Can I take this moment to tell you I’m doing pretty well? Since starting this blog I’ve upped my net worth a bit. I am paying down my debts. I am spending less on frivolous purchases and better controlling my urges to splurge. I have not bought any clothes, even though I’m kind of sick [...]
The Broke Yuppie
trudging slowly toward solvency.
Tag Archives: money
Dealing with student debt: Consolidation
The student-loan bills keep rolling in. Week after week, month after month, loan after loan - they seem endless.
I accumulated nine separate student loans during my academic career, and many of them are on different billing schedules with different monthly payments and different interest rates. I owe money on at least one of them almost [...]
Introducing: Uncomfortable calculations
Three days into the AC Experiment, I’m sitting in a cozy, well-ventilated room enjoying the fresh evening air flowing through my open windows. My cat seems comfy, too, sprawled along the windowsill, staring at the people mulling in the parking lot of the laundromat across the street. It’s a pleasant night - perfect for open [...]
Highs in the 80s, and I have no air conditioner
It’s a new month, so it’s time for a new experiment. Last month the task at hand was to track my expenses and then analyze them with the goal of creating a budget. This I did with moderate success.
This month, the test will be one of will, physics and heat tolerance.
It’s getting hot in my [...]
Why October scares me. (It has nothing to do with Halloween.)
The main source of my financial woes is the more than $55,000 of student-loan debt, the majority of it from grad school, that I must pay off bit by bit each month.
I finished grad school in December, and since then the loan companies have started demanding that I repay them. First the smallish private loans [...]
I have no idea what I bought last week
Dammit. I failed at the final week of Experiment No. 1. Chock it up to laziness or busy-ness or just plain lack of will, whatever the reason, I’m not sure how much money I spent in the last few days or what I spent it on.
What I’ll do to make up for this egregious error [...]
SmartyPig, you are sweet
E*Trade sent me a sad email earlier this month. My annual interest rate, which had hovered around 2.5 percent, has shriveled to 0.95 percent - a significant, upsetting reduction.
I decided to shop around for better deals. There really weren’t many. Most banks have lowered their rates in recent months, even for online-only accounts (thanks, crappy [...]
Beware free, uncooked meat
From The New York Times comes an entertaining, cautionary tale about accepting free but questionable gifts or playing Mr. or Ms. Fix-It when you don’t know the first thing about fixing it.
The moral of the story: If you don’t know how to install a toilet, bleach your hair or replace your car battery, hire a [...]
Inspiration from David Foster Wallace, or: Life is one long budget
The following is from his 1995 essay on commercial cruises entitled “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” The quote’s not explicitly about money - more about choices in general - but it’s relevant all the same. And it’s gorgeous prose. (All you prose lovers out there: read the entire essay.) Here goes:
I am [...]