Your Money or Your Life Part 1

In light of imminent changes in financial situation and that I have never had so much financial info within arm's reach (thanks scrupulous lenders!), I decided to while away a Sunday afternoon on a financial audit with "Your Money or Your Life."  Attracted to this book's lofty goal of "having an income sufficient for your basic needs and comforts from a source other than paid employment."  Work because you want to; not because you have to.  Natch.

Fun insights thus far:

40% of my earnings converted into assets.  Very broad strokes here (i.e. includes half the home and loan, but not the cost of "deferred maintenance").  Could never fully discount the value tuition assistance from family; it made my current employment situation possible (thanks Elders!).  That said, sweet!  It's not unrealistic to aspire to  that 50%-60% savings rate I scrimped for in order to pay for Grad School part 2.    

I make a whopping $13.00 an hour...  despite aforementioned grad degrees.  Caveats.  This fully loads time and money spent supporting career objectives.  So I may work a 40 hour week, but let's not forget taxes eat up 30% of that and then there's a couple hundred bucks and a couple dozen more hours spent on activities I wouldn't do if I didn't have this job...  and this for a gig which is a good lifestyle fit.

Big cost centers:  Irvine apartment, vehicle ownership, and socializing with co-workers after hours.

Big time sinks:  sick leave and decompression time from work/housing stress issues.

I shudder to think what this effective wage would look like back in the consulting days, stumbling in after a 16 hour day, Ferragamo heels soaked in blood from an unanticipatedly long hike back to the hotel after hitting a nightclub with the client's team.  That said, tons of takeaways for pulling fully loaded current compensation in line with the nominal wage.

Next challenge: documenting every penny in and out of my accounts.

L2eBay

Goodwill never struck me as a killer app.  Either you donate there or you shop there, seldom both...  It seems broken in a feudalistic way.

The "e" in e-Bay might as well stand for "egalitarian."

Buy:  I paid $16.98 for pre-owned jeans I had been planning to pay $100 for *on sale.* Sure, this won't work for every item.  I shudder to think what I might have paid in shipping for the $300 recliner MacGyver and I found in a local consignment shop.  But it's enough to make you run a quick e-Bay search before clicking "checkout" on larger ticket items.

Sell: e-Bay has a giant network of trading assistants to help you move your cast-offs with less hassle and more kickbacks than you would see with a Goodwill errand or intrepid listing on Craigslist.  If the Haunted House is still offering up curiosities after closing next month, I might become a TA myself...  Buyer's remorse is paying $10 for a vintage Maxwell House coffee can (operation Audrey III), only to see a half dozen identical articles languishing in the house during the inspection... At the very least, I can engage a local broker should I come across extraneous corporate swag that commands a good price in certain circles.

Cooking for Chi

Makes less sense for a big dog, but home cooking has cut down a lot on Chi's trips to the vet.

Yield:  about 28 Mini Rounds (14 days for a 9.5 lb dog)
Prep:  30 mins
Cook:  1.5 hours

• Gladware Mini Round 4 oz cups (at least 28) [MR is now a unit of measure]
• 1 MR Green Beans
• 1 MR Squash
• 1 MR Sweet Potato
• 1 MR Zucchini
• 1.5 MR Peas
• 1.5 MR Carrots
• 3 MR Oatmeal or Rice
• 1 MR filled with 3 parts olive oil, 1 part cod liver oil, 1 part wheatgerm oil, 1 part flaxseed oil (ease into this dosage)
• 1 sprig rosemary (homegrown!)
• 1 bulb garlic
• 1 whole chicken (approx 5 lbs)

This recipe evolved out of conversations with a co-worker (thx Connie!) and ideas in The Whole Pet Diet.  The book also has a bunch of supplement recipes for kibble diets and healthy treats, for a less involved cooking experience.   

Klee Kai Couture

Photoshoot with Aunt Frances

Kai shows off a fetching "got treats?" dog tag.  

Next season:  the heavily drugged Elizabethan look (don't ask)...  

Rage Quitting Starbucks for Fun and Profit

It turned out to be a mega hassle to get reissued a working Starbucks Rewards card after paying to participate in their pilot program a few years back.  

Thus began the French Press project, which became one of those rare dominating alternatives that is cheaper, more convenient, and healthier.

Cheaper:  $0.93/cup.  Break even:  12 days.  

• French press:  $20
• Bean grinder (optional):  $20
• Snobby non-SBUX beans:  $30 (32 cups)
• 2 cans of whip cream, a couple cups of sugar (only during transition process)

More convenient:  

• Don't need to dress and leave the house
• No replacing leashes Kai chews through while tied to the trashcan outside 
• Less coffee cup waste and frequent trips to trash chute
• More coffee grounds for compost/vermiculture adventures 

Healthier:  

• Decreased refined sugar consumption
• Increased Kai's walk length and variety  (no need to beeline for Starbucks and hurry home to avoid spilling)
• Rad experiments with different low cal condiments (stevia, cinnamon, nutmeg, etc.)

Hanging Garden of Bathalon: Don't Try This At Home

Has some potential, eh?  Speaking of houseplant "successes"...

Should you be toying with the idea of "back to nature" bathscaping, critique this picture before clinging to your own bathtub toe holds to balance a 10 lb planter in all its green Cthulhu tentacled glory on a make shift ledge.  While I haven't ruled out the vision of a bathroom that resembles the Lincoln Park Conservatory orchid room, let's just say there is no shortage of reasons the current crop is checked into rehab on the balcony.  

What's wrong with this picture?  

1.  No natural sunlight:  Even though these species are hardy jungle dwellers, they need some degree of light.  Our bathroom lights have motion sensors, so we couldn't even set those to stay on as a proxy (not to mention ideally, we'd upgrade to full spectrum fluorescent instead of incandescent).

2.  Pot positioning:  Most obvious-- Kai can (and has) knocked over the orchid and rooted around in the Dracaena.  Granted, reaching through a curtain of vines for your shampoo is rad...  but not if watering said plant washes soil particles into your soap, or if the hassle of taking the plant down to water it means it goes thirsty and you're reaching through a curtain of yellowed unhappy leaves. 

3.  Brown Leaves & Water Choice:  Watering some of the other planters with Koi water in the mornings created thriving beds.  However, I learned Dracaena is prone to tip burn caused by overly alkali conditions (and stress).  Fish excrement tends to be alkali as well.  Having plants in the water off-gassing C02 overnight helps to neutralize the water, but all we have in there is a bit of algae and some horsetail.  If we keep using pond water, perhaps we'll need to soup it up with more hyacinths.           

The coming storm.

In 45 days we will be homeowners of a house that has lived for nearly 5 times our age. The house is need of substantial work, the owner kept everything vintage as he and his wife were antique collectors. I will be undertaking the arduous task of updating the home to the 21st century while keeping the vintage quality that truly makes the house unique.

A friend of mine recently went through a similar process with a house half the age and while his house came out excellent, it feels like the changes made were designed to make it look and feel like it was built in 2011. This is definitely not the end result I am desiring. Ryan and I would often joke about me building and installing a custom banister to his second floor. As he is a massive Street Fighter fan, it would have carved figures of Ken doing a flying upper cut in freeze frame up the stairs. Basically the image on the right carved into wood 7 or 8 times. Anyone who would walk into the house would immediately know that it was Ryan's. While alas the Street Fighter banister was only a dream, the feeling of obviously knowing that the home is mine (and Belle's) is what I want to convey throughout.

While Ryan did much of the work himself, most of the construction and rehab was done by contractors. Outside of the immediate needs (plumbing rehab on day one), I will be trying to do as much of the work as I can on my own. I am fortunate in that my father has already passed plenty of home rehab knowledge down, but I think that this start to finish project will continue to allow him to teach me lessons not just in construction but in art as well.

It is going to take a lot of work to get it there, with the first steps being establishing habitability in a select few rooms opening up a greater amount of time for me to get down to business and churn out some epicness. Once the basecamp is established we have a plan to go room to room and gut it, restore it and customize it. I think this blog is going to serve as both a document of how far this project has moved and as a way to stay focused and get my ideas down when my body is too tired to keep hammering.

Going to get some overall before pictures up so that we can see exactly how large an effort this is.