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November 2007 - Posts
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I've decided that I must be entirely insane, and you'll understand why after you read this post. The vast majority of my insanity stems from the fact that I just don't know when to say no when someone asks me to do them a favor. This past week when I was in the grocery store doing some pre-Thanksgiving shopping, I happened to run into my old boss. As you probably recall, I worked in the meat department of our local grocery store over the summer. My boss asked me back when the Fall semester was about to begin if I wanted to stay on scholastic leave so that I could come back and work some over the holidays. I agreed, never thinking that I would really ever work again. Almost four months later, I have worked on a few occasions, but it hasn't been too much of a hassle thus far. This time when I was in the store, my boss asked me if I was going to be available at all over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, since a lot of the college kids who he usually has work are going to be heading home to visit their families for the holiday. I told him that I would look into it and get back to him. As it turns out, I should have been more explicit about my calling back about the hours, because I received a call just yesterday asking me if working on Friday and Saturday of Thanksgiving week would be fine. Well, what else could I say other than "sure, that's fine." In all honesty, I very much enjoy working at the store, but when it is an activity outside of school that takes away the time I have available to do school work, it becomes a problem and a hassle. Once I'm there, I zone out into my work and don't think about school, but as the day wears on, I start to think about what I should have been doing instead of working, could be doing now instead of working, and will be doing later when I get done with work. It's a tough spot to be in, particularly at this point in the semester where everything that I need to do is starting to pile up in the last two weeks. I have tried to look on the bright side of the situation in that I will end up making a little bit of extra holiday cash to use to buy nice gifts for my family back home. On the other hand though, I don't exactly need the money, and the amount that I will actually be making it hardly worth my bother at this point in the semester...hence my frustration. So if it's not the money, and it's not the experience, then I can safely say that I'm really doing it out of the goodness of my heart. The people that I work with were very good to me and treated me very well over the Summer when I needed a job, and so I have been using these times that I make the effort work as little opportunities to thank them for that time. However, I can't help but hear that nagging voice in the back of my head warning me about all the things that I should have been doing while I was at work. Although I think ahead now to the next time that I will be asked to work and say to myself that I will just say no, I know truthfully that I am just joking with myself, because saying 'no' has never exactly been my strong suit. So for now, I will look forward to getting that little extra paycheck and knowing that I will put the money to good use somehow with my Christmas shopping.
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I've been becoming interested more and more in the crisis of our falling currency here in the United States. As such, I've been actively seeking out more news articles, commentaries, and editorials devoted to the subject. Today, I came across something interesting in the mix that I thought that I would share with all of you. While the dollar continues is slow plummet and other currencies in the world contain to make gains beyond it, the dollar's strongest competitor, the euro has been making record setting marks, now reaching to almost one and a half times the value of the US dollar. While I'm not exactly surprised to read about that particular fact, something else caught my eye. At the current rate, financial analysts have asserted that the euro is overvalued by about thirty percent. Now, I don't claim to be an expert in world currencies or a finance professional, but I do know that the word "overvalued" is not a good thing to hear. It seems to me that when a currency is labeled as overvalued, that that means that it is holding what influence it has unnecessarily. Maybe this is just ethnocentrism sneaking out, but it's just hard to stomach that the United States is supposed to be so powerful, yet our currency issues have been perpetuated while other strong currencies in the world are being labeled as overvalued. Another thing that I don't understand is what the "subprime lending crisis" has to do with the whole situation. While I'm sure that the world of finance and currency is incredibly complicated and has more intricacies than I really care to know about, but I think that there should be someone out there willing to explain things in a way that an average taxpaying American like me or you can understand. We should know the basic reasons behind the fact that the money that we work very hard from day to day to make is not worth what it has been in the past. We should be able to understand why it is becoming harder and harder for Americans to go out and see the world, since we simply cannot afford to pay for what we need overseas. Sure, we can get reasonably affordable airfare from the United States to locations overseas; in many instances it's more affordable than traveling domestically. But the problem is once you arrive where you're going. Hotels, food, transportation, and particularly visiting tourist locations are just often too expensive to enjoy. So if Americans can't travel overseas because they can't afford any activities when they get there and they can't travel domestically because it's too expensive to fly around, are people just supposed to stay home? Maybe this is the best bet...stay home and ride out the crisis. It's scary to think that this might be the right choice, because it's yet another instance where we are unable to do anything about the problem and we have no input or foresight into how the situation can change or when it will change. What a mess...
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With the holiday shopping season very well in full swing, a lot of people out there are probably making their lists and checking them at least twice. As I've mentioned over my last several posts, I have been trying to get my Christmas shopping done in advance as well, although I haven't had much of a chance to think about it with all the extra end of the semester projects and papes I've been working on. As I was out to lunch with my roommate the other day, I heard a couple sitting across from us chatting, and the wife asked her husband about what the "hot" toy for this year is. I wasn't quite sure if she was referring to a child's toy or an adult's toy, but either way it got me thinking. I don't know if I'm just out of the loop, but I have no idea what the toy of the year is this year...child or adult. I can recall vividly in years past when the thing to have was a digital camera, an ipod, or a portable compact disc player. But over this year, I think I've really lost track of what the "cool" gifts to give and/or get are. I suppose that is because I have bigger things on my mind than receiving some new fangled toy that I won't possibly have the time to play with. As it is now, I have cool toys like an ipod and a digital camera, both of which sit in a door in my desk, because I never have a chance to use them. Of course they are nice things to have, and I'm sure that I will use them when the occassion is appropriate, but on any given day, I just have no use for them. I suppose that gifts are just getting bigger and bigger as fancy electronics that used to appear unattainable are now getting a little less expensive. People now receive things like plasma screen televisions, laptop computers, and the latest (read "most ridiculous and unnecessary") cellular phones for Christmas gifts. I'm sure that most children these days would be devastated to receive a portable compact disk player or heaven forbid a walkman under the Christmas tree. While these things are still readily available in most electronics stores, I would venture a guess that the people that they are being bought for are not children. It's along the same lines as the "faux" ipods. Sure, the MP3 players out there that are constantly advertised on television are likely just as nice as the ipod and work just as well...but if you're going to get an MP3 player, the "cool" people will not want a substitute for the original...and no amount of convincing is going to convince children otherwise. It's just the way of the world. So anyways, what is the toy of the year this year? Who is buying them? Who wants them, and why? I am more or less interested to know for myself, because the best guess that I could formulate in my head upon hearing the question asked was the Iphone. I then second guessed myself because I figured that an Iphone would be something that you get from a cell phone company, but then again people who buy crazy things like Iphones have money to throw around to violate their cellular phone agreements to get phone upgrades before their contracts are up. Anyways...if you know what the toy of the year is, drop me a line and fill me in!
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I continue to be appalled with what is going on with the oil prices around the world. You probably all already know this since I talk about it probably once every week to ten days. For a while, I had stopped talking about it, because the problem seemed to be somewhat under control. Recently though, the problem seems to be spinning out of control with no hope of a happy ending. Today I read that the price per gallon of petroleum is nearing the "mythical" one hundred dollar mark. While we won't see these record high prices reflected at the pump today or tomorrow, we will surely see them when the oil purchased today is up for delivery in January. All the commentary from analysts that I've read cites the same types of things that have contributed to the oil prices inching higher and higher nearly every day. It's all about the decline of the dollar to start with. It's not that the dollar hasn't been falling for quite some time now, but the fact that it is continuing to fall with no real hope of a rebound is a scary scary thing to many investors and financial analysts, particularly those in the "most powerful country in the world". How can we keep up this facade that we are the "most powerful country" when our currency cannot stand up against other truly powerful nations around the country. For the first time in over thirty years, the Canadian dollar is worth more than the American dollar. Not that I am ethnocentric of anything, but that has got to ring some bells as a major issue. I just can't help thinking how life is going to have to change to adapt to this trend. It's another one of those grown-up ideas that I really have no interest in tackling, in my mind or in practice. How will this ultimately affect businesses, home owning and buying, attending college, or even buying weekly groceries? I have a nagging feeling that something is coming, but it's not going to be anything good. I remember my roommate's history class telling their class that the United States would fall in the next forty to fifty years. Back then I thought that that was the most ridiculous thing that I've ever heard of, but now I'm not so sure. What does it take for something like that to happen, and if it does, what really happens? This is a scary thought that should be in the back of the minds of Americans. How is it that we can continue to spends tens of millions of dollars per day on multiple wars on the other side of the globe when we can not focus on fixing the problems that are happening right here on our own soil? I hate to say it, but George Bush and our ineffective Congress have really done Americans in. Can you imagine what Rudy, Hillary, Barack, or whoever becomes president next is going to have to deal with? If I were them, I would not be wanting to run at all.
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With Thanksgiving just a week away, I've started thinking about what I'm going to make for the big day. The tradition in my house, though it may seem very odd to a lot of you out there, is to make traditional Indian cuisine for Thanksgiving dinner. OK, let's clear some things up first. No, I'm not Indian. No, I don't mean Native American, I mean Indian, like from the subcontinent. Yes, I love Indian food. Yes, I took Indian cooking lessons for about three years. So with all that said, you can probably figure out why I like to make an Indian feast at least once a year. It's interesting that I have traditionally, over the last five or six years, made Indian food on Thanksgiving, and I've started to fall into a pattern of the types of food that I prepare for the meal. Since making the whole meal all from scratch is such a big deal, it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and it's usually pretty darn expensive to boot. Luckily, the most expensive parts are the special spices and the meat, and since you only really need to buy the spices once every couple of years of so, it isn't too expensive every time around. I've had a lot of people over to my house for Indian food Thanksgiving over the years, and while many of them look at my skeptically at first, everyone ends up enjoying themselves in the end. Since I'm the Indian food expert in my house, I have to do a lot of the planning and preparing myself, although my roommate has become quite the sous chef over the years, so he helps out with some of the meat preparation and the vegetable chopping. I take care of the addition of ingredients and the seasoning...the two most important parts of the process. This year is going to be very unique in my house. It will be unique in that it will be the first time since I moved away from home...so since 1999, that I have not hosted Thanksgiving dinner for myself and a bunch of friends. This year, it's just me and my roommate. It will be low pressure, low hassle, and we can eat whatever we want and however much of it that we want. In short, it will be amazing. No, don't confuse my excitement about a low stress quiet dinner with me not liking to host dinners or hang out with my friends. It's much the opposite of that. However, sometimes it's nice just to sit back and relax, particularly when that is not something that you get to do all that often...if ever. This has been my theme lately since I've been so busy with school. I'm starting to re-evaluate things that I put into my life that contribute undue stress and finding ways to make them less stressful or perhaps even eliminate them all together. While hosting dinner parties with expensive and delicious food is a lot of fun, it's also very high stress, so that's why this year we are trying things a little bit different. I decided that it would still be good to invite friend over later on after dinner for dessert though. That way everything will be done and it will be time to relax and digest. I'm sure that when Easter time rolls around, I will be doing my regular old crazy cooking for a ton of people since it seems to be that a lot less people leave town to go home for Easter than they do for Thanksgiving. I suppose that that is because Thanksgiving is more of a universal holiday, rather than a religious one...sure, that makes sense.
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When people travel, every does their best to try and make everything perfect so there aren't too many unnecessary delays and hangups along the way. The actual act of traveling is rarely all that fun, unless of course you're on an extended vacation and it doesn't matter if you are wasting time sitting around at an airport. Most travelers, myself included, like to get where they are going and get there quickly. Of course things come up along the way that cannot be controlled, and one of them is flight delays and another is flight cancellations. These are things we have no control over, and then again, they are things that airlines hardly have any control over. There are so many commercial flights up overhead at any given moment of the day or night that it's hard to believe that there aren't more airline accidents. Air traffic controllers have a hard job, especially since they are dealing with many safety precaution, human and equipment limitations, and unfortunate difficulties due to weather and traffic. Most travelers probably don't give much of a second thought to the logistics that go into keeping a national and/or international grid of airports and their flights moving somewhat smoothly. Most Americans just want to get where they want to get. Well, somewhere along the way, the airline industry realized that Americans were not likely to understand the intricacies of the whole process, and since "the customer is always right" (ha!) airlines used to give away airline travel credits, free accomodations, and other gifts to traveleres who were held up due to delays and cancellations of flights. Recently though with all the problems that airlines have had since 9/11, airlines are cutting back on all these bonuses to their customers. You might recall a post I wrote a few months ago talking about airlines doing away with travel miles or having travel miles expiring after a given amount of time. It's all part of the same process. I hadn't realize how bad this had gotten until I was reading an article about 2007 being the year with the worst travel delays in history. That is pretty amazing, and now looking back, it seems like every time that I had to travel, or someone I know had to travel, something went wrong. When my best friend came to visit me in Indiana from Florida, his flight up wasn't delayed, but his luggage did get lost for two days. There was no offer of any compensation, bonus, or whatever, except that they said they would deliver the luggage for free. This was a pretty big deal in my eyes, since the airport is about an hour away from where I live. Anyways, once he got his luggage, things were fine until his flight back. His flight out of Indiana was fine, but he got delayed in Detroit which lead to him missing his connecting flight in Memphis. Since he was flying to Tallahassee from there, there weren't any other flights, and so the only thing they could do for him was put him up in a cheap motel with a bunch of other people who had missed their flights. He then learned that the next flight available wasn't even to Tallahassee, but to Tampa, and it wasn't even until 2 o'clock in the afternoon the following day. That meant that he was going to miss another whole day of work. It was an absolute mess, and then on top of it, his luggage was lost once again when he finally returned home. What did the airline do about it?...not a single thing...not even an apology. Things sure have changed, haven't they?!
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I just read a really fascinating article about young adults leaving their education with tremendous amounts of debt. Since the cost of attending a four-year university and the expectation these days of going on to get a masters degree at least continue to rise, it is no surprise that more and more students are going out into the "real world" with a ton of debt in the form of loans on their shoulders. As a student who racked up loans from undergrad but has managed to attend graduate school thus far for a profit, I am no stranger to having student loans lingering over my head. I pay on them as best as I can while in school, but the amount that I am paying each month comes nowhere near what it will be in another four or five years or so when I have to start really paying them off. After reading this article though, I breathed an enormous sigh of relief when I learned that people out there have it far far far worse than I do. The article that I read was about two newly married doctors who are just finishing up their residencies, where their combined student loan debt is approaching seven hundred thousand dollars. Do you have any idea how much money that is?! Well, when I read that, I had to go on and read the rest of the article, and I was very glad I did. The report put student loan debt in perspective for readers by saying that, while it is scary to have that kind of money out in loan costs, it's important to remember that we all came to school in order to obtain a good education, and get a good job where we can afford to pay off those loan costs. Even with that amount of loan debt, the report said that that particular couple would be able to pay off their loans in just about seven years, which is entirely reasonable. If they can do that in seven years, I can surely handle how long it will take for me...no sweat. Well, I say that now, but I'm sure when it comes down to it, I am not going to be a happy camper at all. Dealing with student loans is one of those automatically scary adult things to tackle. I have honestly been very unfamiliar with the whole process since my mother was the one to handle all the financial aid paperwork, phonecalls, etc. when I was in undergrad. Since my brother, my mother, and I were all in college around the same time, it just made more sense for her to handle everything so that the paperwork and whatnot were all in the same place. Anyways, I guess it always helps to learn where you stand in relation to other people when it comes down to things like student loan debt. At the very least, no matter how much you owe, you can find out that there are other people out there in a similar situation as yours, and that no matter what you have out, someone always has out more. I can't even express to you how comforting this article was to me...so much so that I'm thinking about calling my mother to tell her about it. You all know that I fret about financial things, so I'm sure that you can probably imagine the many stressful hours that I've had just sitting and staring off into space wondering how I am going to manage paying loans on top of everything else when I finally have to. Luckily, now that I'm in graduate school and working on my doctorate, I should be able to get set up with a nice job one of these days so life turns out allright.
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It's hard to believe how long it's been since I got my first cell phone. Back then, I thought it was the biggest most important thing on the planet. My father was always very anti-cell phone...or pretty much anti-anything that he felt like being "anti" towards. That meant that we never had a cell phone, besides the one that my mother had for work that we were never allowed to use. When I finally moved away from home down to Florida and got a job, I decided that it was high time that I got my own phone, mostly because my roommate at the time was constantly on our house land line. I went out and got myself a plan that would allow me to call home long distance for no extra cost, and of course the big deal at the time was getting free roaming, so I made sure I had that too. Eventually a couple years later, I decided that there was absolutely no reason to bother paying another fifty dollars a month for land line service, because the only people that I ever got calls from were telemarketers, so that line went away. If I'm counting correctly, that means that I got my first cell phone about seven years ago, give or take a few months. During that amount of time, the whole "texting" boom has occurred, and I did my best to stay away from it, because I always thought that if someone needed to talk to me, they should just call. I ended up enduring a while of this without having text messaging as a part of my cellular plan and just paying for whatever text messages were sent, if any, in a given month. In the past six months or so, with people starting to communicate even more by text messages than ever before, I've been constantly paying for text message charges on my monthly cell phone bill. It had gotten to be so many messages that it would end up being more than if I had the service for the month. I decided that it was high time that I just resolved that I was going to pay a little extra each month, so I starting looking into my options for adding text messaging to my service plan. I found out that it was only going to cost my an extra five dollars each month in order to have two hundred text messages. Knowing fully well that that would be far more than enough, but that it was the lowest possibly option, I signed up for that. It's not that I text message any more often than I had previously, but it's nice knowing that the result of whatever text messaging that I do will never end up costing me over five dollars in a given month. I remember times that I would try to avoid the charges by calling people back when they text messaged me, which is honestly the wiser decision I think. By talking to someone, it's instant communication and there isn't a use of a pesky keypad. The best use of text messaging that I've found, and one that is totally worth the money, is having text messages reserved for emergency use and phone voice messages for things that can wait. That way, if there is a problem, I can easily check a text message in class and even respond, whereas a voice mail is something that I would have to leave to check. So, if you don't have text messaging as a part of your cellular service each month, rest assured that it is probably available to you at a decent price that won't break the bank, and then you don't have to worry about those texts that come through unexpectedly. Check it out!
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Are any of your out there obsessed with Amazon dot com like I am? Well, I think that I've approached the point of obsession, as I have gotten into a habit of filling my shopping cart with books that I want and then checking it multiple times a day to see when the book prices fall. Every time the prices fall, I have to then contemplate and argue with myself if it is worth spending the money to buy a given book. Then there is that pesky shipping cost too...oh wait, not any more! Well, let me take that back, not any more...for a while. Just the other day in my email I received a message from the folks at Amazon thanking for years of faithful customer-ship (?)...hmm...patronage is probably better...anyways, they thanked me for my business and offered me a free month's enrollment in their Super Saver program, a service that costs around seventy-nine dollars a year. Well, at first I thought that it was just another gimmick, but then I decided to look more closely and see what it was all about. As it turns out, the Super Saver upgrade allows you to have free two-day shipping on any item purchased at full price, as well as free shipping on any regular priced items that normally ship at the three dollars and fifty cent shipping price. As if that wasn't great enough, they offer two dollars overnight shipping. Wow! Another cool feature is that if you order something from Amazon dot com itself, they will also ship your items overnight for free if available. This is pretty amazing if you ask me, especially since I usually just choose the standard shipping method, which mean that people can ship out books at media rate so that they actually make a profit on the shipping costs. The problem is that media mail, while reliable and inexpensive, takes a long time from certain places around the country. This is why it's always a good idea to check and see where a particularly package is going to ship from if you are going to select standard shipping. You could be looking at anywhere between five days and a month to receive your package. In the worst case scenario, you order on a Friday afternoon on a holiday weekend, and instantly you've added almost another week's wait to the process. Anyways, I was a little bit skeptical about this Super Saver thing, but I decided to sign up for the free trial, keeping in mind that I would be "automatically upgraded" to the service at the regular price after a month. After promptly writing down the date and sticking it to my computer monitor, I went ahead and ordered something that I was going to order anyways, and was glad to see that the eight dollars worth of shipping disappeared. I then got my confirmation for two-day shipping, as well as a UPS tracking number...awesome! With a tracking number, I can see the exact progress of my order as it travels across the United States to my house. What was even more exciting was that I was later emailed and told that the item was available early from the warehouse and was shipped same day. That means that I ordered my item around nine o'clock in the morning yesterday and surprise, surprise, it arrived at my door before five o'clock in the afternoon today. Not too shabby if you ask me!
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Although I am usually a fan of reading newspapers and online news sources to find out what is new and exciting in the world, I have found that one can find a lot of interesting newsworthy material, particularly about money, in some unsuspecting places. Maybe it's not exactly correct to call this information "news", because it's nothing that is particularly late and breaking that is going to change the world, but it is information that is valuable to many Americans that provides some data and helpful tips. So whatever it is that you want to call that...news or otherwise, that is what I'm talking about. I will admit to you all that I am a monthly reader of Gentlemen's Quarterly, more widelyknown as GQ magazine. The main reason that I read this magazine is because I am a "jeans snob". Plainly put, I like to where nice, comfortable, well-made, and therefore sometimes quite expensive denim. GQ is one of the best places to find out what is new in the world of denim, who carries new brands, and any changes in styles. Like with many other magazines, other than having nice pictures and explanations of the content, the editors have their editorials and other columns devoted to a number of different types of information. Every once in a while, GQ will have a blurb with facts and figures about financial information, and in most cases, they are right on target with relevance. They also tend to talk about things that other newspapers would never chance to cover. I've seen items in the magazine covering average incomes, a break down of what certain people spend their money on, and how much world leaders paid for their homes or for their wives' holiday gifts. Like I said, it's not that this information is particularly pertinent to the running of the world, but it does give others a glimpse into what life is like financially for a number of social classes, individuals, or countries other than our own. I think it is absolutely fascinating to learn about what kids my age are doing for a job, how much they are getting paid, what their education (if any) cost them or their government, and what kinds of houses they are able to afford. Having access to world knowledge makes us all better people, as it makes us aware of our surroundings and how we stand in comparison to others around the world or even in our own country or state. This actually reminds me of a little pet peeve that developed in me the other night as a result of watching a television show. I tend to like to watch the reality competition shows on Bravo Television network, and I keep up on them regularly. This week marked the season premiere of the fourth season of Project Runway, and as part of the first challenge to the contestants, they were presented with fifty thousand dollars worth of fabric to make into garments for the show. Yes, fifty thousand dollars just to play around on a television show. Do you have any idea how much money that is...and more importantly how can the show justify spending that kind of money just to throw it away on mostly ugly clothing? Until that moment, I had never seriously thought about the amount of money that gets thrown away to have shows like this one and many others. If they can throw away fifty thousand dollars like it's nothing, what are they spending total for an episode or the whole show. I imagine that the number in both instances would be mindboggling...and all this when there are starving and unhealthy children around the world. Ridiculous...
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As I was reading through the headlines today, I happened to come across a very unfortunate story about phishing methods that are becoming more popular and more widely spread across the internet in many different ways. For those of you who aren't familiar with the terminology, phishing is basically internet spam...and we all should know what spam is. After all, anyone who has an email account has to deal with it. All of these phishing scams for various things are getting pretty scary. Maybe they aren't scary to you and me, who probably use the internet all the time or as part of our daily life. The scams are scary for other people though, say for instance...my mom. My mother is a very intelligent woman, but she grew up before the age of the internet, and wasn't really all too interested in learning about computers or the internet when our family finally got America Online back when I was in junior high school. She used the computer and the internet at her job at the time, and so she always argued that there was no reason to sit on the computer when she got home after having sat in front of one all day long at work. Now that a few years have come and gone and my mother has realized that everyone uses the internet at home, she finally got herself a nice computer, DSL access (eww), and an email account. Now she is a big fan of online shopping, booking travel online, and sending e-greeting cards (again, eww). Anyways, even though she is aware of how to use the internet for all these types of things, that doesn't mean that she is overly aware of the dangers of internet phishing scams, particularly the financially motivated ones. Sure, if you click in the wrong place or open the wrong email, you could get a nasty virus or worm on your computer, but while annoying, it isn't the end of the world. The scary reality is that there are some much more powerful and devious folks out there who are phishing for social security numbers and identities. These people want your money, and they will try to get it by just about any means. I have heard of way too many people who make there living working on computers and on the internet being taken for a very unfortunate ride as a result of these various phishing scams. Just imagine your whole feeling of financial stability and your very name being stolen away from you in a matter of seconds. Scary right? Yeah, it happens though, and a lot more often than I really care to think about. So back to the point that I was trying to make. When someone sends a phishing email to my mother that says "someone has sent you an e-card, click here to retrieve it", it makes me wonder if she will know well enough to not click. Even computer professionals are susceptible to these scams, because all it takes is a momentary lapse in judgement or a moment of not paying total attention to what you're doing, and BAM there goes something important and/or expensive to you. These are definitely the kinds of things that worry me about others in my family, because we all know that spam filters don't always work as well as we want them to. And it doesn't matter how good of a virus filter or spam filter we have, someone is always going to be out there trying to build a better mousetrap. Stay aware!
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You all know well that I try my absolute best to spend only what is absolutely necessary and not splurge on anything that I really don't need. I have my little side jobs that I do while I go to school full time, and they end up paying for most of the "extras" that I purchase from time to time. Since I am going to school and paying for "life" on a fellowship, I have a set amount of money that I work with every semester, and while it is surely more than enough, I love to pinch pennies a little bit and save up what I can, because after all it's free money (more or less) from the federal government. I say "more or less" because, as many of you probably know, most fellowships and grants are taxable money, so that puts a damper on things when tax time rolls around. Anyways, since I'm always so busy and I do most of my banking and bill payments through automatic systems that I set up online, I don't often check my checking account balance...maybe just once a week to see if everything looks normal. Since I usually just look at the deductions, I hardly ever pay any mind to the actual balance. I checked this afternoon to make sure that my cell phone payment had gone through and I decided to look around. When I saw my balance, I was pretty shocked, but in a very good way. I realized that, now that it is November, I'm three quarters of the way through the semester, and I've only spent one third of the total money that I started with in the semester. That is much much better than I've ever done before. As I looked through my purchases to try and figure out how I managed such a feat, I realized that the only thing that I really have had a chance to spend money on besides my monthly expenses is food. I decided that that was perfectly acceptable at this point, since food is a necessary after all, and I haven't been spending that money on grocery shopping. Now, the dangerous part about knowing that you have extra money is convincing yourself not to go out and spend it on something that you don't really need. When I saw my balance and realized that I would be getting the Spring installment of my fellowship money in just over a month, I started thinking about that new computer that I mentioned a while back that I've been wanting. Although it is technically a big purchase, it's an amount of money that I would spend well that would last me for a long time. It's in every way, shape, and form an investment in my education. If I don't have the proper computer equipment, there is no way that I can function on a day to day basis with my school work. The more intricate the software is that I continue to use for my various analyses for school, the more powerful and more reliable of a computer I'm going to need, so therefore it only seems obvious that I should consider spending the extra money that I have from my fellowship to stabilize and upgrade my equipment. I have been wanting a new computer for a longtime, and in the eyes of most people, I'm pretty far overdue for one...at least for a new desktop. I suppose that in my true style, I will start looking around for the best deals, seeing as though the Thanksgiving and holiday sales are coming up, I may be able to get a better than expected deal on one really soon. I'll keep you posted!
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