Resolution check-in

06. January 2012 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,

A week mostly down.  How did it go?

  • Laundry every day: check! So far, so good.
  • Meal planning: not so good.  I had my dad visiting through the beginning of my work week.  We didn’t make it to the grocery store while he was here nor after he left.  So it’s been leftovers and frozen pizza.  Which isn’t horrible, but still.
  • Decluttering: check! I missed a day because I literally wasn’t here, but other than that, I’ve made progress. I’m trying not to think about how overwhelming it is to deal with all the crap. I’ve got a pile to keep and a pile to give away–with even a pickup scheduled today! I’m also decluttering 15 minutes a day in my classroom. So yay!
  • Yoga once a week: check! I even brought a friend with me this week.  So far so good.
  • Budget stuff: sort of check! It’s too early to tell, but I am keeping a close eye on things.  I think this resolution should be changed to something like check accounts every day.  Knowing about spending leads to not over spending.
  • Walk every day: not so much.  I have walked the dog, but that doesn’t really count.  Frankly, it’s just too cold outside.  Mr. Geeky is talking about getting a treadmill, so that might help.
  • Write a program every day: check! A couple of these have been simple examples for class, but still.  And I’m writing my own version of an old game I used to play, just for fun and practice. It’s text right now, but I’m going to graphic-ize it once I have it functioning the way I want.

So not too bad.  I’m taking it a day at a time.  How are you doing?

Refining the resolutions

30. December 2011 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Over the last 24 hours or so, I’ve been thinking about what I really want to accomplish this year, and more importantly, why?  Here’s my list so far:

1. Keeping the house cleaner, more organized.  I find it stressful to come home to a messy kitchen with no food to prepare and piles of laundry to do.  I find the complete Flylady method a little overwhelming and too much to achieve if you work out of the home.  She does recommend a load of laundry per day, which I think I can manage.  I’d also like to get better at meal planning, recruiting the kids to do a little more in this regard.  Geeky Boy got a cookbook for Christmas, so I’ve suggested that he do the cooking on the night I have yoga.  Last year, and even the beginning of this year, I did pretty well on the meal front and had 3-4 meals scheduled each week, hoping for leftovers on at least one or two days.  Mr. Geeky does the grocery shopping, giving me some time to really think through the planning. So I think I can manage this.  I also want to really focus on decluttering.  Our house is a reasonable size, but we don’t have that much storage.  I feel that we have way too much stuff.  There are boxes of things we never use.  We have old cell phones sitting around that could be donated.  There are board games and toys that we’ve held onto for some reason. So, here’s my house cleaning resolutions in a nutshell:

  • Do a load of laundry every day. Wash, dry *and* fold.
  • Plan meals for each week and stick to the plan.  Also have easy backup meals on deck (pasta and sauce, sandwiches) for days when the plan falls apart or when the hoped-for leftovers do not appear.
  • Declutter 15 minutes/day.  At the end of the declutter session, make sure unwanted items are headed where they need to go–trash or donation pile.  I will start at the front of the house and work my way back, then move upstairs from front to back.  I think this will take the whole year.  I also think this will be the hardest plan to stick with.

2. Getting fit, developing an exercise habit.  For now, I’m not going to worry too much about eating.  Over the holidays, I’ve indulged in chips and snack food, chocolate, too much wine and beer, but during “normal” times, I’m much better and my eating habits are not that bad.  We eat mostly vegetarian and fish, not a lot of red meat and I try to incorporate vegetables as much as possible.  Though I think I should add more fruits and veggies, especially as snacks, until I’m set in my fitness routine.  Here’s my plan for that:

  • Yoga once a week, with a plan to increase to twice a week after 3 months.
  • Go for a walk every day.  I feel like I need to do something every day, and I like walking.  I don’t even need to put special clothes on.  I’m going to start with a mile, but work up to 3.  Time-wise, I’m not sure I can go further than that.

3. Sticking to the budget.  I must admit that I often hate dealing with money.  Always have.  In times when we had no money, we checked our accounts all the time, making sure we didn’t overdraw (not that we didn’t on occasion).  Now, we’re less careful, and though we don’t often overdraw, we do end up charging things or not buying things that we wanted to because we overspent.  So here’s the plan for that:

  • Reduce spending by $100/month in each of these categories: groceries, eating out (including fast food), and shopping.  The plan is to increase the reduction if possible.
  • Put the amount saved in these categories (up to $300/month) into savings.

Well, I think that’s enough to start with.  I have at least one more that I’m contemplating.  It’s kind of work-related.  Back in September, I promised myself I’d practice programming every day.  Though I’ve come close to that, it’s not perfect.  I need to make time at work to do this.  So I’m still thinking about how this would work.

Moving forward

29. December 2011 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

So I went to a yoga class last night run by my old friend with whom I used to do yoga 10 years ago.  It was fabulous.  I am actually sore today, but in a good way.  I think I worked every muscle in my body.  The class is offered every Wednesday, so I think I’ll start going at least to that, and then maybe add another class later.

Another area I want to work on in the coming year is money.  We suck at budgeting.  We usually manage to come out okay, but every once in a while, we find ourselves resorting to a credit card, and, in general, we’re not saving enough.  I have made a good effort to pay off our credit cards, but need to do some work in that area.  One thing I keep talking about doing is canceling cable and our land line.  That would save us over $100/month.  We subscribed to Netflix streaming, and have used it a lot.  Geeky Girl and I spent our time over the break watching How I Met Your Mother from the beginning.  Though we’d seen most of the episodes, we enjoyed watching them in order.  Mr. Geeky watches whatever movies it throws at him.  He’s on a foreign film kick at the moment.

I have no problem canceling cable.  We have TiVo and frankly, if we didn’t, this decision would be a lot easier.  We’d just figure out whether to go with Apple.tv or Google.tv or Boxee, etc.  As it is, we’re trying to figure out things that will work with our existing box.  We can access Netflix and Amazon.  We could also go with Hulu plus, which is available on TiVo as well.  But newer services like Vudu are not available and you can’t really just go to a web site like Clicker.com to connect to your shows of choice.  We could connect a computer to our tv, but then we need remote control.  We’d actually lose some of the shows we watch regularly.  At least, we’d lose the convenience of being about to watch them in one place at the click of a button. So I think we’ll keep looking and thinking about it.  And I know, we could give up tv altogether.  Not outside the realm of possibility.

Mr. Geeky and I went over our budget the other day and most of our money goes to food (both groceries and eating out) and shopping (mostly for clothes).  We’re going to try to cut back a little in those areas.  I think that will have a bigger impact than getting rid of cable.  I’ve proposed cutting those by a couple hundred each.  We may have to start slow, but maybe we’ll get there.  We definitely like our food!

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Corporate Money and Education

07. September 2011 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

If you’ve been reading me for a while, you know that I’m an open source kind of person.  I like to use open source software whenever I can.  I’ve donated to OS projects and paid for some outright because they’re good.  But it’s not just about the money.  It’s a philosophy about how software is created through collaboration, and that anyone can change that software as needed, hopefully in a way that contributes to the improvement of that software.  That being said, I am often willing to pay for and use propriety software.  I pay for Apple software, for example.  I pay for Weebly for school.  Honestly, I’d pay for Google docs.  Often I do this when it’s something I don’t need to alter or for which there isn’t a good open source alternative.

But what I’m starting to get the heebie-jeebies about is corporations making money (and lots of it!) off of schools.  Most schools’ budgets are stretched pretty thin, but many of the products sold to schools are way expensive.  Microsoft, Blackboard, student information systems, even Apple, charge schools a ton of money to use their products.  They often sell you their products by suggesting it will help you teach better, make your life easier in some way, or help you students learn.  As you might imagine, I see this a lot in Computer Science.  The two biggest robotics competitions both require the purchase of not just equipment (which I don’t have a huge problem with), but also software.  I’m going to pay $1000 to get software.  They also sell curriculum packets for a ton of money.

I give Microsoft some credit in that many of their products for CS education are offered at no cost, but often to go further, one has to purchase a more robust package, for a few hundred dollars.  Google, of course, provides many things for “free” but they’re not open, and they’re selling off your info in one way or another.

And then there’s the publishers, many of whom sell not just books to you and your students, but online “experiences.”  And I’ve seen other companies that sell whole curricula to schools.

Now, I get it.  Building curriculum is hard, and sometimes you get thrown into teaching something you’ve never taught before and you need some materials, stat.  But I just don’t trust companies to not have some kind of self-interest.  Microsoft, for example, wants employees, so it’s willing to give away some products in exchange for potentially loyal employees.  Nothing wrong with that, but I don’t buy that their desire to create more computer scientists is about “bettering the world.” It’s about bettering Microsoft, which may or may not be bettering the world with their products.  Ditto Google.  The textbook publishers just seem desperate, like they know they’re not going to last and so they’re trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip.

I know that some of my students might go off and work for Microsoft or Google or some other giant corporation where they’re going to be very successful.  But I worry about conflicts of interest.  I’m not teaching CS for Microsoft’s benefit.

I also hate corporations that sell products/curriculum with the suggestion that they want to help students learn when it’s clear that what they really want to do is make money.

I’m not opposed to companies making money.  Audrey Watters recently posted about some good education startups.  Many of these companies are filling gaps left by larger corporations.  I happily support some of these companies.  Yes, they want to make money, but many of them are also hoping to help teachers and students. They started as tools for education, not as general software companies who saw an opportunity in the education market.  I know education can’t be (and maybe shouldn’t be) completely separate from the corporate world, but a little distance wouldn’t hurt.

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Banking

13. August 2011 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,
The door to the walk-in vault in the Winona Sa...

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Earlier this year, my bank was bought out.  This is the third bank buyout I’ve been through.  The last one was rather painless in that I wasn’t paying all of my bills out of the account that was at the purchased bank.  This time, very painful.  Of course, the new bank “transferred” everything over to its online banking system, but I am still dealing with the fallout.  The transfer happened in late May/early June.  For those in academia/education, you know what those months are like.  I kind of did triage at the time, but did not do a careful reevaluation of what was where.  The new bank had warned me–a little–that some things might need to be tweaked, but they didn’t really give me an inkling of how bad things might be.  First, the transfer did not transfer over the names of the account, and instead, I was staring at a list of account numbers.  I had to go through each one and edit the name.  Then, many of my automated payments disappeared.  In some cases, I had been receiving electronic bills from companies, and I then paid the bill automatically.  I had just checked a box to say, “Pay this bill automatically”.   Many of those were now gone and automated payments had to be set up manually.  I had a very nice system going that had bills going out so that they got paid on time, and we still had money left over to buy groceries and go to a movie once in a while.  Now that system is completely broken.

When I was fixing all of this a couple of months ago, I should have gone to each account, checked due dates, etc. and set things up accordingly.  Instead, I made some educated guesses based on what I had set up before, and so, I got some phone calls.  These people call if you are a day late, or $6 under the minimum (yep, I got these).  And while it wasn’t that difficult to say–every time–I’ve taken care of that–it was a pain.  I can’t imagine what people who have real issues have to put up with.  I hung up after one call and thought, “that cost them a lot to recover my $6.”  It’s also very frustrating in that none of this is really my fault.  Another bank bought my bank and their online system messed everything up.  I have literally spent hours trying to fix everything and still, I’m sure something is falling through the cracks.  Partly, it’s that the system doesn’t have all the same options as my old one did, so I have to figure out how tweak things to work the way I want them to.  The lack of e-bills for many companies drives me nuts.  I either have to refer to a paper bill or log in at another site to find out how much is due and when.  I find that particularly annoying.  I guess it’s my own fault for relying so much on online banking but boy, do I wish there were more standardization.

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Entrepreneurship

05. March 2010 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Geeky Girl has decided to start a business.  This is in part a reaction to the book I got her while I was away, A Smart Girl’s Guide to Money.  In it, there are ideas for businesses to start, like babysitting or dog walking, and an explanation of profit.  So, Geeky Girl spent the better part of yesterday trying to decide what business to start and then calculating her profit.  She figured out how much her supplies would cost, set a price for her product and then determined her net profit.  She then hired Mr. Geeky and offered him a 10% cut.  And she’s giving me a 10% cut to go towards my walking fund.  I’m pretty impressed that she’s gone to so much trouble already.  Her business? Selling cookies.  So, last night, she got out cookbooks, selected a couple of recipes, and made a shopping list.  She also made a sign to put on her booth.  The plan is to set up at the street corner.  I’m hoping at the very least to keep that entrepreneurial spirit alive.

Schools and Wealth

04. March 2010 · 6 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

There’s a really interesting conversation going on over at 11D about moving to a wealthier neighborhood to take advantage of the school district. The issue is that doing so might bring with it the need to fit in, both by the kids and by the parents, through clothing and other worldly possessions. We recently had this conversation, not about moving, but about attending private school after Geeky Girl expressed an interest in doing so. After we figured out a way to cover the cost for tuition, we immediately jumped to thinking about the people we’d be surrounded by. I’ve learned to live with the fact that our income doesn’t go as far here as it would in other places we’ve lived, and we chose our current neighborhood in part because we were surrounded by people whose income is roughly the same and whose values seem roughly the same. That is, they’re not interested in having fancy cars, perfectly manicured lawns, houses designed by interior designers, or designer clothes.

Yes, the private school down the street is “better” by some objective measures, but I’m not entirely sure it’d be better for our kids.  Better academically maybe, but would their self-esteem take a blow when they got a lot of flack for not wearing designer jeans or driving a Lexus.  I care not a whit about Uggs or Chanel sunglasses or whatever, but I do sometimes long to be able to travel more, to remodel my house exactly the way I want it, using high end materials instead of cutting corners, to be able to buy a new car.  We can do those things, but not as often as the people who live in the next zip code and certainly not without some planning.  We lived in that zip code briefly, and at one point at a play date, we were invited to a summer home where we might be able to hobnob with the Reagans.  We could never have reciprocated, and that would have made me feel icky (as would hobnobbing with the Reagans, but that’s another story).

On the other hand, I’ve got a few advantages thanks to a generous father and some other friends.  We go on vacation every summer without having to pay for accommodations, which makes a huge difference.  We’d never be able to travel to the locations we do without that.  Or we’d do it less often.  We have friends who live overseas who’ve offered accommodations as well, again cutting the cost of trip nearly in half, making it more likely that we can travel there.  And, it’s likely if I went back to work, there’s much more we could do financially since we’ve adjusted our habits to suit a single income existence.  I think we’re doing okay by the kids.  No, they’re not in the very very best schools, but they’re pretty damn good and living near a city gives them many advantages that we’d never have if we lived somewhere that would allow us to afford a Lexus.  We’re doing the best we can, and I’m satisfied with that for now.  But, I totally get the angst Laura and many of her commenters express.  I have it, too, every once in a while.

Money

04. March 2010 · 7 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

I’ve been tweaking our financial situation over the last few weeks following the suggestions in Elizabeth Warren’s All Your Worth, which I think I mentioned, but can’t find that post at the moment.  So, I started by tackling home and car insurance.  I’ve been actually talking to insurance agents, and I’ve been proud of myself for saying to more than one, “I’m sorry but buying from you is more expensive than what I have right now.  See ya.”  I think I have something good lined up, and will find out for sure sometime today, but it’s been a time-consuming process.  Most of us, I’d wager, don’t pay too much attention to total amounts paid for either of these pieces of insurance.  And I’ve found that people display their prices in weird ways–sometimes monthly, sometimes bi-annually, sometimes yearly–so it takes work to make sure you’re comparing apples to apples.  I don’t think I’m going to save thousands of dollars annually, but a few hundred, possibly.

I also transferred a balance from one credit card to another with a low interest rate.  All my cards, whether I’m carrying a balance or not, (I only have the one I transferred that has a significant balance) have interest rates approaching 30%.  Can we say loan shark? Cause seriously? This is crazy.  These people have made lots of money off of me over the years (I’m not proud of that fact, but it’s true).  We pay on time.  We’ve paid off most of them, but still use them on occasion, and we get no break whatsoever.  Thanks for being a great customer; we’re gonna raise your interest rate now.  I remember the days when they raised our limits and lowered our interest rates.  My plan is to pay these all off in the next few weeks.  It’s a pretty small amount, but not an amount I regularly have lying around, so it takes a bit of planning.

My next step was to deal with savings and investments.  As Warren points out (and nearly every financial adviser does), just paying off your credit card debt is a form of savings.  The money you were putting into paying that off can now be put into a savings account.  We have a basic savings account that is now earning us very, very little in interest.  The account serves as both an emergency fund (which we’ve used in the last couple of years) and a college savings account.  We can pay for about a week of college with it.  Besides our 401(k) accounts, we have no other investments.  I’m terrified of investing in anything, especially after what happened just a couple of years ago.  I lost something like 30-40% of my 401(k) account.  And since I can’t contribute to it anymore (need to roll that over–gah!), it will take a while (if I leave it where it is) for it to regain its value.  Same for Mr. Geeky, though at least he’s contributing to his account.  So, following Warren’s advice again, I decided to start a small investment account, investing in index funds.  So I did this all online, doing a lot of research to figure out what company to sign up with.  And then yesterday, the company called me to make sure I was doing okay and if I had any questions.  And I think I freaked out the guy because I was pretty clueless.  Unlike with the insurance, where I could just say, sorry you’re too expensive for what I want, I couldn’t just say, “Look, all I want to do is get a simple index fund.”  I did mention that, and he said they had plenty of those, but then he asked, “What are your financial plans?”  And I said, “Well, they’re kind of vague.”  And then he put me in touch with a financial planner, which I think we’re going to pay a visit to next week.  Mr. Geeky actually agreed to this. We’ve avoided it because we felt like our financial situation was too simple to require one.  But it’s getting more complicated by the day.  Retiring, paying for college, and other financial needs and wants are closer than ever.

I was telling Mr. Geeky that the guy on the phone seemed surprised about my financial uncertainty, and we both agreed that we didn’t really know anyone who seemed to be on top of their financial game plan.  Maybe this is a problem with academics, who often have salaries that don’t give them enough money to invest in anything outside of their retirement plan and who have pensions and other benefits that mean they don’t have to do a lot of the planning themselves.

The next semi-financial thing I’m doing is setting up a will.  And yes, I know I should have had one a long time ago.  I’m just now realizing I’m a real grownup.  Mr. Geeky even agreed to this move, something he, too, has avoided over the years.  So, hopefully, we’ll have an appointment for that next week as well.  It’s not exciting stuff, for sure, but it feels good to be taking care of some of these things.

We will never be perfect on the financial front.  We just don’t have the time or interest to invest in managing our money, but we can probably do a little better than we are currently, and maybe leave the kids with a little something and be better off to help them when they’re getting started in their own lives.  And yes, I feel old saying that.

Fun with Money

06. October 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

No really. Thanks to ProfHacker, I was reminded of Mint.com, a site for tracking your money that I heard about on NPR. The problem with hearing about web sites on the radio in the car: no internets in the car. Last week, I signed up for an account and pulled in all my various accounts. I still have to pull in the retirement account, but am planning on it today. It is soooo much fun and so informative to have all of my accounts–savings, credit, loans, investment–all in one place. I can see at a glance where my money is, what’s coming in and what’s going out. The coolest thing about the site for me was the way it decided on categories based on the name of the company listed in a transaction. It was about 95% accurate. It was easy enough to spot the things that were off and correct them.

Even more exciting are the graphs and pie charts. Here’s an example of one from my account (without numbers):
You can click on each slice to drill down into the category further. So, for example, that orange slice up there, that’s shopping. When I click on it, I get this pie chart:

That’s a thin slice of books and the rest for clothes. Clicking on a slice that has no subcategories takes you to the transaction itself. This is how I found inaccuracies in categories. I would see a huge slice for something like movies and then clicking on that slice would show me that they’d categorized cable as movies or something like that.

I find being able to visualize my spending and drill down to find exactly where the money goes extremely helpful. I know Quicken and other programs like it did this in the past, but the categories often had to be done manually and it was complicated to set up multiple accounts. I felt like you needed a degree in accounting to do it successfully. Mint, by contrast, is dead simple, relying on data your banks already keep. Since we’re down to one income with my own income coming sporadically, keeping track of our spending is more important than ever. I’ve already found some places to cut more corners, and I’m actually enjoying the process of managing our finances. Who knew!

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Coins, Money and Banks

13. August 2009 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Polish Złoty and Euro CoinsImage by schoschie via Flickr

Every day Mr. Geeky comes home from work and puts his keys and wallet in a little secretary that stands by the front door. He also puts any change from his pocket into a jar. When the jar got full, I suggested taking it to the bank. Not yet, he said. He needed to check for “valuable” old coins first. He added another jar. That jar got full. I made the suggestion again. Again he protested that there might be coins worth saving in there. Months passed. He didn’t move on to a third jar. By this point, there wasn’t room. Finally, I insisted, suggesting that the kids go through both jars and set aside anything they thought might be worth something–old coins, foreign coins, gold doubloons. So, they sat themselves at the dining room table. When they found their first old coin, they got pretty excited. Geeky Boy has books that hold old coins that he hasn’t looked at in years. He got out those and filled a couple of slots. Geeky Girl remembered she had a state quarter set. She got the folder for that and began filling out that collection. All in all, they only found 10-15 older coins, but they’re going through another container we found in hopes of finding more. They’ve been returning to the project periodically without my having to ask. Geeky Girl, especially, having not paid much attention to money before, exclaims when they find something unusual, something she’s never seen before and listens patiently when Geeky Boy explains what the D and the S mean on the coins.

They filled a medium-sized bowl with coins suitable for taking to the bank. Yesterday, I filled a bag with about half of the coins and trudge to the bank on my way to the farmer’s market. The bank lets you estimate how much money you have and if you’re close, you win a prize. As I poured the money into the machine, I saw mostly pennies. So, I estimated about 7.50. When it was all said in done, I had slightly over $52 in coins. Mostly dimes, it turned out. I’m really bad at estimating, especially now that I rarely handle cash, much less coins. All my cash is digital, exchanged either via electronic transfer or similarly, using my debit card. I used to keep tips in a mayonnaise jar on my dresser, saving up for the deposit on an apartment in graduate school town. I know about how much was there, in part because I knew how much I made in tips, but also because I dealt with cash all the time.

I spent a little more than half of my new found cash at the farmer’s market. Even though I always take cash there (most of the vendors don’t take other forms of payment), I felt a little giddy at having such a large amount, created, it seemed, out of thin air.

Money now does seem to come out of thin air, arriving in bank accounts without anyone having to touch anything. I used to work at a bank during the summers. One summer I filed loan applications, the 3 attached parts left after everything was signed off. Another summer I filed the checks people deposited into their accounts, checks that were then sent to other banks to be filed and then placed in an envelope to be sent to the customer with her statement. Even then, the real transaction happened electronically, with a machine reading routing and account numbers, a human inputting the amounts, which were then coded onto the check to be read by another machine. For a brief time each summer, it was my job to count money coming in from the vendors at the annual summer festival. Bags of coins and dollar bills showed up at the bank and I stood behind the tellers, counting it all by hand, recording amounts on deposit slips, amounts that were later entered into computers while the money itself went into the vault, to be redistributed to banks or to customers withdrawing money.

Geeky Boy asked the other day if people still traded things. I said, sure, happens all the time. But money became more convenient at some point and then banks became a place to store that money and now, they are the place where most of our financial transactions actually occur. And they make their own money off of those transactions. What a weird little system we’ve created, making banks the middle man for our exchange of goods.

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