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Friday Stuff

July 28th, 2007 at 03:50 am

I got a bill in the mail for my disability. I just upped it to $4k/month benefit, which is AWESOME!!!! I think $4k would pretty much cover all of our bills but not preschool and some of the extras. Oh well. The coverage is really cheap (& good) through my professional association but they limit it to x percent of pay. I forget the percent, but I just bumped it up from $3500 to $4k and I feel much better about it. I need to check how long that pays out. If for life, we are well covered. If not, it wouldn't exactly cover retirement. But I think if I was disabled we could cut back our lifestyle all the same. Of course it is good to check the terms of the policy and exactly what it entails. I knew at one time but I don't remember now.

The bill was $15 for the increase (for the year). Not bad. Big Grin I'll keep upping it as I can... It costs me maybe $200/year. Well worth it.

I have a professional dues bill to pay. It's for like $160 but my boss will reimburse right away. I'll throw it on the card for the cash back and just pay it with the next bill (prepay) so I don't get tempted to spend it. Or forget why I have another $160 in my checking - which happens sometimes. LOL.

THe hard part is they always ask for x dollars for political action committees and y dollars for scholarships and on and on and on. In past years I have mostly ignored them as I have spent a lot of time not working. But I have to decide how much to contribute. I think all of the things are important. Believe it or not much of the political action stuff is SIMPLIFYING the tax code. Well needed... Which reminds me I have been reading how all the presidential candidates say they want to change the tax code and it makes me cringe. I have had enough - LOL. Gah. It makes it frustrating to plan anything around taxes - you realize how futile the endeavor really is. Tax planning... Oxymoron.

I have to pay the diaper service and the phone bills - throw them on the card. I think then I'll be done for the month. Overall was a good month.

Oh yes and the gym opened today. We are going to go tomorrow and check out the daycare with LM. We'll see how that goes. HE is still small enough I am not sure how I feel. Particularly since his brother won't be with him. Grandma kidnapped him for most of the week... We'll get him back Sunday. The kids together I'll worry less. Hopefully they like it and we can drop them off often!

The stock market is ugly, but I am rather unmoved. I noticed the thread about the 1987 stock market. I can't say I know much about it as a whole (how bad it was how it affected the economy, etc.) since I was only 10. BUT 2001 was pretty ugly around here. I remember it well. IT was a good lesson. But then again the world didn't end. I was thinking today though that the dot com crash and all that was particularly bad in this area with the whole high tech thing and living in Silicon Valley at the time. I hardly know anyone who wasn't out of work at that time. (Except me - which gives me confidence that my job is rather recession proof). & we lost a LOT of money in stocks, and it was just ugly all around. Dh's employer was high tech and at least they did lots of unpaid time off rather than outright lay him off. But since we moved to Sacramento he was the first one eventually cut by a lay off from there.

Anyway, with the whole subprime/foreclosure thing it of course affects this area more than most areas of the country. So once again it will probably hit harder here. Which is interesting. I guess it makes sense though where so much of the wealth congregates, on the flip side so does so much volatility. It's interesting so many people seemed to have not learned anything around here since 2001... I can't exactly say I haven't seen the writing on the wall with this whole mortgage thing for a LONG while myself.

Anyway, this time, we have played our cards different (lots of diversification), and we have recovered enough from last time to know life goes on. But on the other side we really don't have that much in stocks. Not a large percentage of our assets as a whole. We were actually going to start contributing heavily next year and the more the market goes down, the better for us to jump in. Big Grin I imagine though with youth and time on my side, and LITTLE in stocks, it is a lot easier to stomach. I am thinking ahead to the future. I think in the middle, when we start to build some decent investments, but are nowhere near retiring or millionaires, I imagine I will have a harder time riding out some of these waves. IT will be interesting to see I guess. It seems on the bottom end of the spectrum we don't have much to lose and on the high end, well the same thing. Not as much to lose... For now my insanely conservative side helps - I will always have more in cash than we probably should. But it helps us ride this wave too...



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