Debt Sucks

As much as I despise white backgrounds as I find them unnecessarily blinding, Debt Sucks was due for a facelift. I think I’m finally done fiddling with it. Hopefully it’s easier to read, and (at least on my monitor) it offers a lot more real estate. For comparison purposes:

Last night, I went ahead and made my first intentional large purchase in quite a while. Ever since I built the computer, I think. I finally bought a video camera, a Flip UltraHD. Amazon had a deal on it, 23% off or so, which made it $155. I didn’t spring for the mini tripod, because I already have one, even though I didn’t know where it was. Turns out it’s in my camera bag… imagine that! I did, however, get a RAM camera mount for my scooter for it, with the intention of having it on there every time I ride as a “just in case” matter (such as last summer when I almost got taken out by a car that pulled out in front of me in New Jersey). While I was at it, I also ordered a RAM GPS mount. I’ve found it terribly difficult to geocache on the scooter due to the inability to check where I am compared to the cache location.

The good news is that my two paychecks coming this month, including a bonus, combined with my tax refund, is more than enough to cover next month’s expenses. That’s right – next month. That means that I already have this month covered with what money I already have. So, once that last paycheck of the month comes in, I will have successfully stopped living paycheck to paycheck, started living on last month’s income, and achieved rule #1 of the YNAB Way. It’s no time to celebrate yet, though… who knows what lurks around the corner.

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From January 1 to February 2, my net worth increased an average of $27.20 per day, or $870.40 overall, to -$54,176.80. This is a 1.61% increase, and results in a projected zero net worth on 10/7/2014.

It’s a little lower than I would’ve liked, but hey, at least it’s still close to a grand. February is pretty well guaranteed (barring catastrophe) to make up for it. Overtime is getting less and less, but it’s not too many months away that it’ll pick up again. I’d really like to see that estimated zero net worth closer to May, but it’s better than being a year off like it was just two months ago. Progress, progress, she’s a slow one she is.

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For the first time ever, I did my taxes as soon as I got all the documents I needed. There are two good reasons for this that I can think of at the moment:

1. Despite the existence of my spiffy little filing bin under my desk, things are destined to disappear. It’s like socks in the dryer. Even though the dryer door was closed, and nobody was around, you’ll still have put an even number of socks in there only to come up with an odd number when you fold them later.
2. It’s bad enough that the government got this money from me interest-free from the time I earned it. Why let them hang on to it for a few more months when I can use it now?

The damage? A $620 refund that I could’ve used most of last year for better purposes. Heck, it’s even profitable, depending on how you look at it. My total tax obligations were $351. A total of $570 was withheld from paychecks, yet I “overpaid” by $620. Neat. What I really like about TurboTax is that they give you your effective tax rate, rather than making you figure it out on your own (not like it would be that difficult). Last year, my effective rate was 2.44%, this year it’s 2.39%.

In any case, this refund (coming in 8-14 days, supposedly) won’t be going anywhere special. It’ll go in the budget just like any other income, and probably end up towards the car/truck/what-have-you savings.

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Every afternoon when I wake up, the first thing I do is read my email from bed, because I’m awesome like that. Actually, it’s a good way to get myself going before I climb out of bed. Otherwise, I risk zombification. The other day, doing exactly that, I came across an email from PayPal titled “Reciept for your payment to Match.com.”  Say WHAT? Then I opened it, saw the amount, and repeated the previous line once more, only with more gusto. $107.94 for another 6 months on a site that I hardly used during the last 6 months I paid for.

I have subscription lines in my budget in YNAB, but I completely forgot about this one. I hadn’t considered the possibility that it was set to auto-renew, or that such an event was anytime soon. I WAS doing very well with my budget this month due to my recent lifestyle/spending habit changes, but this little doozy blew it out of the water. Lesson learned: If you sign up for a subscription that you don’t plan on renewing, make sure you turn off the auto-renewal right after you sign up.

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I’ve finally decided to stop contributing to my 401(k). I say that as if I’ve been contemplating it, but I haven’t, really. It’s quite simple. I’m currently paying in 3%, and the company only matches 10% of that 3%. That’s a little over $2 per paycheck that is being matched. In my eyes, not worth it. Since I started, I’ve contributed almost $400, and my employer has thrown in a whopping 40 bucks on top of that. Wheeee…. My contribution of roughly $25 per pay right now is money that could better be used elsewhere, and I really don’t care to have my entire measly portfolio invested in the markets. By someone else. On top of that, part of the purpose of a 401(k) is to defer taxes. Are my tax rates going to be the same as they are now in 33 years? I doubt it.

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It’s already widely known that in order to control and cut down on your spending, you need to know where it’s all going in the first place. I’ve tried my darnedest to keep track of what I’m actually spending my money on since I started attacking my debt, with the use of various categories in my ClearCheckBook account. Fine and swell, but it ain’t worth a damn to just enter the information if you don’t look at the results of all that data afterwards. This is exactly why I’ve always been blowing my budget every month.

Since I started using YNAB, it finally hit me like a brick to the face (Andrew W.K. style) where my spending leaks are. It doesn’t quite make sense, as I just use a general “Misc Spending” category in YNAB for my monthly spending money, but whatever, let’s just go with it. It’s actually more to do with knowing on a regular basis how much I’ve spent for the month, what’s left, and – most importantly – calculating what my remaining cash works out to on a daily basis ($10.68/day in an ideal month).

Now that I’ve got a target number, all it takes is to think about what I spend my money on in a typical day. Queue the screeching brakes sound effect here. Every day, $4.50 or so for a pack of cigarettes (the cheap ones, too! Thanks Obama!), and pretty much every weekday, $6-$7 on lunch at work. There’s ten or eleven bucks right there, every day, which leaves quite a bit of nothing left over for spending on anything else. Gosh, gee, no wonder I bust the bank every month. Genius.

Since I’ve got a simple situation, thankfully it provides for simple solutions. As far as hitting McD’s every day at work, I’ll instead be packing. This used to entail a couple of apples, and before that, a couple of oranges, but they’re not filling. In fact, the apples always left me even hungrier a half hour later. It’s PB&J from now on (assuming I give myself enough time to actually make any before work). That’s a quick $130 or so a month in savings. It should also get me back to not clocking out for lunch, thus recouping all that lost overtime, again, like I wrote about months ago.

As far as the cigarettes, of course the obvious answer is to quit. Been there, read the book, got the shirt… sent a postcard? Lacking the willpower for that option, the next best thing is going back to making my own. I still have my old machine, so all I needed was a pound of tobacco and a box of tubes. I was expecting to spend around $40 on a pound, thanks to the wonderful $24 SCHIP tax (an increase of some 2000% or so). Well, much to my astonishment, many of the manufacturers have stopped dealing in cigarette tobacco for just that reason, and are instead promoting their pipe tobacco lines, as are the stores. Apparently this is old news, and I’ve been living under a rock. I did a double-take when the clerk rang up my order, and assumed I had been the beneficiary of somebody else’s mistake. It took a day for me to realize that I had bought a bag of pipe tobacco. Shit, fuck! Did my research, turns out the only difference is the cut (and learned, as stated above, that I’ve been living under a rock). Sweet! I still would’ve been saving money at $40/pound, but this is just… awesome.

I just ran the numbers, including the price of both the tobacco and the tubes, and assuming a pack a day I’ll be saving almost $100/month on cigarettes now. That’s $230 out of my monthly $325 that can be spent on better things, or worse things, or carried over into my debt snowball. Nitty gritty is below.

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After pounding out my budget last night, I determined that I could very much pay my grandfather the rest of the money I owed him from having my truck towed back from Philly. Not only could, but should, to make my monthly debt repayment quota. So, a check for almost $400 later, and the deed is done.

Owing money to people you live with is a tricky affair. Anytime you buy something for yourself, they always see it, and if you’ve owed the debt long enough, you might start to get questions. I didn’t have that problem, just saying, for future reference. Or rambling. Again.

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