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: personal finance
Dealing with student debt: Forbearance and Deferment
So it happened: the dreaded day when my student loans all entered repayment. I was slammed with a $544 bill from one of my lenders - a third of my take-home monthly salary. Last weekend I applied for a consolidation loan from the U.S. Department of Ed., but have yet to receive that loan. I [...]
The car wash is a lie
The older, wiser and poorer I’ve grown, the more I’ve come to believe that many of the “convenient, time-saving” habits adopted by older generations of yuppies are nothing but lazy, resource-guzzling, ass-fattening wastes of time and money.
Case in point: Taking your car to the car wash vs. washing your car yourself.
When I was a very [...]
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 [...]
More ways to reduce the heat
It’s 81 and sunny outside, but I’m feeling quite cozy in my apartment, even though it’s 4 p.m. - the hottest part of the day.
During the week I’ve learned some more heat-reducing tips that I think will help save me and my cat from heat stroke this summer. They are:
Close those gaps: Inspect all your [...]
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 [...]