2007 Year End Review

In the spirit of new year's eve, I thought back over the high's and low's of the past year.

(+)
I got a financial advisor and started paying attention more...
Signed up for ING!
Took a writing class at the Loft
My first stocks :)
Applied for a grant to take time off from work just to write (didn't get it, but still was a long process, and I'm glad I went through it)

( - )
Eating out way too much.
Airfare - a few last minute, high$ flights put a real dent in my non-work travel budget [bonus: silver elite on northwest!]
Gifts - I always have a hard time not overspending on Hanukkah/Christmas presents. Need to be smarter next year and actually save up for what it will really cost me.

December Read/Bought Review

I’m always drawn to those authors that publish a monthly catalogue of what they read and buy in any given month. Nick Hornby does this with Believer Mag (or in novel form with The Polysyllabic Spree). In general, I like these kinds of things – personal, private records and mental tallies made public. And since I like to fancy myself a younger, female Nick Hornby, I’ll go through the exercise for myself, though my list is quite a bit shorter:

BOUGHT
Terrorist by John Updike – on clearance for $1 at Half Price Books. One of my favorite weekend pastimes is scouring the back room for these finds!

READ
Terrorist by John Updike – Good, this + seeing Charlie Wilson’s War over the holidays were a good, humanizing antidote to the other side of the binoculars known as US foreign policy.

The Agenda by Bob Woodward – About Clinton's economic policies. On my bookshelf for years but I haven’t felt ambitious enough to tackle it until now. This was an extremely valuable read for me personally because it banished any lingering desires to “get into politics someday.” An interest is just an interest, sometimes. It also altered some of my preconceptions about the Clintons. I have never been a Hillary supporter, but I came out with a more favorable view of her. Her experience with Congress, policy-making and Washington is real – and her discipline/toughness superceded her husband’s by a long shot in his own administration.

The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl – This was my ‘trash read’ for the Christma break, suggested to me a while ago by an old friend when we were commiserating together about peers who’ve been published before us. My friend and the author were teaching fellows together at Harvard. Great so far, and makes me want to go pick up Dante.

Grad School Add-Up

One of the goals I’ve listed in the sidebar is returning to grad school. The problem is this isn’t exactly a long-term goal. I’m planning to apply next summer and begin in the fall of 2009. The long-term payout makes sense, but these loans are going to be a staggering amount to stomach. Right now, I’m pretty ignorant on how to go about securing the right loans and the right financial aid, but hopefully I’ll round up the right advice before then and wade through it here. I’ve also put together a financial evaluation of the top 6 schools I’m looking at – not to influence my decision, but just to get a sense of how much money we’re really talking about when it comes down to each one:

[Tuition, Room & Board, Books, Living Expenses, Mandatory Fees for 2 years]
- Stanford $150,814
- Harvard $146,600
- Columbia $144,128
- NYU $142,488
- Northwestern $137,252
- Duke $122,416

All of the cost estimates are given by the schools’ websites, so you’ve got to imagine they’re low-balling just a little. I’ll take a ballpark average of $145,000 for two-years. Hopefully I’ll cover half of those costs with pure financial aid. That comes down to $72,500. If I want to minimize the amount of loans I take out to be only about a third of my total cost, then I’m going to need about $50,000 on the first day of classes. Right.

Addendum: ATM Fees

This is harder to track, but I’m determined to do it. ATM Fees.
I don’t like to keep cash in my wallet. $20 in my wallet feels like nothing. So easy to spend on gum, trinkets, food, manicures, etc. – small stuff that I don’t need! So I’d rather avoid the temptation by keeping my wallet on E most of the time. And yet this strategy always leaves me stranded (oh no, the parking ramp doesn’t take cards, etc.) and running to the nearest ATM which inevitably charges a $3 surcharge, plus my bank’s own surcharge. My new strategy is to keep $20 at home, so if I’m ever running out of the house and I know I will need cash I can grab it and avoid the fee. That way it’s on hand, but not in my wallet. Otherwise, hoping just tracking the total amount will shock me into managing this better.

Caffeine Addiction

One of the favorite things that men writing about women’s finances love to do is counsel us about our “latte habit” – that $4 a day that adds up… fair.
[No mention of fantasy sports entry fees, online gambling, or the fact that the last time I looked around my local Starbucks, the gender split was pretty much 50/50. But never mind.]
Taking it to heart, or at least so no one can accuse me of being unawares of the cost of my caffeine, I’m going to start tracking my monthly spending on coffee.
We have a coffee shop within my actual workplace. Great for that 4:30 slump when you realize you’re not leaving in the next hour. Bad for the monthly paycheck deductions on my employee badge. But luckily, my workplace also tracks coffee shop spending as a separate line item on my paycheck, so this should be pretty easy to monitor and tamp down a bit. My goal is to decrease coffee costs each month, and make sure that it is always at a reasonable level. Awhile back I bought a great Cuisinart machine for home, which grinds the beans, and has an alarm clock, which has more than paid for itself in AM coffees. If I can stay disciplined on this for the mornings and stomach the mass-brewed stuff on my floor’s kitchen for the afternoon pick-me-ups, this should help!

Starting Out

A little more about me than you'll find in my profile: I'm doing this for myself, as I've read numerous books about personal finance - Smart Women Finish Rich, etc. - and see myself as a pretty modest spender in general, but still can't seem to stay on the savings track from month to month. This blog is my way to keep myself accountable to all of my little (and large) financial goals, so that one day I will be able to chuck them all, and start living my dream of making a living off my writing.

So I'm sure there will also be lots of thoughts about writing and how to market fiction and nonfictin writing peppered in along the way. Probably other unrelated pondering as well.

I've been encouraged by all of the other PF blogs out there and hopefully you will find some rejuvenation from this one as well.