I'm going to snowflake my bills away

I have 2 credit card bills that just won't seem to go away. Minimum payments are not helping even though the balances are pretty low. I've decided to just snowflake them away. Since I can make as many payments as I want to every month, I'll just send whatever extra money I get when I get it.

Usually I save between $5-20 dollars from my lunch money. If I bring my lunch every day and stick to my plan, I save the top amount. Random purchases, especially snacks, brings me closer to the lower amount. Whatever is left once the pay period is over will be evenly split between my savings account and my credit cards.

I would love to have these two paid off by July and get started on my larger bill. Unfortunately I have a lot of debt to snowflake away. But as long as I stick to my plans, I should be ok.

I only have 3 vacation days left

And I didn't use them for fun things. I was so sick last week that I missed Thursday and Friday. I did come to work Monday but I almost left at lunch because I was still feeling bad. I didn't feel better until Wednesday. I think that was the first day that I didn't sleep almost 10 hours either.

I don't have anything planned for the days, mainly because I don't have any money, so it's not a huge deal that I don't have a lot of days left. It's just nice to be able to randomly schedule a day or two off and be able to sleep in and watch tv all day long.

This year sure has sped on by.

I still have 5 vacation days left

Or in other words, a cool week. In a way I wish we could sell the days back like at some companies. I don't have any plans and I really don't need the time off. I also have a ton of work and I really need something to keep me busy.

But don't worry. I will surely take those 5 days off and be a happy camper. The only thing I really need to decide is whether I want to take it as an entire week or if I want to break it up and take a day here and there.

Either way, it's time off that I'm really looking forward to.

Stop tempting me Groupon

I get the Groupon Getaways email every week. A lot of the time, you will see the same vacations over and over until they sell out or the sell by date arrives. Infrequently they will have something that will totally sell out which usually means it was a great bargain.

Lately I have been seeing short vacations for little to no money. The vacations do not include airfare but I have frequent flyer miles that I could burn for that. It's so tempting to just buy one and plan a mini vacation or even a vacation into next year. Most are 3 or 4 day vacations which is usually just enough to get away and recharge the batteries. The vacations are often all-inclusive which means tip money and go.

Ugh I need to get my finances together and quick.

My vacation was great

I didn't go anywhere and it felt great. Don't get me wrong, I would have loved to have gone on a "real" vacation again this year. But that's what happens when you don't plan and execute. I knew I wanted to go on vacation and I knew it was coming up. However, I didn't save anything for it and once it got here I knew it was not economically feasible for me to go.

I did have plans to do a quick baseball trip but my car decided it wasn't going to cooperate. Also there used to be bus service to the city I wanted to go to. They have subsequently discontinued that route from my city. The only way to go besides flying, which was way too expensive, was to take 2 buses. That would have turned a 8 or so hour trip into over 15 hours. Hmmmm no thanks.

I probably won't start saving for next years vacation until after January and I close on my house. At least if I start putting something away I may be able to do a really quick getaway. Sometimes that's all we need.

So I'm not going anywhere

And I wrote things that suck but it certainly does. I'm not going anywhere this year. Ughh. I have another mini-vacation coming up but that's in late Fall. It will also be crunch time to buying my house so I doubt if I'll have a large outlay of cash coming out of my account.

When I worked a job that made a lot less money I seemed to have much more money for travel. Now I make a decent amount more and I don't have anything extra. This bites!

I missed out on the trip!

I have a few extra bucks for vacation and I was so going to pull the trigger. I hesitated a few days for no reason. It was kind of like "oh what the heck, I'll just wait until Tuesday" or "well the sale is over Thursday so I still have time", except I didn't have time.

Unfortunately the trip ended up selling out. The price that I saw wasn't just a good price, it was a fabulous price. I didn't even realize how much so until I tried to price it out and decided to book. I got to the booking website and there was a giant red X with the words "sold out". I was more annoyed with myself than with the travel site.

That just proves the point that if you see a great deal, grab it before it's too late. As for me, there probably won't be a vacation in my summer plans this year. Bummer.

I just may pull the trigger on this vacation

I love to go on vacation. For the past 5 years I've been really cranky because I haven't had a chance to go. Then last year I decided to go at the last minute. Unfortunately I charged that vacation, and I'm still paying for it. The other day I won a few bucks at the casino and it put me over the amount that I needed to take a quick trip. It's about $450 including expenses like transfers to the hotel and tips, etc. That does not include airfare but I have enough frequent flier miles that I can use to basically fly free. There will be taxes on that free ticket but less than $50 for a $500 or so ticket is darn near free in my book.

I should just save a portion of the money and plan a nice vacation for next year instead of jetting off this year. On the other hand, next year could bring it's own problems and I might not be able to go then either. Oh well, I always book at least 2 weeks in advance so that gives me about 3-4 weeks to decide whether or not I really want to go.

Decisions decisions.

My last post sounds like sour grapes

And in a way it is. I gave someone a heads up on a job and they aced the interview and got the job. It was a job that I really wanted so I was bummed out to not get it. The kicker is that the person is now looking for a new job because she doesn't like it anymore. To be honest, she never liked it but she recently completed her 1 year job requirement and she graduated from school.

There is someone else that I know that is looking for a job and if I can help her I will. But if it's a job that we're both competing for, I won't give her any heads-up about anything. If that sounds like sour grapes then so be it. I won't give away another job like that again.

I won't give anyone a heads up on a job again

Basically a friend got a job over me. I was more qualified than she is but she gave a better interview. The reason? Because I told her every interview question ahead of time. While I had to think on my feet and not have a good experience, she was able to coast through and seem like a dream to the manager.

She caught on to the job and is progressing nicely. She's also leaving in a month so they still need someone to fill the spot. I will not apply and interview for the job again. Although she's doing a good job now, I already knew how to do the job. Now instead of having someone that would have stayed for several years, they got one and done.

It worked out for her and not for me. But if someone else is in competition with me for a job again, I will not hand them the job over me. Not again.

Why I stayed so long at my last job Part II

I just realized that I wrote this post months ago and never posted it. Better late than never I guess.

After staying at my job for 1 year and waiting for the perfect opportunity for another year I decided enough was enough.

Nothing was happening for me so I started to apply for any and everything. If I met the qualifications I applied. But now I was dealing with a post-merger company. The company was bought didn't have a lot of turn-over in their positions but they adapted to our culture really fast. Since most of them had been in their positions for years, they were considered better candidates. There was also the "we already know who we're hiring, but we have to post the job anyway" syndrome. It was bad.

I had to fight for another 2 years before I got the job that I have now. Out of all of the jobs that I applied for, I only had about 5 interviews. One job I lost to a friend, on a side note I'll never tell anyone else about the interview to give them a leg up on me again. Another job they wanted someone who would stay long term and they could tell that I would move on. The other jobs just went with better candidates. It was an extremely frustrating process.

Now I'm in a good place with a job that I think has a lot of potential for growth and that makes me very happy.

I'm bummed about no vacation this year

I thought I was getting my hands on some money from let's just say an unusual source. Anyway, it turns out that I am not getting that money. That was going to accelerate my debt payments as well as pay for a vacation. It wasn't a huge amount but it would have been a little chunk of change.

Unfortunately the money isn't coming. On the plus side, I didn't incorporate that money into my budget so it's not like I can really miss something that I never had. Still it would have been nice to go back on vacation.

There's always next year!

I finally switched my cell phone plan

I called one day last week and talked to a really great rep on the phone. He explained the features of the plan that I have now and the ones compared to the plan that I signed up for. It's basically the same except I don't get a free phone. I can pay a down payment and be billed the price of a phone monthly. The phone would be at or very near full cost, no discount. Or I can do what I had planned and just get a phone from eBay.

The best part is that I got my new bill today and it included my corporate discount. I also save almost $55 dollars in the process. I can save that money, buy myself a new phone every two years and buy my niece a new phone once per year. Even buying 3 phones every 2 years, I'll still save a few hundred bucks over the course of a 2 year contract. Yeah I did have to get another contract, but I'll have the phone for that long anyway so it works out.

Now I just need to get my niece off of my plan and I'll really start saving.

I'm still crunching the cell phone plan numbers

I still haven't made the switch to a new cell phone plan. The main reason is that I don't have the money right now for a new phone. Not a brand new phone but a used or refurbished phone off of Ebay. Of course my niece needs a phone too so I'm looking at over $500. I plan on postponing this for at least another month.

It looks like my corporate discount and my AAA discount are both a no-go. I was told that because the plan is so heavily discounted, they don't take additional discounts off. This is really hit or miss and probably just depends on who you talk to once you make the switch.

Hopefully by next month I will be all switched over and saving money.

I want to switch my cell phone plan

My plan is over $150 per month. I have 2 phones because I pay for my niece to have a phone. We both have unlimited everything although our data gets throttled because we go over 2G of data per month. I barely go over 2G but my niece uses over 5G per month.

Now I want to switch to a value plan where you pay for the service but there is no subside for phones. Either you can pay full price for a phone from the company or bring your own phone. The problem is that they don't want to let me get the cheapest plan because of the data. I'm also getting the runaround on whether or not I get to keep my corporate discount.

I'll have to crunch the numbers before I commit and change anything.

My 2013 Resolutions

First let me say that this is posted across all of my blogs so if you're following my blogs (especially my blogger blogs), you'll see the same exact posting.
My goals are :

• Increase my liquid savings by $2,500-3,000.
• Add 1 $250 CD bringing me to 6 CD's. After I get my liquid account to $3,000 all additional savings will go into the cd's.
• Add $300 to my stock account.
• Save up at least half of the amount for my bedroom suite. With 24 months same as cash I'll be able to pay it over time.
• Close on my house no later than July. It should be sooner but I could push it back a few months.
• Lose 1 pants size. Sure why not! It never happens but whatever. 
• Save $1,000 for moving expenses and trips home. I have to go home at least 3 times this year including getting my stuff out of storage.

Nice and short. Hopefully I'll meet most of them.