Tag: me

Birthday spoils

I had a good time celebrating my birthday with my family.  Aside from checks, I also received these lovely items.  Women’s World is a magazine my mother knows I love to hate.  When I worked in the library during college, my boss bought a copy weekly, which I would read during my Friday night shift.  Twenty years later, I continue to marvel that every single week they manage to have a cover with both a promise of rapid amounts of weight loss, and also a complex cake-like treat to make.

Most of my birthday money went to help meet my Payoff! goal, but stay tuned for the thing I did buy.

Keeping the vintage dress local

Early one Tuesday morning, I dropped books off at the library and continued on Denver Avenue.  But wait! I screeched to a stop. Is that my dress on display in the window of an antique shop?  I wheeled my bike over for another look.   It is!  That lovely grey and pink lace covered dress was my go-to fancy dress for years.  In fact, here’s a photo of me wearing it.

Riding the rest of the way to work, I tried to remember what happened to it. I’m pretty sure I donated it to the Goodwill.  But it’s made its way back to this vintage store.  We’re keeping it in the Kenton neighborhood.

Challenge. Me, the food I eat, and the USDA Thrifty Food Plan

In looking for ways to send more of my money toward the payoff of my student loan, I’m going to focus on reducing my food costs in the last three months of 2017

There are many different ways to look at food costs.  Some people lump their grocery and eating out budgets into one line.  Some people look at the amount for the entire month, while others look at their food budget weekly. Some people even will break down each meal into a cost.

I have a couple of complicating factors in tracking my grocery bill.  One has to do with the calendar.  There are 30 days in some months, 31 in others.  Some months have four weekends, some have five.  Also, I make and sell meals to Matt.  This came about because I needed a side job, and one of my skills is cooking. He has no desire to develop that skill in himself (thus far) and needed to reduce food costs.   This has been great for both of us.  For me, it’s easier to make recipes that feed more than one person.  Plus, I get a little extra cash on the side.  Matt gets a variety of nutritious food for less than he would pay eating out.  I charge him $4.10 per meal.

A few years ago, I was searching the internet to find out what is a reasonable amount to spend on groceries.  I discovered the USDA’s Food Plans.  In a delightful bit of government minutia, food costs are tracked monthly and published on the USDA website. In one handy PDF document, you get food costs broken down by age, gender and family. Plus you can see the average cost under four USDA plans broken down weekly or monthly.

Example: For August 2017, a female between the ages of 19 and 50 would find the weekly/monthly Thrifty Food Plan costs to be $37.90/$164.20; the Low-Cost Plan to be $47.90/$207.50; the Moderate-Cost Plan to be $59.00/$255.80; and the Liberal Plan to be $75.40/$326.70.  Note that these plans assume all meals and snacks for the week/month are prepared at home.

This is super cool and gives me a goal.  Except, I also have to somehow reflect the fact that 4-6 meals worth of food per week go to a male between the ages of 19-50 years old (Thrifty food cost for that category is $42.80/$185.40).  What to do, what to do?

I went back and crunched my grocery numbers from YNAB. There’s a whole spreadsheet, but I won’t make you read that. I’ll just sum up what I found.

First of all, I decided that the grocery shopping week begins on Saturday.  I do my shopping on Saturday or Sunday.  Thus, months that have five weekends, the total monthly food cost gets divided by 5. (Of course, October is the rare unicorn and begins on a Sunday, making things complex. I gave September 5 weekends, and October 4)

From April through September my average weekly food costs were $64.97 which puts me above the Moderate and below the Liberal Plan. Drat!  Although August & September took a deep dive with $56.50 and $54.04 weekly totals.

But! Some of those food costs went to meals for the 19-50 year-old male.  I don’t have data prior to August, but in August I sold Matt 21 meals and in September there were 17. (Vacation happened.)

I took the average number of Matt’s meals per week and added them to the total number of meals per week for me (7 days times 3 meals per day gives me 21 per week) giving me a total of 26.25 meals per week in August.

After that, I figured out what the weekly percentage was for my meals.  In August  that was 80%.  Using that percentage, I could then calculate my actual average weekly meal costs.  My total:  $45.20 which puts me below the $47.90 Low-cost plan but not reaching the threshold of $37.90 Thrifty food plan.

I’ve realized there is a slight flaw in my data in that I don’t actually know how many meals I ate in the month.  As mentioned before, vacation happened and the food budget for vacation happens outside of this grocery budget.  I also don’t know how much I ate out in August, or September. Though my $40 eating out budget remained untouched all month (good job, me)a friend did buy me lunch for helping her with her resume.  Plus work bought at least two lunches.

I have added lines to my spreadsheet so I can more accurately reflect the number of days I ate meals that I prepared.

My goal for October, November, December is to meet the Thrifty Plan Food costs while still eating a variety of delicious food with a lot of fruits and vegetables.  I still plan to buy my red meat and poultry at New Seasons, which costs more, but I hope to offset that by doing the bulk of my shopping once per month at Winco (I have rediscovered the amazing deals) and cooking more with low-cost ingredients as well as using meat and cheese as flavor enhancers and not the main event.  I will also figure out a way to better ascertain if Imperfect Produce is a good enough deal to keep going with.

Right now, I’m pleased that my grocery costs are in the Low-Cost range.  But the monthly difference between the Low-Cost and Thrifty plans is $43.30.  Over one year that is $519.60 that would be better off being paid toward my student loans.

I return to Portland to find I’ve entered some sort of hell.

Having spent five lovely days in breezy Minneapolis, Minnesota I returned to Portland and found:

The Gorge was on fire.  A teenager being irresponsible with fireworks started a fire that burned through large swaths of everyone’s favorite hiking destination.  Multnomah Lodge was only saved due to an all-night battle by firefighters.  I-84 was closed for more than a week, Hood River lost a chunk of their tourist season, towns had to evacuate, hikers were stranded overnight, and many people posted pictures of their favorite Columbia River Gorge sites on social media.  The sorrow was immense.

Ash was everywhere.  The Gorge isn’t far from our North Portland home, and there was a light dusting of ash in the fifth quadrant.

It was friggin hot.  You know how when you’ve been having lovely cool summer experiences and you find yourself plunged into triple digit temperatures and it just doesn’t feel very good?  That was Portland in the week after I got home.

My work computer was stolen.  While I was enjoying my Jucy Lucy at Matt’s Bar, my office was being broken into by people who used the fire escape.  They took two computers, a projector, and a favorite throw to wrap everything in. This meant that I spent my first day back at work with a brand new laptop, which had none of the same ports as my old laptop. So instead of working from three screens (one laptop, two monitors plugged in) I worked with one tiny laptop screen.  It is very hard to do my job with one tiny laptop screen.  Plus all of the installing of programs and getting everything up to speed.

It was probably the bumpiest re-entry I’ve experienced.

The Payoff! Plan

Back in 2003-2004, I borrowed $31,064.02 to attend graduate school.  This was okay at the time, as I was following the conventional wisdom to not borrow for education more than your first year’s salary.  The amount listed above was just under what my starting salary as a first-year teacher would have been.

But I didn’t get hired.  I also didn’t substitute teach, which is the quickest path to becoming a teacher, outside of a weak job market (it wasn’t) and outright nepotism (I didn’t know anybody.)

Instead, I got a job as a secretary, which paid much less than that first-year teacher salary.  My Secretary I job brought in a paltry $9.10 an hour.  There is a lot to be said about why I made this decision, but that is not the focus of this essay.  The consequence of my decision was that I signed up for the 20-year graduated repayment plan instead of the 10-year one.  This means my expected payoff was scheduled for June 14, 2024.

In hindsight, when I switched jobs after a year an a half and got an $8000/year raise, I should have switched payment plans to the 10-year plan. But I did not. For many years, I trundled along paying just my monthly payment.  Only since I’ve begun my new job have I been making extra payments.

As mentioned before, I’ve been reading a lot of Mr. Money Mustache.  Yesterday, I encountered his post News Flash: Your Debt is an Emergency.  This was the second time I’ve read this post, as it is also part of Start Here: Getting Rich from Zero to Hero in one Post.  When I read the debt emergency post the first time, I nodded.  Yesterday, when I re-read it, plus the linked post about the guy who paid off $90,000 of student debt in 10 months, something clicked and I’ve been reborn.

I’m putting all hands on deck to get rid of this debt.

My current balance as of today stands at $13,441.22. My current budget allows for my regular scheduled payment of $189.37, plus an extra payment of $180.00. My goal is to scrape off wherever I can to add to that extra payment.

I’m not going to go to the extreme measures the $90,000/10 months guy did.  But I’m going to massively economize.

From now until this debt is paid off, I will report the following by the fifth of the month:

What I paid toward the loan the previous month
How much I paid toward the principal and how much toward the interest.*
Where the money for my extra payments came from.
A list of what I didn’t buy in order to put more money toward this project.**
Any roadblocks I’m having toward this goal.***

To get us started, here’s a quick Excel graph of my progress over 13 years.

*Here’s something I’ve already learned in the 25 minutes I’ve been doing this project:  my extra payments aren’t going to the principal only.  I will make it a priority to find out if I can change that.
**This is something the $90k/10mo guy did, and I like the idea.
***Right now one major road block I have is the number of friendships centered around socializing while purchasing food/drink.  More on that later.

Our Total Eclipse, Salem, Oregon

Here’s what time we arrived in Salem.  We left at 3:30. There was traffic all the way, but not significant slowing.  Mostly my driving was in the 50 mph range.

In all my planning, I forgot to think about parking. Happily, we grabbed the last space in front of the State Library, paid for a full day of parking, and headed out to the capitol grounds.  There we set up our space. There was one other group on the lawn when we arrived–it turns out we were there before the park opened.  That was probably why all the other people were still hanging out at their cars.  Then we both fell asleep.

Time stamp: 5:52 am

Matt’s sleeping setup.

Here we are more awake.  6:27am.

I made breakfast pizza for our trip.  Breakfast pizza was AMAZING!  Thanks, Cooks Illustrated for creating such a delightful concoction of ingredients. My work-mate mentioned that there would be a special postage cancellation at the capitol, so soon after the 8 am capitol opening time, I went in search of it.  This is Helen, who not only works at the post office, but also designed the special cancellation.  I bought commemorative envelopes from the gift shop and a sheet of eclipse stamps, plus some postcards and headed back outside to do some on-site corresponding.  (Sadly, I took pictures of none of this, not the many postcards, or the special envelopes, or the special cancellation.)  You can do a Google Image search though, which is more fun, because you get to see cancellations from across the country.

Look at these amazing stamps!  They change color when you apply heat!

I also couldn’t resist the pressed penny machine.

Here we are in our glasses.  9:09 am.  The eclipse has begun! When you put on those glasses, everything went black, except the sun.  Hence the not-great framing.  Notice how many more people are around us.  They kept coming.

These two were among my favorite of our neighbors.  While most people, myself included, would put on the glasses and then take them off, look around, do other stuff (write letters, postcards) and then check back in with how the eclipse was going, these two put on their glasses and kept them on.

The stamps in the sun!

Our nearest eclipse neighbor to the left.  He had a lot of cameras going. There were a lot of cameras in general.  The fountain in the background came on early in the morning.  Overheard: “I work at the capitol, and that fountain is never on!” 

My favorite young viewer.

Improvising filters for the phone cameras.  10:03am.

And then it got colder and colder. I put my sweater back on.  And then it was dark. Total eclipse.  These are photos I took on my normal camera on the auto setting with no filter. I zoomed and pushed the shutter button. I’m thrilled they came out so well. 10:18 am.

The cold was surprising to me.  Also surprising was how it didn’t really get dark.  This is mid-eclipse.  It was more of a dusk, than of a midnight thing.

Back to the sun/moon thing.

What it looked like without zooming.

So many cameras!

I think this one is  my favorite.

Totality is over. Seeing the huge difference between 99% and 100%, I was very glad we made the journey.

Time stamp: 10:29 am.  I was very surprised how soon after totality people packed up and left.  There was still another hour of eclipse.  Ten minutes prior, this was full of people. My work colleague was among the early leavers.  It took her only two hours to get home.  This was a far shorter trip than we had.  

Some eclipse supplies.

Class plan, completed.

I’m quite proud of my colorful tracker for my Grammar Lab class progress.  My early goal was to do each week of classwork in six days, rather than seven. I used colors to keep track of how I was doing.  You can see how things progressed.  

One thing I wasn’t counting on was that the class would become easier as it went on.  Thus, I spent 200 minutes on July 15–at that point a normal amount of daily work–on Week 4 and was surprised to discover that I had finished all the week’s activities in one sitting.   From that point on, all weeks took less than 300 minutes to complete. Phew!

And I also feel quite gleeful at finishing nearly three weeks early.  That gives me a nice chunk of summer without classwork.

Essay: Mr Money Mustache has rejuvenated my life

Along with being busy with many various and sundry things, I keep a close eye on my money.  I grew up without a sense of abundance around money–though we were solidly middle class–and while I’ve had off and on times of cultivating feelings of abundance around money, I do worry about having enough.  “Enough” being defined specifically as enough to live comfortably now while also saving enough to keep me from eating cat food in my dotage.

There was a time in my 20s when I would regularly check out the library’s 332.024 call number, which is the personal finance section.  A friend, seeing my interest in money, gave me the book Your Money or Your Life when I was 26 and I applied those principles for the next decade or so.

I’ve slacked off over the last few years. In 2015 I took a pay hit when I left my job of nine years.  My justification was that taking a reduced salary (which also gave me summers off) would result in many more opportunities within the organization in the future. It turned out to be a bad gamble. After a few months of observing the organization, I concluded I wouldn’t want to work there for another few months, much less for the rest of my career.

Happily, the job hunt was brief and successful, and I landed a new position where the salary exceeded my job-of-nine-years salary.*  I received two raises the first year, boosting my salary to its highest level, ever.

(*Though actually, due to the 32-hour week and 7 weeks vacation at the job of nine years, I was making less money at the new job.  I knew that once I left that particular job it would be very hard to equal the pay/benefits ratio.)

This new position fits me well, and I’m happy to have the job.  O! But I miss the days and days of time off I used to have.  It turns out that what was fueling my many projects over the years, was being supported by having enough time to do the projects.  And I didn’t just have time for the projects. I had time to read a ton and goof off and not get a lot of things done too.  Now, working 40 hours per week, not even having ALL the federal holidays off, it seemed like there wasn’t any time left for rebuilding the planter box out front or painting the back doors where the painters declined to finish the job.  I had even solicited names of handymen to rebuild said planter box.  Because when you barely have time to get the laundry/grocery shopping/cooking done, how can you even think of finding time to do the fix-it things?

Then, two things happened in quick succession.  The first was that I took an online class this summer.  It took up time.  The first three weeks, in particular, took up 12-14 hours per week.  After that, things settled back to 3-4 hours per week, but I noticed that even during the weeks that took the most hours, I had time to finish all my assignments.  Could that time be applied to other things?

The second was a link in the YNAB newsletter. YNAB is the budgeting program I use to manage my money.   They are very good at helping people get an understanding of the money coming in, and how to allocate for your priorities.  Their newsletter is full of stories of people who paid off gobs of debt in small amounts of time, or people who saved for the exact vacation they had dreamed of.  One week, there was a link to an older post by Mr. Money Mustache about appreciating the work you’d done to grow you ‘stache.  And to enjoy life.

Who was Mr. Money Mustache, and what was this ‘stache to which he referred?  Happily, there was a “start here” post.  

I started.  

Mr. Money Mustache (MMM) is the online persona of a former tech worker who through his 20s saved large amounts of his large tech salary and “retired” by the time he was 31.  He believes in saving much more of your money than spending it, in reducing your consumption of many things and of not wasting your time on things that aren’t worth your money. He also believes in both “insourcing” as much of your life as possible, and living in frugal luxury.

He’s funny,  swears a lot, and also suggests a good punch in the face, often self-applied.  (In one of my favorite “punch you in the face” posts, he discovered that Mister Money, a check cashing firm, had opened in his town.  Aghast that people who don’t have any idea what they spend in the first place would go to Mister Money and pay a $15.00 fee for a payday “loan” he contemplated opening a competing store next door where people would give him $15.00 and he would punch them in the face and not take the payday loan.)

Mr. Money Mustache writes a lot of things that elicit a reaction of, “Nuh-uh” for the general population.  Never buy a car using a loan, bike everywhere, hang your clothes to dry, save 75% of your pay, stop buying stuff.  Stop buying most everything. 

There’s a part of me (MMM would call it the complainypants part of me) that has the same whiny response. I don’t have a tech worker’s salary! 75% of my pay isn’t enough to live on!  It’s hard to bike everywhere, especially when it’s rainy! Clothes take forever to dry if you hang them in the winter! Sometimes I like to buy stuff!  

But even as these thoughts were crawling through my head, I there was a louder drumbeat:

Mr. Money Mustache is your people!  

And that voice was right.  While I still live a fairly frugal existence–cooking my food, riding public transit to work, buying a lot of my clothing second hand–over the past winter, I noticed a small voice asking where was that person who biked a lot of places, got excited about projects and got stuff done?  Where was the person excited about anything?

Reading Mr Money Mustache posts feels like a shot of the best “early-rising-farmer energy” the kind that usually kicks in around May every year and lasts through the summer.  That energy boost didn’t happen this in May, and I wondered if it would come at all. It turned out what I needed was a good talking to from MMM.

I’m already set up for the MMM lifestyle.  Laundry? I bought a really nice outdoor clothes dryer years ago.  Plus I have two in my bedroom for when it gets raining again.  Biking?  My bike is tricked out for all sorts of errand running. I don’t even need a bike trailer for most stuff.  Saving money?  I’m crazy good at it.  When I looked at my budget 40% of my net pay is already going either to my retirement accounts, or to speed up debt repayment.  Not buying stuff?  I’ve got some room to improve there–just last weekend, even after reading MMM, I spent almost $50 on window washing gear–but I’m game to try.

And guess what?  If I found 3+ hours per week to study and do my classwork, you bet I can find time do some projects. And I love doing projects. I love to plan projects, and I love to work on projects, and I love having done projects. (Finishing them is not my favorite thing).  My house is full of cool stuff that wouldn’t be there unless I (and whomever I roped into helping me) hadn’t done the projects. And my house is just waiting to be cooler than it was because there are still projects to do.

Am I biking EVERYWHERE?  No, not right at the moment.  My work pays for a transportation pass for me, and I don’t love that bike to work, so for now I’m keeping my commute the same delightful (and free!) experience it is.  But I did get out a compass and draw a circle on my the big map in my living room that shows me one mile journey in every direction from my house.  I’ll start by biking to all of those places and make the circle bigger as I get my biking muscles back.

Am I saving MOST ALL of my paychecks? No, but I’m keeping a much better eye on what I spend, and I’m excited to finally do the project where I find out how what the best price for the food staples I use really is.**  I’m also looking into some side jobs that can bring in extra cash.

(**I really want someone to build me an app for this.  Here’s what I’m looking for.  A way to list all my staples: brown rice–long grain, pinto beans, peanut butter, apples, etc.  A way to be in the store, and to quickly find a particular staple on the app. When I find it, it will show me the average price I pay, the lowest price I’ve paid in the last (specific amount of time) and the price I paid the last time I bought it.  I would also like to have a desktop interface, so I can type the newest data on something besides my phone. If you build me this, please let me know you have done this.  In the meantime, I’m going to make a Google sheet.  So unfancy!  I would pay up to $5.00 for a no-ad app.)

Am I thinking of doing a big landscaping project–one that will bring much daily joy to me after it’s finished, as well as adding curb appeal–armed with only my wits, books from the library, the tools I already own and the willing help of the boyfriend? Why yes I am, and I know that Mr. Money Mustache would be proud.

Will I be able to save enough to retire in 10 years, at 52?  Maybe.  But regardless, I don’t feel so hopeless about working until 70. Because I’ve got the skillz to get the savings in order long before that. I’ve spent all of my adult life honing them.  I just needed Mr. Money Mustache to remind me.