Yesterday I had the sick feeling I'm horribly behind financially. That must be a progression from "everybody dies young in my family so why bother saving." The feeling squirmed in as I listened to a woman talk of her spouse's retirement, her planned purchase of a second vehicle, college savings. I have a second vehicle but I wouldn't take it out when it's 2 degrees Celsius. Looking at GnuCash and my budget, I see maybe $150 leftover per month. I'll feel much better when I can eliminate one debt. Someone I know is planning to pay off her car loan this year, although she is considering borrowing from her 401(k). I may just sell some CDs if I feel like joining her in her car loan freedom.
Something I'd like to save up for is a delayed 20th anniversary vacation. I didn't get one last year. We were supposed to go to Hawaii this Christmas, and that didn't happen either. When the net worth improves by $2000 I'll start making reservations at places in the Gulf Islands and on Vancouver Island. Fortunately I don't have to go far to have an "exotic island getaway." My dad was married to his second wife for 22 years; my mother didn't make 20 years with any of her three husbands, and neither did my brother. I did surprise the woman in the first paragraph that I had been married for that long: I hope it's because I don't look like someone who's been married for twenty years.
Maybe start buying foreign currency so I can save a little bit. Maybe convince the spouse to put some aside, if there's a match by employer. I did put $100 into my kid's college account but can't think of what equity to purchase with it. Maybe an ETF with a few more hundred dollars.
I have started exercising, however gently and sporadically. It's the building of a habit that matters, right? I did sit-ups today, started "bouncing" and shoulder shrugs, from Chinese Healing Exercises while watching movies, restarted tracing my meridians. Everyday I had been walking at least a mile, until today, so now I'm bouncing, trying for 1000. I think adrenal exhaustion might be a large part of my expanded waistline. Seeing connections between my eyesight and adrenals and blood pressure and caffeine and adipose. I suppose if I didn't have any hope of a happy golden age there's always the combo of energy drinks and alcohol to speed up the blood clots to take me out. Honestly, I don't know why someone would have that combo at all, let alone regularly enough when one's been hospitalized for blood pressure like 240/120mmHg and has sky-high creatine phosphokinase levels from muscle tissue damage stemming from surgeries on TWO shoulders, but if you ever thought "yeah, my four-year-old doesn't need me and I don't need to see him/hr grow up" or tune out people like your doctor who advises you to cut out the energy drinks because you know everything, I suppose Monster or 5HrPerformance plus a beer can make up for years of bad financial planning. Just make sure you do more than tell your sister you're PLANNING to make a will, and go make a will.
I'll get there, but where is there?
January 5th, 2015 at 12:58 am
January 5th, 2015 at 10:02 am 1420452149
January 5th, 2015 at 02:07 pm 1420466862
Also, what currencies do you have in mind and why?
January 5th, 2015 at 04:40 pm 1420476017
@VS_ozgirl: I might not be doing the best I can. I am not getting help from the person who brings in the money. When I attend my informal debt group we track the outstanding balances we want to track, and I'm the only one who tracks my mortgage, because I'm the only one who doesn't have a credit card balance, and it's psychologically soothing to see that a four-digit figure (including principal from car loan) of progress is being made each month. It may all be that the grass is on the other side.
January 5th, 2015 at 05:30 pm 1420479047
Have you tried to run YNAB via WINE?
I have no idea how well Schwab plays with GnuCash.
January 5th, 2015 at 05:51 pm 1420480292
January 5th, 2015 at 10:25 pm 1420496707
As a hobbyist, I love linux (and xBSD) as well. In fact, the only reason why I still use Windows today is PC gaming.
January 5th, 2015 at 10:40 pm 1420497614
I have a dual-boot, and use Windows for AcrossLite, now that my spouse has subscribed to NYTimes puzzles, and my Savings Bond Calculator application. MS Office is also useful in combination with Avery-Dennison labels and tabs for printing, and for scanning things. I have to use Windows for streaming video and audio from the public library. Wine doesn't seem to do it for me (who knew I'd ever type THAT sentence out?) for the latter.
I got a Raspberry Pi for Christmas and perhaps because it's mainly aimed at children, and possibly other beginners, I have found the instructions for setting up very clear and complete. I'll be setting up Tor Browser for an OnionPi as explained in a Make magazine article, and I look forward to using the RaspberryPi for OpenVPN so I can expand the realms of my subversive wickedness, beyond learning PHP, Python, and relearning mySQL.
January 6th, 2015 at 12:58 pm 1420549119
I've tried Tor, and while I liked the concept, I found it to be too slow to use regularly relative to my security needs (unless the NSA has a serious need to track fruggies tracking their pennies).
OpenVPN is also a good idea that I can't use that even at work, and have no need for it at home.
PHP is fun but I don't really do web designs / backend database stuff (a la mySQL).
I love Python though. Always have. That's my go-to when I can't accomplish something in shell scripts.
That said, I suppose all this is for the sake of learning and fun eh? I really should get back into it myself. It's certainly a frugal hobby if nothing else.
But hooray for finding someone else who is into this stuff.
January 6th, 2015 at 03:39 pm 1420558755
What do you do with Python? The shell/interpreter on the RaspberryPi for Python is IDLE, and that amuses me.