I find this humid, sultry weather so despicable! Hate it.

I posted yesterday that I had just one small window AC; I had totally forgotten about the large portable AC I’ve had for a number of years, but hardly ever use.


It's hard to make out in the photo, but it's actually sitting on a black chair.)

It blasts out cold air pretty well and it’s on roller casters, so you can place it anywhere in the house near a window. I paid a lot of money for it, I think $375 or something like that. It’s s got a large, flexible exhaust tube (about the diameter of a dryer hose vent) you have to hook up to the back, and then through a vent that fits inside a window. The problem is that this tube does not screw into the back of the unit or the piece that fits inside the window securely. (You close a double hung window over it.) It’s exasperating to work with and keeps popping out of place and as a result, I hardly ever use the thing except when I am desperate. I may call the manufacturer as well, which is long overdue.

I did run it for a few hours Iast night during dinner, in the kitchen. It did a good job of cooling the kitchen, but the cool air didn’t really filter into the adjoining dining or living room. This morning I kept the unit in the kitchen but managed to elevate it by lifting it onto a chair directly in front of the window and rejiggered the whole thing. The flexible hose can be pulled out to maybe 10 feet, but when the unit is running, you can feel that hose get very warm, and you have to wonder if it’s sending warmth right back into the air. So I figure when the unit is right up close to the window with the hose contracted in size to about 1.5 feet, if that will help. I will likely run it again today when the heat gets unbearable.

The worst thing is when we get these really hot days and I have to go to work, because I worry about how the cats fare cooped up in this house alone for a 10-hour stretch. They are not smart enough to go into the cooler basement, and if I locked them down there, Luther would be clawing at the door all 10 hours. At least now through Monday I can monitor the opening and closing of curtains, windows, run the AC as needed, etc. My 3 ceiling fans and 2 large floor fans help as well, though once the humidity reaches a certain point, all they do is blow hot air around.

Here’s a picture of the Maharaja chair I acquired about a month ago.



I like it very much. Kind of rustic, but very sturdy and comfortable. Sits in my sunroom.

I’ve started my Lyme meds, but had to cut back a bit on one of the herbs I’m taking concurrently, the Cat’s Claw. It was upsetting my stomach.

Going to mother’s for lunch tomorrow. I was planning on going to the landfill today, but forgot they’d be closed for the holiday. I’m guessing they’ll be closed tomorrow, too, so that means I MUST go on Saturday, the busiest day of all, since they are also closed Monday, my last day before returning to work.
Caraluzzi’s has blueberries this week for $1.88 a pint, cheaper than anywhere else I’ve seen. Used to be blueberries went for .99 a pint in summer, and I’ve staunchly held off buying them for anything more than that, the result being that I ate no blueberries the last few years.  So, I will cave and buy 2 pints at Caraluzzi’s today.

I finally got some interesting stuff to do at work yesterday. I started writing website product descriptions for some pillows and throws; I also have another designer bio to write. These are not ordinary product descriptions you might see on any number of retail furniture sites. They practically give an encapsulated history of where the product is made. For instance, I was writing about a pillow yesterday made in Norway using Norwegian lambswool in a woolen mill whose history is closely tied to the history of the town. It’s a small copper mining town, and back in 1789, a wealthy but childless mine director left his fortune to establish a foundation to feed and clothe the poor by teaching them how to spin and sew clothes made from lambswool. Anyway, it’s all very interesting and yes, the product description goes into some detail about all of the above and all. I don’t feel like I’m writing about a product to sell as much as I’m writing about the history of Norway’s handcraft industry. They’re very nice pillows, but I don’t have $100 to spend on a pillow.

I also wrote about the quality of the raw material: these Norwegian sheep live the good life, roaming at will and munching contentedly on fresh green pasture in the Norwegian mountainsides. Because of the cooler climate, they are not bothered by insects, and thus their wool does not need to be treated with harsh chemicals to clean the wool.

My manager has been making lots of edits to my work and I’m finding that she is uber particular about how everything reads. There is a definite “tone” running throughout the website which she wants to maintain, and being able to mimic that tone exactly to her liking will be difficult. A heavy-handed editor is something that stressed me out in the past, but at this point, I’m really just there to be paid and not taking personal ownership of things which just caused me to be possessive about my writing in the past and who messed with it.


Here's a photo of a large mirror my ex-toy designer British neighbor offered me after rescuing it at the dump. He was going to bring it home to his wife, the kind of thing he does all the time, but i guess he figured they had enough to stage their house and it would be just another thing to move. It's in very good condition except that the paint is coming off it and it would need to be sanded and repainted. It's very heavy so I'm not sure I want to try hanging it now.

If you recall, my COBRA was set to expire June 30. I planned to get onto the Charter Oak plan without a lapse in coverage, but things didn’t go exactly as planned.

As it happened, my premium increased for the month of June, from $562/month previously to about $770 a month. The COBRA rep I spoke to suggested that if I didn’t think I’d need, or could avoid incurring any healthcare expenses for the month of June, that I could save myself the $770 by simply not paying the premium at the start of the month as I usually do. He explained that if I DID need health insurance, I would still be covered for June as long as my premium payment was postmarked June 30; if it turned out I didn’t need health coverage, I could just skip it since I knew (or thought I knew) I’d be getting onto the state Charter Oak plan.

Would you believe that during the very last week of June I started wondering if I could have Lyme disease (again)? I was feeling very headachey, and the headaches didn’t go away. I’ve had Lyme 3 times already so I know what it feels like (for me, anyway). By this past Saturday, June 29, I was sure I had it. But it was already too late to mail in the premium since it was Saturday afternoon and the post office closes at 1 pm so no postmark. Not that I wanted to spend the $770 anyway.

So….I began to worry… a lot….over the weekend, wondering how I was going to get treatment without health insurance. There’s actually a health clinic in town for people with no health insurance but you have to be under certain income limits. I would be borderline eligible; they determine it on a case by case basis. They’re free, which is great, but they’re only open on Wednesdays. So I was thinking of trying to get in there, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t be until Wednesday (tomorrow) or possibly the following Wednesday, too late for something like Lyme where early treatment is very important.

I even called the local hospital to see what the cost would be; I basically just needed the antibiotics for 3 weeks, which I know from previous experience cost all of $15. They explained the emergency room is very expensive: $600.

OK, forget that.

So this past Monday, after getting no answer at the free clinic, I called my regular primary care doctor and explained my situation, that because of various paperwork delays by Charter Oak, I’m not yet covered by them and essentially am in the no man’s land of no insurance. She said it would cost me $75 to see my PCP, which I thought was actually a bargain. I figured it would be something like $200. Not only that, but she actually had an opening that afternoon.
I found that out 8:30 am, just before I needed to head to work. I left work early that day for the doc appointment and met with my PCP, who’s actually an RN with prescribing ability. I’ve been seeing here for probably 15 or 20 years now. When she walked in I could tell immediately she’d lost a ton of weight…85 lbs, to be exact. We talked quite a bit about that at first, which was good, in a way, because I wanted to warm her up to my proposal that she dispense with the blood test for the Lyme disease and just give me the prescription, to save my money.

She agreed to do that. The blood work, again for an uninsured individual, would no doubthave been several hundred dollars. As it was, those $15 antibiotics wound up costing me $124 because I lack health insurance.

I also spent another $150 on 4 different herbs recommended as part of a protocol by a well-known herbalist who wrote a book about beating lyme disease with herbs. I’m not a huge believer in alternative therapies, but I do feel that these herbs helped me get rid of lyme in the past, and I’ve heard enough horror stories about intractable Lyme to know I don’t want to take any chances with it.

So my total out of pocket for the Lyme, unfortunately, has been $350, still less than that $770 premium for the month of June, but probably not worth it given all my anxiety about my health.
These are things that the average person who’s always been covered by an employer health plan never even thinks about.

Here are some of the houses my friend and I visited during this past weekend’s House & Garden Tour in my town:











There were just 6 properties. In addition to the expected old colonials and saltboxes was a nice log cabin.

Have you seen this? Check out rewardboost.com.

You can enter all the credit cards you own here (not your accounts, just the name of the card) and it will help you maximize how much you earn in credit card rewards each year.

I'm constantly participating in various credit card reward offers and it gets difficult to keep track of which one's the best to use for specific purchase categories, like gas, groceries or dining out.

This site organizes all that for you and makes it easy to compare and contract reward offers so you know exactly which card to use for any given purchase.

The bottom line is, no one card is going to best for every spending category. I found that for the 3rd quarter, Chase Freedom will be best for buying gas with its 5% reward, but Amex Blue Cash Everyday will be best for charging groceries (3% reward). Citi Forward is best for fast food at 5%.

I've accumulated about 10 cards now. I have cancelled a bunch, but there are 2 I never use but will always hang onto because I've had them for years, before I got started on the credit card rewards kick.

And I notice my credit hasn't suffered with this many cards (I PAY IN FULL EVERY MONTH), so having several to choose from will help me optimize the savings. Right now I'm still working on upfront credit card rewards on 2 cards (Chase Sapphire Preferred and Bankamericard Travel Rewards) so am charging everything to these 2 cards, but once I meet my spend goals in another month, I'll then be using rewardboost to help me maximize everyday purchases with all or any of my cards.

Later this morning I’m picking up a friend and we’ll be visiting 7 private homes as part of my town’s annual home and garden tour. It’s really the gardens I’m interested in seeing, but I know the homes will be lovely, too. I imagine they won’t want people taking pictures inside, but perhaps I can sneak in a few outside to show you later. 

I haven’t done this in about 15 years. The tickets were $25 each. My friend mentioned that she thought one of the houses was somewhat inaccessible and that it looked like a walk in the woods to the house and she hates insects, not her idea of a good time, yadda yadda yadda. I think she’s entirely mistaken about that house; what she may have thought was a driveway was, I believe, a road. It has been insufferably hot and humid for a week now but we will be in an air-conditioned car and I’m guessing most of these homes are also air-conditioned as well. So please, don’t ruin this outing with complaints already. Let’s think of it as an adventure. Geez. 

Otherwise, this was pretty much a normal weekend for me. I hit Trader Joe’s Thursday, BJs Friday and will be at Caraluzzi’s after the home and garden tour. For some reason, I never wind up getting everything I need at a single grocery store, even though I always come with a list.

I am thinking next week I will look into getting someone to remove a non-functioning humidifier that’s attached to my oil furnace and replacing it with a new one. When I bought the house, I took the advice of a furnace guy to detach the existing humidifier because it would spew lots of unhealthy mold spores into the air or whatever. I have lived 18 years regretting that decision because in the winter, the air in here is exceedingly dry; I wake up with a sore throat daily and you generally feel a lot colder than you would if there was some humidity.

What made things worse is that the guys who were here at the time cut the plastic tube that carried the water, and at some point later, the water still trapped in that tube leaked out and totally rusted the unit as well as one side of my furnace. It didn’t damage the furnace, but it’s very unsightly. You just don’t see it all unless you walk around behind the unit. Anyway, I’m hoping it can all be replaced and the rust somewhat cleaned up for no more than $500. We’ll see. It would be money well spent. Surely they make humidifiers now with a UV light or whatever that kills mold.

My neighbors behind me lowered the price on their house from $900-something to the high $800s after probably less than a month on the market. They have a gorgeous, 6 bedroom house with 7 acres, but it doesn’t help, I would imagine, when the Zillow estimate that appeared on their Patch page with their open house listing valued the house at $580K or in that vicinity! It makes it appear they have grossly over-valued their home. I haven’t had a chance to talk to them about that, but I would love to know why they think there’s such a discrepancy.

I bit the bullet and ordered 6 custom-made bamboo shades (with liner) for my sunroom, at a cost of about $316 with coupon. I really, really need these. My sunroom was done about 3 years ago and I have suffered through 3 summers without any kind of window coverings. From June through August, from noon on, it gets too hot in there to enjoy the space. The windows face south and west. And the heat spills over into the family room, warming it up as well. So I’m hoping these shades will really cut down on the heat in there. I can’t wait to get them. I hope I can install them myself. Others said installation was easy. I need to borrow a drill.

OK, so I’ve been working the new 3-day-a-week job for 3 weeks now, and I’ve gotten a few paychecks under my belt. Now that I know what kind of net income I’m dealing with, I thought I would go over my monthly income/expense scenario again, with an eye toward fine-tuning and tweaking, especially as it affects my retirement.

For a long time, my retirement goal has been, after using countless retirement calculators offered by the likes of T. Rowe Price, Kiplinger’s and others, $1,250,000. That, I felt, was an accurate representation of what I would need to retire comfortably.

While knocking out the mortgage last summer was a big milestone, it certainly doesn’t mean I can just relax and forget about retirement planning. Although my 3-day-a-week job may transition into 4 or 5 days a week at some point down the road, I really have no knowledge of whether or when that will occur, so I’m focusing my re-budgeting based on the 3-day-a-week scenario.

I decided that prior calculations about what kind of savings it would take to save even $1 million by age 60 would not, realistically, be something I can achieve with my current income. (Assuming a 5% interest rate, I’d need to sock away $2,683 a month. Or $1,015 a month based on an 8% interest rate. Yeah, it would be less if I didn’t have to stop working at 60, but I don’t think I want to be locked into working f/t after that age.)

So I adjusted my sights downward somewhat by deciding to concentrate on a goal of saving $750,000 by age 60. Based on a modest 5% interest rate, I’d only have to save $247 a month to accomplish that. Remember that number; we’ll return to it below.

I looked at my revised “bare minimum monthly expenses” once again and made the following adjustments to it:

1. I set health insurance at $589 a month, though I am sort of in limbo right now and not yet accepted into the state plan. My application’s being processed.

2. I was happily able to adjust my monthly allocation for property taxes down to $488 a month, thanks to our recent town-wide revaluation of real estate. That’s a savings of $62 a month, or about $750 a year! You’d think it would be more, given that the last reval was done at the peak of the market five years ago, but hey, I’m not complaining.

3. My insurance for the new car will only increase $100, mainly because I boosted the deductible to $2,000. I’ve never filed a claim on car or home in 18 years, so why pay more each year in insurance if I don’t need to?

4. The big unknown at this point is how much my car tax will be. This is a hugely unpopular tax in Connecticut which legislators recently failed to do away with, but anyway, I called the town and she said it wouldn’t be due til January, so I’ll wait til then to find out.

So with these various adjustments, my bare minimum monthly expenses are actually a bit lower than before, at $1,922. Psychologically, I really like having it stay under $2,000 a month.

My net income from working 3 days will be $2,564 a month, and I’m adding an additional $200 in net income each month from my freelance work. I’m just guessing at the taxes on $300 gross. So with $2,764 in total income each month after taxes, I’ll have $842 left over each month.

I will put aside $247 of this toward my $750K retirement goal on the 1st of each month, starting in July. It represents a 9% saving rate on my NET income, not bad on p/t income, but that’s what you can do when your mortgage is paid off. That still leaves me with $595 for discretionary spending which I predict will be spent on things like home maintenance and the occasional eating out, clothes, Christmas and, hopefully not anytime soon, the vet….none of those expenses are included in my “bare minimum monthly essential expenses.”

In summary, I think this is a doable budget for me that allows me to save a meaningful amount toward retirement, something that has LONG been on my back-burner due to under-employment.

I’m not saying I want to retire on $750K and I’m not sure I could. It would be a fairly spartan retirement, perhaps something like my mother has. I always envisioned something more comfortable that would allow me some travel abroad etc. So while $1.25 mm is still the ultimate goal, for now, I will set my sights a little lower just so the bigger numbers don’t make me throw up my hands and give up. I am definitely a goal-oriented person and I do better when I have a goal I’m working toward, provide that it’s reasonable and doable. I believe this one is.
It also allows some additional funds for who-knows-what. I know this old house sucks up money like nobody’s business. In the back of my head are big capital improvements coming down the road like: new roof @ $8,000, upgraded kitchen cabinets/counters @ I wonder how much and a variety of other assorted upgrades/repairs.

I never paid much attention to pollen counts until I acquired Waldo and discovered he has severe allergies. Each spring it gets harder and harder for him to breathe. I brought him once or twice to the vet, who gave him a quick shot and presto! Allergies subdued in a majorly way, really quick. I noticed his improved breathing on the car ride home!

However, I’m reluctant to submit Waldo to the trauma of a trip to the vet unless absolutely necessary. Heck, I’m never really sure I can even catch him to put him in the carrier.

This spring, I noticed that weather.com will email you the daily pollen counts at the start of each day. They also break it down by trees, grasses or weeds and indicate the level of severity (low, moderate or high).

In early April, Waldo was already showing signs of having breathing issues, so I decided not to throw open the windows the way I do on warm days. I love the fresh air and breezes coming in the house, but it just wasn’t worth it when Waldo was affected by it so much. So I kept the house shut up continuously right through June; the only fresh air getting in here was when I went in and out the doors.

The difference has been amazing. Waldo is breathing so much better.

Not only that, but I came to the conclusion that the pollen he’s allergic to is tree pollen. Now that tree pollen season is over (according to my weather.com reports), it’s down to the grass and weed pollens, and Waldo doesn’t seem affected by that at all. Perhaps the tree problem is more of an issue because it’s floating down through the air from a much higher starting point. I know that when I still had my screened porch, I’d get a thin layer of green dust on everything in the porch and family room.

I’m really glad, as I knew I couldn’t keep the windows closed forever, and that when it really heated up, I’d be forced to open windows since I don’t have central air.

So now I’m enjoying wide open windows (and so are the cats) without any repercussions.

Yesterday, I got a check for $113; it’s the up-front bonus from my Chase Sapphire card. Still working on rewards for dual cards, something I don’t usually do, but I wound up applying for 3 cards right before I bought my new car. So now I’m working on the Chase Sapphire Preferred card and the Bankamericard Travel card. After that, I may take a little breather on the credit card rewards. I feel like you really have to stay on top of them when you’re working to earn those rewards within a given time span.

So far, year to date, I’ve earned $355 in credit card rewards and in another few months I’ll have earned another $615.

I also participated in an easy promotion where you just have to use your BankAmericard once to pay for a phone/cable/Internet bill through June 30 and you get a $15 gift card at Target and a few other stores.

Last night I made my first of the season pesto sauce over pasta. It didn’t taste quite right, because I substituted dried garlic flakes for fresh garlic, and it tasted a little flat to me.

I finally got paid $110 from a Yale study I did in early May. Now that I’m working 3 full days, I will by necessity have to cut back on these kinds of studies, and market research focus group studies, as well, but I will still keep my eyes open for things that might take place on my days off (Thurs and Fri).

The mulberries are starting to ripen on the big mulberry tree outside my window. I only know that because I can hear a variety of fruit-loving birds fluttering around in the branches each morning, including cedar waxwings, cat birds and robins.

Lucky Robin, if you’re reading this, you’ll be pleased to know I fed the boys canned rabbit for the first time ever this morning ($2 a can) and they loved it. I think you're on to something.

Due to my abbreviated work schedule, my “weekend” officially starts at 6:01 pm Wednesday night. So I was just into my weekend two nights ago when I arrived home from work. I didn’t initially notice that Waldo didn’t come into the kitchen at dinner time with his straight-up, happy tail with the crooked little curve at the tip. Which was odd, because Waldo is a healthy eater, and the cats had just gone a long stretch…10 hours…without eating since breakfast.

I found him huddled in a corner behind the French door in the family room. He was just sitting there, in an out-of-the-way spot. Perhaps I was reading too much into it, but the look on his face told me he was in pain. He didn’t respond to me when I paid him attention, and this I found very disturbing as he is normally extremely affectionate with me.

The first thing that came to mind, frankly, is that maybe Luther rough-housed with him too roughly, as I feel he often does, and this time actually punctured his neck. Luther is a big boy and I am constantly breaking things up when he decides to “play” with Waldo. I had even considered segregating them when I go to work, because the rough-housing happens when Luther gets bored, and poor Waldo is missing most of his teeth and can’t really defend himself. I ultimately decided against segregation because no matter where I put Luther, I know he’d be scratching and destroying whatever stood in his way. He can be very destructive.

I had also noticed 3 small pools of throw-up. I assumed it was Luther, who is frequently coughing up hairballs. These didn’t look serious, just white foamy stuff that sat on top of the carpeting, so it appeared it had just happened.

I continued to keep an eye on Waldo, and I was sure something was very, very wrong. If it wasn’t a bite from Luther, I worried that at Waldo’s age, 13, it could be kidney failure. I called the new 24 hr emergency veterinary place in town to confirm I could bring the cat in, any time.

I hesitated, because Waldo is still extremely timid and I knew I would have a really hard time getting him in the carrier. It would be very traumatic for both of us. And I know that I basically had one chance to scoop him up, because if I failed the first time, he’d be extremely wary about letting me get near him after that.

I brought the carrier down from the attic and positioned it upstairs out of view, wondering if I could carry a squirrely cat in my arms even that far. You know how cats can squirm out of your arms if they want to. I couldn’t let Waldo see it or he’d hide, even though it’s been several years since I last took him to the vet for an allergy shot.

Before I knew it, it was already 9 pm. Waldo was still sitting very still. At one point, he meowed once or twice (again, I interpreted that as pain or discomfort) and another minute later, I realized why: his stomach contracted a few times and then he puked up another small pool of white foam. He must have been feeling nauseous, hence the meows. But I didn’t know why he was throwing up. After that, he was quiet, but I was still very concerned for his welfare. Since taming him several years ago, he always loves to be petted, and this time, he didn’t respond at all.

I decided I would spend the night with him on the family room floor and brought a pillow and blanket downstairs. I was pretty tired and settled in, though later, he got up and walked away to jump up to one of his favorite napping spots on an upholstered chair. At that point, I decided that if he didn’t really want my company, I might as well get a good night’s sleep, so I went upstairs to bed.

Yesterday morning, I was up around 7 a.m., feeling a little guilty that I hadn’t gotten up in the middle of the night to check on Waldo. When I walked downstairs, I found Waldo had just gone to his food bowl and was eating with some enthusiasm.

I couldn’t believe it. His appetite had returned. I had been worried he might be dehydrated if he hadn’t eaten anything. I let him eat his fill and then followed him back to the family room. He seemed like his old, affectionate, good-natured self in every way! I was really astonished; I had come so close to hauling him over to the vet’s, which would have entailed all kinds of exams, blood work and stress for both of us.

Waldo has been perfectly fine since then. I really wonder what the heck happened. I’ve had cats all my life, and it’s been my experience that cats rarely get sick in any way, but that once they do, it’s often something terminal. That’s why when I saw Waldo’s condition Wednesday night, it wasn’t hard to convince myself that this was the beginning of the end, that this was Waldo’s time and I wouldn’t’ t have him for long. I thought that at his age there was a good chance he was in the early stages of kidney disease, since vomiting is one sign of that, as is loss of appetite.

I suppose that could still be possible, so I spent some time yesterday researching the best foods for cats with kidney disease, which means high protein, low fat and low carbs. It also means no grain products or the “healthy” vegetables that cat food makers often put in cat food to make it more palatable to humans. Cats are carnivores and don’t need that stuff; in fact, their digestive systems weren’t made to handle it.

There’s a very good vet online (http://www.catinfo.org/?link=cannedfoods) who writes extensively about cat foods and what’s best to feed cats. I studied her writing, lists and charts for hours. I’m going out today to pick up some higher quality cat foods then what I’ve been feeding the boys. “Higher quality” does not mean, necessarily, the most expensive foods. Iams, for instance, seems to a very popular brand, but the very first ingredient in their food is corn. A huge red flag. Another huge no-no according to Dr. Pierson is NO DRY FOOD. Also very little or NO seafood flavors. At most, use them as a treat once or twice a week. (See her website for reasons why.)
I am just so glad to have my old Waldo back but am still flummoxed by what happened Wednesday night. Since he doesn’t go outside and I control everything he eats (unlike Luther, he doesn’t find little things on the floor like bugs to eat), it would seem unlikely to me that he had indigestion, because he ate the same thing that day that he eats any other day.


Another shot of my office building, from the back side.


I discovered this marina just a 5-minute walk from my office!


The marina is behind the Starwood Hotel, which you can see here. Unfortunately, the nice little walkway between the hotel and the marina doesn't extend too far along the water, and it ends where the Starwood Hotel property ends. Too bad. The hotel does have a nice outdoor patio for dining though.

In other news…
I’m trying to work out a savings plan with my new 3-day-a-week income. I think I want to transfer $650 a month to my online money market account from checking. (My monthly net will be about $2,535.) $550 of this is to be set aside for my property taxes, which I pay twice a year. So I’m really only saving $100 a month, or 3.9% of net income, which is kind of shabby. But since I know my “bare minimum” monthly expenses are about $2,000, if I save $100 a month, that leaves me with $435 a month left over, which I can either save or spend.

It’ll probably be a combination of the two.

Sometimes, it’s just the little things that give pleasure. Like Wednesday night, which was like my Friday night, on my long commute home, I decided I would treat myself to takeout at Boston Market. I ate in my car. I used to do that all the time, but hadn’t in about three years. It was quite enjoyable, and a nice way to break up my drive.

One bit of promising news: my recruiter friend told me that his HR contact at the company where I work asked him last week for the “Direct Hire fee agreement.” (This is what the company has to pay the recruiter if they hire me on a perm basis.) Now I don’t want to read too much into this, but I think it’s a good sign that HR wants to review this document, possibly as prep for negotiating a perm position.

If not, I’m okay with that too, and would happily continue the three days a week work schedule, on a contract basis, all summer.

But it also points out how tenuous my work situation still is. If for some reason they decided I wasn’t a good fit, I could easily become unemployed again in very short order, scrambling to figure out what happens next. It’s actually good for me to keep reminding myself of this, because after an initial spending spree rooted in several years of self-enforced frugality (clothing, shoes, a “statement piece” chair, new car, rubber cargo mat for new car, and a few lunches out with girlfriend), I think I’m ready to really buckle down and do what I said I would do once I got a decent job: save as much as I possibly can, for my retirement, for the next unforeseen rainy day, in case I lose my job again and to try to get my investments back into positive growth territory without having to rely on a bull stock market. I have always had “money insecurity,” partly, I think, because I am single and have to rely on myself. I think having money insecurity is a good thing because you’re more likely to shore up your savings than if you were more carefree.

Yesterday I ghost-wrote a magazine article for a real estate exec, in about 5 hours’ time, so it boosted by my hour rate to about $57/hr. It’s important to me to maintain my freelance business while still holding down the other job, as backup security should something happen to my other new job. I also got another builder bio assignment and am trying to schedule an interview time with the guy today.

Sunday I am doing something fun….a tour of an old historic cemetery here in town, led by our town historian, a retired history professor. He’s very knowledgeable but I’ve only heard his talks a few times, so this should be fun. My friend A. will be joining me. I hope it’s not too big a crowd.

This is the building where I work. I can't show you the front side cus it has the name of the company in big letters.


Here's the view of downtown from our parking lot.


It was a pretty good weekend although I didn’t really do anything social aside from a brief visit from my mother and a phone conversation with my dad and my friend R.

I wrote a builder bio on Saturday and he liked it very much.

I mowed the lawn. Seems like is becoming harder and harder pushing that thing.

I made a cranberry-grape relish as well as a crabmeat/red pepper/pea/pasta salad for my work week lunches. I also tried a recipe that’s basically hard boiled eggs chopped up with mayo, sour cream and artichoke hearts, used as a spread on crusty bread or celery sticks. It was okay, but that’s because I just like egg salad; I don’t think I liked the calorie-ridden addition of the other stuff and the whole affair was rather bland, even with liberal use of curry powder.

I also made a turkey chili, so that will serve as this week’s dinners if I don’t get too sick of it. I was wanting to use up my frozen tomatoes from last summer, and after this have just one bag of it left. So, tons of food in the house; I may have to freeze some of that chili.

I swept up portions of my large driveway, as many shrubs hang over it. I got out my land bow saw and attempted to cut down to truly ground level the stubs of some shrubs I had cut back last fall. Without doing that, I still have to mow around the stubby stems. I’d like to be able to mow over the stems to keep them all from sprouting again. I made some progress, but it’s actually kind of hard to saw things like that so close to the ground. I’m sure if a neighbor saw me they’d wonder what the heck I was doing.

My friend R. has another court appearance Tuesday. He is in the midst of a contentious divorce; for him, after she walked out on him twice, it is a gloves-off scenario and he is representing himself and fighting to depose several members of her family and friends as a means of pressuring her to settle out of court. She has hired a high-priced lawyer becus she was/is apparently under the belief that he had gotten tons of cash from two lawsuits he won against a former employer and his health insurance company, but he didn’t get that much.

The whole thing is pretty sad; my friend is far from the perfect guy and, having dated and lived with him 25 years ago, I know that he would drive me nuts if I saw him regularly. However, at heart he’s a good guy, very family oriented and a responsible guy. How two people who twice said “I do” can be so mean to each other is something I have a hard time understanding.

Monday
Made it through another day at work. I only put it that way because it’s such an odyssey to get there. I’ve been feeling guilty my cats are on their own for such a long day, so tonight after heating up my chili in the microwave, I played with the string with them and then, for a special treat, I poured some catnip on the family room carpet and inside a long, rectangular box that is tunnel-like and great for cats. Luther, of course, took to it immediately, but I have yet to see Waldo go completely inside.

I got my “cargo liner” for the trunk of my new car today. I’m pretty happy with it. Only if you inspect it closely would you see that it doesn’t exactly fit the space; along the sides, where there’s a curve, there’s a bit of an overlap, a good half inch on at least one side. However, you can hardly notice it.


To think that the dealer wanted $300 for this.

I’m making good progress on the credit card rewards. For the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, I’ve already charged $1927 in this the first month, so hitting the required $3,000 to earn the $400 back in cash rebate should not be a problem. I also started in on a new Bank Americard Travel credit card, and have charged just $47 on that toward the target $500 in 3 months (to earn $100 back). I already finished with the Blue Cash Everyday card from Amex, and am waiting for my points to show up online (redeemable for $100 back).
Just finished interviewing a builder over the phone; now I can either write his bio now or do it tonight.

My British neighbor/toy designer stopped by for a chat on my front stoop. Since being laid off, he gets lonely staying in the house all day while his wife is at work. The house has been on the market for only a few weeks and they’ve dropped the price by $50K becus they don’t feel they’ve gotten enough interest, and they need to be out of there by December. The house was priced in the $900K range to start.

The Stairway to Heaven looks especially lovely with all the flower petals from the rhododendrons fallen on the driveway.



I’m debating if I should go out now and run my errands or write the bio. Hmmm.

I wrapped up my third week at the new job. I am liking things better as I get meatier assignments, such as writing a bio of a Slovenian designer, which will appear on the website, as well as 2 promo letters related to a home makeover contest ($10,000 prize!) and some other website stuff.

I learned yesterday from the recruiter that they are "particularly pleased" with my work. He predicts an early perm offer, but again, I try not to count on that too much and just chalk it up to recruiter's optimistic/hopeful disposition.

I am not particularly happy with my seating location, though. I am surrounded by a bunch of guys (web developers) in their 20s; I'd rather be sitting with other women, or ideally, the two other people who are writers, which would be my two managers.

They are planning a reconfiguration of the workspace as they have space issues and we should all be sitting somewhere new by end of summer. The nice thing about these offices is that, though there are no cubicles and everything is an open floor plan, they do have these gigantic windows that afford great views of the city.

I told the recruiter/my friend that their payroll person calculated my state income tax according to the maximum rate charged to people making $250,000+. I don't make close to that and asked to be charged the lower rate or I'll have vastly overpaid state income taxes by year's end.

For some reason, instead of approaching their payroll person, he chose to consult some accountant he knows and the accountant said I was correct, so now the recruiter said he would have it taken care of. Just thought it was odd he didn't just ask payroll directly about it but maybe he didn't want to bother her unnecessarily.

So recruiter is asking me to keep him informed of everything I'm doing for the employer as he says it will help "us" negotiate the best pay rate. I assumed I'd be negotiating for myself, but i guess the agency must get some kind of payment if and when i'm hired on a perm basis. He said realistically, i should be able to get about $80K with benefits. Of course, if i got what i wanted, a 4-day work week, my pay would be reduced proportionately, to about $64,000, if I'm not mistaken. I could live quite nicely on $64,000 without a mortgage and with much more reasonable health insurance expenses.

Anyway, trying not to focus too much on that and just taking it a week at a time. And waiting for the better pay to start having an effect on my pocketbook. That won't really happen til next month, as i went on a bit of a spending spree, what with my new car purchase ($19,700), new clothes ($580), a cargo mat for the trunk and yes, a Maharaja chair from Ballard's Design for $187 that I had my eye on for several years now.

As for the commute, I'm finding that the right mental adjustment goes a long way in making the drive more palatable. Meaning, an attitude of quiet acceptance/resignation is far better than impatience/stress and banging on the steering wheel! They are doing some major reconstruction at one exit which should improve things by February 2015. (!!)

I spend about 25 minutes each way on Interstate 95 and I would say my average speed is about 20 mph. That's how congested it is. And that's not to say it moves steadily at 20 mph; it's more like periods of stop and go the entire distance I must go, which is 8 exits. I gave up (for now) exploring back roads or the Merritt Parkway; the congestion is everywhere; there's no escaping it. I do feel I should know those alternate routes though, for when there is a huge backup caused by an accident or something.

So my average commute is between an hour and an hour and 20 minutes. Sigh.

I have some stops to make today or tomorrow: Wal-Mart, Macy's, the gas station and BJs, but it's been raining all day and haven't felt very motivated.
We're supposed to have a nice weekend.

The Author had told me earlier she might want to put her 3rd book on hold for various reasons, which disappointed me, but then she asked me for a price on it anyway. I charged her the same rate I edited the other 2 books for, which is very, very low compared to what others would charge; i'm pretty sure the going rate is .01 or .02 per word, while i've been charging her just .0056 per word. Just becus I was determined to wrestle that first book editing job away from someone else she was going to hire, so when she told me the other person quoted her between $1,000 and $1200, i quickly said i'd do it for $1,000 and after doing a complimentary edit of a few pages, i got the job.

So when book #2 came along, i felt i needed to charge pretty much the same rate as the first one. Also, she's usually broke as she doesn't work much and her husband (wisely) doesn't pay for all her novel-writing activities out of his pay.

So anyway, I quoted her this a.m. $810. It would be nice to do it since it's a little side job i could do in my free time.

Still not sure how my insurance coverage for the rest of the year is going to pan out. My application to get on the state plan is on hold as they want proof of my previous Cobra coverage. I called the Cobra people and they should be able to mail it out in a few days, and then I’ll have to mail or fax that to the state plan. I SHOULD have enough time.

Normally, the state plan doesn’t cover just anyone; they want you to have gone with no insurance coverage for at least 6 months before they pick you up, but there are exceptions to that rule, and one of them is if your Cobra coverage expires, as mine will June 30. It's just that I stopped paying for the Cobra after the May payment. It was the Cobra rep's idea. As long as I could avoid incurring any healthcare expenses in June, I could save myself the $770 premium for that final month of June since I planned to get on the state plan July 1 and would be set. I just hope the state plan doesn’t hassle me about dropping my cobra coverage a month before I had to.

Anyway, hopefully all will work out all right with that.

There are 2 does and a fawn spending a lot of time in my yard at dusk and dawn, and i see a doe here now. Once the apples and mulberries begin to fall, they will REALLY hang around. So yes, they are dropping their Lyme-infested ticks everywhere. She is not huge...about the size of a Great Dane.

Can’t say I “relaxed” today but I got a lot done and didn’t go anywhere.

It was such a lovely day, in the 70s and sunny. I did yardwork from about 1:30 pm to 6 pm and I am pooped. I finished mowing the lawn. Then I decided to remove fencing from around 3 different shrubs, all viburnums. They’re to keep the deer from browsing too heavily, but I’m thinking they mostly leave them alone (?) in summer, when there’s more to eat elsewhere. Aside from having to look at ugly fencing (a combo of plastic and wire), it’s a pain when you mow and also use the trimmer and the grass tends to get high and overgrown-looking.

So we’ll see how that goes. I used the trimmer and things look much better. Also did some weeding here, there and everywhere and potted up some more sedums in one of my homemade hypertufa pots. I trimmed back another shrub that tends to grow into the driveway and scrape the side of the car if you're not careful.....Geez. Now I can’t remember what else I did out there that took 4.5 hours, but I was mostly working.

I also made an edamame/corn/black bean/tomato cold salad for my lunches this week, along with a great fruit salad with mango, kiwi, organic peaches and organic strawberries. Those organic peaches are very hard to find, but they were at BJs. Peaches are one of the most heavily sprayed fruits, along with strawberries, so I figure it’s money well spent.

Darned if I think I may have poison ivy again. Those tiny, tell-tale little bumps on my itchy left pinkie finger. I mostly wear gloves and in fact today washed myself with tecnu poison ivy soap like 4 times.

See, I am not all that perfectly disciplined. Give me a little extra money, and I find the temptations to spend it very powerful.

I bought a pair of shorts at Kohl’s yesterday and today it was a pair of laceless plaid sneakers at PayLess (embarrassed to say I stopped in there).

OK, enough with the spending, Patient Saver.

I did get my first paycheck from the new job in today’s mail. It was quite small since I worked just two days that first week. I wanted to see how close the actual net paycheck was to what I’d calculated online using a calculator at paycheckcity.com. It was off by a good $30-odd dollars, and that was because the agency’s payroll calculated my CT income tax at the very highest rate possible. CT has about 6 tiers, based on income, and the one she used was for people earning $250,000 and up. Maybe they use that for everyone just to make it easier for themselves, I don’t know.

I emailed J. the recruiter about it. If it’s off that much on just one small check, it will mean I’ll have a fairly large state tax refund at year’s end; I’d really rather just get what’s owed me throughout the year.

So….AFTER I did all that clothes shopping, I thought I should try to go through my closet and dresser drawers and see what clothes still fit and which can be worn at the new job. My 3 closets are quite full of clothes that range from a size 6 through size 12, although the vast majority of clothes are sizes 8 and 10. I’m now fitting into the size 8 pants pretty well.

The closets are stuffed because I have quite a few pieces of clothing hanging there that don’t fit, but just take up space because I haven’t been able to part with them for sentimental reasons, believe it or not. There’s the t-shirt from the Adirondack Nature Museum I got over 18 years ago when I was vacationing with R. It never did fit but I always liked the graphic image on it. There was another tie-dyed shirt I got around the same time period at the Clearwater Festival in New York and a few really cute t-shirts I just liked too much to part with.

Anyway, I did manage to throw away a bag of old clothing that no one will want, and I filled another bag for Good Will. I put aside some clothes I thought my mother would like (she’s a little smaller than me), and she stopped by today to get them and to admire my car.

I organized things a bit better. I don’t want to get rid of everything that doesn’t fit because if I lose maybe 5 to 7 more pounds, I think that will make a huge difference, so I dedicated one bottom dresser drawer to too-tight clothes: jeans (3 or 4 pairs) capris (2 pairs) and shorts (2 pairs). I seem to have a gazillion shorts (that DO fit), so I don’t know why I felt I needed to buy another pair at Kohl’s. Oh, and also at Kohl’s, on a different day, I bought 2 more pairs of slacks. One was gray, to go with my new gray/black leopard print slide-on sandals which are oh-so-sexy cute.

But as for the shorts, if I had just dug through my drawers, I would have realized I have plenty.
Shopping can be addictive. I have enough now.

I’ve had to start calling the contact for a Yale study I participated in back in early May. They were supposed to mail a check for $100 but never did. She called back and left a message. I believe it will be coming eventually.

I recently did some legal editing for a client. I did a 15-page report for her before she realized she’d sent me the wrong version, so then I had to do the whole thing over again with version 2. I explained that I would need to charge her for time spent on the first version, but I did feel bad for her, so I just charged her half price and I told her I valued her continued good will more than a few extra dollars and I figured we could split the cost of the first version edited down the middle. That was my reasoning, anyway. So I was very surprised today when I received her payment and she paid in full for both versions. I sent her a thank-you note. I do believe that how someone deals with money tells you a lot about what kind of person they are. I do recall having the hardest time collecting all of $50 from the nastiest realtors in the world about a year ago.
I mowed the lawn this afternoon and will finish that tomorrow. Otherwise, just tidied up around here, had a brief visit with mom, dropped off the Good Will stuff and some trash at the landfill, deposited some checks at the bank and that’s about it.

Tomorrow not going anywhere. Will finish mowing and make an edamame/corn/black bean salad for the coming week’s lunches.

Next weekend getting together with a girlfriend to check out some Connecticut gardens and then probably do lunch afterwards. I’ve already done a breakfast and a lunch out with her which is more than I’ve done in ages, although she did treat for the lunch and I got the tip.

This is a new friend…the woman who shared my old p/t job proofreading. She’s older than I am and lives here in town but she has a very colorful past. She has 4 degrees, including a PhD. In psychology. She used to be a sex therapist (!) and also co-founded a singles dating service with another woman. She recently retired from many years of teaching in the public schools. She’s very social, smart and nice to spend time with. She’s married to a very blue collar guy who works on cars for a living. It’s nice that although I no longer work at that job (she still does) I still got a nice friendship out of it. She’s also had some trauma in her past which I won’t go into but it was very upsetting to hear about. She is incredibly well-adjusted, given everything she’s experienced. She’s a survivor, as they say.

J. told me his recruiting firm pays every Friday. What he neglected to tell me, apparently, is that the first paycheck is always mailed and thereafter it's direct deposit.

Thanks for letting me know. Grr. Makes me feel nervous until i see that 1st paycheck, what with all the other weird things I've experienced with this agency.

I’m halfway to meeting my $3,000 spend target for the Chase Sapphire Preferred, and I’ve only had the card about two weeks! (And to think I was worried I couldn’t hit it.)

I did spend a fair amount ok, a lot… about $500 or $600…on clothes (capris, summer tops and shorts) and 2 pairs of sandals, but Patient Saver hasn’t purchased any clothing, save for bras and panties, since 2009. I’m working with a bunch of 20-somethings and need to look at least remotely presentable/stylish. Otherwise, they might think I wandered in off the streets. Seriously.

Today, I purchased a rubber cargo mat/liner online that’s supposed to fit perfectly in the trunk of my new Honda. (You indicate the make and model of your car and they cut the mat for a custom fit.) It was $80, much better than the $300 the dealer wanted! It even has a one-inch high lip around the edges to contain any spills. I nearly told the dealer to go ahead and order it as I had no idea they sell these custom fit to your car, online, much cheaper than dealer, of course. I'm glad I did a quick check.

The trunk on my old Honda got TONS of use to haul wood, tree branches and other messy stuff to the landfill. A liner would have been great to protect the cloth-like covering. The liner is easily removed so you can hose it down if needed. Just this am I was bringing trash to the dump and worried that my kitchen trash bag might leak in the new car. (It didn’t.)

I figure now is the time to buy a liner, while it’s all still clean. If the trunk liner fits well, I may also spring for custom-fit rubber liners for the 2 front seats. I go through many cloth mats with my cars and they get so grungy and difficult to clean that rubber liners, once again, sound like a great idea. I know you can buy rubber mats at the store, but it’s one size fits all and they don’t completely fit the floor area, so you inevitably track mud or dirt on the floor of your car.

I did a few other things on my To Do list already. I cleared the family room gutter after noticing it was clogged again last time it rained hard. It doesn't take much at all. I also started mowing the front lawn, but still have about 15 minutes of mowing left on the charge, which I need to do since they're forecasting rain tomorrow and part of Saturday.

I went to Kohl's and bought some shorts and am still debating whether or not to return 1 or 2 more items I bought at Macy's. I tend to buy when I need to, not when there's a sale going on, and that was the case again this time. I feel I overpaid on a few things.

Everything looked like a great fit in the dressing room but now I wonder if it just looks like some of the tops I bought are swimming on me like a tent. I don't like tight-fitting tops and so I tend to buy them with plenty of extra room. (I see so many overweight people out there wearing clothes that are way too tight, which I believe makes them look so much worse than they have to.)

Tonight I'll be watching a Netflix movie I've been saving as I don't seem to have enough time on work nights. The commute with the new job is more like between an hour and an hour, 25 minutes, which gets me home around 7:15 or even later, and by the time I'm thru with dinner, it's after 8 pm.

On the third vote, taxpayers finally approved the school budget here. Looks like I’ll see a nice little decrease in my taxes, even though you would expect to see a much higher drop since the last revaluation 5 years ago was when real estate values peaked.

There's a PDF on the town website where you can look up your street address and know exactly what you'll pay. I have a 3-bedroom, 1.5 bath Colonial, built circa 1930 on a 1.5 acre lot near the center of town. Market value right now is around $298,000.

Last revaluation: $269,760
My current taxes: $6,619.91

The new revaluation: $175,770
My new taxes: $5,856.66

So that’s a reduction of $763.25. I’ll take what I can get.

So, I wrapped up my 2nd week at the new job. I worked 2 days last week and 3 days this week. I got the job, if you’ve followed by blog, through a recruiting company and the recruiter happened to be someone I know, a former writer I worked with at my last job who, after his layoff and being unable to find work, switched careers and got into the recruiting business. His name is “J.”

The agency is headquartered in Manhattan. I had never heard of them before. Most of the jobs he places are on Long Island or in the city, but this one was in Fairfield County, and he called me because he knows I’m a great writer.

He originally described the job as paying $35/hr. After I interviewed with the employer and they told the recruiter they wanted me, my friend J., the recruiter, said I’m afraid I’m going to have to reduce the pay to $33 an hour. He was evasive, I felt, when I asked who was lowering the pay, his firm or the employer. He later more or less admitted it was his employer, the recruiting agency. This was all communicated via email.

So he’s trying to wheedle me into accepting the job but I dug in my heels, pissed that he lowered the rate of pay. I wanted to try “negotiating.” It was a Thursday night, I think, and I knew he was going away for the weekend and probably wanted to wrap up the whole thing before he left. He kept saying, can I tell the employer’s HR person you’ve accepted? When can you start? You can make up the difference in pay when they hire you on a permanent basis. (This is a contract job…there’s certainly no guarantee they’d hire me on a perm basis.)

I resisted. His anxiety to make it a done deal showed through in his emails, so I felt I had the upper hand. J., you’re not cut out for this business, I was thinking, because I could almost see him sweating it. Finally, I said let’s split the difference, I’ll accept $34/hr. He was relieved and said he’d “make it work,” whatever that meant, I wondered.

So today I get an email from J. saying he “forgot to give me some paperwork” and can he meet me right after work in front of my office. I said, well, sure, though if it’s easier you can just drop it in the mail. I was a little curious about why he was meeting me as it’s a pain to get around the city with traffic and all at rush hour.

So we met tonight. He didn’t have any paperwork to give me. He explained that his employer, the recruiting agency, was again lowering the price they were paying me to $33/hr! And he had come to meet me in person to give me the difference in cash! Since I only worked a total of 38 hours, he handed over $38 and when I asked him if this was coming out of his pocket, he said yes!

What kind of outfit is this??? Surely he can’t keep this up indefinitely. He told me it was a dirty business and that because I was his friend, he wasn’t going to let this happen to me. Now I wish I could have said no, keep your money, but I really need every cent after being out of work for so long and yes, I felt indignant that this sheister agency would try to pull this on me.

In fact, if it wasn’t my friend I was dealing with, I’d threaten the recruiter to tell the employer’s HR and my immediate manager what they were doing. Surely they wouldn’t want that kind of bad PR. However, I’m not sure what would happen with that since it’s the recruiter that actually cuts me a check and pays me each week. (They are getting paid by the employer.) I don’t think the recruiter could “fire” me since I’ve already started working for the employer.

My friend confirmed that the employer is paying his firm a tidy sum, so this is one incentive the employer has to take me on a perm basis. My friend added that they (the employer) had also been looking for a long time for a writer but hadn’t found anyone they liked. (‘Til now, hopefully.)

I don’t know the business very well and I suspect there’s more going on at his end than I know. He’s kept urging me to work more hours, or that I suggest to my boss that I can work more than the 3 days a week I’m doing now. And he’s acknowledged that as far as his employer is concerned, the longer I work as a temp, the more money they make. But I’ve been complaining about the commute all along and said 4 days a week might be the most I’d want to work, unless I could work at home 1 or 2 days a week and that seems somewhat unlikely since my new boss told me at my interview that she wanted someone on site 5 days a week.

J. asked if I could see myself staying here a while. He also said that if I found another job, to please give him as much advance notice as possible. I haven’t really been looking as hard as I usually have since I started this job, but I have been keeping an eye on postings just in case something much closer to home came up that was also a good match for my background. So he keeps asking all these questions and there’s a lot I really don’t have answers to. Like, I don’t know what’s driving my manager’s decision to have me start at 3 days a week, nor how long she might envision me working at that rate before increasing my hours.

One thing I do know: I want to earn $34/hr. That’s what was offered to me, and that’s what I accepted. But now knowing that it’s coming out of J.’s own pocket makes me feel pressured to not accept more of his money, because he’s a personal friend and it makes me feel like a schmuck.

In hindsight, I’m suddenly realizing that I don’t even have a copy of the paperweight indicating they would pay me $34/hr. This deal went down so fast, I met J. at a Starbucks late one night where he had me sign a slew of papers for taxes, auto deposits and everything else. I signed something that indicated the rate of pay, but I never got a copy from him. All I have as proof of that agreement is the emails we exchanged.

It was another sweltering day. I met a friend at a local used furniture warehouse in town and browsed their goods.

Worked several hours editing a 17-page legal report for one of my freelance clients. Otherwise, tried to stay cool, mostly in vain.

Went out this evening to mow some lawn and take some snapshots.

Here's the new set of wheels:





I know all the plants in my yard so well. I planted many of them myself. Although they bloom so reliably, year after year, I never lose the "wow" reaction when they start in with the fireworks.


This is a perennial called false indigo, I believe.


Another view


Striking red clematis




I often like to leave portions of the lawn unmowed to see what comes up. Here we have a delicate little wildflower called Red Robin.


Spectacular mountain laurel near bloom with rhododendron.


The Stairway to Heaven. You can see a bit of another huge rhododendron in the back yard.

This morning I returned just one of the summer tops I bought at Macy’s and since I was there, I purchased another $100 worth of capris and summer tops at Macy’s and Coldwater Creek. Not my usual modus operandi, but I haven’t clothes shopped in 3 years, and I’m determined not to look like a middle-aged woman with no fashion sense with all these 20-somethings I’ll be working with. I put it all on my new Chase Sapphire Preferred credit card. I need to charge $3,000 by end of August to earn back $400 in gift cards.

After the mall, I hit Trader Joe’s. It was super hot today, up to 91 degrees, so I brought a small cooler with ice paks to keep the food cold. Also put it on the Chase Sapphire Preferred.

Later in the day I went to pick up my new Honda Civic. Was able to pay $1,000 of it with the Chase card. (That’s the most they’d let me charge, in addition to the $1,000 deposit.) I’ll post a photo of her tomorrow! The salesman ran through all the controls in the car, but of course I quickly forgot most everything. I will be carefully reading the manual, to be sure. The car even has a camera mounted in the back bumper so when you put the car in reverse, you see an image of the ground behind you. I think it’s meant to make sure you don’t run over anyone; it will likely be a standard feature in all cars one day, I think.

I don’t think my old kayak rack will work with the new car, especially since I got it with window visors to keep out the glare and rain. They disassembled it for me and I have it, but I guess I won’t be kayaking on my own anytime soon since I’ll have no way to transport the kayak unless I meet another kayaker. This kind of bums me out, becus I got so much enjoyment out of kayaking, but truth be told, I’ve been going less and less since I bought my kayak in 2007.

After picking up the car I headed to A.’s to show it off to her, and we had already planned to go out to dinner. We went to an old favorite of mine, an Italian place I haven’t been to in years due to my frugalness by necessity. She wound up treating me to the dinner to celebrate the new car and the new job. I paid the tip. But I was able to charge the whole dinner on the Chase card as well.

Also tonight I charged my water bill on the Chase card. So I’ve had the card less than a week and have already managed to charge $1,260 on it. I had hoped to also charge my new car insurance, which would help hugely in reaching the target spend, but my agent told me it would be significantly more expensive if I treated it as a new policy, since I wanted to charge the full $770. Instead, it’s just being treated as a modification of the existing policy, so I’ll get a bill for just $93 to pay. So anyway, I still need to charge $580 for each of the next 3 months. That seems doable when you consider groceries and gas and maybe some more clothes shopping for the job. The only other non-recurring charge I can think of is my $80 dump sticker, which comes up for renewal in June. I can also charge the phone/Internet on it too, each month, although at least one of those phone/Internet bills I want to charge on my Americard, since they have a deal, good thru June 30, where you get a $15 gift card if you charge just one phone/Internet/cable bill on it. Seems too easy to pass up.

I might consider getting two new faucets for the upstairs bathroom. The hot water handle on the one faucet locked up ages ago and can’t be used, while the plug thingy in the sink on the other faucet is beginning to rust becus I made the mistake of leaving that sink filled with water for my old cat to drink from. If I ever sell the place, those things will need to be fixed, so why not pick out some faucets now at Home Depot and then have a plumber do. I could charge it. There are probably other small home improvements or items I could buy for the house if needed. Now that I’m making better money, I will allow myself to consider that.

Nothing much planned for the weekend, besides mowing. It’s very, very hot here but I have NOT opened any windows yet this year at all (!) because Waldo has had such terrible allergies each summer. He had a lot of trouble breathing and I disliked traumatizing him by taking him to the vet for a shot. His breathing is fairly good now. I’ve been checking the pollen count daily, waiting for a day I can open the windows, but the pollen count has largely been “High” or “Moderate.” When it becomes “Low,” I’ll open the windows. I need to get through one more warm day tomorrow, up to 86 I think. Starting on Monday, temps will moderate to the 70s.

It’s great to be earning real money again!!

For three-and-a-half long years you've heard me whine about how little money I have and how far I have to stretch it. I'm afraid you're in for a lot of posts about what I'm going to do with a lot more money soon!

So I’m playing with various scenarios for potential income at my new job. It’s based on an 8-hour day with a half hour for lunch and working either 3, 4 or 5 days a week. This week I worked just 2 days and next work I’ll be working 3 days.

3 days a week = $765 gross a week
$3315 gross a month
$2592 net monthly
$600 discretionary income

4 days a week = $1020 a week
$4420 gross a month
$3315 net monthly
$1315 discretionary income

5 days a week = $1275 a week
$5525 gross a month
$3990 net monthly
$1990 discretionary income

The discretionary income is money left over after paying my minimum monthly expenses of around $2,000. This money could be saved or spent, or some combination of the two. It does not include money earned from my freelance work which I hope to continue in some form.

By working full-time, you can see my discretionary income more than doubles, from $600 monthly to $1990 monthly. Seriously wonder if I can do that, though today’s commute was a more reasonable one hour both ways.

Oh, the possibilities.

Today was much like yesterday except that I got to edit a roughly 40-page document in the afternoon. She seemed to like my edits. I’m done for the week. Hooray! I suppose I may have to wait another week before getting paid for this week. But it’s fun to note that in 2 days here I grossed more than I would have made after 5 days at that other proofreading job I had.

Day after tomorrow, I pick up my brand new car!!

Tomorrow I'm looking forward to catching up on mowing, getting a cashier's check from the bank for the car payment and doing some other housekeeping stuff here. May also swing my girlfriend's (my former job share person) to show off the car Friday.

Insurance agent gave me prices for the new car insurance based on a $500 deductible, as well as $1,000, $1500 and $2,000. I went with the $2,000 since I've never filed a claim and don't intend to start, and I want to bring that soon-to-be-recurring annual expense DOWN.

A stupid thing happened with one of my credit card payments. I sent payment in a while ago and they informed me the payment was rejected. I checked and realized I'd left off the first 3 digits of my bank checking account number. Luckily, I had made the payment very early on so there is no late payment fee, but if I want to use that account again, I now have to get the bank to indicate on their letterhead that this is the correct account number, etc. Kind of a pain, but i have to go there tomorrow anyway for the cashier's check so I can do this at the same time.

Still no sign of the return of $500 deposit from Ford dealer! I have to call Chase again tomorrow to find out what's going on with that. I'm still concerned.

Also tomorrow I HAVE to go to landfill which I missed doing last week.

I survived the first day of work. It was tiring.

It took me an hour to get in there but an hour and 25 minutes to get home on account of very heavy traffic on the Interstate. To give you an idea of the congestion, it's only 33 miles. I took a different route this time which probably cut in half the amount of time I spend on the Interstate, but it probably would not be workable to take all back roads and avoid it entirely.

Just this morning, before leaving for work, I idly calculated my daily gross pay and I was surprised to see that the gross pay for a 3-day work week would be $3,536 a month, more than enough to get by and have some savings to spare. (Remember, no mortgage now.) The gross for a full 40 hour week would be $5,893.

I recalled that the hiring manager said at the interview she needed someone there 5 days a week, on site and that they really needed two new people, not just one. So I had the impression they were swamped with work.

So imagine my surprise, shortly after arriving there, when the hiring manager is showing me around and I wanted to clarify my work hours for this week and next, ie, that this first week I’d only be working two days (so I can tie up some other loose ends) and then I would start in full-time the following week. That’s what the plan was and what I discussed with the recruiter.

But the hiring manager said oh, no, we decided we’d have you work just 3 days a week to start and bring you on full time down the road. Didn’t anyone tell you?? I said NO! No one did. I’m not sure exactly WHO was supposed to tell me but I imagine someone from their HR should have communicated that to the recruiter, who would have told me. But someone dropped the ball.

Imagine how upsetting that could be to someone who really needed full-time work. I had, after all, quit my p/t job already! In hindsight, I could have conceivably kept both jobs, although in truth it would seem to be very unworthwhile to hang onto the lower paying proofreading job I had.

And truth be told, after experiencing that awful commute one day, I am relieved that they want me to start at three days a week. It could actually be ideal for me, the happy middle between dealing with the long commute and still having some free time and sanity. I might never want to do any more than that! I wonder how long they’d want me at 3 days a week?
I really feel so out of the loop on this when you’d think I’d be first to know. At least give me a chance to discuss it with you.

Aside from that, it was a rather uneventful first day. I attended two brief meetings and came away understanding very little of what was discussed. The marketing group is very young. I think I’m the oldest one of the bunch. I did some simple proofing and spent most of the day reading stuff on their website, as directed by my manager. I hope I can find some people to connect with/relate to; as I said, the people there are very young.

They use Macs there and so that took some getting used to. I used one at the last f/t job I had, but that was back in 2009. They also use Google Docs which I’ve used before, but don’t really understand well. So there’s a lot of new stuff to get used to.
One funny thing is that the same HR woman who worked with me when I first joined my last employer in 2008 also did the same here! In fact, about 10 people from that last f/t employer of mine migrated over to this company. I didn’t know any of them well, but I did recognize some faces.

I got a lot done today:

1. Went to TJ Maxx to see if I could find some capris or other summer pants for the new job, but found nothing. I had so much better luck at Macy's last week.

2. Mowed the grass.

3. Made a lamb casserole, and since I had the big oven going, I threw in the last of my sweet potatoes and also made a double batch of granola, which tastes better toasted.

4. Got an early start this a.m. with Anita, who shared my job at the p/t proofreading job. We had breakfast and hit an outdoor flea market but that was a bust since it was pretty chilly out and there were hardly any vendors.

5. I vacuumed both floors.

6. I continued editing the Author's 3rd book, Tainted Glass.

Tomorrow is my last day of "freedom." I really need to use the trimmer on the fenced in garden, to keep it in check. But I ran out of string; hopefully, fitting the new replacement string in there is not a big deal.

I see that the zucchini, cucumber and squash seeds I planted never germinated. All this chilly weather may have dashed that from happening. So enough with the seeds, it's Memorial Day Weekend already. Tomorrow I'll pick up some seedlings and plop them in the ground.

I've told 2 of my freelance clients I'm starting the new f/t job. They both handled it well. My #1 client said well, we have a certain rhythm going, you know the business and you have the fastest turnaround, which is so important in this business. So they're fine with me doing their jobs just on weekends. The other client said he was excited for me and that he'd "take what I can get" as far as more limited editing availability.

I want to spend more time perusing my new employer's website to really absorb their "voice."

I'm all organized as far as the car goes, and was able to push back my pick-up day to Friday instead of Thursday. That gives me a little more time to get the new Chase Sapphire Preferred card in the mail. So of the 3 cards I ordered same day, the 1st I already hit the spend target (when I paid for the car deposit), I'm working on the 2nd card right now and will get that 3rd one, the biggie, sometime this coming week.

I have a half a bag of organic potatoes that sprouted and I'm going to plant a few of the spuds in the front yard and see if they take off. There's no more room in the fenced garden, but I'll just plant potatoes anywhere that's sunny and see if the deer/woodchucks overlook them.

Gee, what a difference a dealership makes...

I headed out this morning to the local Honda dealer. They weren’t the lowest Internet price given to me via email among the half dozen dealerships I’d contacted, and I WAS prepared to drive 45 minutes out of my way to one of two other dealerships that had more or less tied for lowest price.

But the spread in prices among the 6 dealers I'd contacted was really not as big as you might think for such a big purchase ($437), so I figured I’d try the local dealer first. I was already armed with Kelly’s Blue Book and Edmund’s ideas of a “fair” price, and so I only needed to get the dealer to agree to come down about $200.

He began by explaining that their “Internet price” was a non-negotiable, no-haggle price and the lowest they could go. After I ignored that statement and explained that I needed him to come down $200 more (to be in line with the KBB price), he agreed without any fuss. (Maybe I could have gotten more off, who knows.)

I got the window visors I wanted and $1,000 for my 14-year-old Honda so the total cost to me was $19,970 (including the window visors, sales tax, registration fees and my trade-in) for a 2013 HF sedan (auto transmission, cruise control, remote entry, radio/phone controls on the steering wheel, CD player, low tire pressure sensor) which gets 41 mpg highway (This is approaching hybrid mileage without the hybrid price tag.) The total price was exactly the price KBB indicated was a "fair" price.

Plus, I had applied for THREE new rewards credit cards last weekend, hoping I’d have them in time to use for partial payment of the car. (Taking a tip from Monkey Mama, I think, I made sure to apply for all 3 at the same time to avoid being turned down because one credit card company interpreted the other recent card acquisitions as evidence I'm desperate for money or something.)

I got one of the new cards yesterday, an Amex Blue Cash Every Day card, and that was really the only reason I went out car shopping today instead of next week. By using it for the deposit, I was able to earn an immediate $100 cash back from Amex in that single transaction, and if I get one of the other two cards in the mail by next Thursday, I can earn at least another $100 back by charging another $1,000. (The max they would let you charge is $2,000.) The dealer said I’d have to pay for the rest of the car with a cashier’s check, but that’s ok.

The other 2 cards I’m waiting for are the BankAmericard Travel Rewards card (get $100 back after spending $500 in 3 months) and the Chase Sapphire Preferred card (get $400 back after spending $3,000 in 3 months). Now I never thought I could spend $3,000 in 3 months with the Chase card, but if I charged the $1,000 for the car next week, I’d only have $2,000 more to spend in 3 months, and there was a time once before, I believe, where I was able to hit a $2,000 spending target in 3 months while being unemployed. Now that I’ll be working, starting next week, I should be able to spend more money on things like gas, definitely. We’ll make it work. I can always buy a ton of food. Hey, and I forgot! I can charge my new car insurance on the card!

The question is, will I get the card in time to use it Thursday? I applied for it online last Sunday and instead of an immediate approval like I always get with new cards, I got an email saying it would take some time and they'd let me know in 30 days by mail if I was approved. Maybe they had a problem with my self-employment income? Not sure.

But then when I was looking at my other Chase accounts online, I noticed the Chase Sapphire Preferred was listed there with a $12,000 limit! But I still don't have the card. Rep said it takes 5 to 10 business days and by Wednesday afternoon, and given the holiday, only 7 business days will have passed. I suppose I could delay the car pick-up one more day, til Friday, but if I didn't get the card in the mail Thursday afternoon, I'll just have to pay using the other credit card I was approved for, assuming I also get that one in the mail by then. If I wind up not using the Sapphire Preferred card for the partial car payment, I would probably just cancel it becus that's a pretty tough spend target without the car payment and there's a $95 fee after the first year. So might as well not hang onto it.

I could have taken the new car home today, but I’m delaying it til next week on account of those credit cards rewards, plus I want to see how much I can get the insurance quotes I got down by raising the deductible from $500. And I also have to wait to get a cashier’s check too.

I start the new job Tuesday, and had already arranged to work only Tuesday and Wednesday of the first week so I could wrap up loose ends. So I’ll have Thursday and Friday off next week and can pick up the car and take care of that. They said they’d remove the kayak rack off the old car. At first, I was going to have them install it on the new car, but he wasn’t sure it would fit and then I started thinking I’d probably not want to scratch up the new car with a kayak or even just installing the rack, so for now, I’ll take it home with me and keep it off. But then that means I can’t ever go kayaking unless I go with someone else who has a truck or rack themselves.

Hmm.

I’m pretty well satisfied with the car purchase and was amazed how different this experience was from the Ford dealer. The sales rep was super laid back and very easy to deal with, not pushy/aggressive in the least.

Since my Cobra ends 6/30/13, I’d been focusing on what my options were. I’d assumed I’d have to go on Charter Oak, the state high risk pool plan at $589/month. But then I got this new contract job where I start work Tuesday, and like most recruiter employment agencies, they offer health coverage to their contract employees. I went to check it out and saw they offered 5 options for health plans but all but two of them required you to be a New York resident. Of the two, one was a high deductible plan which didn’t suit my needs and the other, well, I spent quite some time yesterday filling out their application, reviewing the plan benefits and talking to a rep. I had a lot of questions as this plan is offered through a union which you have to join to enroll in the health plan and there was a ton of forms. But I thought the monthly premiums were pretty decent, at “just” $500 (compared to the $562 I’m paying now thru Cobra), plus you had to pay one-time union dues of $95.

Then, I learned very late in the game that they don’t provide prescription drug coverage for the drug I’m on for the MS! I’d have to pay out of pocket to the tune of $4,000 a month for this very expensive drug. (It used to cost about $1,000 a month when it first came out, but the drug-maker will lose its patent soon and is trying to recoup its R&D costs now, especially since 3 or 4 other drug-makers have released, or are about to release, an oral form of this medication, which will obviously be much more popular with patients than needles).

But of course there’s no way I could pay $4,000 a month for Copaxone, so after spending all this time preparing to apply for the union plan, I had to back out and return to Option B, which was the state Charter Oak plan.

That application will go out in today’s mail and the rep told me I should be able to be effective on it July 1.

Now yesterday when I spoke to a rep at my current Cobra plan, he suggested delaying my payment for the last and final month I’ll be on the Cobra (June) until late June. If I could avoid seeing a doctor or otherwise incurring any healthcare expenses, then he advised I simply don’t make any payment for June at all. Although I usually would mail payment a week before the first of each month, they have a 30-day grace period for receipt of payment, so as long as the payment was postmarked by the last day of June, they would accept it and retroactively cover me for month of June.

If I didn’t incur any healthcare expenses for June, then I could just skip payment for June entirely and be accepted onto the new state plan effective July 1. Under HIPPA rules, as long as there’s no interruption in healthcare coverage for more than 63 days, they can’t deny you coverage for a pre-existing condition like MS. So my 30-day lapse in coverage wouldn’t affect my coverage moving forward AND I would have avoided paying for the last month of my COBRA in June, and as it happens they increased the fees from the $562/month I’m paying now to $770/month, incredibly.

I’ve been stockpiling my expensive Copaxone meds for years just to ensure I have the meds I need in exactly this kind of in-between jobs scenario. While it looks like renewing my meds down the road wouldn’t be a problem based on what I just said above, I was always nervous about this becus this drug is incredibly expensive. But by ordering my meds a little earlier than really needed, I’ve been able to accumulate a 7.5 month supply of Copaxone. (The expiration dates are long out, so no problem there.)
In fact, I was able to reorder the drug yesterday and already have it delivered. Now usually this particular mail order pharmacy would only give me a 30-day supply at a time, even though my neurologist writes me a prescription good for a year at a time. So I was surprised when I got the shipment that they included 3 months in it instead of 1. They must have changed their policies. Many other pharmacies DO ship 3 months a time. So that really helped me with my stockpile.

At least that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about til probably October, which is when open enrollment begins for 2014 and the new healthcare exchanges made possible by Obamacare. At that time, unless I’ve gotten a salaried job that provides benefits like health insurance, I foresee myself shopping around once again for health insurance. It would be nice to get something cheaper than $589 a month under Charter Oak, but who really knows. I also noticed that the Charter Oak plan does not include my neurologist as an in-network provider, so while I have plenty of medication supply left to see me through 2013, if I had an unexpected MS problem/relapse, I’d have to find a new neurologist.

Luckily, since I’ve been going to a bunch of physician lecture/dinners sponsored by the drug company that makes Copaxone, there’s a doctor I like and have become familiar with who is on the Charter Oak network. He’s maybe 30 minutes away, further than I’d like in the middle of a MS relapse, but it would work.

I can’t believe I’ve had to devote so much time to figuring out this whole health insurance mess. Mainly because I’m 1. Lacking in employer sponsored health coverage and 2. I have a pre-existing condition that requires expensive drugs.

Ugh. It’s incredible to me that I had to spend 6 hours of my day today on health insurance coverage. As you know, I’m in transition, job-wise. However, I was told of a way that will likely save me $767 in premium coverage.

Here’s the deal. I’ve been on Cobra, like, forever. I’m paying $562 a month but it’s that time of year for re-enrollment or whatever, and monthly premiums are rising to $767!!! However, my eligibility for Cobra ends June 30 regardless, and I’ve known all along I’d have to find something else. I THOUGHT I’ve have to go on the plan of last resort, the state plan for low-income people, which goes for $589/month, and then stay on that through the end of the year. After that, I hoped to pick up a better plan vis a vis Obamacare.

However, with the new job, I can get health insurance through the recruiter agency, but it wouldn’t be effective until July 1, and the paperwork has to be in to them by June 10. The new plan will represent something of a cost savings to me at $495 a month. It’s through a union, though, so I have to join the union and then pay a one-time $95 fee for union dues.
Since I’m not effective on the new plan until July 1, I still need coverage for the month of June. When talking to the customer service rep for my current Cobra plan and after explaining my situation (that I have only 1 more month to stay on Cobra), he reminded me that there’s a 30-day grace period for the premium payments.

That is, while I normally would send in my payment for June coverage in late May (like right about now), he said if I felt I could avoid seeing a doctor or incurring other healthcare expenses in June, that I could possibly save myself the $767 for the last month of coverage that I need with Cobra.

With the 30-day grace period, I can delay payment for the month of June to as late as June 31 and still be covered, retroactively, if I needed it. As long as my premium payment is postmarked in June, I’m covered.
I went ahead and ordered another 30-day supply of my MS meds today so running out won’t be an issue. I had a doc apt I just rescheduled in late June, but I can reschedule it for July when I’m on the new plan. So I should be able to get through June with no medical issues.

I'm so glad I talked to this guy because I would have never thought of that on my own.

So, last I checked, the $500 deposit at Colonial Ford has NOT been returned. Credit card company said it could take 3 to 5 days, which would bring me to Friday, so I’m just trying to sit tight and be patient. I don’t see why they would say they would refund it and then not do so because it would just make the customer (me) more irate. It would be playing games when there was no benefit to them to do so, unless they actually thought they could keep the $500.

Anyhoo……I’m collecting prices from a half dozen area Honda dealers. The prices are all in the same ballpark with not much more than a $400 difference between them. However, I’ve come to the conclusion that all this effort on my end is pretty much a wasted exercise since when I finally go in to test a 2013 Civic, when the dealer learns that I will NOT be financing the car, they will likely try to make up the lost profit from financing by low-balling me on the trade-in value.

I could go in to test drive the new Civic anytime this week, but I applied for THREE bonus/rewards credit cards last Sunday after someone commenting on my blog reminded me I could pay for the car that way and easily stack up some nice rewards. However, while I know I could use a card for the deposit, they may not let you pay for the whole thing with a credit card. The purchase agreement I had for the Colonial Ford car said in big letters that you had to pay with cash or a cashier’s check.

So of the 3 credit cards I applied for, I was immediately approved for 2; the other indicated the approval would take longer and they’d respond back via mail. Not sure what the problem was there; perhaps my self-employed status? I didn’t like the idea of disclosing my new employer’s name and phone number…too invasive, so I just said I was self-employed, which I am. I applied for all 3 cards on the same day so that credit checks done for 1 or 2 wouldn’t affect the 3rd. I don’t know if I’ll be able to use them for the car, but I’ll have them next week, so that’s why I was thinking of delaying the next step in the process until then.

I noticed that Executive Honda, the dealer with the lowest price, has 40 reviews listed on Yelp, and every single one of those 40 reviews gives them 5 stars. Now I'm sorry, I don't believe these were made by legitimate customers; I'm quite sure the dealership has employees make up comments like this. Many of them list the sales rep by name and use words like "magnificent" and "fantastic" to describe their experience. Yeah, like, umm, I don't think so.

This morning I had an appointment to have a test done to see if I have asthma. You have to keep breathing in this substance which basically narrows your air passages so if you did have asthma, you’d have trouble breathing. The machine has to register at least a 20 to indicate you have asthma. I only registered a 9. So I don’t have asthma.

My dad decided on impulse to come up for a visit from Jersey. 3 hour drive. He took a wrong turn after going over the Bear Mountain Bridge and ended up getting lost for a while, but he got here around 2 pm. He showed up in his new Kia Soul, which is cute, and he let me drive it as we went to my sister’s to drop off some plants for her (he brought me a dozen tomato seedlings he’d grown from seed) and then we went to the diner for lunch. We hung out at my house afterwards for a bit, but then he left around 4 pm to drive all the way back there!! I keep saying stay the night, and I don’t know how you do it, but he doesn’t seem to think it’s a biggie. I’m sure he hit rush hour traffic on the way home, too.

After he left, I drove up to my neighbor’s behind me to return some milk and tea bags Stephen left behind at my place when he come over the other day for a long visit. Ended up gabbing with his wife for an hour or so. They are like the best neighbors you’d ever want to have. Their house is listed and they had a realtor’s open house a few days ago (the reason for Stephen’s visit….he had to vacate the house).

After that, I went back home and mowed the lawn (still not done). Also planted half the cherry tomatoes.

I offered some of them to my friend The Author in return for a bunch of carpet remnants she offered me. She’s been working at a carpeting/tile store and they’re getting rid of tons of discontinued remnants which she said make great bath mats. Any other uses you can see for these things? I want to get some but not sure what I’d use them for.

I picked off 2 adults tickets off me as I was planting my tomato seedlings. Not sure where the heck they came from.

Today was the perfect kind of day and a great example of why I love my unstructured time so much, which is only possible when you don’t work full-time. I didn’t have any of the things I did today on my “agenda,” but all in all, it was an enjoyable and pleasant day.
So this one Honda dealer has offered me the lowest price of all on the Civic HF. It’s actually the dealer invoice price, and all they’re adding to the “out the door” price is sales tax, registration fees and $400 conveyance fee. The only place where I see them making any money is the conveyance fee. Consumer Report lists this as one of their “unavoidable” fees but said you should question the charge if it’s higher than $300.

The other fee is registration fees - varies between $118 and $188 depending on if you are transferring plates or registering new. But according to Consumer Reports, the conveyance fee is for processing documents that establish your title and registration. So why would they charge for that twice? Hmm.

Oh, yeah. So after I met my friend the recruiter at Starbucks this past Monday night to sign all the paperwork for the new job, I gave my notice to my p/t proofreading $12/hr job. I explained that my new employer wanted me to start right away (day after Memorial Day next week) and that since work was so slow, I'd like to not have to give notice since I'm car shopping.

I learned through A., who shares my job and cubicle there with me, that my immediate manager L. was taking it personally and didn't like that I hadn't come in to tell them I was leaving. I suppose I could have but in truth i had a feeling L. would react badly to it, like a personal affront

I knew everyone would be asking for all the details about where I was going. There are some people there I was pretty friendly with. It would be awkward to put those people off with vague answers about where I was going, but if i told 1 or 2 people, it would be like telling them all. And call me paranoid but I wouldn't feel comfortable letting L. know where I was going in case she wanted to badmouth me.

So while J., L.'s manager, wrote me a brief, one-line email saying good luck with the new job, I never did hear a word back from L.

My neighbor Stephen said don't worry about it. You have to worry about yourself, not them. I felt all along this employer was taking advantage of me due to the low rate of pay, and while I allowed that to happen, becus i needed the money, I guess i never felt i owed them much respect, becus in that regard, I felt they disrespected me. Employers will boot you out the same day they lay you off, but somehow they still expect 2 weeks notice if you're leaving them.

I think L. considers herself a likable boss, but in truth I really resented the way she treated me when I gently declined to make any more sales calls. If they want someone to make sales calls, then hire someone to do it; don't make me do every single grunt job wherever there's a labor shortage....no commission offered to boot.

She was positively badgering me to do it and for some ungodly reason she had to bring the whole thing up and rehash it all the following week after I thought we'd put it behind us. She seemed to find it remarkable that an employee would "just say no" to work they requested you do. While I would be careful when I said no in a full-time position that I actually cared about and paid decently, this job was so low-paying that I felt there wasn't much risk of being fired, and really not much to lose. They know that my counterpart and I are way overqualified and doing a much better job than they've experienced in the past when they filled these positions with summer interns.

So I called Colonial Ford this a.m. The main sales guy was with a customer, left a message with him. His mgr. out today. So after not hearing back from sales guy, I asked for Wanda, who was the one who had me sign the purchase agreement.

Victory #1: I said etching was never discussed, i didn't sign it or agree to it. First she says it's mandatory, then I read her the law out loud (eg, that i don't have to pay it) and she fairly quickly said they could take that off.

I said, well why did you just tell me it's mandatory? She quoted me the law number and said she's show me when i came in. I have a different law number here in hand so it doesn't really matter; I still don't have to accept it.

So, just to be clear, CT law does REQUIRE a dealer to offer etching service but it's optional and the customer can decline the charge.

So if someone was not paying attention, when she said "it's mandatory," if you hadn't already investigated the law you might not realize that while it's mandatory they offer it, it's not mandatory that you accept..

Then I brought up the $820 add-on charge for the "comfort upgrade package" (this included heated seats, alarm, some moldings). I said that when i built the 2013 (same model) on Ford's website with the exact same options/add-ons, the heated seats, alarm and moldings are INCLUDED in the base price!

So why was i paying $820 extra, i asked her. She said that even though it said on the Ford website that those features are "included" as standard features on the Ford "build your own" website, that they will also be listed as separate line items. Maybe that is so. The price when i built it online, after including tax, incentives and trade in, came to $19,994 vs the $20K i had negotiated with the 2012 model. But shouldn't i be paying LESS for a 1-year-old car, even if it hasn't been driven?

Victory #2?? I told her i thought this was all deceptive sales practices (thought not illegal) and that I wanted my deposit back. She didn't dispute that but said ok. I asked her when she would do that transaction and she said i don't know, i have to find out from my sales mgr. I asked her to let me know. She said ok.

I am a little surprised they didn't say you won't get your deposit back. It says you lose it on the back of the purchase agreement. Maybe that news will be delivered by the sales mgr. or maybe they will back down more easily becus i mentioned calling Ford Motor Co. and DMV to "clarify" things.

What do I make of this? I think that they are just skirting the edges of what's legal here. While what they're doing is not illegal, it is deceptive.

They say things like "it's mandatory," that lead you to believe something that isn't really true. If I hadn't challenged it, I'd be paying $200 more for useless etching, and i think they count on at least a portion of customers to fall for that. I didn't even challenge the $399 conveyance fee. I don't have the energy. I just want out. Once I get my deposit back, and I'm still anxious that i will, i will STILL file a complaint with DMV (i already printed out the form) to complain about how this all went down. You practically need a degree to go head to head with these sharks.

And then, after learning SO much about car-buying, I will head over to the Honda dealership. Hondas maybe boring (I've had 3 in a row now) but they are very reliable.

At this point, while I wait for dealership to open, I'm still not sure if I want to keep the Fiesta or not.

It's possible, IF he takes off the $199 etching fee, that I will keep the car.

However, I found something else that concerns me.
On my copy of the window sticker for the 2012 Ford Fiesta SES, there are 3 options shown. One of them is an extra $820 for the comfort upgrade package, which includes the heated seats, alarm and some moldings.
I went back to Ford Motor Co. website and “built my own” 2013 Fiesta Titanium. (The Titanium is the new name for the highest model in the Fiesta line; it replaced the SES). I noticed that the heated seats, alarm etc are all included as STANDARD in the 2013 model. So why am I paying $820 for it in the 2012 model????

The dealer may respond yeah it’s included in the 2013 model, but it’s more money, too. When I finished “building” my car online using all the same options and add-ons that are on the 2012 Fiesta I purchased, it came to $19,994 (which includes sales tax, all incentives and my trade-in value), so that’s about the same as the $20,000 price that I negotiated with the dealer.

It’s that $20,000 figure that, when broken down on the sales agreement, includes the $199 for etching.
I remember the dealer saying at one point when the cost was down to $20,426, what will it take for you to buy this car? If we bring it down to an even $20,000, will that seal the deal? I agreed.

So now they may say, look, what do care whether it includes etching or not, because you’re still paying a total of $20,000, which I am. It’s just that when they wrote it up on the purchase agreement, they list the price of the car at $19,280, sales tax $1188, conveyance fee $399, etching $199 and transfer fees (DMV paperwork) $101.

I can’t figure out why they chose to list the car price as a lower figure on the purchase agreement and included those extra fees in there when they could have just said $20,000 for the car, period, since that’s what I said would work for me.

OK, while all of you have been congratulating me, I am feeling more and more upset about the whole new car purchase deal. Don’t get me wrong, the congrats was just what I wanted to hear to reassure myself I didn’t make a mistake. But that nagging feeling didn’t go away.

When I got home yesterday, I was still feeling nervous about the whole thing. As I read through the contract I had signed, I discovered a $199 charge for windshield etching on the bill that I hadn’t even seen when I signed it!

OF course, there was also the $400 “conveyance fee. Both those fees were PREPRINTED on the purchase agreement. When “Wanda” handed me the contract to sign, she took her index finger and, pointing to each handwritten figure on the form, she detailed the price and various options, sales tax, etc, and said out loud the calculations for each, totally distracting me from the preprinted fees. Well, I saw that conveyance fee and didn’t challenge it, but totally missed the etching fee.
Here’s how that line read: (Optional) Anti-Theft window Etching
I have been offered Anti-Theft Window Etching
__________________________________________

There’s a line below where it appears you’re supposed to sign to indicate you were offered it and declined. Some quick online research told me that etching fee is a widely used dealer tactic to basically pad their wallets. Many police stations do this for like $20 or even for free. I’m quite sure now that line item is required on the form, however they did not even bring it up with me and I didn’t sign it, though I did sign the contract.

Here's a portion of the contract. I just deleted my personal info at top and bottom and yes, my signature is at bottom. Notice, too,that they failed to fill in the warranty information at left side.



So I don’t like feeling like I was being taken advantage of after already knowing I bought considerably more car than I’d planned to, but the etching fee just put me over the top.

I not only don’t want to pay that, but I don’t want to buy the car from them, either.

Problem is, I had to give them a $500 deposit, and I will probably lose that money if I walk away from the deal. Although their sales tactics are unethical, I don’t believe they are illegal or even fraudulent. I’m not really sure if I can get my deposit back based on the fact they didn’t bring up the window etching before giving me the contract to sign. I should have read it, and I didn’t.

I will call Motor Vehicles and Consumer Protection to clarify it. I will call Colonial Ford to request return of the deposit. If they refuse, which they likely will, I will also call Ford Motor Co. to complain. I did this once years ago with Honda Motor Co. over some big repair bill I got from the dealer, and they did make contact with the dealer, who then gave me a partial discount on the bill because of it. The car maker is concerned with how dealers treat their customers, since it reflects badly on them as well.

After all this, I again looked over the proposed purchase agreement (which I HADN’t signed) from the first dealer I saw. He didn’t try to sell me a higher end version of the car I didn’t want and really, the car was just the “middle road” model (Basic: S, Mid-Level: SE and High End: SES) with auto transmission. I got the same discounts as I got at the 2nd dealer. It was a decent price at $17,321. I just balked when they offered only $800 for my Honda, although he had indicated before I walked out that he could probably get “a few hundred more” for my Honda if that would seal the deal. So if he did that and I also got them to knock off their stupid “document” fee of $75, then I would save an additional $275.

Then, if I found another upfront bonus reward card to apply for, get it in about a week, then use it to partially pay for the car, that’s an easy $100 back in a single transaction. I could use other rewards cards to wrack up points as well, as some of you have suggested. (Good suggestion, the money will be in my checking account anyway after being transferred, so why not?) So my loss would not be $500, it would be $125.

What do you think of all this? I felt so angry and stupid for so easily falling for some of the oldest car dealer scams around. Me, Patient Saver, who’s usually so careful about stuff like this. And the more I think of, I know I won’t likely use half that high end tech stuff in the SES model, don’t need a moon roof AT ALL, and could do without heated seats and leather at that.

Doing without all those nice extras would put $2390 back in my pocket, or $2265 after losing part of that $500 deposit.

I am either the biggest fool or got a great deal. Honestly, I’m not sure which it is.

Now most people don’t walk into a car dealership alone, but that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t feel like possibly waiting or coordinating with friends or family, and I was of the mindset of being on a mission to accomplish a car purchase as quickly as possible so I have it to start my new job. I also was hoping to make a deal this weekend and not have it drag into next week.

I did a ton of research online, and I had already decided I wanted a 2013 Ford Fiesta SE, although I was also leaving room for the possibility of test-driving a Prius today. That didn’t actually happen as I bought a NEW 2012 Fiesta SES.

I THOUGHT I knew exactly what I wanted after all that online research and comparing of costs and options, but it’s amazing how quickly you can start waffling, especially when you see how nice these cars are in person. And once you allow yourself to start doing that at the dealership, it quickly becomes very confusing becus you’re wanting to compare apples to apples but there are so many individual numbers to include. On top of that, I’d been feeling like I’ve “deprived” myself of most luxuries, certainly over these last 3.5 years, and overall I lead a very frugal lifestyle.

So I guess that was the perfect segue that helped contribute to my buying beyond what I’d planned when I arrived at the 2nd dealer. (The first dealer guy was a youngish guy and after spending a long time, I balked when he offered just $800 for my Civic, so I left.)

At the 2nd dealer, they had one Fiesta SE on hand, but they also mentioned they had a 2012 Fiesta SES, which is the top end of the Fiesta line. So I said I’d drive the 2012 model first. (Never did get to the 2013 one, but I had already driven that car at the first dealer.) They let me test-drive the car by myself.

OK, so I fell in love: It’s a white car with black leather seats trimmed in contrast piping, a moon roof (this I don’t care about), and FORD Sync/Bluetooth that responds to voice commands and lets you do hands free with your phone and a bunch of other stuff; I think it has built-in navigation. Heated seats, Sirius radio, ambient lighting...Warranty is 3 years/36K and 24/7 roadside assistance. I thought it was so cool that the car has a built-in UBS port in the console so I guess if you want to copy music onto a thumbdrive and then plug it in, you can do that. I’ll have to figure out how. In all honesty, the very basic cell phone I have now will NOT work with the Ford Sync system, altho I can still do hands free. I could upgrade to a better phone. Maybe a little later. The mileage is 39 highway/29 city. It has a very sporty spoiler.

Option-wise, there were some things I liked very much, like the leather seats and the spoiler, but they all come in packages that contained other things I could care less about, like the moon roof.

Do you see where I’m going with this? I bought the car. But since I started out wanting just the base SE model, no frills, I quickly became tripped up with all my calculations since while I had checked Kelly’s blue book and Edmund’s for “fair market price” for the base model, I hadn’t done that with the bells-and-whistles model.

However, I got $1500 in rebates/incentives, which I thought was pretty good. And this is a 2012 model with only 100 miles on it; it was never pre-owned, it was just leftover inventory. I do think they ripped me off some on the trade-in value of my 1999 Honda. According to online sources, I should’ve been able to get $1400 to $1800 for it and I got just $1100.
So, after sales tax, 2 rebates, the trade-in of my Honda and all fees, we settled on….deep breath….$20,000 even. The MSRP on it was $21,780.

I could have gotten more if I tried to sell the car myself, but I didn’t want the hassle or inconvenience, and this way, the dealer handles all the motor vehicle paperwork so I don’t even have to go there.

Months ago, after doing my research, I figured that after getting everything I wanted, I’d spend between $17,000 and $19,000, but that was before taxes ($1100), but also didn’t include my trade-in. Plus, for the first time in my life, I got all the bells and whistles, not the basic model. And I must say, I enjoyed driving the car.

Now if I had bought a 2013 Fiesta SES instead of the 2012 Fiesta SES, I wouldn’t have gotten quite so much in dealer incentives. Also, I’m hoping buying a year old car will mean my car tax will be lower, but I don’t know.

I have to contact my insurance agent Monday and have him fax a temp ID card for me to the dealer and then once my money transfers arrive in my checking account, I can go get a bank check and pick up the car. I’m hoping to do that Tuesday, Wednesday at latest.

Phew. I’m feeling a little unsettled and am hoping I won’t have buyer’s remorse. I’m used to spending the least possible amount, and this time, I allowed myself to spend a few thousand more due partly to being tired of the whole process (7 hours at 2 dealers) and, I admit, excited about things like leather seats.

I know, I know…realtors do that with houses all the time. You go into it saying this is my price range and then they show you homes maybe $40,000 more, hoping you’ll like it so much you’ll go for it. It’s exactly what happened to me today, but I DO like the car and think I’ll enjoy it. What may bother me more is the higher insurance costs and car tax i'll be paying! Plus I will no longer want to haul filthy dirty tree logs and stuff to the dump.

I will post pix when I have it home!

So my monthly gross at the new job will be $5893. The net should be around $4,225, based on an online net pay calculator I used.

My monthly gas, car insurance and CT car tax will all work to increase my monthly expenses, but I figure my minimum monthly expenses should stick to around $2,000, give or take. That means my potential monthly savings could range from between $1500 and $2,225 a month, or between $18,000 and $26,700 a year.

I don’t know if the recruiter agency offers a tax-deferred 401k-type plan. If they do, I’ll contribute, but only if it’s tax-deferred. Otherwise, I could contribute a bit more to my SEP-IRA, which I haven’t always funded these past few years cus I had no money to spare. Any additional savings will have to be taxable savings.

Disciplined as I am, I know I’ll feel a strong urge to loosen the purse strings after my long, self-enforced penny pincher ways. I mean, look at me, I’m already talking about buying a new car! Well, that was needed anyway, and all I did was push up the purchase by 5 months or so since I was planning on buying late in the year. I also need to get a bunch of new clothes. It’s business casual, thank goodness, but I’ve been working in my jammies for too long. And then there’s a long list of deferred maintenance around this place to think of.

I want to try to keep doing my freelance writing. I really have only one steady client who gives me the bulk of my work on a regular basis; they are pretty flexible with their deadlines and so if I can do their work on the occasional weekend,that would probably work.

Recruiter did say they offer a health plan to contract workers, but there’s a waiting period. Depending on how long the wait period and how much it costs, I might switch to it. Right now, I’m paying $562 a month for Cobra, but that ends June 30. Then I’ll have to go on the state plan, the plan of last resort for low income unemployed people or people who can’t otherwise get health insurance. That plan costs $589 a month although the copays and deductible are a bit lower than what I pay now. If the recruiter plan is significantly better, I’ll switch, but if not, I only need to stay on SOME plan til the end of the year, because in 2014 I can buy health insurance on the open market regardless of where I work and God willing, it’s more affordable than any of my choices now.

Just as I was writing my last post I was able to finalize an agreement to meet with recruiter Monday night at 8 pm in a town that’s about an half hour drive from home. He’s coming from work in NYC to meet me with all the paperwork and forms I have to fill out. Once I do that and have everything in writing, then I will give notice to my p/t employer, probably via email to 2 people late Monday night. While I will give them ONE week’s notice, I’m really hoping not to have to do that at all since they’re rather slow right now and I need the extra time to buy the new car, buy new clothes and get ready. But I would feel like a cad if I didn’t give them some notice, even if it is a p/t job that pays $12/hr.

In hindsight, it was really helpful and fortuitous that I happened to know the recruiter for this job very well. This was the guy who I worked side by side with for nearly 2 years when we were both writers at the same company in 2008-2009. We were about as close as 2 co-workers could be, and even sat right next to each other. I wasn’t consciously thinking of this when I was negotiating the pay rate, but I know him to be the kind of guy who doesn’t enjoy negotiating things and I sensed his strong desire and maybe some anxiety to wrap up the whole job deal today/tonight. My hunch was right, becus after I accepted verbally, he told me he was flying out of state to do something with his daughter and I guess will be gone over the weekend. So he probably really wanted to close this deal to secure his commission, especially as he’d also mentioned he had gotten this employer in the door, and it was the first time he’d done that. So this would be a coup for him, I would think. I’m glad I stuck to my guns and didn’t just accept the lowered pay rate without fighting for what I wanted. That’s something I would have done years ago but I learned the hard way….and I repeat, the very hard way, that you need to be your own best advocate at times like these, and vague assurances of other benefits down the road, which is what he was giving me, really mean nothing if you don’t have it in hand.