Trying to raise S's salary

They already lied to him for the 4th time and it appears they will NOT be moving him to motorcycle sales after all. So I demanded that he demand a raise from them. He says they refused. So I found some City jobs he might be interested in. I am going to make him go downtown on Monday when he's off and apply for some. I already applied for one of them online for him!

I wish we could finish up his Bachelor's degree. I believe he has around 15-20 college hours or so. But I don't know how we would pay for that.

Yesterday while driving to Lufkin TX

I listened to more of David Bach's Start Late, Finish Rich on CD. I'm almost done. He has given me some great ideas. The latest one is the thought of starting my own business??? Jilly has done it. But where do my talents lie? Well, I'm a librarian and a peace officer. I think it sounds like a lot of fun to be a private investigator. Lord knows I've done tons of snooping on certain people already (our enemies like the whore and her accomplices, even her lawyer). Seriously, I've found out where they all have lived in their lives, how much their houses are worth, who they've been married to, etc. I enjoy being a detective and doing research.

More thought needs to go into this for sure. The sad thing is that should I pursue this avenue, I will no longer be allowed to be a cop. But... but.

Latest Credit Report

Today I got 2 free credit reports and paid for one score. I didn't want to pay to get all the scores, so I just got one. It seems to be right at average, or in the "Prime" category. Personally, I think it should be higher! I've got so much damn credit these days (over $40K in credit cards alone) that I don't even use and haven't made a late payment in years now that I do online banking and check everything everyday. Still, that's just one score out of 3.

The big problem is that stupid timeshare I let foreclose which has to be one of the biggest financial mistakes of my life--buying the damn thing, not letting it foreclose. I was fine with letting it foreclose but it has dinged my credit rating a little bit, that's for sure.

The big credit card's new monthly minimum is...

$287/month! Ha! I scoff at that. I put hundreds more than that on the credit cards every month. I redid the budget today, as I do every time something significant happens financially. This week I learned the next amounts our lawyer is going to need from us, and when. She said she'll probably need to collect about $1500 sometime in May, and $2500 from us right before we go to trial in November. And God knows how much the actual trial is going to cost us. But if her hourly rate is $195/hour, and we're in court 8 hours a day, and the trial lasts a week, then at least $7800???

I decided S should go back into car sales, although only assholes seem to work in car sales. But he was good at it when he did it before and will definitely make more $ there. So I sent off 2 emails on his behalf to the HR's at 2 local dealerships. More to follow as soon as I identify more--foreign cars preferred.

I felt like calling into the Dave Ramsey show today and asking how to keep your spirits up when you are stuck in a vicious, never-ending cycle of his Step 2 (paying down your debts) b/c I've got Step 1 ($1,000 in savings) done. My problem is unique though, b/c it's all due to the custody battle. I have a feeling he'd say I'm doing everything right--debts on low-interest cards, paying waaaaaayyy more than the minimums, got a high-paying 2nd job, etc. The real problem is getting S's salary up. We're working on it. Sigh.

I did see in the newspaper today though, that although home appraisals are up (as ours is), property taxes will still be slightly lower next year! Awesome! I'm putting more away in the credit union b/c I assumed the tax bill would be a little higher! I'm going to keep putting away the same amount regardless.

Ways I Save Money

All money blogs seem to have a similar list; I'll do mine by category:

Cars:

• Dave Ramsey says don't buy a car that costs more than 50% of your annual salary. I bought a good used car that cost about 28% of mine.
• Put my homeowner's insurance on with my car insurance company. My car insurance went down by about $30/month, pretty much paying for the homeowner's insurance!
• Stopped getting oil changes at Jiffy Lube and now go to the guy on the corner who charges $16.95.
• Drive 55-60 mph on the freeway.
• Regular maintenance, regular maintenance, regular maintenance!
• Only use the air conditioner in the middle of summer! I'm always so cold I would probably win the award for Texan Who Uses AC the Least.
• Pled poverty to the guy at NTB when I had a flat last summer and negotiated a discount on tires.

Home:

• Most financial gurus say you can afford a house that costs no more than 3X your annual salary. S and I bought a house that only cost about $19,000 more than our annual salaries. (And actually, now that I'm working 2 jobs, it now costs only $10,000 more than our incomes!)
• Bought a townhouse/condo-type thing. Saves on lawnwork and insurance! (Yeah, the HOA fee is a bitch, but we're still coming out ahead.)
• HOA fee covers basic cable, water, landscaping, trash pickup, and exterior insurance. So we do not have to worry about turning off the water when we shower like other penny-pinching bloggers I hear about!
• We are located behind several gates, making us pretty hard to get to! Security-wise, I feel in a better position than folks who live in houses and have just a flimsy door and window between them and the bad guys.

Work:

• Best thing I ever did: get a Master's Degree! Sure I went into debt to the tune of $25K-ish for it but those student loans were paid off IN FULL last summer right before we bought the house. So the Master's means I make a decent wage (although much less than most industries that require a Master's Degree!!!).
• Got a 2nd, part-time job that pays over $18/hour thanks to the Master's Degree.
• Worked my ass off to get a Texas Peace Officer's license meaning I have a secure, well-paying 2nd career should I ever need one.
• Learned how to teach skin care so I have yet another source of occasional income, which I do for teen programs at the local public libraries.
• Final source of income: occasional bass player when needed, although that hasn't happened much lately. But it used to provide all my walking around money when I gigged several times/month!

Entertainment:

• Use coupons as much as is humanly possible for groceries, eating out, shopping, movies, etc. My mom gives me all the coupons from her Sunday paper and recently I was lucky enough to get one of those Entertainment Coupon Books free from a friend!
  
• Joined email clubs for restaurants, movie theaters, etc. so they send you coupons and special deals.
• When seeing movies, catch matinees. When eating out, make sure it's usually lunch.
• Since S absolutely needs his movies (he really does medicate with video therapy), joined both Blockbuster online and Netflix, but only at the lower levels.
• For the baby, got memberships to the zoo and the children's museum. They have paid for themselves many, many times over!
• Use the public library. I rarely ever buy books and the few ones I do buy are from Half Price Books.
• Cut out drinking alcohol almost completely. Also smoking my little tasty vanilla cigars.
  
• Stopped going out to see live music all the time (well, getting married and becoming a mom will do that to you).

Taxes:

• Never, ever get a refund thereby using my own money throughout the year, thank you very much, to pay down high-interest credit card bills.
• Participate in a Flexible Spending Account for medical expenses.
• Put more away for retirement every year consistently. Still trying to get to David Bach's magic number of 12.5%! I'll be there soon!

Miscellaneous:

• Had a wedding that cost under $2,500 total. For everything, including the dress!
• Speaking of which, registered for quality items we really needed for the house, such as sheets, bakeware, crockpot, and toaster oven. And received them. No frivelous things like ice cream machines or cupcake stands for us.
  
• Only get my hair cut 2-3 times/year.
• Don't ever go into any stores besides grocery, dollar stores, and Target only occasionally. Why even tempt myself?
• Grocery shop at HEB instead of Kroger or, God forbid, Randalls! For one example, Kroger likes to advertise that their brand-name chocolate milk is "on sale" for $3.19 when it's ALWAYS only $2.99 at HEB! What kind of fool they take me for???
• Do my own nails and hair color.
• Buy (and sell) used items off Craigslist (especially stuff for the baby).
• Never pay full price for anything.
• Never use vending machines. (I've noticed where I work--both jobs--it's always the lower-paid employees who use them. Coincidence?)
  
• Changed cell phone plans to a cheaper one.
  
• Usually buy generic although some items you just have to get the name brand such as: Fritos, Nestle Chocolate Milk, and Raisin Bran. Also a certain topical medicine that the generic version of gave me a bad allergic reaction!
  
• Stay healthy: no drinking or smoking, exercising by running for free in the park, and getting lots of sleep no matter what.
  

The new numbers on contributing 3% more

Ok, the truth is that I'm horrible at math. This is bad when one of your obsessions is money management. But all I can do is try harder and keep listening to the experts and things should fall into place. For example, today I got my first paycheck after upping my retirement contribution another 3%. I had no idea what my takehome pay would be after I did that, but knew it was still a good decision to make. Here's the best picture I can figure out, which I deduced by doing basic arithmetic (percentages make me sweat):

These figures are per paycheck and rounded

New retirement contribution: $55 more than before.
New withdrawal amount for taxes: $8 less.
My new takehome pay: $47 less.

Ok, I can deal fine with having $93-94 less a month. Especially if it helps lower my tax bill next year (I'll be sending the KGB I mean the IRS $737 this weekend) and my retirement account continues to compound, compound, compound!!! At the age of 34, I definitely need to be getting to David Bach's recommendation of 12.5% asap.

One thing I'm definitely going to have to do next year is up the amount of our FSA! I budgeted $750 this year for medical expenses for me and DH, and I thought even that amount would be a stretch. I figured I'd supplement it with bandaids and Benadryl and the like at the end of the year if necessary. Well, it's only April and we've already spent $497, leaving only $252 and change left for 2007! Next year the baby will be living with us full-time and so her medical expenses will count as well so I don't see why I shouldn't just max out the FSA contribution, whatever it is. That'll help the tax bill too!

Now that I've transferred that $7,000 custody battle/credit card amount over to a card with 6.9% interest, I'll be paying off the Discover card by the time its 0% interest deal runs out in September! I'm going to go ahead and start using the Discover card to buy gas again now that there's room on it, and pay off the amount each month thereby getting rewards back at 5%. Too bad I can't trust DH with the Discover card and it had to be confiscated. He uses only the Valero card and debit card to get gas now, and Valero gets paid off in full each month. I just wish he could use the Discover card to help with rewards, but he just is not disciplined or observant enough to play the credit card game. Oh well, at least he is not offended at my confiscating his cards, and agrees it is more trouble than it's worth for him to have them!

It's a wise man who does what he can to prevent fights with the (smarter) wife. This is definitely NOT a Latino/Hispanic philosophy but DH is white (and wise about things like this) so I lucked out.

Reasons behind starting this blog

Right now I'm reading Michelle Singletary's book, 7 Mantras for a Richer Life. Ok, well, I'm listening to it on CD, but still. Anyway, I got to thinking about how there are personal finance blogs for just about every demographic: young professionals, baby boomers, married couples, GLBT folks, single parents, black women, etc. etc. but I have not yet seen any of these that are run by Hispanic/Latinos or from our point of view.

If you look in the cookbook section of any public library, it is astounding to see how many books are there and how many shelves it takes to hold all these cookbooks. Yet more and more cookbooks keep getting published year after year, month after month. Same thing with talk shows, it seems there's always room for more talk shows. So surely there is room for one more personal finance blog!

So, what is the Hispanic/Latino/a point of view when it comes to personal finance? Ha! Good question. I'm no expert, seeing as how assimilated I am, but there are some observations I've made. Generally it seems that we tend to be bad with money--just like all the other racial/ethnic groups in existence, right?--and we don't seem to want to trust banks. However, I have also observed that lots of our immigrants, illegal or otherwise, have an amazing capacity for working and saving money in order to send it back to family in the home country. (Of course, they do this by living 12 to a one-bedroom apartment.) But then you have people like my maternal grandfather, who is 91 and lives comfortably, or at least comfortably enough that he really doesn't need to worry about money. He and my deceased grandmother, who was a housewife, were able to accomplish this even while raising 4 children by never owning a car and never taking vacations, among other strategies. I'll address some of these strategies and how they've influenced me--and worked for me!--in future posts.

So just as Michelle Singletary quotes her "Big Mama", I'll attempt to personalize the world of personal finance/money management for any lost Latino/a/Hispanic souls out there. Maybe some of them will do a search on Google Blogs, like I did, and find me. I sure don't have all the answers, but after a year of faithfully listening to Dave Ramsey's radio show and reading a couple of dozen personal finance books and checking in every single day to my fellow money bloggers and other websites, I've learned a hell of a lot! At the same time, I'll outline my ongoing-money war and battles lost and won.

For example:
Money saved today: almost $4 in coupons last night at the grocery store (and no, I don't buy crap I don't need just b/c I have a coupon for it). Also saved $12 by buying advance tix to I-fest instead of at the gate.

And: Still trying to get DH to consider his job/career options so he can start making decent wages. Called my jailer friend who is going to call DH tomorrow and tell him that working in the jail is not as bad as it sounds!

Finally: Still posting items to sell on craigslist. No word yet, but depending on the item sometimes these things take time.