Collisions in Twittering and Blogging

True, Suze Orman is the only personal finance guru/resource I’ve been following on twitter, so I can’t say that I have an exhaustive perspective on this, but I am scrolling TweetDeck on my phone often enough to concur with much of the media that nothing much insightful or thought-provoking gets written about on twitter. Even Suze is reduced to chatting it up about Michael Jackson and Sarah Palin.

It is really difficult to find anything that is actually value-added in any of these 140 characters (times 140 updates per day).

(Full Disclosure: I do have a twitter account under my real name, and I strive to post things that are interesting and value-added and truly undiscoverable by any other forum or unknowable to my friends through any other way. But I mostly fail as evidenced by last 5 tweets:
1.A picture of cupcakes I baked for the 4th of July
2.My disappointment that I didn’t get the house I wanted in Palo Alto
3.Excitement over attending an Indian wedding
4.Disappointment at the ultimate winner of the last season of Biggest Loser couples
5.My mixed emotions over the yuppiedom of owning those little metallic spice racks)

Then again, when I scroll my Google Reader for the latest on personal finance blogs, I truly am – scrolling. I can get the gist of most posts and updates in a few lines, and then I’m on to the next thing.

Which leads me to conclude…. As I go back to school and have less and less relevant topics to post on related to personal finance, would twitter be a better forum for my pf thoughts and insights???

Lately, I’ve been doing quite a bit of muddling over the state of the blog and the worthiness of keeping this up. The background updates and tracking I’ve done as a result are hugely value-added to me, and I don’t want to lose that. But perhaps I can distill the minimal value I create for others into a 140 character update.

I think I’ll tweet about it….

April Goals and an Exciting Purchase...

April is my favorite month. It’s my birthday month, it’s Easter this year, it’s *usually* when Spring finally comes to Minnesota. And on top of that, the Guy and I have a trip to New York planned this month. So, in addition to all that, this month my goals are:

+ Finish studying for Calculus and pass my pre-b-school online tutorial.

(no small feat)

+ RUN 30 minutes 3x each week.
(I always make it to the gym at least this , but I never run... because I detest it... but I'm learning this really IS the most efficient calorie-burn for my time. And I feel so good afterwards...)

+ Cook for The Guy 3 nights a week.

(Since he's been living in a hotel in northwest Arkansas and eating out for EVERY meal for the past MONTH, I'm expecting him to be a bit of a fatty upon his return. So I've promised him that I will cook him lots of healthy meals when he's back. He's really a much better cook than me but he sometimes lacks the recipe ingenuity. So I realize this will be more like me planning our meals and picking out recipes for us to cook together 3nights per week.)

This is also the month that I’m eligible for an upgrade with AT&T, and I think the time has come for me to get an iPhone. I am justifying this as a somewhat school and career-related necessity. If I am going to be interviewing with high-tech companies like Apple, how can I afford to not be familiar with their devices? Right, I can feel you all collectively rolling your eyes at me. But whatever. So to at least partially fund this, I am giving myself the challenge of not spending even $1 – i.e. managing not to even visit Target, Costco and my favorite wine shop this month. I usually average about $100 a month at these three retailers in total, so it will make a small dent towards the iPhone purchase.

The Eternal Question(s)

Wow, the economy is depressing, eh? I know, such an original post subject.

On the bright side, today I bought a pair of gorgeous Jimmy Choo patent leather pink flats, for $104. They originally retailed for $365, were marked down quite a bit, and then I had a gift card. I barely feel bad for exceeding my clothing budget this month. I'm not even a shoes kind of person and these shoes in particular were certainly a nonessential. But at that price tag, I couldn't resist the urge to answer the question: Really? Could those tiny pretty little things really be worth the exorbitant premium they exact? Who is this Jimmy character and why can he inspire such shopaholic passion in so many, in so many genres?

I Should Receive a Frugal Gold Star

I eliminated a bit more of my discretionary spending this month – and it was something that I just recently professed to being unable to do. But I finally overcame my reluctance and decided to cancel my home delivery of the New York Sunday Times. That’s right, I’m now one more straw on the back of the newspaper industry’s decline. One, my promotional rate shot up to $27 bucks a month. For FOUR papers – almost $30 bucks! And despite how much enjoyment it affords me, I just don’t need it delivered to my doorstep four weeks out of the year. I will probably still go pick up the paper at a newsstand twice a month – if the Guy and I split, I’ll still be spending $5 per month on my beloved paper indulgence. But really, that’s $25 of savings and given how hard it is to make my budget fit on more essential nonessentials, I realized, sacrificing my Times is really an easy call. In short, I should get a gold star for giving up my fave thing!

Giving into "Great Deal" Temptation

When I finally gave in to the “great deal” temptation, I realized just how long it had been since I bought something I didn’t NEED. My splurge:

a huge Samsonite Rolling Duffle for only $40 at Costco.
I checked the website to post the exact item (and tempt all of you as well), but it doesn’t appear to be a national offer – perhaps only in regional (Midwest) warehouses.

The need is arguable. I do have a big suitcase already. It is old, squeaky and difficult to wield at high speeds through airports. But it is a large suitcase that works. But THIS one is sleek and versatile, and only $40 – and my old suitcase will run out at some point, in which case this deal might not exist. So all in all, I still think it was a wise purchase despite its falling decidedly into the nonessentials bucket.

Ponderings on Luxury & Discipline

After another trip to New York this weekend and really puzzling through how anyone at any stage in their life hangs onto money in that city, I started pondering – in true Carrie Bradshaw fashion – about luxury. What is luxury? Is it all about the amount that you pay for something, a good or a service, or is luxury more closely tied to things that you truly enjoy and treating yourself to them. To satisfy my curiosity, I discovered that the etymology of the word luxury stems from the Latin luxus for excess. (one of my dream jobs would be the lexiconographers with the NYT mag). Both meanings are in the dictionary – the condition of abundance, having excess, or more than enough for your own comfort – and the condition of indulging oneself in something that provides pleasure. Still, an indulgence at least implies excess – the idea that you don’t need it, but you let yourself have it.

I’m prepared to contemplate some more positive definitions of what I deem luxurious. I hope always to have little luxuries in my life – but I would never aspire to excess. Ultimately I think of luxury more like a scale – that tips towards excess on the far end. It’s a recurring thought in my mind when I go shopping – that I could never spend certain amounts of money on certain items. For me, a nice $100 handbag that I don’t buy at Target is a luxury. The $500 Kate Spade bag I really salivate over is just plain excess. With the new budget, I have to get serious about discipline too. So I will probably be putting off both luxuries and excess purchases of any kind!

Luxury vs. Necessity

Yay! $1000 closer to paying off my credit card! Also applied for a Citicard today though I wont be doing any real spending on it... just trying to improve my debt-to-available-credit ratio.

I found this article in the NYTimes today to be a very funny commentary on our ability to limit nonessentials. I've decided my new goal for Feb is to do just that - cut out all luxuries and limit the nonessentials to see how much I can save next month. Not sure what the right $ amt is but this will be a trial month and I will post updates along the way. Just my attempt to be hyperaware of what I'm spending. Only for one month anyway!