Tuesday, July 31, 2007

job hunting overdrive

Just got word on Friday that my project position is set to end on 8/26/07, which means time to put the job hunt into overdrive.

At least August is an extra paycheck month!

If I can't find anything then I will have to spend every possible moment writing articles of Associated Content to keep some cash flow coming in until I get something else.

I think I may look in nearby cities too. They may pay more and have more jobs.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

and the job hunt continues

Just got the official word that the position I had applied for at work back in May was given to someone else. Not suprising as I overheard some stuff earlier in the week that made me think that was going to happen. It's not all bad though as in the past couple of months since applying for that position I have realized that this is not the sort of place that I want to stay at. Now I don't have to struggle with leaving a job that pays well, since I didn't get the better paying position.

No worries though, I had my resume submitted for a position at another company on Tuesday and I'm hoping that pans out. If it does, that will be a $10,000 - $15,000 pay increase. And if not, I'll keep looking.

Send good job hunting vibes my way!

delayed gratification strikes again

I mentioned how I was helping my mom look for a new laptop and thanks to all the waiting she was able to get a sweet deal yesterday.

She was a Best Buy and my dad noticed a box locked up but not in display. No price and no salesperson around, they called me and I looked it up on the website. It was this Acer Aspire Notebook that I had looked at but saw to be sold out and not available in stores. It's showing a price of $449 now but yesterday it was $399. Can't beat that with a gig of memory. She snatched it up after I told her the price. And to think, last week she wanted to get one at Wal-Mart that was more but only had half as much memory.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

awesome find thanks to delayed gratification

I hate spending money on clothing and related items. I'd like to be able to find nice stuff for a cheap price so that I can throw more money at debt.

I've recently found myself in need of a new pair of pj pants. I wanted to spend no more than $10. I found a pair at Macy's two weeks ago for $10. Got home with them and decided I didn't wanna spend more than $5 so I returned them last week.

Then I found a $5 off coupon for Old Navy with no minimum purchase. I looked online and found 2 pairs on clearance for $10 but shipping was $5, so I decided to find a store near me. Found one and went there on my lunch break today. The same pants that were $10 online were $5.99 in store. I found an even nicer pair though for $6.99. After my coupon and taxes, I got the pants for $2.12. And they are nicer than the ones from Macy's!

Sure, I had to wait a little more than 2 weeks without them, but the cost savings was so worth it! It's almost as if I made over $4 each week thanks to the difference in price between the buy-it-now Macy's pair and the two-weeks-later Old navy pair.

If only this worked with everything. I've been watching for a low-priced laptop for my mom since April. She's a flight attendant so she needs a super lightweight one. And with Vista needing a gig to run well and proper, you just are hard pressed to find a laptop with a screen smaller than 15" and a gig of memory under $500. I'm hoping some back-to-school sales offer up something for her.

proof that college tuition is too high

College is expensive - I know, I have a buttload of student loans to prove it. Unfortunately it was a little too expensive for a kid in Ohio as he robbed a bank to pay for his tuition.

He was caught, of course, and it's quite sad that he did this. Clearly he felt like he was under a mountain of debt that he was never going to get out from under, regardless of his constant hard work. I know, because I feel like that sometimes with my debt, and I suspect I'm not the only one.

generic tea....or not!

We drink a lot of iced tea at my house and in an effort to decrease our grocery spending I picked up the Wal-Mart Great Value brand of tea bags instead of my usual Lipton. It was around a couple of bucks cheaper and I figured it’s just tea, how bad could you mess that up, right?

Guess what?

Wal-Mart’s Great Value brand of tea bags is actually Lipton!

So, I’m now getting the exact same tea at a lower cost. Just wanted to pass that along in case anyone else is spending too much on tea! :)

Minimum wage increase

I heard on the radio this morning that the minimum wage here in the US is now up $0.70 to $5.85. That’s great for people that are in jobs making only minimum wage. However, I read that due to this increase that restaurants will be raising their prices to offset costs (as will some other places). I’m kind of confused by this since the majority of employees at restaurants are servers and they do not get paid minimum wage since they get tips. When I worked in a restaurant about 10 years ago the hourly rate was $2.15.

I think when servers have to do their side work and silverware rolling that they should make minimum wage as they cannot be earning tips during that time. And that time spent not earning tips decreases your hourly average.

Yesterday I was reading what some of the presidential candidates think should happen in regards to minimum wage. Obama thinks that it should be raised to $9.00. I think that is a ridiculous idea. The only other person quoted in the interview was John Edwards, who thinks that the minimum wage should be on a sort of sliding scale that goes up and down with various factors. I think that’s pretty ridiculous too as you cannot lower someone’s wage which it sounds like would be part of this plan. I can’t offer any better idea, but I do find those ones a bit silly.

Monday, July 23, 2007

still not bad

While it does not look like I will be on track to meet my goal of $2400 in alternative income this month, I will however be making more than I spend this month. And that is always a good thing.

And there is always next month to reach the $2400!

Thursday, July 19, 2007

what happens next?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what’s next. Once I get out from under all of this debt, what will happen? What will I do? (besides cartwheels)

I’ve thought about the prospect of home buying. But I don’t think that is a good idea for me. Yes, I hate idea that renting means I’m basically throwing away money. However, I don’t plan on staying in US. And the monthly rent on and apartment is much less than a home payment would be. Mainly because of that I think I can end up with a better quality of life renting than buying. And I’ll be able to sock away money allowing compound interest to work for me. If my rent for an apartment is only $500, then once I get all this debt paid off I won’t have to work at a job I hate just to pay the bills. Instead, I’ll be able to be more selective about what job I take. And I think I would lose that to some extent with a mortgage payment.

It’s frustrating though because living in apartments is frustrating. However it seems like that is the best option for me, at least looking at it now that’s what I think. But I'm a long way off from having to worry about it :)

More amenities at a lower price?

While JetBlue is my airline of choice, I'm pretty stoked that Virgin America starts flights next month.

Unfortunately I do not live near any of the airports where they will be flying in and out of. I do wonder though how their service will compare to JetBlue's.

I haven't flown on any Virigin Air flights, but I did take a train in England that was a Virgin train a few years back and it was way nicer than any of the other trains I took.

stupid money decisions

It's really quite unfortunate that time travel is not a reality. I have a lot of stupid money mistakes I have made in the past that i'd really like to be able to go back and fix about now.

I'd really like to go back to right before I got my first job and teach myself about compound interest. That would really change the situation I've gotten myself into now.

I'd also like to tell myself that buying a new wardrobe every month at American Eagle when I was in high school really did nothing to improve my quality of life or make high school any more enjoyable.

I'd also like to stop myself from buying a $600 prom dress my senior year. That I wore only one time. And I had a horrible time and ended up leaving early.

I'd like to have started out at a community college for two years instead of a private school for two years that I ended up leaving for a state school. And the bulk of my credits didn't transfer. I'd also like to smack myself everytime I took out a student loan.

Maybe I wouldn't have moved around so much either, cause that has certainly taken its financial toll.

I also wish I'd never bought a car that cost more than $5,000. Any of the times I bought a car. Cause the $1000 1991 Nissan 240SX I bought 2 years ago has been one of the best running cars I've ever had.

Of course I would not have gotten credit cards just to get a college logo t-shirt either.

And all the buying of junk that I didn't need. Dvds, cds, clothes, and the list goes on.

It's sad really, to think how different things could have been if I'd had a bit more financial knowledge. The bright side is that I can change things now, but I'd still time travel if I could.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

If only it were easy to make a million by not watching tv

I found this article on Yahoo about becoming a millionaire just by giving up tv and video games by age 25. Instead you are to take the money you would have spent and invest it, which is how you become a millionaire.

It is an interesting thought, but do people really spend than much each month on tv related expenses? $100 a month for cable? That's a bit much I think. And who spends $20 each month on pay per view?

And who has enough time in the month to squeeze all this activity in that results in the money spending? Watching pay per view and rentals and playing video games? Sounds more like a 15 year old than a 25 year old.

Top bloggers and their income

I was reading Retire Young and Wealthy and noticed a post about the Business Week article Bloggers Bring in the Big Bucks.

It's an interesting list about the top bloggers, 14 of them I think, and how much they make a month and what exactly they are blogging about. I recognized most of the names on the list but didn't see John Chow on the list. Apparently I wasn't the only one to notice this as John Chow actually did a post about it today.

His conclusion? He's too evil for Business Week.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

new reading material

Just got The Complete Tightwad Gazette from the library.

I'm hoping to find some tips in it to help me get my monthly spending down a little bit. It's actually a rather huge book, so I'm confident that I'll find something useful in it.

test

test

Friday, July 13, 2007

Making extra cash feels good

This week, after working for 5 hours tomorrow, I will end up with $250 in overtime pay for the week. Of course, I won't see all of that thanks to taxes, but having a larger than usual paycheck next week will be exciting. Last week I had worked $150 in overtime pay, and that translated to an extra $100 on my paycheck.

I've also been working like a fiend on my Associated Content articles. And I just broke through the performance bonus payout level and got an extra $20 for that. When I logged into my PayPal account yesterday it was showing a $127 balance. That was nice too.

And this week I got my first PayPerPost payout. It was just $5.01, but it was still nice to see.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

i forgot one

When I did my post earlier in the week on alternative income I forgot something.

It's small, but I make about $10 a month with Pinecone Research. And sometimes I'm lucky enough to get freebies in the mail from them. I recently got a full-size lovely bodywash to try out. And when you get freebies to try out for them you get another $5 for doing the follow-up survey.

And I do MyPoints, which isn't cash but it allows me to get gift cards at places where I would have spent money.

Monday, July 9, 2007

What I do to earn alternative income

Saving Diva left me a comment wondering what exactly I do to earn alternative income each month, so I thought would address that in a post in case anyone else is wondering.

The majority of my alternative income comes from Associated Content. (disclosure: I make $3 if you sign up via the referral link) The thing with AC though is that it takes a lot more work than most of the other things I do. Last month I didn't write a lot of articles, thus the drop in income. This month though I plan on being a writing fiend. And don't worry about needing to have uber perfect writing skills. One look around the site and you will see that they will pay for anything, complete with spelling errors. The pay rate per piece is supposed to be between $3 - $20, with exclusive pieces paying more. In my experience, non-exclusive and excluvise on almost identical articles have paid exactly the same, so I do non-exlcusive in case I want to do something else with them. The most I have gotten paid is around $11 (I think) and my average is $6.20 per article.

I do a little PayPerPost and ReviewMe. I haven't gotten paid for anything I've done on PayPerPost yet though. And I've made $20 two months in a row on ReviewMe. (referral links below)


Get Paid to Review At ReviewMe!

And I sell some dinky little travel ebooks on eBay every now and then. (edit: I average around $400/month with these)

That's it. I have no secret money-making mojo to offer up. Best of luck to anyone trying to earn some extra cash!

Sunday, July 8, 2007

Debt roundup #5

Well, as previously posted there were some financial woes this past month. This means that things did not go as planned, as far as working towards paying things down. Of course, that just means I'm going to work harder this month!

Balances at end of June:
  • car = $13,117.67 ( I start paying on this again this month)
  • credit cards = $30,731.02
  • student loans = $153,968.90

I will see more income for July, which should take care of some of the tragic balance increases the credit cards saw last month.

My alternative income goal for July is $2400. But I will lose a weekend to reading the new Harry Potter book later in the month, so I'll be trying to accomplish this in about 25 days.

I think I can, I think I can...

All extra money goes towards paying off the 29.99% card that saw the interest rate increase. The balance of that card is around $2400.

Saturday, July 7, 2007

Parting with money hurts

I really hate spending money, even on things that I need. Like sneakers.

I've been needing sneakers for a while now, but I hate the price of them so I've been waiting, and waiting. And I get a lot of foot cramps so it's important that I find a pair that are going to be good for my feet.

I found a pair at Kohl's today. I thought they were $45. I wanted to spend no more than $30, but they felt great, so I took them up front.

They rang up $54. Yikes. We bought them, took them home. I said I'd wear them around the house and see if they really are good for my feet. Then I'd take them back and wait for them to go on sale. Then I got to thinking.

While I don't want to pay more than $30, $54 is not horrible considering the non-sale price of this pair and most pairs. And it is really worth the time spent returning the shoes and looking for a cheaper pair just to save $24? I'm not sure. I might just see if they go on sale at Kohl's in the next few years and try to get a price adjustment.

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Less than stellar alternative income for June

Well, I got a little lazy with my Associated Content articles in June, which brought my earnings in alternative income down.

For June, alternative income fell to $953.87.

Granted, that is nothing to cry about! But, I need to tackle debt better. So, I have a new, lofty goal.

I want to make $2400 in alternative income in July.


That will payoff that Chase card that was given the rate hike recently.

Also, a big shout out to Brett over at Frugal Law Student for signing up for Associated Content using my referral link. $3.00 of that total above is thanks to that, so thanks Brett!

Monday, July 2, 2007

iPhone sillyness

On my local news they were interviewing the woman that was first in line at the local Apple Store to get an iPhone the other day.

She said that she had not even planned on getting it and decided only the night before to go wait in line for it.

She said she is happy with her purchase because it is a great investment.

Say what?

Clearly she didn't need an iPhone, and she didn't even really want it since she only decided the day before to buy it. I suspect someone she knows was talking about wanting or getting one, which activated her 'keep up with the joneses' chip.

My other thought - someone needs to buy this poor woman a dictionary and mark the page that 'investment' is on.

Black clouds moving on out

Ever heard the saying about how it's always darkest before the dawn, or something like that. Basically, before things get any better, they're gonna get worse. Why does that always have to be true?

June was a not-so-great month financially. I paid my rent late by accident ( I thought I had 5 grace days, but I only had 3). Geico unceremoniously cancelled my insurance without warning and my new insurance is $200 more each period (6 months). Had some hospital bills come due. Chase decided my 16.24% card needed a 29.99% interest rate.

But, thankfully, the black clouds seem to be moving on out. My work has offered up 3 Saturdays for overtime. For me, that would amount to about $400 extra, which would be awesome.
Priority #1 - pay off that blasted Chase card!