The car-troll says hi!

Come on, I couldn't have been lucky enough to be passed by the car-troll. I knew he'd be coming over. Well, he finally did drop by and left me with a couple of quotes, and a very... strange situation.

First, what's up with the car: it needs 4 new tires, as the current ones it has are very worn. Dangerously worn. We got them from the junkyard when we got the rims, so I wasn't too surprised. But we need them soon, as the front passenger tire seems to have broken some of its innards and the car has stability issues. I was quoted for $58.16 in labor and $339.92 for pieces. Total with tax JUST for the tires: $418.48.

There's also something wrong with the chassis, sway bars and hub assembly. No, I have no idea what any of that is, but I was quoted $389.99 for labor (HA!), $154.95 for parts, and $554.24 for all with taxes. Almost $1000 between both repairs. Of course, it had to happen on the worst week of all, as I will be traveling to SC this weekend. I will try to have it figured out by Sunday, at least the tires. I really don't want to risk a blowout.

Of course, I took the quote and went my merry way. On a financial tangent, the lady handed me the quotes sort of expected me to be terrified and dismayed. She even opened up saying that she knows that nobody can afford both of these at the time, what with balancing paychecks and trying to split the expenses and bills... I couldn't help but to smirk inside, because I guess they're used to seeing people like that; with no savings, no safety net to fall into. I'm happy that I do have some sort of safety that even if I had no choice but to fork over $1k, I wouldn't lose much sleep. I'd be mad and upset, but it'd be ok.

Anyway, online prices showed me a very different story. There's no huge savings on the tires unless I go used, but on the second piece of the quote, all the extra things, my dad thinks he can install the pieces, if I buy them. I looked each part online, and I could spend less than $100 on all, and save $390 on labor. Good deal, no? We'll see how it plays out.

Now for the kicker: one of my younger brother decided he's picking up and going to Texas. I knew he had plans to go at some point. Even the people at my PT job knew before I did. What I didn't know was that it was gonna happen next week. And that my brother wants my car, because my dad told him I was buying a new car soon (which is true, but not THAT soon). So he texted me and asked if he could have that car before he moves, and I could drive his piece of junk car until I do buy something else. Uh, no. Not at all. His car is a death trap with historic tags that leaks oil and needs a quart every 40 miles. Add to the drama that my other brother, whose graduation I am attending, is looking to change/sell his car. It's a 2011 Ford Fiesta. I know nothing else of it. I may consider it if the price is right... very right. I doubt it is, since he bought it new in 2012 after dumping my dad's car and the loan back to my parents when he got tired of the car and almost let it get repossessed at my expense. Ahem. If I am to buy that car, the price would have to be below 8-10k, which I don't think it is. I wont exert my finances to do anyone any favors.

It should be a very interesting weekend, I can tell you that much!

Poverty mentality?

I do believe I have a poverty outlook on things. When it comes to money, even before I took reigns of my own finances and moved away from my parents, I would be looking for sales and spent very little, if at all. My mother handled all of the household money, and that includes that she would buy all of our clothes, snacks, entertainment. We had little say on things and we just went along with it. I think that outside of books, the only things I spent on during college was food, and that was like, such a wondrous experience! At 22, I was excited about having money and being able to buy lunch at the school restaurant (mostly for a $5.95 Chix Caesar wrap with chips). It was me and my brother's quality time, and we felt rich once or twice a week, depending on our class schedules. Yeah. That's sad.

Now that I'm becoming a bit more financially secure, I still find I am very hard headed. I still refuse to spend money on some things (like shoes or clothing), even when I do need them. This has come to bother me, not because I think I should be spending more, but because I am being priced-out of what I need to buy. I have no clothes! Yet every time I go to the store, I am very disappointed on the prices and walk away empty handed, even when I come with the intention of buying clothes and with the money to fund it. I can't bring myself to spend $25 on a shirt I really, really like. My mind is still stuck on years ago where I was expected to buy at least 4-5 clothing items for that amount.

Anyone else disappointed on the store prices? Is it just me that finds the price of goods just too expensive? Or am I poor enough to justify being priced out of options?

Dentist consultation, but no pricing

The consultation went well... I budgeted an hour's time, spent 30min in the waiting room after arriving, with all of the paperwork pre-filled online, then 15min in the examination room. The consultation was 15min of telling me all the stuff that can go wrong, plus a surprise: I do have my two top wisdom teeth. I just thought I didnt, when what my dentist had said was that only the two bottom ones had come out. My dentist/surgeon recommends taking all 4 of them down. And it makes sense, considering after 1 experience and 1 recovery, I may never go back there, if the other two wisdom teeth become a problem... so all 4 have to go.

Then came the fun part. I checked out and had my card on hand to pay for the appointment. But the lady told me the consultation was free. Success! However, no pricing would be released until after they speak with the ins company. Uh, ok? Guess that's how dental work works... so now I sit patiently for a call of the verbal breakdown of costs. I am now thinking I should've budgeted for $1000 and not $500 (which was $250 per teeth). Even then, my numbers may be wrong anyway. But I'll just wait and see.

After all, I can invest all $5 of my awesome tax refund into any overages. Then pay for the rest maybe out of another non-essential fund. I need to ask them if they would do discounts for paying it all in cash. I'd take it, even if it was just a 2%.

Oh, and girl scout cookies are here!... somewhere. Wait, I shouldnt be talking about cookies and sweets on a dentist post. Oh well. What's your favorite flavor? Do you buy them at the stores with the little girls dressed up, or go through a lead? This year I am going through my landlady's daughter. They got them in, but she's a bit overwhelmed with the organization, so I am not pushing her to deliver (even though I got orders from the whole office too).

One down, one last to go

Some people think I'm smart (ok, maybe I just like to think they think that way), but when I look back at my long list of mistakes, especially those I continued to do until recently, I feel like a complete fool that hasn't improved that much from 3 years ago. I know, I am my harshest critic, but that hopefully stops me from falling into the same holes in the future.

The mistake I stopped doing until recently was squandering my PT job's money. Before, that money would just linger and mix with my regular pay in my checking account, and 9.5 out of 10 times, it would just disappear without so much a whisper. It'd be spent on my parents, or to cover some overages... it was a nice pillow. It wasn't until almost October of last year that I decided that it would be automatically moved to a savings account as soon as it's received. Since then, I saved enough to complete my car fund ($2k!), and the savings just continue to build. Why didn't I just do this at the beginning?

Something about having it out of sight, out of mind really works, and works really well. The money is still "there" (it's my CapOne360 account, so the savings account is just a few clicks away from my checking account). Overages still happen. But I save a lot more of it when the money is moved away from checking. Ah, the wonders of separate savings accounts...

On a good note, I updated my totals... CC2 has been paid off. Woo hoo! That card remains my only black eye on my credit. I didn't actually know about it until I moved out. By that time, it was 90 days late. I can't help but to think what my credit would be without that one negative. But now it's gone and gone for good. Next and last up, Student Loan #2! My biggest single debt (which was actually comprised of 4 different loans, with different interests--the two remaining ones are only 2.35%). 3 months if I am patient... a lot less if I'm not.

Have a great weekend!

What preparedness is to a 5 & 13yo

Yes, we're in the path of another snow storm. I doubt we will get hit big time here in MD, but it doesn't stop the radio, the TV or everyone on the streets from talking about it. Needless to say, the stores are emptied out of essentials. I can't argue that it's better to be prepared than not, but I do think people take it a bit too far sometimes...

I thought I'd share the following grocery list made by my landlord's daughters of the things they did not have, but need. At least someone has all the priorities straight as far as storm survival goes:

"6 toilet paper, no more paper towels, no chocolate"

After all, who can survive cooped up inside with no chocolate?!

February Trip booked and paid

I've been looking closely at travel since my brother will be graduating from Marines at the end of the month. Driving was the better option, at the low low cost of about 11hrs and $112 each way (or 22hrs, $224 just in the drive). This sounds like a lot, but a heck of a lot better than the $400 plane ticket. Right now, those tickets are up in the $500's, but when I was looking, it was $385 from my preferred airport. I had no idea on hotels, but I figured $65 or so a night for 2 nights. Yup, this was shaping up to be one expensive trip either way I looked at it.

I also started looking at Priceline, and found that if I fly out of other airports, it'd be cheaper. It's usually like that, but rarely with such a gap as this. A whole vacation package (flight, hotel and rental car for 2 days during a weekend) came out to this:

 

Not too bad, honestly. One of the cheapest, but closest hotels, a rental car for 2 days and flying from a different airport at decent times (if we can call 11:40pm arrival a decent time). I kept looking, and today I looked again. Same package, same place, same price.

 

For the heck of it, I tried it with a different browser and went InPrivate (so no cookies read or stored), and this came up:

 

Wow, talk about a difference in amounts!

 

I refreshed the old one, but it kept showing the higher rate. I decided this may be as cheap as it gets and bought it, $370 after taxes and all. If we want to consider the real cost of this... I used 9% cashback (~$30), plus 1% (~$3) from my credit card, then not having to drive for 22+hrs AND not having to use up a vacation day or take an unpaid day at work, and this may be the best I could do with such a short notice. It will all be paid for from my vacation fund, which still had $400 leftover from last year. Time to start working on that fund to get it up to $800, which was my target increase for 2014.

 

I also get to drive a rental car. Woo hoo! I've been wanting to do that for a while. That's one less thing on my list for the month.

And here's how the cake turned out!

I had mentioned that I was making a diaper cake, and since there were no instructions anywhere... I thought I'd share some of our section by section photos. This is a photo intensive post, so be forewarned! I started with 234 size 1 diapers from Huggies, rolled up using white, latex-free elastic bands...



"Floor 1": Counting diapers clockwise from top: 21, 32, 7, 32. We held them together by using elastic string and cutting pieces of cardboard to keep them straight. 

2nd Floor: 24, 14, 24

3rd Floor: 16, 7, 16

Backside... It doesn't look as pretty. Remind people to look up front and stop finding defects in your creations. PS: Third floor's back side is held to Fl2 by pens inserted through middle of diapers.

Front completed. Sort of.

After this point, it was getting too late. It was almost 10pm and this was 3hrs into the whole building process. We forgot to take photos until we got to this:

Finished products: We added all ribbons (9yd of double sided 1.5" black satin ribbon and 9yd of Ravens 7/8" ribbons, some small amount of 1.5" yellow ribbon to cover up two cylinders that make the posts). Also added a piece of green felt, and wrote numbers and drew lines with fabric white ink.

 

And this is what it looks displayed at the office. Even with my super crafty dad, it still took the two of us about 4.5hrs to piece this together. Total work hours may be a bit less, since we had Ice Age playing in the background. It was fun, but at 11:56pm (official time we said, "WE'VE HAD IT"), we both really just wanted to sleep.

 

Alright! Time to go join the party. I will really be regretting staying up so late last night, especially since I'm going from FT job to PT job with no breaks in between, then work til today is tomorrow, but I am really pleased how the cake turned out.

 

Enjoy your weekend, all! 

Happy Hump Day!

I think (or I hope) I am finally over this coughing cold. Now I am just extremely sore all around my core, but when you think about it, coughing for 2 days + no food + straight to bed after work, I am sure my body is feeling terrible. Had I been smarter, or known I was going to get this sore, I would've done some stretches and exercises. But Alas, I didn't.

Everyone at the office thinks I need to go to Urgent Care... I don't want to do that, because I do feel I am over this cold. I know I am no doctor, but I'd also like to think my body is stronger than just a coughing fit. And last time I pretty much braved out of bronchitis (after coughing for 1.5wks straight) and was just given 3 antibiotics and some OTC cough med. But my coughing has reduced significantly since this morning, which is great, because it hurts when I cough!

On another topic, my rear passenger side tire has been getting deflated on and off since we changed the rims... so I finally took it to the tire place here in town. They said they'd let me know by noon whether they can fix it or not, but here we are 2hrs in and no call. Guess no calls is a good thing, when it comes to car issues? I also told them I was in no hurry, since I am picking up my car at 3pm. Maybe they just forgot about me. Hope it isn't too expensive.

As far as taxes are concerned... last year I did them for free through H&R block's online site. They ran a special where you could do your taxes free if your income was under $51k, which mine was. They don't seem to be running that special, at least not yet, so I will wait another week or so and see if they feel like running it. If not, I'll just do it with Turbo Tax. As it looks like, I owe $25 federal, and I'm getting a $30 state refund. Net $5! Woo hoo! Beats last year and the year prior, where I had to pay $1k-2k in taxes.

I don't know if any of my readers is familiar with tax laws and what not, but if I go with the standard deduction, I can't claim taxes paid last year? I read somewhere that if you paid taxes last year, you can claim them on your return... but I cant find no info outside of Schedule A listing, which only applies if you go for itemized deductions.

Another 6wks of winter

I know many were tied to the TV to watch the (somewhat disappointing) Superbowl. However, after much cleaning and organizing, my main concern was what Phil the Groundhog was up to. And yes, he saw his shadow! Not hard to believe, since today we're getting torrential rain mixed with snow (slushies anyone?), and are expecting the weather to remain about the same for the next 2 weeks.

While I do love cold weather and I am not complaining, what I don't like is colds! Apparently one hit me yesterday evening and I've been coughing most of this morning and just feeling very off. Doesn't help I got zero sleep last night... was just very uncomfortable and couldn't rest. Can't wait to get off work today and go to sleep!

If anything, one good thing about the weekend is that I ended up switching my plan, yet staying with Verizon. I went to a prepaid plan for $50. Refill cards can be had online for about $46 with discounts (not counting credit card cashback!), so I'd say I am happy. There are a lot of up-front costs that I somehow didn't realize. There's the $50 for the first month, and before Feb is over, I have to buy a refill card for $46. On top of having to pay my current Verizon bill for my terminated account ($86). It should get a lot easier going forward, I hope! All of these extra expenses will come straight out of my PT job, so no big deal.

Speaking of PT job, I've gotten a lot better about moving the full pay away from my checking account the moment I get paid. I don't even miss it! And it accumulates pretty fast, so I am happy. I want to build up $500 for a "slush/Murphy" fund, and then start redirecting the rest to my savings account for redistribution.

So on the list for today: adjust my 401k or IRA amounts (not sure which one will get the funds...), request days off for my dentist appointment, try to find a flight+hotel for my brother's marine graduation on the 28th... oh yeah, and taxes. Finally got my W2s. Fun stuff!

Cellphone updates

I am on my last research days... I don't love it, I don't even like it, but I am really looking at Straight Talk, $45/mo unlimited plan vs staying with Verizon @ $86.98/mo. I want to stay in the Blackberry line, but I don't want to continue to pay almost $90 just because. I've known for about a year that I don't use even a quarter of what I am using. Not in minutes, not in texts, and definitely not in my ludicrous grandfathered unlimited data plan. Honestly, I don't even come close to 1GB:


6 month data usage

ST has an older version of the Blackberry, which was my previous phone with no touch screen. I really like my current phone, but I don't use it that much to justify a $45 markup. Though ST is known for their poor customer service around forums, they seem to be my best choice because of their coverage areas compared to the other pre-paid plans--yes, it sucks to live in the middle of nowhere! I'll do some soul searching at my part time job, but chances are, this may be my last month with Verizon. Sad. I will call them and see what they can do, but I am quite sure they want me out anyway. They've been hating on those with the unlimited data plan for ages now, so I highly doubt they want to do anything for me, even if they could.

The good thing is that the extra money will be sent to my 401k. I contributed a very low 2% ($27.38/check) this past year while focusing mostly on my debt paying efforts. When I got a $35/check increase during Sept, I set up an IRA auto transfer, so that money never really made it to my budget. My FT employer does not do contribution matches, so my size of contr. would not impact what I was getting back for our profit sharing contributions, which were stellar this past year.

My plan is to increase my 401k contributions to a full 5% (about $68.45, which accounts for a $40/check savings from switching to ST). I may play with math a bit more and decide to up it to 10% just for the heck of it. Or increase the amount that goes to my IRA account from $35 to $50~$75. Decisions, decisions! Have a good weekend!