Is April almost gone? Already?

I really enjoy reading about other people's daily lives, and it makes me somewhat ashamed I don't really share a whole lot.

One of the reasons I don't is because it would either sound like a very long string of whining, or I'd put a sickenly sweet sugar-coat on it and finish it off with rainbows and flowers. Though I myself like rainbows and flowers, that's not the point. I'll try to find some middle ground to give you a window. Or a completely vague post like the one below that covers absolutely nothing. But I digress.

I think this will also help, because for a while there I got burned out of talking straight about my finances. If I say so myself, besides the mishaps thanks to my family, my finances are pretty much in cruise control, and the double checking numbers becomes kind of tedious. I'll still do it, just not as frequent.

So what's going on with me... I've been enjoying some of these:

I really like the spring, though it has made it impossible to wear contact lenses with so much pollen. We havent gotten out of High Pollen Warning since the cold weather left. Good thing my glasses are still in one piece.

I've also been working on my dearest. Yeah, she is a laptop. I went through 4 days of full time fixing her. I lost all of my data I'm not a very happy camper. But she's back and running! I still wish she hadn't died. 

Other than that, I'm still pretty busy at work, which is good. I havent made any purchases of note.

As I had mentioned previously, I'm looking at my timelines again. And yeah, I am looking at the job market over where I want to move in, and it's not a bad market. I've found a few jobs I could apply to and be a great candidate at, but it would be staying within the same level, or be a step below where I currently am. I would love to find a company with SOME mobility, which my current company offers none of.

Dont get me wrong! I love my job. It gets boring, monotonous, repetitive and a bit tiring at times, but I still like doing what I am doing, so I am not looking to switch jobs. At least, not until I move.

April is almost gone, people! For those of you dealing with Financial Aid, 5 more days! I hear the deadline is May 1st. My co-worker is dealing with all that FAFSA fun, so best of luck to you all.

What fun and exciting things are you guys expecting during May? I am looking forward to less pollen, more nice weather, and hopefully some fun events as my half brother prepares to ship back to CA at the end of his schooling.

A second look at moving dates

I thought I was a very change-friendly person... but I'll be the first to say I don't like this new Blogger layout. I hated it when iGoogle forced changes on their home page, and the Gmail website, and I am not liking this a lot either. But oh well, life moves on.

As to what have I been up to... not a lot. Not a lot at all. Running a LOT of numbers and being really homesick of Chicago. (Hint: I may return in the summer time!) I guess I have never really shared what my plans are, so perhaps you guys can give me a hand and let me know how realistic my scenarios look.

Moving on your own to a place far from what you know is not easy. But it is something I will do and want to do. But since my mind is usually fixated on what could go wrong, I want to go as prepared as possible. And my preparation includes having as little debt as possible, while maximizing my savings. That way I can stretch money for longer, if I am unable to find a suitable job. So what does this look like for me?

My standard plan right now is to continue snowballing debt until only my larger student loan (L2) is left, then split the disposable income into half debt-half savings. This will get rid of L2 by January 2015 (effectively ridding me of ALL debt), and gives me a nice 5.50 months of living expenses by May'15, which is my preferred date to move. In my mind, I am considering the scenario that I resign, pack up and move, find a job and life goes on. I have to consider the possibility of not being able to find something right away, or not even 6 months in. I am not allowing myself to think what would happen after 6 months without finding a job, because I am very flexible and have a lot of labor-type experience and would make it work. Needless to say, it still concerns me.

I think I am more than likely to have found a job, even if part time by the time I've moved, but I still want to have that 6 month cushion. Who knows, if I don't end up using it, I may just take the rest as start-up mortgage down payment!

My question would be if it is realistic to wait that long? Should I just take a jump of faith? If I could convince myself I could just pick up and move in a few months with a job offer in hand, you better believe I'd be packing now, but perhaps I am being overly cautious about it and I want to have ALL bases covered.

I don't know if everyone could relate to this, but I think it could look similar to other big decisions. Are you the type of person who jumps in first, asks questions later, or do you plan plan plan until the end of time (like I do)? How would you find compromise?

Renewed determination

These past weeks, even though there’s still chaos going on, I have been adhering myself to my payment/spending plans. My family, however, has not. It is surprising to me that they try so hard to see me broke. Consciously and rather intently. But I digress.

My vacations were both very wonderful! But sorry, no worthwhile photos. I may find some and put in this post later on. I hope Mark won’t hit me with his bat, though I heard he’s taking a bit of a break. While I did have a very cute camera with me, I am still not a very comfortable photo shooter. Plus, my half brother hated me for taking random photos of random things and asked me (read, ordered) me to stop that.

So where was I? I visited New York for 3 days, and Chicago for 8 days. New York with my half brother was just wonderful and relatively luxurious while being extremely cheap. Even though we had a very ambitious agenda, we met almost all of our sight-seeing goals. Price was much higher than I expected. I will break down the budgets in a later post, as I don’t want to ruin this with numbers just yet. We stayed at two very beautiful hotels, courtesy of my employee discount. I must say I love the darn thing. We got lots of sight-seeing, done, managed to get lost in the metro, ate good foods and tried some street foods. Overall, it was a great experience.

Chicago followed, and that was just to chill and relax. You never know when/how much you REALLY need some real down time until you experience it. And I had not had any real down time in too many years, so I was really at peace. Depressingly at peace, as I love this town and my friends in the Windy City, to the point it overshadows anything I have or can obtain here in the East Coast. However, all good things must come to an end, and despite me feeling very, very at home in Chicago, I had to come back. I was very sad, as I truly feel that I have so much over there, and I have so little here (and even portion of that ‘little’ is bad/toxic stuff).

For that, debt, I despise you. You are keeping me away from the only place I have felt truly comfortable at. I vow revenge on you and will not be truly satisfied until you are oh so gone. You hear me?! 12 more months until you start falling apart.

With renewed will and determination, I am once again ready to hammer the heck out of debt. Murphy dislikes my plan BIG time, and he has teamed up with my parents to actively set me back, but that does not matter. Yes, they’ve set me back, no, I don’t feel like talking about it, but yes, I am STILL doing progress, even though my EF and saving funds are gone and snowballs halted for 6 long months.

A few undeserved, unrequested pats on the back from me to me:
- I have paid a total of $750 extra since March started.
- The car loan went below $5,000
- CC1 is at 63% utilization. Still very high, but it had remained at the ~90% range on average since August of last year.
- I have been able to pay my CC3 in full within 3 days of usage. Not even sure if I’ll ever make a debt counter for it, since I am using it as a debit card and I am determined to NOT see it carry a balance. Ever! I don’t want to pay a single penny in interest. (Though I mistakenly may have to, as I am learning about the ‘pay by’ and ‘statement closing’ dates.)
- Thanks to CC3, CC1 is NOT getting used, so there is no way it will ever go up again. It’s on full-repayment method now, and I like that.
- I did my last snowball for the next 6 months, as I gear up to pay for my taxes. This sounds like a negative, but I am glad I was able to maintain snowflakes this far.
- Taxes will be paid off by the end of September.
- I re-revised my spreadsheets, and I am still within a month or two of my original plans.
- I worked 19.5hrs on Saturday. Nonstop. How’s that for a no-spend day? The money from it wont be bad either.
- I signed up for a retirement plan from my part time job I was never informed about. I was eligible 7 years ago and nobody mentioned anything. Oh well. Good thing is they do some matching, unlike my full time employer, so I am contributing a decent amount to get the best out of matching.
- I won a free pizza at Domino’s. Free food is awesome.

I'm catching up to y'all, so bear with me while I fix my desk and go about my business.