Mane Event

I found a job posted on the Craigslist gigs section that I am so excited! It's just a day-long event, but it would tick an item off my bucket list that I've been struggling with for the past couple of years.

The downside? Well, it's (technically) a modeling position. That means I need a head shot, and at this particular point in time I don't even have friends with cameras. I sent in some terrible preliminary shots just to establish a connection, and got a positive response, but they need the professional shots at some point in the next couple of weeks.

Of course Craigslist may save the day again. I Searched "headshot" and found a number of budding photographers seeking volunteers to expand their portfolios. I contacted one describing herself as "a married woman" and hope to hear for her in the next day or two.

Even if it's free, I want to make any headshot session worthwhile. Which means I should arrange for my semi-annual haircut in the very near future. My best friend/stylist is currently in Minnesota, which means I have to exchange currency for a cut. I was racking my brain trying to figure out how I can justify borrowing money from my already-too-generous creditors for a trim when I remembered my stepmother's offer to pay me to rake her yard. I'd originally dismissed the notion - I'll rake her yard for free, for goodness sake! - but I also can't make it a priority because my "real" job has been running me ragged. Well, now I feel inspired to make her yard her a priority, which will make her happy, and accept enough cash to get my mane in shape (I'll undoubtedly pay her back in some form or another).

I can't wait to unveil the final details :)

Plans and Moving Forward

2012 was an amazingly lucky series of coincidences. I worked like crazy early in the year and took a long and fantastic vacation for the last quarter. It was almost entirely unplanned and totally charmed. Those last five months of unemployment were the richest of my life so far.

So, how to deliberately replicate those circumstances in 2013?

I think we're off to a great start. I came home to a raise and have been offered a position through to the end of April. Darling should start working next Monday.  We were talking about leaving Austin in March, but between the good gigs and the dental work I can have done in Austin, we might just stick around until May.

I'm taking the weekend after next off to meet with a friend and potential employer out of town. Darling has always wanted to play cowboy (yes, a vegetarian British cowboy), and we were discussing making our way to Wyoming at some point this year. When this first came up, we had no idea that our friend has been working out there for the past year and can probably hook us up with a couple of seasonal jobs! How random is that?! Nothing is certain yet, but if everything goes as planned I will have achieve my goal of alternative room and board arrangements that will preclude paying rent through the rest of the Summer.

I'm also competent that we should earn enough money by spring to pay off our debt and cover us for the rest of the year, so any income we bring in with Summer jobs will be pure gravy...er, I mean, invested. In cowboy boots credit union cds.

Checking In On Spending

I caught up with my tabulations yesterday and did a quick where-is-my-money-going graph to check myself out before January. It's not worth posting (maybe when I post my February net worth), but it was kind of nice to check up on how true to my intentions my spending has been.

My big goal for 2013 is to not spend the majority of my cash in the same way I did in 2012: debt, rent, and work. I kind of explained that in What About An Emergency? Basically, I feel that those areas that absorb the most of our earnings are the ones that need to be addressed, especially if they are "untouchable" categories: food, housing, utilities...Any category we feel we are not in complete control of is a serious problem. Unless, of course, you look at your spending and feel complete contentment, at which point you win at life and should be writing your own damn blog.

My big three categories for 2012 were debt, rent, and work. I could easily accept rent taking 21% of my income, had I not spent five months of the year homeless. But spending 49% of my income on debt and work collectively makes me feel a little sick to my stomach. So I committed to spending as much as possible on debt early in the year to get rid of it once and for all forever, and to experiment with new ways of living and working to deal with the other two big expenses.

My big three expenses in January were travel, transportation, and food. All of the money spent is unfortunately borrowed from friends and family, so I've done worse than not pay back debt, but I started work the day I got off the bus and have been working full time to rectify that situation. I don't think I mind travel and transportation having replaced rent and work, that's just the nature of being a gypsy, innit? The same goes for food. I don't have a garden, have yet to find a decent dumpster in Austin (lots of compactors in this city), and will generally choose organic over conventional. That stuff adds up.

Cleaning Up

I'm on day four of washing my hair with baking soda and apple cider vinegar, and the best I can say is that it's nicer than the terrible brand of conventional shampoo I was using last month. I've done this before and know that it takes a few weeks for the follicles to realize what's going on and produce less oil. Then my hair seems to grow thicker and wavier. I'm definitely looking forward to the great hair that follows weeks of fairly terrible post-shampoo hair.

In the meantime, my skin looks fantastic. That's very meaningful because two weeks ago my chin broke out in a new and terrifying way: it resembled my brother's chronic psoriasis! I normally don't use soap on my face, but I think the same reside that was destroying my hair was reeking havoc on my pores.

Speaking of cleaning up, I have to catch up on my tabulations and get all the loose receipts out of my purse. In the past I've recorded all of my spending in a planner, but this month I thought it would be a good idea to just keep receipts and just make quick notes every night on the computer. Like most good ideas borne out of laziness, it was a terrible idea. I saved absolutely no time and have a frustrating project ahead of me now. To make matters worse, I won't get my first paycheck until February. My paperwork wasn't filed in time to take advantage of this pay cycle. So there will be another two weeks of working full-time, borrowing cash to put gas in the truck, and putting off my creditors. I'm looking forward to a steady income more than ever before.

Check Up

Feeling super-productive lately. Having a house to enjoy, a kitchen to myself, and a full-time job is incredibly satisfying after months of drifting and poking around the periphery of others' lives.

These days I'm all about the lists. My notebook is full of running to-dos. Financial goals divvying out my next three paychecks, grocery lists, stuff to do at work, appointments to make and keep, phone calls to make, and general prep and tasks reminders. I've definitely hit the ground running, and only yesterday realized the necessity of blocking off days to relax and spend time with Darling. 

What's the economic situation? As with everything else, there seems to be neither time nor resources to make as much headway as I'd like. This feels like a weird thing to admit after years of writing about money, but I still really don't know how to keep a steady hand when it comes to earning and spending cash. My strategy has always been to spend it as quickly as possible on big priority items before it dwindles away on small daily expenses. This month I'll only have one paycheck to try and reimburse my brother and "fix" my net worth before the next tally. Low as my expenses are, though, I also need to save a chunk of that check for gas and groceries, and we absolutely must deal with our phone situation...

The temporary nature of my position also has a big impact on my choices. I'm only guaranteed four checks, maybe seven if I work through March. By then I will need to have not only caught up, but put away for a future on the road!

Urban Sprawl

My first impression upon returning to Austin is how unimpressed I was. Don't get me wrong, my city is my heart, but having experiencing Detroit, St. Louis, Ann Arbor, and Columbus, Austin is in many ways just another place. What really got me was the realization that almost no one I know in Austin actually lives in Austin. My brother and sister live in the northern outskirts, my friends from school live in the northern suburbs, the friends I'm actually staying with now are in the southern suburbs...My Dad and Stepmother live central, and my cooperative family are of course still south-central, but that's it. Considering the fact that I'd just come from a town where just about everyone I knew lived within walking distance of each other, Austin suddenly felt more lonely than I ever knew it to be. I suddenly recognized that a good deal of my discontent last year stemmed from a sense of isolation. Even though I lived in the middle of a beautiful and bustling city, and even though my days were packed solid with social engagements, every social call required a half-hour drive each way. A bike ride was at least 45 minutes, a bus trip close to 2 hours...
Ironically, the situation is compounded by my incredibly close and intimate relationships! I don't really develop friendships with my coworkers or other inner-city folks because I'm so busy maintaining the ones I've had since I was eleven.

I feel so absurdly blessed to have my amazing friends. I missed them all desperately while I was gone. But the agonizing daily commute feels as good a reason as any to keep traveling for at least another year. For me, "settling down" just might not be an option in this sprawling city!

Replenishing

My wardrobe suffered terribly the effects of the long bike ride. For most of August I wore leggings and skirts, but come fall I relied entirely on my single pair of jeans. I have a better selection of tops, but you wouldn't know it thanks to my non-very-exciting color palette: I have two gray t-shirts and two long-sleeved black shirts. None of it is in great shape.

I missed Treasure City Thrift's 25-cent sale due to work, so went to check out MLK day sales. Thrift Town had a 30% off sale and absolutely no selection. Goodwill looked great by selection, but was three times as expensive so I only came home with one pair of jeans and a green organic cotton shirt (original tag still included).

On the one hand, I'm anxious to have spent $10 on two items of clothing. On the other hand, the brand new shirt would have cost me at least $20 from a non-thrift retailer. Also, I'm completely over the level of grunge I have achieved. The time has come to look nice and put-together again!

...Speaking of which, why is conventional shampoo so useless?! Before leaving Austin I was using a locally made product (hi, South Austin Soap People!). I could shampoo my hair once or twice a week, condition it as often a month, and was golden. During the bike ride I started washing my hair once a week at most, and it looked great. Then in Virginia I started showering daily and bought a bottle of VO5. It was so terrible: it felt like my hair was dirtier immediately after the shower than before. Then I started using more "natural" brands here and there, but my hair has been awful no matter what. It's getting too long for these types of surprises.

My plan is to go back to baking soda and vinegar. Nothing has ever worked as well in the long term, nor come close to being as affordable.

Contentment

I'm falling into kinda-sorta normal mode here in Austin. Darling and I are staying with friends just south of Austin, I'm working full-time at the non-profit, borrowing said friends' truck for the commute, eating the best food I've had in months (often waiting for me when I get home from work, no less), drinking a morning coffee and a nightly beer, baking a little, and gaming.

My big fear while traveling was that we'd get back to Austin and everything would go back to normal. I don't feel that way anymore. Strangely enough, I'm also no longer afraid of the inherent difficulty we'll face re-integrating into the world of renting apartments and connecting utilities. I'm just happy right now to have a well-paying job, a way to get to it, good food, and a warm bed.

What About An Emergency?

Bad things happen. Every single one of us is vulnerable to any number of emergencies every moment of every day. Life is like all beautiful things: inherently fragile and impermanent. When a real emergency happens, your life changes.

The current theory seems to be that money can dull the pain, insulate us from crisis, and maybe make the bad thing go away. What money does, at best, is disguise the symptoms of an ongoing emergency. For example: the fridge stops working and all the food inside starts going bad. You don't have the $200-800 to fix or repair it. You pull out the credit card and cope with they symptom.

The problem is not solved. I argue that credit has compounded the problem: you still have no idea how to repair a fridge, you still have no savings fund in place to repair or replace the next fridge (and paying for this one is going to eat into that), and your lifestyle still depends on the convenience of the fridge. You have made yourself more vulnerable to this and other emergencies, more dependent on credit.

Had you no access to the loan, the emergency would have changed your life. Believe it or not, there are empowering solutions to this problem. Maybe you would have gone online, talked to experts, discussed the matter with friends and family, and worked out how to fix the problem yourself at a fraction of the cost. Maybe in talking to people someone would have offered you an old fridge that's been taking space in their garage for some reason or another for the past few years, for cheap or free, and it should last at least a year while you scrape together cash for a new fridge. Maybe you learn to live without a fridge for a little while. This may sound insane to the average American, but the savings on electric bills will get you a lot closer to buying a new - or likely used - appliance.

Dealing with your emergencies instead of covering them with credit will reveal larger patterns that need to be addressed. The most obvious one being, of course, our international habit of spending more than we earn.

Let's go back to your refrigerator scenario: you had no savings to replace it because you have no savings. You have no savings because you have no money left over after bills and groceries. That's your emergency right there, and credit  can only make it worse.

This is how real emergencies can improve you. There is no other choice. Faced with the fact that you spend every penny you earn, you must ask yourself how to earn more pennies and how to spend fewer. Earning more often results in spending more, so you'd be just as better off finding ways to earn differently. Is your commute eating up a quarter of your earnings in gas and car maintenance? You might be better off taking a 10% pay cut to work closer to home, thereby increasing your real wage by at least 5%. Or you could move downtown, paying higher rent but ditching the car altogether and having consistent access to city services.

I was a long-time advocate of making small changes to reap big savings, but I have recently made a shift in position. Track your spending for for a year and look at your biggest area of spending. No doubt it will be something you tell yourself you have absolutely no control over: mortgage, private school tuition, car payments...unless it's court mandated (child support), do everything possible to eliminate that expense. Expect this to take another year and some controversial choices. It's possible that tracking your income alone will provide the understanding and inspiration to change your little spending habits and shift you from the red into the black. Otherwise, drastic times call for drastic measures.

If your greatest expense is debt, elimination is going to take a while and will require significantly more resources, so look at the next-highest expense as well. If it's the car you need to get to work, figure out where you're going to carpool or work closer to home. If there is no work near home, will you find a new way to make a living or will you move closer to your current job? If your greatest expense is your mortgage, don't take for granted that you are growing equity or that renting will be more expensive. Your current position is the result of having taken too much "common knowledge" for granted for too long.

In the short term, these changes will be embarrassing and feel like a step backward. Many of us used credit to look more grown up than we act. Owning a house felt more responsible than living with roommates in a rented house until we could afford a reasonable down payment. When we got our 9-5 job in the city, we felt too important to depend on the bus system. These weren't clever short cuts. There will be a reckoning, and the sooner we face that, the better off we will be.

Soon - and sooner than you think - you will have shifted your position. You will spend less than you earn. Your choices will shape your destiny rather than your circumstances. As your financial position improves, you will recognize that the steps "backward" are as temporary as you want them to be. By then, you may have grown fond of your new life: maybe the first two post-mortgage apartments sucked, but your current place is adorable and you've learned to depend on the company and support of roommates. The luxury of having a landlord to call when the fridge acts up might just be your favorite part. 

Settling In

I'm back on the schedule at work! I'm also earning more money than before, which is a fantastic surprise, and learned that full-time employees of my company are entitled to a health plan, 401(k), vacation days, tuition reimbursement, and even a travel allowance for those of us using mass transit. I didn't sign up for any of this, of course, because I won't be here for the time necessary for it all to kick in. But if I ever decided to settle down for the long run, I feel pretty happy about my options.

Last night my friends cooked an amazing dinner and it was really nice to just sit around and chat over a can of cheap beer before heading to sleep in an actual bed.

Having a paycheck on the way makes me feel a little safer with regards to spending money. I'm going to go to St. Vincents before work today and purchase all the jeans they have that fit me. I might pick up a pair of decent tennis shoes if available. Then tomorrow is Treasure City Thrift's 25 cent sale. I found a lot of great shirts the last time. Most of my wardrobe has been strewn and abandoned across the Midwest, the rest is somewhat threadbare, so it will feel great to have a few decent outfits. All told, I'm expecting it to all cost about $25.

Home Again Home Again

Darling and I arrived in Austin at 6 a.m., a full 24 hour earlier than I told our hosts to expect us because I somehow managed to forget that Wednesday exists.

With $2 in our pocket, uncomfortably heavy luggage, and a disinclination to make phone calls before nine a.m. under any circumstances, Darling and I stumbled out of the terminal and to the nearest bus stop. Which just happened to be a route that would take us straight to the co-op.

We knew we'd be able to drop off our bags, nab a cup of coffee, and maybe even shower before walking to the bank to cash a check and make our way to our final(ish) destination. So here we are. Back where we started six months ago. Remember when Dorothy woke up in Kansas after her dream of Oz? Yeah, if I took a nap and woke up on the couch in a couple of hours, I'd probably feel the same way.

Now the real world beckons, and I have so much to catch up on. Our W-2 still haven't arrived, which is a real bummer, and I was apparently summoned for jury duty last August, which is an even bigger bummer. That's undoubtedly resulted in a massive fine. That's why I'm going in to work tonight despite having spent the past two nights on a bus: between jury duty, the money I owe my Mom and brother, and needing to ship the bikes from Virginia to Austin...

Yuck. Time for another cup of coffee, and then to hit the road.

From Nashville

I'm writing this from a bus terminal in Tennessee. Who knew Greyhound had wifi?

Darling and I have bits and pieces of food to get us through the 33 hour trip, plus a bag of change to work our way through, and a little bit of cash. So far we've purchased four bags of chips, a bottle of tea, and an ounce of pickled jalapeños. We've also had boiled eggs, a bag of cheese (made nachos w/chips and jalapenos), and handfuls of mixed nuts.

A friend offered to pick us up once we're in town, which is a huge relief as I had no idea how we were going to get from north-ish Austin to just south of Austin at six in the morning with no bikes.

I'm pretty bummed out about leaving our transport in Virginia. We planned on taking them on the bus and packed them in bike boxes, but in the end our funds just weren't going to stretch. Bummer #607 regarding not having any money. Not a big fan of not having money right now. Seriously looking forward to having an income again!

Financial Direction, 2013

I'm having a hard time formulating outright goals this year. That doesn't mean I'm not excited about the next several months, however! Here's a look at what I'll be working on:

Debt Freedom  Paying off my debt in 2013 is fairly inevitable. I would like to have this wrapped up by April at the latest so I can focus on my travel-related goals in good conscience.

Maintain 2012 Income and Freedom I'm happy to say that we earned enough last year. Having practically decimated our debt, we could earn much less money and live much more luxuriously. Which is really something coming from a woman on the last week of her four-month vacation

My husband's skills are highly desirable across the country, and I have an extremely diverse resume (I can drive a fork lift, pull a perfect shot of espresso, and type 60+ words per minute). I think we are perfectly capable of both traveling and earning to our hearts' content. We just need to find the right balance, time ourselves accordingly, and sort out supportive living arrangements.

Save and Invest  I've struggled with saving. I know that an emergency fund is absolutely vital to financial security, but my debt has always felt like an emergency. In a way, working part-time was m fund: whenever we needed fast cash I would get a second job or pick up extra shifts for as long as I could cope. Earning more money was straight forward: it invariably resulted in more debt payment (my reining obsession) and avoided the matter of earning less in interest than I was losing to interest.

The goal is to save as aggressively as I paid off debt. This will have the double benefit of keeping my spending in check and reducing my calculated yearly income need by at least 30% without affecting my standard of living at all.

The problem is that I'm not used to having money accessible: that's why debt payment is so much easier than saving for me. And if all goes according to plan, that's an extra $6,000 for me to ignore. I have some ideas involving credit unions and/or Treasury Direct, but there's more research to be done and at least three months before I must take action.

Inventory

I spent today packing for the home stretch. Every time Darling and I settled for anywhere more than a day or two, our luggage seemed to expand far beyond the capacity of our bags and explode all over our temporary space.

Part of the problem is how much people give us. Concerned by how little we have - which is dictated by how much we can carry - people urge us to take clothing, books, bedding...We definitely have more than we started out with in August.

There's also the matter of having packed not just what we need but most of what we own. That includes my childhood collection of rocks and rings and Darling's beloved t-shirt collection.

Today was the first time I really analyzed what we have and organized accordingly. I actually took an inventory. This is a big deal because it's part of step One of Your Money Or Your Life...the part I skipped several years ago. Living in the co-op, where all our worldly possessions amounted to one bedroom, a bathroom, and two closets, taking an inventory didn't seem like a huge deal. Just big enough to be troublesome...But I'd always meant to go back and amend my mistake.

Well, today I was going to be handling every single item, so why not just write it down? It took a goodly long while, but I'm really glad to have taken the time. Knowing where I stand materially puts my net worth in context.

I can't imagine you'd be interested in knowing what fills my suitcase (boring stuff, I assure you), but it's strangely fascinating to me. Who knew that I had twenty-two items squeezed into my tiny toiletry case?

Do I sound crazy? Go ahead and do your own inventory. Start small, your desk drawer, your purse, or closet. It's liberating, I swear!

Fear vs. Love

The first two weeks of 2013 have been really anxious. Darling and I both really expected him to get that VA solar job, so we were mentally preparing for a lifestyle change that, emotionally, we aren't the least bit ready for. We would have had to be apart for several months, leaving him to build the foundations of a new life on his own and me to wrap up the loose ends in Texas. All of my hopes and dreams for this year would have to be put on the back burner and eventually replaced with goals that didn't involve the Rocky Mountains.

Then Darling never got the call, or presumably, the job. By this point we were so wrapped up in Plan B that we had a hard time adjusting back to our original - and far superior - plan of action. My fear had been driving me, propelling me forward. Without it, I was like a puppet with her strings cut.

Is there a bigger financial life truth in there? That we move most enthusiastically - even in the wrong direction - when inspired my fear? Like bison stampeding off a cliff (a fiscal cliff, even?). What would it take to be driven so powerfully by love? What would it feel like?

I kinda sort know. The superhero ride was very much about love and faith above all else. Sleeping outside, moving from town to town, consciously choosing to explore the scarier neighborhoods...I would flip through the early months of my journal and wonder what was I doing working at the plant when it made me so miserable? Was I really doing it for the money, jonesing after the hard drug like my...like a particularly athletic junkie?

In the middle of the superhero ride, anything seemed possible. Thailand next year? The Grand Tetons next June? Volunteer building an earthship? Sure, why not?

Now I was asked if I would give it all up for a decent paycheck, even if it meant months of misery and stress, and then years of struggling with conventional finances, and I JUMPED AT THE CHANCE. I reverted back to fear-based thinking without hesitation.

I don't want to be that way. I want a life of service and adventure and...okay, spirituality. But I'm not giving up my grounding goal of Total Financial Freedom, either.

Rideshare Fail

I arranged for a ride home to Texas close to a month ago. The driver seemed friendly enough at first contact: he agreed to a low-but-reasonable gas contribution and offered to take along his bike rack. He was heading from Texas to New York and we planned to meet on his way to north.

I got a call at 2 a.m. the day we were supposed to meet. Somehow he was five hours early and wouldn't make our appointment. So I wished him a safe drive and agreed to talk to him later the next week.

Sure enough, he gave me a call and we discussed the ride a little more. He planned on picking us up sometime early in the day - either the 15th or 16th - and we'd be back in Texas late that afternoon. "You're about five hours away from me," he said. I did a quick mental calculation.

Ah, oookay. "That's a long drive. The fastest I've ever made it was in eighteen hours. That was with three of us trading off every few hours to stay fresh and at least one of the drivers drove twenty miles an hour above the speed limit the entire way."

"No, I'll be doing all the driving. No one else drives my car."

I'm not the best at math, but I do know that there is absolutely no way to make that trip in less than eighteen hours. Google Maps clocks it at twenty. And he was going to be driving five hours before even getting to us? AND he wasn't going to share the wheel? So he was going to drive twenty-three hours straight?

My 60 mph collision on the Illinois highway is far too fresh in my mind to accept that. Give me midnight on East Side Detroit with a busted bike tire any day of the week, CARS ARE EFFING DANGEROUS.

But how stupid am I? Stupid enough that I accepted that idiotic proposition, wrote my boss in Austin an e-mail to say I'd be home by the 17th, and went about my life until yesterday.

I gave him a call to get confirmation on the 15th or 16th thing. "Oh, no," my driver said, "I'll be going back on the 18th. See you at 2:00 on the 18th."

Sadly I agreed and hung up before this really sunk in. Then I hopped on Greyhound.com, called my brother, and was reviewing my confirmation receipt minutes later. Suddenly paying $300 and being on the bus for a day and a half feels like the best deal ever. Looking forward to being home Friday morning!

Think Epic

By this time next week Darling and I will be home and working in Austin. Within a few months we will have paid off our debt, and then the real work of The Challenge begins.

Back in 2007 I announced my intention "to do everything wrong." Contrary is more like it, almost completely contradicting conventional systems and thought processes. In order to achieve Total Financial Freedom in fourteen years I have to make choices most people would consider completely backward - hello, homeless and unemployed! - so perhaps I should share some of the method to my madness.

Let's start with rent:

Say I created a budget and, deciding to be exceptionally frugal, committed to spending $400 a month on rent. Let's set aside the renting vs. purchasing argument for now, because the figure is important above all else.

My ultimate goal is to not have to work for money by 2027. That means if I want to live in a $400 apartment, and am lucky enough to earn 3% on a secure investment, I must have $160,000 invested in the next fourteen years.

That would require a monthly savings of $768. Looking at it this way, my rental cost for the next fourteen years comes to a yearly total of $14,000.

$14K is a lot of money for a $400 apartment.

Many folks would look at those numbers and identify a need for higher income. That's because few people have a clear idea of how much money they spend for the privilege of employment. Tripling my income would be incredibly expensive and timely affair, and I don't have the luxury of time. 

What I do have is flexibility, creativity, and freedom from rent. Conventionally speaking, my husband and I have a problem. Realistically speaking, Darling and I are in the most fortuitous position of our marriage.

I have arranged for us to be rent-free for the majority of 2013, the details of which I will divulge in the near future. We also have employment which should require little financial investment. If anything goes according to plan, we will be debt free by spring. That means that the three categories which took a combined 70% of our income in 2012 will amount to almost nothing by Year Seven.

Think about that. What would a person have to do to increase yearly income by 70%? I'm making some extreme choices to decrease spending, but they (should) result in some epic adventure as well.

Stay tuned.

Credit Score 2013

In my opinion, not having to check or care about my credit score is one of the great benefits of the challenge. Every once in a while, however, I get curious do a quick looksie.

And it always makes me angry.

Oh, where to start? How about my student loans? Sallie Mae offered me two, one subsidized and the other unsubsidized. I didn't know what this meant nine years ago, I don't know what it means now, but they are treated as one loan: they have the same interest rate, payments are applied to both in accordance with the lender's formula, and so on...

After a few years Sallie Mae sold my loans to a company that called itself XLS, and a year or so ago XLS started calling itself AES. According to the credit reports, the (one) company that has owned my debt is has been the same one since 2006: CIT.

Not that any of that matters so much. What matters is that on my credit report, my student loans show up as ELEVEN lines of credit. The last time I checked my credit score, it showed up five times and I spent weeks disputing this. Why did it go from five to eleven? How did it go from five to eleven?! Why is it not two? Why isn't it accurate AT ALL?

Other things that annoy me: my college says I never paid the last $30 bucks to them. For two years after dropping out, I worked on a farm for the weekends and asked my boss to write checks directly to the college. On the weekdays I worked at a coffee shop and collected my tips for the same debt, walking to the college financial office every time I scraped together $20. I seriously paid most of $2,000 in crumpled bills. I received a monthly balance sheet in the mail and the secretary took to writing encouraging notes in the margin. I sent in checks for months after moving to Texas, but made sure I was in Virginia to make the final payment - in cash, in person, and deliriously pleased with myself.

So I resent learning, years later, that my record wasn't cleared. Had they sent me any correspondence regarding the matter - after years of being in touch - I could have cleared the matter up.

Speaking of correspondence, I'm also pretty annoyed that Verizon apparently didn't turn off our phone at our request in 2006, billed us for a few months after we moved to Texas, and then sold the resulting "debt" to creditors. Yet another negative mark due to someone else's incompetence, but one that will actually affect my ability to get a land line.

I knew all this stuff before. All of it was on my credit score the last time I checked, and all of it has been disputed. But it still makes me angry. Angry that I'm so vulnerable to others' mistakes, angry that my friends and family are so much more vulnerable. Angry that this is even a thing. It's all just so absurd and stupid.

Okay. I'm also angry because it scares me a little. What if I do have to care about my credit score? Not for a credit card, loan, lease, or mortgage, but to get an apartment? Or a job? What if I can't get another land line? We were so insulated in Austin with our cooperatively shared utilities and landlines. The world feels more complicated now. So much smaller.

Conventional Considerations

I feel like someone pushed "pause" on my life a few weeks ago. We were racing across time and space: shuttling North to a new life of capes and cycling, across the Midwest in search of decent dumpsters and world peace, and then to the East Coast where we ran smack dab into the wall of conventional considerations. Like, "wow, we have almost no money." And, "what are we going to do about that?" And the special edition for married couples, "what do you mean, you disagree?!"

We've settled into an awkward waiting here in Virginia. Our current home is located down a windy country-road-turned-windy-sort-of-highway, making cycling too scary to consider. I have plenty to keep me busy now that I have a regular source of Internet for the first time since July, but my time is sucked up into endless episodes of Dr. Who. I don't even want to cook or bake right now, and I've felt little temptation to approach my writing. It feels as if all of my creative energy is drained by the act of waiting. Waiting for the phone to ring, to hear from the company Darling interviewed with. For the words that will determine the goals and direction of 2013. Words that will determine who I'm meant to be in 2013.

Disaster

Checked my e-mail last night to find 80 comments waiting to be verified. Ah...should have seen that coming. But who knew I was getting that much spam to this blog every day?! I added word verification, which I hate, but hopefully that will stem the tide.

Part of me wants to not care. This blog really isn't much more than an online journal, and I'm not terribly bothered about my stats. I mean, it's cool to think that a hundred or so people check out my writing once in a while, and I've developed some fantastic relationships over the years. But I couldn't do this for profit or for anyone else's approval.

On the other hand, the idea of someone else might be profiting from my blog pisses me off to high heaven. So it's gotta stop. If that means stopping comments altogether and allowing responses by e-mail alone, I won't hesitate.

But it's not that I don't love you humans out there.

Everything In Moderation

I have a hard enough time keeping up with regular posting on this blog, and am ashamed at how terrible I am about keeping up with the comments and developing good relationships with my handful of readers. I also ignore just about every change and update that blogger does, in the hopes that they will go away.

However, I just discovered two things: blogpot has a nifty function that shows all the comments you have per post, and I have hundreds of thousands of spam comments on this blog! Last year I went through and deleted loads of these comments. It took forever, but I figured that it was five years worth of random robots generating code. Now I have more than ever, and on fairly recent posts.

So I set up moderation. Hopefully this will force me to respond to comments properly from now on.

Categorically Speaking

One of my favorite aspects of tabulating spending in the Your Money or Your Life Program is how it makes you really think about why you put money down for certain products and services.

Most months before August I struggled mightily with how to file my food and beer expenses. Neither are necessities, particularly since rent covered my organic grocery budget. On average, however, I spent at least $85 a month eating out, and that's a low estimate because after August I hardly spent any money on anything whatsoever.

At first I just felt really guilty that, hard as I worked for my cash and desperate as I was to be debt free, I could drop hundreds of dollars a month on P Terrys and cans of tea. But when I looked at each individual expense, week after week, the patterns emerged. That $50 wasn't just another night I couldn't bear facing the dishes, it was my Dad's birthday lunch. That $25 was the day I had to drive Darling to Houston and back for work, clocking six hours on the commute alone. And the weekly $10 was snack food for the weekly game with friends, maybe not the best ten bucks (or $40 a month) I ever spent, but maybe not the worse? And that $6 taco was the fuel to cross town by bike!

Basically, tabulating makes me rethink that basic expense and ask myself: is that work? Is that time spent with family? Is it time spent with friends? Is that transportation? Could it have been better spent? Food jumps around a lot, not because I'm trying to hide it, but because it tells me what elements of my lifestyle needs to change in order to reduce that spending. When I recognized that every time my brother came into town I dropped big cash at a restaurant, I prepared a huge family brunch the next weekend he came over. That saved the money, but was a little exhausting, and I might have learned that eating out in that particular case is money well spent.

Beer is another category jumper. For 2013 I plan to make beer a category of entertainment and leave it at that (besides the money spent at bars with coworkers after work, which I maintain is a business expense). For the past two years, though, I confused it with food and it jumped around like crazy. In trying to work out why I drank, and why I spent so much money on beer (sometimes as much as I spent on food), despite never buying beer just to have around the house, and never drinking more than a couple of beers a week. It took me a long time to work out that baked goods and alcoholic beverages are my contribution to social gatherings, and I love social gatherings. So if I want to adjust that expense, I have to think about what else would fill the roll of alcohol...and frankly, I don't always have time to knock out a dozen cookies. I do think a lot about brewing my own, though, once I'm in a stable place.

Unexpected Interview

In November, while Darling and I were still in Detroit, he applied for a job with a Virginian solar company on the off chance that they'd be wrapping up a project and needed some extra boots on the ground before the end of 2012. Apparently not, but he did get a call back just before Christmas and decided to go on in for a job interview anyway.

A friend gave him a haircut so he'd look presentable, my sister-in-law lent us a car and some boot polish, and we cashed the Christmas check my Mom sent us in a preparatory/celebratory fashion. The purchases felt very much like our first step back into "the real world:" razor cartridges, shampoo, a package of socks, and toothpaste. During the interview I slipped into a Salvation Army and bought a pair of khakis for $1.00, finally retiring my (one) pair of ripped blue jeans. I'd have bought at least one other pair of jeans, but it was the smallest shop in the world and I'm just super-grateful to have found one item that fit so fantastically well.

Darling wasn't sure how the interview went, but we'll find out before the end of next week when they call to let us know if they want a second round of interviews. This is cutting it a little close: our ride back to Austin picks us up on the 16th! Fortunately, our happiness doesn't exactly ride on the answer either way. If we're offered the job, I'd absolutely love to move back to Virginia, set up a household, and settle down for a spell. If we're not offered the job, we get to spend the rest of the year traveling and have plenty of work scheduled to keep us busy. The only downside is having to wait ten days to know what the rest of the year will look like!

2012 Spending Breakdown

I spent all day yesterday catching up on my tabulations dating all the way back to July. I'd kept up (more or less) with recording my income and expenses, but hadn't maintained my record of monthly averages and totals.

The most vital lesson gleaned from at least eight hours of mind-numbing data manipulation is that I really do.not.give.a.damn that I spent six dollars on soda at work in March. YMOL is very insistent that financial records be as specific as possible, and 99% of the time I agree. Perhaps that's why YMOL doesn't suggest doing the extra half dozen things with data that I choose to do: why risk the burn out?

Unless, of course, an awesome graph could be produced in the end...

 Look at that! This is where my money went in 2012. It's far from perfect, but the important bits are very accurate. How mind-blowing is it that I spent 33% of my income on debt alone? Keep in mind that rent up until August covered my groceries, utilities, and general living expenses.

There's a lot to be said about that figure. For the past seven years I've wanted to make debt servicing a greater and greater priority. For the first time ever I can look at the situation and say, with a smile on my face, "next year I will spend less on debt."

I also intend to spend less money on work. Construction is expensive business. Never mind the $2,000+ spent commuting, my union dues took a big chunk out of my paycheck and we spent about as much money on tools. The good news is that the dues are tax deductible and the tools will last for several years. (Tools are supposedly tax deductible, but I'm not going there with the IRS).

The rent category is a funny one. For the first few months of 2012 I kept thinking, "that's my greatest expense, but there's no way I can lower it!" Homelessness traveling can be expensive, but we spent much less during our five months on the road than we did in a single month at home! How to use that information to keep costs down in 2013 has yet to be determined.