Just a 48-year-old mom of 2 in Northern California. My kids are Monkey Monkey(MM) and Drama Llama (DL). I am married to Monkey Hubby (MH). Oh my, yesterday was exhausting. It was terrible.
I have 2 kinds of tax seasons. Most of them are the gain weight kind. I am a stress eater. Thus, I often gain 5 pounds (& work it off the rest of the year).
Other times it is just so hectic there is no time to eat. I have had one or 2 tax seasons where I lost weight or maintained. Even with the stress eating on my days off. LOL.
Anyway, I forgot to eat lunch yesterday. I scarfed some food down around 3pm when I started to get hungry and remembered.
I got home and wasn't hungry for dinner then.
Dh has been shopping so carefully and I have been pinching my pennies more, I start to think this may be a tax season I can actually make it without gaining 5 pounds.
I also did good on the holidays. I got an ungodly amount of popcorn in a gift exchange, but dh sent it down to a relative's New Years Party. We had it out christmas and I left it out at work for a while but there was barely a dent. I think I gained 2 pounds eating what I did. We were ready to throw it out. Just too much. So hope it went to good use.
Well, I don't advocate not eating and forgetting meals (certainly messes with your metabolism as well which can work against you). But I start to think that maybe there is hope for me to lose more weight. I usually give up pretty much this time of year. The gym membership helps (as I generally am fine to just go for a walk, but the weather is just horrid here. Cold cold, and more cold. It's 30 degrees. It might as well be 20 below if you ask me. LOL).
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In other news, I vested in my profit sharing plan yesterday!!!!!! It's been 6 years. Ineligible year 1, and then contribution and vesting of 20% every year since. My contribution has been on average $6k/year (10% wages). So my balance just went from $25k to $33k with the vesting.
For 2008 I figure at 100% vest I am earning about $600/month into my profit sharing (employer contributes).
The ironic thing is it puts my balance to $33k today (from $25k or so on the 30th before I vested). & our ROTHS are also at $33k. Even steven. Our retirement is 1/2 ROTH and 1/2 taxable now. I always say both probably isn't bad, so there you go. 50/50. LOL. We also plan to add to our IRAs at a similar rate this year. Well, very ideally anyway. We'll see... I expect them both to be pretty neck and neck for a while.
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I participate in a green energy program with our local electric utility. I contribute $6/month voluntarily to pay for more renewable energy sources.
This city-owned utility charges on average, 1/2 of what PG&E does.
They city-owned utility to my boss's building and offered to give him new energy efficient lighting for free. & it would reduce his electric bills, etc.
Just a perfect example of how they are committed to cutting down energy usage and such.
On the flip side, there was a ballot measure to switch some local cities over to our city-owned utility. It didn't pass, and PG&E fought DIRTY. Having lived here I could not imagine why anyone would vote to keep PG&E and pay twice as much.
Anyway, the point of this story is I saw PG&E has a new "carbon offset" program. I started looking into it more. It is a variable payment that s'posedly completely offsets your carbon footprint. (We have PG&E for gas).
Well, it looks like it would cost us like 65 cents in the summer months (we only use 5-10 therms per month in the summer) and maybe $5 max in the higher winter months.
But I Was skeptical. Is PG&E really using this money for renewable energy? I find it hard to believe 65 cents a month will offset our entire carbon footprint for gas.
A little websearch shows a lot of criticism of PG&E's program, and some really high praise for our city utilitie's.
I guess my gut feel was kind of on.
I am not going to waste my money.
It's nice to see high praise for the one we do contribute to. Of course I am skeptical there too. You have to be.
But be careful out there. There was a big article in the paper the other day that 99% of "green friendly" products were not at all. I have always been very wary of that stuff.
I never understood why so many people around here spend so much money on "eco-friendly" products. Tons and tons. We just try not to use so many products, period. I always thought that made more sense. Vinegar and baking soda. What's wrong with that?
I think it is much the same way for "animal safe" and "socially responsible." I am always rather skeptical with anything of this nature. & further digging usually shows you should be. Organic? Same thing. I think a lot of these items have good intentions, but there is only so much you can do (example mass spraying over Cali organic farms when fighting mosquitos and West Nile virus). & I kind of laugh at the socially responsible funds. How do you measure socially responsible? From what I can see, rather arbitrary. & I think that is the problem with a lot of this stuff. It takes hard to work to really care and make a difference and just not buy the marketing hype. Unfortunately, but that's the way it is. Most of this stuff is really just marketing.
Green Energy and Such
January 1st, 2008 at 04:46 pm