A $500 lesson in adulting and the importance of savings

Now that the blinding rage has died down, I think I’m calm enough to write this.

I don’t drive my car every day or even every week. I don’t check on it every day. Maybe I should, and maybe I will in the future even though I don’t want this to make me obsessive about my car. It’s 11 years old with almost 150,000 miles for goodness’ sake, and I don’t want to waste my life energy worrying about it. But disaster struck a few days ago. Continue reading “A $500 lesson in adulting and the importance of savings”

Lessons in gratitude learned while my sister was sleeping on my futon

Y’all, I am tired. It’s been a long couple of weeks. My sister was living with me for the past three weeks (she just moved out a few hours ago), sleeping on my futon and keeping her clothes etc in part of my room. That came with the awesome benefit of a $150 deduction on rent for both me and my roommate (yeah, I made my sister pay $100/week for rent. Life is expensive and also we only have one bathroom which gets crowded when three people are involved), but man am I tired. Continue reading “Lessons in gratitude learned while my sister was sleeping on my futon”

It’s annual salary increase time so let’s talk money

So I got my annual salary increase letter today. This is the first time I’ve gotten one at my current place of employment and I stared at the envelope with a mix of nervousness, fear, and excitement for a few minutes before opening it (yes, okay, I’ll admit I indulged about 10 seconds’ worth of wild fantasies about what if it’s something huge like a 10% raise?!?). The verdict? A three percent increase. Okay, cool, that’s nice. I’ll take whatever increases I can get! And then I started wondering what the usual annual percentage increase is for cost-of-living adjustment. Is it 3%? Usually a bit less? I believe my increase at my previous place of employment was 2.5% (maybe less? Whatever, I was making $17.25 so whatever it was bumped me all the way up to something like $17.80), but that was there. What was I supposed to make of the 3% raise here? Continue reading “It’s annual salary increase time so let’s talk money”

How I got a credit card sign-up bonus without bankrupting myself

I realized last year that my first credit card (and my only one aside from the Old Navy credit card I’d close if it didn’t have a ridiculously large line of credit for something like $7,000 which would greatly negatively affect my overall ratio of available credit if I got rid of it) was one I’d gotten in college and really wasn’t doing much for me anymore, so I got a cash back card. Who doesn’t like cash back, right? However, this year I’ve been reading about travel hacking and have always idly been considering a credit card that would get me travel rewards. Continue reading “How I got a credit card sign-up bonus without bankrupting myself”

How to save money on car insurance

No, it’s not to spend 15 minutes on the phone with Geico, although maybe that would save you money! Although fun fact: my parents have been with their car insurance company for ages. A few years ago just for fun my dad decided to call Geico to see if they could save him anything and the guy who answered was like “uh your rates are amazing. No, we can’t beat that.” So maybe calling won’t save you money after all! Anyway, my parents gifted me my mom’s old car about a year ago and I’m now on my third car insurance policy. I’ve learned a bit along the way about how to save money in that department and I thought I’d share, even if this information may be pretty straightforward and obvious to people. Continue reading “How to save money on car insurance”

Azores trip

Well…hello. It’s been a while. I don’t really have an excuse other than that I’ve been exhausted this week and after working late (to make up unpaid time from the trip), working out, then making dinner, I was ready to read a book before bed rather than write a post. So, nope, not really an excuse. Continue reading “Azores trip”