I feel the need to rant

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1. People who do not understand that an unmarked intersection is to be treated as a four-way stop.
2. People who drive the wrong way in a parking lot.
3. Architects and designers who do not understand that a room full of hard surfaces such as concrete and glass creates a very noisy ambiance.
4. Postal workers who expect you to answer the phone at 7:30 am and only give you 90 minutes to call back and confirm package delivery.
5. Starbucks employees who do not want to package your ceramic mugs in boxes, do not give you a bag to carry the boxes, do not give your order to the barista, and do not apologize when you ask what happened to your coffee.
6. Telemarketers
7. Lack of health insurance for heterosexual domestic partners.
8. Office politics
9. Tow truck drivers who tow away a car with dogs inside.
10. Computer companies who spend their time constantly re-inventing their product and do not provide support for their old products.
11. Versus coverage of the Tour de France, do they not know that there are more than 5 teams and 10 riders????

MUST LEARN SWEDISH

And after learning Swedish, I must move there. These are apartments either for sale or rent via this site.

Employer is Playing Dirty

The union contract I am part of expires on June 30th. We had a new contract agreed upon last fall, but Governor Gregoire refused to sign it due to the economic crisis. The union has been trying to renegotiate and get a new contract in place before the 30th so that layoff protections will be in place. In April my department lost approximately 20% of our staff due to eliminating empty positions and laying off people. We have been told to expect three more rounds of layoffs; I pretty much spend every day in fear that I will not survive the next round.

Today I received an email from the union updating us on the status of the renegotiations. This jumped out at me:

"The (employer's name here) forced us to mediation on June 3rd, and then their chief negotiator went on vacation until June 29th."

I get that this is a tactic, but what does it say to your employees (the ones you expect to be hard working and loyal), when you behave like this?

SNAP! and it continues

March was $844.17, but April was only $559.50 and so far I think May has been minimal. That makes another $140 that I owe myself due to naughtiness. On the bright side I am happy to report that the emergency fund is fully funded! WOOT

Sorry for the lack of posts (what's new you say), but I'm taking three classes this quarter and am having no breathing room.

February and the flogging continues oh and also: textbooks suck!

Just got around to adding up my February naughty spending and my fine came to $74.97 a whopping .86 less than January . Hey at least I'm consistent, that counts for something right?

I had a new idea today. We've tried all sorts of ways to control our eating out, but until we develop actual willpower I'm afraid the unabashed eating will continue. So instead of trying to force limits on it, I'm going to track it for awhile and post it on a calendar. Maybe seeing how often we do it will help, although I'm not feeling well right now and the last thing I want to do is cook dinner so....

About textbooks, I knew they were a huge money-making scheme, but I had no idea to what extent. Last month when I registered for Spring quarter I went to my school's online bookstore to get my book list. I also made a note of the prices because I like to buy them elsewhere for cheaper. Well after going to the school bookstore I went to the WAOL site, which is the site that manages some of the online courses I am taking. The WAOL site has a link to ecampus letting you search for books on the ecampus site via the WAOL course number. This is convenient because the school bookstore site does not give out isbn numbers online because of course they don't want you to have those numbers and find the books cheaper elsewhere. The WAOL link to ecampus was selling the books for roughly the same price as the school bookstore. This I expected because WAOL is run by the schools and they wouldn't undercut their own stores so they obviously have some kind of pricing agreement in place with ecampus. (I'm getting to the point). When I loaded my cart at ecampus I noticed that I did not have free shipping. Now I have shopped at ecampus before and know that all orders over $59 qualify for free shipping. Being curious, I emptied my cart and logged out of my WAOL session. I then logged back into the ecampus site with my own account which is not tied to any school, meaning I receive the non-school contract pricing otherwise known as regular retail pricing. And hooray the free shipping was available! I searched for my books and discovered that by using my retail account instead of a school account my books were now on average 15% cheaper and I got free shipping! This is where I got angry, aren't schools charging students enough already? That they feel the need to charge 15% more than retail stinks!

There was a bill introduced in Congree in 2007 dealing with textbook affordability. It didn't pass.

image courtesy of beans for books

College Textbook Affordability and Transparency Act of 2007 - Requires publishers informing teachers at institutions of higher education about available textbooks or supplements to include written information concerning: (1) the price the publisher would charge the bookstore associated with such institution for such items; (2) the full history of revisions for such items; and (3) whether such items are available in other formats, including paperback and unbound, and the price the publisher would charge the bookstore for items in those formats.

Requires a publisher that sells a textbook and any accompanying supplement as a single bundled item also to sell them as separately priced and unbundled items.

Directs federally-assisted institutions of higher education to include on printed or internet course schedules the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) and retail price for each required or recommended textbook or supplement for listed courses. Requires an institution to: (1) use the author and title if the ISBN is unavailable; and (2) indicate that the required information has yet to be determined if its disclosure for a course is impractical.

Requires such institutions to provide sellers of textbooks (other than publishers) that meet their requirements with: (1) their course schedules for the subsequent academic period; (2) the information this Act requires to be placed on each course schedule regarding each textbook or supplement required or recommended for each course; and (3) the number of students enrolled, and the maximum enrollment, in each course.

January update with flogging

image courtesy of Redneck Texan
$20 Challenge:
So I had decided to charge myself a 10% fee on all non-essential money spent as my version of the $20 challenge. And although I consider buying lunch essential, I am charging the fee on that as well since I could have brought lunch; most likely I did bring lunch but didn't eat it. I also didn't do a very good job of tracking my receipts so I probably owe more than I am paying. Good freakin' God, I owe myself $75.83 !!!! A flogging is in order! This money will go into the house/emergency fund at Emigrant.

Income Taxes:
Did I mention I started school for the third time last summer? I've already been conditionally accepted to WSU in 2012, the catch is that I have to finish my AA at NSCC before fall 2012 and then I'm in. And way cool, I can do the whole thing online. What this has to do with taxes is that my tax return doubled because of paying for school. I tried my taxes twice see, once without claiming my tuition and once with. Without my return was only $800 something and with claiming tuition it jumped to $1972. And being bound to be a mo' bettah frugalista this year (paragraph above not withstanding) I promptly put the money into a CD which I've never done before.

Savings:
In addition to the aforementioned CD, I also finally took advantage of the $25 that ING sends out and opened a savings account with them. I have designated this account the vacation account and am putting $30 every month into it. Of course by the time I am able to take a vacation I shall be 87 but I'll have enough money to take a spanking good one!

I went crazy in 2008

2008 was a year of spending, you'd think after living frugally and paying off my debt that I would have learned something and managed to stay debt free. But no, it seems that the terrible habit I have of doing what I'm told not to do applies to things I tell myself not to do as well. So I spent 2008 spending money on myself. I spent $1157.43 at Etsy alone!!! Then there was the wii and the wii fit, and paying for two quarters of school (why are textbooks so expensive!!!), and more books on Amazon, and shoot. Debt is up to $6k.

Well here it is 2009 and things are going to change. I am not going to live a life of denial but I will learn moderation. I've decided that this year is all about self-discipline and that I am going to stop being so lazy in all aspects of my life. I am going to start with the $20 challenge. (again)

This is the third try at the $20 challenge, but this time I am going to be successful because I am going to switch it up a little bit. Instead of it being the $20 challenge of random money that has no purpose; the money saved will go into the house fund. And instead of paying myself every time I bring lunch to work, I will charge myself a fee every time I buy lunch. A 10% naughty fee. And a 10% fee every time I make a frivolous purchase. This way I'm not denying myself but hopefully will think harder before making the purchase. I think the third time really is a charm, it took me three tries at school, but I'm really sticking with it now and am enjoying it. The last two times I didn't like it at all. Maybe I am growing up.

Anyhow, it's 11:06 am, Saturday January 6 2009 and the brand spanking new $150 house fund challenge has officially started. ($150 because that's my Christmas cash) Good luck to me and Happy New Year everyone!!!


Update: oops, I forgot to 'splain $20 challenge. Start with $20 and each time you save money add that money to the kittie. For instance if you grocery receipt says you saved $5.75 then you take $5.75 of your money and add it to the $20 and then you have $25.75. The challenge is in remembering to do it and seeing how big you can grow it. Ima Saver has been doing this several years and amassing thousands!

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