So-Late-I-Shouldn’t-Bother To Accomplish, January 2012

Every time I post twice in a single week, (and during the first week of January, I posted 3 times, which is a monumental accomplishment. For me.) I start feeling cocky about my blogging abilities. “This isn’t so hard!  I’m going to start posting twice a week every week and soon I’ll have one of those blogs that doesn’t languish silently for weeks at a time!”  This feeling of smug accomplishment carries me for about two weeks, at which point I realize I haven’t posted anything in that period.  And that I’ll be posting a list of monthly goals halfway through the month.

What happens then is that I get stage fright thinking about how it’s going to look when I post my goals midway through the month, just like I have pretty much every month since 2010.  I’ve joked before about being the worst PF blogger ever, but it’s times like these where I realize it’s true.

And so, you get my list of goals 22 days into the month.  I probably could have saved myself some effort by just posting a recap in… 1 week, when the month will be over, but then my faithful readers would miss that one week of suspense. I would never deny you those extra days of anticipation, the flutter in your stomach when you wonder if I’ll make my workout goal.

You’re welcome.

To Accomplish, January 2012

1. Reset 401K contributions and W4 withdrawals for 2012.
I try to estimate our income to figure out how many taxes we’ll owe and how much I need to contribute to my 401K in order to not owe anything on my taxes & not miss out on any employer match. I’m usually wrong and end up fiddling with the numbers in April, but I do this every January anyway. Might as well continue the tradition.

2. Work out 4 days per week.
I have to stop thinking that the holidays are a food free for all, where nothing I eat has calories and that 20-minute walk around the neighborhood is a real workout.

3. Read 10 books & write a quick summary/review.
This is related to one of my 2012 resolutions. I won’t share any spoilers!

4. Eat vegetarian for 1 week.
I was talking to a friend at work who is vegetarian, she mentioned that she thinks that it’s hard for people to get around the idea of a meal being something that doesn’t include meat. I grew up in a house where the meals were very traditional meat and potatoes type, and Chad’s house was similar. In our life together, our dinners have been pretty much the same. But there are plenty of other options, and they don’t all have to be breakfast for dinner or mac ‘n’ cheese type meals. I’m hoping a vegetarian week will be about exploring some foods we haven’t had before & expanding our ideas of meals.

We’ll probably just have cereal for dinner a lot.

5. Post my 2012 resolutions/goals on the blog.
I already have a big long list, but typing everything up is where the process falls apart. I will do this by the end of the month (in, erm, one week).

6. Research volunteer opportunities nearby.
One of my other resolutions is to give more – both time and money. I keep saying this, but it’s time I actually take action to do it!

2011 In Review

2011 was definitely the Year of Career for me.  While meeting my other goals just seemed like a slow slog to the finish line, I felt genuinely challenged by my work. I worked enough overtime hours to fill an extra month (I’m calling it Smarch), I killed it on my first big project, and I’ve gotten rave reviews from my supervisors and coworkers.

In 2012, I think I’d like to set some more goals that will inspire me outside of work, similar to StackingPennies’ decision to focus only on goals she really cares about.  I’ll still set my financial goals, but I expect them to take a backseat to the things I really want to accomplish.

At any rate, I definitely did well on my goals this year.  I failed on the same sorts of goals I’ve always failed on (*ahem* blogging 2x per week), and did better than expected on some others.  Financially we’re doing well, even as the stock market eats up our retirement contributions.  As for everything else, the full list of goals is reviewed below:

Financial

1. Max out all retirement accounts. Done!
Pretty self-explanatory.

2. Save $25,000 in cash. Done!
We managed to meet (and exceed! slightly!) this goal despite the fact that Chad left his soul-sucking job midway through the year.  We were helped along by a sizable tax refund (I never know how much to withhold since Chad’s employment status has been so up in the air) and the fact that I worked over 200 hours of overtime.  These 2 things combined were enough to make up for the stipend Chad would have gotten if he’d stayed in the lab.

Technically, we cheated a little on this goal since Chad paid for a semester of school out of what I call his “secret savings account,” so in terms of actual money, we saved a little less.  Still, I don’t track his secret savings, and it’s partially made up of money set aside by his parents for grad school, so who knows what’s fair.

Around $2000 extra going to a travel fund to pay for our Ireland trip in 2012.

3. Earn at least $5,000 in overtime this year. Done!
I earned more than double this amount.  I will also never set this goal again – I ended up piling on overtime early in the year and getting sort of burnt out.  I met this goal by April or May, and then the rest of the year was so busy that I ended up working even more.  Overtime pay is not worth my sanity!

4. Stay within my budget on personal spending. Done!
If you remember, I settled on $200 per month plus a birthday “bonus” of $200. I ended up with about $350 left over, which is just enough to get Chad the Christmas present he wants.  A big portion of this money was spent on clothes, with books and music taking up a larger percentage after I got my Nook and my iPhone. 

In all honestly, this amount felt positively decadent, so it doesn’t feel like a huge accomplishment to have stayed within it.

Health & Fitness

1. Work out 4x per week. Mostly!
I managed to be fairly consistent with this, even through crazy work schedules.  No, I didn’t make it every week, but I’m calling it close enough.  This goal will definitely be repeated in 2012!

2. Keep a food journal on weekdays. Done!
How helpful was this?  Well, it certainly worked well to shame me after the fact.  It didn’t really work to keep me from eating things, though.  I think I’ll continue to track, since it has become a habit (I made a spreadsheet at work!), but I think some other healthy eating goals would work better.

3. Eat lunch with my coworkers one or twice per week. Fail.
This goal completely fell apart by… February.  I worked crazy schedules, but that’s not really the reason – mostly I forgot that I had even made this a goal.  Since I moved offices, I now spend plenty of time being social, and I need to work over lunch to make up for that wasted time!

4. Lose that pesky extra weight. Maybe?
I’m down about 3 pounds.  Does that count?

5. Cook more. Fail.
I had a few good months, but it’s so easy to slip back into the old habit where Chad cooks and I… sit on my ass and read blogs.  Yeah, epic fail.

Miscellaneous

1. Wear everything in my closet before buying any new clothes. Done!
I liked this goal so much that I’m going to repeat it in 2012.  It took me nearly THREE MONTHS to complete this goal in 2011, and while there were some pajama-only weekends and outfit repeats sprinkled in there, that’s an insane amount of clothes.  It also helped me be a little more strategic about my shopping, and really opened my eyes to how overstuffed my closet truly is.  It definitely spurred my closet cleanout, where I removed 5 trash bags full of clothes from my closet and didn’t feel a dent.

2. Blog at least 2x per week. FAIL.
I published 52 posts this year, which is an average of 1x per week.  Yep, worst blogger ever.

3. Make our apartment like a place real people live. Close enough!
Our apartment looks pretty good right now.  No, it’s not like the homes I’ve tagged on Pinterest – Chad always has to remind me that I can get an unnecessary drafting table once we buy a house.  Still, we made enough little tweaks that I’ve started to really like how everything turned out.  Which probably means that we’ll move in 6 months.

4. Stop cursing so much. Done!
Most of the people at work were surprised that this was on my list (remember – I’d asked them to police me if I dropped an F-bomb).  It wasn’t as though I was cursing in meetings or at inappropriate times, just that I think curse words are hilarious and add some extra oomph to social conversations.  At any rate, just being aware that I was doing it made the occurrences dwindle, and it has also bled into my life outside of work.  Even my football vocabulary has changed: now I mostly just chant “You suck. You suck. You suck.” instead of using the more colorful vocabulary I’ve been known for.

5. Read 50 books. Done!
Thanks to the Nook I got as a birthday present, I finished 85 books this year! No, it’s not like I was reading the classics, but still an accomplishment given that I’ve struggled in the past to reach 50.

6. Kick ass at work. Done!
I totally did.  Not only did I get the highest rating possible on my year-end review, but my West Coast mentor told me I deserved an early promotion.  Not sure The Powers That Be will agree with him, but it was high praise.  When I was asking around about that other job, several of the higher-ups I spoke to for guidance told me that I was one of our program’s rising stars.  For someone who has struggled with Imposter Syndrome for what feels like forever, that was awesome.

How did you do on your goals this year?

2011 Net Worth Update

I told myself I’d be doing these updates monthly. Ha!  Luckily, my networth has been dancing around the same number since April, mostly due to fluctuations in the stock market.  Our cash accounts grew nicely, but since we have double that amount in retirement accounts, it doesn’t do much to staunch the bleeding.

We did manage to meet a new milestone, and that is that we’ve now exceeded 1/3rd of a million dollars in net worth!  The only (First World) problem with that is that our normal deposits, even for a good month, just don’t affect that number much. Going from $50,000 to $60,000 sounds like a much bigger deal than going from $340,000 to $350,000, even though the amount increase is the same.

Note that these are joint values (i.e. they include assets from both my and Chad’s accounts).  They do not include money from rotating (i.e. checking) accounts or credit cards, and they also do not include the small personal savings accounts that Chad and I keep for ourselves.

How did you do this year?

Musing on Christmas Gifts

My parents offered to buy Chad and me a new TV for Christmas this year.

We’ve had a giant tube TV since we moved to California 6.5 years ago, a giant tube TV that also looked as though someone had taken a bite out of the side due to an accident on the moving van.  We’d been talking about getting a new one when Chad started working, a date that moved further away as Chad decided to go back to school full-time.

Instagram makes everything look classier than it really is.

Still, after upgrading the little TV we kept in our bedroom, we were itching for a new flatscreen in the living room.  The want got worse every time we came home from watching football in HD at our friends’ house (you just can’t tell if that player’s foot was in bounds when you’re watching in standard definition).

After dragging my parents to Costco to look at TVs one more time, they finally offered to buy us one for Christmas.  It took up all of our Christmas budget AND I won’t be getting a birthday present next year, but I would say it’s worth it!  We now have this 47″ monstrosity that dominates our living room and is complete overkill considering that we only sit about 5 yards from it.

We probably still could have seen that Penn State sucked, even in standard definition.

My original plan was to write a post titled “Gifts that cost money” and it would, of course, be about how upgrading our DirecTV to HD would increase our monthly bill by $XX, meaning the gift would commit us to enough extra money that we could buy the TV again.  I was not prepared for what actually what happened when we called: our bill dropped by $15 from the “discounted” price we had to call every 3 months to maintain.  And the features are a little better; we got the new dish for free, got the upgraded HD DVR and we can watch DVR’d shows in the bedroom.

No, we’re not “saving” any money, since we’re still shelling out $50/month to watch TV.  And while I still think the TV commits us to some extra expenses – shelling out for BlueRay versions of things, new cables required for everything, etc. – I still think it’s a fun gift.  I just wish we’d done it earlier in the football season!

Did you get any fun gifts this year?  Are they going to cost you extra, or save you some money?

Two paths diverged

I mentioned before that my current boss is leaving.  He’s hanging around to do our year-end reviews since they don’t have a replacement manager yet, but he’s already splitting time between our group and his new job.

Because of the desire to cut costs in our organization, my ex-boss’ bosses are still debating how to list the job posting.  They seem to be reaching a consensus to list it as a very low-level management job, despite the fact that it comes with a group of 25 underlings and a host of other program management responsibilities.  In fact, the level is so low that the most senior people on my program can’t even apply because it wouldn’t pay even close to what they’re making now.

Our group works well because of the camaraderie between members of our group and the free rein we’re given as long as we get our work done (and we get a lot of work done).  This often means pancake breakfasts, bets on football games (whoever loses the bet buys bagels for the whole office), midday coffee breaks in the conference room, etc. As such, there is a desire to keep the management job “in the family,” i.e. making sure no new guy/girl is going to come in an attempt to change the culture.

At this time, there are only 2 people who have the required experience and also don’t make too much money to apply. I am one of them.

I’ve been getting a little bit of pressure to apply for this job.  Part of it is that there’s no one else since the job is ridiculously underpaid for the amount of work (they think I don’t know this), part of it is that they’ve done the same math I have, and they know I’m one of two potential “insiders,” and hopefully part of it is because they like me and think I’d be good at it.

As a career move, it’s not a bad one.  I’d be making more money more quickly – it would amount to the promotion I planned to ask for this year (I am convinced it will be denied this year and next year, but possibly 2013), or just slightly over.  It would set me up for more management responsibility in the future, all the way up to CEO. (Just kidding.)  I do think I’d enjoy the money aspects of it, given how much I enjoy my own, much smaller, budget.

Still, I’ve always said that I wanted to stay technical.  I love the challenge of engineering, the moment of clarity when you’ve finally figured out the solution to a problem.  My career aspirations were always to be an expert, to run the analysis that drives the evolution of technology.  I hoped I would be smart enough to get there.

In the teeny, tiny, gossip-ridden office I work in, everyone would know if I applied, interviewed, or was offered the job.  Which means they’d also know if I turned it down.  In all the pressure to get me to apply, I was assured that I’d have a good chance of getting it.

I just can’t decide if I’d want it.

Winter is here!

Here in DC, we’ve been enjoying unseasonably warm temperatures.  I’ve been enjoying the extension of fall, where I can pile on thin layers and cute coats, in contrast to winter, where I throw on my thickest sweater and unflattering puffy down coat and horrible faux Uggs and basically cease to look cute for the next 4 months.  I’ve also been enjoying our utility bills!  With no need for heat or air conditioning, they’re the lowest they’ve ever been.

I’ve been loathe to acknowledge the temperatures dropping.  But yesterday I had to scrape ice off my car for the first time, and apparently, our heat vampirism is no longer enough to keep our apartment toasty.  After a night of waking up freezing because Chad had wrapped the second comforter around himself again, leaving me nearly uncovered, I checked our thermostat.

55 degrees. Oh.

So the heat has been turned on, and we’ll probably have to keep it going until April.  Still, I’m glad I won’t be walking around my apartment wearing gloves this winter.

What’s your temperature limit? At what point is it too cold for you to keep your heat off anymore?  I work with a guy who said he keeps hims thermostat at 55 degrees when he’s home.  Could you do that?

Fight On

I don’t usually post about personal stuff or my opinions on non-financial (erm, or non-fashion) topics, for many reasons.  Still, I often find writing cathartic, and even if I end up not posting this on the blog, it helps me to get this out, to write about it even to a pretend audience.

I am a Penn Stater.

When I applied, it was just because I knew my parents couldn’t afford more than a state school, because my sister went there, and because I knew I’d be a shoo-in with my high school GPA and extracurriculars.  However, after starting my Freshman year, I fell in love with the campus, the anonymity of being one in 40,000, the instant bond of being part of the Penn State family.  And I fell in love with the football team.

There’s something about the stadium, the 100,000 fans crowded together, all strangers bound by a common love.  It’s hard to describe the atmosphere, the excitement, the energy of hundreds of thousands of fans screaming the same cheer.  My younger sister, a senior in high school, was set on going to another university; after attending a football game, she wanted to come to Penn State.

Everything this past week has been a nightmare: the horrific crimes perpetrated against children, the implication of several of the university’s highest-ranking officials, the loss of a beloved coach.

When I heard about the case (later than everyone else, I’ve been working graveyard shifts since last Thursday), I cried.  I wasn’t familiar with Sandusky since my time at PSU came after his retirement, but as a victim of sexual assault and the sister of a rape victim, I understand just how much pain comes from that experience.  There are no words for the monstrosity of someone doing that to children.

I understand why Joe Paterno had to be fired.  I can’t help but hope that further investigation, which can proceed now that the hordes have extracted the first pound of flesh, will show that Joe’s worst crime was just that he did not do enough, that he trusted in the integrity of university officials.  I still believe that he is a good person at heart, despite how he has been painted this week.

Lots of people, protected by internet anonymity, say that we can’t possibly care about the victims and our university and our coach.  That if we defend our school or Joe, we don’t care enough about the children.  I have enough room to grieve for all three.  And I refuse to participate in the game where we all try to prove that we care the most about children being molested.  You know who hates child molesters?  Everyone.  Who cares the most?  Everyone.

 

If you want to post something hateful, that’s fine (if you’re a first-time commenter you’ll have to wait until I moderate it, but I promise to let all non-spam comments through), but put your money where your mouth is.  I often post about how I want to donate more to charities, so here is my chance to show that I care.  Hopefully, we can channel our outrage to something greater than a million angry comments on the internet.

To Accomplish, November 2011

I always enjoy the time at the end of the year.  I look forward to the holidays and the holiday pay, we make elaborate New Years Eve plans but usually end up just heading to a bar (or staying home to watch the Twilight Zone marathon), and I get this huge burst of feelings of accomplishment as one by one, my New Years Resolutions get checked off.

How are you doing with your yearly goals?  Do you prefer the end of the year, when you’re almost done, or do you prefer January, when you get to write down your goals with the promise of fresh starts?

To Accomplish, November 2011

1. Make 2012 budget.
Since I finally switched banks to simplify my obsessive tracking of our finances, this means that I can get rid of several of the budgeting tricks I employed to simplify our previous arrangement.  I’m hoping that will make tracking spending easier next year.

2. Work out 4 times per week.
Oh, the old standby! 

3. Read 8 books.
I’m abandoning the idea of reading 100 books by the end of the year – I’d have to read something like 15 books in both November and December to pull this off, and I don’t even think that’s possible.

4. Try 3 new recipes.
I keep adding new recipes to Pinterest, but I’ve been slacking on actually cooking them!  Actually, this goal may be somewhat hard to meet since I’m working funny shifts for most of November, plus we’ll be out of town the week of Thanksgiving.  I mean, that still leaves me with at least 5 times the number of days I’d need to meet this goal, but you know.  Any excuse to not cook!

5. Make pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.
For some reason, Chad’s family does not have pumpkin pie at their Thanksgivings.  Sure, they have pumpkin-flavored desserts like pumpkin cheesecakes, or Chad’s famous pumpkin whoopie pies, but no pumpkin pie!  Which is my holiday Holy Grail of Desserts.

I figure, instead of complaining, I should make my own damn pie.  So I shall.

6. Do a net worth update.
I used to keep up with this monthly, but ever since I took my NetWorthIQ widget down, there has been no motivation to update it!  Still, I need to get a new look at our net worth, and I owe the blog an update as well.  I think I swore to do it quarterly, and I think I’ve only fit in one so far this year!

7. Schedule a massage.
November is going to be stressful.  Due to the aforementioned crazy work schedule, as well as another 2 presentation I’m giving to large audiences near the end of the month, I think I deserve something luxurious.  Hence, massage.  I may wait to actually get the massage until December, but I must book it by the end of the month!

October Wrap-Up

As an engineer, I get that it’s sort of required that I watch the show The Big Bang Theory.  But you know what?  I can’t watch it.  I laugh at parts of it, but I just can’t get past the laugh track. I hate television shows with laugh tracks.  It’s like whacking off to a video of someone else whacking off.  I don’t need to know how funny other people think the show is.

Also, sometimes the studio audience laughs at nothing.  They cannot be trusted.

 

To Accomplish, October 2011

1. Work out 4 times per week. Done!
Okay, so the last week I only got in three workouts because of the freak snowstorm that we had last Saturday.  I’m still calling it good because everyone gets to be fat once in a while.

2. Read 8 books. Fail.
I made it through 6, with 3 more in the works.  Remember how I said I’ll switch between different books?  Yeah, that killed me this time!  Oh well.  I may not make it to 100 books by the end of the year (I’d say that’s distinctly unlikely!), but I’ve already beaten my goal of 50!

3. Try at least 3 new recipes. Done!
Here they are:

Moo Shu Veggies. These were really good, but when I tried to make them a second time, I discovered that you have to be really careful with the amounts. I tried to eyeball it, and everything ended up way too salty. And I say that as someone who loves salt!

Southwest Beef and Bean Burger Wraps. These were so good, although the refried beans made the burgers way too crumbly. Also, I ruined a pan with the grease.

Five Spice Turkey Lettuce Wraps. I used shredded chicken instead of ground turkey, but these were still really good!

4. Talk to my coworkers. Kinda?
I managed to sneak in a 5-minute conversation with one, but it was cut short, and definitely wasn’t as in-depth as I would have liked!  November is looking way too crazy for work stuff already, but maybe I’ll push this to December or even next year.

5. Read a book on a programming language. Done!
I started with a really easy one, and now am trying to slog my way through some code that others have written, in the hopes of improving some of our tools.  It’s funny because just learning the simple nomenclature stuff made those previously incomprehensible codes make sense!

6. Take car of all of my car inspections/bills. Done!
This was an easy one, but that’s probably just because Chad did almost everything, running around to all the different places to get the car inspected.  I went online and paid one bill.  Because I’m a contributor.

Happy Halloween weekend!