I have been contemplating cancelling my cable service for several months as most of the shows I watch I can see online.

I called today to cancel and AT&T offered me such a good deal, for the tv service and the internet, that I decided to keep it for a while longer. I did discover that with the new package a couple of channels I watch are not allowed but they are found online, and so are their shows, so it works for me.

The internet service is faster and cheaper by $5 a month. The total cost is now half of what it was prior to me calling. Why did I not do this months ago? I may still cancel over the summer and save the $39 a month, but we will see how this goes for now.

Yay!

Also, our union has reached a tentative deal with the state. The union board is voting on it tomorrow. If they approve, members vote. If members approve then it is done once the assembly approves it. The union says it would be affectie April 1. That means my paycheck will increase ever so slightly. Every penny helps since they have been taking almost $1000 a paycheck for two years with three furloughs a month.

In July my step increase comes through. I can get rid of one CC by November and the other by this time next year. No more debt!! (Well student loans will be around for a long time.) Good timing as I need to start saving for a newer car/down payment. I hope my car lasts for another 4 years. That would be the best scenario.

I needed/wanted a couple of things for my apartment. One was something to hold all the plastic tupper ware type bowls and lids that have been floating around my apartment since I moved in. I have been watching the dollar aisle at target but not seen anything that would be large enough to warrant spending a dollar. And I go there only once a month, if that, so I was probably missing something.

So Sunday I made my grocery list and decided to stop by the dollar store to see it they had what I was looking for. And they did! I got two collapsible cloth boxes for a dollar and they fit perfectly! I also found the dish soap I like for a dollar (usually around 350 per at taret) so I bought four. Those will last quite a while. I also found cocoa mix, nestle, and a couple other things all for under 10.00! I forgot how great it can be to shop there! Must remember in the future!

Then I went grocecry shopping for just a couple of items I needed for the week, and for the freezer. I am so stoked about the dollar finds!

It has been over a year since I updated this blog. life got the best of me and I began working a lot, working out to lose some weight (down 55 pounds!), doing some consulting work, and using another website for health stuff that this one got pushed to the back burner. I hope to try and update it once a week as I work toward a goal of saving 2500 for a trip with a friend in November.

And I hope to get some more consulting work this year, too.

All the best to all of you!

Previously I had 98 and 56 miles.

Then I was sent on a business trip and had to drive 800 miles total in a week (last week.) but I am happy to say that I did not drive on any Friday or Saturday this month! Good old furlough came in handy. I don't spend money on Fridays unless it is absolutely necessary so....I feel good about that.

Deducting my commute is pointless because my commute is less then 3 miles every day.

Anyway, my mileage counts are 1219 for the month. about 800 more than usual. I want to try it this month but I have a week long trip for business I will be driving to because there is no airport to fly into that is cheaper. San Lis Obispo is beautiful but....hard to travel to. I need to be there for a week each of the next three months. Ugh.

I know my normal mileage was cut by about 40% and I am happy about that!

I also figured out that if we go back to our regular paychecks (and my 5% raise comes through) I could be cc debt free by March 2011. GOAL!

And if i stayed putting that same amont to my student loans I would be debt free in 3 years. BUT I cannot live like this for another three years so I am making my goal to pay off CC debt by March 2011 and student loans with in 6 years. That will still cut 24 years off their approximate payment schedule and cuts the interest by 88%. (my loan interest rate is 2.75% for the entire amount!)

Carless challenge for March:

March 1-7 = 98 miles (but no driving on Friday/Saturday!)

March 8-14 = 56 miles (no driving Friday/Saturday/Sunday! Didn’t even leave my house!)

I also hope to begin walking to work now that it is not dark when I leave the office. I can only do it Tues/Thurs as I have class that I leave to go to right after work Mon/Wed until the end of May when I hope to begin walking to work every day. Friday has been my car less day since the state furloughs began 13 months ago. I also spend no money out of pocket that day. (although I use the washing machine (and sometimes the heat and dryer) that day and clean the apartment...)

I have $26 dollars from last weeks gas bill. I only have a ¼ of a tank but I am going to fill it tonight with that $26. I hope to put this weeks $35 in my vacation fund.

I have an interview for my dream job in June. I could have selected Washington DC or Chicago and chose Chicago so that I could also have a bit of a vacation and visit a friend who lives about 90 minutes outside in Michigan. Another friend from this area is going with me and the three of us plan to do very little but hang out together. In Chicago we are going to do the city architectural tour and have a nice dinner together.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’d like to get some plants for my apartment and patio. Do any of you know what can grow in a north facing apartment with no direct sunlight beside fern? I am betting the chance to have flowering plants will be small as there is no direct sun. It is bright on my patio because the sun reflects from the pool area but no sun directly in the apartment.

Well the Bell's Palsy is slowly going away. I can almost close my eye completly and most of my taste buds are back. A few other things have improved as well. The doctor believes it should all be cleared up in the next couple of weeks.

It has been an expensive thing to fight though. I did 6 acupncture treatments and they are not cheap. I did not have enough in my "personal hsa" so it went on my credit card. I have no regrets about doing the treatments as I could feel a difference from the first session (tinglinh where there was no feeling otherwise) but I have upped my savings amounts for the monthly deposits into the personal HSA.

On other news I passed the personal naratives I needed to pass for the dream job! I received word Wednesday morning. So the next step is a day long series of personal interviews/exams. I will begin studying and preparing for this process this weekend. I can schedule this day sometime in Febrary but the exam process won't happen for several months. I am very curiuos how many people passed to the third part of the process but I am just focusing on what I need to do.

In other news I have slowed down the debt payments I was making in order to save extra money into my emergency fund. With the problems California is having with GAS and the budget issues I think having a little more in there is necessary.

There are threats that state employees are going to be paid Federal minimum wage beginning July 1 if there is not a budget. Federal minimum wage equals about $1200 a month and my expenses run about $1700 a month if it is bare bones and about $2000 if not. So...it is just a waiting game now.

At some point after the budget is passed we would get the back pay but we are warned to expect a larger amount taken out for txes than usual because it is paid in one lump sum.

I have been busy with work and house sitting and not had a lot of time to blog. Bt yesterday I eneded up in the Emergency Room.

The problem began yesterday when I could not keep a contact in my right eye wth out it drying up. I thought it was a bad box and opened another one. Finally got one to stay and went to work.

At about 3 pm I realized that contact was not staying wet with rewetting drops and took the contact out. It was then that I realized my eye was not closing all the way when I blinked. Then I noticed my right side of my face was a bit numb and weak and could not move very well kind of like being paralyzed.

One trip to the doctors who then sent me to the emergency room then to another emergency room when the first had a 14 hour wait and 42 patients in the lobby I found out I have Bells Palsy. It is caused by an inflamed set of nerves that connect to the face. It usually happens after a patient is getting over a virus within 2 to 4 weeks. I was sick at Christmas so I fit the time table. It feels a little bit like how a stroke patient would feel. The doctor was hopeful it will not progress to much because I came in less than 12 hours after the symptoms began.

It has caused me to not be able to blink my eye fully and I have to wear a patch over my eye for the next 10 days, have numbing and tingling, can’t really speak very well and I will be re-evaluated soon. If you have ever had Novocain at the dentist then you know a little about how this feels but it is not quite that potent and does not wear off. I am on steroids for about a week and I also had an acupuncture session this am. Some of the tingling is less and the eyes feels a little better but I can’t be sure yet.
It is a little scary to think I could face this for a long time as some times it lasts3-6 months and can be permanent in about 10% of cases.

If anyone has faced this, please drop me a note and let me know if there was anything that really worked for you.

I am hopeful the recovery will happen soon.

Spending Log:
Dec 9: no spend day
Dec 10: no spend day

Today I need to do a litte grocery shopping, return a mattress to Ikea and get the right one, get gas, etc. so i till not be a no spend day.

Good and bad news: dinner with two girl friends was cancelled so no seeing them until after christmas but no spending done either and my fun money lives for another cople of days.

this weekend I have a party to celebrate dutch christmas and my nieces 23 birthday. I need to get her a gift and I am afraid I will have to hit the mals to get it. She was married a month ago so I think that I will pick up something off her registry at bed, bath and beyond or target or crate and barrel. something girly but sill good for their new life. Talk about easy gifts for the next few gift giving opportunities. I am excited about that!

It will be a quiet rainy weekend but I am glad for the rain. It is still cld here but not as much as it was earlier this week.

No spending Dec 7
No Spending Dec 8

I am freezing! The heat is on in the apartment but this apartment has bad insulation near the windows and very old windows. I can feel the cold seeping in. I am heading to bed in a few minutes after I put the chicken in the slow cooker to cook overnight.

It is just so weird for this city to be this cold.

Started my new weekly balance for this week today. I still have planty of groceries, gas and no plans to spend money until Friday when I might go catch a matinee. I need to start christmas shopping too. So far this month I am under budget by almost 7 dollars. Pretty good since I have been over budget for the past few months. I'll take it and hope that more savings will happen this month.

Spending log:
groceries 38.68 (still have 6.32 in budget)
movies 10.00
lunch 12.92
gas 27.00

All spending from my budget. I had a coupon for the gas station for 2.00 off a ten gallon fill up so i paid 25 and got 27. It was just over three quarters of a tank and it should last for at least a week but if it doesn't i have a new gas amount available on the 8th.

I saw the movie the blind spot. Loved it! Well worth the afternoon at the movies and since I was gone and someplace warm I could turn the heat off at the apartment. It is freezing here and mom has gotten some snow. Roads will be clear but icy for her tomorrow. We are supposed to get between 2 and 4 inches of rain but I have not seen more than a couple drops on my windshield all day.

Grocery shopping after the movie. It was all planned for on my grocery shopping list although I probably didn't have to buy the ice cream sandwiches!

Work this week is four days and a furlough friday. I have a dr. appointment for what I believe to be a pinched nerve in my back that I have been struggling with for 7 weeks. It needs to go away!

Even with the spending today I am within my budgeted amounts for the week Dec 1-7. I have new amounts for the week the 8th - 14 that I will put in my purse tonght. This is the first time i have been under budget in about 5 months.

Spending log:
$21 of spending money. Had dinner out.

Quiet day. I watched some tele as I sorted through a box of stuff I just tossed into a box when I moved. Thank goodness I only did that with two small boxes! One box down, one to go.

Tomorrow I think I might go see a movie. I need to go grocery shopping before the week begins. I also need to do that return at ikea to get the right stuff for the chair.

I discovered that the bed is high enough with the new frame that the clearance will actually allow me to put the boxes i packed under there. The clearance is a little more than 11 inches so I will find a coupld under the bed storage boxes for items that do not fit in the smaller packing boxes and it should be good.

Oh, I passed the written exam i needed to for my dream job and wrote the personal narratives i needed to but i don't think they are strong enough to make it to the next part but i hope they might be!

Spending log:
12/2 nothing
12/3 nothing
12/4 nothing furlough Friday. I stayed home in my apartment, watched some TV and some recorded items, laundry, cleaning, and putting away another box of the 10 or so I still have. I need some under the bed storage bins that I will pick up tomorrow when I return the wrong mattress at Ikea.

December Budget:
Rent 703
Spending/Fun 185
November Estimated electricity 75
November Natural gas 21.33 (less than I expected by about half!)
November Cable/internet 132.92
November Water/sewer/garbage estimate 40
Cell phones 125
IRA 50
Rental unit 10
Groceries 200
Donation to Care 15
Auto gas 125
Auto insurance savings 125
Auto repairs savings 100
Dentist bill 30 (1 of 2)
Netflix 15.21
Audible.com 14.95
Contacts savings 40
Chase 135
FIA 117
Amex 375
National 205
Car 150
Savings 1: 50
Savings 2: 50
Christmas 325

I have figured out what my grocery/fun/gas bills are for the weeks 1-7, 8-14, 15-21, 22-28 and 29-31 and enveloped them. The full weeks equal $115.16 for the grocery/fun/gas spending and the extra three days is 49.35 for the grocery/fun/gas expenses. (Daily money is groceries $5.96, fun $6.45, gas $4.03.)

I have yet to spend any money this month from my grocery/fun/gas budget. I will need to get gas tomorrow and might do some grocery shopping from the list of items I need for this next week and the meal planning I have done.

I am buying a treadmill from a colleague. She used it when she was recovering from knee surgery and has only put about 150 miles on it because as a runner she hated walking/running inside. It is in great condition and she said $150 and her husband will deliver it. It will have to go in my dining room area but I am excited about the possibility.

I have worked out my budget for 2010. If I stay on course with paying off debt instead of saving for a house I will have all but $2500 or so left and this is with the furlough days was have and the lost 15%. If the furloughs end in July 2010 and my raise takes effect that same month I could be completely credit card free by the end of November 2010. That is a nice feeling.

I wrote a long post about my expense plans for this next month and lost it so I am just ging to report spending for today:

12/1 took mom to lunch for $19.00

The one thing that has surprised me about moving: I have saved some money.

I know I have spent a lot of money buying items for the apartment and it seems like everytime I go into a store I walk out with something but all that spending was planned for years (really, years).

What has surprised me is that the stress that was in my life is gone. Well, almost gone. My former land lord is dragging her feet about final payments, that I owe for “lost” silverware (interesting story see below.) but overall there is lots less stress I feel. That has translated into me not spending money. I have been eating at home, enjoying my peace and quiet and just loving the apartment. I have not bought fast food (which was a staple for a while when things were so bad, where I could buy almost every meal out Mon-Fri.)and buying groceries for the house that I someone have $500 left over this month. Yes, I know that there is still a week to go but with only a couple of items needed at the store, it will be nice to end the month with money in the bank. I have not bought fast food since i moved on the third.

As for the lost silverware story…in my lease there is a clause that says the flatware she uses belonged to her mother and has sentimental value. She tells us that when a house mate moves in and out a count is done and all the house mates put money toward the flatware purchase. She told me my third of the flatware bill is around $300. I questioned that and asked for the inventories that “were completed upon my move in, when MC left and when BC moved in and when I left but especially when MC left because I have no record of having to pay her money for a purchase.” She has no inventories from previous times. NONE. She just ways that this is what is owed by me for my time in the house. Um, excuse me?

I then asked my former housemate MC what she had to pay because I have no records of having to pay anything when MC left. MC sad that she didn’t have to pay anything. LL never did the count and told her she owed anything. So…LL is saying I owe $300…and I say no, if you can’t prove what I owe, why do I need to pay this amount? She said I am calling her a liar. Yep. Sure am.

Oh, did I mention that MC fond two spoons and a couple other pieces in her stuff when she moved (over a year ago) that she JUST returned to LL? No mention of this from LL, no change in what I owe to her. MC also mentioned other items that she did not have to do: shampoo the carpets, extreme cleaning, etc, etc.

If LL refuses to give me back my $450 security deposit because of this I am going to file papers and take her to small claims court. She can’t stick me with the bill just because I am leaving and she is pissed that things are not going her way. She was pissed I gave 30 days notice then moved out on the 3rd. I paid for the month and the utilities. What does it matter when I moved out? With the wedding, dad’s visit, moms heart stuff and work stuff it was the time line that worked for me. There is no way I could have moved the week of Thanksgiving, this week. I had a long scheduled stay-cation that worked with the coupon I had from the moving company. And LL tried to say that I never shampooed the carpets or returned two items that got “shuffled” into my kitchen items. I returned them last week and spent chatting 20 minutes with the neighbor who liked me. I asked him to witness the drop off of the key to the mail shoot and the drop off of the items. LL said I owed her XX dollars for the stuff. I said I dropped it off , oh and did I mention that R says hello, we had a lovely chat when he escorted me onto the patio and stood there as I dropped all of it off. Ha! HA! I am SOOOOO GLAD I am gone!

I really hope that I get the chance to take her to court. She brags about how she has taken former housemates to court and always won. Let’s see her win this time, especially with the comments and email from MC.

And being able to control the heat/ac is nice too! I use lap blankets and wear layers in the winter. I hope my bill is less than $40 for the month each month! I am waiting for my first bill to come for electric and hot water.

Spending log Friday Nov 13: Dinner at Chicago Fire with K and J $26.00

One more day closer to mom's surgery and I am trying to get a grip on my emotions. I am the only one who is going to be at the hospital in case she has to get transferred to the other hospital if an emergency happens.

One sister can't afford to take the day off and I will text her every 15 minutes if I have to. Other sister talked about coming up after kids are sent to school but i mentioned they might have to transport her if they decide she needs to be at the other hospital and it is close to her house. It would be better for her to sit tight until we know if she is going to be up or down the hill. Mom has packed her bag and got everything together in case she has to be transported and for staying at my sisters for the three nights they want someone with her. My new place is to small and she hates the mattress on my bed. so now we wait......

Spending log: Thursday zero. Went home for lunch today as I live about a mile away now. Nice to do that occassionally and not worry about work. I am moved into the new place and love it. I will write more about that later.

The thing that is really hardright now is that my mom is facing an angioplasty Monday. She went into the doctor a week ago Monday with some chest pains. She was diagnosed with congestive heart failure about two and a half years ago but has been good on medication and responding well. The pains came on Sunday night and she took two nitroglycerin and they went away.

I am incredibly scared for her. I want things to go well with the angio and all I think is that we are going to lose her. I am not ready to lose my mom. I know no one is ever ready but I am really scared. Tears come when I think of it.

Will you all say some prayers that we can get her through this and all be ok on the other side of Monday? I could really use the prayers and good thoughts.

Spending Log
Tuesday 14 at food source
Wednesday 21lunch with mom at applebees free meal event for veterans day for her

I got the apartment and signed the lease yesterday. I set up my utilities yesterday too. I decided to get a phone line for now but will re-evaluate after christmas and see if my cell phone is working ok.

I did get cable but got a pretty good deal for a year and lots of extra channels. I will probably do what i did this past year and dvr lots of movies to watch sometime in the future when the movie channels go away.

I am pulling some money from savings to go shopping and buy some furniture and needed items for the apartment. I have been saving money for so long for a house and furniture that I think this is ok. Not a lot of furniture but a love seat that is also a pull out bed, another love seat, a chair that changes into a single bed, a couple of book shelves, dishes, glasses, silverware, etc. and most importantly a bed frame!! Yeah!!

I know what I want and even the prices. I will not go overboard but will enjoy the fruits of my labors and am excited to get some new things for my new to me home.

I wanted to add something about emergency preparedness (EP) to one of my previous blogs but since I did not write it down it was missed.

I often wonder, when people have to evacuate an area, do they know where they should go and how much gas it would take to get there? I know that in my current car (getting 25 mpg) I would need about two gallons to get to my moms house, which is my evacuation point if something happened in the valley. Where is your evacuation point, how many miles away is it located, and how much gas would it take to get you there safely?

During the storm several weeks ago a good portion of the area I in which I was staying lost power. Usually I would not worry about anything except…I let my gas tank get WAY below a quarter of a tank. My little gas tank computer told me I had about 50 miles to go with a 22 mile commute to work.

In the past I would never have let my tank get that low. With the advent of the high cost of gas the past few years I have let the purchasing go about 8-10 days between fill ups. It has become a bad habit to let it get to about 30 miles of gas left before I fill up. This can be dangerous to do for many reasons, but let’s discuss this from the EP side.

As I mentioned before, the power was out in my local area when I left for work that morning. I noticed the gas level and realized that if I got stuck in traffic I could have a severe problem and began to realize that my previous strategy of filling up every Sunday regardless of the level of my tank would have come in handy, had I continued to follow it!

Then a second item hit me.

I used to work for a large petroleum company that ran many stations. When the power went out we often could not process credit cards for purchases, even when the power came back on. I realized that if I had not fallen out of my habit of getting gas on Sundays and keeping about $30 cash (in various denominations) in the glove box for gas emergencies then I would be fine and not have to worry as I would still be able to purchase gas with the cash.

I drove for a bout 5 miles when I found an area where the power was on and I was able to fill up my tank, great news! The bad news was that I was soaking wet by the time I finished filling up my tank and arrived to work wet and looking, shall we say, less than professional. If I had stuck to my usual planning neither the worry nor being wet would have occurred.

I remember there were reports of gas shortages as people tried to evacuate the New Orleans area before Hurricane Katrina and in the Houston area before Hurricane Rita. Not having enough gas can mean a lot of abandoned cars along the road, impeding an evacuation.

I have returned to my habits of getting gas on Sunday (or when the tank gets less than half full) to ensure that I could get to where I need to be without any problems.

How low do you let your tank get before filling up?

Good news: the apartment people called and I get the apartment! Yeah! But I can’t move into the other one as that one was rented the day before I got there. Darn! The next solution to find:

How do you choose which telephone/cable/internet packages to go with???

I have to pay around $35 a month for sewer/water/garbage to the complex on top of my rent. The property manager said for a unit my size he has never seen it go over $37 a month for those three. I budgeted $40.

The manager said natural gas and electricity should be around $100 a month. Gas item is only the water heater and should run about $25 or less a month. Everything else is electric. So, if I continue to keep things around 68 degrees and use layers and the occasional electric lap blanket and dry most of my washables (excluding sheets and towels as I hate scratchy sheets and towels) by air dry and hanging I should be able to keep both under $100. My goal is $75 for the two. The apartment is 700 square feet, surrounded on all but the front wall with other apartments so I don’t think it will be hard. Unfortunately for the winter I am in the back of a building so I get no direct sunlight into the apartment but for summer this should be good as it will keep the apartment cooler, I think?

I am trying to determine if I need to have a land line or if my cell will get enough reception in the apartment to not need it. I’d like to save money and only get cable and internet if I could but I am not sure of the signal strength in the apartment. Talking to the office staff, three of them live at the complex and have only cells phones and have no problems so that is a comfort. I think I am going to try to be cell phone only at this apartment as well for the time being. It will save me some money.

I am looking at bundling the cable/internet/land line into one product. Do I have to have a landline to get internet services? Can I get internet through the cable wires and still have it be wireless through out the house? I won’t have a TV or cable in my bedroom but I would like to be able to use my laptop or netbook in my bedroom and watch a movie if I want online.

How can you tell which is a better service: 1.5 mbs or 12 mbs? Is it worth paying $30 more for the second service over the other? How about $5 or $10 to increase it up to 6?

Is there anyone out there will to give me questions to ask as I begin to look for these packages? I have never had cable/phone/internet at any place I lived that I had to set up other than dial up internet about 15 years ago and have always been cell phone only.

What should I be looking for speed wise to be able to down load and watch movies and TV shows from places like Netflix?

Ugh…I knew this was going to be a learning curve but really do they have to make it soooo confusing? The people I spoke with were really confusing me yesterday when I called to compare some different plans and get information.

So I found an apartment to rent. It looked nice online and the community looked good. I wandered through the complex yesterday and spoke to a couple who live there and they like it a lot. Very safe and quiet and people seem respectful.

So I went and looked at the 2 one bedrooms they had available. I decided on one but today I am calling to see if I could have the other instead. It has an extra window and neighbors only on one side, not two, and it was right across from the “gym (had three pieces of equipment and some weights) so I would never have an excuse for not at least taking a walk on the tread mill.

I filled out an application and paid the deposit to hold it so once they process it I will find out if I am approved. It is 677 square feet for $700 a month. It has a small patio accessible through the bedroom or the living room. The carpets, appliances and counters were all replaced within the last year. The carpets were freshly steam cleaned right before our walk through. It is across a small courtyard from the pool area but all the people I spoke with who also live there say there is little noise and the pool is not used that much. It will be great for when my nieces and nephews come to visit me!

It is within walking distance of my office! A short 20 minute walk and I would be at work. That is kind of exciting to me.

I am taking a class at a local college that allows me to put my student loans into deferment. I make payments but do not accrue any interest. My goal is to have accrued less than $4,000 in interest over the life of the loan when I finally pay it all off.

The course is actually a move class. Yep, you heard right, a class all on movies and has been a lot of fun. The first course was westerns, and while I still don’t care for them I learned to appreciate them and the art that they are. This second course is on musicals and we watch movies like The Wizard of Oz and Meet me in St. Louis to the Disney Beauty and The Beast and it has truly been a fun course.

For a couple looking for a cheap date night twice a week it would be perfect. See a couple of movies and have a nice evening. The total course was $60 for the 8 weeks so that makes each evening about $3.75 per person. I am usually home by 8:30 so it is not a late night but is still a fun outing. I have even brought a few friends to the movies because about 80% of the class leaves after the ten minute lecture so there is plenty of room. I have even brought in movie theater popcorn for the whole class. It has been quite a kick!

They announced next semester’s topics: Fantasy (which I will struggle with because I don’t really like this genre) and Romantic Comedies. I think it will be a fun semester next spring too. The fall looks like it will be foreign films and then maybe black and white.

I think I am really enjoying these classes because I never got to study the fun stuff in college. I was so focused on getting through school that I only really took courses that were geared toward my major.

I have a friend who will be joining me for the fantasy class. She loves the movies they talked about showing and would love to see them on the big screen instead of her little TV. We never get a chance to just hang out so this should be fun.

Just something to consider if you are looking for some weekly cheap fun or dates.

Movie Quiz:
Anyone name the musical my blog title song comes from?

So….I made an additional deposit of $420 to the house down payment account. I should be able to put another $75 on Monday.

Work is going OK although I am a bit bored at present. I was able to order a new chair and being the state we have to order from a specific company. $760 for a chair is ridiculous but having one that fits me, goes up and down etc is almost priceless.

This week and next are the longest weeks of my life. I have to work 5 days a week and it feels weird to after all the furlough days. I sometimes think that going to full pay, full days is going to be really hard to do after this furlough stuff goes away. But bring on the full pay!

Nothing else really happening right now financially and I still have almost $300 until payday a week from Friday so that is good.

I keep meaning to write a series of posts about how to take a year, frugally and with some careful thought, and prepare your home and supplies for an emergency. I know this industry really well and that storm we had last week (which they likened as a small hurricane) caused many people to scramble for supplies and materials for the loss of power we experienced. (Ironically me as well as I was house sitting and could not find her supply of candles and matches or flashlights. I used the one flash light from my car emergency kit and bought candles the next day to put into my house sitting kit.)

Would you guys be interested in a series of articles around this topic?

Of the things I wanted to accomplish Sunday:

1 Met A for coffee and we talked for three hours. I have not seen her for a month so it was so good to hear about her trip to Portland and rehash the FSOT exam I took several weeks ago.

I reset the closet item and reconfigured furniture in my one room. It looks a little different but it will work for now.

I washed several loads of laundry but need to do two more and the sheets/pillow cases off the bed. But I feel good about what I did do.

I went and looked at three houses and almost made an offer on one but the seller has accepted an offer already. It has been on the market two days.

Could not balance check book because I left it on my desk at work. First time I have ever done that! I will work on it later this week.

I did get gas and the mail.

Tomorrow I will:

1. Meet A for coffee.
2. reset closet thingy with basket usually blocking the attic.
3. wash laundry, dry, fold an dput away.
4. look at 2 houses
5. balance check book for the rest of the month.
6. get mail and fill up gas tank.

Today was a quiet day. I slept in and read late in the morning. I went to my nephews soccer game and then we got jamba juice. It was 80 and HUMID today. Awful for October. i hung out with my nephew and nieces while my sister had a couple hours to herself to grocery shop and unwind. I told her she could NOT return for a minimum of 2.5 hours and gave her money to pick up pizza.

We enjoyed dinner and a movie (Aliens vs. Monsters was pretty good) before i headed home. I returned home later then I wanted but it was a nice day and good to spend time with the kids. Tomorrow is pretty low key too. But the next two weeks are long non-furlough weeks and i wanted a pretty quiet day. So it is going to be a looooong month.

I made it home last night after being gone house sitting since August 1 (except for a week in there some place when I was at the house). It has proven to me that I really do not want to live where I live and with the housemates I live with.

For the past two months no stress, no problems, no tension in my upper back and neck. It has been wonderful. I woke up Sunday with so much tension I could barely turn my head. My upper back and neck have been bothering me ever since. It all happened when I realized I only had a couple days left at the house sit and would have to return to the house.

I really need to find a house or move out to some little apartment. If I move out into an apartment that means I will have very little to save for a down payment. So… there is much to consider in the next couple of months.

I am turning in several applications for part time seasonal employment that if I could snag one of these jobs, would help with the saving of some additional money if I decided to move out.

I updated my ticker to show an additional $900 to my down payment account. I should have another $500 or so to add. I was hoping to add in closer to $800 on the second deposit this month but the weight I have gained in the past year has really started to show in my clothes and while I am working to lose it, I need some work clothes!

Someone posted a comment about my goal of working for the foreign service someday and asking where I would want to go. With the FS you have to have world wide availability. You serve at the pleasure of the department and while you bid and work toward a particular post, they really have the final say as the where you serve.

I would be happy anyplace. I speak Spanish and have studied French, Russian and Mandarin in the past ten years. I also studied a bit of Dutch when living in Holland and a semester of Korean in college for a job I had. I would go where ever they want!

The price of gas was $2.85 when I went to fill it last night. The house where i have been house sitting for the past month is about 40 minutes to work on a good day. I have seen my gas bill more than double in the past six weeks. I have no more house sits until the week before Thanksgiving.

The last house sit couple asked me if I would be interested in sitting for a month next year. Of Course I would.

I have been really quiet posting because I really have not had much to say.

I have made offers on three houses/condos and have always been outbid by only a couple thousand dollars. It is interesting that then they come back and have problems with the financing. I have resubmitted offers on the same houses twice because of financing issues. Why not choose the candidate with the best credit and score and less debts owed then the offer that is offering the most money. Even the house I fell in love with 6 months ago is back on the market because of financing issues. I am not willing to bid again because mello roos and how fees equal 315/month on top of the mortgage. Just to rich for me. If it came down 25k then maybe I would consider it again.

Work is going ok. I had my review and had “excellent” in all categories but I will not receive a raise at all because of the budget issues. My 5% came in July and they quickly took 4.8% away for the furlough day they added. So my “raise” this year was .02%. not even close to the cost of living.

Anyone notice the cost of gas? $3.15 per gallon here. It is trading below $70 and it is $3.15?

I signed up for the written foreign service exam in October. That is my dream job. Even my boss knows it and the joke he tells me is he is retiring in one year so I better pass the orals this year and get a job offer so he can retire and know I am ok. I enjoy working with my boss and the team we have. I am just so burned out right now that it is painful to come to work.

I have been house sitting a lot lately, pretty much continuously since August 1 except for two nights spent at my house.

I have added close to $2000 to my house savings account in the past few months by being careful in my shopping, using coupons, not going over my budget, bringing my lunch to work. I have an additional $2400 planned for by the end of October. I stand at $3125 for this additional savings so ….maybe I can make the $2400 addition!

I have been reading even though I have not been posting, glad to see so many regulars and the newer blogs so active.

I am so ready for fall weather and it is supposed to be 103 degrees tomorrow!

The past few months have been pretty stressful. The state has slowly taken away 15% of my salary with another 5-10% expected.

I am frustrated that I have worked long and hard to get where I am and we have a state leader who insists on trying to balance the budget on the backs of state workers or using state workers as pawn in his game. His political career is toast so he wants to take out as many as he can. The thing he doesn’t get: cutting salaries means cutting the taxes he gets from state employees.

Cutting the number of days we work means cutting the amount of time employees have to collect taxes from businesses and tax returns.

He wants to cut employee levels to about 30 % of what it is currently. The largest state in the union should have 30% less employees. California ranks 49th in the amount of employees to population with 235k employees to 33 million residents and estimated 5 million illegal aliens.

All my dreams of having my own house by the time I am 35 are toast. I can’t put any money away toward retirement because the money he is cutting is what I put away each month. Buying a house would just put a greater strain on my budget and make it way to scary without having enough income if anything happened.

I worked hard, educated myself and took a job that would be serving the people of California and ensure they are protected during major event and that the state is prepared to respond or support local governments. I choose public service because I believe in it and believe it is a way to return the blessing I have received. Doing the same job in the private sector is almost impossible.

Trying to think positive in this climate
I have come up with the following things

I think about on a daily basis:

I am lucky I have a job.

I am lucky I still have a job that pays well.

I am preparing for passing the written exam again (having done so in the past) and the oral exam (having come close and missing it by literally .05 points) in my dream job. I have scheduled the written exam for October and hope to have the orals (and pass them) in February or March 2010. If I do well enough there will be a job offer by this time next summer.

I have a family that is healthy and for the most part happy. Tough times are ahead for my sister but as a family we can get through anything.

I have good friends who are fun and loving.

I still love my job and find it fun and exciting and most days I want to be there.

I enjoy (most) of my co workers.

I have interesting hobbies and skills.

I am trying to remember the positive things that I have currently in my life.

I will enjoy my Furlough Fridays and work toward fnding a part time job to supplement my lost income.

I started this entry as a reaction to the story link Baselle posted in her blog. It is based partly upon that story but also on my fears, the current economic situation and the state of the economy for the state of California.

My big fear is if I buy a house I will lose my job or something like that and be forced into losing my house. I am talking about buying a house that has payment of about 1100 per month and I am stressing about it. I want my own place but am I ready for the big burden of owning my own place?

On top of everything I work for the state of California. Yep, that wonderful state that just 20 years ago was the leader in education, financial markets, one of the top 5 economies in the world even compared to some countries. And now where are we? Overspent, looking at bankruptcy, cutting state jobs (you see my worry here right?) and cutting state employee salaries another 10%.

I agree that there are some employees out there who do not earn their paychecks but there are others of us who educated ourselves (masters degree here), work hard every day and earn each of those pennies they give us. I take work home and don't claim the OT because we can't earn it right now but my work still needs to be completed. Cutting us an additional 10% and laying off people, that are some hard choices.

Please don’t tell me that I could leave the state service and go do the same work someplace else because that is just not true for the field in which I work. My education, both bachelors and masters were geared to serving people, I left as a peace corps volunteer (and came home injured not finishing my service, something I regret every day). I love my work for the state even if I am not earning what I could be. I feel it is a small piece of service to the community and the state.

But what about cutting some of those contractors the state hires? I am not talking about those contractors who build things and remodel things. I am talking about the grant funding that is used to hire “experts” who (in my PERSONAL ) experience have no idea what they are doing? They are making 90-125k a year (also in my PERSONAL experience) taking a job a state employee could be doing. Let’s look at this from a financial point of view:

The state hires someone through a contract with an “agency”. This agency could be a contract through a non profit, a university research center or another place.

They hire someone and pay the “agency” the salary and an administrative fee that is about 40% of the salary of the person they hired. This is supposed to cover the benefits of the employee and a fee for the “processing” of this employee.
Why do I know all of this? I was a contract employee, hired through an “agency” on loan to the state. I never made close to 100k, indeed my highest salary was between 45 and 50k. I earned the equivalent of the other people doing similar work. For the other contractors across the state this is not true. They make close to twice what a normal state workers makes and add in 40% for the administrative fees.

When I no longer wanted to be a contractor because I wanted a permanent job I took a state exam sponsored by another state office, placed first on the exam list and then was hired in the office where I had been working for several years.

Does me not wanting the state to be paying for contractors make me a hypocrite? Maybe, but I was educated and experienced when I took the contractor position and when I took the exam and through the whole experience. I placed that well on the exam list because I prepared, used my education and experience and worked hard to get ready. This is not always the case for the contractors and why should they make twice the other state workers?

The state could save several million dollars in just the one office I worked in, and hire two employees for each ONE hired as a contractor. Most of the money (in fact 99%) of the money the office I worked at was federal grant money good for 5 year period. Do you know how many people the state could keep on, without losing jobs, if they replaced the contractors with state employees? Almost 2 to 1. Yes this might not affect the budget to much as it is federal money, but, it would mean keeping some jobs without having to lay off state employees.

I am so frustrated with where the state is and about the possibility of people being laid off, including me (I got one of those letters even though I have 6+ years at the state). Now they are saying they are definitely going to lay off 5000 people. My agency says they will not be losing staff as we are going to eliminate vacant positions and save millions through not hiring people. But what happens three months from now? Six months from now? I want to buy a house! This is the year when it is a good time to do it, I am financially stable, have money set aside to do a nice down payment and I want the tax breaks that are being offered. But do I do it when the economy is so bad?

I just don’t know what to do.
~~~~~
On another note the house I made an offer on was out bid by about 2500k.
There is a foreclosure houw I looked at yesterday. It needs some appliances (as there is nothing there), and door, hardware and handles for the bedroom and bathrooms (why would you take those? Are they really worth any money?) light fixtures in the bed rooms and some covers and a swith or two in other areas. It is a three bed 2 bath home listed for 159900. They are anticipating many offers. Payments would be around 1100 a month, do I make an offer?

There will be many more homes coming up for foreclosure in the next few weeks as the 90 day moratorium is gone. Do I wait or offer?