2009 Goals

Wow. Back-to-back posts. Dont have a stroke.

After posting that last entry, I was reading through it, and the list of my goals caught my eye. Being 2010 now, I think that it would be appropriate to comment on how things went, and of course, judge myself for failing to get things done...

Short Term Goals: Jan 1, 2010
- Increase savings account to $1,500. FAIL (6.5%). OUCH! There is only $97.29 in my savings account! Well, that sucks. I really need to get back to work on that savings account.
- Start & Get Vet/Emergency Savings to $400. FAIL (63%). I have $251.30 in the Vet savings account. It is not $400, but there is money there. But still, I feel sad that the cats have more money in their account than I have in mine.
- Pay down credit card debt to $6,000 (pay $4,400). FAIL (93%) I did not quite get the credit card debt down to $6000, but now the total is only $6478.79. And I did pay a total of $4081.23, which is better than I thought it would be going into this post.
- Pay down CitiLoan by $2,700. WIN (115%). WOO! This one I did good, but I also think I was setting the goal too low, as $2700 is paying the minimum each month.
- Pay off Capital One ($409.96). WIN (100%). Although, technically I did not pay it off by Jan 1. It was paid off by Feb 1, which is good enough for me.

Mid Term Goals: Apr 15, 2010
- Pay All Federal 2008 Taxes ($3,905). FAIL (51%). Federal taxes are not paid off yet. But I have taken a nice sized chunk of out them. But it is not quite April 15 yet. Here is hoping that I can really get this done. Although, I did manage to pay $2000 to the IRS between August 2009 and February 2010. Maybe at this rate, I will get this done by the summer.
- Pay All State 2008 Taxes ($1,319). WIN (100%) I mailed my last state tax payment in October 2009. WOO!

Okay, so actually looking at things in better detail (which forced me out of bed to the other computer where the Quicken info is), I am not as bad off as I thought I was. I am nowhere near where I want/need to be, but I have accomplished some of my goals and made some nice progress on others. Really, my biggest FAIL is the savings account. And I need to remember not to use the credit card that I can use. Simply keep paying on it. That is hard, but I should be able to do it.

But now, I am off to bed.

This is not a catch or creative title.

Yes, before you say anything... I realize that I have fallen off the face of the earth for a few months. It happens. Im sorry. Moving on.

I had hoped to get motivated enough to do my taxes this weekend, but alas, Ally McBeal DVDs and my couch won out over the 1040.

Sidenote: WOW. Finding that link made me very glad that I bought this DVD set when I did. At $129, it came in under my Three Cents per Minute Rule. Now, it is listed on Amazon for $182.49! Good job, Okturn!

Anyway, I have mentioned before that one of my good friends at work was fired last fall. Well, recently he found a new job. Unfortunately (for me, fortunately for him), his new job is in another state. Inspired by my moving road trip with SS4BC, he asked me to help him move, which will entail driving down with him and his wife and then flying back home on my own. His new job is giving him $2500 for moving expenses, which is awesome! I talked with him today about being concerned about expenses on the road trip, and he said that the new job would reimburse him for stuff up to the $2500. And until that second, I had not thought that was how that would work. In my mind, they gave him $2500. Hmm.

Of course, being as self-centered as I am, I turned this inward and became worried that when I find a job, I am not going to have the money to pay for the move up front. UGH. Seriously, right now, my big financial concern is scraping together enough cash for a plane ticket and rental car for getting to a conference in March for work. I will get reimbursed for the travel, but I have to pay for it all up front.

Basically, I need to be saving a lot more than I am now. Sadly, I have not put money into my savings account in months. Winter is expensive in New England. My utility bills were about double (maybe triple, but I dont know the numbers off the top of my head right now) what they are in the summer, because of the damn heat.

Anyway, my savings amounts to a measly $300ish right now. Really not enough for any type of emergency, except for an emergency trip to the grocery store. It makes me mad that, once again, I have fallen out of habit with one of my projects (here being this blog and diligently managing my money). The irony is not lost on me that when I stopped regularly writing in the blog is when I stopped paying attention to my money and really have no extra anywhere.

Really, my fear now is that I am going to find the perfect awesome position somewhere next year and not be able to afford to move to the new job. How stupid is that? Anyway, this has lit a mild fire under my lazy ass to get back into financial shape. And get myself to where I am not scared of my account balances.

The upshot of this spring is that with any luck I wont owe any taxes for 2009, and there may even be a small refund (which will go directly to my outstanding 2008 tax balance). The 2008 taxes will get paid off by this summer, or I will have to kill myself. And once that is done, the $250-400/month that I was paying the IRS can go into savings, and I may be able to breathe again. I have yet to actually sit down and figure out if that is actually numerically possible. But I hope to get to my taxes this week, and I will write a post all about that. And hopefully, I will have some updated goals for 2010 and perhaps some updated status bars.

**sigh**

I must be more proactive and less reactive. But really, I want to be less terrified about the future, so that I can actually start looking for a job and get out of this hell hole.

Holy CRAP! It HAS been a long time.

So yeah. Things in real life get in the way of the internet, and I really have been neglecting my blog for way too long.

Anyway, I was just poking my head out to say that I have FINALLY made my last payment for my 2008 State Taxes. OMG that took a long time to take care of. I still have the Federal taxes to deal with, but now I can add the amount I was paying to state to the amount that I am paying the Feds each month. And hopefully, that will be finished that much sooner.

Other things have been pretty much status quo in the financial department of the DelMoniq house. And I guess that is okay. I am still slowly paying things off and trying my hardest not to accumulate more debt.

I've been a bad boy.

I should feel bad, and I kinda do. But I didn't realize it was the end of the month until Friday. I did realize that I got paid (thank goodness for emails from the bank when I get direct deposits). This reminded me to go get a money order for rent. I bad been thinking of trying the bill pay thing, but I didn't want to risk it cutting it this close. Anyway, I ended up watching Heroes on Hulu (the episodes expired on Aug 1, so I had to finish the season) and chatting online with friends. So, no bills got paid. Saturday, I went to work, and then I had dinner and Lost night with friends. I got home too late to worry about the bills. So today, I had to go to work again, but I took all my bill stuff with me so I could pay them and mail them and not have to worry about it. Well, as I was leaving work this afternoon, I realized that I left all the bill stuff in my desk and didn't pay a goddammed thing! UGH.

I've not been this late with my bills in a long time. So, I'm going to have to remember to pay them all in the morning with my coffee at work. I've just been feeling so lost and weird all week, so I'm not entirely surprised that the end of month caught me by surprise. But damn. I was trying to be so good.

To top this off, I had plans to write several new blog posts about things that have been going on, but I never actually got around to it. I'm not exactly tired tonight, so I may try to get some things written out tonight. But ugh. I'm annoyed with myself.

Woah. Too much data in a short amount of time.

So, I'm sitting here tonight, awaiting the impending thunderstorm and watching The Bold and the Beautiful, and I get to thinking about my money. Well, I was thinking about all kinds of things, really, and chatting with Dr. Faith. She's got me excited about something that I never thought that I'd be excited about (but that's for another post). Anyway, the conversation turned to finances. She pointed out to me that Debt Ninja posted about getting your free credit report today.

Of course, I check it out. Holy crap! There is a ton of information out there about me, and there was a lot of stuff that I hadn't thought of in years on there. So, I've got 29 pages of my own personal financial data to go through this weekend. Most people would yawn or scoff, but I'm excited. At first glance I've noticed a few things:

(1) I'm not as horrible as I thought I was.
(b) No one has stolen my identity.
(iii) My total revolving credit is down to 47% (meaning that 53% of my credit card debt is paid off).
(4) My student loan is kicking my ass.
(e) I (again) owe my parents a HUGE truckload of gratitude.

It's getting late, and I still want to watch these two episodes of Samantha Who?. So, I plan to tackle all this head on this weekend. I don't have to work this weekend (thank GOD), and I've got 30 episodes of Days of Our Lives to watch. So, I'm going to multi-task some major PF blogging with some hot soap watching tomorrow.

I intend to discuss my student loan in more detail, which will probably come in the form of the long awaited History of My World - Part III post. I'm going to use the summary table from the credit report to rekajigger my status bars (and possibly adjust my 2009 goals). I'm going to figure out how I'm doing on my $100/week plan for July, and figure out where my money is going this month in a more systematic way (instead of a haphazard list). And we'll see what interesting information we can gather from my credit report. I'm totally stoked.

But for now, I'm going to enjoy (for probably, and hopefully, the last weekend of my life) my one remaining bad-vice, and then settle in for some more TV.

Posts coming soon

I know that I'm still really new at this whole blogging thing (aside from my personal journal) and that there aren't very many people that read this or expect anything from me. But I just have to apologize for the lack of things going on with Addicted to Toaster Strudel lately. I still need to write a few more history posts, and I need to do this week's Sunday post. But today was just one of those days where it's so difficult to make myself do anything. Part of it is that I'm planning a trip to the bank tomorrow, and I wanted to write it all in one post. And part of it is that it's just been a difficult week in general.

But I'll get better. I plan to write the Sunday post tomorrow after work.

An interesting day at the mail box.

So, I was planning on making some of my posts that I'm behind on tonight after I take care of some things. But I was so excited about the mail, that I had to share this before I did anything else.

At first I was worried, because I saw two envelopes from some random lawyerly sounding place. I immediately jumped to worry and dread, because I'm a very nervous and high-strung person. I opened the first one and this is what it read...

Dear Consumer:

The Federal Trade Commission...filed a lawsuit against...(long list of names). The complaint charged that the defendants were billing consumers without authorization for alleged visits to websites. Consumers saw charges on their credit card bills under the names...(long list of names). The defendants bought access to lists from a bank that provided the account numbers for more than 3 million valid Visa and MasterCard credit cards. Rather than use the lists to confirm that potential customers had valid cards, the defendants debited the cards for web site services the cardholder had never used.

The unauthorized charges were incurred by you many years ago, and you may no longer have the credit card that was charged. The enclosed check is your share of the funds collected.

...(more details that are irrelevant here).

At the bottom is attached a check for $27.68! And I got two identical letters! That's $55.36! And that's totally awesome. The sad thing is that I probably never noticed the unauthorized charges way back when. I had really bad habits, and even though I was scraping by to pay the minimums each month, I never took the time to look over statements too carefully. So now, I get a little extra money this month!

Unfortunately, this is canceled out by a third piece of mail. A statement from the city for 2008 taxes for $84.42. Luckily, the tax is based off of the value of your car, and I drive a piece of crap. So, the tax could be a LOT worse. And I have these mana from heaven checks to help offset the tax. So I'm only out $29.06 instead of the whole $84.42.

Plus, I got a late birthday present DVD from a friend, so it really was a banner day of mail today. Hopefully, I'll be able to get to some more posting tonight. I still did to do the "Where'd my money go?" and "History of My World Part III" posts. Fingers crossed that that actually happens tonight.