baselle's Financial Diary

Calming down from Christmas - these five days are usually some of my favorites. So quiet, so peaceful, so... not part of the rest of the year or part of any year. These 5 days gave the Romans fits, too. After all, 360 is so ....round.

Any way - I filled out the increase in my 403B contributions. I put in for 17K, and for another 1K of catchup. We'll see for the next three months how it goes.

Cashed in a couple of checks - the Chase credit card cashback, and some Christmas money. With the proceeds, I've bought another round of Target stock. $500, so about 9 shares.

Got my list of celebs for 2012, and it looks like there are going to be 8 or 9 participants this year. Mjrube, where are you? You are ahead for 2011!

Merry Christmas today and tomorrow - happy holidays in the next few days.

I've been off for a couple of days, and have proceeded to spend more than usual. But I plan on buying some more Target stock - got it going with 9 shares. I also ate more than usual - am holding between 167- 165.

This is the neighborhood good fiscal

deed that Seattle is talking about. Hopefully your neighborhood has a little something like this!

Had a late lunch el desko and decided after to run an errand - get a little bit of money from the downtown branch of the CU.

Quite the line, even at 2pm on a Tuesday.

That's kind of the way its going. The neighborhood branch in the Safeway has now gone - they did leave one ATM which now routinely has a big line in front of it. And now the checkouts also run short on twenties.

The things we do to avoid big banks. Adjustments have to be made.

2 players had Christopher Hitchens
3 players had Kim Jong-Il

Am looking at increasing my withholding for my 403B this upcoming year. Since I turn 50 this year, I qualify for catch-up. And I will be catching up. My task for this weekend is to figure out whether I can play catchup for both my 403B and for my Roth.

At the risk of sounding and getting a ton of hits and disappointing the pervs out there, I'm talking about the cashless,

frictionless spending.

Frugality is all about the friction.

Seems like all of society is out there telling you "make it easy" and get with it, while are all here to say "stop for just a second" and "don't be a spending sheep" and "do you really, really need or want it, upon a few seconds of further consideration?"

Contrast cashless buying with layaway. Primitive, but that less than instant consumerism can give you a different way to demonstrate gratitude and compassion.

Been away for about a week - except for Christmas spending, not much happening. I got the most difficult gift (to MIL) shipped this afternoon, so phwhew. Had to wait on sending it until today, when I got paid. Felt the frugal burn - I had $20 in checking the night before.

Sister is being sent her fish - she probably got it tonight. The fish is a bit pricey, but if you are going to spend for the next day shipping, might just as well make it pay. She got salmon, lox, crab, trout, and a bit of ling cod. Got a letter from sister and my missing ORCA card. Hah! I knew she had it. (and she was the one who told me not to lose stuff during the trip) I bought another card so now I have two spares. If sister and her partner come out, I'm ready.

The credit card bill will hurt this month, but I don't expect any charges next month, so it will balance out. Cashed in my credit card rewards points $127 or so.

Had an interesting Christmas story from this afternoon. I was in Safeway, perusing the Christmas cards when a guy asked whether there were some funny ones. I pointed out one that was funny and rude. Turns out that the guy was giving the card to a guy in prison - the card I showed him was perfectly rude.

I've just started a Drp - Target, aka Tarzhay, stock ticker TGT.I had an interest, and since I have two other stocks with the same transfer agent, it was now a cinch to start it up directly from the transfer agent. Much, much easier and cheaper than using Temper of the Times. The only thing about this Drp is the $5 fee - I'll have save up and put in $500/ a pop to keep the fee at 1%. That's the thing that gets me with Sharebuilder - $4/trade seems like a good deal, but not if you are trading a few shares.

Made a wild Christmas candy bark recipe - base of chocolate, layer of crispy bits of bacon, chopped nuts (the original recipe called for peanuts, but I substituted walnuts and pecans), topped with caramel and on top of that, a little bit of salt. Tasty, but if you have bridge work, dangerous.

We are going with some friends to Korean barbeque and to them, for the Christmas season, goes the candy bark.

I'm almost done with the deciding about who to give and what to get them for Xmas, and with the exception of one item, I am done with shopping for the hardest recipient: MIL. Since she now has a Nook, I aimed for a couple of BN gift cards hidden in a homemade cheese-based gift basket. Collection phase is over, wrapping, packing and shipping remains.

Noticed that two of my dividend stocks WEC and SYY are raising their dividend. WEC especially is nice - 6 cent per share increase. To cheer me up because stock prices are so volatile, I totaled the dividend payments I would get if I stopped now and decided not to re-invest. $260.

Last night I lost my ATM card at the grocery store. Today I appeared at the credit union, bright eyed and managed to get a new card in about 15 minutes. I'll miss that (the CU at the grocery store is leaving as of Monday). I rarely lose stuff, so it was fortunate I got it all over with. I mentioned their move and the guy who got me the new card told me that they will keep one of the two ATMs, but will remove it as soon as another bank or CU goes into that space.

Finished the first week w/o our boss, who is on maternity leave. One down, twenty five more to go.

Have to get it off my flat-ish chest. HR asked about comments to the performance evaluation ... which is already fraught. I mentioned that the math is kind of gooby on it. A column says %, and you have to put in a decimal. For example, if you wanted the 50% thingee, you don't put in 50%, you have to put it in as 0.5. Its small, but dammit either fix the math or fix the column so you're warned that you have to put in the decimal.

HR minion mentioned that others mentioned it. Fine. Then came the back-handed slap that the HR minion mentioned to the HR VP (who came in late and asked for a summary) that "some managers were challenged by it".

I am not challenged this at all. Repeat: I AM NOT CHALLENGED BY MATH. And I said so. Don't get me wrong, I love a good "challenge", but I was very insulted by the word as used. I was tempted to snark that this gooby math was HR's challenge, not mine. Instead, I mentioned that if you want to present data of any sort, all the units have to be comparable. Basic science. Its like having one column in dollars and another in pennies.

Yet another skirmish between HR and me.

First day of bosses' leave was a quiet one and I managed to get mostly caught up on the routine stuff ... a couple of the big projects remain.

Am up to 167, but not bad considering I ate sweet, delicious leftovers.

Put an ad in our company intranet to advertise 4 free chicks. Duvall couple found a couple of rebel chickens who nested in amongst the blackberry brambles. Not a bad idea - a predator will have to be darn hungry to make it through a thicket of blackberries. They managed to rescue several of the eggs, candled them and found that they were developing. Wyandottes.

Got a surprise looking through Wikipedia - the golden Wyandotte was

developed in a farm around my home town, probably within a couple of miles from the farmette. I NEVER thought anything or anybody of note came out of my home town.

We hosted the Duvall couple for Thanksgiving. Two tablecloths that I got during the Greenwood yard sale made their appearance, we had the usual, and we had our own mini-version of Christmas. They got the mosaic rooster (the rooster was a likeness of the one they kept for breeding); we got goat milk, a couple of chickens, and the loan of a couple of paper books that I've wanted to read for forever. I don't have to buy them!

Don't know what it is, but this Thanksgiving it was mostly the old simple favorites: turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, sliced cranberry sauce from the can, stuffed squash, green beans, pie, whipped cream, and actual conversation.

Today, I walked off some of the dinner and did a little buying in the neighborhood. Not only am I not a Black Friday shopper, I usually think that most of the time its a

scam and I'll get a better price a week or two later. If nothing else, my sleep is worth MUCH more.

Its been wet and rainy, so I'm getting fiscal, fiscal to take my mind off of sopping....everything.

Over the last month:
I've found about $7 in found money as I've walked.
BECU gave me about $2.50 in interest in my checking and savings accounts.
I put 45$ into savings, coming from my tip box at work (when I think about it, I put money in a little covered box in a drawer at work called my tip box)
ING gave me about $75 in interest coming from my savings.
I transfer $125 from checking into savings (1 paycheck), and I transfer $100 into ING (other paycheck)
I've made $375 in stock purchase ($75 is usual, $300 is a quarterly, once-in-awhile-buy)
I've put in $1200 into my 403B from work.

I'm having good luck playing all my savings games, from little to big - from the amounts that I find on the sidewalk, to the $1 or several dollars that I put into my tip box, to paying myself first, to making sure that my checking and savings accounts pay me instead of I pay them. I know that others can't or aren't interested in some of these games, but I find that the more of them I play, the more mindful I am to save and the more inspired I get. If anything, the big stuff is less inspiring to me because I overshoot a hair and it means that I take some out of savings.

What kind of savings' games do you play?

Yeah, we got those big banks on the run. Got it in the mail today. According to card, my banking slavery can, apparently, be bought for $150.

A little bit more about the 403B consolidation - HR misspoke about "termination", only that the two accounts will be merged into one. Supposed to save money for the company because both accounts need to be audited. The match (.50:$1 up to 8% of salary) is unaffected, as is the 1.5% just for being an employee. Word, though, is that if you don't participate in the 403B, why give you the 1.5%?

Sliced up some bread to dry and get stale for stuffing. We are hosting this time; DH finished with cleaning the carpet. What's on our list to get is: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, drinks. What's on their list is bread, sides, salad, pie, cheese.

This afternoon we got a missive from HR. Instead of having 2 accounts (retirement, 403B), all participants will have just 1 account (403B). I think that the retirement account is what our non-profit gives you, and the 403B is your contributions. It takes us 6 years to vest, and the vest appears only in retirement. We were assured that the monies will merge rather than the retirement disappears. We'll see. If its true, its a lot easier to asset allocate or rebalance only 1 account. Could well be a super sneaky way to alter matching, vesting, and its a way to hide when the non-profit places the money into the account.

Based on this

link

Boy and man came into a store, sign blinking in bright neon. They trudged to the back smelling hardware and rubber and tired men in the midst buying things needed for tired men projects. Man was after bullets. Bullets were always sold in the back. Man was happiest buying anything in the back, nothing in the front was worth the time. Boy followed. He was a good son but he was of an age were he did not understand that the back sold reality, the front sold image.

But the man loved his son and after bullets were selected for the gun they needed to protect the cattle they had to trudge back to the front toward and through the candy colors and ringing coin to get back to the reality outside.

Boy spoke first. May we? He pointed to the brightest machine. Lottery $1.

Man paused. Stupid thing for a man to hope. Man filled ovals under the rimmed gaze of baleful blue eyeshadow.

Name? asked the woman.

Man shook the bag of bullets. LLC, said the man.

I got a note from my credit union yesterday. They are moving their neighborhood banking center and ATM from the Safeway. Now I normally don't care much about the banking center - I use direct deposit and another banking center downtown is what I use for snafus - but I'm not very happy about the ATMs going.

Oh, and every time I think "I should get a financial planner", well, karma delivers the reason

why. Geez, I think I can screw up by myself and for free.

So a few observations and doings about:

Harvested about 15 pounds worth of green tomatoes. My early girls were decidedly very, very not. I've split them off into two items I'm making - a green tomato jam and green tomato mincemeat. The green tomato mincemeat is perking away as I type. I plan on making little tarts out of the mincemeat for Thanksgiving and have it with a bit of cheese - kind of a dessert/cheese course in one. So far, it smells absolutely wonderful: green tomatoes, quince (as a substitute for the apples .... quince is still in season), orange slices, orange peel, dried currents, golden raisins, sugar, brown sugar, a bit of apple cider vinegar, cinnamon sticks, ginger, a tiny bit of hot red pepper.

Saw a few people with BECU (credit union) forms today, leave your bank day. We got word though, that the little neighborhood BECU is moving from the grocery store. Bummer, but I hope they keep the ATM. Otherwise, grr, double bummer.

Somebody had Andy Rooney on their list.

Has happened to me fiscally. I did come down with a cold and took off a couple of days from work. Since I was either sick as a dog or working like a dog, didn't spend much money nor did I think any deep thoughts about money.

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.

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.

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.

Link

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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!

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.

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.

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

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!

With the stock market 12% off and with the never ending recession, and with a virtual certainty that if you have a checking account with a big bank you'll be (expletive deleted)... well, I need to share just one good thing that happened this quarter. Here it is, made it myself: