baselle's Financial Diary

Yesterday, at work, I listened into a web broadcast put on by the national HQ of our non-profit. It was about preparing for retirement. It wasn't bad - there were a couple of pieces of knowledge that were novel and useful to me - but there is a lot of the "it depends on your individual situation" and "see a financial planner" ... not to mention, the ever popular "keep an eye on your financial planner."

Weasel words, I think. If you have to know enough about financial planning/personal finance to keep an eye on your financial planner, wouldn't it be cheaper to be your own financial planner?

Anyway, I'm on a jag here. There are a couple of hobby clubs, book clubs, etc - I wonder if there is a place for a personal finance club at work.

Anybody out there start one or participate in one? If you have, how do you structure it, keeping things simple for the newbies and interesting for not-newbies?

We divvied up the cow amongst all parties this afternoon - all in the parking lot behind the Seattle Mennonite Church. A slightly new twist on last year's procedure: after we divvied up the cuts and packages that were mathematically easy to divide, we spread out the rest, drew lots for picking order and took turns picking a package - a bit like picking teammates or picking a Christmas package at the white elephant sale (no stealing though ).

That worked even better than the dickering, although I don't know if the number of times one picked in a round was equivalent to the proportion of your beef. In other words, the person who bought the whole quarter should get a pick/round versus the people who bought an eighth would get a pick every other round.

DH and I still should get about 5lb bratwurst and 5lb of kielbasa in the next couple of weeks.

I asked my current trainer and a friend of his to come down and buy from us because I wasn't sure that our share would fit in our freezer - last year we had to cook that week what couldn't fit in. The friend took one look at the piles of white packages and said, "that is more meat than I have ever seen."

There was one cute, but sneaky, little 3 yr old moving our packages into his dad's pile. Fingers crossed that we caught all the packages he moved.

It only took us 30 minutes from when the farmer/rancher drove up to everybody leaving the parking lot.

Cost of our 1/8 share - $427.88. I had heard that the farmer's side job was no more, so I wrapped a $20 (for gas) and added it to an envelope, along with my check.

Oh yes, still keeping on with the paleo/primal eating plan. I'm now at 164.8. I lose two more pounds and my BMI will drop below the overweight range.

The stock market that is. Time to monitor my stocks closely because if they pay dividends, and they keep paying dividends, buy 'em cheap.

One does have to ignore that my holdings (403B, etc) have dropped some, marshall the money I have to invest, and wait until my stocks drop below my target price.

Taking the analogy of "buy when there's blood in the streets", its like cleaning my gun while not dwelling on my own bleeding as I lie in wait in the sniper nest.

I have to remember that in March 2009, I bought great stuff - International Paper at $4/share, 3M at $45/share, Coke at $40/share. Most of my holdings pay enough of a dividend to buy an extra share/quarter.

Early yesterday afternoon, DH and I visited the Greek Festival at St. Demitrious Church. Its gotten a bit more focused than in years' past - no $2 raffle tickets at the front and the deli is a bit smaller. Plus with following the paleo/primal eating diet suggested by my current trainer, I really had move along quickly to avoid the baklava and powdered sugar desserts. We went, looked around, and bought 2 multi quart cans of olive oil, and we were done. Hopefully the olive oil will last us the better part of the year. Although with this diet you can practically drink the stuff.

Speaking of that diet, I've been on it for a month and lost 6 pounds - I'm at 165. If I hit 163, my BMI will fall below the overweight threshold and into average. Woo hoo. The big surprise was the body fat reading - normally its been stubbornly holding at 35%. Yesterday the reading was 33%.

Afterward, I grouted my third mosaic project. I'm going to give it the Duvall friends for Christmas - which added an additional twist to grouting. Grouting always makes me nervous, but this turned out well.

(I was going to upload a pic of it, but the site is bombing out on me.)

Today I tried depositing what was in my tip box - my credit union - BECU - claimed that the entire credit union ATM network was down this afternoon. Ah well, I did have an additional fiscal task that a rep did so it wasn't a total bust.

I got a set of forms from the Toronto, Canadian branch of my transfer agent (fiscal entity that administers a particular company stock DRIP) - I had to show a "bank officer" my driver's license, so the rep could fill out the form and vouch for my identity. I had a slight worry that since the form said bank officer...that I had to go to a bank. I could go to Chase, as I still had my credit card with them, but since the payments are going to be on the credit union, well, tough. The credit union rep was willing to fill out the form and sign for me (after I whipped out my driver's license). From her part, she was not certain about the "reputable and internationally known institution". We will see. Along with the form I slipped in a printout stating that my credit union is the 4th largest in the US.

We had a benefit talk at an all staff meeting yesterday. There's a possibility that the 403B contributions will get sweetened up. Which led to a co worker telling me that he "maximized his contributions". After a little more questioning, I had to gently let him know that he merely put in enough to maximize the company match. 8% is usually A LOT less than 16.5K.

Somehow I think that the personal finance writing is pretty damn sloppy on that point. Maximize the match suddenly is heard as maximize the 401K/403B and that's a big hairy difference.

Made you read, eh!

I'm still tracking the amount of change I find "around". Even more interestingly, I compare the amount I find monthly with the amount that I would have invest monthly that throw out the same amount of interest.

This month I found $9.73. (I know!) Turns out it would take $1,250,642.67 in a 4 wk T-bill to generate that amount in interest. It could be worse, I guess - a couple of months in 2009 T-bill returns were 0 ... or it would take an infinite amount.

Bad times a comin'.

Everybody at work is now back from vacation, and the temporary fundraising staff is here with us on our floor - the pace at work is picking up.

Right now I'm working on the audit - my boss is pulling transactions that the auditors are interested in tracking and I'm making sure that my facts are straight on them. Today, though, I looked at the list the auditors gave, traced the details ... something is wrong, wrong, wrong. With the auditor's sheet. Strangely enough, it cheers me up when the auditors screw up. Only people, I guess.

I am feeling a bit grumpy at some of my co workers, though. One especially who works in a different department. I formatted a sheet with leading zeroes and she whined at me to do it again. Drives me insane about it (and other things) - it takes all of fifteen seconds for anybody with reasonable Excel skills to fix it. These days in the recession, we are on the second leg down - you show idiocy, a "not my job" attitude, or weakness it's over. It just is.

On the food front, the farmer is nearly ready to deliver - tentatively we can gather everybody around on the 24th. Free museum day appears to be canceled.

For the last couple of years, DH and I participated in Free Museum day, inspired in part by the birthday of The Smithsonian. A couple of years ago, we went to the Museum of Glass - quite pricey generally at $20. Last year we went to the Seattle Museum of History and Industry. This year on the 24th, who knows? It might be Museum of Flight or SAM or Wing Luke.

The rules are pretty straightforward - check out the link, find a museum, print out a ticket for two at the museum, and show up with the ticket.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/museumday/

Ugh. I don't know why I have my undies in a bunch about this this year, but man its ANNOYING to see Halloween candy and cupcake displays already. And Goodwill and Fred Meyer have the costume displays up.

Halloween is definitely turning into retail alt-Christmas. Yikes!

Apologies that it's been so long since I've written. Its been quiet, I've been paid, and we are in the midst of a three day weekend. What could be sweeter?

We (about 15-16 of us) in the beef consortium are about to get our beef. This second year, the cow was named Gosling. She is going to be a big one, with a package weight (I call it that - its the total of all the white packages we will get) of 480 lbs! Ginger, last year's cow, was a glorious 402 lbs. I was the designated call-ee - the butcher asked one of us to make a call and confirm the cuts that we wanted. I didn't want too much too fancy, but I did want the cuts to be an inch thick. Last year Ginger was 3/4 inch thick. The thinness made making rare steak a challenge.

Last year we developed a pretty straightforward distribution system. The farmer drove up into the parking lot where we were all to meet. We asked the consortium beforehand to bring coolers and food scales if they had one. We collected four large boxes and broke them down into pads, each representing a quarter. (I and my cow-partner comprised our quarter).

We set the cardboard pads down on the concrete. We sorted the cuts out by package so had a good idea of what there was a lot of and what there was only one or two of. We took the packages we had the most of (hamburger) and dealt them out, then dealt the next most, and all the way down to what we had packages of four of.

Cow-partner and I had to split what we were dealt between the two of us. I asked DH what he most wanted and what he thought would be nice to have. I think we got it. This year though, the cow-partners are a couple of very close friends of ours - DH might find it easier to give up some cuts betting that we'll eat at a dinner party.

The fun began with the 1-2 package cuts. That's when the food scales came in handy. We cleared the pads again (people put their dealt cuts into their coolers and bags). We called out the cuts - the cooks amongst us called out what you could do with the cut. Whomever was most enthused about the cut, the dealer put it on their pad. We kept those cuts on the pad until those cuts were dealt, so that if we could see if someone was shorted. We also traded between the pads on a pound for pound basis.

So I admit that this technique works best if all parties have a sense of adventure, and while excited about meat aren't total booby-heads if they don't get every cut. I throw it out there as a public service - buying a whole cow is suddenly fashionable, but no one talks about how to divy one up.

...and speaking from someone who lived in NC, I want to remind you to save yourself a bit of post-hurricane frustration. Check to see whether your place of work is up and running, or at least that the power is on. No sense trying to fight traffic dodging downed power lines, flooding, downed trees to get to work and there the power is also out.

I had a cheap way to check, although these days it does depend on the workplace physically having a primitive machine - the fax. I used to dial the fax machine and if I got the screech, I knew that the fax was on and the power was on.

I know, I know, who has a fax machine these days? But if you do, remember that the fax sits on the shelf and is plugged in, ie. only works if the power is on.

So why not call your voicemail or see if you can remotely log in? It might work, but your voicemail and your email servers might be offsite to provide protection during times like these. In other words, connecting to them might give you a deceptive answer.

Yes, don't need to rub your eyes. Soap nuts.

Two weeks ago I bought a sample of these for $2. I got a little muslin bag, and inside were 7-8 dried shells of

Sapindus. The guy I bought them from at the farmer's market claimed that they were good for about 7-8 washings. So far, I've used them for 4.

Using them is pretty easy - plunk your clothes in the washer, plunk the muslin bag in the load, run the washer. Intercept the muslin bag when you load the clothes in the dryer for use in the next load ... the hard part, because the muslin bag has hiding skills.

Clothes in the dryer (or hung) ... supposedly the clothes need no fabric softener. Whatever that is. !

I've really enjoyed using them. My clothes don't have any fragrance, they are clean (not that they get all that dirty) and feel soft ... although they still have some static when you pull them out of the dryer. Think I might get some more.

When they have given their all, the soap nuts can be composted.

Anybody else use them? For once, a cheap solution. (.25$/load)

I read an insightful

article about decision fatigue in the NYT Sunday magazine.

The basic point of the article is that decisions of any size require energy. The more you make during a day, the more likely you will either make a crappy one or that you will go with what is recommended to you ... and in a sales situation, its always going to cost.

Insightful to the frugalistas and frugalistas-in-training, for a number of reasons.

Remember the saying "you can have anything, but you can't have everything"? Of course, it means that you have to figure out what your anythings are in the whole universe of everything ... which means setting priorities .... which means decisions. Lots of decisions.

People sometimes consider my tactic of setting a routine to be ho-hum, but it means that I don't have to re-make routine decisions and I free myself for the biggies during the day.

Every so often the question, "what is the most frugal skill one can develop?" pops up. I thought it was math estimation skills but I might make the case that preventing decision fatigue might well be it.

With all the gyrations of the stock market, I hadn't checked my all of my accounts in about a month. Tonight I did.

I am down over $27,000, or about 4.5%. I expect to be down a bit more before its all said and done. Ignorance for stretches definitely pays.

Been quiet - I've been paid, and I've been waiting for something fiscal to happen.

This stay-cation was broken up. I just came back for two days in case the auditor had questions for me. I met with the auditor for all of thirty minutes. Sigh. But these two days weren't a total waste. I evaluated one of my employees and was evaluated by my supervisor, and I caught up with my emails. I will only have three days worth of emails rather than nearly three weeks.

Didn't win anything on the Gumshoe, but I had fun. I'm in the process of drawing and designing my third mosaic piece. So far I've gotten some free flat pallet wood that forms a back and a frame - I can funky it up, mosaic on the flat, and stain the frame up. Another artist, whom I took the mosaic class with, offered me some pine back boards. They were originally for the backs of wheelchairs - flat, smooth, nice. So far - free stuff!

At home, I looked over my invoice at the thrift store. I appear to have gotten the 10% senior citizen discount.

I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or dye my hair. But I will take the discount.

Blog

one, just the pictures.
Blog two, the captions are a riot!

Several people commented about the Gumshoe - here's a link. Its a creative fundraiser, and got a lot of people out there walking with their fuchsia handouts. Got the other 10 from the main Gumshoe walk. All I have left is to identify one restaurant from a snippet of a picture in one of the side games and I can turn it in for several drawings.

... grouting my mosaic - the fish one - with dark grout. I buffed a bit too hard or did it a hair too early and a couple of the background pieces popped out, so I covered the holes with grout. But the fishy turned out perfect. I'm going to be a bit sanguine about it - I want to use the piece as the bottom of an outdoor/indoor garden tray and if its hair imperfect ... it means that I won't be afraid to use it.

Didn't look at my stocks much. I am excited that I might be able to buy some more in a few weeks. But we will see. I'm still kicking myself for not buying more in March 2009.

My blogoversary matches DH's birthday - I took him out to dinner. $80 there, and a 30$ gift certificate to one of his favorite bookstores. Wasn't feeling all that creative for him.

It is my staycation - and I picked up a $20 entry form to the neighborhood Gumshoe 5K walk. I did it last year - you buy into 30 clues that lead you through bits of the neighborhood. After each clue there is a question that you can answer only if you are in the right place. You write the answers on your entry sheet. The clues are not tricky, but they are subtle, detailed, and every word is used. The perfect person for this is an observant 12 yr old - looks with no filters, and has plenty of energy for backtracking. I find that I can get into the "zone", catch the clues, and not put on a filter or over think it. Today I got 20 of the 30 clues - 10 left! It helped that the 5K walk was in a part of the neighborhood I lived closer to and knew better.

Aaaaah!

Much as I love time off from work, its hard on my budget and on my diet. If I'm at work, I'm not tempted to spend much money, and I'm not tempted to eat ... two temptations that really happen when I'm out and about.

But this staycation, I'm going to be finishing up on my crafts. I picked up my first mosaic - its now completely done, except for the grout sealer, which I'm applying. The grout sealer is to ensure that rainwater (of which we get much in Seattle) won't harm it. Here it is:


And last night I finished gluing the glass bits on the mesh of my second piece, which is going to be a bottom of a wire tray. (Got the wire tray at Value Village for $6!) I have yet to mortar the glass onto a board using thinset, then grout it, then seal the grout. But you can get the general idea.


I figure that I've spend about 300$ on the class and materials of which I have plenty for several other projects... and I think I can keep the costs down. Definitely enjoy this!

I got a mystery gift today. Somebody paid $20 for me to get a twenty minute massage. I suspect it was my boss, but I'm not sure. I'll ask her tomorrow.

Yesterday was the Greenwood Seafair Parade... somehow the pictures I took didn't really turn out, but I'll see if I can find some good ones for fun.

The crafty patch is thinning out some. The non-crafty, but creative project of getting my database to play nice in Office 2010 is nearly done. It loads and mostly works - only two buttons don't. Of course they are the two buttons that I use in January, so sigh, project not completely done. But done enough for August.

Video for what our department does has been written and filmed. Now it has to be rendered into a file format and edited ... then done!

We are planning to get another 1/8 of a cow. This one is larger, so it will finish a bit slower (late August instead of right now) - good for a little time to save some money. Bigger means that 1/8 is going to run more than 50 lbs, so I've gotten another buyer who we can sell some to if we don't have enough freezer space. The farmer is offering us two possibilities - one is an Angus, the other a

Limousin. Finding out the Limousin is a very old breed that runs a bit leaner is tipping me toward that choice.

Everything is now quiet enough to allow us all to wonder about a US default. But in the meantime, its payday tomorrow.

I found a 1943 steel penny on the floor of Safeway yesterday. Different color and a magnet really grabs it. The US made these pennies at the height of WWII, when copper was needed more in other places. The penny is not in great shape, but its another interesting find.

Nobody had Amy Winehouse ... but several of you suggested it.

what the 30s were like. In the next few months, I worry that we'll all find out.

I got the checks I ordered. Nice. I'm being dinged $40 as a late payment from the landlord and I'm not sure why. I've found that the credit union's bill pay can be useful, but its slow, and doubly slow when the receiver doesn't seem to handle the EFT well. Far faster to write a check, date it, and stop by the landlord. Not to say that I'm completely reverting back to primitive, I'm just bowing to the best way depending on the payee.

The check patterns were fun - if I wanted a Scooby Doo checks, or Cruella De Vil, well, I know where to go. But the safest is the classiest. Imagine writing a mortgage check on the Scooby Doos.

Am back at 167, and I'm making progress on the database. It seems unstable lately - it bombed out on me several times today.

I listed out all the crafty creative projects I've been roped into or found to do -

Wrote the story board and wrote about a 1/3 of the shooting script. Screenwriter friend brought his camera and showed us how to use it, so now the camera people are working out shooting the piece. Today I made four joke pledges as props - Montgomery Burns giving to the Release the Hounds Dog Park in Springfield, for instance. Since stamping is part of my job, I made a joke Bulls%*t stamp. It will be small, but subtle. Thank you mom's side of family for the mean sense of humor, it came in handy.

Working on getting the database to play nice with Office 2010. I got the database to load (yay), and 80% of it works, but a number of functions were lost, and I'm working to get them back.

Got my first mosaic piece mortared with thin set on the wedi board (wedi board is a stiff styrofoam board coated in concrete and mesh. Thin and light but waterproof). It went about as smooth as I'd expect it to go the first time. The big thing is that even though I was careful in my calculations I still made a lot more than I needed. I'm willing to bet that many people try to finish several pieces before mortaring. There is a bit of thin set on the glass, but not much - I've been successful taking a knife and gently scraping it off. I learn to grout on the 30th.

I'm gluing glass onto mesh and making my second piece. Goin' solo on this one!

Have all but two of my yard sale frames painted. Time to take a look at pictures.

Yeah, I broke down and ordered a box of paper checks for my credit union account. I can transfer about 95% of my transactions using bill pay, but somehow its just so satisfying to give a person a paper check. Write it give it to them and its done, versus sending it, making sure the other person clicks on the link blah blah blah.

As I was waiting for my name to be called to order the box, I idly watched the ATM line. How come when I get to the machine, it takes thirty seconds, and it takes the guy ahead of me five minutes? ATM performance anxiety, me thinks.

Also got a check from Bank of Montreal for a fractional share as my old bank stock went away. Turns out that yes, the new bank stock is a full Drp, and one can optional cash payments (can pay in US dollars), so I went in and signed up for dividend reinvestment.

Its July in Seattle, the height of the tourist season, and everybody is looking to make a bit of coin off of them....

I started with tracking any change that I find on July 14, 2009. The first year I found $49.98, so missed $50 by two pennies. This year I found $89.66, missing 90$ by 33 cents.

Not sure whether I just really got better at hitting the places that are likely to have dropped money or whether the recession has eased some which means a bit more carelessness.

I don't know whether there is an upper limit to the amount of money I can find. Jeffrey, in his change finding, found money in the hundreds of dollars. Somehow even at Seattle's sloppiest, hundreds seems a bit high. But I once thought that $40 was high.

Perhaps you remember that I have some drps - stocks where I can add to my position in small amounts along with reinvesting the dividends as they come up quarterly. My bank stock had been ailing since the near-implosion in the fall of 2008. I say had because as of July 1, it had been acquired by the Bank of Montreal (BMO). I discovered that the transfer agent (the banking/ accounting entity that you buy the shares from) is the same one as my KO stock. Good news - no new weird one, and they are very prompt with the payments. It appears that I can drp in that one also, but I've asked for the prospectus. The only odd thing is that the account is kept in Canadian dollars.

Stocks went up in the last couple of weeks (though not on Friday) - my net worth broke 600K again. We'll see if it holds.

Have 5 more days til I close this year's change finding adventure. I found .21 today, and I'm at $88.23. Probably not going to hit $90 this year ... but $88 - $89 is darn good enough.

Nope, nobody had Betty Ford.

On the crafty side, I'm making progress. I have only a couple more frames to paint, and I've finished gluing the glass and tile bits into my mosaic. I also bought a bit of thinset mortar ($12 for a box), and found a notched trowel for $2 at Goodwill. Gotta love it when I can find what I need at the thrift store. I've emailed the mosaic teacher several questions. When I get the answers I'll take the plunge and get the mosaic mortared to the board. Grout awaits! will

Their

website is up and running. Support Elizabeth Warren and check it out.

Now with July 1, it turned quiet on the accounting/ pledge processing front again, probably because most of the people that I would have had to slap took Friday off as a 4 day weekend.

I seem to have entered a crafty patch. Here's what's on deck:

At work: helping write a storyboard & screenplay for a 20 minute video about our department.
At work: troubleshooting my main database to get it to play nice with Office 2010. (creative, but not so crafty)
At home: painting frames and framing some of my more interesting pictures.
At home: picking some of my Vietnam and Cambodia, and perhaps even the Paris pictures to blow up, frame, hang on the walls.
At home: potluck dish for the 4th party and fireworks.
At home: finishing up the mosaic I've started on. Glass has to be glued in the mesh and the mesh has to be mortared on my board by July 29. July 30 I learn to grout.

Bought the last ingredient to make my mosaic - the glass - today and began to do some more gluing. Still having fun and I've gotten a couple of complements on what I have so far.