A couple weeks ago, a former coworker of mine told me about his new business he was starting, and he invited me to consider being a part of it.

I got a chance to see a Webex presentation of the current status of the project. It was pretty interesting, not just the technical aspects, but he also went through some of the business aspects. I don’t know much about corporate finances or start-ups, but they hoped to raise $200,000 and thought that would last over a year. This means that the salaries probably are low and more in the form of stock options.

I’m really torn. On one hand, it sounds exciting, and Kevin would be a great guy to work for. Plus, extra money (yay!), more experience, a little extra security in a somewhat scary time at my employer (my cube neighbor was laid off and I get to overhear his struggles. Yuck.) It sounds like a pretty good deal. Also, one awesome perk of this assignment–free Macbook Air. Or maybe it was just a regular mac, I’m not sure. I mean, it is nothing to fall over about, but it is a neat perk.

I recall Krystal asking her readers, “Would you take on a second job?” and I (along with many) answered with a resounding NO. But I had in mind mindless jobs not related to my field, not some consultant work on the side. This is entirely different.

I’m going to speak with T about this and see if he can help me decide. We have similar educational backgrounds, so he really is my most trusted source of information on good steps for my career. My parents just don’t have the background to give sound advice, and neither do my friends.

I think I’ll send Kevin an email and sort of let him decide. I’ll tell him the situation–I’m really excited about it, I’d love to work for him, but I’m nervous about over committing myself. I can only promise 10 hours a week, but say that I could probably offer more in these initial months before school starts. I’m not sure if that is worth it to him, and I’m not sure how much he really could use my help. I know he thinks I’m a good worker, that I can take on challenges and get things done. But he also is in contact with many other people who might have more time and experience. So, if it is not worth it to him, the decision is made. I do really want to do it, but I don’t want to commit to more than 10 hours a week.

If it is… then we will talk money and I am leaning towards doing it. He said the employees will be set up as consultants…. That is a whole new thing to learn about. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

I think I had goals in June. I wrote them down and then promptly forgot about them. I didn’t think about them once all month! As you will see below, that is not a recipe for success.

Wow, that is a lot of red! Here are some other accomplishments that staying within close to the budget entailed: (See, I don’t completely suck!)

• Saved $308 to Roth IRA, and over $400 to 401k (plus match), even though my retirement balance went down (boo, markets!)
• Added $572 to emergency savings. (Some of this was cash leftover from May’s abundance, but it wasn’t flowed into the Efund until this month.)
  
• Increased gift fund to $185 (increase of $60)
• Paid for hotel for Vegas trip, but kept travel fund at a healthy $268
  
• Increased car fund by $40 (and paid just $20 for a repair) to $350 (Slightly pathetic, but progress still)
  
• Saved $105 for insurance
• Procured some boogie boards and spent a day on public transit (more to come on that… maybe…)
  

For July, I will…..

I’m doing my june wrap-up slightly differnt this month. I’m just going to paste a picture of my end of the month budget spreadsheet.

I should note that I adjust the “Budget” column through the month to attempt to get everything to add up (which depletes the “misc” cushion). This allows me to adjust for surprise purchases. For July, I added a column that will stay fixed so I can see what I thought I wanted to spend at the begining of the month.

Also, a lot of the categories are really “funds” and the excess goes into (or comes out of) my short term savings account.

While I did go over on gas, this isn’t quite accurate as T’s mom gave me $50 gas money in return for using my car when they visited last month. I went slightly over on entertainment, but I had money left in the fund, so I’m just a couple bucks short. I also paid for my half our our hotel for our August vacation, so besides the $100 I had budgeted for travel, I took $47 out of the travel fund.

All in all, not too bad. I think if I didn’t budget carefully, I could easily spend the extra $300 savings line item.

I updated my final June networthiq, and things went a little downhill. No worries, mostly just due to the drooping market. I stuck close to $1000 in this month, yet the balance is down by just over $1000. Seems backwards! I’ve been focusing mostly on retirement savings, so my cash reserves didn’t increase much to cover that. The good thing is, everything in my short term savings isn’t counted (with the exception of my car fund), so all my cash gains should stick. I used to hate how it might jump around with vacations or insurance payments.

Are they “good debt”? Is there such thing? I will provide you with the definitive answer! (Ok, it is just my opinion, as is everything here.) I still get excited when someone links to me. Someone recently (not SO recent, since this post has been hanging in draft state for awhile) linked to an older post of mine, where I argued that the federal government’s investment in my education was a good thing, for me and for them. She is considering student loans, and asking the important question: How much is reasonable? How much is too much? Everyone should ask these questions before borrowing, but unfortunately, not all do.

College students are typically young and not financially savvy, and commercials (used to) abound offering you “Up to $40k a year!” for school. It makes me sick when I see those. That is rarely going to turn out to be good debt. If you can go to college without student loans, that is quite obviously the optimal solution. If you can’t, (I think) student loan debt can be a great investment if and only if (iff for math geeks):

• It is a reasonable amount for the degree and expected salary.
• It has a reasonable interest rate (this typically excludes private loans). Canada also doesn’t seem to offer as nice rates.
• It was needed to pay for college, not to fund an extravagant lifestyle while in college.
  • Disclosure: I took an undetermined amount of extra student loans to help fund my amazing study abroad experience. I did get a $5000 scholarship, but I’m sure I spent more than that. I’m not apologizing for that extravagance, even thought it doesn’t meet my own criteria. It was worth every last red cent!
• Other options were exhausted: Savings, part time jobs, scholarships and grants.

Much traditional federal student loan debt really should be viewed on a different level than credit card debt (though current rate offerings are almost 7%, a little high). However, private loan companies jumped into the game and really mucked things up. If you have $100k in 12% interest loans for a degree that commands a low salary, it is hard to say that was a good investment (individual exceptions may apply, as well as non-financial benefits of college). If you have $10k in loans at 2.0% tax deductible interest (some people do have those crazy low rates) for a degree in almost anything, it probably was a good choice.

If you have student loan debt and it doesn’t seem to fit the bill of “good debt” (and you are a pf blogger or reader), you probably are paying it off quickly if you can (go FB!). If you have “good” student loan debt, such as Well-Heeled’s zero precent interest, forever loan, you probably are not (unless you do it for the emotional payoff, which is fair). Mine is more good than bad, but not as good as others. It is at 4.5% (tax-deductible) for about $20k, commanding me almost $70k early on in my career (inflated due to high cost of living city), and more later. If I had extra money, I might pay it down, but I use my money for other priorities. I’m maxing out my 401k before I’ll pay extra on that loan. (It also will be at 0% from this September for about two years.)

I’ve heard anti-debt militants people argue that you should save up, pay as you go, and take extra time to graduate. That is certainly an option, for those of you that it suits. Financially, I doubt I would have come out ahead doing this (how much could I make with no degree?), and personally, it would have (to put it eloquently) sucked. It is an option, but not one that I was interested in.

Some other student loan information:

• From Get Rich Slowly, A rough guide to Student Loan repayment, guest post by me, geared towards those who just graduated and don’t know what to do (one year old). I wrote this because it is the info I wish I had the year before.
• Check out finaid.org: My favorite resource for federal loans.
• If you are considering consolidation of older variable rate Stafford loans, the rate has reset! Current rates for those longer out of school is 4.21%, and in the grace period, a nice 3.61%. Consolidate now to lock in those rates!
  
• For balance, a post on why student loans aren’t good and advocates paying as you go, even if it takes you 6 or more years.
• There are a lot of different ways to get a degree. Here is an interesting article about someone getting a technical certification to earn more while they pursue a degree.

I had a nice little plan on how I’d ride out the last few days of my budget. Oh plans!

Unfortunately, my plan didn’t include boogie boards. Now, I’m not really an avid boogie boarder or anything. To be clear, I’ve really only been swimming in the ocean a handful of times in my previously land locked life. However, since I moved to California, I have been going more, and I hope the trend continues. Now that the summer heat has settled in, I can go into the waves without my toes freezing off. It’s a treat.

Last weekend, we played in the waves for awhile, and later found ourselves at some overpriced sports shop eyeing boogie boards. We didn’t purchase, because the only ones I deemed to be a “reasonable” price were obviously crap. T thought we should just get one higher quality one and share between the two of us. Frugal, but not as fun. I said we should just wait and see if we could find a better deal elsewhere.

We did. I found two boogie boards on Craigslist, one white and one pink, for $25 each. Looking up the models, they weren’t high end (maybe $50 new), but totally satisfactory for us to start playing with. I phoned the seller and arranged pick-up for later that evening.

The location was a little further than expected, since I had filtered my search to be relatively close locations. Since we were using my car (and my gas) I paid just $20 (and bought us In-N-Out for dinner), and T paid $30. It wasn’t as sketchy as I had imagined craigslist to be. The couple was young, friendly, in the middle of moving, and had a cute tiny baby. We made some chit chat, handed them the cash., and walked away with two boogie boards and smiles on our faces. It was really easy and we couldn’t have gotten the same quality buying new.

So, that means that of my $39 left, I spent $27. Except that on Thursday, in leiu of going out with friends (they didn’t get out to the bar until too late for this working gal), we went out to Mexican for $21. Really, that is only a few more than I’d planned to spend going out, but still, it wasn’t necessary. I think I had a few dollars left from another month in my entertainment fund, so it shouldn’t be a big deal. I haven’t balanced the books yet.

On top of that, we spent another $5.50 yesterday (saturday), but it was $5 well spent. In fact, I think that adventure deserves a post of it’s own. I’m ending the month $16 over budget, yet again. Not horrible, not great.

I feel caught in my web of lies!

No, not really. But I think the time has come to tell T about this blog. It started really as a hobby and I sort of anticipated it dying after a month or two. I mean, I’ve always loved to write, but how much could I write about personal finance? Read any of my early entries and you can see how much effort I put into it. (Heck, even read some of my current entries!) But it hasn’t died yet. I don’t see it dying any time soon. So… now what?

I have many good qualities, but being a completely open book simply isn’t one of them. I occasionally keep weird random secrets about things that don’t even matter. Like a book I’m reading, or a store I visited, or something totally weird. Not secrets, per se, more of a “if they don’t ask, don’t bring it up” sort of thing (and no one has asked “Do you write a blog?), for no reason whatsoever.  This isn’t to say I don’t try to be better about this. I do try to be open., though it goes against my nature. I guess I’m afraid of being made fun of for it, even though I know his character and I know he wouldn’t. I don’t know where I got this neurosis, but it is in my head that writing=weird, and writing on the internet for strangers to read = extra weird. And you know, maybe it is, but everyone is a little weird.

My desire for privacy is very much ingrained in me. Middle child syndrome? Perhaps. I’ve always had secret hiding spots for my diaries, poems and other writings when I was a kid. I don’t like to share my goals/dreams with people until I know that I’m really going to go after them. I simply don’t like people to know all my thoughts.

Maybe he secretly already knows. One day we were talking about some TV show, I think “The Office” as we were walking together, and he said something like “Why don’t you start a blog about it?” My heart jumped into my throat, and I wondered where it came from. Maybe I was just being opinionated about something random. Sometimes when my dad gets on a political rant, I tell him he needs to start a blog, “www.creedthoughts.com” (reference to the Office, again, which he loves).

It just is reaching a point where I should retire my blog or tell him about it. (Or maybe that point was like… 9 months ago.) Of course, this means revealing the nitty gritty details of my finances, which we haven’t exactly done, but isn’t a big deal since we’ve talked about it in non-detail enough.

So how do you do this? How do you say, “Honey, I’ve been writing a personal finance blog. For the past year.” Advice appreciated!

It is nearing the end of the month, the most difficult time of my budget. While I’ve already exceeded my food budget, all that I have to do to meet my overall budget is get through the weekend. The overall budget is what really counts to me.

What do I have left? Basically, I have $14 left budgeted towards “personal” items (beauty/hair), but I don’t want to spend that because I’ll need a haircut next month. (Side note: Frugal or Cheap–cutting your own bangs with non-hair scissors?) Other than that, I have $39 left for “misc”, and nothing left for anything else.

With that $39, I need want to do:

• Go out tonight: T has arranged for some of his friends to meet up at a bar near where I live, then he’ll come stay with me. On a weeknight, yay! I’m also happy because his married friend and wife is coming, so it won’t be just 4 guys and me or something lame like that. Anyway, $15, or less. I’ll eat first and have just one or two drinks since it is a work night.

• Feed us at least one yummy meal this weekend: I’m thinking I think I’ll buy stuff for these calzones (thanks Spilling Buckets!), which will require
  • tomato sauce
  • mozzarella cheese
  • sausage or pepperoni (check prices!)
  • spinach (for salads and calzones)

  Maybe $12? $15? We’ll see. If I have money left, I’ll could get some more exciting salad toppings.

That is it! I think it will be cooler this weekend so we are going to do some easy hikes for fun. Maybe we’ll drive downtown and explore that one day too. Or if it is hot again, beach time! I have enough other food to survive on, and if we do decide to indulge in alcohol, we already have stuff to make little summery drinks ourselves.

I also was given an extra $50 for gas money, since T’s mom and sister used my car to cart us around to universal studios, the Tonight Show, and other destinations. This isn’t in my budget, but I’ll probably fill up on gas this weekend and use that. Well, not directly since I like to get the cashback, but in my mental accounting, I’ll use that.

I’m excited because I really have the potential to meet my budget. I’ve only been using official budgets for a couple months and while I’ve been close for a few months (withing $20) this may be my first month meeting the budget!

So yeah, I could get a case. I could, you know, be CAREFUL with them. I’d rather just buy cheap ones. I don’t wear them as a fashion statement (well, not really, though I may purchase trendy ones), I don’t wear them as a status symbol, and I mostly wear them at the beach or in the car. Designer sunglasses? They just aren’t my thing. There is so much more I’d rather spend my money on. Sunglasses for $25 to $50, I might consider, but that is probably the limit.

I do (sort of) get why a person wants designer sunglasses. You can wear them a lot, you can love them a lot. Just like I do (sort of) get why a person might carry designer handbags. It just isn’t something I do. There is no way that is in my budget, and it isn’t something I place a high value on. So I’ll stick to my cheap-o sunglasses, and have only momentary pain when I find them squashed at the bottom of my beach bag.

PS - I know the shape/style of my sunglasses is sort of “out”. They were purchased for sailing, so functional. I’m kind of glad I have a good excuse to get cuter ones.

Work has been really busy lately. This is good. It keeps me engaged. My mind has been on work when I’m out of work, which is ok. I can push it to the side when necessary, but it keeps my wheels turning and my mind active. I like it a lot. Since work is on my mind, and work is how I earn my money, I am going to write about work issues today.

I’m working with six people on my current task. Three of them I think are quality employees and I enjoy working with them a lot. One of them is probably a good employee, but he seems more “politic”-y, and it annoys me. Someone has to make status charts for managers, and I guess I’m glad it isn’t me. Another one seems to lack the skills and understanding of the task, or she’s been busy with another project. I can’t tell which it is.

The one I’m working most closely with consistently drives me crazy. He seems nice (I think–I can’t tell with those quiet ones. Sometimes they are secretly not very nice.), but he’s done so many things that irritate me. One day he said that it became apparent that “his part” would include X, Y and Z functions, which was essentially the whole task (or all the interesting parts) leaving me with the crap work. (I insisted we stick to the original plan of splitting up the functionality because it wasn’t that hard to do.) He did his part slightly wrong, and I noticed it first and asked him to make a quick fix. I thought it would take an hour. He fixed it wrong, then sat puzzling about how to fix it properly until I told him exactly what to do. Also, he is always asking me so many questions! It isn’t that I am unwilling to answer them, but usually they aren’t anything I know anything about, or that he should expect me to know anything about. I’ve only worked on this task like 3 days longer than him, so it isn’t as though I’m some magical expert.

In a way it is good, because I am a bit of a control freak, and being marked (unofficially) as the lead gives me more control. I can make sure things are done to my standards without worrying about him. It is also annoying because he asks me questions and expects me to figure out the answers, when he has the same capability as I do. I am not senior. I am new to this task too.

So, if I only really enjoy working with half your team, are they the problem, or is it me?

I hope I get a chance to give his manager some sort of feedback about his work. At my last job, we got to fill out evaluations for some of our peers to help with the salary/performance review process, which I think is valuable. Of course, the only people I filled them out for were people I really liked, and the one guy that wasn’t very good at his job must not have put my name down as someone who worked with him closely.  Even though I did, for several months.  He was a real pain to work with, stating in a meeting that he was providing me with updates to the model to test when he hadn’t even talked to me in like 2 weeks.  And he was supposed to test his on dang model.  Loser.

Anyway, I probably won’t ever get to provide any feedback on this coworkers performance. It isn’t as though I can whine to managers that I don’t like working with him. Then I look like the difficult employee. It wouldn’t reflect well on me.

What do you think? How do you handle difficult coworkers?

This is probably old hat to long time Los Angeles residents, but T and I recently decided we’d start actually taking flyers from people who always were offering them to us in Santa Monica (and elsewhere, but we often stop by the farmer’s market on weekends) for free movie screenings. We’d always ignored them before, but why? Since I moved here, I’ve only been to one move (Sex and the City) because it is just too dang expensive.

It seems they are only weeknights, but the locations aren’t all that far (especially from T’s) and we might even get popcorn while we watch. Has anyone ever gone to one of these? Tonight, we are going to a screening of Will Ferrell’s upcoming movie, Step Brothers. I also have a flyer for a Thursday night showing of Mama Mia, but haven’t RSVP’ed. Free, except the ever increasing price of gas!

I want to explore the rest of the city a little bit, so I found these podcasts which I hope will guide us through downtown L.A. one of these weekends when the temperature is a little cooler. (I’m a podcast nerd.) This past weekend, it was so hot we just chilled at the beach/pool. I even went into the ocean, and the water felt comfortable! At the recommendation of a reader, I also plan to check out the Griffith Observatory in the near future, and I want to see the modern art area at the LACMA (pay what you wish after 5 pm). My rent may have close to tripped when I moved from the midwest to L.A., but this is a great place for twenty-something to have a great time (even if I don’t go out to the clubs much)!

P.S. - Thanks for the bra tips one post back! I’m totally clueless on that sort of thing, and I appreciate the suggestions. Macy’s it is (at least to start)!