Archive for the 'Karma' Category

Choices, Sunshine, Happiness

Published by
MiserlyMike
at April 30, 2008 in Emergency Fund, Karma, Personal Finance, Spending and Weekend Recap. 0 Comments

After three weeks back in Syracuse, NY, I’ve returned back to Florida, and I must say I love the weather here.  As nice as it was back in NY, we really don’t hold a candle to Florida.  Anyway enough of that.

I have been assessing my current financial situation and reflecting on the recent market activities and I am a little torn on what to do.  I currently have 3500 in cash in my Roth IRA from this year’s contribution.  I didn’t contribute the maximum, due to the recent loss of my job, though I probably could have.  I like to play it safe and keep that cushion.  I have available credit, other than my parents that I could really draw upon in case of emergency — and I like it that way.  Cash is king in my life, except for the largest of purchases;  tuition, mortgage, etc.

I have $2,500 remaining in my checking account, and another 1100 from my last paycheck.  I also collect $250 a week from unemployment.  This gives me a grand total of $4,600 by the end of april.  After bills and the like I’ll be down to roughly $3600.  If I live an extremely meager lifestyle, I should be able to sustain solely on my unemployment checks and keep around $3,000 in my checking account.  The choice I have to make is whether I want to continue this lifestyle, unemployed and living in the sunshine and doing as I please, or go back to work and make money again.

Ideally, I could do both.   To those that are, you live my dream.

Karma Chameleon

Published by
MiserlyMike
at April 24, 2008 in Budget, Emergency Fund, Karma, random thoughts and work. 0 Comments

Things tend to happen in odd ways. The past three weeks have been one long drawn out party with my old friends. It was much needed. I’ve become pretty content with not working. Financially, I’m not in any immediate trouble due to a healthy nest egg from being uber-frugal, the assistance from unemployment, and my low cost lifestyle. I decided to take this time to think about what I really want to do with my life, and if working an 8-5 job is the right lifestyle for me. I still haven’t decided what the best course to follow is, but I know that 8-10 hour workdays just aren’t for me. I need flexibility. I’m a quick and diligent worker, and logging a 10 hour day, when I could probably pop off my entire days workload in a few hours is nonsense. I’m going to try my hand at developing some passive income streams to supplement my lifestyle. If I am able to develop enough alternate income, then I see no reason to go back to work, and can pursue my real interest, which is starting a legitimate business. As I mentioned in a previous post, these alternate income streams will flow hopefully from affiliate marketing, and the facebook application I am in the process of developing.

So as for the title of my post, sometimes things happen at odd and unexpected times in your life. Here I am content as a pig in shit for the time being. I’m studying for my graduate entrance exams, working on side projects, and going out with the guys every night like the world might run out of whiskey at the end of the week.  I meet a fellow over a game of pool that works for a local defense contracting company. Sure enough he is  a Sr. Software Engineer for said company and tells me to send him my resume as his boss is a fellow RIT Alum.  Now I have an interview tomorrow morning for a position I wasn’t searching for. Great! It is certainly a mixed bag as far as feelings go. On the one hand, if I did happen to get the job, as far as jobs go, it is pretty fricken’ sweet. Great pay, security clearance, great benefits, relaxed workplace. On the other hand, it is a job. And I don’t like “jobs”. It would require me to relocate back to Syracuse from Jacksonville. I’m not sure if that is the best course of action for me either.

Either way, I’m really excited for the prospect, and it just shows that if I did happen to need to actively look for a position, it wouldn’t be very difficult to sniff one out. Anyway, I’m off to brush up on my C++ skills. It has been a long time since I looked at C++ code, I spend too much time in .NET!

Emergency fund and Karma

Published by
MiserlyMike
at August 15, 2007 in Budget, Emergency Fund, Karma and Spending. 1 Comment

In my last post I mentioned there had been a death in the family that caused me to tap into my emergency fund once again. It ended up being a pretty deep tap when all was said and done. I had already tapped into my emergency fund to fix my vehicle and also rent a car and help my roommate out with some gas expenses. This time, I even had to withdraw from some of my liquid savings in order to cover all my expenses.

Let’s start with my flying fiasco first. Once again, my luck continues with flying and I had my flights on Thursday and Friday both canceled. On top of that my baggage was lost both on the way there and on the way back. I have since went back and complained to US Airways about my disasterous flying record and they have so far issued me a one way travel voucher for EACH trip that was interrupted. So now I’m waiting on my third travel voucher to be issued, hopefully this week. I will probably use them to go to Vegas with my brother for New Years. Sometimes it pays to complain.

Back to emergency funds. I spent a total of $400 on flights for the weekend. On top of that, I bought some new clothes. This was in part because they had lost my luggage and in part because I needed some new clothes (for work). Thanks to some thrifty shopping, I was able to pick up a suit (Pants, Jacket), a tie, and six dress shirts for under $300. The shirts will help boost my rather meager ration of three ill-fitting dress shirts that I wore to work. Now I have another rather nice suit, and some fitted dress shirts that make me look a hell of a lot more professional than before. The shirts were only $20 for fitted Stafford long sleeve button downs. On top of that I had two $15 off coupons. Normally the shirts alone probably would have totaled $250 and up on their own.

$700 right there that I was able to use from my emergency fund that allowed me to get to NY for my Grandmother’s funeral, and look pretty dang snazzy in the process. While in NY my four year old cell phone bit the dust. I’ve been putting off getting a new one for quite awhile now. It was literally falling apart. Taped and glued in multiple places. The screen was cracked. The battery didn’t stay in. When it did, it only held a charge for about 20 hours. The chargers were after market and regularly wore out or broke after a period of usage. It was in rough shape. On top of being functionally deficient it looked pretty crummy too.

I know that looks aren’t everything, but it wasn’t professional. It was difficult to take a call in a professional work environment with a ratty looking phone like that. Not that I need to have anything special, just something that doesn’t look like i literally fished it out of the trash bin.

I ended up purchasing the vx-8300. Not exactly new, not exactly old. It came with two chargers, two batteries, and an extended charge battery. On ebay it ended up costing me $96+$6 shipping for a total of $102. Even though I could have gotten an upgrade from Verizon for probably free, I decided not to, since my contract has been up for quite awhile now, and I feel much better not being locked into any obligation with them to continue their service.

I chalked these purchases all up in my “emergency expenditures”. Even though some of them probably weren’t true “emergencies”. This totaled to about $800 and change. Pretty hefty considering I just spend quite a bit getting the car situation straightened out.

On top of that I bought some books on Amazon and a laptop harddrive for my roommate. The books for 6 of them, ran me about $50. They were all professional development type books. Never Eat Alone, Who moved my cheese?, and so on. Now I just need to find the time to read them.

The hard drive I bought for my roommate to show my appreciation since the two of them have driven or picked me up from the airport 6 times, drove me to and from work for nearly two weeks, and just been all around great people for only knowing them for a few weeks.

Recently their laptop died and they have been griping about it for awhile. Since computers are sort of my forte I surprised them by ordering a hard drive ($40) off www.newegg.com and they came home to a working computer. I figure, if nothing else, a few bucks and some thoughtfulness can lead to a lot of good karma and probably a few friends in the process. A trade I’m willing to make any day.