Pottery Barn credit card bonus

Whilst perusing the latest Pottery Barn catalog, I noted that the fine print of their credit card bonus program is actually pretty sweet. If you spend $750 during the six-month "program cycle" (which appears to be the first six months of the year, and the second six months) you get a $50 gift certificate to Pottery Barn. Plus, if you spend $100 in the first month, you get a 5% rebate certificate which you could use to make the gift cards go farther. If I spent $750 on my American Express card, I'd only earn $7.50 in gift certificates, so that seems like a good deal to me. To totally dork out, $100 in gift certificates just for spending $1500 with the card (and it doesn't stipulate anything about balances, so you could pay it off right away) gets you a 6.6% return on your money. If you don't want to shop at Pottery Barn, you could sell the gift certificates on eBay or get 70% of value without hassle at GiftCardBuyBack.com or a similar site. (Most of the time eBay'ed gift certificates will get at least 85-90% of value, but it's more time-consuming and you have to pay fees.) I'm probably going to do some credit card arbitraging once my current 0% deal expires and I pay it off, so I'll apply for this one too and get my free gift card.

Details: http://www.potterybarn.com/cust/ccsplash/cust.cfm?cmtype=fnav

A new direction for my net worth this month...

I compiled my net worth statement this month and wasn't too surprised by the results - I'm down about $5,000 - because I finally decided to spend some of my damn money. :) This August, Boyfriend and I will be taking a week-long trip to Rome! I love to travel and Boyfriend took Italian all year, so it works out well. I am so psyched I cannot even begin to tell you.

I am doing pretty well on my "save all my salary, live on business earnings" plan - I am getting a little chicken though, since with paying for the Rome trip I'm down to only (gasp) two or three months worth of living expenses in the emergency fund. You can tell how chicken I am.

I've taken a new philosophy over the past six months or so - I'm finally realizing that I do in fact earn quite a bit of money, and that money isn't any good if you don't use it to get what you want. At first what I wanted was assurance of financial security, now and in the future, so my focus was on building up an emergency fund and retirement savings. Well, I have over $10,000 in cash, albeit earmarked for different purposes, and as of now I have a smidge over $40k in retirement savings. My outlook on savings could best be described as "starvation mode" - you can never have enough. But I am relaxing some, and not saving every dime. Another facet of my realization is that I am spending a good deal more now on restaurants, entertainment, movies, etc, and often paying for my friends (most of whom are students) because I've realized that one thing that I want is to go out and have a good time with my friends, and there is No Good Reason to not use my money to accomplish this end. :)

Next month I will be moving into a more expensive apartment (it's a duplex) and I am also really excited about this. We need more space, and I want a backyard very badly. (My guinea pigs haven't been outside except to go to the vet in a year and a half.) Boyfriend is getting a grill, partially because it is entirely my idea to move as he's perfectly comfortable in our current apartment, and he is putting up graciously with my shenanigans. (Of course, he also has a room to himself as an office, while my desk is in the bedroom.) Now we'll both have an office, and a very nice kitchen and dining room area, which we use extensively. Of course it is more expensive than where we live now, but this is yet another arena in which I need to remind myself that I can well and easily afford this. There is quite a difference between living below your means, and living vastly below them to the point of unhappiness.

I fully expect my net worth to reverse next month, as I am paying off the Rome trip in a lump sum. I also need to contribute more to my SEP IRA, but I have until April 2008 to do that, so I'm not in a hurry.

Going once..

I posted before that I am looking to see if someone else would like to take over running the Under 30 Honor Roll and Festival of Under 30 Finances as I don't have the time to develop it into something better - if anyone's interested, please let me know!

Bah, oh well

So we went to take a look at this house.. and I must say, I was a little taken aback. While I was fully prepared for the cracked kitchen tile and lumpy, painted-over siding, I was not prepared for the several joists in the basement holding up the central floor beam, nor for the fact that all the floors are sloped and a little spongy. Least of all was I prepared for the ladder made of 2x4's that is the method for getting into the attic (which is actually finished quite nicely and is, by the reports of Boyfriend, the nicest room in the house - I was too scared to go up the ladder since it leaned backwards somewhat.)

So just from our initial trip 'round the house, we decided this was not for us. I had been prepared to put $30,000 into this house, but not $60,000 or $70,000 - especially with the damp basement and potential house-sliding-into-one-corner problems. I had been under the impression that the house had been a rental for a few years, but apparently it had been rented out for TWENTY - and it really looks it. There are lots of repairs (like the 2x4 ladder) that look like a cheap, quick, not-particularly-durable solution to a problem. The roof similarly looked like it had been put on by an amateur with cheap materials - it wasn't evenly spaced, and we found part of a shingle on the ground. It's too bad because the backyard was pretty great for this area (yes, you really can buy a house on 1/50th of an acre) and it might be a nice house, if I had $70k. The real deal breaker though were the upstairs bedrooms, which are all quite small, and only one has a normal sized closet. One had a closet literally ten inches deep, and the third had no closet at all. So I backed away from this house - maybe in another few years. :)

So now I'm looking at places to rent, since I do want a bigger place. I found a place that looks great on paper, but I want to talk to the landlord and see what experience they have since I get the impression it's just some guy who owns a house and felt like renting it out. From the county auditor's site, I found that it sold in 2005 (presumably to this guy or someone he works for) for $228,000 - and you can do the math that the rent of $1200 is not going to cover that mortgage. So who knows what the deal is there. I also have my eye on a few other nice places, so hopefully they don't get rented out before I make the final call! My lease is up August 15th so that's a bit early for around here (most things are Sept to Sept) so I'm hoping to get someplace for August 1st, so we have two weeks to move.

In other news, CashDuck is quite busy now and I have added another person to my crew. :) At this point she's mostly helping me catch up on tasks that have been long neglected, and taking only a little workload off of me and my other crew member. Ah, such is business.. it grows faster than I can manage to hire people to take work off me. But things are going quite well. My wonderful ducklings raised $350 for breast cancer research with this month's promotion so I'm pretty pleased with that too! I am pretty much ducking when I am not eating, sleeping, or at work though. Yesterday, I took an hour to relax, which I am not good at, and watched some TV.

In other news, I fear that between my work and CashDuck and attempting to have a real life, I do not have time to administer the Under 30 Honor Roll and I'm not doing it proper justice. So for any fellow Honor Roll members, if you are interested in taking over the Honor Roll and making it the best it can be, drop me an email.

Eee!

OK, so I know I keep seesawing back and forth on this issue of should I buy a house. I had thought about it but eventually decided that I couldn't afford anything that was in the area that I wanted and had the amenities I wanted (like not sharing a damn wall with a neighbor) so I started looking at renting a larger place instead. Today we even went to see a potential new place to rent which was pretty nice.

Well, I got home from that tour and visited the Craigslist ads as I always do, and then for a lark went on the Prudential page that I use to look up local properties. And..

There is a great house for sale. It is a wee bit more than I wanted to pay, but I can afford it on my salary, not counting any CashDuck money or contribution from Boyfriend. It needs work, but I do have money coming in that I can use (plus if I put a nice downpayment down, I can take it back out as home equity in the short term.) It used to be a rental, so all the guts work, it just isn't terribly pretty. Very nice big backyard (which is pretty rare for the area) and a big deck. Plus, it is empty right now, which is important because I only have three months (approximately) to get this done. Boyfriend doesn't have intensive classes during the summer, so he'd be able to oversee the work a little bit, and my mom is retiring in June and really wants to help out too.

So.. I put in a request to see the house tomorrow, and for a quote from a mortgage broker (an Upfront Mortgage Broker, thanks Searchlight Crusade!) and maybe we can get this puppy going. Although it is a bit higher priced than I would like, it's going to be the only thing we can get a mortgage for in this area - and I'm pretty much guaranteed to get back all the money I put into it when we sell as all the other houses in the area are at least $50k more, and most are pretty nice houses.

As my mom said, you were meant for this house! But then, as I said, I just have to make sure no one else is meant for it too. :) Definitely be updates on this soon.

Edit: I just pulled my credit reports and scores, I have a 697 (???) at Experian, but a 749 from Equifax and a 740 from TransUnion. So I feel pretty damn good about that.

Head above water

This month has been a particularly crazy one for CashDuck, hence the long silence. But I am doing pretty well with it all, though it does mean I don't sleep quite as much as I'd like. Or blog, or clean the house, or feed the cat. (Sorry, cat.) Recent thoughts:

Taxes - Ouch. I paid about $4,600 between federal, state, and local (plus I paid some 2007 estimated taxes for local). H&R Block decided that I should pay a penalty for underpayment of estimated taxes - however yesterday I got a letter from the IRS (which did cause some consternation when I saw it) in which they stated that I didn't actually need to pay the penalty and they were going to send it back to me. Awesome! Albeit in 30 to 60 days. Still essentially free money. I signed up for the federal estimated tax payment website, and am waiting for my packet on that, and attempted to sign up for the state program but it is rather confusing so I need to sit down and try to figure that out. Local taxes, I just fill out a little coupon and mail that in with a check, there doesn't seem to be an online method. If the state and federal systems weren't so massive that I'm afraid that a paper check would get lost, I'd do it there too as it's simple, but unfortunately doesn't leave much of a record.

Housing - I am really getting the itch to get a bigger place. Our current apartment runs $695 per month plus electric/gas which is another ~$115, so it's pretty easy for me to swing. This is a two bedroom apartment and currently Boyfriend has the small bedroom (it's pretty small) as his office, and I have the remaining space in the large bedroom that isn't actually taken up by the bed. I would really like to have my own room though (especially since then I could take a larger home office deduction if I had a whole room instead of a 5x8 area) and I really need more storage space for all the duck stuff. Second, I would really like a backyard that is fenced in and that dogs haven't been pooping in so I can take my guinea pigs outside. I used to do that all the time when we first moved here but then our second year here several dogs moved into the neighboring apartments and their owners allow them to crap right off the pathway, so I can't let my guinea pigs eat that grass for fear of getting an infection. So some space outside that I can absolutely know dogs haven't crapped on would be great. Third, we need more storage space - we had a great big closet that fit everything, but then (although this is both good and bad) our landlord put a washer and dryer in it. Plus, I am storing most of the unpacked CashDuck duck stuff on a giant shelving unit which is oh-so-lovely right in our living room. So I am really thinking about moving, but have to weigh more room and nicer space against paying at least $400 more per month for what I want. I found a nice place that's a block away, but despite the fact that I walked by this morning and the rent sign is still up, the landlord said it had been rented already. So I've emailed about another place that's a little farther from where I live now, but closer to where I work, but is available in May (and our lease here is not up till August). It won't be a tragedy if we have to stay here a little longer, and then maybe our current landlord will have something that I want available, since we really like our landlord. But I am just getting a little frustrated with how crowded our house is - the rooms are all pretty small or full of furniture.

Savings - I have successfully put Plan Not Living On My Actual Salary into effect. I will get paid $338 on Monday, split 80/20 between the bills bank account and the fun stuff bank account. I already sent off the rent check from my ING checking account (hopefully it will get there on time as I forgot to do it till yesterday so it won't go out till Monday) and transferred some extra money into my bills account. I also didn't get around to making my normal $500 Roth deposit in March so I will put in $1000 in a couple of days for March and April, and my 403(b) will get the $2500 from my salary, plus my regular nonnegotiable contributions, so I am pretty excited about this massive influx. I will also probably put some more money into the Fidelity SEP IRA that I set up - I put $4600 in during early March sometime, of which only $1000 was for this tax year, so I should really put some more in. Part of the logic of not living on my salary is that pretty much one way or another there is not any way for me to get out of paying self-employment tax on my CashDuck earnings, and how much I can save of that is limited to 25% of profit, so I might as well sock away as much as I can with my 403(b) and then put away whatever I can in the SEP afterwards. Also because I can continue sending in money for 2007 to the SEP until Apri 2008, but I can't do so for the 403(b). If I continue not living on my salary for the rest of the year, I'll nearly max out the 403(b) and 457.

MBA - I've been thinking about what kind of advanced ed I should get (as I have intended to get something or other all along) and I'm really leaning towards getting an MBA. The university where I work has a really great part time MBA program which you can get done in as little as two or as many as five years, and is very flexible, and all the classes are at night. The thing that worries me though is whether I will really have the time to do it with both working full time and doing CashDuck. I finally broke down and got someone to help me with CashDuck, but I would really need more help or more time to be able to do this. So the options there are, hire someone else to help me, or go to 32 hours or less per week at my full time job. Option 1, I don't know how helpful that would be because there is so much that would be really hard to spin off, and would require a lot more sophisticated of a structure in order to keep all of the gears running together. The person who helps me now is doing tasks that can be done anytime and don't really intersect with other operations, so it doesn't matter that I don't keep tabs on her. I have a few other things that could be spun off that are similar, but she doesn't have unlimited time or unlimited space for duck prizes at her apartment. :) Option 2 might be the way to go but I think I will wait until I have been there long enough that I am too valuable for them to say "no" to me going 80% (since it would then be 80% of me or 0% of me.)

In the back of my mind there is also option 3 which is to get a different, less demanding or less than full time job, because where I work now seems pretty dysfunctional and unless things improve I might leave too. I do like the work but the management stinks. Everybody keeps asking me why I haven't quit my job to work CashDuck, but the short answer is that I would become very neurotic working at home and having nothing else to think about. Plus I need the psychological security of having that income (even if I'm not living off it) and I wouldn't feel safe quitting my job without having large, large sums of money stashed away. Third, I'm young enough that having that kind of gap in my resume might be disastrous later on. ("You were in research and quit to run a website and now you want to do research again?") So I don't feel it's wise. I mentioned this to Boyfriend the other day and he told me that he would think I was nuts if I quit my job to run CashDuck, for pretty much the reasons I outlined above, but mostly the neuroticism.

A parting thought.. Anybody else notice that ING put in a total deposits amount at the bottom, that shows how much money you have among all of your accounts? I find this to be dangerous as I am practically a compulsive saver now, and I am going to be very unhappy to see that number go down when I have to pay CashDuck estimated taxes soon (since I park CashDuck tax money and general savings money at ING), but I do like seeing that nice big number (though more than half of it is CashDuck's money anyway.)

I will try to keep to a once weekly blog update as I feel very squeezed for time right now - if you saw my house (and desk) you would understand.

See Me On The Tee Vee

Check this out! They actually didn't use very much of my footage.. but I'm glad they pronounced my name correctly. :) And they didn't use any of the shots of the guinea pigs which I think were definitely way more interesting than me talking.