Phew! Step 4 of my 401k rollover is complete!
1) Call Vanguard, figure out how to get 401k money from old employer- DONE
2) Call old employer, have them send me the forms- DONE
3) Fill out forms, send back to old employer- DONE
4) Figure out how to distribute money to current employer- DONE
5) Send rollover checks to current employer
And BTW, the reps at Vanguard are super friendly and helpful. I don't know why I didn't do this sooner.
I worked at my old employer as an intern for a few summers, and after the first full year (they kept me on the payroll all year long), I was eligible for my very first 401k! I was only 19, but dutifully put away 10% of my money, and my employer even matched some of it! Since I only did that for two summers, and my intern salary was pretty low, the total in my accounts is less than $3,000, but it's MY $3,000!
Thursday, July 31, 2008
(More) Reflections on July Spending
Ha, it didn't take me long after posting my July expenses to develop some serious thoughts on the matter.
Having been with my employer for three years, I make a good amount of money. $80,000/yr, my anonymous friends, to be exact. Given the high cost of living here, I'd say my adjusted income is more like $50-$60k. For example, my rent is $1375- and that's only MY share of the apartment! Total rent for the one bedroom apt is $2700, and we had to put up a wall to make a second bedroom! See how crazy it is?
But what's really crazy, is that my nice salary barely supports ME. Just one person- ME. Families of four+ can live off of this salary, but I still manage to spend more than I make (as you can see from this month). I don't have to pay for childcare, extra clothes/food, health care, I don't have car payments (although I do chip in for the BF's gas), and I while my rent would probably cover a decent mortgage, I don't have to pay condo fees/taxes, etc. So where does all of my money go? Well, some months it goes into clothes for my professional work wardrobe (July was an anomoly... hmmm), but mostly it's been going towards travel expenses. Granted, if I had a family to care for, I wouldn't be flying out of town every weekend, so I guess that makes up for part of it. But what this exercise has done is given me a lot of respect for the families out there that have to budget on less money than what I have, and still make sure there is some leftover for the future. Although, without making unfair assumptions, it's possible that a lot of families living beyond their means and are incurring debt to make ends meet. No surprise that money in America is tight.
Having been with my employer for three years, I make a good amount of money. $80,000/yr, my anonymous friends, to be exact. Given the high cost of living here, I'd say my adjusted income is more like $50-$60k. For example, my rent is $1375- and that's only MY share of the apartment! Total rent for the one bedroom apt is $2700, and we had to put up a wall to make a second bedroom! See how crazy it is?
But what's really crazy, is that my nice salary barely supports ME. Just one person- ME. Families of four+ can live off of this salary, but I still manage to spend more than I make (as you can see from this month). I don't have to pay for childcare, extra clothes/food, health care, I don't have car payments (although I do chip in for the BF's gas), and I while my rent would probably cover a decent mortgage, I don't have to pay condo fees/taxes, etc. So where does all of my money go? Well, some months it goes into clothes for my professional work wardrobe (July was an anomoly... hmmm), but mostly it's been going towards travel expenses. Granted, if I had a family to care for, I wouldn't be flying out of town every weekend, so I guess that makes up for part of it. But what this exercise has done is given me a lot of respect for the families out there that have to budget on less money than what I have, and still make sure there is some leftover for the future. Although, without making unfair assumptions, it's possible that a lot of families living beyond their means and are incurring debt to make ends meet. No surprise that money in America is tight.
July Spending
Yikes. For the first time in a while, I'm actually looking at what I'm spending versus what I earn. I usually spend less than I earn, because I have some leftover cash to toss into savings most months, but if I don't have much left over, I don't stress about it because I've got some hefty savings in place already. Now that I'm blogging about how I spend and save money, I would be remiss not to give my expenditures a good, hard look so that someday soon I can properly assess my spending categories and start to... gulp... budget.
I spent the last hour or so scouring my credit card and bank statements to analyze all of the money in and out, and here is what I've come up with:
MONEY EARNED: $4166 (after 401k, FSA, health insurance, gym membership, taxes, etc. This is what is direct-deposited into my savings account each month)
MONEY SPENT: $4,203 Oops.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I spent the last hour or so scouring my credit card and bank statements to analyze all of the money in and out, and here is what I've come up with:
MONEY EARNED: $4166 (after 401k, FSA, health insurance, gym membership, taxes, etc. This is what is direct-deposited into my savings account each month)
MONEY SPENT: $4,203 Oops.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BREAKDOWN: (In alphabetical order)
Beauty: $124- highlights, including tip. Ouch :( The roots were looking pretty bad, I had no choice. But no mani/pedis this month, even though I really needed one before my trip to Vegas!
Cash: $300- ATM withdrawals for items not listed below, to pay for lunches and all the taxis I paid for with cash in Vegas
Charity: $50- colleague's Swim Across America event
Dining out: $165- includes drinks I bought in Vegas. This is considerably less than what I actually spend eating out in NYC, considering that client entertainment dinners are company-expensed.
Drugstore/household: $120
Entertainment: $84- two D.C. United Tickets
Furniture: $420- to buy my roommate out of her share of the stuff we bought together
Gifts: $141- my two best friends have birthdays in July, don't expect this expense next month
Groceries: $61- I stocked up on canned goods on sale. I love canned green beans! Ha.
Rent + Utilities: $1507- $1375 rent, half of $165 for cable and $99 for electricity
Travel/Lodging: $1025- not surprising. I acknowledged from the beginning that this would be my biggest expense category. Items this month include: various taxis (including the $5 taxi I take to work every day), transportation to/from airports (I always take public transportation, but the trains to the airports are still $15 or so each way), hotel at MGM Grand in Vegas, return flight from San Fran for the wedding this fall, two Virgin America flights to Vegas in December, train ticket from NYC to DC (return ticket was free via Amtrak Guest Reward points)
Wedding related: $108- down payment on limo for bachelorette party, but will be paid back by other attendants for part of the cost
This breakdown doesn't include the things I paid for in advance of this month, such as prepaid reunion costs (flights, show tickets, dinner, etc.). But I also paid for travel this month that I won't be taking until later this year. Since I don't have any new trips on the horizon (yet... those are dangerous words), I might not have any plane tickets to buy next month. Watch me eat these words later. Other one-time costs include the furniture buy-out and the birthday gifts for my two best friends. There are no August birthdays in my family, that I know of...
Next month I expect (money in) - (money out) to be a positive number, not just because I will be conscious of spending less, but my paycheck will get a boost! The 20% raise from my promotion will be effective (YEAH!!!), and I will max out my 401k with my bonus, so no more paycheck deductions. And at the end of August, I will have maxed out my social security tax- another boost to look forward to!
Flight deals
I love finding the best travel deals possible (since I travel almost every weekend), and one of the best tools in my box right now is www.kayak.com. Kayak is different from other flight search engines because it helps you find the best airfare available for only the flights you want, and it's so easy and uncluttered. I have pretty strict requirements- I need to leave Friday evenings after work and I usually like to stay at my destnation through Sunday evening, but not arrive in NYC too late, so I just adjust the "depart by" and "arrive by" bars so that I don't get fooled by cheap flights that leave at inconvenient times. You can also select (or de-select) a group of airlines to search from, include a range of nearby airports, and choose from all kinds of other search criteria. Note, I am not sponsored by Kayak to laud them, I just love them so much because they help make my fantasy vacations become reality!
One of the best new features at kayak.com is the "weekend" search function, which will find the best fares to a destination for a variety of weekends over a period of time, perfect for this weekend traveler! Instead of having to separately search for multiple weekends and compare prices, it does all the work for you! That means that I will be more likely to visit my brother in Ft. Lauderdale this fall, and maybe even squeeze in another trip to Vegas, and since my schedule is flexible, I will just go when it is cheapest!
If you're obsessive-compulsive about getting good deals on plane tickets like I am, then you might also like www.yapta.com, which tracks the prices of any flights you are watching or have purchased, and notifies you when the prices go down. You can see at a glance how the prices have changed, and if you've purchased a ticket and the price goes down significantly, Yapta gives you advice on how to get a refund from the airline, if possible. I find that airlines are being stingy about giving refunds these days, though. Virgin America wasn't too sympathetic when my recently purchased ticket went down $70 during their sale, but Jet Blue has awarded me flight credits for lowered fares in the past.
Also, be sure to check out the sale that Jet Blue and Virgin America are having right now.... I really wish I had waited to buy that wedding ticket...
Last of my flight-website shout-outs is www.airfarewatchdog.com. They post amazingly low deals each day found by real people, not computers, and you can stay ahead of the airlines' shenanigans such as checked-baggage fees and discontinued flight routes by reading their blog.
Happy traveling!
One of the best new features at kayak.com is the "weekend" search function, which will find the best fares to a destination for a variety of weekends over a period of time, perfect for this weekend traveler! Instead of having to separately search for multiple weekends and compare prices, it does all the work for you! That means that I will be more likely to visit my brother in Ft. Lauderdale this fall, and maybe even squeeze in another trip to Vegas, and since my schedule is flexible, I will just go when it is cheapest!
If you're obsessive-compulsive about getting good deals on plane tickets like I am, then you might also like www.yapta.com, which tracks the prices of any flights you are watching or have purchased, and notifies you when the prices go down. You can see at a glance how the prices have changed, and if you've purchased a ticket and the price goes down significantly, Yapta gives you advice on how to get a refund from the airline, if possible. I find that airlines are being stingy about giving refunds these days, though. Virgin America wasn't too sympathetic when my recently purchased ticket went down $70 during their sale, but Jet Blue has awarded me flight credits for lowered fares in the past.
Also, be sure to check out the sale that Jet Blue and Virgin America are having right now.... I really wish I had waited to buy that wedding ticket...
Last of my flight-website shout-outs is www.airfarewatchdog.com. They post amazingly low deals each day found by real people, not computers, and you can stay ahead of the airlines' shenanigans such as checked-baggage fees and discontinued flight routes by reading their blog.
Happy traveling!
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Paying for HBO
Last year, after a series of horrible displays of incompetence by my local cable company (Time Warner, I'm talking about YOU!), I wrote a letter to customer service (the phone reps were extremely unhelpful, and even more incompetent, I'm afraid to say) and they offered me three free months of HBO to compensate me for my poor service. Well, my roommate at the time became hooked and suggested that we renew the HBO subscription after the free period ended, so we've been paying ~$15.00/mo now for about a year. At first I found a few things on the channel that I liked to watch, but now that I am home less and less, I realize that I haven't watched anything on it in a few months.
Are any of you addicted to something on HBO that I need to check out? Between my roommate and I, it's only $7.50 each, so I could probably find enough to watch each month that would be worth that much, right? I don't even know if my new roommate watches the darn channel. I'm kind of too lazy to cancel it, in fear that I might be missing out on some awesome programming, so I need to poll you guys and find out if there's anything I need to watch, or if I should scrap the channel all together.
Are any of you addicted to something on HBO that I need to check out? Between my roommate and I, it's only $7.50 each, so I could probably find enough to watch each month that would be worth that much, right? I don't even know if my new roommate watches the darn channel. I'm kind of too lazy to cancel it, in fear that I might be missing out on some awesome programming, so I need to poll you guys and find out if there's anything I need to watch, or if I should scrap the channel all together.
Free shipping at Drugstore.com
I just made an online purchase at drugstore.com (following the link from ShopDiscover to get an extra 10% off using my Discover card!) and I could have sworn the purchase threshold for free shipping was $25. So instead of getting my $15 of goodies, I found some extra stuff that I needed to get to $25. And I'm pretty sure that I saw the shipping fee go from $5.99 to "FREE" in my shopping cart. But then I just looked at the confirmation order sent to me today when it was shipped, and I was charged for shipping! And now, I look and it says that free shipping is for orders of $50+. I wonder if this JUST changed on me, and if I got caught in the transition between when I placed my order and when it shipped/was charged for the items.
Am I crazy? Does anyone remember $25+ free shipping at drugstore.com?
Update: I'm crazy. Aparently the $25 off is for new customers only, and because I put all of the items in my shopping cart before logging in, it assumed I was a new customer. However, I don't remember there being an updated total page after I logged in, although I'm sure there must have been. Customer service has graciously waived the shipping fee as a one-time courtesy because of my mistake. Yeah, drugstore.com! Also, I ordered the products on Monday, and they arrived at my apartment today! Yeah!
Am I crazy? Does anyone remember $25+ free shipping at drugstore.com?
Update: I'm crazy. Aparently the $25 off is for new customers only, and because I put all of the items in my shopping cart before logging in, it assumed I was a new customer. However, I don't remember there being an updated total page after I logged in, although I'm sure there must have been. Customer service has graciously waived the shipping fee as a one-time courtesy because of my mistake. Yeah, drugstore.com! Also, I ordered the products on Monday, and they arrived at my apartment today! Yeah!
Comp Day
Today is the almighty Comp Day, the day when I learn what my bonus will be for the year's worth of toil. I imagine that I will find out sometime later this afternoon between 3 and 5pm, so if you're reading this early in the morning, keep your fingers crossed for me! The bonus I got last year made me very happy, but as the business has not be doing as well this year (although our firm has held in better than our competitors), I don't think there's as much money to go around. Our bonuses are a substantial part of our compensation, because while the salaries are decent, they're not very impressive alone and don't stretch too far in NYC.
Despite the smaller pool of bonus money this year (I assume), I am optimistic b/c my performance review indicated a dramatic improvement from last year, and as such I am ranked in the 1st quartile of analysts at my firm! I am hoping that this translates into $$.
Effective August 1 is my promotion from analyst to associate, which comes with a 20% raise in my salary!!! That's HUGE!!!! Because of all of my before-tax deductions (FSA, gym membership, transit card, etc.) I'm not sure how many extra dollars this will exactly translate into. Also, I will have maxed out my social security tax for the year, so that's an extra kick to my paycheck! I've only invested about $3k in my 401k this year, so I will be maxing out the remaining ~$12 from my bonus. This will dramatically reduce the amount of cash I have leftover from my bonus, but I purposely kept my monthly contributions low in anticipation of this large mid-year contribution. That means I will have a couple hundred extra dollars each month to play with (aka SAVE) that I was previously contributing to my 401k. Additionally, my share of rent is a little bit lower because my new roommate is paying a bit more than my old one, so that's also extra cash I didn't have. Thus, a few new reasons to love my paycheck on August 15!
Anyway, wish me luck on my bonus... I'm trying to go in with low expectations, but even if I'm disappointed, I need to remember all of the blessings that I have that money cannot buy!
Despite the smaller pool of bonus money this year (I assume), I am optimistic b/c my performance review indicated a dramatic improvement from last year, and as such I am ranked in the 1st quartile of analysts at my firm! I am hoping that this translates into $$.
Effective August 1 is my promotion from analyst to associate, which comes with a 20% raise in my salary!!! That's HUGE!!!! Because of all of my before-tax deductions (FSA, gym membership, transit card, etc.) I'm not sure how many extra dollars this will exactly translate into. Also, I will have maxed out my social security tax for the year, so that's an extra kick to my paycheck! I've only invested about $3k in my 401k this year, so I will be maxing out the remaining ~$12 from my bonus. This will dramatically reduce the amount of cash I have leftover from my bonus, but I purposely kept my monthly contributions low in anticipation of this large mid-year contribution. That means I will have a couple hundred extra dollars each month to play with (aka SAVE) that I was previously contributing to my 401k. Additionally, my share of rent is a little bit lower because my new roommate is paying a bit more than my old one, so that's also extra cash I didn't have. Thus, a few new reasons to love my paycheck on August 15!
Anyway, wish me luck on my bonus... I'm trying to go in with low expectations, but even if I'm disappointed, I need to remember all of the blessings that I have that money cannot buy!
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