Little bits and pieces of progress and good news

I sold a story. Not for much money, but it's more money than no money.

It's November 28 and we have not had to run our heat yet this year. (It's 44 degrees outside right now - I just checked.) The new windows installed in May promise a winter like we've never had before here (a winter without $385 gas and electric bills.)

Two gas cards totally paid off, two major credit cards totally paid off, one store card totally paid off, and:

That same store card about to be closed edit as of 1:28 PM: is now closed (I don't need a $300 limit from Target), another store card about to be closed (I don't need a non-reporting limit from Neiman Marcus, I don't buy their stuff, and the card has been at zero for almost the entire life of the card and with the non-reporting limit, it's simply shortening my "average account age,") and

Two major cards about to be "opted out" of. Mr. 444 and I have twin mastercards under a label too embarrassing to report here, and while we've been perfect high-interest-paying customers for a year or more on these cards, we received rate-jack letters in the mail like many consumers have, apparently regardless of account management behavior. A phone call will be made next week to opt out before the deadline and freeze these cards (close them to new use) so we can pay them down at the current rate instead of the new price-gouging rate proposed by the card issuer.



That's the news around here. What's the news at everyone else's house?

Ouch, that hurt!

I put my money where my mouth is, and I took $1,070 out of my brokerage and completely paid off a credit card. One that was about to ratejack me next month, I found out when I called today to verify the interest rate.

Don't ask me why I was carrying that high a balance on a gasoline credit card. Am I a long-distance trucker? No. A fleet owner? No. Just a stupid/lazy consumer who allowed months' worth of gas purchases for my gas-sipper car to pile up and I looked the other way regarding the 21% interest I was paying on it.


*I shouldn't badmouth Mobil here because it's really Texaco I'm talking about

I thought they were raising their rates like everyone else, but when they confirmed for me that they were, indeed raising them for "everyone" in December (nice holiday present, huh?) I imagined 22 or 23%. After all, it's already outrageous and not designed for carrying from month to month. (Only a fool.... I mean, it's a GAS card. Not a VISA or MC, just a plain old gas card.)

When the CSR told me 26.66%, I said, "What? Wow. You have got to be kidding." Her bored/mildly shameful silence told me she was not. I said, "Well, we just paid off my husband's card - I guess we're paying mine off next."

And I meant it!

p.s. Gotta love this day and age of instant banking. From stock to cash to checking account to credit card, to being credited as paid TODAY, all in a few clicks of the mouse.

Dear [Mrs. 444]:
Thank you for scheduling your credit card payment online.
Your payment of $ 1071.80 will post to your account on 11-25-2009.
Login to view and manage your account online:
* Update personal information
* Monitor recent activity
Sincerely,
Chevron and Texaco Credit Card Services

Destructo Los Tarjetas Creditos, part 2

Remember when it was my goal to move my balances around and pay off my cash advances? Or at least shuffle them around to my best advantage? Well, I've accomplished that this year, so I guess I've done something right.

But after all the shuffling is said and done, I still have a ____load of credit card debt. And I am getting very sick of it.



I realize I have a mental problem wherein I am loathe to take any money out of my investments, even when I have an absolute monster of debt breathing down my neck. I have done an analysis of my stock account performance and it goes way up and then way down while I sit there watching, like a helpless spectator (because my mental block extends to my extreme reluctance to sell a stock at any time - I "fall in love" with my stocks, which is the Investor No-No #1 rule.)

I'm going to try the harsher strategy of forcing myself to skim some fat off the top and pay off one of my odious bills at a time. No matter how much it seems like a drop in the bucket, I just have to make some progress on these debts.

Pretty soon some money from my great-uncle's trust will start rolling in (although I have no earthly idea what the amount(s) will be) and I don't want his money to come into the scene as disaster-relief. I want to start cleaning up the disaster area in advance of the arrival of his kindly-bequeathed assets.

It's going to hurt to take large chunks out of my investment account but that's what I'm going to do. It's high time I started taking the repayment of these debts seriously and not simply hoping that the means to repay them will magically appear. I tend to be an all-or-nothing person and I'd like to wipe them out in one day but I know that's not possible. It's boring, tedious, and not as rewarding to take the slow, disciplined approach but I guess that's what I'm going to have to do. Part of this psychology problem is that I am afraid I'll never have as many assets as I have right now, and I'll lose out on the opportunity to make something of them if I ream them out and throw them at the likes of Chase Bank and their greedy, opportunistic ilk. The thought of being "debt free" or as close to debt-free as I can manage at this moment is very tempting, but the idea of being asset-less is very scary to me. My instinct tells me that is not the right move, either.

Since I know that some assets will be coming in, I should just have some courage and take a few steps across the shaky bridge over the icy river in the pitch-black darkness (yeah, sounds dramatic, but you see how much I hate taking anything out of these investments, truncated as they are over what they used to be.) I'm trying to take the zoom-out view of my life and realize that I may have better days ahead and what I do today might affect how much better those days will be. On a gut level, I can tell you that I am hating this debt more and more every day. It's been almost a year since I started this blog, with the goal in mind of doing something about them. Reduction of debt has been a fail, but the rescue of my investments has been a win. So I'll just start from where I am right now and regroup.

The "stretch" plan

So there's a $30K annuity (present value actually $31.5K) left to us by our mother three years ago, unfortunately in the name of just one of the four of us (my sister); she is ethical enough to know that it should be split four ways. However, unbeknownst to all of us until now (I did periodically scratch my head and wonder, "Whatever did happen to that thirty thousand dollars?") her HUSBAND who was worried about HIS taxes and HIS tuition tax deduction called the insurer and asked that it not be paid out in one lump; no, not even on the maximum-five-year distribution plan, but rather that a fancy "stretch" payout term be implemented which takes into account my sister's actuarial lifespan and computes payments based on her not seeing the full proceeds until her life is over. Meaning small payments for many years. I now understand the $250 or so per year being sent to me in relation to this $30K annuity.

?!?!?!

Don't get me wrong, I understand taxes and I understand interest (woo hoo - 4.5% per year accruing on that sh__) and I understand tax brackets and financial aid. I can't feel extremely sorry for people who make so much money that they are obsessed with getting a $4,000 reduction in their taxable income or over the possibility of missing out on a few dollars of financial aid.


This is what the printed-out chart from the insurance company looked like the first and only time I saw it three years ago.

My sister and her husband are the types you would all be proud of: No debt, other than a fifteen-year mortgage, cars paid for in cash, tuition paid up front, probably no loans (I don't think they take out loans on anything) and as for their moral values, I won't go into that because I don't want to alienate any of our readers by bringing up points we may or may not all agree on. Let's just say that you'd be surprised, after seeing the type of car they drive, and the bumper stickers they sport, (if they have any, but the type they would if they sported bumper stickers) and the hypocrisy (little snooty enclave in the gritty inner city, across-town private schools all the way for them, and most-expensive-in-the-country colleges for their kids - Oh no, we could never send them (gasp) locally... Well, you might be surprised (I was) what complete and total pikers they are.

I mean, I've heard their song and dance about tax liability before. There was - I kid you not - $60 coming her way from a federal program that has to do with tobacco growers - and she said she didn't want any of it and ordered it split between the three others of us. (Anyone in our family have lung disease? No... Smoke, even? No...) It turns out I later learned that they count pennies and are loathe to go into the "next tax bracket," even though I've explained till the words run together that if you go $60 into the next bracket, you'll pay the higher rate, but only on that $60 that is over...

Anyway, after much bilious griping and mean-spirited finger-pointing she has caved to pressure from her three siblings (me, my brother, and my other brother who actually died waiting for his request to be approved or denied) that she get that annuity either stepped up or paid in a lump. My brother had to offer to take it in his name so that taxes (even though we offered to reimburse for our portions - that's only reasonable, natural, and fair) would not be an issue for Mr. and Mrs. Piker.

You would think an enemy had called and guilted her into donating her last kidney, so scornful and bitter is my sister's reaction to last weekend's double-team request by my brother and I that she wrap up this relatively small (yet sizeable, if available to use in the present and not in fragments over the next thirty years) account. I understand it's because she "doesn't understand taxes" and "doesn't understand financial aid" and "doesn't understand any of that stuff" and therefore it's her husband breathing down her neck that's at the root of this nasty grumpitude my brother and I are now subjected to. I guess that's the "fee" my brother and I pre-pay immediately; having to take our lumps from someone who seems to regard us as more bothersome than an infected pimple on her ass.

I'm still sort of reeling over Mr. Piker's nerve in stepping over the heads of all of us and deciding on behalf of a sick man and his three siblings that his own (er... I mean, his and his wife's) tax concerns are more important than two sons and two daughters getting the benefit their mother obviously intended to go to them.

Why was it left in just one person's name? This is from a job either in the 1970s or the 1990s. It was probably provided by the employer and largely forgotten about. I'm guessing one name could be listed (actually my older brother is listed as a secondary or joint beneficiary) and probably had to do with who was the most adult, age-wise, at the time.

Mr. 444 is a big man

I don't mean that he wears XL shirts because while he doesn't now, he did (in fact, XXL or larger at one point and he's down to L now, taking control of his health and his weight which is more than a lot of dudes will even try to do - and this is only one of the many ways that Mr. 444 is big enough to tackle his problems and not have a give-up, can't-help-it attitude. He has the best attitude of anyone I have ever known.)

But what I really meant to say is that despite a healthy dose of pride, an above-average appetite for risk-taking, and admirable ambition, he knows when to smarten up and admit that he could change his ways financially, as well. Before I go into what he has done that is smart (and gracious) financially, let's look at a few corollaries to what I will be getting at, ultimately.

As a teenager his parents hired a bass guitar teacher for him and after a period of time, the teacher told him, "You know everything I know now. I can't teach you any more." Mr. 444 went on to become the best bass player in a wide area (I won't specify "in the state" or anything like that because he always takes modest exception but let me tell you, it would be hard to find a more competent, talented bass player.)

Has anyone read Thomas Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbridge"? Mr. Henchard hires young Donald Farfrae and soon enough Farfrae is the one running things, and customers ask for him by name. Unfortunately Henchard feels threatened by this and cuts Farfrae loose. I'm sure you can guess what happend next: Despite Farfrae's vow not to take Henchard's business directly, he gains enough new clients that soon his trade is flourishing while Henchard's business sinks down in the dumps. Great book - it's available as a drama on a 3 DVD set, also.

So anyway, at the risk of embarrassing Mr. 444 I have some charts of our Etrade accounts. I was concerned because we have a limited amount of money and we can't afford to lose it all. Mr. 444 has understood how to invest for a long time but I didn't even know what a mutual fund was up until 2007. I think it was about two years ago that I even dipped my toe into the world of owning a single stock, and I've been learning at a furious pace (hastened by painful mistakes along the way) ever since. Anyone can have bad luck at investing - it's so tricky that a large component of it is hoping and praying that you won't step on some thin ice that you didn't count on being right there under your foot, while out too far to get yourself back to where you were.

Mr. 444's account this year (through Friday)



Here's me:



See that lowest dip in his account followed by a climb upward? He decided he'd take some serious advice from me; I'm glad he did; I'd feel terrible if I steered him wrong but it's working out OK for now.

Pardon what seems like gloating (I'm tooting my own horn here in a roundabout way, and since I'm not good at many things, I think it's acceptable to go with that once in a while) and what seems like a public embarrassment of Mr. 444. I just asked him and he's fine with it. It's just BUSINESS. It's only money. We have to get past our pride to learn. I mean, I have made some serious mistakes. What you see above may, in fact, represent an inordinate amount of bad luck on his part and good luck on my part. And there are things I could have done this year to get a better return than what you see here. I do not have all the answers and I have no easy strategy or "system." And in the past (2008) I made such a costly mistake, pretty much all at once, that I nearly lost all of our money; in fact, I feel responsible for having put us into a negative net worth situation. Can you believe that I still don't want to talk about that yet? I've talked about it more and more, I guess, and someday I'll tell the whole tale. It may seem anticlimactic by then, and the farther in the past it recedes the more the drama may fade. Suffice it to say that I did not understand some very important money-managing details (I'm not going to say it was "bad luck" on my part because it was ME - my bad decision - not bad luck) and I kissed a huge amount of money goodbye in a small handful of transactions. I wonder if I'll ever be able to live that down - and I'm talking about to myself, not to anyone else - Mr. 444 does not and has never blamed me nor tried for even one second to make me feel bad about that. Now see what I mean about what a big person he is?

All right, all right, I realize I've been a boring blogger

I want to thank those who left their mathematical ruminations for me. I will get back to that subject soon. Right now I'm obsessed with cleaning my desk so I can throw it out (you can't imagine what a cheap piece of BLEEP I've been working on for 8 years now - actually I'm going to freecycle it because it'll make a nice desk for some elementary school student somewhere. Maybe a first-grader. Hmm... kids in my own house might like a desk. Freecycle in my own household maybe??)

Yes, I bought a desk when I shouldn't. I was jealous. You see, Mr. 444 brought home an absolute behemoth from his office, totally free. They were getting rid of it. Do you know the difference between the real office desk and the



circa 2001? From the clearance aisle of the now-out-of-business discount store five states away? This is the approximate size of what I've been typing to you from every day. Sort of like the above but with the roll-out tray long-gone; it fell out once and imparted a toe hematoma so scary it required an x-ray, and the color didn't fully disappear for, I'd say, the better part of a year. Goodbye old desk, goodbye old blackened-toe memories.

So... I did order something rather modest but which will make me feel like less of a first-grader next to Mr. 444, (literally next to him, our desks abutting as they are.)



First it was in New York. Then Smyrna, DE. Then on the truck to my local store. (I didn't pay for home delivery - give me credit for saving $25 by making Mr. 444 haul it home for me.) They're going to call me any day now and my desk is only half-cleared. I'm moving a good portion of stuff onto the bookshelf to my right shoulder, but I'm also throwing away the percentage of papers on my desk that turned out to be trash - about 95%. (If you're wondering how many papers/objects a desk that size could hold, think: on, around, behind, next to, by my feet... you get the picture.)

Could really use some help here (APB - please give input)

OK, I've been told that I'm a smart person but I'm not always so sure about that. I can't see things that should possibly be obvious (then again, they may be more complex than they first appear.)

Read the post below if you have time. If not; well - you know my debtload. You know I am paying about $21 per day in interest alone, and that amounts to something over $600 per month. Sickening, eh?

You can see my (not Mr. 444's, not our Roths) investment account in the post below. Well, here is the second (borrowed) half of my account, updated as of a few minutes ago. See how, just with the bottom two investments, I could sell them right now and the gain I've made over a couple of days would pay nearly all my interest for an entire month.

I've thought that I should harness the power of these good days and put up some protection against bad days, in order to improve my investment health and stability and also tackle my debts in the process.

What would you do? What should I do? I hope none of you would say, "Well, I'd sell every penny of every investment right now and have $40K in debt instead of $50K in debt." I hope you see that I do need to keep the power of my investments... I'm just asking... in what judicious and strategic way should I take some off the top, and when, in order to sock it to my toxic, costly debt? I'm obviously paralyzed by indecision.

News (assorted)

I have slacked on posting because I've been busy with other matters. Housekeeping is similar to, but different from in some unimportant ways, financial housekeeping. I've determined the need to totally shake down my house (actual house, not financial house.) I won't bore everyone with the details and I won't post lots of photos (actually when I'm done I may have a few to share) but let's just say... I've mentioned before the "Hoarders" show which has actually spurred me to action, I think - don't get the idea that we're that bad. But somewhere between I'd say the middle 60% of homes in the nation and the Hoarders people lie us. (and I think I'm being generous by placing us somewhere in the worst 20% because it might be more like worst 10% or 5% if I had to place a serious guess.) Meaning that we have pockets that lean toward looking like a Hoarders disaster, and the general burden of "stuff" we've been accumulating is starting to feel suffocating, and add to that discipline none of us have ever learned regarding sorting, throwing away, and generally maintaining any space. A perfect housekeeper I will never be and I don't strive to be. But when, for example, little receipts and ticket stubs from more than a year ago start obscuring entire desk surfaces and outfits not worn since last summer form the foundation for piles of clothing taking over the bathroom vanity and starting to encroach upon the sink, and bins upon stacked bins contain bills from 9 years ago which were simply stashed during a move and never sorted through - something has to give. Dust has been piling up and allergies have been starting to result. So a campaign that may take a year has been initiated, with all family members on board in some capacity.

OK, on to finances. No one came up with anything in response to this plea for help, so I've had to ruminate and calculate with only my own brainpower for fuel. It's sort of like staring down the obvious. Not only have I been investing, but I've been investing with the house's (the brokerage's) money, so I have to watch that very carefully. Poor investment choices have not been my issue; volatile investment choices paired with the use of leverage have been quite dangerous, though. I hope and pray I can learn to rein in greed and keep myself out of the way of the forces that could run me down and leave me ruined. I guess if I figure this out, I'll be a better investor than most, huh?

Quick example to illustrate. I have made a rough and somewhat arbitrary (but bottom-line correct) division between "my" stocks and the house's stocks. Keep in mind, I have to pay back the house for those stocks bought with their money, market conditions and subsequent stock prices notwithstanding. Today is a good day but see how I have just barely broken even (last week I was in the hole somewhat - meaning I owed several hundred dollars to "the house" in addition to being in the position of needing to pay back my loan for those stocks eventually and theoretically.) I have tracked them on two different streamer lists.

First I'll list "my" stocks.



Note that I paid $9,755.32 for these stocks and they are worth, as of this moment, $11,428.29. This is the value of my account (a day or two behind - I've actually made a little today on the "borrowed" or margin stocks, as you'll see below.)

Here is what I am considering my margin-bought stocks. This is because I owe (or did when I set up this streamer a few days ago - I could re-allocate these stocks as "mine" or the house's any time I want) - about $12,700. In other words, Etrade graciously (for a fee, of course, which is just 7% interest per year) fronted to me $12K to invest, with the understanding that I owe them that money, whether stock value goes up or down. They're like co-investors with me, asking only for fixed interest and letting me keep all the profit and be responsible for any loss.

Understand margin better now, if you didn't understand it already?




(*look for the 444s on the bottom line)
So as you can see, I owe $12,702.75 to Etrade, payable at any time or no time (as long as I have the funds to keep my account in good standing which includes a minimum equity requirement I won't bore you with the details of) but if those stocks go down, the loss is mine; Etrade doesn't get hurt. They get their money, and interest, either way. So.. it's to my benefit to see that the gain (currently $444) on that gets harvested (cashed in and possibly sent to my bills - what do you think?) or at least watched for continuing gain and not allowed to diminish and decay till the return is negative. Because that's not just investing - that's BORROWING to invest!

Any thoughts/suggestions are welcome. Today's gain on just the margin portion is $480, so I'm in a good mood; gain on my own portion is $316 today, and that's not even looking at Mr. 444's account or our Roths (a quick glance shows those, in aggregate, up about $450 right now for the day.)

On to the last item: For anyone curious about the estate/trust matter (and I'm curious, but too polite to go asking detailed questions so I nose around using searches of public data): While there are so many variables I can't make any real predictions of what is going on (I can only GUESS - an educated guess, albeit - at the number of beneficiaries alongside myself and their weighted shares) I have found evidence that at least some of the assets of the trust (and these are just the ones I found - they could comprise the bulk or some smaller portion for all I know) total close to 2 million dollars. So that's at least promising; it's better than finding two pieces of real estate worth 1/10 of the price, which is something I would not have been at all surprised to have found. It was a nice moment of eyeball-popping to see those commas and those strings of digits and realize that yes, the two commas and seven digits do represent property in excess of a million dollars in value. More later, as I know it (which could be some time from now...)

Credit up, debt down

Not much new to report, except that our available credit is up and our debt is down. Scroll a little ways down the page and you'll see those graphics on the right.

Keep in mind that the available credit figure represents only NON-store-cards. I don't list available credit on store cards. But I do list all the amounts owed to all cards as "credit card debt." Actually, if you're really interested, clicking on "available credit" will give you all the details. Either on the chart or in the prior sentence.

And the "daily interest we pay" has gone down. By a whole dollar! Whoop it up!

Need your mathematical help (notes taken straight from the instant messenger)

(addressing Mr. 444 who is responding as he can between chewing his fingernails to the bone and tearing his hair out)

"Mrs444 (1:07:15 PM): I am going to have to brainstorm a formula I will follow from now on. When I am fully margined and enjoy gains, I am going to have to take a certain amount of that gain out at the end of each positive day and put a certain amount aside for potential reinvestment and take a certain amount out to pay down debt.

Mrs444 (1:09:25 PM): Then, I am going to have to come up with a percentage that I will tolerate my portfolio falling in value before I convert back to no margin owed. Then maybe another percentage before I convert to cash, in increments. I have studied my account behavior and have learned that it looks exactly like the behavior of FLSTX (Fidelity Leveraged Company Stock, your 401K holding) except in an exaggerated scale. And the problem is that downswings can force me into situations where I may not have cash to bail myself out or may be forced to sell at very disadvantageous prices. Back to my old saw of "margin is to be used on the upswing but paid back on the downswing."

I really dislike doing things by rigid formulas but I think sometimes I need them because they can provide discipline and take the focus out a notch or two. I get caught up in the minute-by-minute and lose sight of the big picture. I'll include the actual graphics to show you guys what I am talking about.





Any mathematical minds out there have any input for me? Margin is a very powerful took for the upside (see it?) but it takes away on the downside for chumps like me who sit on their hands during market routs, humming, "The sun'll come out, tomorrow... bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow..." (Get it? My bottom dollar is soon literally on the line.)

I look forward to any suggestions of strategy revolving around use of margin (being able to invest 2x the actual value of the money in my account, which is what I customarily do, which is partly why I do so well) that could be used to preserve those up-spikes pretty well and limit the down-spikes without seriously crippling my potential to take optimal advantage of any subsequent market rise.

Credit card rewards.. Oh,you have no idea!

I have to admit that I applied for and got an Old Navy store card, and I did spend $30 with it. (Remember the half-price shirts?) Well, I logged on to monitor my account and I was shocked at the cash advance limit on this humble little $400-limit store card. Who would have known?

I lost $1,488.00 in one day

Hey, look, I originally titled this post "Four Cards Paid Off" but I noticed in the last few posts that negative titles draw readers and commenters. Thus the re-title. Back to our regularly-scheduled post:

I never really feel that I am getting anywhere so I find shreds of evidence that I'm doing something right and try to convince myself. Thus the graphic below showing four big fat zero-balance credit cards.

iTunes Juniper (Barclay's Bank) is the stupidest credit card ever invented in the history of the universe. OK, it's not one of those proprietary cards where you can only order slankets from their catalog of stuff. It's a real Visa but Mr. 444 paid it off once before and asked if the rate (22.24%) could be lowered or the credit limit ($500) increased but they told him, "NEVER!" Really, they said that this particular "card product" is not eligible for anything. Meaning it's a loser card for losers and always has been and always will be. I mean, maybe someone else has this card with a sweet rate and a generous limit but apparently it's coded as some sort of "product" that will never be modified.

So it's paid off. Same thing with Target. If they upgrade it to a Target Visa this holiday season (cannot be requested; only the shadowy figures behind the curtain can effect this change at their discretion) I'll keep the card, even with the terrible rate I know it'll come with; otherwise I'll close it.

I left the non-paid-off Texaco card in the screen shot because I think I should roll it into another card with available credit and call it paid. The limit is low, the rate is high, and the minimum payments are a high percentage of balance. All a losing combination. What do you guys think?

If you're wondering why we don't close cards, well - maybe we will and we have closed SOME, but if you have ever needed to understand principles of credit repair, it helps a FICO score to have open, available credit and age, also (not age of person, but age of credit lines, to show that we didn't just fall off the turnip truck yesterday.)



As for the $500 some of you were kind enough to offer your thoughts on... well, yesterday (and a few days prior) was a terrible stock market day. Enough to make me question my sanity and my brains. So like an impulsive nutjob as soon as it hit the receiving bank I transferred it right back from whence it came, the brokerage. I took profits yesterday ($700 worth) in the middle of the day out of disgust and fear. Then after an hour or so I did what I always do: Get back in. For better or for worse, I just can't sit out. My reasoning was: IF there were to be a market POP (like is happening right now), I'd be locking in the shrunken (after weeks/months of mushroom-like growth) gains yesterday and greeting the new day with my feet chopped off. In other words, I'd be selling on the low-ish end of high and not buying low, but sitting there with leg irons on while the market goes higher and I'd be fumbling around like, "duh... there goes the market without me." (Many times the major seismic shifts in the market happen overnight when there's not easy access to buying and selling, so if you miss the pre-market pop, you missed it.)

So here's a simple view of my stuff right now. The greens you see at the top are the things I got at bargain-basement prices in the depths of yesterday's agony; the reds farther down are things I have held onto through the last few days/weeks that got taken down in the storm. Each of those has buoyed back up some from where they were yesterday.

And the very last one - that's the $500 (doubled by use of margin) invested in a small-cap-600 index. The one right above it is the same index, different lot - you see I got creamed but there's always hope for a rebound and the new lot was bought with the intention of turbo-charging that process (could turbo-backfire instead.) Wish me luck with it. As you can see at press time I was several cents down on the investment. But keep in mind that I had to pay $9.99, so really, about $9.50 of my commission was already paid back to me and I'm just waiting to go green with that, hopefully. *edit: Stop the presses! I've made $1.89 as of 11:33 AM! *

Do you see any 444s in the screenshot? They follow me around everywhere.

My new business

... as some of my nice blog readers have proposed that I call it...

so I bought three lots of stocks on 9/22, 10/8, and 10/9. (I mentioned one of these on Friday but didn't you know that after all my talking about it, I didn't sell it?) They were designed to boost returns. When the market is not doing well, letting those investments go red would go completely against the purpose of boosting returns, correct?

So just now I sold those three lots and the resulting gain/loss on them were: -9, +28, and -2 for a net gain of $16.00. Still better than a savings account, eh?

So now that I have $1,831.35 sitting there available for withdrawal or reinvestment, what do you think I'm going to do with it? (Not sure what I'm going to do with it, so that was not a rhetorical question.)

Wow, no wonder we have no cash flow

I just totaled up the minimum payments on our credit accounts, and it is $1,212.51.

This is not to mention the bank loan which is $153.00.

Total payments to loans each month (and this is minimums only): $1,365.51

Take-home pay is only $3,952.

Rent: $1,298
Water: $100 (we went over this a year ago - yes, it's a phony rip-off bill)
Car payment: $365 (yes, it's a loan too but I never include it in loan calculations)
Gas and Electric: about $250-350 depending on time of year
Then there's the phone, cable (just internet and basic, no need to yell at us), gas for the cars, insurance for the cars, eating... No wonder our debt is going up slowly but surely.

I calculated interest paid to credit accounts (not the bank loan, just the credit cards) and it is about $680 per month. So about half of our payments are going to interest and about half to principal.



We look like idiots, I know. It's not that simple, though... I know this is a common refrain, but we haven't run up debt by buying "stuff," it has been by putting gas in the car, food on the table, keeping the car insurance paid, etc. And also, dating back to pre-2009, by bailing out some of the investments we talked about in the last post. There's no way I'm going to just liquidate the investments in total for any reason. I'm not going to have zero investments, or a token $1,000 investment account in a quaint little "target date" mutual fund or have a little E-fund in the form of a money market or savings account.

But let's look at some ideas put forth. If I did (liquidate all investments, and this is a big IF because it's not going to happen) it looks like we'd only reduce our credit card debt by about 60%. This would help our cash flow, for sure, but by about $700 per month, I estimate. What would we do with that $700 per month? Make payments on the remaining debt, if we were smart. Right? And then how much power would our investments have to increase? Actually we wouldn't have any investments if I sold them all, as in this example. So let's say that with the $700 in liberated cash flow in this example we instead used that to invest. I bet I could bring in some returns investing. But at a rate of only adding in several hundred dollars month by month, instead of working the sizeable pile that we already have invested right now, could we possibly bring in enough (and save enough in interest we'd then not be paying on debt) to make this an advantageous move as opposed to just working what we have now and finding a way to make tedious progress on the debt?

I want to respond to Revanche's kind suggestion that we use rewards. There are ways to make credit cards work for you, and there are low-interest options for carrying credit card debt. Something that might not be obvious (well, it is if you see how much interest we pay) is that our credit is crappy. Because we don't pay our bills? No... on the contrary we do. And pay, and pay and pay and pay pay pay... It's because of our balance-to-limit ratios. People who don't borrow a lot or who borrow a fraction of their limits get great rates. People who borrow a lot and owe a lot get bad rates, no matter their record of timely payments. Apparently bank models consider us a bankruptcy timebomb.

And honestly, when I read about people walking away from houses and starting over "fresh," I wonder what I'm trying to preserve by paying and paying and paying.... it's not like we earn good credit for our actions. Ah, depressing, all of this is, for sure.

But before I get all depressed, I have to say: I looked back at our situation from last February. Same income (it barely budged with a tiny raise), same utility, rent, and other cost of living bills (rent went up $12 per month, car insurance by about the same... basically no change) and yet...

Look where we are, at year's beginning vs. today. Again, I go back to my post of yesterday, and I have to question... are we really doing anything wrong, or is it possible we're doing the best we can under these circumstances? Maybe even doing better than can be expected, given our income, expenses, and pile of debt? I think my investing has been the only thing that's kept us in as good shape as we're in. If someone sees it differently, let me know, but I can't calculate a way that we would have come out better in these last ten months by ditching the investments at any randomly chosen point in time along the way.

And we've made many investing mistakes and unfortunate choices over the last year and had many "learning experiences" that have helped us to hone our skills. I'm saying that these returns are not reflecting my best.

We have made no progress on debts in 2009

I thought that would get your attention, since everyone likes to read bad news more than they like to read good.

So let's examine carefully age-old financial advice (I mean that seriously - I examine it nearly every day) - should all financial resources be marshaled to pay off debt?

It seems so obvious that I have to wrap my brain around any other strategy every day to make sure I am not being insane. But consider the circumstances:

We have a cash flow situation that allows us, apparently, to barely pay for our costs of living (food, shelter, transportation, other necessaries like health care - believe me, I don't think we've spent much, if anything, on entertainment or "stuff" this year) and service our $50K in consumer debt, and just barely keep afloat. Actually, our debt has been bloating upwards a little bit, as you can see, because we can't quite keep afloat on our income.

But at the beginning of the year, I kept our $15,443 in invested assets invested and they've gone up to $35,261 as of yesterday.

Our debts, on the other hand, have risen from $45,901 in January to $52,539 as of yesterday.

The chart shows you the dollar amount up for stocks and up for debts.



The Excel nerd of the house is home today and produced this for me (and for you.) How do you like it? For data sticklers out there, I will display below the sheet that gives actual values on the left (stocks and then debts) and the change values from January on the right (stocks and then debts) used to generate the chart.



The next thought always is... "but but but - if you had used your assets to pay down your debts, you'd have so much more money every month and would eventually build up more assets."

Not sure I buy the math on that. Let's look at it this way. If, in January, I had taken our $15,443 in assets and applied it to our debt, we'd have "only" $30.458 in debt at that point. Nice... I guess. But you see, how much do you think that would really liberate for us in cash flow per month? Enough to build up the same value in assets that we have now? (Keep in mind that the increase in our debt that you see probably would have taken place in this scenario, too, since our increase in debt reflects our inability to meet living expenses through our income.)

Thoughts? Calculations? Strategies? (that you can back up - no pithy truisms or Dave Ramsey soundbytes, please.) I invite anyone's thoughtful advice or calculations if you can tell me what we might be doing better (in balancing our assets and debts, I mean. I don't need advice about second jobs and all that.)

The recent downturn in debt was made possible only by the trust distribution that I initally parked in the bank but decided would be put to better use clearing the entire balance on one credit card. This saves about $23 in interest payment per month.

I did not include our non-changing assets or those we have little control over (a pension, some company stock that is not easily accessible) so the above data represnts ONLY the stock accounts we control every day that are pretty liquid, thosewe have easy access to depositing/withdrawing from. All debts are represented.

I have to give credit to MovingOnUp! of the eponymously-named blog who, through her post, Assets are down, but so is debt, motivated me to think about this and work up some figures and even a chart. (or get Jr. Engineer to create the chart under duress because he wants rides to parties tonight and has even taken out trash, etc. without complaining today.) Didn't you just know that I had to put this in NWIQ format, too? Go here to see.

$2,500 paid off a card (math nerds, please help out)

I guess by now no one is going to quiz me on why I invest instead of paying down debt; I think my asset side compared with my debt side should show that I have recently been able to grow assets faster than my debts rise; the goal would be to pay debts down, of course, but keeping the plus side rising faster than the minus side is all that's really required.

That said, I actually took a cash advance (no fee! Only charge to me is interest per day, which is the same as my credit card rate; Budgetsaresexy and I discussed this on his page a few weeks ago) and I could just let one of you do the math for me:

$500 cash advance; cost to me is the 15.9% APR for that; someone compute that out per day for me, or for the time period of Oct. 8 through today, please.

$500 invested in EWZ for that time period (I'm about to cash it in, in disgust) net proceeds for that will be $542.72 if I do it right now. I have already accounted for commissions in and out. Charge to me is margin loan interest; please compute $500 at 7.99 annually. Remember, it's Oct. 8th through today, Oct. 23rd.

Sounds like a losing venture to me, or one with a puny return; one I don't have the patience for, anyway.



In separate news: The $2,500 I spoke of earlier has been parked in the bank doing nothing so I paid off an entire card with a balance that was nearly that same figure. It's one of my lowest-interest cards but I had a conversation with them about increasing my credit limit on that one, and of course they gave me a big fat "NO," but encouraged me to call in a week or two, once this payment has been posted and marinates a while.

The anti-finance blog

For your entertainment; I stumbled across this. It's the antithesis of a personal finance blog. It tells you what NOT to do.

Possibly handsome; I guess he used his looks to get his hooks into the bank accounts of others.


"Don't date him, girl!"

The most boring post you might ever read

This isn't much of a post but I felt I should post something. I don't have the graphic yet - maybe later (duh - I don't know how to scan and get photos online from there, but if you saw Mr. 444's setup you'd forgive me. It looks like I'm stuck in the middle of IBM headquarters.)

I bought him some shirts from Old Navy since his company has unofficially changed their everyday dress code from oxford shirts to polo shirts. I will list the original prices on the tags and then the sale prices on the back:


$19.50
$19.50
$15.00
$14.50 TOTAL I WOULD HAVE PAID: $68.50

$6.49
$4.99
$1.97
$10.49 TOTAL I PAID: $23.94

What's the "personal" in "personal finance blog" for, anyway?

I was going to wax philosophical and try to tackle subjects like what is money for, what does it really do for us, what is important in life, life, death, what does it all mean, etc. etc.

But then my brain started hurting and I figured I'd stick to the facts.

Folks, you're learning a lot right as I learn it. Well, I have some skeletons in my closet and I'm not ready to open that closet up quite yet. Let me inch it open.

It's October 10 now (no, it's October 14 but the tenth was on a weekend) and the Dow just hit ten thousand. A year ago, I guess it was sometime in September although I mark it as October 10, 2008 because that's when I picked up the pieces of my broken financial "self" and started over... well, a year ago, I had just lost a lot of money. I can't talk about exactly how and what happened quite yet. It doesn't matter, anyway - suffice it to say that I destroyed something that I thought had been handed down for generations (only money - and yes, I know it's not people and people are more important and...) let's just say that the financial culmination of some lives was in my hands and I didn't handle it well.

Let me skip back now. Growing up, I did not live like a "rich" person, not in the slightest, but not destitute, either. I'd say on the modest side of average in a nicer-than-average side of town. Money was a private subject in my family - and didn't lots of people grow up that way? I had the vague idea that my mother - and even more so, her family of origin - was well off, comfortable, secure... I don't know what other descriptive words can be used because I want to make it clear that I'm not searching for euphemisms for "wealthy" or the like. Most of us think of people with more money than they know what to do with, when we use that word. It's all relative, I guess (the people scraping around for change think that those who can keep the lights on are "wealthy," maybe, but you know what I mean.)

I'm not even trying to make this coherent - a post with a point, I mean. There's no story, lesson, or revelation here, and I'm not currently philosophizing. I'm just sharing with you some things that I uncovered - things easily available for reading by those looking in the right places (but maybe cloaked under considerably more layers just ten or fifteen years ago before the true explosion of the information age AKA advent of the internet.) I have been sort of blown away by the discovery of some things I previously had only vague inklings of and only about 3% of the facts on. I'll share some tidbits, out of order.

Let me put it this way: How would any of you feel if you found a newspaper article from 100 years ago detailing the shooting death of your great-grandmother's nephew (that would make him my... not even going to figure out the label - OK, I know he was my great great uncle's son) as a 22-year-old, unmarried but engaged, while traveling on business, for defending another person who was being beaten (I should note: the person being beaten was of another race, and that's relevant given the year and my family's region of the U.S.)? And the shooter later discovered to have previously beaten to the point of murder another person of the other race. Shooting victim being the son of the town founder (my great great uncle), who was described as "timber baron," "railroad tycoon," "philanthropist," "wealthiest citizen of the county," but who nevertheless never recovered from grieving for his oldest son, and perhaps not coincidentally, didn't live out an especially long life? Sure, there is the church cornerstone with his name, the library, the college, the monument in the center of town, but those birth and death dates on it don't tell the stories of grief, crying till dawn, and "we were afraid he would lose his mind," (exact quote). "Amassed a fortune in real estate" is easier to note in the history books (that I'm ordering from Amazon right now. These are not people you'd read about in Barnes and Noble - these are college-library-collection type books, some of which are in print and I'm going to grab copies.)

See what I mean about money, and what does it mean, and what does it do for any of us? Doesn't stop someone from dying within minutes of an altercation because someone pulled a gun. Wealth can influence the commission of a special train to bring that person back home, but can't change the fact that the person being transported is described as "remains."

Well, but... I guess you noticed, and I noticed, too: This is just a few generations back for me. A hundred years, which is not a lot in the grand scheme of things. I was bowled over that my great-grandmother's brother (that would be my great-great uncle - number of "greats" seem off, but write up a tree and you'll see that's right) pulled in the most money in the county, apparently, through numerous natural resource-related, real estate, and other business ventures, and here I am scrambling to get my net worth in the black. I'm not even going to read anything into that or go into any theories or feelings I have. I'm still sort of reeling from seeing it in print that these people that I knew described only modestly as "teachers," "farmers," etc. had this much going on. More than I do, financially, obviously. I've been feeling like a loser enough already so far in my my life and especially in the last year (again, I should specify, financially - I know the difference between personal integrity/conduct/human worth and finance, but when you take stock of your life and find yourself coming up short and even failing big-time when it comes to money, it can threaten even broader self-esteem and erode hope. Because I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end, recently I defended "Dog" of "Dog Ate My finances when some anonymous person predicted lifelong failure for her. Someone predicted the same for me some time ago, and while I shouldn't let strangers on the internet shake my confidence, it didn't help when I was already struggling to count myself in as a human being.) Does this discovery give me greater self-esteem or make me feel special? I wouldn't say that... it's more like, as I said, my financial failings are set in just that much more relief, they are just that much more stark. And maybe I'm just that much more driven to recover what I had one year ago. We're all working whatever resources we can for our children, after all, and I feel like I'm also trying to work on behalf of others who are now gone, to get back what they established and passed down, which seems to be slipping away. I wouldn't want to see that happen, not under my watch, anyway.

Are wealthy, successful people most often self-made or are they "helped" along by their background? Good question; (only my guess coming up here...) I think it's often the former but I thought it was a well-known fact that the influence of the latter can't be underestimated. Now I'm philosophizing and getting all sociological and economical, but I don't think it's generally easy or statistically especially likely for people who come from extremely limited means to better themselves and their families financially for the long haul. It can definitely be done but it's like swimming upstream. And those who come from more privileged backgrounds have a leg up, at the very least, although what they do with that is up to the individual. Multi-generational fortunes can be wasted, mismanaged, lost, although it might take time and is less likely to happen quickly or at all, given many descendants (some are just bound to keep the resources going when the opportunity and resources are spread out among many.)

I never wanted to be one to waste or mismanage anything. One of my readers commented back in March when I was scrambling to keep a sliver of something going, "It's understandable that if your mom left you a little money, you'd want to keep it going." She was propping me up in my decision to borrow if I had to, to avoid cashing out. She knew what the issue was but she had no idea of the scope or the scale. Let me wrap up this ramble now. I never knew the far-back origins of anything my mother had although I saw the gory details of her finances when they were divided up. I thought any appreciable remnants of family wealth were now gone, disbursed, dissolved - wasted and mishandled, on my part, anyway. That explains my urge to just kick myself in the head every day from a year ago until now, despite my attempts to pick myself up and keep looking for the light at the end of the tunnel.

But now my relative's estate, you'll know if you've been reading, is coming around the bend. The dissection and collation of its ingredients is going on right now. What's contained within it is just about as much of a mystery to me as it is to you. Stay tuned if you want to hear what happens next with that, although don't expect it to be very soon.

444 had it for you first

Whether it was fleeting or not, I captured it for you; enjoy: