Got My Security Deposit Back!

I can safely say I never thought this day would come. My landlord was great when it came to fixing stuff, getting the sidewalk shoveled, etc. but that's not to say we didn't have our issues during my five year tenure in the building. And from what I heard from former neighbors he was notorious in denying former tenants their security deposits. I had pretty much written off the deposit as I paid it so long ago and figured he was going to find a way to keep most/all of my money.

Well color me surprised when I opened up the mailbox today and found a letter from my former landlord with a check for $492!! It's not the full amount I paid 5 years ago...he also included an itemized bill....but hey it's $492 I definitely was not expecting to get this week.

To the Wedding Savings it goes!

Where it Went 6/24 - 7/7

So I am finally free of my apartment and paying rent, yay! Moving meant scrambling around like a maniac for a week and a half and spending some cash, but it's finally over and I can start seeing some savings.

I had to buy a new dress for a wedding we attended and despite my efforts at finding one on sale (believe me I tried) I ended up spending $100. Granted it's a very nice dress and I'm sure I'll be wearing it again but...ouch.

I also bought a weight loss video game to the tune of $43, but $10 of that money was technically spent on "donating" my old computer monitor to Best Buy. I'm trying to think of ways to make working out fun. It stinks. Hopefully I'll start to see some results in that area of my life soon as well.

Without further ado, here's how my budget stacked up over the past two weeks compared to my earlier projections:

Aunt Sallie Mae - 406/408
Perkins Loan - 93/93
School Loan - 54/54
Utilities - 45/47
Sprint - 100/97
Laptop - 70/0
Groceries - 100/0
Misc. - 128/280

Clothes - 0/100

Video Game - 0/43
Wedding - 400/90

My first pay period of saving money for the wedding and I totally blew it. I have to start transferring the money to the wedding account at the beginning of the pay period to prevent this problem from reoccurring. Must remember to get some deposit slips from the fiance. Will need to adjust accordingly in today's budget as this wedding isn't going to pay for itself.

I didn't end up sending in the lap top payment yet but don't worry folks (and fiance) it's not due until the 13th and I will pay it today!!

Stay tuned for the next budget and some bad news. :-(

Guess what I didn't do today?

Pay Rent!!!!

I am landlord free!

Finally out of my apartment and can devote money towards Wedding Savings!

I may even be getting some of my security deposit back! More on this as it develops.

Moving!

It seems like only yesterday that we moved my fiance into his (our) condo but actually it has been 10 whole months. Now it is finally my turn to move in officially. While his move involved trucks and moving men and backbreaking work, mine has been relatively low key so far. That doesn't mean we're not exhausted beyond belief after sorting through five years of stuff, most of it so important I haven't felt the need to move it over with me during the last ten months.

We made two trips to Goodwill to donate lots of unneccesary clothing and household items. Unfortunately they do not accept furniture so I've been struggling to get rid of the last of mine. We kept a few pieces, gave away a few, and turned in a t.v. and computer monitor to Best Buy where I had to pay $10 (for the computer monitor) but got a $10 gift certificate in return.

The journey is finally almost over. Just have to get rid of a few more things and have one final meeting with my landlord (cross you fingers for me). Then we can begin the new journey of finally living together (for real!) as an engaged couple. I'm excited to start the next chapter of our lives and also excited to no longer be paying rent!

Budget 6/24 - 7/7

There are a lot of IFs in making this budget. I have been looking forward to the day when I no longer had to pay rent on my Very Expensive Storage Facility, aka my apartment, for SO long and it may finally be here. But to make a very long story short, I may still be on the hook for July's rent. Then again, there's a very good chance I will not have to pay. So here are two budgets - best case scenario and worst case scenario.

Starting Balance = $1,296 (woohoo my pay isn't be lagged anymore)

Best Case Scenario Budget

Aunt Sallie Mae - 406

Perkins Loan - 93

School Loan - 54

Utilities - 45

Sprint - 100?

Laptop - 70

Groceries - 100

Misc. - 128

Wedding - 400

Stupid Sprint has not yet applied my discount. I will have to call them when I feel a little better.

Worst Case Scenario Budget

Rent - 725 or half of 725 @ 360

Aunt Sallie Mae - 406

Utilities - 45

Groceries - 55

Misc. - 65

and everything else waits for two weeks.

So yes I am really hoping that my landlord and I can work this out in the best possible manner. I think worse comes to worse I would just give my landlord half of July's rent and if he really demands more tell him to wait for two weeks as I have given him more than enough notice I was vacating and I've been a darn good tenant for five years. BTW I cannot wait to never have to utter the words "my landlord" ever again. Goodbye serfdom!

Also we've been experiencing a tad bit of domestic stress as of late but I am excited to officially live with my fiance. As much as it has felt like we've been living together this past year I can now see that until you have to part with your wonderful girly accouterments for the greater good it has not been the real deal.

Where It Went 4/29 - 5/12

I know I sound like a broken record but things have got to get better for me financially when I can get out of my friggen apartment lease. Worst case scenario (and what's looking likely to happen) is that I have to pay rent for the months of June and July and then NEVER AGAIN. It's not so bad I realize and I'm very lucky to have not one but two places to hang my hat, but ugh, the money I'm wasting! I could be saving in my emergency fund, I could be contributing to the wedding deposits, heck I could be out buying ten news pairs of shoes each month with an extra $725!



My spending has been a tad out of control now that the warmer weather has kicked in as well. I felt like going for a walk and oh look there's a restaurant...why don't I get take out? Also I've been social a little more and well that aint free. I don't regret it though, live is meant for the living and I've never claimed to be a hard core frugalist.

So here's where my money has gone compared to the budget I set two weeks ago:


Budgeted/Actual
Rent - 725/725
Perkins Loan - 93/0*
School Loan - 54/0*
Groceries - 100/70
Dry cleaning - 60/54
Misc. - 101/180
Dinner out - 0/63
Mother's Day - 0/50
Makeup - 0/30

*Not yet due

Wedding
Reception Deposit - $2000 - from my parents
Photographer Deposit - $500 - from my fiance


There's no turning back now, we're getting married!

Unemployment Watch 2009

So first, some good news: it's too early to count on this but according to some credible sources, I am going to be transferred to a new office by the end of the month. It's actually quite an exciting move and I am excited (and nervous) for the opportunity. I won't believe it officially until I see it in writing though.

In the meantime, I literally have to come to work everyday and do nothing. Not a thing. I have been cleaning out my office, taking walks, catching up on the Internet, reading celebrity gossip. I am bored out of my mind. If I had more personal time accrued I would be home in bed. Alas, I used most of the time left for that mini-crisis a few weeks ago. So here I sit, useless and scared.

I took a few hours off yesterday to do a major overhaul of my apartment and last night a potential renter toured it. I wasn't present for the tour so I don't know how it went but I can say that my apartment never looked cleaner. I found a woman on Craig's List to come in and clean for $18/hour while I frantically moved stuff to my fiance's apartment and met people on freecycle to get rid of unwanted junk. I know many people don't believe in splurges such as a housekeeper but wow does it look amazing. And if helps me get out of my lease faster it will end up saving me a lot of money. I'm crossing my fingers that I can be moved out by next month!

My office is dead. There is no morale left. No one is even really talking to one another as a lot of us are competing for the same jobs. It's really a crappy situation. I can't wait to get out of here but I'm also unsure of what the future holds. I hope I get good news soon.

Where it Went 02/18 - 03/03

Another payday and I'm more than a little worried that there won't be many more. It's less than a month to the end of my contract. My contacts in the know tell me not to worry..but how can you not?

With that in mind I have been working hard to pay off all my short term debt so I could move out of my apartment and greatly reduce my monthly expenses.

Here's how the budget went for the last two weeks compared to the budget I set. I got a tax refund of $141 so I had a little more money to work with than I expected.

Budgeted/Actual

Rent - 725/725
Sprint - 60/59
Utilities - 150/133
School Loan - 54/54
Groceries - 50/0?
Clothes - 50/40
Overdue Water - 0/100
Misc. - 51/90

My spending was a little sketchy since we were out of town for a weeklong mini-crisis. I spent a bunch on take out and lunches while my fiance was out of town as well. No biggie but I gotta remember to get a bunch of groceries before he goes away next time since shopping can be a pain without a car.

My water debt is at a big fat zero now, yay!

Paid off my water debt!

As I mentioned before, my fiance agreed to give me some money towards the overdue water money that I owed my landlord. We talked about it and decided it was best to just nip it in the bud ASAP so I can finally ditch my apartment and move in to his place officially.

He kicked in $100 and I paid the remaining $100 so I am now water debt free!

I'm happy to be one step closer to getting rid of my apartment. My parents - who orginally weren't too crazy about premartial cohabitation - even told me to hurry up and get outta my expensive lease.

My overdue utilities are so close to being paid off as well - only $80 left on the payment agreement! In fact, now is a good time to review all of my "short term debt" that I've been working on since establishing the blog in May '08.

Friend A - $200 - paid in full on May 12, 2008

"Boyfriend" - I still owe him (now my fiance) about $300 and he's been lenient on repayment terms but still wants his money back eventually. He says paying him back will keep me honest. Do you agree readers?

Friend C - $60 - I finally got her address and will be sending her the money I owe her in the next pay period. I know this debt bothers a lot of my readers - and me too.

Overdue Utilities - according to my payment agreement I only have about $80 left. Will knock this out in the next pay period and perhaps with my fiance's assistance.

Mom Debt - $100 paid off in August.

So that's all for now. I wish I had more news on my job situation but everything is still up in the air. Stay tuned for wedding planning news!

5 More Rent Payments!

I've posted before about my plan to live in sin. It's something I think about every time I have to pay my rent, my utilities, etc. I cannot wait until the glorious day that I can bid farewell to my renting days. Right now the plan is to make this move on June 1st. Sometimes it seems like SO far away - and so much money - but I know this isn't a move to be taken lightly.

But since I love thinking about the future and crunching numbers, here they are:

Old/Projected
Rent - 725/400
Utilities - 80/0

Of course by then my overdue utilities (around $180) and my overdue water ($300) will be paid off so I can ditch those additional expenses. At the very least I will have an additional $400 a month towards saving/debt.

If I get laid off, however, this plan will be put into effect in April, cuz losing your job is a really legitimate reason to break your lease. But for reasons that will be discussed later, I am pretty sure I'll be starting a new job within the next month or so.

Where will my extra $400 go? Definitely towards the Emergency Fund at first. I want this sucker to be big enough to pay for a deposit on a new place if I decide I no longer want to live with Boyfriend (not likely, but hey, gotta plan for every contingency). After I reach $2000 in this fund, I will move onto my other goals outlined in my 2009 resolutions.

I'm feeling very optimistic about this change. It helps to be in love so that whenever things get rough you know someone has your back. And Boyfriend and I are very copacetic when it comes to finances. He is a frequent (if silent) reader of the blog and ha himself become pretty obsessed with personal finance, tracking every little thing on Quicken. Hey, who urged him to buy a condo in the first place?

A new expense I will have to budget for is securing a storage facility for my stuff. I have an expensive mattress, a very nice kitchen table, two t.v.s and other stuff that will ultimately be used if Boyfriend and I decide to upgrade to a bigger place in the years to come.

Stay tuned for tales of cohabitation.

Budget 11/26 - 12/09

I'm hoping that since I brought lunch to work today and won't be at work for the rest of the week (yay) that I can attempt my new plan at conservative spending in the beginning of the budgeting period instead of blowing through my entire paycheck in the first 10 days and being flat broke for the subsequent four days.

That being said, I am getting really tired of paying for an apartment I barely ever spend time in. I can't wait until I break my lease and can officially be living with Boyfriend. In the meantime, Boyfriend and I will be sleeping in separate bedrooms all weekend as we visit our families. Stupid families!

So here's where my paycheck will be going for the next two weeks:

Starting Balance = $1140

Rent - 725

Water - 50

Credit Card - 20

Sprint - 65

Utilities - 105 (including $40 towards Payment Agreement)

School Loan* - 80

*So I forgot that a loan my law school made directly to me had come out of deferment and was due starting last month. It's only $40 a month but I had to pay $80 since I had to pay two months. Another $40 in loan payments definitely sucks but luckily I only have 5 more months on my Payment Agreement with the utility company which is also around $40 a month. My four years of water costs to my Landlord will also be paid off in six months if I keep paying $50 a month. Little by little, right?

So after all that I have less than $100 left over for myself. Which blows. But hey, free turkey this weekend, right?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I Have An Interview - Sorta

I'm trying to stay positive in light of the career jeopardy I face myself in....but it hasn't been easy. If one more person tells me "it's going to work out" I may just lose my mind. How is it going to work out? Is money going to fall from the sky?

I talked to my mother yesterday and told her how concerned I was and she told me not to worry and that her and my father would help me out. When I replied that there are no jobs in my city she said I could always move home. Move home? At 28?! Not bloody likely and completely disregarding my relationship with Boyfriend.

What bothers me most is that I would have definitely saved some emergency expenses had they not forced me to renew my lease in the first place as I already live with Boyfriend in all but the legal sense. I reached out to my Sister and expressed my desire to break my lease and got a judgmental email back so I know that no one will support me if I ultimately make this decision.

Anyhow, I have an interview today. Not a real one but a "let's meet and if the clouds part and there's room in the budget maybe I can hire you" session. With much trepidation, I asked my current Big Big Boss to put in a good word for me and he thankfully obliged. It's a good position - maybe with even a little more money - but the man I'm meeting with already told me on the phone that he would like to hire me to help Big Big Boss out but I should pursue other options as well. How's that for depressing?

Wish me luck and here's a lolcat to cheer me up:

Landlord: "By the way, you owe me $400"

Despite my complaints and my desire to save up a Scumbag Landlord Fund before I potentially move into Boyfriend's Condo, my Landlord is better than a lot of others I've read about. I've pretty much resigned myself to losing my deposit because I used to smoke against his wishes and the explicit notice he added to my lease. But I've lived there for 5 years so the $775 I put down only boils down to about $155 a year lost. And if truth be told, it was my Dad's money anyway.

All in all he's been understanding, tolerant, and very quick whenever there was a problem. My apartment is nice and since I've been there so long my rent is slightly below market for its size.

Yesterday I called my Landlord to let him know my heat wasn't working. Don't worry, dear readers, I rarely sleep at my place anyway and I knew what the problem was. He called back an hour later to say the problem had been solved (amazing, right?) and then he laid this bomb on me:

I owe 4 years of water service in the amount of $400!!!

I would like to claim total ignorance or blame it completely on my Landlord but I simply can't. The first year I moved in he charged me a fee of $100 for water for the year. The next year there was a note on my lease saying I owed $100again but he didn't ask for it. So I didn't pay. The same thing went on for the subsequent years. I think he may have said something once like "you owe me money for this year's water" but it's not like he sent a bill or anything. We communicate only by phone and on the first of every month I post my rent check on my door in an envelope.

I wasn't dodging this expense, really, I just forgot. And I guess he forgot to remind me. My knowledge of the law makes me think he probably couldn't collect all of this money from me in court owing to the Statute of Limitations but I'm not gonna be that guy, you know?

I wanna say Damn the Man and hate on my Landlord like English Major's Money is rightfully doing after being screwed out of her $1800 deposit (yikes girl move upstate!) but really it's just a situation that sucks and is adding to my general frustration today.

He said we can work out a payment plan. Woo-hoo, another payment plan.

Well isn't this depressing? Why don't you check out quite possibly the funniest depictions of landlords ever created to cheer yourself up now?

Gotta love that Pearl.

Planning to Live in Sin

Every month I write a check out to my Very Expensive Storage Facility, aka my apartment. It's something I try to tell myself to see the "big picture" that despite the fact that I spend the majority of my nights (shocking) at Boyfriend's place, that maintaining my own apartment is neccessary. But it's hard to see the big picture sometimes when it costs you $725 a month. Plus utilities.

When Boyfriend was living in his old apartment moving in with him wasn't something I planned on. The place was way too small and on a sketchy block. We briefly considered renting an apartment together - an idea that lived until I mentioned it to my parents and they had minor heart attacks about the situation. But a few months have gone by, my parents have gotten to know Boyfriend a little better, and goddamnit I'm 28 years old....

I know that moving in with someone can be stressful. But if that's my goal I need to plan for it, right? Besides "officially" sharing his space it will save us both a couple hundred dollars a month. After talking about it with him we agreed to the following terms (compared to my current numbers):

Old/New
Rent - 725/400
Storage - 0/50
TV + Internet - 0/0

I still may decide to pick up half of the cable and Internet but he said not to worry about it. I will rent a storage facility in order to store my bed, desk and a couple other things I won't want to part with (in case - gasp - it doesn't work out).

This plan sounds great, right? Why don't I just sign on the dotted line and get moving? Well, here are the problems:

1. I am locked into a one year lease ending on August 1, 2009.
2. I don't know what my parents will say.
3. I need an Emergency Fund.
4. I need a Scumbag Landlord Fund.
5. I need to pay off my old utilities.

So, alas, the move is not happening any time soon. I want to save up at least enough money to put down a deposit on a new place and first month's rent in case (gasp) the move/relationship does not work out. Based on my current savings of $0, I am about $1500 away from achieving this goal. Ironically, if I didn't have to pay rent every month, saving $1500 would be a snap. Isn't irony a bitch?

Paying off the old utilities is taking an excrutiatingly long time. But there's no interest on the Payment Agreement so it hasn't been my first priority. I hope to have it paid off by Christmas.

I also want to save some money in case my landlord tries to take me to Small Claims Court. He has apparently taken most of his former tenants to Small Claims Court over one matter or another. Yay my first trial! The amount I will aim for is $725 - a month's rent.

Plus an Emergency Fund of $1500. Can it be done?

I hope so. My deadline for the Living in Sin plan is circa June 1, 2009. I will be 29.5 years old and my parents can kiss my butt at that point.

Got My Money Back!

So I'm new to budgeting and this month was always going to be a little tight, but some things have changed (some good and some bad) since I laid out my Budget last week.

I had to pay $315 TWICE to my landlord a couple of weeks back. It was money that I owed him. Problem was: I wrote out a money order so that my check wouldn't bounce and HE LOST IT. It was my fault. I didn't tell him I was putting it in the envelope with the rent check so he didn't see it I guess. I went to the bank to see about cancelling it and they told me it would take 90 days to get it back. Frustrated, I just waited for the next pay period and paid him again, figuring I would wait the 90 days for the money to be returned to my account.

Well this weekend he calls and says HE FOUND THE MONEY ORDER. I was extremely happy to hear this. Took it to the bank this morning and boom, $315 back in my account.

Alas, it was needed as I have taken out $100 in cash since Thursday and still hadn't paid my student loans. And another payday loan that I must have forgotten about went through and I'm out another $65.

It's embarrasing that I am this bad with money. It really is. But I'm glad the money is back in the account. I promptly paid $100 to my student loans this morning and now will have enough to cover the $300 settlement I made to a Collection Agency that hasn't hit the account yet.

Luckily I can't eat any solid foods or smoke this week so I'm going to be pretty much spend free for the next couple of days.