Saturday, August 25, 2012

49 more weeks

As you may know, I started my current job in August, 2010. It is a temporary position, but it's typical that people work for the company for years as a temp. I think it's because the company I work for would rather not have to provide benefits and they like the ability to drop employees if they needed to. It's not such a great benefit to the employees though. I work for the paycheck and that's all I get. No paid vacations, no paid sick time and paid holidays are only after 6 months and only if you work a certain amount of hours the previous six months. You have to work 1,000 works for the previous 26 weeks before the week of the holiday. So that only allows you to miss 40 hours in that time frame - and you don't get credit for the holidays during those 26 weeks since you don't actually work those days. So for example, counting back 26 weeks prior to Memorial Day the first week included in that is the week of Thanksgiving, so if they make us take off Thursday and Friday of that week then I'm already down 16 hours, then I'll miss another 8 to 16 hours for Christmas depending if I work Christmas Eve or not (it's on a Monday this year) and then I'll lose another 8 for New Year's Day. So there is the 40 hours I need keep my holiday pay. So basically if I even miss a half day I won't get paid for Memorial Day. So paid holidays is tough to get on my job.

Anyway, another thing they do because of some legal loophole, they require the temp workers to take 60 unpaid days off once they have worked there for three years. I just passed two years and I am already counting down the weeks until I get a break. I only have 49 more weeks left! I have this internal conflict within myself because as much I need the extra money I am really looking forward to taking those 2 months off. I dread going to work and I'm not really sure if I even want to go back once my 2 months are done. Or if they will even take me back. I've heard sometimes people don't come back after their 2 months off. It's stressful not knowing what I'll be doing this time next year, but I think I'll welcome the change. I'll probably take some of my time off to look for other job opportunities, if I don't already find something before then.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

New Rules of Money

I am currently reading the Robert Kiyosaki book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". It's making me think a little harder about money and working my 7 to 3 job, taxes, good and bad debt and more. "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" was written in the mid 90's, so some of the info is outdated. I found some videos online about his "New Rules of Money" which are still a few years old, but the information presented makes you think about how to make money.














Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Extra cash challenge - July

Here are July's results of the extra cash challenge:

Part time job: $29.79
Amazon: $13.38
Advertising: $123.61

Total: $166.78
Difference from last month: -$94.46

Well as you can see I didn't do as well as last month. I don't want to give away what my main blog is, but the traffic really depends on how much the topic is in the news and this July was a slower month than June. I anticipate it'll be pretty slow for the rest of 2012 as well. So some of the income is out of my control. My part time job really slowed down again as well. My part time job is basically updating websites, and two of my main customers are summer festival and a county fair, but which are in June and July, so most of the website updates are done in May and June in preparation for those events. Now that those two events are done for the year, I expect that income to slow down too. So I should be trying to think of up some new ways to bring in some extra income. Any ideas?

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Trying out Lending Club

I had mentioned a while back that I wanted to try Lending Club to make a little more money from my money. Right now my biggest financial goal is to save as much cash as possible, and I don't really see that changing much over the next 3 years. I have the expense of replacing two vehicles, replacing the rest of the windows in our house and other home improvement projects that will need cash. Plus I still want to take that awesome vacation next year. So because I have a bunch of cash sitting in the bank, that money can kind of double as my emergency fund. If something comes up, we can use the money we were setting aside for the windows or the vacation and put it towards that emergency. I still want to keep a $4,000 base emergency fund, but I want some of that money to make some passive income for me. I haven't decided how much I want to invest, and right now I just opened an account and put in $100 to get a feel for how it works. If I like how the first $100 goes, I'll probably add another $1,000 or so. It won't be a life changing amount of money, but every little bit helps!

Friday, August 3, 2012

Is a Roth IRA really better than a traditional?

I am revisiting the idea of investing in a traditional IRA instead of a Roth IRA for the tax benefits. With all the questions and uncertainty about our future, I would rather take the known benefits now which is 25% back in taxes. I decided to stop investing in my Roth this month. So far in 2012 I have put in $1,000 into my Roth, so I just opened a regular IRA and I put in $1,000. As of right now that's all I plan to do in 2012 for investments since I have so many other shorter term financial goals to make in the next few years. I'll take the $250 deduction on my taxes next spring (which will come in handy because of my husband's raise will likely produce a higher tax bill).

Why was the Roth IRA introduced? The Roth IRA, which was named after Senator William Roth of Delaware, appears to be a way the government can get their money earlier instead of waiting decades to get it. I'm guessing the option to invest in a Roth IRA was created to benefit the government and not the people. It brings the government more tax money now and who wouldn't want money now instead of later? As I mentioned before, probably around 20% of people will die before they even get to use their retirement accounts. If their savings are all in a Roth, then they have already paid the taxes before they died. If someone who dies before retirement has their money in a traditional IRA, then they never had to pay the taxes on their money. Maybe I'll change my mind in the future, but I'm going to delay paying taxes on my retirement money for as long as possible.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

What if one spouse a lot more money than the other?

I was thinking more about needing to think bigger with my income and I was thinking this is even an issue in my marriage. My husband makes almost 3 times as much money as I do. So if he thinks about money, it's likely that smaller amounts of money do not matter to him much. Which is why in his world it is ok to spend $3.50 a day on food that is not even a meal. By the end of the week he has spent $17.50 and in my world that is almost 2 hours of pay. I am happy my husband makes the money he makes, but I sometimes feel like he lives in a completely different world than I do. I feel like everything I do to be smart with my money just gets undone by his stupid decisions. I also feel frustrated when he spends money stupidly on things like beer. He can easily spend $20 a night in beer after his softballs game or when he's out. That's a lot of money in my world, but less than an hour's work for him. I'm not sure if I really have any advice on how to not get as upset, other than just try to look at the financial world through his eyes. Of course I'd rather him see money through my eyes and respect it more. Look at how much money I can save with the muffin and pop scenario. I think even he would admit $600 is a lot of money.