“we think you will be too!”


My whole life the newspaper people have been changing around the paper which drives me out of my mind. On top of switching up things that are just fine they way they are is that they always say something to the effect of, “And we think you will love it too!”

Um, no.  It makes no sense to me to put the “living” stuff with the “travel” stuff and make the “arts” stuff separate.  The former section with the “living” and “arts” together with a separate “travel” section was working just fine for me.  But clearly someone needed to justify keeping their job, or needed a promotion or something, so I will roll with it until you change things up again and I get annoyed all over again.

Essay: Patricia’s Money Philosophy Series. Part II of IV: Debt

I believe in paying attention to your money.  I think that how you care for it and what you spend it on make a difference—not only for your own piece of mind, but also in the context of the universe and energy and whatnot.  Money ignored is money that won’t be around for long.  So here’s an incredibly long and detailed four-part series about how I manage my money.  To see the entire series look for the tag “Money.”

I avoid debt as much as I possibly can.
Aside from a brief period in my twenties, where I combined my lack of skills with an iffy job market and no clear idea of what I wanted to do for a living, I have avoided credit card debt.  At the time, I had about $800.00 charged to a
high-interest card, which was the only kind I could get due to the fact I did
not establish credit while in college.  I also had a $2000.00 computer loan and $16,000 in student loan debt.  And I had no job.
I often read financial stories of people who come into a windfall and happily pay things off, or realize that they could sell the rental property they own and make more money than being a landlord.  These stories leave me with an intense feeling of jealousy.  “I wish I just had a windfall like that.” I mutter to myself. But the truth is, I had a windfall and it saved my bacon.
Beginning when I was in elementary school, a check used to arrive every month made out to Patricia and Chris Collins.  Every month my brother and I would endorse it, with me grumbling that I had to write my full name (I was Patty then) while Chris got to write his nickname.  The check was for $128.00 and change and was a mortgage payment made on my father’s boyhood home.  I’ve never really understood why we got the mortgage payment monthly, but it happened for twenty years.
The money was deposited into an annuity account, which I’ve since learned was a horrible investment vehicle for children still in elementary school.  My brother and I cashed out the annuity in our twenties and the amount I received was enough to pay off the credit card, the computer and the student loan, along with putting something in savings.  This gave me the heady feeling of being debt free, which not only was an amazing feeling, but also kept me from ever wanting to carry credit card debt again.  So I had my windfall and something good came
of it.  But I am also happy to accept windfalls in the future too.  I am just
putting that out there, universe.
I do have debt, though. When I went to graduate school I took on student loan debt again.  Because I had used the windfall to pay off my undergraduate loans I left graduate school with loans that totaled just a bit under what I expected to earn my first year as a teacher. Loans equal to or less than expected first-year salary is the phrase that is bandied about when advice is given about student loans.  I’ve slipped into the passive voice in that last sentence because I know
that I read that advice multiple places and yet I’m not sure who is giving it,
or if it is good advice.  I’ve been paying those loans for seven years now and have thirteen years left to go and I’ve yet to work a year as teacher.  To say these student loans drive me crazy would be an understatement.  My monthly payment is one I can easily meet each month. I was faced with bleak employment prospects coming out of graduate school, so I chose the graduated repayment plan over 20 years.  Right now I pay $160.00 per month.  Would I love to accelerate those payments and get rid of this debt early? You betcha. Would I be willing to work 40 hours per week instead of 32 to do so?  Not in my current job, no.
The other debt is the mortgage.  Mortgage debt seems a fact of life for everyone I know, so I don’t begrudge the debt, though when I look at the interest-to-principle ratio my tightwad self shrivels a little.  However, while I regret the student loan debt, I think we did it right with the mortgage.  For one thing, we didn’t overbuy.  Our house is modest, but is as much house as we need, as far as I’m concerned.  Also, we bought our house from a land trust, which means that the land trust owns the land below our house and we pay a small fee for the lease. Since the value of the land isn’t included in the purchase price, our mortgage is that much less.  When we bought the house, I felt comfortable that I could lose my job tomorrow, pick up temp work while I looked for a new opportunity, and still be able to meet the mortgage.  In addition, should we ever decide to sell our house, it will be resold to another first-time homebuyer, which preserves an affordable stock of housing for people who would have otherwise been shut out of the market, like we were.  This is a very important concept to me.
For me, owning a house was important psychologically—once we got into the house and unpacked, I felt incredibly settled.  Here was where I could live for the rest of my life, if I so chose.  This brought a feeling of peace that was not present through the apartment living period of my life.  Apartment living has its
advantages, but I always felt an underlying bit of tension.  You never know when the landlord is going to raise the rent, sell the house out from under you, or tear down the beautiful building to build a parking garage.  I didn’t like that feeling of insecurity.
There are tradeoffs, though.  Before I bought my house, homeowners told me that they were astounded at the amount of time they spent on the house.  “Oh, but I will love that time spent,” I told them, all heady with the idea of projects.  I’ve done a lot of projects over the five years we’ve lived here and they have been mostly satisfying.  Before the house, I used to be bored on a regular basis.  After the house, I think I’ve been bored maybe two days.  This is good and bad.  Sometimes the house can seem a bit overwhelming, but at least I don’t have a regular sense of ennui.

Paperwork!!!!

Oh beginning of school, you torture me.  This corner of my desk was clear just twenty minutes before.  But then all the families walked into school and handed in their massive paperwork packets and I’m back on the paperwork bandwagon.  Back-to-school paperwork keeps me busy through October.
 
And yet there are still things to do that aren’t paperwork.  This is why I wrote all my September essays over the summer.
 

Essay: Patricia’s Money Philosophy Series. Part I of IV: Budget

I believe in paying attention to your money.  I think that how you care for it and what you
spend it on make a difference—not only for your own piece of mind, but also in
the context of the universe and energy and whatnot.  Money ignored is money that won’t be around
for long.  So here’s an incredibly long
and detailed four-part series about how I manage my money.  To see the entire series look for the tag
“Money.”

I have a budget.
My first forays into budgeting involved a modified envelope
system.  I was working at Pizza Hut in
high school and I had three categories. 
Savings, spending, and my favorite category:  saving up for something good, which I called
SUSG.  The percentages are hazy, but I
think half of my pay went to savings, and the other half was split between the
spending/SUSG category.  I don’t actually
recall what “good” things I was saving up for, but I think they were items like
clothing that cost more than $50.00 or do-dads I bought from catalogs.  Ah, the life of a middle-class teenager, when
everything is covered except for extras. 
Still, that savings category meant that I could offer to kick in money
for my college education.  My mother
suggested I keep it instead and use it to live off of.  This was rather brilliant on her part as I
blew through half of it in a freshman freedom spending orgy. Unlike many
freshmen, nothing was spent on drinking or drugs as I lived on a dry campus,
didn’t drink and wasn’t into drugs.  There
was, however, a lot of catalog buying. At the end of the first semester, I
found myself horrified at my spendthrift ways, reigned myself in and from then
on paid for most of my expenses while in college.  Granted, my parents were paying my tuition,
room and board, and later rent, but I managed to work enough to procure my own
supplies, clothing and sundries and, when I moved out of the dorms, food.  I kept an eye on what I was earning and what
I was spending and I think this was a good stepping stone for supporting myself
in my post-college life. 
My budget works for
me.
My budget now is inspired by two systems: Your Money or Your Life by Dominguez
& Robin.  I also use the 50/30/20 principle
first proposed in the book All Your Worth
by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi. 
Your Money or Your Life
teaches you to think of your money in an entirely different way and I feel it
is recommended reading, even if you don’t follow the program exactly as
planned.  What YMYL does is teach you how
to personalize your budget to your spending patterns.  Before this book, I would buy notebooks at
the store with pre-made budgets.  I loved
them, because they had a sense of order, but I usually quickly grew
disillusioned as the categories didn’t fit me. 
They always included a line for “childcare” that I didn’t need.  I crossed it out and wrote in something else,
but the pencil line through the printed text annoyed me.
With YMYL, I tracked my own spending and created a budget
filled with categories I actually used. 
I dropped the entire budget into an Excel spreadsheet and have been
using it ever since.  Not the same one,
of course.  Any time something changes
financially—every six months or so, but as often as every three or four
months—I revise the budget, changing amounts or sometimes even adding or
subtracting categories.  My categories
are pretty detailed and split into several sub categories, see below for a
complete listing.  Despite my
thoroughness, I believe you can have a budget with as few as five categories:
Savings, Food, Shelter, Clothing, Misc. 
However, those categories are going to become unwieldy, unless you make
very little money.
I like the 50/30/20 principle because it gives me a good
idea of how I should be spending (and saving) my money.  Before I read this book I would always wonder
if the amount I spent on groceries (or whatever) was too much.  In this system, Warren and Tyagi propose that
20% of your net pay goes into savings, 30% is spent on wants and 50% is spent
on must-haves.  They define must-haves as
the bills you have to pay month after month and wants as some fun money right
now. 20% goes toward saving for the future. 
Though I was attracted to the 50/30/20 plan’s big emphasis
on saving and the firm, and large, percentage, I don’t want you to think that
I’ve got the plan implemented.  However,
I just reviewed my budgets since I adopted the program and I can tell you that
since May of 2008, I have only met the percentage goals with two of eleven
budgets made during that time.  So it’s
still a stretch goal for me.  This may be
because I work a 32-hour week, but am still living as if I work 40.
Current budget categories
Food
Subcategories of groceries, joint groceries, dining out and
garden supplies. 
I’m thinking of adding a further category of “sweets”
because my dining out category has been over spent a lot the last few months
and I think it’s due to the cookie habit I have formed.  The food category as a whole has been tough
the last few years.  I’m budgeting much
more than I ever have, but still struggling to keep expenses down.
Shelter
Mortgage
This is a joint category. 
I’ll talk more about how we handle the joint expenses later.
Bills
individual categories:
student loans, school, cat, car, house holding
The “school” category came about when I was paying for a
certificate program to add to my degree. 
It has not yet gone away, but has been reduced to a minimal amount.  The “house holding” category is for
maintenance of my household supplies. 
Like a woman with a dowry, I bring all the kitchen stuff to the
relationship. I aim to take all the kitchen stuff with me from the relationship
if it ever comes to that and I don’t muddy the waters by buying anything with
joint funds.
joint categories:
phone, land lease, life insurance, homeowners insurance,
garbage, electricity, water/sewer, yard, internet, saving up for big
appliances, joint savings, joint vacation, dates, household supplies,
furniture/decorating, cleaning.
The “cleaning” category is how we pay ourselves for
housework completed.
Clothing
Work, fun, sport
These used to all be separate categories, probably because I
was in my 20s.  Now it’s all just one
thing.
Transportation
Bicycle
This category used to contain a category for public
transportation, but I’ve been lucky that my employer has provided a monthly
transit pass for the last six years.  I
guess the “car” category from bills should go here, but I haven’t ever moved
it.
Health
Personal care, doctor/drugs, gym
Personal care is all the “stuff” to maintain me, like
toothbrushes, shampoo and tweezers, etc.
Recreation
Plays and lessons, vacation, newspaper, computer, random fun
things to do
The plays and lessons category used to be horribly overspent
until I spent a year pledging not to take any classes.  Now it is only moderately overspent now and
then as I want to see more plays than I budget for.  That said, it’s a very minimal amount
budgeted each month. I would love to increase it. “Random fun things to do” is
my general spending money each month.  I
found it easier to lump the movies, the occasional book bought or entrance fee
paid in one category than to make separate categories for all of these items.
Gifts
Personal gifts, Christmas, public radio donation, church
donation.
I have a budget amount for family/friend birthdays and a
budget amount for Christmas.
Savings
3 month
I could technically rename this “8 month” because I finally
met my three months of living expenses saving goal.  But I like the historic flavor of it.

End of the 6 in Kenton


When I moved to the Kenton neighborhood, I was thrilled that not only was I smack dab in the middle of two Max stops, but that one of the stops was a “Transit Center” meaning a number of bus routes converged at that point.  I was in public transit heaven.  I could take the yellow line downtown. Or I could take the #4 to George Middle School where I volunteered for two years.  I could also take the #4 back toward downtown taking me through Mississippi’s hip neighborhood.  I could take the #75 to the St. John’s Movie theater or the other way to a variety of places: Trader Joe’s in Hollywood, Laurelhurst Park, Hawthorne Blvd.  I could also take the #6 to Jantzen Beach and once they cut the amount of service on Sundays, the #6 was my quickest route to church, depositing me a short three blocks away.  Living near a transit center is awesome.

I still have the Yellow Line,  #4 and #75 at my service.  But beginning September 1, the #6 route changed “to  eliminate duplicate service.”

I understand that Trimet is stretched to capacity, but as someone who doesn’t own a car, some of those duplicate services are important.  Now if I want to go to Jantzen Beach I have to take the #75 to MLK and transfer to the #6.  If I want to go to church I get there way too early or way too late.  I’m disappointed to lose the #6 route through Kenton and I hope service will be restored someday.

This was an awesome vacation!

I know not why blogger chose to rotate my photo that was in the correct orientation before I uploaded it.  Blogger is not my friend right now.  But onto the point!

This vacation was awesome!  Every time I have a long school vacation I make myself a planning calendar.  It has the days of the vacation and sometimes the goals.  Then I write in what’s happening and have the whole vacation at a glance.  This vacation I accomplished all my goals:  paint bathroom, paint bedroom, garden, finish reading a friend’s book, clean out physical inbox, catch up blogs.  Not only did all that get done, but I did social things with my friends, did work trades with my friends, watched a whole lot of (mostly Channing Tatum) movies and even read.  It was fabulous!

Non-Matt Muddy Buddy

The job of Athletic Supporter requires standing around with a camera ready to capture whatever action is happening with the athlete you are there to support. Because I have so few opportunities to capture the athlete and so many opportunities to capture everyone else, I inevitably come home with a lot of pictures of the athlete and then even more pictures without the athlete that I just like.  Here’s a tour of the Muddy Buddy, without Matt.

So the “buddy” aspect of the race means there are a lot of “twins” outfits.  This is fun.
 

The race itself had people walking around taking photos.
 
The “buddy” aspect of the race means two people are often doing the same thing at the same time.
 
Two of the photo people.
 
One of the better male outfits.  Way to embrace the chest hair!
 
This man doesn’t know it, but he’s an Athletic Supporter, too!
 
The blue line registers the athletes start when their chips cross over.
 
This guy reminded me a bit of Julie McCoy from Love Boat.
 
There were two other guys with Julie McCoy hyping up the crowd at the start, though it looks like there’s about to be a fight.
 
I think this lady is not an Athletic Supporter, because she was standing on the side where normal spectators weren’t.  I think she might have been with the male announcer.
 
She kind of looked a bit bored.
 
This photographer’s efforts to get the kids to cheer resulted in the kid in the red running back to his mother.   Which resulted in me laughing.
 
Fans!  Much more so than the woman checking her phone.
 
Waiting to start.
 
This blue mat is not quite right.
 
South Salem High School’s ROTC were the volunteers.  There were two guys who had to stop people from walking across the course when athletes were coming through.  It was a tough job and I was interested in the contrast between their ROTC role, their job stopping clueless people, and the demeanor they projected.  I faced this guy, so got more photos of him than the other one.  I tried my best to capture all of the above, but I don’t think I did.
 
 
 
These guys had the fun job of pulling people over the wall, which was sprayed in fabric softener to make it even more slippery.
 
A younger competitor waiting for his partner.
 
Both of these women wore shirts that said, “I will step on you to win.”  They were a bit scary, though less so, post shower.
 
Done showering.  Just wait!  These guys will appear again.
 
We were at Kruger’s Farm.  There were chickens.
 
First place already!
 
I loved this interaction between Kate, the owner of our gym, and her race partner.
 
Heh.  This team placed in the coed category.
 
Hey!  It’s the guys from before!  Being weighted as part of the “Beast” category (Over a combined 450 pounds). I liked the interplay between all these people.  This is my favorite picture I took.
 
They turned out to be the winners!