little correction
I still don’t have any internet. Word is, I should get it by next Monday. I’m typing this from a cafe where I just bought juice and potato chips. I don’t have the patience right now to tell you what Ver.izon has put me through, but believe me, I won’t let this slide. I’m getting my service from a new company now.
On another note, I have paid all my bills for the month, I’m still credit card debt-free, and I have about $350 in my checking plus another paycheck coming Friday. This is the point where I save and contribute to my IRA – both of these tasks have gotten lost in the sauce over the past few weeks, so I’ll be making big contributions to make up for lost time (and have good things to say about myself at my end-of-the-month net worth review.
Good news – I went out to dinner (Mexican), saw a movie with Sistah Beginner (Vantage Point, and I can’t wait to catch you up on her progress), and got a new pair of tennis shoes over the weekend. I gotta get a job that pays like this project. Having discretionary income is great!
Gotta go – will catch up later!
catching up after a long break
From Tuesday, Feb. 19th – I never was able to post this, the weak signal died.
Through some small miracle, I have a very weak signal coming into my living room, so I figure I’ll try to post this blog entry.
Folks, it’s been a bumpy road, starting with losing my regular internet connection. Most of my bills are sent via e-mail. All of my bill payments are usually done online. I don’t even have pre-addressed payment envelopes coming to my home, so I had to get on the phone to contact the companies I have business relationships with. I’m working a lot, so doing this was hard during business hours. That started at around the beginning of this month.
Then good news came – my project was approved for overtime. I get paid hourly on this assignment, and I can bill enough each week to earn about $1,400 extra each month for the rest of the duration of the project. So between billable hours, lunch, and my short commute, I’m putting in about 11 or 11 and 1/2 hours in every business day. Because I’m saving for a house and my working overhead is very low, it’s totally worth it, financially.
But this is where the bumps in the road come in: Saturday before last, I was headed outdoors to get someone from the train station. On the way to the car, I noticed trash all over the street. Something said, "Check it out and make sure it’s not yours." But when I picked up the paper that was right by my foot, to my horror, I saw Mister Ant’s name. A quick scan in both directions revealed that our mail was all up and down the block I was on and the next block up. In the twilight, I walked up and down those blocks, salvaging every scrap of torn up mail that I could, including the envelope that used to house the paystub from my employer that had my checking routing and account number and the last four digits of my social security number, along with my name and address and the name and address of my employer. They probably saw something that looked like a paycheck sticking out and just grabbed it and all our other mail. Who knew what else they got from my mailbox that I didn’t know about? Hopefully not one of those access checks that would charge to a credit card (that I meant to tell the credit cards to stop sending but didn’t in time for this)!
I didn’t waste any time. I called Mister Ant, who was at a friends house and told him to investigate credit freezes online. Then I called all my credit card companies. Luckily it was Saturday night and I found the stuff less than two hours after it was stolen. I had all my account numbers changed. I filed a police report. It was a long weekend – I had to wait until Monday morning to change my credit union account number. I also called the credit reporting bureaus that morning and but a 90-day watch on my reports so that anyone trying to open an account with my information would have a hard time trying. It was all made easier by the fact that I have all my creditors’ number saved in my cell phone’s phonebook, and all made harder by my work schedule, and my extremely limited access to the internet. With all my account numbers in flux, paying bills was hard – I had to cancel automatic debits (and my direct deposit) and find alternate ways to pay my bills. As I type this, my car insurance payment is days late because despite my effort to try online and phone payments, I have to actually visit my agent to pay the bill since they had me in the system as an automatic debit client when my bill was generated. It’s been a journey. Last week, when I was paid, I had to use my entire lunch to go pick up my check from my agency, cash it on the bank it was drawn on (for a five dollar fee), and deposit the cash in my credit union to keep from having the same problem I had last time with my money being held for a week. I can’t even provide my employer with a voided check to reinstate my direct deposit (and avoid walking all over Philly at lunch) until I get the new checks for my new account number. It’s a trip!
But after all of that, here is the good news. First, and most importantly, there is no evidence to date that any of my accounts have been compromised or that any of my money has been misappropriated. I am not in bad standing with any of my business relationships – to the extent my car insurance is late, I have a grace period, and it’ll be paid on Wednesday. Also, I have secure mail now – we’ve abandoned the unsecure mailbox for the door slot (which was inoperable and has now been fixed). I have all my new account numbers and cards now. The checks are on the way. We’re getting our own internet connection on Wednesday. And the biggest news of all -
I PAID OFF EVERY LAST PENNY OF MY OLD CREDIT CARD DEBT, JUST IN TIME FOR MY BIRTHDAY!!!
So that’s how I’m doing! Sorry I haven’t been to visit anyone lately. But my month in financial purgatory is winding down – the sun is coming out!
quick word
Looks like I won’t be getting access at home for at least another week. Gotta be quick, I’m being rushed. When I come back, I’ll tell you all about how I had to fight to defend my identity, what I decided about life insurance, and health insurance, and how I’m glad for a little something called overtime.
feening
I am typing this from a cafe in my neighborhood that has a wireless network. I have no internet access at my house. I can’t use the internet access on my job. I don’t have an internet plan on my cellphone. I haven’t even SEEN the internet since sometime Saturday.
Mister Ant and I have been piggybacking on an unsecured network of our neighbor’s all this time with hardly any problems. But over the weekend, the signal went away (the neighbor probably finally secured their connection) and we can’t use wi-fi to get onto the net. We are setting up an appointment to get a connection at our home as soon as possible. Until then, I can’t check email, my bank account, my blog, my favorite blogs… nothing – unless I pay for somebody’s cookie or coffee. Arrgghhhh! Between work and my short commute, I’m putting in at least eleven hours every day, so who feels like trucking to the cafe to sit among strangers eating overpriced snacks just so I can get on the net? You just don’t know how much this bothers me. I get my news from the net. I entertain myself with the net. I’m a junkie. The internet is what helps me deal with not paying for cable. And now, I wish I had cable. I even considered getting it in one of those internet/phone/cable packages. But for now, the plan is to get internet without paying for cable every month.
A person who is job-hunting cannot effectively search for work from home without internet access. It is totally worth the cost to have our own connection at this point. You just don’t know what you have ’til it’s gone.
The good news is that there’s a place near my job that has wi-fi, so maybe I’ll start eating there during lunch so I can feed my fix during the day. (Of course this means spending money daily just to get on the net, which you KNOW I’m not enthusiastic about. We’ll see about this idea…)
I have a lot to talk about, though, so I’ll try my best to make the time to share my hustle with you the next time I step up into a cafe!
Providence
I spent the last month of 2007 and the first two weeks of 2008 at home, looking for work. I was blessed with the opportunity to earn some income in the middle of January, and I’ve been working since then. The expectation is that I will be working on this project until spring or summer. I’m still looking for an opportunity to take advantage of at that point. However, I am not hoarding my money just because my employment situation isn’t quite stable yet. My goals haven’t changed, and my January net worth reflects that.
I didn’t add much to my savings or retirement, because my first priority has been staying current with my bills. I’d been using the credit cards more often for other expenses – I used them like advances on my unemployment compensation. So I didn’t really save anything. However, just staying current on my bills helped to increase my net worth. Also, just like I said I’d do last month, as soon as I started getting income from my current job, I made a point of reducing my old credit card debt. Put together, these efforts have advanced my net worth by over a thousand dollars in January – this number actually surprised me, because I was expecting less progress.
I’m excited to say that this time next month, I could very well be rid of every single cent of my revolving debt. Praise God!
I am keeping my savings liquid, since I still don’t have a permanent job. Also, I suspect that I will do much better with savings (for the house) and retirement contributions next month. It’s nice to see that the six weeks of unemployment didn’t stop my net worth from continuing its determined climb.
