A Bit of Housekeeping

When I updated my goals in September, I had said I altered my savings strategies a little and mentioned that, some time in the future, I’d like to save up for a new laptop.

What with all the sour news lately, though, I had sort of put that off on the back burner. Then my dad, hearing about the newest Macbooks, mentioned that maybe the company could buy me one, like they did with my cell phone. I said maybe I could pay for half.

This is where I should insert another caveat about my dad’s being the nicest, most giving person and just admit here and now that I must be spoiled rotten. Last weekend, while we celebrated a birthday and an anniversary in the family, neither mine, Dad surprised me with a brand-new, silver, shiny Macbook. It’s wonderful, and he’s the nicest person ever.

So scratch that off my goals.

The biggest change this is causing for me right now, financially, is that my budgeting system needs to be completely different. I had been using budget by snowmint, but the version I had only works with PCs. Buying the Mac version is another $30 or $40, and then I risk losing it all over again if I want to switch computers. Since I’ve been using Mint.com for a while, I’ve decided to start using it for my budgeting as well. We’ll see how this goes.

Difference a Day

It’s amazing to me how different life can be from day to day, and, along those lines, how absolutely impossible it is to measure the happiness of one’s life (or even the peacefulness or the conflict-free-ness of it) by one morning.

Take this week, for example:

Yesterday, because of a smallish mistake a restaurant made on my order, I and my co-workers ate lunch for free (!). This, I’ll just tell you, was enough to make me grin from ear to ear, while exclaiming how nice this restaurant is! such good customer service! what a wonderful manager! I even wrote a letter to the company’s headquarters, just because I was feeling so positively pleased.

But that was yesterday. Today, a colleague I have come to greatly dislike wrote me a nasty letter, which to me came out of nowhere and was based on presumptions. Trying to take the higher road, I apologized for what he accused me of, saying that wasn’t what I’d meant. I also mentioned, at the end, that using expletives when referring to people I work with (or me) probably wasn’t appropriate. The whole event got me in such a down mood, feeling so frustrated and irritated and wanting to get away from him, the office, anyone who reminds me of the incident in question.

And then, just as I’m high as a kite in my self-pity, I think of that really kind manager yesterday, who bent over backwards to help me and make me happy, at no real reward to himself really. And I remember how on-top-of-the-world everything was afterwards and feel a little embarrassed at how bottom-of-the-barrel I’ve become because of one (mean maybe) person.

What does this all have to do with personal finance? Well, aside from the not-paying-for-a-meal thing yesterday and the hey-I-still-have-a-job thing today, not a lot. Except to say that just because your stock portfolio or your career path or your 401K seem down today doesn’t mean they will tomorrow. And vice versa, I suppose.

I guess what I mean is: most everything’s temporary. And when you see things that way, there’s not a lot to worry about.

This is my fall.

I drive to work in the morning and pass one school and four big, yellow school buses, filled with children with backpacks, wearing thick jackets, smiling. I see neighborhoods of sprawling maple trees, their leaves varying shades of crimson, golden, deep burgundy. Trees also flank the highways, peeking out above embankments, marching in ordered rows, set in similar burnt shades. Crisp, cold air flows inside through my car’s open windows.

At work, I sit surrounded by large windows, with a huge tree just next to me that’s beginning to orange and matching, smaller trees at the buildings within view. It’s darker now, so I flip on my lamp. Volume is slower these days, thanks to the economy or the election or just life. There have been layoffs. Then more layoffs. Then the sad, sad voicemail at my desk one morning, from the receptionist I loved who raved about my baking. Chin up, she told me. She’ll be fine, she’ll keep working hard, she’ll get through this. I watch the pale blue sky while I work, sipping coffee, ready to bite into a freshly picked apple my co-worker gave to me.

By the end of the day, the sky will be gray. It’s happened sooner this year than last, before daylight saving time, before the end of October, before I had time to expect it. I will drive home in almost-dark, the sun night quite set, night on my mind. I will eat dinner, maybe go for a walk, maybe read a little, maybe blog for a bit, then go to sleep.

My Thoughts on Credit or, this economy

Here’s the thing about this whole economic mess: I feel like I’m the victim. Do you know what I mean? I do realize that I’m not the only victim, of course: there are the people who were talked into bad mortgages and the people who’ve lost jobs and (oh gosh) the people who invested in AIG or Freddie Mac.

But there are a lot of us (just look around at PF blogs) who have been trying, really trying to do everything the right way. We’ve been saving instead of spending, investing instead of splurging, researching instead of just believing what we’re told. We don’t use credit cards to buy things we can’t afford, you know? I guess for as long as I’ve been trying to be smart with money, I’ve been operating under a very basic ideology: that people who work hard and invest and stay informed will come out ahead.

There are no sure things, I hear people saying these days. Remember the Depression. Remember world wars. Sometimes times will be tough, so you have to focus on the good things.

And I have been, or I’ve been trying to. But, forgive me: Should I feel bad for people who max out their credit cards on luxuries? Should I want to pay higher taxes for people whose eyes were bigger than their pocketbooks? Am I being unfair? Does anyone else feel the same way?

When in the world, seriously, did credit cards become a necessity? Can we try to justify them as one now? When did we decide that we have to have certain things?

I remind myself often that things are much more complicated than they seem from my small perspective. And there are a lot of people who weren’t given my privileges, education or exposure to financial information. But still, a nagging, persistent little voice says something’s not right.

This past week

I’ve been out of town, driving all over the Midwest, seeing old friends and visiting my parents at their cabin and coming back to work again. It’s been a busy week, a good week.

Last night and today, I caught up on all your blogs and our terrible economy and what everyone thinks about the bailout and the election and the plunging stock market.

And I’m worn out, honestly. Wondering how in the world I can ever get back into the PF-blogging I love, that’s about real people with real budgets and dreams and financial struggles. I’m wondering how I can make things a little less like “12 Tips” and “4 Steps” and “6 Easy Secrets” and a little more like something I enjoy. I don’t blog for money (I make very little). I don’t blog for prestige (I’m anonymous). I [thought i] blog for fun. But somewhere along the line, blogging has become something I should do, something I feel like everyone else is doing better, something I can’t catch up with. And I don’t like it.

So I’m making a command decision. I am only going to blog here when I have something to say and when I want to. Enjoyment is, really, the only thing I’ve got going for this whole blog thing. So I’m going to start working towards it again.

Saturday Round-Up, 10/4

Here’s a taste of what you may have missed in the College Money Network this week:

Poorer Than You gave a brand-new HP laptop away (sadly, not to me. I tried!), but now Broke-Ass Student has one to offer. Entries must be submitted by 10 PM tomorrow night, so hurry over to see what you have to do!

And, believe it or not,  Broke Grad Student is giving one away, too. Deadline is October 6. Double your chances of winning a computer by entering the game at his site, too, where the contest has gone Post Secret Style. Should be fun to see the entries!

With all the talk about the economy, it’s good to get some terms defined. Over at College Finance 101, read about the FDIC and what it means for you.

Did you hear Wells Fargo now has Wachovia? You can read all about it at Green Panda Treehouse.

Spilling Buckets explains How the Federal Government Works, complete with charts and links to contact information for your representatives.

Random Thoughts on a Friday Evening

My stock portfolio, like probably everybody else’s, is at a new low. Let’s not talk about it. I promise I believe things will work out, and it’s not like I’m checking my numbers every day; it’s just Mint.com likes to e-mail me status updates at the end of each week. So I’m just saying.

The bailout, which, up until now, I have been incorrectly hyphenating as bail-out—let’s not talk about that either—is actually boring me now. Will they? Won’t they? What did they change? What are they promising now? I’m just so disillusioned with the whole political process. Do you know I already give 25% of my paychecks to the government, as a combination of federal, state, social security and medicare taxes? 25%!! And I’m not in a high income bracket. The consolation is that I’ll get a large part of it back in a refund… or is that even a consolation? And now, as if all the taxes the government is already bringing in aren’t enough, the massively indebted USA is taking out further funds. Don’t even try to tell me it won’t affect my wallet. I don’t want to hear it.

And, since we’re talking about it, why in the world aren’t condo prices dropping drastically around here? I mean, if “no one is able to get a loan” as someone told me this week and “real estate is terrible” as I’m always hearing, why the heck aren’t the sellers lowering their prices? You’d think, to help compensate for my lowered portfolio, home values would follow suit, but no, not in Chicagoland. Not in the places I’d want to live in.

So. I have nothing else to say but that I’m happy to have a job and I’m happy to be healthy and I’m happy I’m not a politician or related to one, since, apparently, you’re either a media darling or a media scapegoat and either one is annoying.

I’m just an ordinary American, tired, suspicious and trying to make sense of things.

On Personality

I am discovering, I think, that I might be a Type A person.

Type A, from what I understand, likes to get things done, likes to be prepared, likes to feel in control. This can be good, and this can be bad. Good: planning for retirement, being an effective employee, staying on top of responsibilities. Bad: worrying about a health problem I do not have, impatience with people and circumstances… essentially, wanting life to fit in neat, understandable little boxes that make sense to me or, better, that I arranged myself.

Just when I think I know what the Uncontrolled Event in my life for the moment is, another one comes along. I’m all fretting about a problem at work and how I can fix it and why this is in my control, when, out of nowhere, my friend has a crisis that threatens to undo her. And, before I can wrap my mind around how to help her, I have a doctor’s appointment to prepare for–what to ask? what to remember? And then my brother’s returning from his first business trip and I’m about to leave for the weekend and I haven’t balanced my checkbook in over a week and Congress just passed the bailout–is it better? what does it mean?

Although it goes against my nature, I am learning to not know the answers to questions, to not know what will happen tomorrow, to accept that I am not in control.

I am learning, for example, to just do one thing–post a blog entry. To remember the beauty of fall, to reduce my concerns to trivialities, to count my blessings.