Monthly Expense and Income Report – Nov 2011

I’ve decided to make myself more accountable for my spending and start sharing to a greater detail. Boy was this the wrong month :)

This month I went over in terms of birthday gifts and gifts in general. I have to include these in my budget for next year. Also, I forgot to pay last month’s family cell phone bill which added up to quite a bit as well. In addition, “someone” on the plan went over the shared minutes and so we ended up with an overage of $240. They’ve been warned and told :) All told, I lost about $1,400 this month, but did make a big payment on my student loans.

Bank Fees are going up, whether you like it or not

It’s true, people as a group were able to dissuade the large banks from imposing upfront fees for using debit cards. What many don’t realize is that banks operate for profit and at the responsibility of providing returns to their shareholders. This means that is you stop the banks one way, they will find another way to load you with fees.. and they’ve done just that.

In a recent New York Times article, select banks upped wire transfer fees and depositing online via your phone. The reasoning behind this is the loss of income from overdraft fees and the lowering of the per swipe fee they could charge merchants. I feel bad for any business that is forced to endure such loss, and I’m sure that people are feeling the pinch in these times. So the question remains, is it better for banks to up these “hidden” fees or to just be upfront about the true cost of running a business, turning a decent profit, and giving you the transparency required? The article mentioned tries to answer some of these questions, which is great for everyone to make an informed decision. But I would still like my bank to be in touch with me about this, rather than having to read it in an article.. I am currently still a customer at BofA, but that may soon change.

Mint has cash transactions via Android App!

Finally Mint.com has listened to it’s customers and have released an update to their Android application that allows one to enter cash transactions on the go!

The forum on mint.com requesting this feature was huge, and I’m so glad they finally got around to updating the application. I think this month will be my first detailed spending month thanks to this. I will provide a cool mint.com chart at the end of this month to see how I’ve done.

See, free promotion event for Mint.com :) Amazing what happens when you deliver for your customers..

Leverage in Job Promotion

I wanted to share a story of how I’ve used leverage in my job promotion. In this down market, one can take the view that they must accept things as they are or that one can choose to make things as one wants them to be. I chose the latter.

I know that my work speaks for itself, unfortunately I’ve not done a good enough job of promoting it. Great work without promotion goes unnoticed. So this time (6 months ago) I decided that I wanted to be noticed, especially after graduating with my MBA. This conscious decision, made about 6 months ago has led me to a series of interactions that have put me in a place where I can leverage my work to get a promotion. Not only have I spoken with senior management about it, but to outside companies that I’ve interviewed with.

The leverage comes from two places:

  1. My work and how I’ve promoted it
  2. The business need for my work to influence

You can’t have one without the other as your work must fill some role. If not, then most likely you should try and gain new skills or a job that does fit your current skill set.

I saw the need that needed filling and I voiced my reasoning behind why I was the best person for that job in an organized and clear manner. This included salary surveys from graduating members of my MBA class, competing offer letters that I chose to decline showing what salary I wanted at the least, and skill sets that I’ve developed and where they applied in the new role.

I still haven’t been put in this position, as there are some organizational issues that need to be resolved. But I put myself in the best possible position, I believe, to achieve that goal. If you don’t use a finite window of opportunity for the leverage that you may have at work, you will lose it. That’s not to say you won’t gain leverage again at some point, but why waste it :)

Wish me luck! I’ll keep you posted.

Home Repair Costs and Insurance

Recently a part of my parents’ roof was damaged in a heavy rainstorm. The insurance company is willing to pay for only $772 of the damaged little portion of the roof. However, further investigation by a few contractors revealed that much more of the roof needed fixing including replacing a main beam because of rot and damage. Estimate from contractor = $6,000 . Now that’s a $5,000 difference that the insurance company should pay, and hopefully they will, but this still needs to be completed regardless. With a proper emergency fund, which my parents don’t have funded currently, would have taken care of this issue without headaches. They now need to figure out how to deal with this at the last moment if the insurance company does not compensate..

Contractors
The insurance company sent them some contractors that they could work with and she also received some estimates from Home Depot. They seemed nice enough, but after much deliberation and checking of reviews online on contractors and the large box store, they decided to go with a local neighborhood licensed contractor that had completed several other neighbors’ roofs already. The only difference is that he came with an estimate slightly higher than the others, but with the peace of mind that he will get the work done fast and on time, with no headaches as experienced by the hundreds of people that left reviews on contractors online. Besides, they can go pester him if he’s not on the job site :)

Fingers-crossed, this will be the desired outcome.

Insurance Payment
With such a big gap in estimates between the insurance company and the contractors, a detailed list will be submitted by the contractor as to what exactly needs to be completed. This should makeup for the gap. However, if they don’t, that will mean they will need to finance it somehow out through a home equity loan (if they can get one) or borrowing from me and others. I don’t really want it to go this route as I’ve warned them that they need to start funding that emergency account, but I guess I will do what is necessary to have a roof. I’m helping as much as I can to properly request the additional funding from the insurance company until this is completed. My negotiation skills will get some additional use :) Wish me good luck!

Networth Update – 10/25/2011

-Updated Networth-

Total Assets:       $80,724
Total Liabilities: $106,188
Networth:           -$25,464

I shifted to contributing to the future home/other goal downpayment fund from the emergency fund. Currently, with 17,000 in cash for the emergency fund, I feel comfortable enough to contribute to the other goal fund. The swings in the market seem to have made losses as I add more money, hopefully the index fund will perform over the long run :)

Targeting a new mix of income, including the current business plans I’m working on. Also, there’s a possibility of co-founding a start up with a few people from business school. An interesting, but daunting task. Slowly but surely moving up the right direction in Networth.


Cheers!

-1step

US Unemployment

I just saw the video below on the unemployment rate in the US, and I have to say I am getting a bit worried. While I do have a job for now, it seems like the situation itself is not getting better. According to Reuters, the real unemployment rate counting part-time employed and those that have been unemployed for more than 6 months is 16%.. Now that’s significantly higher that the unemployment figures that just show new unemployment and counts those with part time work as having “full” jobs.

I went over to the bureau of labor statistics to see how this rate as described by Reuters trended over the past years, but I could not find it. Instead, I obtained this data from another website and I pasted the graph below. It shows this data included in the rate. I find it pretty alarming to see this broad increase over the past few years. What are your thoughts?

Expenses in Foreign Places

Presently I am on business in Dubai and it’s interesting to see how the mind spending patterns shift when on travelling. The expenses will be paid for by my company, which like many others that get this benefit can take us out of the “normal” patterns we are used to. To give you perspective, in Dubai the cost-of-living is pretty much in par with New York city (i.e. A Subway foot long grilled chicken sandwich + coke = 30 AED = $8.17). Along the way, I’ve come to realize that one can easily go overboard when someone else is paying for them. Thus, along the way, I’ve tried to minimize costs to ensure that I am not changing my spending patterns too much and save the company some money in the process.

One of the ways I save money is to use my no foreign transaction fee credit card. At the same time I earn airline miles :) The card is a Capital One Venture Card (not affiliated with the card) with no annual fee, and there are other cards out there such as Chase Sapphire, but they do charge an annual fee. My corporate card does charge a foreign transaction fee, which I am saving my company for paying, and at the same time gaining some points!

Another way is to cook breakfast instead of buying it at the hotel buffet. It’s amazing how much money the hotels overcharge (60 AED = $16) versus an entire week’s worth of breakfast supplies from the local supermarket. Grant it, this is something that makes intuitive sense, but I find that people just take advantage of the situation that it is not their own money and go on a spending binge.

I also try and take local transit as much as possible as the cost is often time 10x more expensive to take a cab; however, it can be prohibitive if the walking distance to the transit stop is too far (in 100+ F weather) or if you’re running late (15 min cab ride = 40 min bus ride). I won’t count that as a way I save, but if I was in a better location then yes.

Bundling. Not all hotels provide internet service in the price or other amenities such as a gym, thus looking at more details for the hotel often helps to find other ways to save. For example, the current place I am staying at also has a washer/dryer combo that I can save on laundry services + free broadband internet. A comparable hotel with a fee internet charge + laundry services on location would’ve been significantly more expensive.

Many of these methods are ones that I use in everyday life at home, but it’s amazing how easy it can be to spend money when you’re in a foreign country on someone else’s dime. So practice what you preach and save a little money :)

Image Source: Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/hani_suliman/5170581380/in/pool-52239804480@N01/

$2,000 loan payment .. and 134 months to go.

I just made $1,000 for a side project and spent $2,000 on repaying a small part of my grad school loan. Since all of my debt is now essentially student loans, I’ve been quite aggressive to try and pay them off as soon as possible. My goal is to do $1,000 per month (notwithstanding the $155/mo I’m already paying on the undergrad loan). According to calculations using a conservative 6.8% interest rate as the bulk of my loans are that + some lower interest rate federal loans, I should have it paid off in: 130 months or 10.8 years..

Now I think I’m doing well in my plan, but it is certainly a daunting task. I plan on using any extra money I make to pay these loans back as soon as possible, but I have to also keep on saving for my other goals.