Update on dog daycare, among other things

So I did hear back eventually from the doggie daycare owner of the place Maggie goes to - I had emailed them about two weeks ago asking if it would be possible to trade me working on Saturdays for her going during the week. They said that everybody was trying to get as many shifts as possible right now, but offered that she could come at a much reduced daily price for the next three months. Which is really super awesome of them and is really going to help. She'd been going two days a week for the past few weeks because I couldn't afford the $75/week for her to go everyday, but on the off days she was all wound up and lonely. So it's definitely good for her mental health to go back to going every day. I feel a little like I shouldn't be taking advantage of their offer, because it's not like we're not going to eat if she goes, but I'm sure they realize that if it were a choice between groceries and dog daycare, the daycare would always lose, and $25 a week is better than $0, especially since the incremental cost of labor for caring for each dog is pretty small, and Maggie is a well-behaved dog.

Still trying to increase my savings - it makes me nervous to not have much in savings so I've been paying minimums and putting the rest into savings. I do also contribute to the 401k at work, which is about $100 a paycheck, but I want to contribute to my Roth as well.

Speaking of which, I did roll over my 403b when I left my previous job, into a traditional IRA and then into a Roth IRA, but my calculations on whether I could afford the taxes depended on me getting a job sooner than I did. So I called TIAA-CREF and asked that it be recharacterized and turned back to a traditional IRA. Not something I particularly wanted to do, since last year was (hopefully) the lowest annual income I've had since leaving college, and stock prices are so low that it would be less money to roll over, but I really can't afford an extra $3,000 in taxes right now. I'll try and roll it over in chunks over the next several years, which was the original plan. However, it's been more than two weeks (maybe three?) and my online statement still shows all my money in the Roth. I don't have much confidence that they did it correctly, since the guy on the phone first didn't know what a recharacterization was, or that you could ever roll a Roth back to a traditional, then didn't know that you had more than 60 days to do it, and then didn't know (though an online rep had told me so) that you could do this over the phone. So I'm betting there's a good chance that the paperwork wasn't processed correctly.

Another little project of mine

For Christmas I received a very nice scanner from Boyfriend's grandparents (I am apparently now an honorary grandchild.) This scanner has text recognition software. So I used it to scan in a little book that I had gotten from a friend, that I had intended to type up during my unemployment, but did not get farther than a couple of pages once I decided that typing that much with no one paying me was not worth it! I did used to be a transcriptionist in college, but while that wasn't terribly exciting, it did pay $14/hr, so one gets used to it, and I would pull 12 hour days during the summer.

Anyway, the little book is called Harmony in Marriage, and I thought it was interesting because it was published in 1955, but has some pretty progressive ideas in it for the time. Or at least what I perceive to be progressive, having not actually lived in 1955.

There is, interestingly, a good segment of the book devoted to finances. And I think this reflects something that people today don't like to talk about, and so "money gurus" bring it up again and again: people in relationships fight about money as much if not more than anything else. This is theoretically supposed to surprise us. But this guy in 1955 saw that this happens, and set out to provide some of what seems to me as very basic personal finance advice. But he lays it out in the spirit as, this is just part of what you need to make your life and your home run smoothly, and it cannot be ignored or the rest will be derailed.

Here are links to the sections (the chapter is interestingly called, How Can Money Hlelp or Hinder?):

Choosing Goals
Financial Teamwork
Shall Both Work Outside?
The Budget: A Plan for Spending
Overcoming Insecurities

Much of the rest of the book is somewhat vague - but it's interesting that he's pretty direct here.

Something I'm rarely accused of, outside of comments

One thing has struck me, when looking at the comments that spam-posters make. These people want you to think they are real posters and have actually read the posts and have something to say about it, while conveniently slipping in their own link. But they continually say that I'm doing something that I rarely if ever do.

Which is provide useful information.

Now I don't claim to be totally useless, but this blog pretty much is "whee! look at me go!". I don't really report anything useful that's going on in the world, or provide a reference for much other than how much my pet surgeries costs. But the commenters seem determined to see me as useful.

Today:

This is really an informative post, and I have to say your blog is really giving my knowledge in the financial industry a boost which is a great help as I run several bad credit sites, making it very important to get all the important up to date finance info that I possibly can. Good luck to everyone in the new year.

P.S. I definitely recommend subscribing to this blog's feeds, they are a wealth of information.

Sept 2007:

this report is fantastic, the infomation you show us is really interesting and very important. Do you want to see something more? you can visit too:

Great investment opportunity in Costa Rica: jaco beach real estate, map jaco beach, hotel in jaco beach costa rica. Visit us for more info at: http://www.jaco-bay.com/

July 2007 (from someone who evidently didn't notice I don't have a PR of 2)

I saw your website and all the blgs are very good, so you have the opportunity to sell space ads on you blogs... And i can't find another way to contact you,sorry...


i receive 72$ every month doing nothing, there is just 4 links at my website)))And you're website is much more better then mine.
Payments via PAYPAL and CHECK!!

http://(deleted)

No matter what language your website or blog has. No matter how many visitors a day visit your website, it's only depends on the PR!
PR MUST BE AT LEAST 2!!!!

IF SO YOU CAN EARN MONEY!!! LOT OF MONEY!!

try them...


After you'll sign up here write to me... and i'll tell you how to optimize it for well... and give you several good tips...

April 2007

Hello I want to congratulate to them by its site of the Web of the exelente looks like entertained and very good very to me it elaborated. I invite them to that they explore a little on my site of the Web.
Costa Rica Real State (blah blah more about costa rica for several sentences)

And then of course there are comments left by real people, which I cannot decipher anyway. This person posted twice, apparently because she thought the first didn't go through..

this was a gr8 post n i do agree abt the adding comments thing
i madly wanna start my blog
infact i had gone half way .........but then adding titles confused me in blogger....
i had thought title means the headline for the specific blog
but having written that it asked me 4 a heading ....
anyways even i m interested in informal blogs n thanx 4 d information
i just hope i can b a gr8 blogger cuz all my net friends luv d way i write

this was a gr8 post n i agree wid u
i m lookin 4ward 2 startin my blog
but how is it that someone can have newones under their wings............
all i know is probably signing up 4 blogger n then u need 2 write a blog straight there
n how do ppl post their emails as their blogs?
is there any way 2 poat the same thing everywhere .......in blogger thoughts etc?
i think informal blogging is very interesting as we can relate wid so many other ppls thoughts
btw thanx 4 d post !!!

But no post has ever received more comments than mine on how to start a blog. It does well on searches and seems to have inspired a number of people. And to think I thought I knew so much after having mine for.. uh.. six weeks? Yeah. I don't follow a lot of my own advice (for instance, I basically never edit, and my posts are right off the top of my head) but most of it still looks pretty good, and it still gets a lot of traffic.