Net Worth Feb. 09: Calm Before Storm

Net worth Feb. 09 73,699 (-358, 1.48%)

Highlights:
* a bazillion dollars to the wedding. Wedding is now paid for except odds and ends like tips and hair and honeymoon food. Maybe 1-2K in expenses left.
* 2,100 in investment losses, and that's with 3,500 invested this month. OUCH! I feel like I'm pumping Benjamins into the Obama shredder
* lots more cash. Up to 32K. That's just shy of a year of emergency fund.

Breaking even this month is pretty incredible considering we pretty much cash flowed a wedding. Woo hoo!!! Without the investment losses, we'd be way up. Hooray!

In uncertain times, it's pretty good to be DEBT FREE, sitting on a year of barebones expenses, plus have a cash cow small business. One year ago, with 3K in cash and a pile of car and credit card debt, I would be terrified of being laid off. (But one year ago, I had almost the same amount invested! BOO!)

RETURN THE RSVP CARD

When you get a wedding invitation, just return the freaking card. It's not that hard, people.

People have been just telling in-laws/relatives/grooms that they are coming. Or, they just assume I know they are coming. Or they just don't bother. RUDE RUDE RUDE.

I'm missing about 50 cards from 200 invitations. WTH?

Seriously, when you get a card in the mail, return it. People have to buy food for you (it's called a catering headcount) and they have to make seating arrangements. Thank god we have so much drama that there's no seating chart. There is no way I could make a seating chart with so many rude people.

You Should Still Pay for Two Seats

Whee! I got a lot of email about this post about a horrific flight from London next to a 400-lb man. I'm racist! I hate fat people! I have no compassion! I'm a judgmental witch!

I'm really a very mellow traveler. I sleep through all flights, and I don't even require an armrest. For all I cared, it could have been a screaming baby or a guy watching porn on his iPod the whole flight. Doesn't bother me. But this was beyond the pale.

I can sleep through pretty much anything except people touching me. That means 3 year olds poking me, and that means 400 lb guys flailing their arms at my chest (OUCH!).

The reason I didn't ask to be reseated is because I didn't want to "embarrass" him. HA! I didn't want to draw attention to an obvious fact (and I didn't realize how bad it would be). That must be my Southern politeness. You NY ladies would have huffed and puffed in a NY minute, right?

Look, I don't know whose fault it is. I think coach is large enough for most people. I've sat next to some big guys. First class is large enough for pretty much everyone. This guy knew how big these coach seats would be, and that he didn't fit. That wasn't a surprise. So, that's his fault. But it's also the cowardly airline staff who waited to see if a polite Southern lady would tolerate it. It was MY FAULT for not asking to be reseated. Never again.

Look, I don't know if you're 300 lb and "big boned" whether you should have to pay more, and I really don't care. That guy was too big for his seat. And I don't care if it's your fat or your purse or your kid or your oxygen tank -- it doesn't go in MY seat.

Next time, I'm not sitting in that seat. It would have been better to get bumped an hour and a half to the next flight, even if it meant risking my connection.

Giving Up a Dream

We're thinking 2009 is not the right time for the Dog family to buy a house. We're not changing the savings goals, I think they still make sense for eventually buying a house, just not this year.

We have no idea where we will be in two years. We know we'll be in this city because of the business but that's about it.

I might be making 200K, I might be unemployed. He might have 50 employees, he might have none. We have no idea. It's a kind of scary, kind of exciting place to be. When you don't know where you'll be -- even within a half a million -- it's probably not the right time to buy.

So, when our lease is up later this year, I think we'll just rent something nicer.

Pay for Two Seats

I had the least pleasant flight of my life this weekend from London to NYC. (And I once flew LAX-Hong Kong next to a screaming three-year-old!)

I was seated on a full flight next to a guy who must have been 400 lbs. I am not even sure how he squeezed himself into the seat. His tray table could not even move he was so big. His sides were spilling over all over both armrests. I could barely get to my headphone jack. Because there was nowhere for his arms to go but in my lap, he had to cross his arms in front of him.

As he fell asleep, his arms would fall uncrossed and hit me in the arm or worse. So, every 20 minutes I was greeted by a flailing arm. At first, he'd apologize profusely. American. Of course. By the end of the flight, he just pretended like it wasn't happening.

I've never said this before because I've never seen it before, but that guy should have bought two tickets. Or first class or something.

At least it wasn't a longer flight, thankfully. I was then very grateful I was connecting to Texas. But I needed my sleep on that flight, or at least the precious little space I paid for. Now I'm just miserable and cranky, ugh.

OPM or Gold-Digging

There were some harsh responses to this LAL guest post by Megan who titled her blog "When I Grow Up I Want to be a Trophy Wife."

She wants to have no job, look pretty, and spend all the wealth her husband makes. (Not sure about the exit strategy.)

You know what, I get it. There's a reason women throw themselves at rich men. Other People's Money (OPM) is fun! It's soooo much fun to spend OPM than your own. Think about it. You get a birthday gift card for $50. Much more fun than spending your $50. A guy at the casino gives you $20 in chips. Wheee! Tons of fun!

OPM is the heart of the gold-digger fantasy. No work, just spend spend spend. Tell me you never dreamed about that. Tell me the first time you dated a guy in a 80K car you didn't imagine this lifestyle? It sounds so lovely, how could you not? And wouldn't it just be even better if your partner came from money??? I get it.

As a life goal, maybe not. But to have no work and all the money in the world... I find it strange that in blog comments, the reaction is always the same. Women whose goal is to never work have a NOBLE CAUSE when you attach kids to it (SAHM), but are shallow when they follow all of the cues in society to follow the money and not work (SAHW or this trophy wife).

It's not my goal, but whatever, I get it, kids or no kids.

Paying for All You Can Eat

One of my favorite things about travelling to the UK is my UK phone. I've had the same number for years and the same phone. I just fire up a few pounds in prepaid wireless practically anywhere and *bang* I've got a local phone that my friends across the pond already know! It works in London, and it works in Scotland, where I also end up often.

I never use all my US cell minutes. Between two siblings and I on a cheap family plan, we had about three months worth of rollover minutes that just expired.

My UK friends knew exactly how much data they had transferred, how many texts they sent, and exactly how many minutes they had used. Wow. I have no idea how much data I used (work blackberry) and I used far fewer texts and minutes than I probably should have.

But all you can eat is the American way. We wouldn't pay for our phones, our home internet, even our online gaming subscriptions by use. We want all we can eat! The only bill I have that is metered by use is my power bill. My UK friends thought that was crazy.

Octuplets = Fame

I'll admit it. I Tivoed all of the interviews with the Octoplet mom. After all, I have really bad taste in television.

I expected her to be like the breeding folks from my hometown. Clueless, working the system. She actually sounded articulate, if a bit odd. And she was pretty! I think she was quite pretty.

Her math was weak, really weak, the numbers don't add up. Money is "just paper" to her, and it doesn't add up. I get it now. There are a lot of ways to get paper under the table for a smart, pretty woman. Not only is she pretty, she's smart enough to be a master manipulator of her parents and her doctors. As all the tax cheats in the news lately have shown us, there are plenty of people in this country who get paid in cash.

She's too smart to be sitting on her duff. Maybe she did, maybe not, we'll probably never know how this whack math adds up. Only adds to the mystery, the intrigue of this woman.

One way to pay for a billion kids when you have no job is to put them on reality TV. Whee! This woman is like Anna Nicole and that super-religious family rolled in one awesome reality show. Hooray!

Think about that show. You could watch her date. You could watch CPS show up. You could watch their routine. You could watch how they get (or don't get) the autistic one to treatment. I don't believe in putting kids on reality TV, but it's better than letting them starve. That said I feel for those kids. When those are the two options when you are born, you're in for a rough life.

Anyway, I think we haven't seen the last of this woman. She's only in minute 1 of her 15 minutes. And I admit, embarrassingly enough, that I'll watch whatever they put her on.

Bye, JW

I've gotten a lot of comments and emails about JW. The people really miss him, and I miss him too.

I remember once Grace wrote a post about all the blogs she loved that just vanished without a trace. That's not what JW did. He emailed me goodbye, and that's all I'm going to say.

I understand why JW would stop blogging. His full name was on there and his picture! In the past year, people had outed his address. Real-world neighbors had commented. It was just odd. It always seemed like too much private information to me when he didn't do much to protect his identity.

That's why I have been so careful with my anonymity. I don't understand why anyone would want to out JW (or me). It really makes no sense to me.

I learned a lot from JW. He inspired me to start this blog, and he inspired me to be very careful with my anonymity. I wish JW only the best. I hope he starts blogging again too, just with a fake name.

Bachelor Party

Señor Dog went on a bachelor party excursion this weekend. He's not really into the raunchy part, he even skipped quite a few of these because it's not his thing. So I wasn't too concerned, and I implemented a don't ask-don't tell policy.

Except for the cost. His share was $800. I flipped my lid. I was so angry, I walked away.

I realized we had different visions of what the trip would be. I assumed it would cost a few hundred. Señor Dog thought that he would actually pay nothing, so he was surprised when the bills were split. It was a total communication break-down by everyone really.

I've calmed down now about the $800. It was a vacation, it's a one time only thing, and it could have been a lot worse for more, uh, exciting entertainment.

I think some dialogue about expectations probably would have been better for everyone. We can afford the $800, I guess. I'm not thrilled, but it won't break us. His married friends got to get away from their kids, and he got some quality time with his friends.

Merging Money

I always find it fascinating to see how others merge their money. There's this post about who pays for what little expense over at Feminist Finance. Then there's this terrifying mess of micromanaged accounts over at Make Love, Not Debt.

Señor Dog and I have more or less had combined finances for a long time. So, I'll start at the beginning. Two weeks after a big, expensive vacation mostly on credit cards, Señor Dog and I moved in together. I had been listening to Suze Orman, and I had allocated rent as a percentage of income, and I had split the remaining bills accordingly. A month later, I lost my job.

I went to the charts, and tried to make it work, I was really stressed out. Señor Dog cut me off said that all of that was all stupid. He gave me the password to his bank account, and he said "Just pay the bills. We're not roommates." He walked out. I was speechless. I will never forget that moment of trust. He gave me his password for crying out loud! At that moment, I knew our commitment. It was loud and clear.

When I got a new job, I made three times as much as Señor Dog, so it reversed. I paid the bills. Sometimes we moved money between our accounts. We just did it. We talked about our expenses. We saw what we spent. There were no secrets. There were a few issues, like a $200 bar tab, and a $300 salon tab. But we talked about it, it didn't fester, and most importantly, it wasn't a secret.

When Señor Dog quit his day job to start his own business, we were reversed, and I was supporting him. That was an stressful time for me emotionally. I think it was compounded by all of our debt and about the risk of small business.

In the last couple weeks, I have changed all of our accounts to joint, or I have closed them. We have a bank account through Fidelity, and a money market account through Fidelity, all joint. I kept two credit cards in my name, one in his, all with authorized user cards for the other. No secrets.

I know our situation isn't right for everyone, fine. Maybe you've had issues, maybe you really don't trust your partner with your money, maybe you don't want accountability on everything you spend. Fine. As for me, I feel like all that bill divvying and dividing and splitting and adding is for roommates, not partners. I've split bills for a long time, in a lot of roommate situations. But now that we're life partners, the bills are not mine, they are ours. So, the money is ours too.

Ugly Election, Coming Soon

We're almost two years off, and I've heard from a whole lot of people that the Texas governor election is going to get very ugly.

I think the lowest point of the presidential election was the way Hillary was treated. I'm still appalled that one of the most well-educated, experienced women in this country could be reduced to her cleavage or her pantsuits or when she cried.

In Texas, things are different. Kay Bailey Hutchison has been our Senator for as long as I can remember. Better yet, she's one of only five female senators EVER who weren't appointed to replace a relative. And we're a red state!

Texans love Kay Bailey, but she has an uphill battle against the current governor. I've heard this election is going to be big time in Texas. We were largely spared the presidential election: barely any ads, events. We got a little action at the primaries, but we were not the battleground.

The governor race is going to be big -- huge -- and expensive and all-consuming.

I barely talked politics at all at work during the last elections. Now, my wealthy friends/clients all seem to already have picked a side, and there were some surprises in those picks. Either way, a whole lot of money is going into this campaign and it will not be pretty. This one is going to force Texans to choose sides. The fact that I already know where many of my colleagues and work contacts line up, when the campaign hasn't officially begun yet, is just crazy.

Pre-Rebalance

I've been tweaking my investments a lot. This is a snapshot from a couple weeks ago, and then I started changing things.

My 401(k) added FUSEX (insert immature giggle here). FUSEX is far superior to my old similar fund, VTSMX. FUSEX is a ton cheaper, but you usually have to invest 10K minimum. Hooray, 401(k)! So, now I have to move things around to get more in FUSEX and still keep the allocation close.

You might check your 401(k) for new options.

I Heart OOMA

This review has been a long time coming. I wanted to wait until I had enough time with OOMA to talk about it. There are a lot of VOIP options. Depending on your needs, others might be better for you. As for us, we needed:

* a local phone number to give out for business (too many people calling his cell!)
* an answering machine that is always on
* reliability
* portability if we move

We didn't need:

* international calling. We use Google chat for that.

So, we bought an OOMA for about $220 at Amazon. We bought a phone with three handsets, which we placed around the house (you can do the same thing with OOMA scouts, but we didn't see the need). OOMA gave us a local phone number and lifetime service with no more fees.

Set-up was a breeze, with one glitch. We wanted a particular area code, but it took over an hour to get tech support on the line. (Yuck!) It didn't activate itself for a day, it was just a dead box. But after that, we've had no issues at all with OOMA in three months.

It has some sort of online voicemail or something, but we just use the old-school answering machine on the phone itself. It also has add-on options for more money like international calls or ring tones or something, we had no interest in that.

One of the best OOMA features is the caller ID. It's far better than my cell phone's. It tells you a name and a number, it's great. I also like the sing-songy dialtone. OOMA has exactly met our needs for $220.

There are other choices. If you're in the market for a product like this, you should also look into Magic Jack or Skype In. I have OOMA, so I have no experience with those.

There is an obvious problems. OOMA could go out of business. They could stop offering service, say, right now, and there's nothing I can do about it. We can live with that. As long as OOMA lasts a couple years, it will have been worth it to us. For now, OOMA is great.

I would buy OOMA again. But I would buy it through Costco, so that if OOMA goes broke, you have someone to complain to.

Disappointed in Ramsey

I wrote a review last month of Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover Live. Really, it was a big let-down.

I was a big Ramsey fan. I listened to his radio archives while at work probably 3-4 times a week. I found him witty, compassionate, and I even enjoyed his political rants. I didn't agree with everything, but I always enjoyed his show.

Since the Total Money Makeover Live, I haven't listened to his radio show. He lost his luster to me after I saw him in person. I sort of miss him.

I knew the live event would not be targeted at me. I knew it would be for the clueless, for the beginners, for the novices. That's why all the selling bothered me so much. Maybe people who sit mindlessly in front of their TV aren't bothered by 15 minutes of selling every hour, but I was. This was an expensive, paid event, and he just wanted more money. Left a very bad taste in my mouth.

All of the things that make Dave charming -- world-class, really -- on radio were gone. All that was left was a slick, repeatedly rehearsed, corporate Power Point from a soap box about how bad "they" are and all of the fine Dave products you could buy.

The compassion, the spontaneity of Ramsey on radio was all gone. All that was left was bitter, self-righteous whining, condescension, and snake oil. This wasn't the Dave Ramsey I knew. And now I feel like I was not seeing his true colors all along.

It's really kind of sad. Like I said, I really liked Dave Ramsey, and I'm grateful he convinced me to generally live without debt. Maybe it's just time to move on.