Friday Celebration Post -the first!

[jamethiel]

I start early because I am early! It's the end of the week! Let Joy and Celebration be unconfined!

Come and tell me--what progress have you made towards your goals this week? Finances OR frugal living, or even buying something that you've saved up towards!

Comments

[holyschist]

I am 2/3 switched over to a credit union with better interest rates and fewer/lower fees! (The parts that aren't switched over: automagic payments, which I'm going to set up tonight, and my credit card balance--which I screwed up on and which will take a while to sort out, but will ultimately involve ~ -17% in my APR, making the credit card the least of my debt concerns!)

I talked to my broker about investing my inherited IRA to actually earn money--ironically, despite being a poor semi-employed student living paycheck to paycheck and buried in student and car loan debt, I have a great retirement account. I just didn't have the energy to deal with it AND my thesis after my dad died. So now that I'm almost done with school, I got that set up, and asked for the minimum distribution forms, which I would like to do now to give me a little more cushion as I look for a FT job.

I also sat down and looked at my schedule for the next two months: I have a short-term temp project and a part-time job with really flexible hours, so I figured out how to fit everything together. I'll basically be working full-time, which is good, although I need to get more job applications out, too. (I'm just finishing up grad school--the other factor is finishing the last things I need to get done by the end of March, so I can focus on earning money and finding a FT job.)

I dedicated a big chunk of this week into getting my finances in order and have been making good progress so far, although I'm saving big stuff like taxes for this weekend! So I'm trying not to kick myself too much about the screwup.

I've been doing better this week about not eating out! I think I'm going to try a dinner-at-home-for-a-month challenge or some variant. And be better about telling the partner that if he doesn't want to scrounge or cook, he can go out by himself; I need to eat less junk food and I can't afford it (neither can he, but I also can't control his financial choices). I am foreseeing a lot of giant batches of pasta in our future!

[jamethiel]

Yay! Let us know when you're done with the credit union stuff and we'll raise a glass in your honour!

Also, good on you for taking up the challenge of eating at home for a month! Just remember, cheap can be really good food. Being enthused about cooking is fun!

I think everybody makes mistakes about finances at one time or another. Witness the amount of debt I got into before I decided not to be in it! But every mistake is recoverable from, given time and a little effort. Let us know how you go!

[holyschist]

Haha, I could so be done already if I hadn't been stupid. It's kind of stressing me out. But hopefully by next week.

I love cooking, and I prefer eating at home; I've just had an awful couple years and got out of the habit (and I have frustrations about the partner who is good for prep work but rarely for actually producing the meal, too). But I'm just going to have to get back in the habit.

I'm embarrassed to admit to what my credit card debt is (worse than yours was, better than some), but I'll pay it off eventually; it is nothing next to the student or car loans (both of which will end up higher interest), so I'm not that worried, just looking at loan payments for a long time.

[jamethiel]

Trying to work around other people in the kitchen is hard!

Sympathies on the debt. Keep plugging away at it. If you can pay more than the minimum, you'll get there eventually. For me, the hardest thing to do about it was decide to do something about it and then work out a sustainable plan that was a good compromise between quickest repayment and still having a life. Once I'd done it for a while it was just routine. It took a while until it felt like I saw results though.

[holyschist]

I'd feel much more comfortable if I had a FT job; the payments are fairly manageable when I'm employed, but the temporary stuff I have right now is temporary, and the job search is super-stressful. If I end up unemployed for more than a month (if that), I'm not sure what I'll do, since I'm not even remotely eligible for unemployment.

But I'm trying not to dwell on that.

[bewize]

Call the CC companies. A lot of them will work with you to get more manageable payments. They'd rather do that than end up getting nothing if you declare bankruptcy!

[kyrielle]

Hmm. If your partner is good at prep work - what about dishes? I've had fairly good luck getting my husband to play sous chef and dish washer on some of my cooking runs....

[holyschist]

Yeah, he does the dishes half the time or less.

Part of the issue is that he views chopping stuff as contributing equally to the meal (it isn't) and part of the issue is that he works skewed hours, so unless I want to eat at 9:30pm every night (which we often end up doing, and I hate it), I have to do most or all of the prep and cooking before he gets home. And it makes me grumpy.

I haven't really come up with a solution for this all yet, other than lots of pasta (and that's still eating at 8:30 at best, unless I cook it all before he gets home, and then 8:00).

[kyrielle]

:( Yeah. That makes it hard. I cook and freeze on weekends, reheat weekday evenings, but that doesn't solve the distribution of labor issue, just moves mine. (Of course, in my case it DOES help as then my husband is home to clean up the detritus.)