Everybody Loves Your Money

We’ve had a relatively quiet couple months when it comes to spending money.  Yeah, we went to Disneyland but that was generously covered by my aunt.  Basically, our lake house project has been at a standstill while other priorities were addressed.  (namely, getting my mother’s house rebuilt from the fire).  Anyway, I’m heading out to start some work on it tomorrow.  I plan to spend the week of the 4th out there working on the place, aka spending money.  We have 10 yards of gravel coming tomorrow and I’ve got a backhoe due on Saturday morning.  Backhoe: $350, gravel: $190.

I’m also having my neighbor come out to paint it.  He paints houses on the side and I’m working a deal with him for a really cheap price.  I should be able to have him spray the whole thing for about $400.  After that, I have someone coming to install the gutters on the 5th of July.  Total cost: $450.  Add in the food, gas etc and it’s shaping up to be a rather expensive holiday week, but also a productive one.  Since we are paying cash as we go, this will be a nice hit to our checking account.  I’m glad we’ve had some time to build the reserves back up.

I’ll probably blog a bit from out there but I can’t promise it will be anything spectacular.  It’s really kind of hard to blog when your hands are dirty and your back is sore…… 

On another note, I received a call this morning from a company I had applied for recently.  I’ve been at my current company for 6 years but have been considering getting back in an office for a M-F gig where I can work hard and enjoy the company of other coworkers.  Working at home has gotten old over the last few years and the work I’m doing isn’t exactly rewarding.  If I was to get this job, it would drastically increase my commute, but would also make me feel like I’m working at a company that is truly making a difference in the world.  That is becoming more and more important to me.

I’m not sure if this is really true or not, but it appears to be.  Check out this article about credit triggers.  It’s on a political site but I also found information on NPR about it.  (You can find those links in the first article).

Basically Experian can sell your information to creditors that allow them to keep track of your credit activities in real time.  For people in debt, this means that as soon as you have new activity on your credit, the collectors may come calling rapidly.

For those of us that have good credit, it means that other lendors may see our inquiry in to a new mortgage or other credit and start bombarding us with offers via the phone etc to try to get our business.  I haven’t experienced this but I think I’m going to do a bit more research on it.  If it’s true, I think it’s wrong for Experian to do this.  I want some control over who gets to look at my credit!

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/6/24/7591/57004

What do you think?

Madame X over at Openwallet asked the question, “What is your company paying you for?“  It’s funny to read her answer to the question and realize that we are probably exactly 180 degrees from each other on the Meyers Brigg type test.  I took a similar test (Called Insights) and was a big fat yellow.  Being a yellow means that I crave the social interaction of the work place and love to celebrate a job well done.  I tend to be motivated to get the work done and enjoy the feeling of accomplishment.  I also have a little red in me in that I drive to completion and expect that from the others on the team.

It sounds like Madame X is clearly a “blue” on the Insights wheel because she loves the numbers.  While she likes dealing with the numbers and her personality test stuck her in a room doing analysis all day, she also ventures out in to other personality areas and uses a bit of the “red” and “yellow” to complete her responsibilities.

What struck me as interesting when I took this test was that I have completely positioned myself (to the best of my ability) in a more social role of working with internal customers to identify their requirements and help architect technology solutions to meet them.  That’s just because I work in IT.  I’d never be happy sitting back writing software all day because I wouldn’t get the social interaction that I obviously need.  I also wouldn’t choose number crunching all day for the same reason.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my career and whether I am listening to myself and pursuing the goals in life that I really want to.  The problem is that I’ve had a lot of trouble figuring out what those goals are.  I know that process development and the many other things I do in my daily job at a large bureaucratic company aren’t my life calling.  So, then, what is my life calling?  I think this must be how a midlife crisis starts.  I’m 35 and probably a little early on this, but I definitely need to spend some time figuring out what kind of job I would enjoy that would take advantage of my strengths (working with people).  I’d consider sales but that seems to be fairly high pressure and I really don’t want to be measured on a weekly basis for my productivity level, although I can see why a company needs to do that.  It doesn’t make sense to pay someone that isn’t bringing in the revenue.

If I was given a choice, I think I’d just retire now and quit worrying about earning income from a 9-5 job.  I can tell you that as soon as there is a national healthcare solution offered, I will leave the workplace immediately and start doing things I like.  (Unfortunately most of the things I like to do generate very little income).  Blogging is something that I enjoy, but that doesn’t exactly pay the bills.  If I could blog, read, nap, work around the house, drive race cars in an amateur circuit, and mess around with computers all day, I think I’d be content.  Of course that is on top of my first priority which is spending time with my family.

As far as what my company pays me for, I’d have to say these attributes:

-My judgement

-My ability to complete work

-My ability to work well with others

-My ability to be a strong communicator

-My technical skills

-My business knowledge

Yeah, it’s all pretty broad but everything I read says that in the future companies are going to be looking for people with an emphasis on the soft skills like communication skills, ability to work well with others, ability to follow through on commitments etc.  That’s music to my ears.

Here’s a really neat poster that shows our government budget.  You can click “shift” to zoom in and also use the drop down to choose a particular agency.  I actually wouldn’t mind having one of these posters, although I’m probably too cheap  to spend $28.95 on it.

http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/poster

I have to tell you right up front.  The following article makes me sick.  I am so tired of the American way of measuring the success of a special day based on how much money is spent on it.  I’ve long since been disgusted with the mass hemmorhaging of money during the Christmas season.  I think we’ve long since lost sight of the true meaning of Christmas.  Well, Father’s day and Mother’s day is apparently the next place to measure success based on how much the gifts cost.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19248549/site/newsweek 

In this article, the author suggests that maybe fathers are less important because the average price of the gifts are $98.34 compared to the average price of gifts on Mother’s day of $139.14.  Retailers are pushing the “fathers day gift” promotions plenty hard while they try to increase their sales.  That’s what is so funny to me.  If we all embrace all of these sales, then fathers day (and the other holidays too) become more about increasing corporate profits by buying crap that you don’t need and less about showing someone that you truly care for them. 

I hope my wife and daughter don’t spend a cent on me this year.  At our house, we focus far less on expensive gifts and much more on doing something with meaning behind it.  I love seeing special things that my wife and daughter have made me.  One year I received a wonderful hand painting from my 3 year old.  It was wonderful and made me feel great.  Far better than a new Weed eater or tool.  This year I happen to know that they’ve been hard at work making me a very nice photo book with lots of wonderful photos of our family.  I’m really looking forward to seeing it.  Today at 3:00, I’m heading to my daughter’s school where they are having a special party for dad’s.  They’ll have ice cream and have been practicing a song for us.  That’s what father’s day is about;  spending time with your family and feeling the love that they have for you.

Thanks to Nickel for pointing out that Maxed Out has been released on DVD.  This is the next movie I’m watching.

Here is the trailer for the movie:

Here is a 10 minute interview with James Scurlock (Creator of Maxed Out):

Wouldn’t you know it.  I stick my neck out a bit and buy this second home.  Further, I sink every nickel I’m making in to finishing the place.  Then drama starts at work.  I’ve been with my company for 6 years and was able to ride out post 9/11 while thousands and thousands of people got laid off.  I’ve always been a high performer and shouldn’t have a thing to worry about as far as job security goes.  There’s only one problem.  I work in Information Technology (IT).  I think all the leaders of major companies must sit around in exclusive cigar rooms and talk about the next place to focus their cost cutting efforts.  It has certainly been sexy to shrink IT as much as possible over the last 4-5 years.  Certainly I’m whining a bit here.  I completely understand the need to continuously improve productivity and I know that it’s capitalism at it’s finest.  While I understand it and even agree with it to some extent, I still don’t have to like it when the grim reaper starts walking down the hallway.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get laid off or when I might get laid off, but I know that I’m not feeling very secure about my job these days.  It’s kind of sad when you are considered a top performer, get great pay raises each year and progress in responsibilities but you are also scared to death of losing your job.

All of this insecurity gives me a great opportunity to start playing with scenarios again.  While we don’t have nearly the emergency fund that we have had in the past (due to the second home), I do have a few assets that would be quick to liquidate as well as a decent chunk of cash that’s fairly liquid.  By my quick calculations, we could get by pretty well for upwards of a year, without feeling too much pain.  If it got really ugly, we could sell the second home and take our profit.  That would get us by for a couple years.  There is no way I’d be out of work for a couple years.  I would work my network of friends and past co-workers to find something long before that.

Anyway, nothing like a little job insecurity to get the blood pumping.  I’m going to go have a drink.

We are back from Disneyland and I’m happy to report that we had a great time!!  My daughter was overwhelmed by the place when we got there but slowly started to acclamate to the place.  I haven’t been there for a long time and was amazed at all the changes.

One thing that didn’t surprise me was how expensive everything was.  We used a few coupons but 10% off of ridiculous is still ridiculous.  One meal at a buffet cost us over $200 for 5 adults and 3 kids.  Adult prices were over $35 per person.  Was the food that good?  Nope.  It was all about the characters that came around while the kids were eating.  They could have been serving dirt and the kids would have still had a good time.  As for the adults, we just ate the mediocre food and smiled a lot.  I must admit I really enjoyed seeing my daughter get so excited to see Jasmine (a Disney princess) & Goofy.

We had a few drinks while we were down there as well.  Each margarita set me back $8.50.  Yeah.  Ouch.  I have to admit they tasted pretty good, but certainly not $8.50 good.  I had pretty much decided that we weren’t going to worry about money while we were there.  I don’t think I would have had nearly as much fun if I’d been trying to watch every penny.  We were very fortunate because my aunt paid for the entire trip except for about $40.  That included park admissions, staying at the Disneyland hotel and all the food while we were there.  In fact, we wouldn’t have spent a cent the whole time we were there except that I overindulged on the margaritas a couple nights.  It was worth every penny.

We did a little shopping while we were there too.  When you stay at the Disney resorts, the path to get to the park is saturated with restaurants and shops, most of which are Disney themed.  We went shopping in the “Princess” store and my daughter found about 100 things she just had to have.  Luckily we’ve long since gotten her used to the fact that she can’t always have what she wants.  The “dress up” Princess dress that she just loved was $60.  It could not have cost any more than $5 to make and ship over from China.  Talk about profit margins.  We couldn’t bring ourselves to spend that kind of money on a silly dress that I know she wouldn’t wear more than a few times.  Instead, we spent about $60 on her over the course of 3 days letting her buy smaller items.  She was just as happy and we felt like we got more mileage out of the 60 bucks.

We flew via Alaska airlines there and back.  On both flights, the flight attendants took time out to announce that we could receive bonus miles if we were to sign up for an Alaska airlines credit card.  Every time I fly on Alaska I listen to the same sales pitch.  I’ve yet to see someone ask for an application, although I’m sure people do.

All in all, it was a great trip.  We’ve been getting a good night’s sleep for the last couple nights as we catch up on our sleep.  My feet are slowly feeling better (we walked a TON) and it just feels good to be home.  We took lots of pictures and have great memories of our trip, so I think it was money well spent.  (And it’s even easier to say that when the whole trip cost us $40).

The last 5 days of work have been brutal.  Yelling, screaming, emotions running high.  I wish I was joking, but I’m not.  I learned a long time ago that it isn’t worth losing your cool, but certainly other people that I work with haven’t learned that.  The way some people react, you’d think that people’s lives were at stake.

Back in the days that I volunteered as a police officer, I found myself in a few situations where people’s lives WERE at stake.  I always think back to those situations when I come across a stressful situation in my regular job.  No matter how ugly it gets, nobody is going to die.  It’s amazing how well that works to put things in perspective.  So, while people were yelling at each other today and talking about how hard things are, I couldn’t help letting my mind wander a bit.  “Good old Bill (names changed to protect the innocent).  Work seems hard right now but at least he gets to go home.  No one is pointing a gun at him threatening to kill him.  I wonder if he realizes how lucky he is to be working in this company, making a good living, without anyone trying to shoot him as part of his job.”

Anyway, enough of this blabbering.  I’ll forget all about this by tomorrow night as we finish packing our suitcases to head to Disneyland Thursday morning.  I am so excited about my daughter getting to go to Disneyland.  I know she is just going to love it.  She’s almost 4 and knows all the characters that she’ll see there.  (And what’s amazing is we don’t let her watch much tv and she still knows them all).  You may be wondering how much this crazy trip is going to cost us.  ZERO.  My aunt, who is basically like my second mom, is taking all of us (including my sister’s family).  She loves to travel and saves up for months and months to be able to take us on trips like this every few years.  Yes, I feel guilty and try to do as much as I can for her.  She’s single (never married) and retired.  She has always been included in my immediate family and, like I said, is like a second mother to me.

So, we’re off to Disneyland on Thursday and will be back late Saturday.  I called ahead and they do have internet access in the hotel and it’s free.  (I wasn’t about to pay $10 for access).  I’m probably going to take my laptop so if anything really interesting happens (at least from a money point of view), I’ll probably blog about it.

If anyone has any great tips for going to Disneyland, please leave them in the comments.  I’m interested in really fun things to do there and great values too!