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Archive for October, 2011

money is fungible

October 29th, 2011 at 04:27 am

Over the course of 28 months (2 yrs + 4 months) I've found $166.03.

Two weeks ago I bought a Kindle for $150 (including tax), loaded it with 1 $9.99 book, and bought another during the daily deal for $1.99. Sweet, no?

I bought a case for it for $15, which puts me over the top, but if anybody laughs at me for picking up pennies ...

Well, I bought my Kindle with found money.

And I really needed the Kindle tonight during the commute. It took forever - downtown traffic was astonishing ugly - and a main intersection in my neighborhood is closed this weekend (and will be next weekend) so it can be fixed in time for next road season's cone chess on 85th.

lunchtime conversation

October 27th, 2011 at 04:56 am

I had a nice lunch time conversation with several temp staff helping our non-profit fundraise. I learned the loss leaders for a six or seven different grocery stores, and everybody knew that all the weekly specials changed on Wednesday. Lately I've been eating an avocado for lunch; found out that they were 88 cents each.

I've been keeping up with the tip box and have been still finding change. I'm again not feeling the urge to put on a costume this Halloween, but there are going to be a couple of potlucks for it - I can be festive in that way.

so much for saving

October 26th, 2011 at 03:47 am

In case one wanted to know why interest rates are dropping ... and for some of us with a lot of money, soon it will get even worse.

Text is Link and Link is http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/25/business/banks-flooded-with-cash-they-cant-profitably-use.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=banks&st=Search
Link

Haven't heard much about the mattress lately. I give it six more months before the jokes start.

Treasury Direct doings

October 23rd, 2011 at 03:22 am

Not much happening on any of the financial fronts, but if you have some Ibonds or an electronic account with Treasury Direct, I note that they are

Text is changing their logins and Link is http://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/myaccount/changes_treasurydirect.htm
changing their logins - soon there won't be a need for that secret code card.

Its the damn downside of investments. If you have diversity, you tend to have diverse websites, and you have diverse passwords. I'm getting old and website account maintanence of any form is not exciting. In this case, I'd prefer to kill a tree.

40$ per paycheck

October 18th, 2011 at 04:21 am

The raise wasn't too shabby. I think I will increase the savings transactions to compensate before I get too used to it.

I looked at my own Chase rewards and I've activated the 5%. One of the categories this month was charitable giving. I'm toying with the idea of giving by credit card vs giving by payroll deduction...work the system a little bit.

Occupy Seattle

October 16th, 2011 at 03:28 am

Today I visited Westlake Center to see what I can see amongst the Occupy Seattle group. A good thousand people were there. The energy was high, many of the homemade signs were clever and creative - my fave so far was Only Boehner's Tears Trickle Down. One sign had an Elizabeth Warner quote "The rich didn't get that way by themselves"; I had a nice chat with the lady (my age) holding it.

About 70% of the people were under 30, but there were a number of people my age also.

This whole thing, though, reminds me of the first day of the WTO riots before the anarchists came. And the anarchists were there, ever hopeful. Fewer black hoods and more Guy Faulks masks. I picked up the anarchist newsletter (which seems oxymoronic) where an article also compared this to the WTO riots.

Anybody else in a city with an Occupy group? Anybody else visit it?

Busted!

October 14th, 2011 at 04:01 am

My boss, a co worker, and I went on a work field trip this afternoon. Over the walk there, I picked up a nickel and penny ... so I was busted on my change finding habits. My boss got a kick out of it, though.

But the real fun will begin tomorrow morning - the pay raise kicks in this next paycheck.

I can't get too used to the extra though. I turn 50 in April, so come January I have to think about pursuing that 403B catchup. Scary, but I thought pushing my 403B to the max was scary. (For you who haven't thought about this deeply - everybody else in the world - I got an inheritance, which is taxable. I hiked up the 403B to get the tax break, figuring that when the taxable money was spent, I'd drop the 403B to a more reasonable level. Still have plenty of taxable money.)

Waiting for the weekend!

the 8 year itch

October 8th, 2011 at 07:14 am

It turns out that I use my electronic stuff just fine for about 9 or so years. Back sometime in 1994- 1995, I got my first "laptop" - a subnotebook brick. 386chip ... I was riding high ... and at the time, the internet was mostly usenet so we all grunted and got on with typing. My critter did suffer from Y2K ... all my files were written in 1900. Big Grin

By 2003- 2004 DJ friend (and co worker) had a friend selling Dell laptops. I was a hair nervous buying from him, but as of yesterday, it was what I went online with, and it still works today. It is, however, a good 5-6 pounds. In other words, these days its a tank.

The night I blogged that I was trying out the netbook from DJ friend I wrote the check for $250 - includes the DVD/CD drive, and a wireless mouse. In return, I loaned him a 12 year old copy of Word 2000 for his wife's job search. In return of that, DJ friend's business partner who does sound mastering needs a laptop to run the mastering software and tanks work well. Since the laptop was an old friend, I didn't want to just toss it and storing it in the attic was wasteful too. Giving the laptop to him was a perfect solution! ...And it was 8-9 years so I got a good cost to use ratio.

So I got a serious lightness and speediness upgrade for $250, DJ friend got Word, DJ friend's business partner got a laptop that he can use.

On a side electronics note, I also got the ad version of a 3G keyboard Kindle. Wow, so light and reading things are just so easy. I'm a little bummed that I appear to have to pay a small second subscription on a home delivery subscription. If I love reading the paper on the Kindle, I might drop the home delivery to just weekends or something.

It will be strange, though. I wonder what stuff I'll be using 8 years from now.

brava mjrube!

October 6th, 2011 at 05:55 am

I'll be cryptic because you know why. You were the only one - 44 points and a commanding lead.

test driving a netbook

October 5th, 2011 at 03:16 am

So DJ friend bought a netbook for his dad, but found an iPad even better for his needs, so he is interested in selling the next-to-never-used netbook to me for $200. So far, I've loaded Firefox, NPR and this blog. Its very cute and very light, and frankly, as long as I can surf, crank an Excel sheet, I'm happy. It'll be quite a change if I get this - I've had my laptop since (also bought from DJ friend) 2004. Sweet!