Long time no see! An update

Here's an update on my life, for the curious. I decided I missed the pfblog community so I'm going to try to keep up on Penny Foolish.

Job: Between jobs currently. Left my previous job in March as it was not much fun anymore and I was not happy. Boyfriend is no longer a student and has a FT job. So it works out financially (at least someone is paying the rent, that much I am sure of.) On the upside, this means I have had some time to work on a new business, which is still far from complete - mostly because it costs a pretty penny to get custom PHP programming done, and I don't want to spend much until I get another job. (Funnily, if Boyfriend hadn't gotten a full time job, he might have done it on the cheap.) However, since I left, I was able to roll over my 403b into an IRA, so I may convert some of that to Roth if my taxes are going to be quite low this year, so that's sadly convenient. I am anxiously waiting to hear right now, actually, whether I got a job at a place I interviewed on Tuesday, which I really really liked and they seem quite sane. I happened to have interviewed there a year and a half ago, and they did not hire me because I didn't have experience in their specific medical field. Lo and behold, that field is where I got my next job, so I'm well qualified. It's mostly a matter of me (Ms Personality) vs someone else (Ms Way More Years of Experience) but it's definitely making it a tough choice for them so I feel good about that. Also, when I did the initial phone interview and mentioned that I'd interviewed there before, the head doc commented, "We should have just hired you then!" So fingers crossed on that one.

Life: Spending a lot of time with the dog, Maggie (acquired in January 2008) and the guinea pigs (both of which have now cost me an additional $1k or so since they both got uterine cancer and one of them appears to have an abdominal mass. Fun times.) The cat is perfectly healthy as always and is enjoying his new five-foot-tall cat tree which I got for a steal at a neighborhood-wide yard sale. ($25, and you know it's a good deal when 3 other people try to buy it in the 15 minutes while you are going to fetch your car.) Still working on CashDuck, and have recently opened CashDuck Global for the UK, Canada, and Australia. Working piecemeal on the new business. I had a temp job for a while grading the Ohio Graduation Test short answer essays, and as every generation has thought about the next, we are in trouble if this is the future of our country. :) I am cooking up a few other business ideas as well. I had planned on trying to get into business school to get an MBA, but basically if I don't work for the university, it'll cost buckets. So at this point, I figure I don't need an MBA to be a mogul, Andrew Carnegie didn't have one! Perhaps if it takes off and I need help, I will recruit from among my loyal readers like I did for CashDuck. :)

Home: Still living in a rental, although Boyfriend has put in and had accepted an offer on a real house, that we will hopefully move into by the end of July. Due to the inconveniently timed job loss, this was just the way it worked out best. We were also a little nervous (although willing) about being on the mortgage and title together if we weren't married - very messy if we parted ways. I am excited about finally owning something though, because now we can actually fix things when they go wrong, instead of having our landlord's maintenance men half-fix it and then cause a housefly infestation. (In the bathroom.) The house is quite reasonably priced and is right on the border of where the taxes double, so we get a nice neighborhood with low taxes. Although we might have been able to qualify for more, especially if I were working or did stated-income with the CashDuck income, I feel a lot more comfortable with a mortgage/taxes/insurance payment that is about or a little less than our current rent payment. Plus, there are several remodeling projects that we are planning that should significantly raise the value of the home, and its value as a rental if we choose to go that way in the future. Boyfriend also seems to have caught the homeowning bug and is anxiously awaiting being able to finish the basement and put his office in it.

Finances: And now the part you've all been waiting for. Since my quitting coincided nicely with Boyfriend's full time job, we haven't had too much trouble in the cash flow department. Unfortunately I got into some debt from when Boyfriend was unemployed for three months (he didn't make a lot, but it did help) and mostly from taxes (self-employment income is a crap ton of money, and I have essentially paid for the economic stimulus checks of Everyone I Know.) But my retirement kitty has been untouched since we had some savings and I chose to do some balance transfers rather than dip into it. I will need to take out a little, since I am providing the downpayment for the house, but that's 3% of a not very expensive house so it won't be too much. But since I am not on the mortgage, it doesn't much matter how much debt I am in, and while I'm in more than I'd like, it's all on balance transfers at 4-5% interest, or on the 0% for 1 year card I got before quitting, so I'm not overly concerned about how much interest I'm accumulating. Cross fingers that I get this new job - with both of us having full time jobs, that would literally be like rolling in money. Does it mean I'm still a finance blogger at heart if the first thing I think of is, we could save so much money!!