Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $1.25 coffee + $6 lunch (for 2 days) + $3 carrots, apple + $5 bubblebath, deodorant

Back to the finances. A little financial tidbit to get off my chest. Again with the I-bonds, and I noticed a number of articles contained cutting comments about how its a good thing that savings bonds are becoming unappealing because taxpayers are paying the interest.

Perhaps. That opinion still burns me up, though, because it implies that I'm unpatriotic and a leech because I've taken out an I-bond or two (or about 30). Such a turnaround from the opinions of the past - imagine that being said during WWII.

Humph. Is it my fault that I had the savings to invest in the first place? I mean, if I wasn't there to buy the dang US savings bond, the taxpayer would have to fund that 50-5,000$ in addition to the interest. There. That's much better! Perhaps I should fund someone else's government should I wish to do so. T-bills are indirectly funded by taxpayers too, not to mention the funds that the Federal Reserve uses to provide liquidity to financial markets.

Do we, as a society, really think so little of savers?

Saving log - $7 tip box
Spending log - $1.25 coffee + $8 lunch

Neither of the big checks were presented to the bank, and my ING transfer went through, so I could move the money back to savings. Now you know that if I hadn't moved the money in the first place, it would have been a different result.

Have to call the Ameriprise planner to close that account. All I will have left is stock and apparently, legally an email stating that decision is not good enough. Makes some sense, but a phone call is even more ephemeral than an email.

I've put the money into Vanguard, but I've put it in a money market fund, so I can buy the funds at once.

Got my new glasses today, and they replaced the lenses on my old glasses. It is such a luxury having two pair, even though right now it means I squint in a different way.

Been quiet otherwise.

Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $.84 apple

First day back to work. DJ friend bought me belated birthday lunch today, so it was a nearly no spend day.

Checked out the new I-bond rates set this May 1. I-bond rates have two component - a fixed rate that is set for the life of the bond, and the variable rate based on inflation, set every six months. You want to keep your eye on the fixed rate because that was going to be what was going to protect your I-bond from inflation. I figured that the fixed rate was going to be crappy. It was crappier beyond my wildest dreams:

0.0%

In other words no protection from inflation and if there's deflation (hey, you never know), these I-bonds can actually lose money. I guess that's what the US Treasury is gambling on - lots of inflation and no deflation. In addition, the US Treasury is trying to move savers to T-bills away from savings bonds - you can buy t-bills in $100 increments, while you can't buy more than $5000/yr in savings bonds. Don't know how that's going to work out for the US in the future.

Anyway, I'm glad that I've bought extra I-bonds last week and finished my position.

My photo for today. We had the May Day why-not-inconvenience-the-commute rally at 4-6 pm. Nice to know that in Seattle, when the revolution comes, it will be catered:

Pulled the trigger on two of my decisions from the last entry. Started the new drip (IP) by filling out the application, and I added $500 to my bank Drip.

I have no idea when my stimulus check is going to hit my account - I filed electronically, but I paid by check. I'll either be 2 weeks from now or 5 weeks from now.

Found out that sister gave her notice to her job last Friday. Her last day is the 9th. Her plan is to take six months off and work on the farmette.

Still on my vacation and kicked around town again today. Went to the Tully's downtown to catch up with three people from tinfoil-hat set . They've always been there kvetching, watching CNN and CNBC, waiting for the recession. Actually, except for the fact that I don't own gold or silver, I apparently fit right in. During the conversation, I found out that only one of us had a car, two of us rented, and none of us changed our food buying habits. So we are all carless cranks throwing our money away on rent.

Kicked around West Seattle, then came back to downtown Seattle and did the $6.70 mini-vacation - I took the ferry to Bremerton and back. I managed to get back before it got too windy and before the storm clouds in the west hit Seattle.

Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $3 coffee, turnover + $7 lunch + $45 groceries

Screenwriter friend is starting to make an independent movie based one of his scripts. Today I helped him out with auditions. I really didn't do much - I provided a friendly face and was an additional presence while people tried out for various roles. It made for an interesting Saturday.

Right now I've a cluster of "small" financial decisions to make.

I, like retire@50, have also bumped up my I-bond purchase for this month. I'm purchasing $400 in I-bonds, for a total of $10K. I figure it will complete my holdings for a little while. Because the t-bill auctions have garnered such a poor interest rate (.8-1.5%), I figure that the May I-bonds will have a very poor fixed interest rate, giving me an excuse not to buy any for a little while, meaning I have $100/month to invest somewhere else.

I will have my round lot of KO in June. After June, I will stop buying KO for a little while and let that ride. I might pick that up again if KO drops back down below $50. Here I have $50/month to invest somewhere else.

One of my CDs is maturing at the end of May. Bummer - its at 5.2%. I won't get such a lovely interest rate for a little while. I plan on rolling it over, but for a 6 month term. It will be a bad interest rate, but it makes no sense to lock it in for longer than 6 months. The interest the CD earned is going to ING.

The bank Drip stock that I own has bucked the trend and increased its dividend by a penny/share/quarter. I read that as a sign of strength and plan on adding to my position of the stock, using savings. Not too much - $500 or so.

I'm going to start a new Drip with the $600 stimulus check. Not saving, but not spending either. I have the paperwork; all that's necessary is to fill out the form my transfer agent provided. Since I'm so used to paying $50/month for a drip, in a sense I'm trading KO for something else.

Saving log - $3 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $8 lunch

Put in this month's collection from the tip box into savings - $46 worth.

Looking into getting a currency CD from www.everbank.com, because the interest rates look and because I'm assuming that the dollar will get weaker before its gets stronger. Anyone else out there looking into owning one?

Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $7 lunch + $14 groceries + $50 cash

For the new readers out there: saving log and spending log are quick snapshots of what I spent or saved that day. Nothing much more.

Since my Paypal interest rate is not any higher than my ING account, I consolidated by moving the Paypal money into ING.

Getting my folders ready for the tax advisor tomorrow night. I still have to find my SS card and my last year's form. If nothing else, I have files for both on my flash drive.

Lawyer friend's youngest brother was diagnosed with a serious form of leukemia; he's heading out tomorrow for the east coast.

Tomorrow is the last day for my temp guy. He can speak Mandarin Chinese; his new job depends on his ability to translate and he was tested on it. He squinted at a character and said, "Badger?". The company was very happy; no one else figured that character out.

Tonight I was milling around my bus stop at my usual time. Intermediate transit lesson for today is: Identify your markers. Markers are people who share your regular schedule and who you ride with. See them milling around the stop and be consoled that you didn't miss the bus. If you get sick of watching the road for your bus, watch their movements instead. If they're heading for the edge of the sidewalk, so should you. Its considered a nice touch if you yourself have a memorable flair and you're regular; you too can become a shining beacon marker for someone else.

Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $6.50 lunch

Just in case you're new and you need to know about the mysterious tip box:

http://baselle.savingadvice.com/2007/04/10/the-infamous-tip-...

DJ friend was excited about getting several more coupons to his favorite Indian restaurant, so we went. The coupon, however, was for 11-noon and 1-2, leaving that critical lunch rush 12-1 at full price. Look at your coupons carefully!

Still not looking at my stocks and equities this week. We've had the drop in prices, now we have the rally. Of course the rally didn't really make up for the drop.

In gym today two other trainers were teasing my trainer. We now have a little index card binder into which my trainer writes the wicked routine she devised for me. Index card binder = $4.50, including index cards with the holes. The binder opens up the long way, like a checkbook, so when my trainer writes notes, it looks like my trainer was bribing me with checks during my routine. 15 pushups for a buck, anyone?

Still holding at 184!

Saving log - $7 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $13 stamps

Third free lunch of the week. I pay now for the next two days.

Put what was in the tip box into savings. $46. Not too bad this month. Payday yesterday, so I could move another $100 from checking into ING. I needed to pick up some stamps, just in case, so I got a sheet of Forever stamps along with a sheet of regular ones.

Made a quick dinner, but had a bit of a scare - a jar of crushed garlic broke in my hands. Luckily I didn't get cut, but the sauce got a lot more garlic than it should have. I rescued the rest of the garlic, checking for shards, by putting it in a plastic container with a bit of olive oil on top.

Found a dime in between our couch cushions.

Saving log - $2 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee

Many freebees. Got cash for the sandwich, enough to do the footlong drill (buy a footlong sub, eat 1/2 one day, other 1/2 the next), got a free coffee from the financial planner, who I had a meeting with this morning. I have to do a bit of research comparing Vanguard with Schwab, especially figuring out fees when I rebalance. I suspect Vanguard will pass with flying colors, but you never know.

The issue is that my portfolio was fine before the serious influx of inheritance money. Now everything has to be re-jiggered to get the appropriate % to the now much larger total.

The plan is to take all but 180K of cash/cash equivalents (180K should be enough for a 50-60% down payment of a Seattle house in my neighborhood in about 3 yrs, a bit of emergency, along with some payments to sister for farmette), put them in a moderately aggressive portfolio. Each account that can't be rolled over into Vanguard - 403B, IRA, Roth IRA, should contain 1 or 2 different accounts to make it simple to determine whether one asset or fund is doing fantastically well or bad.

Emailed the Amerprise guy. Yes, the box of checks we gave you - use 'em. At the very end, to scrape up the little bits of interest, I need to email him to get the paperwork to completely close the account.

Thursday
Saving log - $9 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $8 lunch

Friday
Saving log - $300 ING
Spending log - $1.50 bagel (free coffee!) + $230 spending

Since I worked on Christmas Eve and on Boxing Day, I took today off, and I plan to take a few more days off in January. Boy I needed it - I was losing my nouns when I talked to people and I felt like I was ready to kill someone, two signs that I was burning out. Oh yes, and the faint smell of burning toast ...

After a little bagel breakfast, free coffee from the punch card, and a nice, easy forty five minutes with the paper at the neighborhood coffee shop, I was ready for the day of clothes shopping, lunch, CD and more clothes shopping. I did pretty well, buying things I would use and use often: 1 pair cords, 1 pair jeans, 3 tops, 1 track jacket, 6 pairs of underwear, 3 CDs, a digital TV antenna (for the new Christmas TV), and a conveyor belt sushi lunch.

It was fun, in the budget, restful, and guilt free all around. I could see how someone would feel very good about buying stuff. Its too bad that the pleasures of saving money are far more cerebral - seeing higher numbers in various accounts from one day to the next is just not as brightly sensual.

Transferred $300 from checking into ING savings.

Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee

Nearly no spend day because we had our Winter Event - aka the afternoon office holiday party. A lunch in a nice venue in downtown Seattle, with a drawing for prizes, and a couple of speakers. It was all right, but not nearly as entertaining as ones when they had the no host bar. Now there was frugal entertainment! I don't remember the precise year when we stopped having the ability to buy a drink. A guess that's a good sign that I don't have an adult beverage problem.

I won 2 tickets to a John Denver (esque) concert at the Seattle Rep that I must use by Dec 24. I put the esque in parantheses for a reason, John Denver's been dead for awhile. Or maybe, just maybe, if I have that adult beverage that could appear to change.

Paycheck tomorrow. $50 goes to another DRP account. The interest that I've been earning on T-bills has been dropping like a rock - over the summer its been 5%, now its about 3%.

I keep getting Ameriprise materials, so I know that an account in my name had been created and bits of grandmas trust is moving into it, but nothing final. They say that trusts resolve more quickly for heirs, but in my experience the probate process was much more absorbing and a bit more transparent. I know that's a bit weird to say, but with all the decisions that sister and I had to make it seemed that probate knit us together a bit more. I'm sure sister would disagree - she had to do most of the heavy lifting. Trusts just seem mysterious. If its that much a done deal, just cut us two checks and be done with it.

Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $1.19 coffee + $15 lunch

I've put some of my money in electronic savings bonds and recurring 4 wk T-bills so I have a Treasury Direct.gov account. I got an email two weeks ago from TD explaining that I will get a card and a letter of explanation about a new layer of security.

Tonight I got the Treasury Direct card and letter. The card is laminated, and is a grid - numbers running down, letters going across. The layer of security is this. I type in my account number and three letter/digit pairs appear - I'm to type what's in the intersection in the grid.

Interesting. Reminds me of Ralphie in A Christmas Story http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085334/ when he bought and finally got one of the secret decoder rings. After a lot of work decoding the secret message at the end of the radio serial, it was: DRINK OVALTINE.

Thinking about WaMu today - who isn't in Seattle? It's my brick and mortar bank downtown. I don't have a lot in there - I direct deposit my paycheck in a checking account, have credit card with them and have a little bit in a savings account. My tip box savings goes into the savings account. Mostly I treat that WaMu savings account as a little antechamber - I've linked my ING, Paypal, & Treasury Direct accounts to savings. All told, if I have more than $2000 combined in both accounts, I know its time to move some bucks away from WaMu to somewhere else.

Not too frightened, less than .5% of my money's in WaMu, but a shaky WaMu is a financial shot across the bow. Tonight I logged in - WaMu is offering over 5% on a 6 month CD. Yikes. How the he!! can they earn that? T-bills are running around 3%.

One order of kool-aid, hold the cyanide.

Saving log - $1 tip box
Spending log - $1.30 coffee + $15 chirashi lunch.

Keeping on an even keel financially. Collected $49 from my tip box this month and put it into savings. I've been debating putting some new money into a WaMu 9 month CD, but WaMu got caught doing some interesting things during this subprime mess. Sure, its FDIC insured, but is it worth the agita?

We are now all busy at work. My supervisor and I went through my 6 month evaluation, which was successful. I'm the boss of DJ friend so I'm happy that I'm keeping things in a good place there. My other employee is working out very well, too - I've given her a bit more responsibility and she's run with it...that was good to see.

DH picked up our turkey - its huge, but it means that everyone will get a lot of turkey, darn it.

I'm usually not jealous of other people's thanksgivings, but my temp guy is heading back to Oregon to a Chinese feast of seafood hot pot. The WASP traditional feasts are nice, but the ethnic traditional ones are much more memorable. I was invited to an Iranian thanksgiving with turkey, pilaf, and a gigantic bowl of pomegranite pips. Just take your favorite feast food, make a ton of it, and enjoy.

Saving log - $0 tip box
Spending log - $5 lunch

Coffee and a bagel at the all staff meeting, so I only spent on lunch today. Payday today, so in the next couple of days comes the big shuffle of money. Yesterday was moving $200 to ING, along with another $100 on a monthly schedule. Today I looked at my brick and mortar bank savings account. $700 making 0.25%. Definitely in need of a prune! Moved $300 of that into my PayPal account - that one's a money market fund still making around 4.75%.

Sister called at work. She still has yet to send out her paperwork from grandma's estate, but she's interested in having it managed by Ameriprise. Hard to figure her out.

Saving log - $2 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $15 chirashi lunch

Cashed in the $42.04 today, and received an account for more, different shares. It worked like this: I had 45.xxx shares of Company 1. It turned into - 45 shares of the new Company 1, check for the .xxx shares, and 15 shares of Company 2.

Found out that DJ friend got a resolution with the IRS, the auditor called it "convincing." So he pays 1/2 of what he feared he would pay. The consulting lawyer looked at the letter and the table, and suggested only a concluding sentence. My luck with letters worked again. I give good letter, I said to DH.

I get paid tomorrow, but I have a fair amount of money still in my account, so I decided to move $200 to ING.

Saving log - $6 tip box
Spending log - $6 lunch (2 day footlong sub)

So it begins again. Tonight I got a call from the cousin's lawyer. In a couple of days, paperwork from grandma's trust will arrive.

I got a letter on Saturday from my bank that I've stashed 2 CDs in. Apparently they hadn't gotten the signed paperwork yet on the second CD. I called today about it, the rep told me that it is possible that it might be part of the backlog. I'll take a look and call you back she said. Thirty minutes later, the rep called back and told me it was there.

Thursday
Saving log - $1 tip box
Spending log - $4 lunch

Wednesday
Saving log - $1 tip box
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $15 lunch

The hold on the 95K dug a bit deeper - I tried to send money to me to pay a credit card and to sister and couldn't do it. This time I called and sent an email. They will unblock at the end of the week. It was a security issue - the system thought the transactions looked funny, so close to a deposit with a hold on it.

I asked the bank's customer service to send the checks by physical mail. I'll see how long it takes to the electronic - electronic so far takes 4 days.

Today our HR at work unveiled the market research data - the average person working at my job (or jobs like mine) makes about 14% more, so I can expect a few more payraises in the next few years, which means that setting the 403B at 15% ensures raises there also.

I still do gym. My weight has been rising again - its at 190. Sigh. However, my new clothes fit better than they did 6 months ago. Go figure. We did the tape, something we haven't done in awhile - I lost .5 inch off the hips, .25 inch off each arm, and 1.5 inch off the waist. I'll just have to lose weight the old fashioned way: lie about it.

Saving log - $8 tip box
Spending log - $1.16 coffee + $9 lunch

At noon, I went back to the bank to get rid of the non-sufficient fund fee, and talked to the training manager, who was doing customer service. I was armed with a printout about six weeks of transactions, which were mostly unnecessary - the guy remembered me from when I deposited the money. 95K makes you memorable, it appears.

As soon as I got to the 95K, he glanced at the paper and said, "oh, that NSF fee is so wrong, would you like me to reverse that for you?"

"I'd like that very much," I said.

We swapped stories about being reasonable to customer service in the face of weirdness. He liked my Nashville story http://baselle.savingadvice.com/2006/06/25/deep-frugal-part-...
Also told me that he has a speeding ticket to try to talk the judge down. I wished him luck.

Next time, he said, just call. No need to show up.

It looks like I will be employing the innocent missive to get rid of yet another overdraft $29 fee. This time its - ironically - the bank that I just put 95K into. I know how it happened, and it's totally inappropriate.

Step 1 - before I deposited the 95K, I had 16K, to use to pay sister in our joint account for farmette expenses.

Step 2 - deposited the 95K. Was told that the 95K, due to its size and that its out-of-state, that it will have a hold on it for 5 business days. Fine, I said.

Step 3 - actually Step 2a, because as I deposited the 95K, I said that I wanted to also put a piece of it into another CD. Great, they said, we'll mail you the paperwork so that we can send you on your way.

Well, I thought that meant that the CD would be created after I sent the paperwork. Well no, it was Step 4..

Step 4 - CD was created 2-3 business days, so with the hold, it gave me a negative account. Fine. And FYI, that's not when the fee was charged. It was charged during...

Step 5 - I sent 5K to my sister on the weekend after I deposited the 95K. After all, I did have 16K in an unheld account.

Well, what happened was that the 5K bounced because of Step 4, and that bounce generated the overdraft fee. Essentially what happened is that with the creation of the CD, all of my money was put on hold. That's inappropriate - I was told that only the 95K would be put on hold.

So its an innocent chat with the bank to get rid of the fee. I'm guessing that they will be reasonable - why charge me $29 when they have the use of, well, lots more?

So far this year the reasonable request using in-depth analysis has saved me twice - and what's with everyone charging $29?

Noticed that ING dropped their rate to 4.3% the day after the Fed dropped the prime leading rate. It will probably even go a bit lower in the next few days. Here's to having a long-ish term CD.

Saving log - $2 tip box (have to pick up the pace for this month)
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $9 lunch

Got my first paycheck with the raise - $50 more each paycheck, $100/month. I get paid on the last business day and on the 15th of the month (earlier if the 15th is on the weekend). No three payperiod months for me.

Added $50 to my recurring savings at ING, 50$ to my recurring savings at my brick & mortar bank, and tried out online bill paying for my new credit card (the one I've transferred the trainer and the newspaper charges).

The office picnic is for tomorrow (Thursday) lunch, and the co worker that I worked with for that hour and a half last Friday offered to take me to lunch Friday. I'm going to team it up with buying morning coffee with my Starbucks card and attempt two no-spend days in a row. Cross my fingers that I can do it!

I took another look at the inheritance correspondence. When I send the little form to sign-off on the last check, it is the final distribution. It's really a timing issue. Since neither sister nor I are battling and have no particular issue, the estate has to be resolved within 18 months. Because the assets are real estate, things slow down a bit, the executor filed and got a 6 month extension, which ended a couple of weeks ago.

The first piece of property was sold and the money has paid us, the debts, the lawyer, and the executors. The second piece of property has been sold, but sister and I are to be deeded the whole thing (farmette + 73 acres bought by the state of Wisconsin) at the cost basis of 150K each to sister and I.

I originally thought that the 2nd property was going to come to us in the form of money, rather, its coming to us in the form of the deed.

The executors took out, as promised, a flat 4%, and best of all, it was inclusive of the lawyer's fee. I was expecting the lawyer to take out a separate, equal chunk. Sister apparently had a betting pool with neighbors and friends. I don't know who won.

So the executors step out. Sister and I work with the lawyer on the second property sale.

The 40K CD I started last month has started to earn interest - 174$.

Just three events:

1.) Sister and I will be formally deeded the farmette on July 8, so we have to transfer and get property insurance in our name by that time. Sister talked to one of our great aunts in the area, and she got a good estimate that we probably will go with. (good enough, I think, that we probably got the family estimate) Another insurance agent will drive by this afternoon, so we'll know what the non-family estimate is.

2.) In the high-interest account that I'm using to my sister for farmette use, it has already made $27 in interest.

3.) After paying off all my top of the month obligations and looking at my slightly increasing savings in teeny brick and mortar savings account, I transferred 200$ into PayPal.

The credit card check got posted to my account. I'm caught up, with about $60 in total debt. Hah.

I have about $300 left in my checking account to last me 4 days, so I put in another $150 into my Paypal account, which is in itself paying 5.02% interest. If I have $300 in checking by this time of the month its really not doing me any good. I'd much prefer $100 - $150.

Will be seeing what this paycheck is going to look like - I couldn't get a fix on the last paycheck because it has retro pay on it. With the pay raises, I plan on hiking up the monthly amounts I put into savings. How much depends on what I see in the next paycheck.

My newspaper subscription is going up by an estimated $3/month.

Saving log - $0
Spending log - $1.25 coffee + 20$ lunch

I was sort of a bad girl today, along with all the other bad girls today. Our workplace has an all-staff meeting once a month. I planned to miss and I slept in a bit. Evil, no? There was only one piece of info at the meeting that I wanted to know, and I found it out after the meeting. (if you got an evaluation rating of 3 or greater, 4.5% raise). Whenever I do miss those all-staffs, I claim that I'm doing everyone a favor - the room limit is only for 120 people, yet if we have everyone in, its 140. Missing the all-staff makes the room safer.

But I didn't sleep in too much. The large inheritance check from last weekend had been kicking around the house for a few days and it really should be put to work. My plan was to deposit it while the all-staff was happening. And the larger the check, the longer it takes...you have to say no many more times.

One of the local banks has an ad in the window for their CD rates visible from the bus. 5.6% for 11 months. Best rate I've seen for a brick and mortar bank in Seattle. So I stood at the door at 8:59am, and I must have looked prosperous, because the manager came and unlocked the door, and we began.

It turned out that 5.6% CD was the rate if you had a number of accounts with them and you banked with them before, but I did manage to get 5.4% out of them, splitting my check into a 40K CD and the 26K and change in a high interest checking, which I wanted in case sister was interested in the joint account. The manager was friendly, and had a good poker face when I told him about the inheritance and presented the check. I also got a tote bag and a water bottle.

The manager did a soft pull of my credit rating. 808. A little bit of gossip - I told him that I looked for this bank in bankrate.com. He told me that they used to advertise there (they have online banking), but they got too much "east coast" money. So Tony Soprano banks here, I joked. He laughed, but it turns out that the real issue that it would come in easily and electronically due to the high interest rate, and it would flow out just as easily if someone else gave them a better rate. So they just advertise in the window for local money.

All in all, it took about 40 minutes of signing and printing out materials. Pretty easy, and they were very friendly. I wonder if after I left and turned the corner that the manager whooped for joy. The romantic in me likes to think so.

N.B.: tote bag is in the car. Sturdy, well made, good green color, its turning into the grocery produce shopping bag.

Saving log - $0
Spending log - $3.44 coffee, breakfast + $5 curry lunch

I usually bring (5) .99 clif bars on Monday for breakfasts throughout the week. Today I forgot, so I bought one where I buy my coffee. $1.69! That'll be incentive to remember to put my week's worth of bars in my purse.

Sister called at work. The state of Wisconsin signed off on buying our 73 acres on the second property, so things are moving along. Makes sense, it is now close to the end of the fiscal year (June 30), and the beginning of the next fiscal year. It turns out that I'll be getting slightly more money than sister because sister already got some of the proceeds from the house, etc. The gang apparently has a little betting pool to predict how much the executors and the lawyer will take in fees. Hah hah.

Paypal mailed me the code to unlock my account, so yay, my account is now unlocked and I can put money back into it. Its paying 5.04%.

I signed the letter describing my promotion, so soon I will have something to slip into Paypal.

Saving log - $6
Spending log - $1.84 coffee, milk + $8 lunch

Thought I would take a break from the Paris pics to list what is currently going on:

Taking over all of the little functions as a supervisor - time cards, approving time off, reporting who is out, sitting in on the evaluations, planning to move some of my duties onto them. Tomorrow the plan is to determine whether my two staffers are interested in 1-on-1 meetings or not.

I found, to my surprise and delight, that the promotion came with a 5% pay raise, its retroactive from the paycheck before the trip, and is separate from a raise coming from a decent evaluation. And I get evaluated tomorrow.

My lower back locked up, so the chiropractor claimed, and I gained approximately .4 lbs during Paris. Or maybe not. I told the trainer that I didn't do any of the upper body drills in Paris. She didn't seem all that upset; she was positively chipper as she put me through an exercise routine that made me regret not doing the drills.

Ate the cheese I brought back (thank you customs dog for giving me a break), and brought chocolates to work. Found out that it only took 1 week for the postcards to travel from Paris. I sent three postcards back with no writing, just a Jackson Pollock induced spray of coffee cup rings. Lawyer friend is still talking about his. Hey, anything you write from Paris on a postcard is going to be banal...why not say everything by saying nothing?

Something odd happened to my PayPal account - I saw two mysterious transactions. I emailed PayPal, they refunded the money and locked up my account. I figured that now's the time to change all my financial passwords.

Saving log - $3
Spending log - $1.85 coffee, milk + $6 lunch and snack + $6 stickers

DH sometimes has the sensibility of a 12 yr old boy. He told me last night that he wanted to change the stickers on his PDA - too flashy, he said. So I bought him some Japanese samurai and kabuki stickers.

Tiny and not so tiny decisions - I have one of three recurring charges (ISP, Netflix, newspaper) on my credit card. This month was the first month I saw that my ISP charge made it from the credit card to my debit card. Think I will try moving the Netflix this month.

Not so tiny decision. This stock market is baffling me and has been for months. I don't understand the fundamentals and why its going up so fast. I decided to shift the 403B part of my portfolio a bit. Before it was quite aggressive - 90% stock (I have some bonds elsewhere). I decided to redistribute to 50/50 bond and stock, so I still have plenty of stock. I'm just trimming my sails a bit.

I'd do that with some of the Vanguard holdings, however they're in a taxable account and I've bought less than a year ago, so if I shift things around, any profits from selling will be taxed on the income rate, not long term capital gains rate. The next little bit of new money I receive, I'll put it in bonds and trim the sails a bit there, too.

Just to remind me that it's May in my yard:

Yesterday, April 25, 2007
Saving log - $1.35 tip box
Spending log - $.65 milk + $8 lunch at the food court

April 26, 2007
Saving log - $2.35 tip box
Spending log - $.65 milk + 7$ curry lunch + 12$ grocery run

Yesterday I had lunch with lawyer friend. He made the "affirmation statement" but he is not long for the job; he's talking that anything would be better. It will surprise me if he is still here after I get back from Paris. I told him that I want to avoid looking like a tourist; he mentioned that they don't wear fleece.

I'll remember that. Or I might go the Ugly Betty route.

Today more fun happened. First off, it was Take Your Child To Work day. Several of us from different departments met with the kid crew this year. We all introduced ourselves.

The first question: What are your job titles?
We went around...
Second question: Why are your titles so long?
We laughed, out of the mouths of babes. We honestly said that if a workplace can't give us money, they give us a fancy title instead. Why not tell them the truth, they're ten or so.

Did two bank moves. I called and got the note put in my account so I don't look like an identity thief having a good time in gay Paree, and I moved the first $1500 out of savings to the checking account for the Paris trip. I had two things in mind for that:
1.) Get a quick supply of euros.
2.) Time how many days it took the transaction to occur, to plan ahead so if I have move it from Paris, I know how long it takes. 3 days.

And finally, I did something at the gym that I have been fantasizing about from the beginning. Today, there was a fairly buff guy...

Ha, ha, not that

There was a fairly buff guy struggling with a flared leg lift, which strengthens the side of the leg. He was working with his trainer, who set his weights and watched his form. They left to do something else. I came in to do the VERY SAME EXERCISE and had to INCREASE the weight. Wow.

It was from 5 lbs to 10 lbs, but still a victory.