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I’ve been doing some minor planning here and there for my yearly trek up to Orange County, NY for a Where’s George? gathering. Tonight that consisted mostly of checking to see how many people were going to be there this year, and who (and who not). It just so happens my friend, the investor, is planning on attending. Back when I was looking for money for that failure of a business venture, it consisted mostly of begging people in the WG IRC channel. It was annoying (for me and everyone else), but it worked.
Anyway, since I had yet to make a decision on what debt to throw all this extra cash at, paying him back seems the definite way to go. It would be pretty akward to meet him in person and hang out for a day with us both knowing that I still owe him such a large amount of money. That just goes back to the usual advice of never lending money to (or borrowing from) friends and family. I just sent him a message a while ago telling him it’s good to go, and asking if he wants a check in the mail or in person, or a sack of 1,150 one dollar bills in person (which would totally be a viable option for such an event, trust me). No turning back.
Good thing I didn’t wake up early enough today to get to the credit union, because that was totally my plan all along… And now my temptation is to destroy the month-ahead buffer on all my other bills to take care of that. It’s like a monster. Can’t control it. Brrrrraaaaiiiiiinssssssss……………
Popularity: 27%
From June 1 to July 2, my net worth increased an average of $36.96 per day, or $1,145.62 overall, to -$49,226.60. This is a 2.33% increase, and results in a projected zero net worth on 9/9/2014.
Thanks, extra paycheck, hope to see you again in December! That’s the same zero date as back in May, which also had the same daily change rate. Interesting. So I’m playing catch-up, I just need to keep playing. Visual pleasure below… with a spiffy new graph!
 
Popularity: 25%
Happy July 2nd! July is a three paycheck month for me, and since yesterday was payday (and I do my budgeting today), I decided to count that paycheck as last month’s income. Not only does doing so help to pay things off a little quicker, but it should keep me from blowing all that extra money. However, it comes with a catch. A big catch.
After all my bills and spending money and whatnot, I have $1,172 left to budget for July. I owe the landlord $600. I owe the investor $1150. You see where I’m going with this. The landlord sued me a year ago, so there’s a judgement. That isn’t going away until I pay, and I’ve only owed that money for a year now. The investor, on the other hand, hasn’t sued me yet, and probably never will, but he’s a friend, and I’ve owed him this money for 4 or 5 years now. I want to get that taken care of pronto, as I’ve already missed a couple promised payoff dates. I could come pretty close to paying off the credit union or AES with this money, too, whose payments could then be snowballed (especially the credit union, with it’s high interest rate and high payments).
Writing this now, I realize it should be pretty clear what I ought to do, but I defer to you, dear readers, to help me make sure I’m doing what I ought to be doing.
Popularity: 31%
Anonymous at High Class, Low Income asks her readers if their parents taught them about money. To that, I say “bwahaha….”
As far as I can remember, we weren’t exactly well to do, if you will. We had a hell of a nice house in a hell of a nice neighborhood, but for most of my younger years my mom worked two full time jobs. When I was really young, she drove a total beater of an old ugly as sin Chevy Cavalier, which is probably the most frugal thing I ever saw happen around those parts. I was too young to know it at the time, but I’m pretty sure we were on food stamps, too, for a bit there. Big house, nice quiet neighborhood, food stamps. Things are adding up quickly, I tell ya.
Probably the first time I thought “what the hell are they doing?” was when I noticed a habit of buying one new vehicle, and finally paying it off only to turn around and buy another. I never even knew how much money my parents made until it came time to apply for financial aid for college. My dad always seemed secretive of how much money he and my mom made, much less anything else involving money in the house. There was always a serious “she made the money, he spent it” thing going on.
Of the two things my parents taught me about money (that I remember), one was “if you want a car, get a job.” They didn’t actually have to tell me this, as I was the youngest of four, so I already knew the routine pretty well. I still only got my first truck and my driver’s license when I was 18, because hey, I was pretty awesome at managing my money at the time. Or not. I didn’t even save up for the truck, I got a loan from a business associate (yes, I was quite the entrepreneur).
The second, and much more important thing I learned about money from my parents was to not hide your finances from the people you have no reason to hide it from. My dad always had a “stash” hidden somewhere, which was quite simply an envelope stuffed with cash. At the very least, it was coupon savings from grocery shopping, but if there was more to it than that, who knows. I can’t imagine how my mom put up with such a thing.
And would the sky really have fallen just by telling your kids how much money you make? Jeez.
Other than all that, I don’t think my parents taught me much about money at all. My dad was a douche about it and my mom wasn’t around for it. What time she was around was spent doing more motherly things like nagging about cleaning and whatnot 
Hum… I suppose the point of reflecting on how your parents raised you is so you can do a better job with your kids than they did with you, right?
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From May 1 to June 1, my net worth increased an average of $27.41 per day, or $849.59 overall, to -$50,372.22. This is a 1.69% increase, and results in a projected zero net worth on 10/2/2014.
Unfortunately, despite reducing my discretionary spending budget from $325 to $250, I’m not going to be able to increase my debt spending for the month of June. Quite the opposite, I’m sad to say. If I hadn’t overspent like a crazy bastard in May… ah, well, we can only plan on the future now. The only other thing I was really able to cut out of the budget was $7/mo for my premium membership at Where’s George? I’m still $156.85 away from paying off the landlord.
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Three days ago, the YNAB app for the iPhone went available. To be completely honest, I only noticed it tonight, but when I did, there was zero hesitation to buy it. Even if I don’t really have $9.99 available to spend on an iPhone app, much less anything else. Some might think “ZOMG impulse spending, you’re going to financial hell now!” However, it’s quite simple – sometimes you gotta spend money to make (or rather, save) money.
The reason I noticed the app tonight was because I did my usual once-in-a-while balancing of my accounts in YNAB tonight, as well as trying to beat the hell out of next month’s budget to make it work like my previous post, until of course I realized that I didn’t make any more money this month than last. Right now I’m pretty happy to have my debt repayment budget almost the same as last month’s (a dollar short!).
Anyway, what’s all this have to do with the YNAB iPhone app? Well, every time I balance things out, there’s a huge balance adjustment in the cash category. I don’t keep my receipts anymore, they just fill up my wallet. Hell, I used to write on my hand every time I fed money in to the vending machine at work, but that didn’t last very long either (partly because I don’t feed it money any more). With the app, however, I can quickly and easily throw cash expenses in to my budget when they’re made, rather than saving receipts, getting annoyed at them, throwing them away, and forgetting about it. I’ll need to get myself in to the habit of entering transactions at the cash register, but if all works out well, I think the app will be an even bigger improvement on my budgeting situation than YNAB itself when I bought that.
Should be a ten bucks well spent, I think…
Popularity: 34%
I have this handy line in my goals table that tells me how far on or off track I am from hitting my 5 year goal. For quite a while, I’ve been behind. I’ve been wondering for months what I can do to bring it back in balance, if not get ahead. The only thoughts that really came to mind was to hope for some random windfall (bonus at work, hit the lottery, the usual) to throw at my debt and get those numbers lined up. And then it hit me the other day – I’m doing it wrong. Or backwards, to be more specific.
 The bottom line is the one we're looking at. Do note that I don't really have $35 in an emergency fund, it's actually zero, that's just there to prevent errors... Backwards, you say? Well, since this is a time based goal, as well as a necessary one, my debt repayment should be the primary, rigid category in my budget, not the flexible one. All this time, I’ve kept all my spending the same (increased it, even) and adjusted my debt repayment based on “what’s left.” This is the completely, utterly wrong way to go about it. It would, however, be the appropriate method for saving for “want” goals, such as when I was saving up to build my computer. Instead, my discretionary spending should be the variable category, adjusting as need be to still meet my debt goals.
Obviously, there must be limits. I can’t just plan to spend no more money this month and expect it to work, because that would just be setting myself up for failure, which is the result of all unreasonable expectations. Right now, the difference between those two numbers in that table is $80.06. However, it’s not even the middle of the month and that table automagically updates itself every day. The real benchmark is where that number is at the end of the month, before I start making all my payments. If I pretend that today is May 31st, it goes up to $146.66. However, since we’ll then be halfway through the year, I’m pretty sure I’d have to double that amount in debt payments to bring myself back up to par by the end of the year. $293.32 in extra debt payments every month is a pretty tough goal, considering my discretionary spending budget right now each month is $325.
Maybe I’ve been a very bad boy, and haven’t noticed. If anything, I wish I would have realized this much sooner, but better now than later. Without working out some sort of crazy math, I think I’m going to just shoot for $50 or $100 extra every month for now, and see how that number changes. I also need to keep track of where it’s at at the end of every month, to see what sort of progress I’m making in getting back on track. Another thing I’ll be doing is changing the setting in YNAB so that when I blow my miscellaneous spending budget, it automatically reduces my budget for the next month, rather than letting me get away with murder.
Popularity: 39%
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