. Often in the summer heat, cheap bread goes moldy on me before I can eat it all. I can assure you that every crumb of my two loaves was eaten and never had a chance to grow mold.

My next experiment in bread baking will be with whole wheat.

Bengie’s in Baltimore (hon!) runs a weekend triple-feature called ‘Dusk to Dawn’. For $8 bucks a person, you can see three first-run films with vintage cartoons for intermissions. For another $8 bucks you can bring your own food. (But no alcohol.) The snack bar was pretty good though. ($6.25 gets you a huge bucket of lightly breaded chicken fingers.) There’s a special deal for classic cars on Sundays, the driver gets in free! Go early before dark so you can see the classic cars on display near the snack bar.

Boyfriend and I took the Jeep up and put the softtop and windshield down for a really awesome clear view. While it was a little chilly late at night, the bigger problem was the bugs, which weren’t too bad. (But it’s Monday and I still itch.) So take some bug spray. I took a US Army surplus wool blanket (flea market find for $15) and I was cozy all night. Boyfriend thought I was crazy to bring it till he was cold at 1am.

Guys and gals and kids and pups turned out for the show. It’s a very family-oriented event and the bathrooms weren’t too bad. They just get REALLY crowded when a film ends.

The triple-feature linenup:
Speed Racer - A visual treat, but not the greatest plot. That’s ok though since the old TV show was a lot like that anyway. Things I loved: The little nods to the original show like Trixie appearing in frame upside down, Spritle’s obsession with candy, etc, and other stuff like Boy in Paul Frank pj’s with monkey in little boy motif pj’s.

Indiana Jones 4: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - Disappointing. But there was no way I wasn’t going to see it. If you liked the first three, yes, go see this one. The little nods to the first three are there and it becomes a fun guessing game to see which things will turn up. But Karen Allen is a bad actress and the plot is weak. Also, the soundtrack to the film was lifted from American Graffitti. I swear to God.

Iron Man - Absolutely the best of the three we saw. Boyfriend is typical boy and likes comic books so he tipped me off to some of the insider stuff to the original Marvel comic books. However, we didn’t stay for the scene at the end of the credits which hints at a sequel. (Of course there’s going to be a sequel!) I have the hots for Robert Downey Jr. He certainly doesn’t have a heroin addict’s body in this film. Watch for Pepper Potts’ line early in the film about taking out the trash. It’s total catfight material. (And Gwyneth Paltrow looks fab as a red-head, or should I say ’soft auburn?’)

BostonGal says, “Seeing how many people are on the Millionaire in the Making list due in part to secure state, government, or military pension plans is becoming a bit of a downer for me. Should I try to start a second career as a state or government employee? Just so I can get guaranteed income and heath benefits in retirement?”

Some of her commenters take issue saying that benefits are not guaranteed and changeable with the economic tides especially at the state level. I agree. It’s a risk and it has a lot of pros and cons. Living in DC, I can see that every day. The CNN/Money series has generally profiled federal government employees and if you ask me, a lot of them have been active military and I’m not sure combat pay is a great way to build your wealth up.

Check Office of Personnel Management if you really have questions. OPM is your best resource for general questions or else the HR office of your potential agency.

In terms of benefits as a full-time employee, you get:

FEGLI - Group Life Insurance: But you have to sign up for it when you are hired. No changing your mind later because you can’t sign up. OPM only runs a sign up period every few years, ‘few’ meaning ‘decades’. You can check their site for the open enrollment dates, they are very, very far apart. When you’re young, you don’t think you need it, so you think you’re saving money. Then you turn 40, have two kids and you want insurance and now you have to go get it on your own. Something to think about if you enter a government career at 25.

FERS-Federal Employees Retirement System: A three-part system consisting of
1. Social Security - Yes, they really think they’re going to pay it in 20 years.
2. Basic Benefits/Annuity - Pension benefit, an annuity payment of a portion of your salary.
3. Thrift Savings Plan - Retirement investments, which on the whole, are very generic and probably don’t chase a lot of risk for high reward. But it’s a little hard to tell from the available literature. The other thing is that the maximum match is 5% of your salary, for a total of 10%. The other good thing is that you vest in 2 years and they automatically give you 1% even if you don’t save anything.

Health Insurance: Health insurance, for your whole family, dependent children, adopted/fostered children.

I’m sure all that sounds great, but you have to work for the government for 30 years unless you are in one of several categories, all of which have stipulations.

1. Military or Law Enforcement: 25 years of service or Age 50 and 20 years of service.
2. Voluntary Early Retirement: Special retirement packages offered agency by agency, dependent on a matrix of age and length of service, determined at the time the packages are offered which could be few and far between.
3. Part-Time Employees
4. Members of Congress/Congressional Employees
5. Military Reserve Technicians

Frankly, I don’t like the idea of working for 30 years for anybody. At that point, I might as well be a company man for some large corporation or something crazy like that.

The other thing is that BostonGal might not like her pay grade and step. I know she’s in IT but some federal IT jobs in the DC area don’t pay well and frankly, they can truly stink. (I knew a sysadmin who left our company for two weeks and came right back because his FAA IT job wasn’t what it was billed to be.) You’re better off being a contractor if you ask me, but the government does pay for a lot of training, so you might be able to move your grade up a lot faster with an internal promotion, new degree, or an agency change.

At any rate, if you want to work for the government, check out USAJobs.com. It’s OPM’s website for recruiting. It works like Monster.com where you can set up agents and bulletins for new listings. That’s key since there are closing dates on postings which are very important. However, several agencies subcontract out to AVUE, like DOJ, USDA Forest Service, and TSA. (Get used to acronyms, that’s what government life is all about!)

There is much more to consider but these are some basics. Things like COLA, ‘danger pay’, locality pay, etc are more esoteric but can really make a huge difference in your salary comparisons. (For instance DC area pay is 30+% higher than published tables.)