Corner of Bourbon & Division

Tomorrow I take my car back to the dealership.

This is a Good Thing™, even though I will miss the ease and convenience of having my own mode of transport right outside the door. This will free up a considerable amount of cash for me (lease + insurance + gas) and as an additional bonus will significantly reduce my ecological footprint.

I won't miss the expense, that's for sure. I didn't call it the Huge Damn Financial Albatross for nothing.

So.

Good-bye to you, my car. It's been an interesting four years. May your new owner enjoy you as much as I did.

The problem with really looking forward to getting rid of the car at the end of August (August 27th, baby! 42 days to go! Maybe I should start a countdown) is that I keep thinking of all the cool things I'll be able to do with the extra money that will generate.

I keep having to remind myself that one of the reasons I'm getting rid of the car to begin with is that my normal, everyday expenses were piling up. Like, oh, say, my Bell Canada bill. So I'm going to have to curb my enthusiasm considerably. I have to pay my bills, reimburse my father, and re-organise my life so that I won't be a financial mess forever. *sigh*

Still, I'm hoping that after a few months I'll be able to do some fun things. There are any number of "little" things that right now are too expensive for me to even contemplate, which I'd like to get. Most of these involve DVDs, and entire seasons of TV shows that I like. I should go and update my Amazon wishlist. I hope I remember my ID and password. I think the ID is the same as my LJ name. Oops. Goes to show how often I look at these things. :P

Oh well. By this time next year I will hopefully be completely debt-free and on my way to becoming a financially responsible member of the community. Go me!

It's officially summer. Yes, I know, the solstice isn't for another few days, but it's sweltering outside. It hasn't been hot for more than two days and I already look like I've gone three rounds with a heavyweight champion. I didn't think the circles under people's eyes could even turn that colour. I seem to forget every year just how poorly I fare in the heat and humidity of a Montreal summer.

Everyone say it all together now: It's not the heat that's bad, it's the humidity.

Okay, now that the obligatory cliché is over, can I repeat how much I dislike the heat? I wilt like a tulip under a magnifying glass in the summer. Bleah. Summer is a very very pretty season, but I'm no good to anyone until the end of September.

So I was duly felled by the heat this weekend. The usual migraine on Saturday (it might be the recently-replaced light bulb in the rehearsal space doing it, or it might just be the quality of the air or something) lingered until late on Sunday, thus effectively ruining eighty percent of my plans for the weekend. Migraines are weird beasts. As long as I ignore them (only acknowledging them enough to take Excedrin), they seem to stay sort of at bay, until I stop moving around/interacting with people/doing stuff. Then they drop like the proverbial anvil (are anvils proverbial, or just the result of Loony Toons?) and pretty much incapacitate me until they condescend to go away. I have yet to understand this phenomenon, but let's just say it's annoying in the extreme.

Needless to say, there was no baking. Not at 32 degrees Celsius, thank you very much. Besides, baking involves bending over and straightening repeatedly, with attendant blood rushing to and from the head. Badness, in short. There are limits to which I will push my masochism. Adding migraines to heat is not one of them.

I did get a little bit of cleaning done. Not nearly as much as I wanted to, but at least I got rid of a couple of garbage bags that were sitting on my back balcony, and tidied a little bit more. Since the weather has decided not to cooperate with me, I'm going to take the FlyLady approach to the rest of my cleaning, which is the fifteen-minutes-a-day technique. With any luck, that will mean actual progress by the end of the week. An hour's worth of cleaning by the time Friday rolls around might actually provide visible results and not make me die of heat prostration in the interim.

The Parental Units are in good form. The Maternal Unit is in a revoltingly good mood, the way she always is after a trip to France. The Paternal Unit gave me a long and not-entirely-accurate lecture on financial responsibility, and once that was done he agreed that I was taking the right course in my current financial decisions. It occurred to me that he doesn't actually understand that much about how personal finances work (though global economics are no problem whatsoever), or at least how they work for an individual with a low income and no job security. Be that as it may, I am going to the bank over my lunch break (joy) to commence proceedings for solving my current financial debacle.

At my father's suggestion, I'm going to start by switching my checking account over to the bank I actually work for (even if, technically speaking, I don't actually work for them). I was planning on doing this eventually, since the CIBC seems to take particular delight in screwing me every chance they get *and* are closing their branches left, right and centre. In fact, there is no CIBC branch anywhere near where I live, which is highly inconvenient. I had been holding off until I got a permanent position at the National Bank, but at this point it seems more expedient to just switch over now.

I'm then going to apply at the National Bank for a loan. Hopefully they won't scoff at my credit rating, but that seems doubtful. Who knows? Maybe I'll get lucky and my father won't have to co-sign with me. However, he's told me that not only is he willing to co-sign, but that if things are truly too tight for July and August while I still have the car (aka the HDFA), then he'll even help me out with paying the loan for those two months. I don't think it'll be necessary, if my calculations are correct, but then my math has always been notoriously unreliable, so it's nice to know I have a contingency plan.

The more I hear about other people's parents, the happier I am that my own Parental Units are so freaking awesome. They've always been supportive of anything I wanted to do, and have always backed me up if I got in too deep over my head. Of course, some people might argue that I haven't learned any lessons because they coddled me too much, but I'm not so sure. I mean, I've never made the same mistake twice (at least, not in important matters), so they must be doing something right. Sure, they're responsible for all my neuroses, but they're also responsible for all my good qualities as well. So, go them. :)

I bitch about my parents far too much, considering how great they are, especially compared to other parents.

Technically it's Saturday now. Oh well.

Spent all day with owldaughter in a pretty productive writing jam. I wrote a bit about it in secret_history so I won't go into it here, but let's just say it went very well indeed and industrial quantities of tea were consumed. I also snagged myself some more Amelia Peabody and Jane Austen mysteries. I am a happy camper.

Went to my dance club afterward, where I met up with miseri who was kind enough to lend me a few copies of the Alfred Hitchock Mystery Magazine and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. He left early, and I ended up only staying until about 11:30 or so, since I was hit with a massive anvil of tired.

Skippy (one of the members of my club) and I have finally, we think, mastered this dance that was giving us trouble. It's a fun little dance, with a "windmill" step (basically it's a half-turn shuffle, but instead of keeping your arms either at shoulder or waist level, you raise them over your head in a windmill motion) and some tricky little steps in the middle that it took us forever to figure out. However, tonight we conquered it, and it was fun.

Tomorrow there will be band practice, and then I've agreed to drive miseri to IKEA after to get a wardrobe. He's moving on Sunday, and has nowhere to put his clothes. After IKEA, depending on how much time I have left over, there will be chili, and then I'm off to my club again for a special event.

I wasn't going to go to the special event, actually, given the state of my finances. See, it costs $15 to get in (not counting drinks and whatnot) and, well, I just don't have that kind of money these days. However, my friend C from the club, upon learning that $15 was all that was standing between me and the special event, informed me that he was going to buy a ticket for me and that I had no choice whatsoever in the matter. :)

Have I mentioned that my friends rock? Even the ones you all don't know. If there's one thing I can pride myself on, it's my excellent choice of friends.

Sunday will be spent continuing my cleaning spree. I haven't come close to finishing yet, but I am making headway, slowly but surely. I shall also make chili, if I don't have time tomorrow.


As you may have noticed, I am still connected to the internet. I managed to get Bell Canada the minimal amount of money it would take to not get all my services cut. Go me!

I have decided to get rid of the car when the lease expires in August. I realized I was just being stubborn about it, and when that realization hit I actually felt relieved. The car was, like I said before, a huge damn financial albatross, and while it was useful while I had it, I don't think it's worth the massive amounts of stress it generated for me.

So, as of August 31st, the car goes bye-bye.

More as events unfold. ;)


Good night!

Wow.

So I took a cursory look at what my monthly expenses are in order to get an idea of what my budget should be. My conclusion? Holy shit.

I have no idea how I made it this far without starving. The Financial Good Luck Fairy obviously got sick and tired of me very recently, because she must have been giving me a hand before. There's no other logical explanation.

( Car stuff )

( Moonlighting )

So that's the end of yet another instalment of The Not-So-Interesting Financial Life Of Phnee. Thanks for tuning in. :P

Welcome to another chapter in How Phnee's Finances are T3h Suck. There's a little bit of ranting in here, be warned.

I got a call from Bell, which I received late, of course, having not checked my messages since Monday or thereabouts. Turns out I owe them a metric assload of money. Now, let me explain something first: I am lousy with money. I am lousy with remembering to make regular payments on just about anything. I know myself well, and thus on ALL my bills I arrange to have automatic payments withdrawn from my account every month. It's simpler and prevents me from having to worry about it.

Apparently the automatic payments didn't work for Bell, for whatever reason. However, they didn't see fit to warn me about this until, oh, about two seconds before they threatened to disconnect my phone line. Okay, in theory I should be checking my invoices online every month to make sure things are going smoothly. However, I have mentioned that I use automated services precisely because I'm lousy at that sort of things. Touching, my naïve faith in the system. :P

So, mostly my fault, but kind of also partly theirs. None of which makes any difference, because it's ALL my problem.

*sigh*

I am going to the bank tomorrow to see if I can get a loan, or a credit card on short notice. I was very pleased about no longer being in Massive Amounts Of Debt, but apparently my smugness is now being thoroughly punished. Dramatic irony: gotta love it.

Still, I figure this will be an opportunity to consolidate all the BFO's (Big Financial Obligations) I still have into one neat package. I am still, thanks to the stupid paycheque snafu from last August, one month behind on rent. I owe Bell a ton of money, and I have a few SFO's (Small Financial Obligations) that would do well from getting handled all in one go.

Jesus H. Murphy.

The worst part is, is that I can't really rail about the Vast Unfairness Of It All™, because, really, if I had been more on the ball about this, I wouldn't be having these problems. Well, I'd be having them, but in reduced form. Part of me wishes very much that Bell had waited until August to get their panties in a bunch, because then The Car would no longer be a huge damn financial albatross hanging around my neck. Ooh, I like that expression much better than BFO. HDFA it is.

Okay. This is not the end of the world. This is not the end of the world. Remember to breathe, and repeat: This is not the end of the world. Lather, rinse, repeat. Aloof, unavailable elf princess. Aloof, unavailable elf princess. This is not the end of the world.

I shall endeavour to view this as an opportunity rather than a massive pain in the ass. I shall endeavour to find the silver lining in this very large and annoying storm cloud. If I consolidate all my HDFA's now, then I could potentially be entirely debt-free by this time next year. Potentially.

I think my credit rating is still okay. It can't be fabulous, but I don't think it should get in the way of a small loan. For one thing, I've never missed a car payment, and I know that goes a long way to keeping a good credit rating. Hopefully it will act as a counterweight to all the really crappy financial things that have happened in the past three years or so.

You'd think that two years of gainful employment would cancel out a year of unemployment, but you'd be wrong. Two years later (almost to the day, in fact), and I'm still fucking paying for the fact that I couldn't get a job and was ineligible for EI benefits (I quit Bell Mobility, since it was making me a psychological wreck, but because I quit then the government considers it All My Own Fault if I don't have money).

Did I mention that the Quebec government decided that I owe them money, in spite of all my taxes being taken off at source? I give them a quarter of my paycheque every week, and somehow I STILL end up owing them money. Someone explain to me how that's supposed to work. No, I'm not bitter at ALL. Bah.

Okay, enough whingeing. This is a blessing in disguise. A very, very cunning disguise, but nevertheless… Tomorrow I shall go to my bank and get their help to fix my problem. One day, I will have money. Today is not that day, but some day, mark my words, I will be worry-free.