so don't ask if you don't want to know
Posts tagged money
Living on tuna
Jul 1st
The good news is my car now has functioning air conditioning. At least until the compressor totally takes a shit. Apparently it’s iffy. But at least I know Max can fix that!
The bad news is… over the phone “it’s seven hundred and twenty” sounds an awful lot like “it’s a hundred and twenty.” Go ahead, repeat those over and over and you have to agree. I misheard the quote and had a very happy day yesterday up until the moment he called me back to tell me the car was finished and the total amount. FUUUUUUUUCK.
Oh well, it’s only money.
D’ya know you can live on tuna and macaroni and cheese fairly cheaply?
Other cheap meals include PB&J and bagged cereals.
And now I must call and make the stupid car payment on this stupid car.
WTF APS
Sep 11th
I haven’t paid an electric bill in a while, but I’m pretty sure when I did my SRP bill never broke this shit down this way. WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN???!!!!????
- Basic service charge………………………………………………………$1.83
- Delivery service charge……………………………………………….$50.57
- Environmental benefits surcharge……………………………….$5.70
- Federal environmental improvement surcharge………..$0.22
- Competition rules compliance charge………………………..$0.46
- System benefits charge…………………………………………………$2.86
- Power supply adjustment……………………………………………..$6.12
- Metering………………………………………………………………………….$2.61
- Meter reading…………………………………………………………………$1.80
- Billing……………………………………………………………………………….$2.03
- Generation of electricity…………………………………………….$124.78
- Transmission and ancillary services……………………………..$7.09
- Transmission cost adjustment……………………………………….$2.92
Seriously? Competition rules compliance charge? I pay them to follow the fucking rules? What the fuck. Maybe they should charge me for the gas they put in the trucks and maybe list what I pay for their 401k and retirement funds.
Oh yeah, then there’s the taxes and fees:
- Regulatory assessment
- State sales tax
- County sales tax
- City sales tax
- Franchise fee
Franchise fee? Anything else? Can’t think of another bullshit thing to add on. Perhaps a You Live in a Crappy Apartment and Have No Choice Fee?
Value, worth, cost, MONEY!
Jan 29th
We’ve often had this value vs. worth vs. cost conversation in my family. The kids and I went to yard sales almost every Saturday morning when they were younger. In an effort to teach them value and thrift we’d discuss at length what people at one sale would ask for an object because we’d see it at another sale for a different price. It’s not what the price is that matters, it’s what you’re willing to pay for it. Some people having yard sales over-price their item when the item has no value to anyone else. Value is personal to you, and would the price of VALUED ITEM A be worth the cost.
1stSon is the get-rich-quick kid, always asking, “what can I get for this?” He’s also cheaper/thriftier than I. Where I’m picky about which off-brand items I’ll buy, he seldom buys name-brand anything.
2ndSon on the other hand, goes for the label. Every item of clothing he owns (outside of what the Army made him wear) has Oakley or Tap Out or DC all over it.
GirlChild? Well when she has money she’s thrifty most of the time. She does splurge on Victoria Secret bras. And she prefers to eat out a lot, as do I.
There are some things one shouldn’t go cheap on. I refuse to use anything other than Dawn dishsoap. You MUST have at least 400 thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, seriously. Never ever buy cheap sheets, you’ll thank me later. With food, I’ll try off-brand things, but I usually end up as cheap as my taste buds will allow. I’m not eating crap to save a buck.
Value of things is harder to identify. The value of an object usually has a direct correlation to the cost of replacing it. I have a couple of Firefly/Serenity items and my Anne McCaffrey books where I’d be upset if anything happened. Of course photos of my family have value to me. But mostly stuff is just… stuff.
I won this comic book (signed by one of the artists, Jay Fotos) last night. I’ve never been a comic book person and I’ve no interest in that whole world. Other people at the event were very impressed which led me to believe there was value in this object. Someone even mentioned eBay! Seriously? I won’t bother with that but I would gift it (as an object of value to them) to someone who would appreciate it, but my non-interest in comic books means I’ve no idea which of my friends would… appreciate it, that is.
(Bad sentence structure there, I apologize.)
What do you place value on in your home? I guess it goes back to the old question, “If you had 10 minutes to leave your home forever what would you grab?” What items do you splurge on?
Welcome to the Deadbeat Club
Dec 27th
I accidentally answered the phone the other day and encountered the dreaded bill collector.
May I speak to Gerald?
There’s nobody here by that name.
May I speak to Debra?
This is she.
Oh, but you don’t know who Gerald is?
Yes I do but he’s not available at this number.
Do you know a number where he might be available?
Nope, we’ve been divorced for almost three years and I don’t have a number.
Blah blah blah, she exhausted every question possible about how to located him or if I knew where he was working or how much he made, etc. Then she started in on me and I gave her the barest minimum in responses.
(Here comes the good part.)
She: So after your necessary bills you have about $1000 left over a month so you could afford to make some sort of payment on this debt, right?
Me: Not really, I still have other bills and I do have to eat.
She: Well, what do you spend your money on? Cable TV and Internet? Eating out all the time? You could go with the basic plans and save money and stop going out and wasting money.
Me? Seriously? You’re suggesting I sit in the dark and eat Ramen so I can afford to make payments on a vehicle I no longer have? What kind of good-effort payments did you have in mind?
She: Even $25-50 a month would go a long way in clearing up your credit.
Me: DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG IT WOULD TAKE TO PAY OFF $14,000 WITH $25 A MONTH PAYMENTS? I’d be dead of boredom and starvation long before the first grand was paid off. No thanks, my credit is so far down in the crapper that the world’s best plumber couldn’t dredge it up.
She: So I should just put you down as refusing to negotiate?
Duh.
My position on being a deadbeat: It’s the business or bank’s responsibility to NOT give me credit. If they’re careless enough to throw away their money, why is it my responsibility to give it back? And with interest? What a rip-off! I made enough car payments to pay off the actual price of that car. It’s not my fault they chose to apply my payments to their interest scam first, and then when the car exploded and got ran over and repossessed it wasn’t worth enough to get the rest of their money. Price of doing business, yo.
Now with people it’s different. I hand someone money and I never expect to get it back, then when I do it’s a bonus, right? If someone hands me money and it’s a loan, I pay them back as soon as possible. (Thanks Mom, did you get my check yet?) People are people and I don’t renege on people. Just businesses.
Anyway, I told her not to bother calling me when she got further down the list and found the loan on his truck that we defaulted on too. Let it go beyotch, we ain’t paying. Blood out of a turnip and all that.
Fuck You Liza Minelli
Mar 10th
Money makes the world go around? The world continues to rotate whether you’ve got money or not.
The weekends keep getting longer. Casey’s been laid off his great job and has little money to keep his household running. I feel bad but I don’t have spare money. Ginnie’s out of a job, so she tends to stay home to eat instead of going out all the time. Corey was laid off, too. NOBODY is working and everyone is eating my food. Casey and Kira usually show up sometime on Saturday and just hang out and that kid eats all the time. Peanut butter sandwiches, cereal or cheese. Milk and cheese add up!
Today is Casey’s 26th birthday and he guilted me into baking a cake. And he wanted something specific for dinner, which WalMart was out of (of course) so I had to go to another store and pay an extra $1 per package for it. This just about shot my extras budget for the week. In return he tells me I don’t have to pay him the $100 I still owe him from last month. Mighty white of you there son.
Friend of mine gave me a name to help clean up my credit (fat chance) and looking at the guy’s website, I can’t even afford to do that. I can’t get out of this lease without paying two months rent.
Personally, I can live on sandwiches and cereal, mac & cheese and eggs – in order to have money to go out for #evfn with my friends. I can usually make what I have stretch for my own priorities, but I can’t feed everyone. But what can I do? Gee, kid you’re on your own? I’m nagging Ginnie every day to suck it up and get another job. Casey is supposed to go back to his old tool selling job tomorrow and they’re both supposed to eventually get unemployment. It’s taking a long time for that stuff to kick in.
No, I’m not asking for and don’t anyone send any money. That just makes me feel guiltier and more of a leech. I’m just bitching. One of the projects I was working on for extra money the guy canceled after I did a bunch of work, and I don’t know if he still plans on paying me. I guess I’ll find out Wednesday. And another project for another friend fell through before I even started.
I don’t know what I’m going to do. Bitch a little here, bitch out loud to them, then sell my body? Yeah right, I can’t even give it away.
