Unamerican!

Worthless

I decided to get a handle on my finances a year or two ago. This year's big goal was to get my net worth to zero.

I know, yes. ZERO.

I have student loans. this is something our country has decided is a good thing: crippling college graduates with outrageous loans, and discouraging potential college students from saddling themselves with a debt and education. Educated masses are no good for the route we are on anyway.

but, whatever.

I have reached my goal: I am worthless. The positives slightly outweigh the negatives. (and, no, I did not pay off my student loans. I am too smart for that: the interest rate is lower than my savings account interest rate, and student loan interest is tax-decuctible.)

December is the time when I need to map out my goals for next year, but with career change hanging in the balance, I may actually end up bogging back down into the red. Leverage, I hope, for a future payout. But for now, I am just where I hoped to be: worthless.

Where should you go, if your home won't have you?

I've come, again, to the conclusion that I cannot afford to live here.

On a day-to-day basis it's all fine, but I know that it can only be day-to-day. Yes, including living in the same apartment, now 11 years, and having to stay here for another 11 or 22, or maybe more like 55?

Rents are too high to move; homeownership is a joke. I have no meaningful gains in earnings in sight.

Staying here means just living day-to-day.

Last year I made a goal and laid groundwork to clean up my financial house. And then I did. But I can see that things being as they are, I can't make any real progress.

About a year ago I started thinking about buying a place. Everyone seemed to be doing it. I guess I figured I was around that age or stage in my life...

But a little research showed something much weirder going on. The majority of these people took out toxic loans, or are living in buildings they bought with strangers... I'm too financially conservative to consider either of these options.

But it will take a long time to correct itself, and I do think prices will remain sticky on the downside, for a long time. I don't know enough for this to matter, but my uneducated guess would be winter of 2008 would be a nice time to buy. Maybe even later.

In case you don't know, wages have been stagnant for several years.
The US savings rate dipped below 0% recently.
Millions of dollars of ARMs are set to adjust next year.
Trillions the year after that.

So it has to come down.

But this is life, not investing. If the best time to buy is in 2011, shall I put my life on hold until then? What if it isn't until 2015? I'll be 38 before I can move out of this apartment?


I don't see any future of much better salaries in my current career path. I don't have a clue what else I can do. I assume I'd have to go back to school, but I don't even know for what? Could I afford to go back to school? Would it be another mistake?

I know there are a few manufacturers in the Seattle and Portland areas I could pursue, but I don't know how the salaries stack up there. I really couldn't see myself living in LA. New York would probably be a similar problem, although I know the salaries there for my position would be nearly double.

The vision I have for my ideal is working in downtown SF, living in the downtown or Potrero Hill or possibly Hayes Valley/Duboce areas... Mainly, specifically, walking to work or taking a bus down Market St. if needed.

But it's meaningless if wages and housing can't line up. I really can't stay.

worthwhile

The other day I realized that I have never, in my adult life, had a positive net worth.

There have been a few articles lately on CNN and other news sites about the crippling weight of student loan debt. I have to say, it's fucking bad. Really.

What exactly is the point of discouraging kids from going to college for a better education, to a better job, to more taxes to the government and a more competitive workforce?

What indeed?

And of course Bush hacks away even more aid recently. I know that's not what he SAID, but it IS what he DID...

As debt goes, it's not a bad one. interest is tax-deductible, and the rate is low. So low, it's not worth paying off early. But still, it's there, and it's bullshit.

Same thing if you want a house: debt forever. Now I'm seeing the ARM foreclosures. And laughing. "we didn't realize what we were signing." ha!

Anyway, I guess I should be happy that I'll have a positive net worth later this year. But I'll never be debt-free. It's just not the American Way.

Blah

The weekend was grand.
Friday was the party at my folks’ house. I got to drink a whole bunch of wine and see my family and friends that I see rarely. Saturday we hung around the Turner Compound with my family in the morning, then went to SF with my brother and his wife to visit their friends in the evening. It was nice to visit SF as a tourist. We drank a lot of tequila?
Sunday we returned to SF and then Berkeley after Ben & Megan went to the airport, and watched an older Errol Morris movie, Gates of Heaven. Which was subtly hilarious. Not for everyone, but I enjoyed it.

I am finally getting things out of my house that I intended to get rid of months ago. I’m tired of all the clutter! Make it go away!
Last night, I got some freecyclers to take away four garbage bags full of clothes, and also the old Mac and peripherals. The old Mac (and its peripheral cadre) took up a TON of space; I am so glad it went away. And the clothes, well, I pretty much only wear the same stuff these days, and am pretty sure I don’t need those old dominatrix boots for riding.

In fact, I need LESS CRAP in general, because I’m beginning to think I’m going to spend another ten years in this apartment. I think it will be eleven years this March. So there. Rent Control. I guess I’ll never get that garage, but if I move right now in the City, it would probably run me about $1200/month for a studio with a garage, assuming I could find a suitable one. I’d rather spend that extra $530/month on my 401K, or possibly ice cream.

I'm reading a tome about finances, which my mom gave me, not really for me, but so that I could read it and help my sister with finance. I thought it would suck, but it's actually a good read. On the other hand, I should have saved more when I was 22. I could have stopped now and still come out ahead. Damn. Can I have a do-over?
It turns out that I can't ever own a house, is what I'm gathering from all of this.

Fancy

Wow, I sure did witness a lot of Fancy Driving on the way home from work today. I mean, I know it's raining and all, but, uhhh? Shouldn't *I* be the one with the problem, two wheels and all? Jeebus, drivers are lame.

I would like to personally meet one of these people who pulls into intersections that they know they can't get through, so that when the light changes, no one can move. Some people just need hitting. Well, I can just pick through them, but then you encounter the guy on the other side coming full speed down the wrong side of the road because he assumes that traffic is blocked on that side. (Hello head on collision with a motorcycle) I don't even comprehend where this guy thought he was going. It's fucking raining people, that means you ought to drive BETTER, not WORSE.

Air bags and side impact studies are a terrible thing for darwinism.

My brake light doesn't work today. Who cares, since no one can see me anyway?


I just gave myself an early Christmas present, by setting up my long-ignored IRA to maximize itself automatically from my checking account weekly. Woot.

Step 4, Question #1

I’ve been directed to ask a few particular questions of myself, in my search for my own definitions of meaning and fulfillment.
First Up: What did you want to be when you grew up?

When I was very young, it seems my first career aspiration was to be a waitress. Apparently, as my parents understand it, I always saw people giving the waitress money, and decided that would be a good thing.

How does this relate to where I’m at now?

Well, if it’s true that all I saw was that a waitress got money, and I wanted money, perhaps it is this: I really don’t consider myself interested in or defined by my job. I go to work, they give me money, I turn that money into motorcycles, is how I’ve been explaining “what I do” to people for the past few years. It describes me as someone who has made a life outside of work. A good life. But it also describes me as someone who spend at least 40 hours a week being bored or worse.

Later, I decided I wanted to be a teacher.
Which is a very noble concept. I still love teaching, sharing knowledge and experience, and learning. To me, a teacher is among the most honorable professions, or positions. At some times, we are all teachers, professionally or not.

At some point, I seemed to want to be a lawyer. I don’t know how much of that was because I love a good argument (I do), and how much was because people seem to think that’s a good thing for a kid to want to be. I really don’t think I’d enjoy being a lawyer.

The President thing must have just been one of those things kids say. Why the hell would I want to be president? I mean, sure, I’m pretty sure I could do a head-and-shoulders better job than the current president. But as a career, politics sounds horrible. Thanks, but I don’t want to turn into a shell of smiles and bullshit covering up a bunch of dry-rot. Anyone who really wants office is probably the worst person to put there. With a few exceptions. Maybe.

Then I started to mature into my teenage years; hobbies and interests start to take shape.

I think I must have been in junior high when I decided the thing to do would be to buy a semi truck or a Humvee (at that time they were still military vehicles with actual capacity and function) and live in my vehicle and travel around. That has nothing to do with occupation, but a lot to do with what I wanted to do.

In high school, I also cultivated interests in English/writing and history. History doesn’t make much of an occupation, but writing could, if I were willing to really work at it.

But really, I wanted to be a costumer. I loved to sew, I loved costume history, I loved to make things. I still love to make things, but don’t really have the time and space for sewing. I still love history and design, but I abandoned the costume thing when I realized how unstable it would be. I really like having a life with health coverage and a paycheck. At some point, I think I thought a small business: coffee chop and bookstore, possibly retail of my clothes type thing might interest me. Maybe that speaks of a need for meaningfulness in my work, a need to feel like I’m building something? Or maybe it’s just bullshit. I don’t know. Again, I may be too much of a coward to be in business for myself. I really like my health coverage. Have I mentioned I’m obsessed with health insurance? Perhaps the expensive ambulance trips and surgeries that took place while I was in college, are not coincidental to my decision to shift to a more stable, employer-oriented job market. So. Fashion. I mean, it’s what my degree was in.

You think you want to be a designer, because everybody is supposed to want that. But at the same time, you can’t stand the designers you meet. My mind is too technical and pragmatic to deal with this silliness. Design is good, but not when it’s been given a bad name by these morons. I know how to put together a corset and straightjacket, I know the best way to set armholes and zippers, and I don’t understand why I have to explain repeatedly that we can’t change a pocket width by 1/16” because of mass production restraints. Further, I’m not sure I care.

So what did I want to be when I grew up?

I guess I wanted to teach and learn.
I guess I wanted to make an impact in people’s lives.
I guess I wanted to make money.
I guess I wanted to travel and be free of a lot of crap.
I guess I wanted to write, which could mean a lot of learning, or traveling, or research. It could have meant telling stories or it could have meant teaching.
I guess I wanted to create, and in a very hands-on, technical way. I loved the craft, the information, the meanings and histories, and even more, the rustles and smells of the materials.
I guess I wanted to have ownership in something, and a quiet and personal connection.
I guess I wanted to make ends meet, to allow for other needs in my life. Health, proximity to family, and my life in the city, to name a few…

My Penance for Art School

I wiped the hard drive from the G3 and need to get rid of a whole bunch of shit in my house: clothes and shoes, mostly. A car would be a handy thing once or twice a year. Goodwill won’t come pick this shit up; I gotta, like, rent a car. But I don’t got no license even for that. I want to get rid of a lot of things in my life, material and otherwise. I’m trying to simplify. Every weekend I get a little more done. Things are starting to make sense. Spending time at home, reading, listening to interesting lectures, or walking around the City, have been really nice.

On the other hand, I really need to streamline my life in such a way as to cut down on the cost. My biggest weakness seems to be eating out. I have to learn to cook more and bring lunches to work and all that. I don’t even know where to start.

But, financially, I WILL make inroads. I HAVE made inroads in the past year or so, and continue to do so. I've started reading about money. Even when it doesn't apply to me, I'm trying to become more literate.

Money can be a sticky subject to some people, but I'm trying to bring it into focus in my life. After all, I spend a lot of my time going to work to get it, so it better be worth something. What do I have to show for that part of my life spent at the office? What do I WANT to show for it? I know I'm not a flat-screen TV and fancy car kind of girl. But, consciously, what do I want? What am I willing to trade my time and effort for?

Something I’ve been doing lately is trying to pay down my student loan debt faster. I’m on some sort of auto-pay plan where the consolidation bank takes payments directly out of my checking account every month. I’ve been on that plan for a few years, and it grants you a reduction on your interest rate.

Well, since I wanted to pay it down a little faster, I decided to start sending them additional money by check every month as well. Sounds good, yes? Well, it’s good for me, but less good for them. It’s a fine line creditors walk: on the one hand, they want you to be in debt. They want you to be buried in it, and just pay the minimum all the time. More interest for them, more money for them to invest in the interim. But they don’t want you to be so buried that you can’t pay. A very fine line. It’s a shitty game they play, and you’re a fool if you let them play you with it in the realm of credit cards. It’s a little less foolish to have the debt for student loans and houses. But still, you want to pay that shit off. Interest charges are free money you’re giving to someone who already has plenty of money.

My $104.69, or whatever it is exactly, is supposed to go out of my checking account automatically every month, and then I was going to send in extra checks. But I wanted them to continue to take the “EZ-Pay” (that’s what they call it) money out every month to keep me on track and keep my discounts. Hell, they even sent me a letter last month that my interest rate was to go down again because I’d been doing EZ-Pay for so long. Oh Boy!

How do I make this happen? Huh. I looked all over the payment coupon to find a checkbox or something, to apply this additional payment without upsetting my schedule: nothing. After reading all the fine print on the back of the statement, I did see a note that you could pay extra without advancing your next scheduled due date if you indicated that on the coupon. Which, since there’s no express place to “indicate” that, I assumed meant you had to write it on there yourself. STUPID. But I did it. Twice. Handwritten on the front of the coupon. Really, that’s good because it’s so noticeable I guess, you can’t miss the handwritten note?

I realize I am a Rocket Scientist.
Dumbasses ignored it. Advanced my payment, and won’t fix it. I spent some time on the phone with “Linda” this morning, who didn’t seem thrilled to deal with me. I was a little irate, and she sounded like she hadn’t had her coffee yet. When I deal with customer service or tech support people who are not particularly interested in being helpful, I assume that it’s because they are sick of irate customers. If they are sick of irate customers, I assume it’s because there are a large number of unhappy customers. So, Citibank probably sucks, is what her tone told me. It’s not her fault the people in the other department didn’t feel like following handwritten instructions, just like it’s not those envelope-openers’ fault that someone in management doesn’t have a checkbox put on the payment coupons to make this fucking simple. It’s nobody’s fault. That’s shitty corporate America’s telephone tree customer support model. Nobody you talk to can actually fix anything.

The conspiracy part of me thinks they don’t do that because it doesn’t benefit them to have you paying this thing down faster.
The part of me that dealt with Linda this morning makes me think they are just stupid and lazy. That’s also the part of me that’s been looking at their pathetic website.

Oh, and also the info on the website about my payment due and amount due don’t match the information on the telephone system. I’ll have to take Linda’s word, and the word of the auto-telephone recording, that I don’t have a payment due in two days, since that’s not what the website shows.

So, fuck you very much Citibank Student Loans.