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Sinus Headaches and Giving it Away for Free
Whatever pressure system is going through my area is giving me a sinus headache. One of those headaches where you kind of wish your head would explode because it would be such a relief.
I’ve been writing and talking to people in the blogosphere to get more information on financial writing. It always makes me feel so backward and weird when I hear others talking about having problems with the marketing but they have no problem finding the outlets.
I’m like a big gun waiting to fire but I don’t have a target.
So, when that happens, I just start marketing and figure the outlets will come later.
This time I’m starting in a place where I don’t know anyone already. Okay, Fussypants is an acquaintence…of sorts…on Twitter, but I don’t know her like I know, say, eMom. Which isn’t much better, but I’ve at least met Wendy in person, so that counts for a step up on the social ladder.
But I do know that Fussy is smart, and she went through some drama a while back and I thought she handled it very well, so I have respect for her in that, “Ooh, I saw your drama get aired in public” kind of way.
So I’ve been wanting to write more about finances without turning this blog into finance central all the time, plus I kind dig Fussy…One plus one equals two, right?
I’m the newest contributor for Financial Bliss (over at Blissfully Domestic) which, I hear, got changed last night to Frugal Bliss. If I had a vote (I totally didn’t) I would have named the section Blissful Wealth. But, you know, that’s just me.
I even get a cute little badge to show off my membership and contribution to the new clique.
Now that I put it in the post, it’s not really a little badge, huh? Oh well, it will look good hanging out in the sidebar with all my other “Flair” - are there 22 pieces yet? Do you all remember Office Space well enough that the flair joke is even funny?
Ok, I’m going to crawl back into my sinus headache. You can click here to read the first post I wrote for Financial Bliss (now Frugal Bliss should be Blissful Wealth or at least Wealthy Bliss but, again, I’m a brand new contributor and have no right to do anything but provide good content and snuggle my graphic.)
Hope you enjoy the site. As far as group sites like that go, it’s one of the nicest I’ve seen. Great branding too, which makes me feel good about writing for free and putting it in my portfolio so people can see the body of financial writing I’m attempting to create.
The first post that is going up is on current events, but we’ll be talking a lot about investing with small amounts of money to start building a portfolio even if you aren’t moneybags. Because, yeah, the stock market is not just for the rich or stupid. It’s for anyone that is looking for the path that leads to true wealth. That little place at the end of The Game of Life (by Parker Brothers, right?) where you want to get your little pink care with the little pegs.
The Kids are Back in the Bedroom - Finally!
After weeks of drop cloths and rollers my kids are finally back in their room.
They have a lovely bright-white room with the ceiling trim painted a lovely pastel pink, and the bottom baseboards and thick trim around the closet painted a lovely pastel minty green.
It kinda looks like something out of a Pottery Barn Kids catalog and it makes me want to cry when I see it, because it’s so much better than the off-white it was before, complete with crayon, pen, lipstick, marker, and glue that was all over the walls. It looks like something out of a catalog.
Back when we were poor (I do not use that term lightly) one of Randy’s “before he was awesometastic” jobs was working with his cousin. His cousin had a commercial/residential painting company. Randy’s cousin is like the painting mafia. Perfection was necessary and Randy did his best to live up to his cousin’s expectations. He actually did a pretty good job - the only reason he left was that he got a management position at a local coffee house that had a ten second commute.
What this means is that when I need a room painted, I have a painter here on staff to take care of it. It’s a blissful feeling knowing he’s patching and edging and knows the difference between flat, eggshell, and semi-gloss paints.
Even better? Paint is expensive. Randy’s cousin ends up with leftover paint from all these different jobs he does and it’s a pain in the butt for him to dispose of it all properly. (There are laws, who knew!) So when we want to paint, Randy drives over to his house and says, “Hey cuz, what paint are you getting rid of?”
We currently have about twelve buckets of paint in everything from pastel pink, yellow, and green all the way to bright red and gray.
He is currently in the middle of painting our bedroom.
Sidenote: We thought the walls were white when we saw the house five and a half years ago. We really did. I couldn’t figure out why the house always felt, well, a little dingy no matter what we did. Once randy hit the girls’ room with the first coat of white, it was like a light went on! Our walls were all horribly off-white! So, even though I swore when I owned a home I wouldn’t paint all the walls white (white walls always felt like “apartment living” to me) it seems I’m sucked in.
Besides, I know how I want to decorate the rooms. You saw my scrapbook photo frame, right? I’m going to do more of those plus do some sayings so I don’t have to put vinyl stickers on the walls. I’m really excited about it.
Back to my bedroom. We’re doing white again, but our trim is going to be the lovely, subtle ice blue for both the top trim and the baseboards. Oh, and the baseboards were painted when we moved in, so we’re not the morons painting over wood. When I get my hardwood floors I’ve been dreaming of we are going to redo the baseboards at the same time so they are wood.
Pictures will be provided as soon as I have the dresser and bookcase painted for their room as well. I’m going to do a cool distressed effect where we paint them the light green, then a coat of white, and then use a fine piece of sandpaper to “distress” the white and let some of the green show through.
Finance Friday: Getting It Together For October
You know I’ve been trying to follow most of the Dave Ramsey Plan right?
Dave Ramsey Plan Review & Summary
- $1000 emergency fund
- Pay off debt
- 3-6 months of expenses REAL emergency fund
- Invest in retirement
- Save for kids to go to college (or start a business)
- Pay off mortgage ASAP
- Invest like a madwoman (I’m paraphrasing that one)
The problem is, I did the written budget, realized we actually had money, and went kind of batsh*t there for a minute - or a month.
From lunches with friends to beer making equipment to taking the kids downtown for the day, my debit card was used, bruised, and abused so much in September I heard it on the phone the other day pitching a Lifetime movie.
With all that, my emergency fund will be shy of the first $1000 goal.
Now for the good news. It’s only going to be short by about $300. Every time Randy gets a paycheck (twice a month, not bi-weekly) $100 goes right into ING Direct Savings. That means we only have to contribute an extra $100 to the savings account sometime during October to make that step one from up there in the list complete.
The big problem
I have a personality that drives to do everything, all at once. I figure out what the steps are, I map out a path, and then I attempt to run like the wind down the path as fast as I can go.
That means I keep trying to pay off too much, too soon, and I get discouraged really easily. Because numbers make me feel downright dumb. Really. Working with a budget and the bills and addition and subtraction makes me feel so very, very stupid.
Feeling stupid can lead to some reckless behavior.
The quick fix
Since I can’t revamp my personality quickly, I’m revamping the plan. I’m trying to make the budget more conservative by giving my categories for the following some extra cash (a.k.a. more breathing room.)
- Randy Entertainment
- Jen Entertainment
- Groceries
- Eating Out
I know, I know. If you are a Dave Ramsey viewer you hear the mantra, “Rice and beans, beans and rice.” You can keep your beans and rice. I believe that eating out once a week is less than most people and perfectly logical to have in the budget. Randy has a full time job and multiple freelance clients. I have two toddlers and blog and freelance and do a multitide of other things to bring cash into the house.
We both need cheap reminders that we are working like dogs for a reason. The future? That’s never enough to get you through tomorrow.
I also think building that little extra into the budget will keep us from having another spendfest like we did in September.
Other habit changes
We stopped drinking Starbucks coffee. We found that the Folgers Dark Silk Roast tastes basically almost like the Sumatra that I was so used to. It’s strong enough that it wakes me up in the morning, but is a little less acidic than the Starbucks. So it’s really better overall. No more acid tummy. Plus Folgers is cheap!
Randy and I made a deal. I’m the one that always wants to eat out (because if it’s cooked by me I don’t eat and then we have that whole almost-an-eating-disorder issue - I like meals now and then.) For any money left over at the end of the month from the “eating out” budget - basically if I don’t spend all the money in that envelope - I get to put it in the ShareBuilder Mutual Fund to either be left in the mutual fund or used to purchase stock.I cannot even tell you how excited I am about this development.
The only thing more important to me than good food brought straight to my table is money brought straight into my bank account.
How to Start and End Your Day Happily in the Negative
Here’s the weird thing about a ShareBuilder account with ING.
When you buy the stocks, you buy them at the price they are when you buy them. Common sense, right? But the prices of stocks fluctuate overnight. When I bought my Lehman Bros last night it was at $.13 and Fannie Mae was at $1.78. So my bank account was charged a grand total of $277 because of what the pricing was when I placed the order.
When the actual Buy Order went through this morning it went like this:
Lehman Bros - $.25 x 100 Shares + 14.95 comission = $39.95
Fannie Mae - $2.01 x 100 Shares + 14.95 comission = $215.95
For a total of $255.90
But since I’d only agreed to pay a total of $227 for both of the stocks, I started the day with a negative account balance. The difference between the opening prices and the prices when I made the order. A difference of $28.90.
So when I first logged in this morning and saw that my account was -$9.90 I felt pretty good about it. I’d already made back much of my loss.
There was a way around it
I could have found a way to trade on another market to buy the stocks. Australia is getting up while we are going to bed. It is possible I could have purchased the stocks through the Australian stock market (I don’t know if one even exists, just so you know, this is only for the sake of example.) That would have assured my purchases would have happened at the prices I wanted to the penny.
I haven’t started researching overseas trade, but I imagine it costs a little more to execute than the $9.95 it costs with ShareBuilder from ING. Even if I wanted to do a phone trade with ING it would cost $29.95! I’m happy sticking with the Internet.
Where I ended up when the market closed
When all was said and done at the close of the market (4:30pm CST) I was down in my ShareBuilder account by $29.90. While you could look at that and say, “Wow. Don’t you feel all freaked out being in the negative on an account?” I don’t.
Because I started out at negative $28.90 and ended at negative $29.90. I lost a dollar today.
Considering the bailout plan got shaky during the last hour of trading I’m surprised I’m not down a whole lot more. When Twitter reports were coming through that they had made a bailout deal before McCain could even get himself to Washington, DC everything spiked (as expected) and at my highest point today there was a whole $49.60 in the account. Not negative, either. A positive balance of almost fifty dollars. (Had I cashed out it would have meant I made $78.50 - the combo of covering the negative I started the day with plus the profit at the peak of the day.)
I don’t generally think in terms of how much I made when I wasn’t even planning on selling, I just want to make sure I’m being clear how I can be happy ending my day in the negative.
That and you and I both know I didn’t buy these stocks to sell them today. I bought them this morning JUST IN CASE the bailout somehow went through today. Lehman closed at .33 cents today when I bought it at .25. Fannie Mae closed at 1.97 when I bought it at $2.01. The slight differences between opening and closing prices (basically my stocks for all intents and purposes are almost exactly where they were when the market opened) when the overall Dow Jones closed UP 196 points tells me the market and everyone in it are probably going to stay about the same until something happens.
Like, oh…I don’t know….a bailout perhaps?
How I want to play this
That means my job is to wait. Wait for news that will make a difference in how these stocks act. Something that will make people feel one way or the other about them.
For now they are just kind of sitting. Flucutating a little based on the day’s news and any whisper coming out of those bailout meetings. But that won’t make the big difference.
I don’t really expect to even consider getting rid of these stocks until Monday.
Until then I plan on watching the Fox Business Channel. The mix of Dave Ramsey on one end of the spectrum and Jim Cramer on the other helps me stay focused on where I want to be.
Stuck in the middle with you. Of course.
