It's been quite awhile--I do apologize. The apartment hunting really ate my life for a week and a half or so there, and I've been recovering since we signed a lease last Tuesday. That's right! Signed a lease!
K and I will be Brooklyn residents at the end of the month, and it feels a little bit like the end of an era. I'm a born-and-raised Manhattanite, so it'll be a bit of an adjustment.
My personal rent bill is going from $625 to $750, which is a big bump. The raise (about $90/month in real terms) will make much of the difference, but I'm also going to have to dial down my 401(k) contributions. While doing so is a bit disappointing, I've been contributing a pretty sizable amount up until now (about $115/paycheck), and reducing that to about $60/paycheck will allow me to pay my rent while still earning the full employer match in my 401(k) this year. I'm just going to get from here to December on that--my budget will need to be totally retooled then anyway, since I'll (hopefully) have met my Freedom Fund goal, and my travel fund will get much more urgent, and everything will be in flux some more.
We've paid the security deposit and the first month's rent, but have yet to figure out the situation with the broker fee--we're still hoping to negotiate the broker down from her draconian 12% figure, and it's all a little bit chaotic right now. Having pulled $1250 from savings is scary, even though I'm pretty confident that it'll be paid back when we get our security deposit back from our current place.
There's a limbo period in which many balls must be kept in the air. I'm just hoping not to drop any.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Goodness.
Monday, May 05, 2008
I Will Not Get What I Do Not Ask For
Wow--I totally got what I wanted. I got more than what I wanted. My request for an accelerated salary review at the beginning of June turned into a $2,000 raise, no questions asked, effective immediately. I win at negotiating!
See, okay, I'm a nonconfrontational person by nature. I'm also, despite current appearances to the contrary, really not that great at advocating for myself. But I'm definitely better than I used to be, and improving all the time, because over and over and over I learn that I will not get what I do not ask for. And you won't either.
I think a lot of people, especially young women, are scared to be seen trying. We think that if our merits are apparent, the people in charge of evaluating us will see and will reward us, and if they do not see and reward us, we are not displaying merit, and we will look like stupid, stupid fools if we start talking about our merits to people who clearly have already decided that we have none (or at the very least, not enough). So we sit still and we keep quiet and we cross our fingers. As a strategy for getting oneself where one wants to go, this sucks. I've just had that demonstrated for me very powerfully. So I'm going to keep trying. Visibly and otherwise. I succeeded this time, but I definitely have a ton of failure in my future--I think I'll come out ahead for it.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
April Goals Update
My net worth is $23,613, which represents an increase of $1,052 or 4.66%. I'm expecting a strong month in May, as it's a three-paycheck month, so hopefully by the end of next month I should be closing in on the $25,000 mark.
I'm revising my net worth goal to $30,000 for this year, which would be an increase of $10,000. I'd factored the assumption of a strong market performance into the previous goal, which turns out to not be a great idea. I hope to beat this goal, but I think my initial goal of $35,000 was overly optimistic.
I made some progress in my 401(k) this month, too:
Fidelity Freedom 2050 Fund: 383.59 shares (last month: 351.2 shares)
Fidelity Total Stock Market Index Fund: 35.3 shares (last month: 32.2 shares)
That said, how are my other goals going?
Earn the full match in my 401(k)
I'm nearly at 50%. At this rate, I'll have earned the full match by the middle of September.
Save $4,000 in the Freedom Fund, for an end balance of $10,000.
My Freedom Fund currently stands at $7,275. It should be quite close to $8,000 by the end of this month.
Earn $1,500 of non-salary income, earmarked for graduate school application expenses.
I'm not doing a great accounting job on this goal...eek. Let's see: I made $35 from a paid link, and $60 from Prosper referrals...decent, but not great. I'm itching to take Google Ads down and replace them with BlogHer ads (technically, you can do both, but I don't want the page overwhelmed by ads), but I haven't yet hit Google's threshold for a payout. It's agonizingly slow.
Buy a friend a drink at least once a month.
I don't think I made this one this month, actually--I offered a couple of times for sure, but I don't think it worked out, actually. I did throw a seder for a bunch of friends at my place, though, so maybe that counts.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Job Decision
I'm staying put.
I talked to one of my bosses today: told her I'd had an offer and that I wanted to stay. Told her why: I'm excited about a couple of upcoming projects, I can be open about the fact that I'm considering going to grad school (if I stay here through then, I'll have been here nearly three years, which is an extraordinary tenure at this kind of job, and won't feel at all guilty telling my bosses in advance that I'm looking to move on and getting them to write me recommendations), and I appreciate the opportunity to work on my own. All of this is true. I also told her that they'd offered me $4,000 more, which is sort of true (the base salary was $2,000 higher than I make now, plus a bonus of about $2,000--but as I've mentioned, the benefits were worse than the ones I get now by a margin that wipes that difference out). I told her that I'm not making demands for a raise, but that I'd like a salary review in June, instead of waiting until the customary one in December. She said she thinks that's fair, but that it's ultimately my other boss's call, since he runs the department. He's in London, but she and I will meet to go over my projects on Friday so that she can be prepared to meet with him to advocate for me. If I get this raise in June, I come out ahead of where I'd be, financially, at either job, and I'm in the right place to boot.
So, that's done. Ultimately, I decided based on the way each of the two jobs fit into my life and my plans, not based on money or even the fact that I find my boss (not the one I talked to, the other one) abrasive. My current plan has me staying here about another twelve to thirteen months, then quitting for a glorious summer of travel and vacation before starting graduate school.
Next up: finding a damn apartment. I've already done some things right and some things wrong, and in my next post I'll tell you what they were.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Job Stuff Some More
I was supposed to hear back from the woman I've been negotiating with over at Prospective New Company today. I didn't. I think this means that the news that's coming is bad: that they're not going to be able to give me what I asked for.
That's okay.
I mean, not "okay" as in, "oh, okay, I'll take the job anyway." It's okay because my options are wide open. While considering this job offer, I realized that it's not an either/or situation: it's not a simple choice between a) stay in my current job for another year until I quit to go to graduate school and b) take that job. I can do any number of things. I could put off grad school some more if I found my dream job, or I could quit altogether and try to make it through to grad school doing freelance writing (hey, that's why they call it a Freedom Fund, my friends). In the meantime, I've contacted a well-placed friend of my parents' who's agreed to chat with me about working with books and ideas in a couple of weeks. I've got a lot going on in my life right now: planning parties and starting blogs and thinking about my future, in addition to some personal stuff I'm still having to put time and effort into, and then the big push for graduate school coming up if I don't find my dream job in the next couple of months...
The thing is to remember to treat it as a joy to have so many options. It is a joy, and a privilege, and I tend to choke up and flip out about having to make decisions about my life--I'm working on not doing that so much. Breathe, I am trying to remind myself. Breathe.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Great Blog Find: The Economical Academic
I just stumbled on The Economical Academic, which is a perfect cross-section of frugality and academia, directed at grad students, and simply had to bring it to your attention posthaste. Hit it up for tips on surviving through to the PhD.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
My New Baby
I've alluded to this a couple of times on this blog, but it's mostly up and running now, and you can go check it out:
Please welcome The Interpreted World!
I do, frankly, think of this both an investment and a career move, and I'm interested both in the possibility that it can (eventually) earn me income on a month-to-month basis and can (possibly) get me a job doing what I love, which is analyzing, criticizing, processing, interpreting. But in the short term, it's a way to hone my writing skills and a source of personal satisfaction, and though I haven't hit my stride yet, I'm looking forward to carrying the project forward. I invite you to check it out, comment, subscribe, all that good stuff.
My brilliant and generous boyfriend did all the design. He's not credited yet, because the one thing he can't be pinned down to do is take credit for his work, but he did it, and he deserves recognition for it. But I'd love your feedback on the site: anything that looks weird, works weird, reads weird—let me know.
Enjoy!
