The Most-Used Card in My Wallet

This morning I grabbed my transit card and realized that I use my transit card way more than my credit card. In the past week, I've used my transit card at least five times--four days of commuting to work and one bus trip over the weekend. I've used my credit card twice, for Domino's and snacks at 7-11.

Ignoring my poor eating habits for a moment, it's a rare week lately when I use my credit or debit card more than my transit card. I use my credit card for almost all expenditures so I can get a few rewards dollars at the end of the year. Obviously, I pay it off every month--my typical credit card bill is about 1/500th of my net worth.

Examining how often you use the various cards in your wallet seems like an interesting exercise to me. If you're trying to drive less or spend less, see if you can use a bus pass or train pass more than your credit card. If you're trying to build your small business, maybe you could set a goal of using your business cards more than you use your credit card.

Personally, I think I also use my library card more than my credit card--especially if you count every time I log in online as a "use." The only other card in my wallet is my driver's license, which I use only as a form of ID. (I haven't driven in about five years...I do want to start driving again someday, but it's pretty far down on my list of priorities.)

Which card in your wallet do you use the most?

Keepin' On

It's been about two and a half years since I really started saving for an early retirement. I've made progress faster than I expected (I'm about 12,000 ahead of where I thought I would be at this point). However, I don't think I'll be able to retire in four and a half years, since my financial situation has changed.

Right now I'm spending about $1900-2300 a month. This covers our rent, utilities, all the food my boyfriend and I eat, and my personal expenses (which now that I think of it are pretty low lately--$52 at the salon every month or two, an occasional event with friends, clothes, except that all I've bought this year are a couple of bras. I haven't spent anything on travel since December and basically nothing on "stuff.").

We're pretty frugal on day to day expenses. Eating out about once a week is basically our one splurge--at about $20 to $25, or $80 to $100 a month. Most of our expenses are in rent--$1250 a month. Could we reduce that? Probably by a little. We *might* (boyfriend, if you're reading this, I stress might) be able to find a place we're 85% happy with for $850. But would it really be worth the PITA factor of looking? We really, really hated looking for apartments last time. It took us FOREVER.

We are finally in an apartment we like. It's top floor, a good size for us, decent neighborhood and right by the train, but an easy drive to suburbs for my boyfriend's job, with central air and heat and an included parking space. This is without a doubt the best of the four apartments we've lived in together.

If we had enough money that a move to a new, cheaper apartment would actually allow us to stop working, I could see us doing it. But right now it would be more like "if we move into a place we're not crazy about, we could retire in several years." I don't think we have the patience for that. So for now the ER date is further out than I originally hoped.

I do, though, still have a little slip of paper on my desk at work with a date written on it--the day I'm "allowed" to quit. Whether I actually quit on that day, or before, or after, will depend on a lot of things. Will my job still be here in 5 years? Will I have a lot more work because other people have been laid off? Will I still have free health insurance? Will I still get the company match on my 403(b)?

I still hope to never need to take another full-time job. I make some money from freelancing, and I think I could increase it. I haven't really experimented with this because the work I do get keeps me so busy. But with the amount I expect to have saved in 5 years, I think I could make up the difference with freelancing, supplemented with another business or a little office temping if I had to.

And in the meantime I save about 40-50% of my takehome every month, plus the 25% that goes straight into my 403(b). I keep doing my freelancing. I keep getting little checks from ehow every month, and socking away anything extra that I get. The nest egg keeps growing. The growth will accelerate as the next egg gets bigger. I keep getting rid of things I don't need. We keep looking for little ways to slash the grocery bill. We slowly reduce the amount we eat out, because our cooking is getting better and it's not as much of a treat anymore.

We keep on keepin' on.

EDIT: Google/Blogger knows me scarily well, because the ads that they put on my blog are ones I'm actually tempted to click on. I've never been tempted to click on online ads on any site, but local sources for Indian food? Yes, please. Alas, clicking on your own ads will quickly get you removed from Google ads for violation of terms of service.

Financial Diary, May 29, 2010

Costs of my business trip to Washington:
$5 or so, copies at Library of Congress
$54 hostel since I went a day early and didn't want to shell out for the expensive conference hotel
Meals and cabs from airport will be reimbursed

• Spent a delicious day and a half pre-conference at the Library of Congress looking up obscure journal articles and dissertations. Had a lovely conversation with the librarian in the children's literature research room about the project I'm working on. All free.
  
• Last year I bought several snacks during conference; this year I managed to make do with things brought from home and extras from various meetings and receptions.
• Binged on cable TV since I don't have cable at home; didn't have Internet in the room so checked my email in the staff office and the lobby.
• Found left-behind magazines on both the flight there and the flight back. I always do a quick scan while exiting the plane and if I see anything that looks like a "real" magazine (instead of in-flight), I grab it. I'm sure people judge me for it, but I don't care. I had a good score this time: InStyle on the way there and People on the way back.
  
• Didn't have time or energy to do any touristy things other than the LOC. Spent my down time watching TV, working on a critique of a friend's manuscript, and working on a synopsis of my book
• Phone charger broke; not totally sure if it was my fault or the maid's. Apparently it can't be fixed. Grr. A new charger would be about $30; can replace the phone for less than that but I'm not sure how much; guessing $20.
  

Since coming home:
Pizza: $30

Other Misc. Developments in finance:

• Going to San Francisco, again on business, next week. Maybe I can manage to keep my record of not spending anything? I don't seem to be very into touristy things lately; I can have plenty of fun walking around the waterfront and browsing at City of Lights.
  
• Haven't used air conditioning yet, not because of finances but because after a bug infestation earlier this spring we really want the vents cleaned out before we use the HVAC again. Unfortunately, our electric bill was actually quite high this month. They had been giving us estimated bills for several months because the landlord wasn't providing access to the meter. Now we're back on the meter, but I guess the estimates (which we thought were high) were actually too low. Yuckola. So I'm sweaty and haven't even saved any money yet.
  
• Checked out a new stack of library books this morning. Was practically out of fiction, which is a bona fide emergency!
• Spent today working on novel-related things and watching Suze Orman Show segments online. CNBC is stingier with online video than most stations, but I can still get a good dose of "Can I Afford It?" segments.
  
• Trying to convince R. to open a Roth IRA; I think progress is being made.
  

Financial Diary, May 17, 2010

Tomorrow, I'm leaving for a business trip to DC. A few days after I get back, I'll be going on another business trip, this time to San Francisco. I'm dreading being away from R. for so long. Financially, business trips are kind of sweet, since I get to eat out all the time for free. I could try to be frugal on business trips but it wouldn't do me any good since I get reimbursed for all the eating out anyway. And while I'm in DC, I plan on spending several hours at the Library of Congress looking up obscure academic articles, which makes me very happy.

Money related activities of the past few days:
- bought 2 T-mobile refill cards, $91.18 each for a $100 value. R.'s will last him about a year, mine will last about 6 months. That makes our total cost for 2 cell phones for the year about $300. I think that's pretty good, though I'm always hoping to reduce my cell phone use enough to make a $100 card last a whole year.
- Spent $14.00 on McDonald's. Didn't mind that since it's been a long time since we've eaten out.
- other meals included spaghetti with tiny meatballs, taco salad, a sort of nacho concoction, and apple crunch, all made from previously purchased groceries.

This weekend, my fun consisted of:
- creating a list of books and articles to look up at the Library of Congress when I go there on Tuesday
- downloading articles and dissertations from online databases
- picking out books to check out at the library before I leave
- watching cooking shows with R.
- writing a scene list for my novel
- critiquing someone else's novel
- playing a vapid online game
- cuddling
- cooking

I didn't leave the house from Friday night until Sunday night. Most people would probably find my weekends dull as sticks, but I love them.

The First 100,000 is the hardest?

My net worth is now hovering around 100k--to be exact, on April 6, it was $105,000. I've read that once you've accumulated $100,000, interest and investment gains start to add up and it starts feeling easier to save. I still feel like I'm a long way away from my "number" for early semi-retirement, which is somewhere between 300k and 500k. I used to think my goal was the lower end, but realistically, despite all our little frugal actions, R and I still managed to spend $40,000 last year. Ugh. Which, actually, would make our "number" 1 million. Double ugh.

I'm trying to decrease that this year, but we're not really interested in moving for financial reasons (we had a hard enough time last year finding an apartment we liked in this price range) and his health insurance and car insurance are pretty much set expenses. (Thankfully, we don't have a car payment, since the car is a hand-me-down, and it's used mostly for his brief commute to work, so gas and repairs are fairly small.)

We don't spend much on entertainment or household things. The biggest things we can cut on this year are travel (me), groceries (both), and eating out (both). It's likely I'll spend very little on travel in 2010, decreasing our expenses by 1-2000 dollars.

Groceries are a continual battle between "ooh, Doritos!" and "oh yeah, cauliflower." And there is definitely a balance between having appealing groceries on hand and the likelihood that we'll be tempted to eat out (which for us mostly means ordering a pizza).

On the plus side, our current apartment costs the same in rent as our old apartment, but our utilities costs are about $90/month less because of the smaller space and better insulation.

Last One Out Turn Out the Lights

Last week a woman was laid off from my work. My organization now has 17 employees, and I have a few new responsibilities.

We also got rid of our storage area in the basement of our skyscraper. (Side note: How tall does a building have to be to be considered a skyscraper? Our building is 24 floors. I usually just call it an office building, but I'm not sure if that means something different to people who don't live in cities.)

Storage is now in the former mail room and the mail room has been moved to the main work area. I'm convinced we could also do away with the mail room storage, which still holds a lot of junk like dozens of old binders and publications we'll never need, but I don't know if there would be any financial benefit to that.

R. has said that he doesn't think I'll ever have to face the scary task of actually quitting my job because "in ten years it won't exist."In 10 years, I think my company will have more like 10 employees than 17. I can pinpoint the order in which I think they would be laid off, too, and I think I'd be pretty accurate, because for months I've guessed that Ms. X would probably be laid off in April.

There are several people in their late 50s/early 60s who might retire before they get laid off--I don't know if they would be replaced or if we'd just redistribute their responsibilities. My boss is, I think, the oldest person here, and I dread her retirement, since I think she handles the organization really well.

Layoffs in our org seem to happen based on role more than seniority or work performance. I think my position will last for a while--it has existed since the early 70s. Though if I'm still here in 10 years I may be doing more work myself rather than supervising.

Will the company fold altogether? I think it would take a lot--it's been around for more than a century. Eventually, if we're down to just a few employees, we might merge with a larger organization. I could see that happening 20-30 years from now. At which point I'll hopefully be long gone--even if I loved the place, I wouldn't want to stay here that long.

I have a certain fascination with things closing in. Recession economics equal simplification. I'm all right with that. That's the kind of challenge I find interesting and fun--doing more with less. What can I declutter today? What work are we doing that's redundant or that doesn't create much value for the organization? What can I not do?

No spending, a few more discards

Mildly financially related things I did yesterday:

• wrapped a paperbackswap book
• brought lunch of leftover taco meat made into a taco salad
• cooked dinner--butter chicken and broccoli
  
• spent nothing

Today:

• changed the amount for my biweekly automatic transfer from checking to savings. I think I can do another $90 per pay period without feeling the pinch too much.
  

Discards:

• 2 tubes of lipstick: I like how I look wearing lipstick, but I never actually do it. Also, R. doesn't like the taste of lipstick, and I like being kissed
  
• one pair of earrings
• one chain that inevitably gets tangled in my hair
• many papers related to my novel, as I revise and resolve the issues
  

More upcoming discards:

• bicycle
• Family silver? R. is mildly-to-moderately against me selling this, because he thinks it will appreciate in value over the next fifty years. I disagree, but should probably do more research on the historical trends in silver prices (it's monogrammed, so I probably won't be able to resell it except for the metal value).