lowquality.net

I can’t count how many times I have posted a list of plans or goals on this site only to have them go com­pletely unfin­ished or aban­doned. I am going to make an attempt to not make a list this time.

Kim and I will be mov­ing together in the near future, and I am hop­ing that this leads to a dras­tic lifestyle change for both of us. Not just because it might be tight finan­cially and there­for nec­es­sary to live dif­fer­ently, but because the neigh­bor­hood we’re mov­ing into is a lit­tle more con­ducive to walk­ing, rid­ing our bikes and doing things with­out spend­ing a ton of money. We’ll prob­a­bly save a for­tune in gas since we work in the same gen­eral area and can car­pool. Even if we both drove sep­a­rate cars to work we’d still save gas by elim­i­nat­ing the all of the dri­ving back and forth to each other’s houses that we do now.

All in all, my debt sit­u­a­tion is under con­trol, though still not ideal. I have been read­ing a lot about “snowflak­ing” lately and, at the very least, is inspir­ing to see peo­ple either elim­i­nate mas­sive amounts of debt or mas­sively increase their net worth in as lit­tle as five years. Before my stu­dent loans became an issue, I had a credit card with a few thou­sand dol­lars on it, and I was able to pay it off com­pletely just because I became obsessed with mak­ing it dis­ap­pear. To this day I have no out­stand­ing credit card debt, which, I sup­pose, is some­thing to be proud of. I had already started to take this snowflak­ing approach with pay­ing off a small­ish stu­dent loan I had from my last col­lege endeavor (it’s about 5 grand) and also my car loan, but there is some­thing in read­ing that other peo­ple have come to the same con­clu­sions that makes me feel like I am on the right path.

I think my min­i­mum pay­ment on the car was orig­i­nally some­thing like $342 and I just started pay­ing an even $350 a while back (orig­i­nally because I could never remem­ber the exact amount due and I got lazy). Now my min­i­mum pay­ment is down to $300 and I keep pay­ing $350 regard­less– I even have it set up to auto­mat­i­cally with­draw. I intend to raise this amount once the $5000 dol­lar stu­dent loan is paid off. The min­i­mum pay­ment for that loan is only like $55 but I have been pay­ing between $75 to $100 every month. Basi­cally when­ever I notice that I have some extra money I put it on that loan. I have been a lit­tle bit appre­hen­sive because I don’t know what expenses will pop up once Kim and I move in together. If I can afford to keep this habit up– or pos­si­bly pay more than what I am doing now– I totally will. This small loan actu­ally has a higher per­cent­age rate than most any other debt I have so I am really bent on mak­ing it disappear.

What this is all lead­ing up to is some­day being able to afford a higher pay­ment on that damn Sal­lie Mae con­sol­i­da­tion loan. The prob­lem with Sal­lie Mae (as if there was only one prob­lem) is that they do not auto­mat­i­cally apply excess pay­ments to the prin­ci­pal of the loan (you have to explic­itly tell them to do this). This is a pain in the ass because I seri­ously doubt that me writ­ing a let­ter to Sal­lie Mae will do any good unless I send it with EVERY PAYMENT I MAKE to them (and print it in big let­ters, and pos­si­bly use crayons and draw pic­tures for them), which means of course that I will have to pay them by mail, which makes it even more of a hassle.

I have read on a few blogs that in order to acti­vate the screen which allows you to apply your excess pay­ments a cer­tain way, you have to pay more than twice your monthly pay­ment. For those of you that know how much the brunt of my pri­vate con­sol­i­da­tion loan pay­ment is, this is a laugh­able prospect (it’s about $1,200 dol­lars for the pri­vate and another $185 for the Fed­eral). So, for now, I am just not going to worry about the Sal­lie Mae loans and just make the min­i­mums because pay­ing any extra is just not going to ben­e­fit me at this point — at least not as far as low­er­ing the prin­ci­pal. Of course, once I pay off either the car or the afore­men­tioned $5,000 loan I can dou­ble the Fed­eral con­sol­i­da­tion loan and work on get­ting that one down.

All in stages.

I don’t know how much of a goal this is, but I want to be debt free before I am 40.

And in spite of get­ting a new place to live and hav­ing all of this stuff to worry about and pur­chase and every­thing, I really, really, really, really, really want a new amp. Actu­ally the want­ing a new amp was the inspi­ra­tion for this pay­ing extra on my loans. My debt has ruled my life for too long and it pre­vents me from doing what I want with my money. I fig­ured the sooner I elim­i­nated some of my debt the sooner I could jus­tify buy­ing a big ticket amp. It may not hap­pen for another year or another five years, but I have been putting a cou­ple of bucks away in an account for this spe­cific pur­pose of buy­ing a new amp. Of course that same account is also where I am going to buy a bed for the new apart­ment, but I am not com­plain­ing so much about that because it needs to get done and Kim has done so much I don’t think she should have to pay for it.

Speak­ing of which, Kim made home­made soy­bean burg­ers last night and they were fuck­ing amaz­ing. I have been think­ing for awhile that I should quit eat­ing meat again. Being a veg­e­tar­ian who eats out all of the time at fancy vegan restau­rants or pur­chases prepack­aged foods is totally not worth the expense, but if you can pull it off by mak­ing your own foods it’s so much cheaper than being a car­ni­vore. I’m not say­ing I would do it only to save money. I doubt that I would con­sider it if money were the only rea­son, but since I don’t eat a ton of meat as it is (and hardly any red meat) and I’m sure it would be a lot health­ier for us even if we just paired our­selves down to one or two des­ig­nated “meat days.” Not to men­tion that this would be a load cheaper for us and just cook­ing at home in gen­eral often yields lunch for the next day.

I just thought of some­thing: Not to pan­han­dle on the inter­net, but do any of you have any­thing you think we might find use­ful in our new place? We’re good with most of our kitchen stuff (Kim has amassed uten­sils and gad­gets and pots and pans since her years work­ing in house­ware retail), but we could use a toaster over or a microwave and maybe a chair or too– hell we’re not picky! If you have any­thing you’re already think­ing about throw­ing out or donat­ing and you want to give it to us, we’d appre­ci­ate it. Even if you want to give us stuff to hang on walls to make the place look like home, we’d appre­ci­ate that too. We will return the favor some­how (most likely by send­ing you some­thing thought­ful in return so). Since I got a care pack­age from a good inter­net friend dur­ing Whiskerino 2007 (which I now con­sider to be a good real friend) I have rethought the idea that accept­ing things from and giv­ing things to inter­net acquain­tances is creepy. I spend more time in this e-world than in the real world, which sucks some­times, but it is what it is and I might as well make myself at home.

If you want to send me some­thing just click the con­tact tab. Or just click it and say hi.