I read an interesting piece in the blogosphere of late about emergency funds and how they create this negative psychology around anticipating catastrophes at every turn and create a poverty mentality. That got me thinking about the right way to set up your goals to motivate you to save positively, and not discourage you about where you are, where you want to be, and where you may never be. That’s depressing, whew. For my goals:
Emergency savings – $9,000 really is three months of my current salary, so that one is based on a pretty typical principal.
Business School Savings - $50,000. I realize this is actually way higher than I can actually achieve. I sincerely doubt I’ll be able to save this much before I go to school. However, this is the amount that I would feel really good about going into school to sustain a semblance of my lifestyle without taking on excessive amounts of debt. For me, it’s more important here to acknowledge the real total rather than set an achievable end goal. In the end, I will have to take on tons of loans to go to school. Everyone does it. (Sigh) I’ll do it too, and I’ll be okay. What is important for me in the meantime, is to set achievable short-term goals along the way to that total amount, i.e. upping the ante on my automatic savings each month.
Travel Goal - $2,500 This is the bare bones amount to have a real South American adventure. I honestly don’t think I can do it for less. So this is more about budget setting than anything else.
Wedding Goal - $? I can’t even think about how much I’m going to need for this right now. I should probably take it off, because I’m not even contributing to this yet, but it’s a reminder that I really should be saving if I want to pay for my own wedding and get married anytime in the next decade.
Those are the big ones – the NEEDS – that I’ve chosen to prioritize but I also think it’d be great to set a few other positive goals, to recognize that I’m trying to save, cover my needs, and be more frugal so that I can enjoy some of my WANTS. And as long as you save and budget for it, you can enjoy these fun things that cost money. So, a short list of my financial WANTS.
+ A Personal Trainer for a Year
+ A Dog, complete with Dog Walker for weekdays
+ A few more of my favorite magazine subscriptions (right now it’s just Vanity Fair)
Right now I’m not saving specifically for these, but once I’ve finished up with my travel goal, I’ll choose one of these as a positive savings goal to tack on. Any other strategies for keeping yourself on the positive side of saving?
Monday, July 21, 2008
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Why Women Don't Rule the World
I’m going to need a new suit for business school (and later) job interviews. My only suit is from my senior year of college when I was frankly, a bit of a porker, left over from rowing crew and excessive amounts of beer-drinking. Now that I’m marginally svelter, I couldn’t keep the thing up with a belt. So, I started doing research on how much I can expect to spend, and I ran across this bit by Laura Solon, a UK writer from the Guardian and she is just irresistible. Am now convinced that I should raise my children in London, so that they will be just as witty and charming:
Why don't women rule the world? Is it because we live in a patriarchal society that forever perpetuates the glass ceiling? Is it because women don't support successful women? I think it's both, but I tell you what doesn't help women in their cause: women's suits. Hillary Clinton's peach trouser suit. Deborah Meaden's beige number from the Dragons' Den promos. All the ones worn by women in the government. They are awful. Really awful. They are so awful that they could be a contestant on The Apprentice, where they'd annoy Margaret so much she'd swear.
The law of women's suits is: it doesn't matter how much a woman spends on a suit, she will almost always end up looking as if she bought it from a Next Seconds shop where it was nestling on a rail between a chenille turtle-neck and a plus-sized taupe thong.
The only way to wear a suit is if a) it's Chanel and b) you're a Parisian woman who weighs six ounces and sleeps safe in the knowledge that if global warming continues and lions start living in France and she's chased by one, she could save herself by hiding in the gap between her fridge freezer and the wall.
Maybe one day I will care about the brand name of my suit. I am going to business school in the next few years, and despite my thoughts on the matter, maybe I *will* lose my soul after all, and become the kind of person who has a comment on the suiting collections at Bergdorf vs. Saks. My actual price-hunting revealed I should probably budget around $400 at least. My two winners:
J.Crew $460 = $225 jacket + $130 pant + $100 pencil skirt
Bannana Republic $400 = $200 jacket + $100 pant + $80-100 pencil skirt
A quick search of Nordstroms.com revealed lots of Solon-described numbers and Bloomingdales.com revealed some sharp Theory and DVF looks that were way out of my price range ($800), and Chanel is just not an option. Any other ideas for finding a great looking suit under $500?
Also, a bit later in the article, Solon talks about her lack of financial knowledge and proposes:
scrapping sex education - just force all teenagers, boys and girls, to wear women's suits and thoughts of sex will all but disappear - and then replace it with finance education.
Cheers to that!
Why don't women rule the world? Is it because we live in a patriarchal society that forever perpetuates the glass ceiling? Is it because women don't support successful women? I think it's both, but I tell you what doesn't help women in their cause: women's suits. Hillary Clinton's peach trouser suit. Deborah Meaden's beige number from the Dragons' Den promos. All the ones worn by women in the government. They are awful. Really awful. They are so awful that they could be a contestant on The Apprentice, where they'd annoy Margaret so much she'd swear.
The law of women's suits is: it doesn't matter how much a woman spends on a suit, she will almost always end up looking as if she bought it from a Next Seconds shop where it was nestling on a rail between a chenille turtle-neck and a plus-sized taupe thong.
The only way to wear a suit is if a) it's Chanel and b) you're a Parisian woman who weighs six ounces and sleeps safe in the knowledge that if global warming continues and lions start living in France and she's chased by one, she could save herself by hiding in the gap between her fridge freezer and the wall.
Maybe one day I will care about the brand name of my suit. I am going to business school in the next few years, and despite my thoughts on the matter, maybe I *will* lose my soul after all, and become the kind of person who has a comment on the suiting collections at Bergdorf vs. Saks. My actual price-hunting revealed I should probably budget around $400 at least. My two winners:
J.Crew $460 = $225 jacket + $130 pant + $100 pencil skirt
Bannana Republic $400 = $200 jacket + $100 pant + $80-100 pencil skirt
A quick search of Nordstroms.com revealed lots of Solon-described numbers and Bloomingdales.com revealed some sharp Theory and DVF looks that were way out of my price range ($800), and Chanel is just not an option. Any other ideas for finding a great looking suit under $500?
Also, a bit later in the article, Solon talks about her lack of financial knowledge and proposes:
scrapping sex education - just force all teenagers, boys and girls, to wear women's suits and thoughts of sex will all but disappear - and then replace it with finance education.
Cheers to that!
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Homage to a Government
Next year we are to bring the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it’s all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly.
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.
It’s hard to say who wanted it to happen,
But now it’s been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.
Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it’s a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.
That was Philip Larkin’s poem from 1969 - on Vietnam, entitled "Homage to a Government." And America’s leadership is disappointing now for different reasons. “Lack of money” has never been a concern with this administration. The position on military spending has rather been – money is no object.
As the economy has grown since the seventies, those annual upward ticks of growth have ballooned military spending naturally, since there’s a larger and larger bucket from which to draw. But the unnatural part has been an attitude change with regards to money and priorities.
The last time I checked on the National Priorities Project link, the Iraq War has cost a total of $537.8 Billion. $15.8 Billion of that total was paid by my current state of Minnesota. The tradeoff for those dollars – that same figure could have been spent on health care for 4.5 million people (that’s just shy of the state population, 5.2 Million).
It’s true that money has been an influence on the Iraq War – as we’ve spent and become aware of those kinds of trade-offs, the more America has called the purposes of our presence there into question. But politics, not money, will (hopefully) pull our troops out of the region (or at least divert them to a more rational, resolute mission).
My own homage to the government will truly begin after a different fiscal moment of truth: do we deal with the deficit and count “lack of money” as the reason we avoid thorough reconstruction of the regions? Or do we devote the same “money as no object” mentality to healing what we’ve hurt? I attended the unveiling of the Obama headquarters in Minneapolis this morning and volunteered my Friday afternoons until election day to help out in the office and put in some time at the phonebank. I already donated a small amount of money, and would love to be able to give more, but I will devote my time until.
For lack of money, and it’s all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly.
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.
It’s hard to say who wanted it to happen,
But now it’s been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.
Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it’s a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.
That was Philip Larkin’s poem from 1969 - on Vietnam, entitled "Homage to a Government." And America’s leadership is disappointing now for different reasons. “Lack of money” has never been a concern with this administration. The position on military spending has rather been – money is no object.
As the economy has grown since the seventies, those annual upward ticks of growth have ballooned military spending naturally, since there’s a larger and larger bucket from which to draw. But the unnatural part has been an attitude change with regards to money and priorities.
The last time I checked on the National Priorities Project link, the Iraq War has cost a total of $537.8 Billion. $15.8 Billion of that total was paid by my current state of Minnesota. The tradeoff for those dollars – that same figure could have been spent on health care for 4.5 million people (that’s just shy of the state population, 5.2 Million).
It’s true that money has been an influence on the Iraq War – as we’ve spent and become aware of those kinds of trade-offs, the more America has called the purposes of our presence there into question. But politics, not money, will (hopefully) pull our troops out of the region (or at least divert them to a more rational, resolute mission).
My own homage to the government will truly begin after a different fiscal moment of truth: do we deal with the deficit and count “lack of money” as the reason we avoid thorough reconstruction of the regions? Or do we devote the same “money as no object” mentality to healing what we’ve hurt? I attended the unveiling of the Obama headquarters in Minneapolis this morning and volunteered my Friday afternoons until election day to help out in the office and put in some time at the phonebank. I already donated a small amount of money, and would love to be able to give more, but I will devote my time until.
Friday, July 18, 2008
The Gift of Sagacity
So my brother is on the 5-year plan for graduating from college (he was an athlete and had to red-shirt one year, so it was legitimate), and as a graduation present next year, I would love to compile a book of wisdom for him, financial and otherwise.
Yes, he doesn't graduate for another year, but I'm starting now, so it's actually comprehensive. So I’m looking for gems to pass along. I have a big section on retirement planning/saving already, but is there anything else that you would have wanted to know the day you graduated from college?
Yes, he doesn't graduate for another year, but I'm starting now, so it's actually comprehensive. So I’m looking for gems to pass along. I have a big section on retirement planning/saving already, but is there anything else that you would have wanted to know the day you graduated from college?
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Equities vs. Dollar Balance
Considering market downturns, other pf bloggers are encouraging me to think of my retirement assets as a certain number of shares rather than a constantly fluctuating (or diving) balance – hopefully this will help take the emotion out of re-looking at how I’m doing, when I have a long way to go before retirement. With that, I’ll start keeping this tracker in addition to my net worth tracking.
# of Equity Shares:
Company 401(k): 112
Company Stock (Given as extra incentive/gift): 10
Roth IRA: 107
Total: 229
# of Equity Shares:
Company 401(k): 112
Company Stock (Given as extra incentive/gift): 10
Roth IRA: 107
Total: 229
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Slackonomics: Our Part in Rehauling the economy as we know it
Just read the introduction for the book Slackonomics: Generation X in the Age of Creative Destruction by New York Times contributor Lisa Chamberlain (I think the snappy description under the subtitle sums up the premise nicely: “How financial insecurity and technological innovation changed everyday life for a generation poised to take the reins from boomers – and not a moment too soon.”
I guess I should say that I’m a Gen Y person by definition, but I’m excited to finish this one. So far what I like about it is that it really seems to be just an anthropological look at a unique era, the specific cultural experience that we’ve had. I really like that Chamberlain doesn’t try to compare our generation to another and make some argument about how we’ve missed a lesson somewhere, financially. Her point is that in some ways, these economic times were almost inevitable and unavoidable – but this creative destruction we’ve experienced and are experiencing is likely to uproot a lot of the old definitions and economic modes, and spit us out into a totally different realm – for better or worse.
For instance – take social security (note: this is my own example, not Chamberlain’s). Scottrade Investing just completed a survey that noted that although 87% of Gen X’ers believe they deserve social security benefits from the government, most aren’t counting on actually getting any benefits. Other highlights from the survey:
43% believe they won’t be able to retire fully
26% aren’t sure they’ll ever be able to leave the workforce
37% predict they’ll need $1 million to retire
40% haven’t hit the $25 thousand mark yet
40% are saving more as a result of their insecurity over social security
I think those stats exemplify Chamberlain’s definition of creative destruction – because of all of the financial insecurity (first four bullets), Generation X will be forced to create a new economic reality for themselves (last bullet). Right now, they are just saving more, but will there be a reinvention of how we save for retirement, or protest that results in genuine change to the entire social security infrastructure.
Otherwise, I’m reading Jane Eyre at night before bed. I used to have a tradition of reading one l-o-n-g classic every summer (back when I got summer breaks), and I’m trying to carry that over now. What’s your favorite classic?
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Bonus Time! & Goals Report
Finally, finally it’s end of year bonus time at my company – the total ended up being $2,942 (measly comapred to the other MBAs who have my same role, but a nice bump for me). And true to my goal, I am sending 60% to B-School Savings, 30% to the E-fund and devoting only 10% to something fun. I bought a new purse and a pair of orange flats for my something fun a bit ago, so the rest I sent to my travel fund.
As for my other two goals:
Carpooling 2x a week instead of 1 – I’m 2 for 5. I did manage to continue carpooling 1 day a week, and I will keep trying to step it up. When this is not *technically* the other person’s goal, it makes it tough.
Giving up Alcohol for any portion of time – No and No. Not only did I fail at this goal, I went to a wine tasting with friends and bought several expensive bottles – some for me and some for the Guy. I get very generous when I’m tipsy. Damn. For the rest of July, I’m going to just focus on the carpooling goal and reducing my driving in general. I will try to walk to the Guy’s place at least once and walk to yoga more often. Also, I’m going to start unplugging all my appliances (Cell phone charger, toaster, coffee maker, etc.). My average energy bill is pretty small as is, but every bit helps, and I can be greener this way as well. I’ve never tried this, but I’m NEVER in my apartment, and it really is such a waste.
In other news, this is my 99th post! How many posts are you on, and what were some of your biggest “milestones” in the pf journey, blog-related or otherwise?
As for my other two goals:
Carpooling 2x a week instead of 1 – I’m 2 for 5. I did manage to continue carpooling 1 day a week, and I will keep trying to step it up. When this is not *technically* the other person’s goal, it makes it tough.
Giving up Alcohol for any portion of time – No and No. Not only did I fail at this goal, I went to a wine tasting with friends and bought several expensive bottles – some for me and some for the Guy. I get very generous when I’m tipsy. Damn. For the rest of July, I’m going to just focus on the carpooling goal and reducing my driving in general. I will try to walk to the Guy’s place at least once and walk to yoga more often. Also, I’m going to start unplugging all my appliances (Cell phone charger, toaster, coffee maker, etc.). My average energy bill is pretty small as is, but every bit helps, and I can be greener this way as well. I’ve never tried this, but I’m NEVER in my apartment, and it really is such a waste.
In other news, this is my 99th post! How many posts are you on, and what were some of your biggest “milestones” in the pf journey, blog-related or otherwise?
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