After I bounced my check for the water bill, I contacted the department of public utilities (via email because I couldn’t wait on hold while I was at work) to inquire as to whether they would attempt to send the check through a second time, or if I should just pay the bill over the phone via their 800 number.

I was surprised to find a response within a half hour. I was told they wouldn’t put the check through a second time, and if I went ahead and used the 800 number to pay my bill, they wouldn’t charge me a fee for the returned check.

Sounds like a bargain, eh?

So, I did what they instructed. I had to pay a $6 fee in order to pay the bill on the phone, but $6 is still less than the returned check fee would have been, so it was still in my favor.

Except that they *did* put the check through a second time. It cleared. The payment I made over the phone did not.

How lovely that now I get to spend my Friday trying to find a moment at work to call my bank and find out what, if any, fees I’m facing for this latest development. Think it’ll carry any weight with them to forward the email the department of public utilities sent me?

I so do not need this right now.

Update:  The bank can’t do anything. The electronic payment cleared when my paycheck was deposited overnight. Now I’ve paid the bill twice. Oh joy. I’m pretty certain the city isn’t going to be issuing any refund, either, so my effort to start 2008 off fresh has already been derailed.

I have no one to blame but myself, but I swear if either one of my kids asks me for a dime, you’ll be reading about me in our local paper…

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Ah… the end of the year. The time when I like to sit back and take a moment to reflect on what I did or didn’t accomplish over the past 12 months, and think about what I’d like to try to do over the next dozen.

I sat down last Sunday afternoon and went over my finances. I finished paying the December bills, including my quarterly water bill that was actually double because I’d misplaced and then forgotten about last quarter’s bill. (Funny… I never misplace the bills I can pay online… I wish the city would get with the technology.)

Anyway, I wrote the single check for the water bill, paid everything else online and spent the rest of the holiday weekend feeling satisfied that I would be starting 2008 off on the right foot.

That feeling last until I brought the mail in yesterday and discovered the check for the water bill had bounced. WTF???

I logged into my bank account and frantically scanned the list of transactions. At first look, nothing was out of the ordinary. No strange numbers showing up. But the ending balance showed that yes, I was overdrawn. What the hell did I do??

And then it hit me. For the first time in four years, I neglected to deduct my bi-weekly mortgage payment from my checking out balance. Yep. That would do it.

So much for starting off 2008 on the right foot.

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I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a couple of days, but last week was just not a good week in oh-so-many ways. It’s not that it was a bad week; it was just busy and there was that whole not sleeping thing. So, this didn’t get posted.

In the past, I have written posts here that included specific keywords with links to them for a company that I’m not going to name, and I have been compensated $5 per post where I have done this. I was able to make a nice chunk of change for very little effort and it all went into my mini emergency fund that I am still slowly building up to one month’s expenses. With all of the brouhaha regarding paid posts that took place after BlogHer last summer, I made sure to make a point of categorizing each of those posts with the name of the company, so that anyone reading them could easily figure out that yes, I was paid to put that link in, even though I tried very hard to write an honest-to-goodness post around it.

Well, the week before last, this company came out with a new disclosure policy. They said we could no longer tag or categorize posts as sponsored, or with the name of their company. We could, however, post a blanket disclosure policy in a sidebar and they even provided real examples. At the time, they owed me about $60 so I waited a couple of days until it hit my account. And then I wrote them a little note to say I couldn’t comply with their new policy.

This is my blog. No one tells me how I can or can’t tag MY posts on MY blog.

To be fair, they wrote me a nice note back and said they completely understood, thanked me for my past work and to get a hold of them if I ever changed my mind. That won’t be happening, but the acknowledgment was appreciated.

Of course, the downside of this is that I no longer have that little extra amount coming in. I wasn’t relying on that money, but I enjoyed the fact that it was helping me achieve that goal a little faster, not to mention the goals I’ve set beyond that one.

Still, all is not lost. I’ve already taken one step toward replacing some of that revenue and I’ll be brainstorming for ideas in the coming weeks. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to pass them along! Just keep in mind that I work full time and go to school part time, so waiting tables on the weekend? Not an option.

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I’ve think I’ve lost the war.

You know the one I mean, right? The war raging in my home: estrogen vs. testosterone? I’m outnumbered. The only way to balance things out is to get rid of The Boyfriend and the orange cat. And even then, what good is the female cat when her greatest talent is puking on things I’ve just cleaned?

Dishes done every day? Get real. I’m lucky if I can step into the kitchen. JL’s misguided sense that “everything must be fair” is back in full force. He doesn’t believe in picking up anything that he didn’t get out, washing anything that he didn’t dirty and oh my GOSH was he offended that I felt he had to be taught how to use our electric lawn mower. Well, when you never mowed the lawn since we’ve lived here….

JM had a job interview last week for something that would be a huge help. A full time security guard position with a nice hourly wage and full benefits, including free tuition. But I suspect he didn’t get it, as there’s a letter waiting for him today. If I’m right, I’m worried about his reaction. It could go either way. He could be upset at not getting the opportunity. On the other hand, he could be somewhat relieved that he’s not going to have to deal with the stress.

Things are tight on the money front. I made one crucial mistake a couple months ago, and it’s coming back to haunt me now. I took the boys out to dinner for their birthday. On the one hand, I never do anything for their birthday anymore. I haven’t in years. But the money could have been better spent elsewhere.

My deferred compensation kicked in last month, so my net income is about $50 less per month. I had hoped to increase my deduction for it, but the way things are going… that missing $50 is already hurting me. When it costs me $8 in gas just to go out to where my dad lives and back, $50 is a lot of money.

So, nothing gets spent this month, outside of monthly bills. Not on new shoes that I desperately need, not on the Counting Crows CD that I really want, or any of the cabinet organizers I’ve had my eye on. Nada. Not even on groceries! Given that I did such a great job at the grocery store over the weekend, I really have no reason to go back there for quite some time. I already told The Boyfriend that he was responsible for any items I may have missed, or for milk “restocking.” But really, I think we’ll be ok until the end of the month, especially since I organized that pantry on Saturday. Even JM commented on it!

I’ll make it. It’s not as though I’m behind on anything. I’m just trying to make sure that I don’t get in that position. Especially since car insurance starts up again next month, and along with it, the neverending battle of getting a certain son to cough up his share in a timely manner. But it’ll be a LOT easier with him here in the house, instead of 700 miles away at camp. *evil laugh*

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I’m patting myself on the back today because I just checked my online statement for my mini-emergency fund and I am officially more than one-third toward my goal. This is a GREAT feeling for me.

I also paid off one of my debts last month, which leaves me two credit cards to work on paying off. One of those should be gone when I get my income tax refund next year. I do have student loans in deferment while I’m enrolled in classes now, so those will still be an issue in the future. Given that I’ve already been down the student loan consolidation road, I’ll be in good shape once the credit cards are gone and I have more money to apply to those.

My deferred compensation should start with my next paycheck. I’m waiting to see what effect it has on my net pay before I make any adjustments to the deduction amount. That amount will steadily increase as I pay off debt, but it’s important for me to get started on it now, for as much as I can afford to set aside.

Things are coming together slowly but surely. I am proud of myself for what I’ve accomplished so far. I won’t say that I haven’t made a few spending mistakes along the way, but never anything that sets me back.

I hope the rest of my day is this good!

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Looks like I missed some controversy at BlogHer ‘07 when I skipped out on a couple of sessions. It appears that there has been some flack over paid posts. I’ve been hopping around to various blogs to get a feel for what’s being said. I even posted a comment on Mir’s blog over on WorkItMom.com, but thus far moderation has not made it appear.

I might as well admit it. I’m a little bitter. When I was in college at the ripe old age of 32, I was an intern in the university’s public relations office. I was told by numerous people, time and time again, that I could write. After one of my fellow interns graduated and landed a job as editor of a local weekly paper, she gave me some freelance work, at $15 per article. She certainly seemed to think I could write and so did many of the subjects of my articles. During my last summer before graduation in December 2001, I interned at a local daily paper. I was offered a job after graduation, making $8.50 per hour. Did I mention it was a 45-minute commute each way?

Obviously, I couldn’t take that job. I had a family to support on my own. Social security survivor’s benefits had gotten me through school, but my benefits stopped when the boys turned 16 and my income dropped by nearly half. And in case you’re not aware of this, teenagers aren’t cheap.

So, I sent out resumes for every job I could find in my field. I couldn’t even get an interview. After doing some freelance (and not steady) publicity work for nearly a year, I took the first job I could find as a department secretary at the same university I earned my degree.

Congratulations, Val! You just spent four years and thousands of dollars on a college degree to get the same type of job you had before you took that leap into higher education.

Was it worth it?

Yes and no. An education is always worth it. And I certainly won’t begrudge having a steady source of income, particularly one with the kind of benefits this one had.

I just want to know one thing. Can I write? Or were all those people lying? I once had an editor call one of my references to ask about me, and tell that reference that he was going to hire me, only to never hear from him. On another occasion, an editor contacted me and told me to call him to set up a time to meet. I did and got his voice mail. Repeated messages and I’ve never gotten a return call. And I’m not even going to talk about the columnist that did get hired whose writing drives me insane.

Think about the message that sends to someone like me, someone who started this game later in life and with a whole lot less confidence than your average 22-year old graduate. Walk in my shoes before you’re so quick to call people like me prostitutes. There is only so much rejection I’ll deal with before I decide it’s time to hang it up and do what I can to get by.

The thing that sucks most about this is that I was on such a high after BlogHer, and now to find out that some of the people I really respected look at people such as me like this.

So much for supporting each other…

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Excuse me? Could anyone tell me me WHY I am awake before 7 a.m.?? I didn’t get to bed until well after midnight and at roughly 5:30, I started the tossing and turning again.

Actually, I’m pretty sure it’s my allergy meds. I had stopped taking them for about a week (too broke to afford the refill that was imminent), but I noticed that there was another pollen count advisory, so I figured I’d better get back in the game (plus I got paid). So, I started taking them night before last and I think the decongestant is keeping me from sleeping well.

On the plus side, I suspect that I will come home from work tonight and crash hard which works out well since tomorrow is my early day.

It’s not so bad, really, since I have a lot of things to knock out of the way before work. For starters, I need to renew the registration on both my car and JL’s, which is still in my name. I’m only a week late. (See above note about being broke.) But I’ve been stressing about getting pulled over for something stupid I’ve done, and getting a ticket for that on top of everything else. I did not start earning money blogging to pay for stupid mistakes.

I also need to get those aforementioned prescriptions (three of them!) refilled.

Tuition waiver forms need to be copied and submitted, and I might just go into work early so that I hand deliver the damn things. I submitted waiver forms for myself and JL in April and May, respectively. They still haven’t been credited to our student accounts. Meanwhile, J at work just submitted hers two weeks ago and it’s already been applied. Something isn’t right somewhere and no one is responding to my email questioning it. I have to submit one for JM anyway, so I’m just starting over from scratch. But I am starting to gain a little understanding of the parents and students who come into the library and vent about not being able to get necessary information from various offices on campus.

While I’m at it, I’m also going to “bite the bullet” and complete the necessary paperwork to maximize my deferred compensation contribution. I’ve been holding off on that for a while, thinking that I need to have more debt paid off first, but knowing that I’m not doing more to prepare for retirement is kind of stressing me out.

And you know that I’m also going to work in doing the dishes and dealing with the incoming mail, right?

Let’s just hope I can stay awake all day…

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I’m hanging out in the backyard, looking over my expenses for July. There are many, unfortunately. My trip to Chicago is the biggest of them all, but fortunately I’ve been putting away some cash toward that and my mom is paying for one night of our hotel stay as a birthday present. Thanks, Mom!!

Now that The Boyfriend and I have definitely made the decision to drive, we have to determine which car we’re taking. Mine needs new tires, which I really can’t swing this month. His AC needs to be recharged. Auto air conditioning is a MUST on a four-hour trip. I don’t care how great the weather is right now; in late July anything is possible and I’m not dealing with open windows all the way to Chicago.

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My friendly neighborhood mail carrier brought me two things over the weekend: a refund check from the credit card account I just closed and a certified check from JL for three months of car insurance. This pays him up through July, which is the last month we’ll owe a payment until November when the whole thing starts all over again.

The biggest financial nightmare I’ve had to face was two (teenage) sons needing car insurance. I remember the look of disbelief on their angelic little faces the day I told them how much it would cost them to be able to drive. They’re through the rough part now. Turning 21 last year saw a drop in their rates. Hitting the quarter-of-a-century mark and/or getting married will probably result in further decreases.

By that time, they will need to have their own policies. I expect that JL will be the first to go forth and find his own car insurance quote. He’s definitely on an independent streak that will hopefully last far beyond when he comes home in August. His plan is to get two semesters in, achieve sophomore status and then head to Australia for a semester abroad. I wonder what car insurance costs down under?

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Though it would seem I’m only concerned with organizing one aspect of my life (the house), there are actually several areas where I’m attempting to make changes. One of those areas is finances.

Thanks to a run of some bad luck with various cars and medical bills, I have managed to incur just a little more consumer debt that I’m comfortable with. I’m also trying to build up an emergency savings fund to prevent such a thing from happening again. The reality of the situation is that while I enjoy my job most of the time, the pay isn’t anything to write home about. If I were in a dual income family, I’d be in a pretty nice position, but it’s all on me and the dependents? Aren’t quite ready for complete independence just yet. But we’re getting closer…

Anyway, because there are only so many hours in a day and I can’t think of any part time job that would A) fit around my frequently changing schedule and/or B) not totally kick my ass physically, I have decided to try making a little bit of extra money with my blog. I debated with myself about this for a very long time, but ultimately it came down to some bloggers whom I respect highly making the same decision. I’ve opted to go with PayU2Blog because I like their method of having you relate personal experiences with the sponsor.

I’ve had two assignments so far, and it’s been interesting. In addition to the extra money, I think there’s an opportunity to get myself to think about writing in a different way. Ultimately, that could end up being an even bigger benefit. There’s certainly nothing wrong with a challenge, eh?

Now, I would like to say that I did get the dishes done this morning, and it was almost pleasant because The Boyfriend cooked a very tasty meal last night: cajun grilled chicken, fettuccine alfredo and green beans. Very yummy. And The Boyfriend actually soaked the fettuccine pan overnight, so cleaning it up today was a cinch. He’s really learning!

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