The Hustle of Sistah Ant

My lil’ cousin and I were talking yesterday and she mentioned wanting to visit her folks over the weekend but not having money for gas.  I told her that since Mister Ant and I are going to pass her on the way anyway and our parents are within miles of each other, we didn’t mind stopping to pick her up on the way down south, so that is the new plan.

I didn’t think about how leaving the highway to pick her up on the way there and back will add mileage to the trip tonight.  Or about how having one more body and another bag of clothes in the car might affect the mileage, especially since I am taking my laundry to my folks’ house (don’t even say anything about that, ‘cause if you didn’t have a washer and dryer at your home, you’d probably consider it, too - although I’m not sure what’s more expensive, the laundromat quarters or the amount of gas mileage I’m sacrificing by having the extra weight in the car).  The heavier the car is, the worse the gas mileage will be.  Carpooling, in this case, isn’t helping me, because I’m not asking my lil’ cousin for gas money.  That just isn’t right.

Oh well.  The laundry has to get done.  And I’m helping the kid out.  I remember when I was a broke college student and only went home when I could afford it.  Gas costs four times as much now as it did when I was in college.  If not for me, girlfriend would be stuck in campus housing all weekend.

Have a great weekend!  (But stay frugal - maybe you can carpool to your destination, too!) 

This project I’m on was supposed to finish a week and a half ago.  It’s still going.

But the project is over on Friday.  My co-workers are finding new projects and/or finding out about unemployment.  But I’m not.

I am coming back on Monday.  The project is not over for me.  My employer wants to keep me on a while longer.

Thank God for small blessings.  And big ones, too. 

Stupid renter’s insurance.  Stupid annual professional association fees.  Stupid continuing legal education course requirement.  Stupid, just stupid.  Stupid printer cartridges.  Stupid gas!!!!!!!  Stupid thirty dollars for half a stupid tank of stupid, stupid gas!!!!!!!  Stupid $3.60 bread.  Stupid food, period.  Just stupid.  Stupid lunch.  Stupid healthy food for being more expensive than regular food.  Stupid money.  Stupid!  Stupid electricity.  Stupid wallet, stupid checkbook.  Stupid spending.  I’m tired of spending stupid money.   Arrggh! STUPID!!!

It helps to get it out every once in a while, you know?

I haven’t been talking about my retirement savings much lately, but it has been on my mind…  I have a traditional IRA, mainly because I started a 401K at my previous job, and when I was laid off, I rolled the balance over into the IRA to keep from having to pay taxes on the money.  I couldn’t roll it into a Roth, so there’s my little bit of money in a Fidelity account.  I’ve been adding about 10% of my net pay into it - not always 10 and not every pay period, but most of the 10 and most of the time.  I know I should do better, but dangit, all I can think about lately is this house I’m saving for.  Besides, I’m kind of hoping that I’ll be able to catch up with my next 401K and matching.  All I can say is, don’t be like me - all the advice I’ve been reading says that the key to retirement savings is to save early, save regularly, and save with discipline.

Anyway, I want a Roth, for its tax advantages and for its flexibility.  It’s what I’ve wanted for a while, but I didn’t get around to it because I was so busy getting rid of my credit card debt.  By the time I got rid of my revolving debt, I’d already started and lost the 401K.  Now, as my rollover IRA is growing and approaching an amount where I’m comfortable putting less than $100 a month in it, as long as I’m also contributing a more substantial amount to another retirement account, I’m thinking that I might want to open a Roth with Vanguard…  I need to do some research.  Or maybe talk to someone.  I’m worried about whether or not I’m making my retirement saving situation more complicated than it needs to be, especially while I’m still looking for a job, saving for this house, and 401K-less.

Called myself balancing my checkbook last night.  My credit union says that I have $22.53 more than my checkbook register says, even after accounting for pending transactions.  So where is this discrepancy coming from?  I found it by putting all my recent receipt amounts into my checkbook register and coming up with a new checkbook balance, before comparing that balance to the amount my credit union says is my actual balance. 

I would understand if maybe I thought I had more money that the credit union said I had, and the reason for the discrepancy is that I didn’t account for a purchase I made.

But this is different.  Surely I haven’t subtracted $22.53 more than I’ve actually spent.  You know, just for the heck of it.

*Sigh*  Not that I was planning on spending down to my last dime, but now I have to be extra conscientious about my spending, until I figure out what my balance actually is. 

When I checked my credit this weekend, I found out that I’m in less debt than I thought.

Over fifteen hundred dollars less debt!  I’m so simultaneously happy and embarrassed.

Happy because now, I know that I have fifteen hundred dollars less to pay on my car note before my car is paid off and I own it outright - title in hand.

Embarrassed because I can’t even remember what janky math it was that I used to get the outstanding car loan amount wrong in the first place.  Something about the monthly payment amount times the total number of payments over the life of the loan minus the combined amount of payments already made, bla bla bla, I dunno what happened, but I messed it up.  I’m a lawyer, not an engineer.

But at least now, I realize that I own more of my car than I thought I did.  This makes me feel a little less guilty about the debt that I’ve gotten myself into.  I’ve noticed that every month lately I’ve been so busy putting money away that I haven’t been making my debt total go down by very much at all.  This correction is psychologically good for me.  I’m actually in the same amount of debt I was in before I realized my mistake, but it looks like I’m in less debt, so I feel better anyway.  …Um, despite the mistake.

Word to the wise ants out there:  Double check your math. 

In conversations with my Mom over the weekend, I told her about my current My Own Home balance ($9,000.00) and credit score (808) to apprise her of my progress, and she wanted to know why this weekend’s neighborhood tour of houses was a trial run and not actual house hunting.  Her opinion is that ten thousand dollars, which I’m not long from having saved, is a fine down payment for a house, and with my credit, I should be good to go.  Right now the story is that it’s a buyer’s market, so I should go ahead now, while I’m employed, and move.

First, $10K is still thousands shy of the 10% of the price I expect to put down for the kind of houses I’ve been looking at, and that isn’t even counting the closing costs and moving expenses necessary to get me in the door.  I want, for my own personal satisfaction, and for the sake of my monthly mortgage payment amount, to put down at least 10% and have at least another $5,000 (in my emergency fund) available for other expenses.  Ideally, I could get some help from the seller or a first time home buyer’s program, at least on the other expenses, but I realize I may not even be able to get that. 

Also, a buyer’s market for whom?  Not Philadelphians - not unless they’re looking for a condo in particular areas.  From what I’ve been reading, the single-family-home market in my city hasn’t missed a beat.  Places may stay on the market a little longer, and the prices are a little stagnant, but the houses are still moving.  I’m not counting on the media’s wink-wink, nudge-nudge, "Buyers, take advantage of the weak market and buy a house now before it’s too late" message that I’m constantly hearing.  I think that depends on your situation and where you are.  The last wave of people who bought houses without thinking it through are renting now, if they’re lucky.

I also think that doesn’t mean you can should buy a house with too little down.  This is how people come to consider loans that are bad products for them - they’re buying something they can’t yet afford.  I’m already anticipating that an ARM will be marketed to me, since I’m putting down only about 10% instead of the recommended 20% and will need to borrow more than 80% of the purchase amount.  I need to brush up on my reading (for what seems like the eightieth time) so that when I am mortgage hunting, I will understand the jargon from lenders I don’t trust.

One more very, very important thing.  I am employed, but I am a temporary employee with scant benefits and very little job security.  Until that changes, no matter what my credit score is, and no matter how much money I have to put down, I have no business entering into a mortgage agreement.  Period. Especially with the job market the way it is now.  Exclamation point. (That said, I bet other contractors buy homes, and I wonder how they do it.)

I’m just going to have to keep working and waiting and educating myself.  (And taking my well-meaning but never-entered-into-a-conventional-mortgage mom’s advice with a rock of salt.)  Don’t get me wrong, I am insanely eager.  But I’m not much of a gambler.

Remember how I gave myself a gas allowance for traveling this past weekend?  Well, I didn’t make the trip - I just didn’t feel like doing all of that driving.  So… the question arises: what should I do with the money I’d planned to go out of town with?  First, considering that I still plan on making the trip, I could hold on to the money for when I actually do make that trip.  Another possibility is to spend the money on something else.  I have some expenditures coming up, like conference fees and professional dues.  Yet another possibility remains, because I could just save the money.

I’m going to save the money.  Today, I’ll deposit it into my bank account, which I’ve already decided will be my "spending money" account for my New Orleans trip and for any other thing I might want to buy.

Why not the other options?  I actually don’t see the difference between holding onto the money for when I do take the trip and putting the money in my "spending money" account.  And I have already planned to use my upcoming income for the other upcoming expenditures.  I guess my general tendency is, "When in doubt, save."

Eight-oh-eight.

My eyes bugged wide open as I came face-to-face with my credit score.  I exclaimed my joy!

I felt a profound sense of satisfaction as I read the following commentary on my credit report:

"Your score is excellent, and a wide array of loans and credit cards will likely be available to you, often at attractive rates. It is unlikely that your credit application would be denied based on this score alone. The fact that you have received such a high score implies that you scored the maximum (or very near the maximum) possible points for many of the aspects that are evaluated by the FICO score. As such, you should not consider the factors discussed later in this analysis to be any serious flaws with your credit history. They simply indicate the few factors on which you did not score the absolute maximum possible points. You should already have a wide array of credit products available to you."

I felt even more confident about my ability to get my own home - the home I have been saving like a madwoman for - the home I was driving around a certain neighborhood taking pictures for just this past weekend.  It felt good to see a pie chart with 99% non-revolving installment debt reported (meaning my credit card debt is gone, and all that’s left are student loans and my car note).  It felt good to look over the payment history of all of my accounts and see no gaps, no late payments, no delinquencies, no charge offs…

But for the grace of God - the blessings of employment, unemployment insurance, the ability to save,  the discipline to watch my spending, solid common-sense hustle, and no devastating emergencies - I wouldn’t be looking eight-oh-eight in the face.

If you want to check your credit report for free, as I’ve been doing for the past few years now (it’s taken me this long to work the factors and pull my score out of the 600s), go to AnnualCreditReport.com.  If you’d like to view your FICO score as well, it is also available there for a separate fee.  Instead of checking all three companies’ reports, I have only checked one for now, and I’ll come back to check the others at intervals between now and when I start mortgage shopping.  This is important because they each report differently and you should know what people will see when they check your report - details, errors, and omissions can be different on each report and it’s our job to stay on top of it.

Got paid Thursday.  I took one of my favorite planning tools, the back of a paystub envelope, and worked out a plan for the entire check.  At the top of the envelope I wrote the balance in my account, and then I added it to my direct deposit amount.

This time I was committed to leaving myself enough money to get through the week to my next paycheck.  So I brainstormed to think of every thing I should expect to have to spend money on in that amount of time.

The obvious expenditures were my mobile phone bill, the balances on my credit cards, and a retirement contribution.  I knew that I wanted to stash money into the My Own Home account, but instead of making the same mistake I made before, I didn’t want to save so much that I’d be handicapped on spending for the rest of the week.  I thought about $100 for groceries and other incidentals (which I usually leave in the account as a buffer).  And then I thought really hard to see if there was anything else I might spend money on.  Then I remembered the roadtrip I’ve planned to go see my parents over this weekend.  It usually takes the majority of one tank of gas to get there and another to get back.  For me, that’s $35 per tank, or $70, which I added to my list of expected expenditures.

Then I subtracted each of the expenditures, including the $170 for groceries, incidentals, and gas, from the new balance.  This left me with $474.09, which I promptly deposited into my My Own Home account.  It felt good.  Saving as you go is the good life.

If I hadn’t left an allowance for the roadtrip, I probably would have put the gas on my credit card, for fear of cutting too much into my groceries/incidentals allowance or raiding my savings.  Then I would have had to pay the cards off on my next paycheck.  I understand that that’s not the worst thing in the world, since at least I would pay the balance off of the credit card as soon as I receive my next paycheck, thereby avoiding having to pay interest on the balance.  However, why pay later when you can pay now?  At this point the financial rewards my credit cards offer really aren’t that compelling - I’d rather have the peace of mind of knowing that I don’t owe anyone anything.  I don’t really like creating a tab - even if it’s a payable tab.  When I go on my roadtrip, I can pay for the gas, subtract the amount from my checking account, and not give it a second thought.  Paying as you go is the good life.