Wait, what the hell am I talking about?  Historically?  I’ve only been “keeping tabs” of any sort for five or six months.  Anyway, in those five or six months, I’ve used a very simple program called Buddi.  I don’t recall how or why I became a Buddi user, as I’ve never heard it mentioned even in passing by any of the PF bloggers I read.  I think it was a random discovery when I was surfing through a list of free downloadable Mac OS X-native software.  I do recall that I had the program on my computer for a good year before I ever cared enough to start using it regularly…

Anyway, I’m a big fan of Buddi.  The general concept is the same as any other budgeting program, except that it’s 100% devoid of any bells, and about 98% free of whistles, too (and the remaining 2% can be toggled off if you’re a purist):  you set up accounts, you set up expense categories, and you record the transfers between those accounts and track the expenses into which your money disappears.  The program is capable of generating charts and graphs, but it apparently doesn’t have the ability to display those charts and graphs itself; it instead exports them to Firefox.  Or maybe it exports them to wherever you want them exported…mine go to Firefox.  The charts and graphs are a nice way to sit back and enjoy the fruits of all your careful documentation, a colorful and visually pleasing presentation of the data that will make you do a spit take and shout, “I spent HOW MUCH on my cat’s medication last month?!”

As mentioned (hinted at, really), I’ve been reading I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi, author of the blog of same name.  He encourages a system of automation, because he is a smart man and understands that no 20-something is motivated enough to always stay on top of tracking his expenses.  (I’ve done pretty well, but I must confess that one of my expense categories in Buddi is “Disappearing Money.”)  So, he recommends Mint.com as a budgeting tool.  I’d heard this recommendation many times before, but his was the one that finally made me curious enough to sign up.  And since, I’ve been using both programs concurrently, to see which I prefer.

Like Buddi, Mint.com is totally free, so there’s no risk associated unless you consider posting your financial standing online to be a risk.  (Mint is renowned for its security, by the way, but I know that’s not enough for some people.)  Its main appeal is that it links up in real time with whatever bank/investment accounts you choose to give it access to.  The minute my debit card transaction goes through my bank’s website, it’s reflected in my transaction history in Mint.

This is where Mint shines:  Buddi is totally manual, where Mint is almost totally automatic.  It tracks my investment gains and losses (more on that later) as they happen, where I don’t even bother following them with Buddi because it would be too much work.  If I forget to record my expenses for four weeks, but all of those expenses were paid for by credit or debit, they’ll all have shown up on my Mint account automatically (but none in Buddi).  Plus, Mint seems to have a pretty good understanding of what categories these expenses fall into.  When the automatic bi-weekly transfer from my credit card to my bus card went through, Mint filed it under the “Public Transportation” budget tag without being told to do so.  Impressive, yes?

Unfortunately, I’m a cash guy.  And this is where Mint falls short.  You can use it to track cash spending, but it doesn’t keep a running tally of how much cash you have on you.  I’m a perfectionist, and Buddi humors me in that regard.  See, when I say you can set up “accounts” in Buddi, there’s no set definition as to what an “account” is.  With Mint, an account is anything you can give a user name and password to.  With Buddi, it’s anything you can imagine.  I have two very important accounts in Buddi that Mint just can’t help me track:

1. Wallet:  A cash account, and portable at that.  I like to have a record of where my cash has come from and where it’s gone.  This gives me 100% accuracy when tracking which budget categories my money is going toward, and it satisfies my newfound urge to have 100% control over every aspect of my financial life.
2. Owed to Katie:  My girlfriend and I pay for one another just about everywhere we go.  And, though my “Owed To” accounts are set up as credit accounts, if it’s my turn to pay and her turn to owe me, Buddi just documents a negative balance, meaning Katie owes me.  (At the moment, if I may pat myself on the back, that’s exactly the case.)  This removes the vague distrust that has always accompanied any “Isn’t it your turn to buy groceries?” conversation anyone has ever had.

But Mr. Sethi’s initial point stands true:  for anyone less obsessive than I’ve recently been, Mint.com would by far be the better option.  Also, embarrassingly, for anyone with a more typical income than me.  See, when I drop $5 in cash at a restaurant, I want it recorded and documented in the “Dining Out” budget category as having come out of my “Wallet” account, because five bucks is almost 1% of my paycheck going toward a lousy sandwich.  For most people my age, it wouldn’t even constitute half that much.

Unfortunately, although I can’t bring myself to dump Buddi for those reasons, I like the idea and the smooth, streamlined function of Mint too much to abandon it, too.  So I’m now using two pieces of budgeting software, when I used to struggle to keep up with just the one…though admittedly, Mint does most of its work for me.

In my absence (I wish I could say it was time spent studying, but there was also a lot of TV-watching and general laziness in there, too), a lot has happened that deserves reporting here.  The short list:

1. I received a sizable tax return.
2. I used said tax return to start a Roth IRA.
3. I watched as a minor financial meltdown took a bite out of my brand new IRA only days after I started it.
4. I organized my filing cabinet for ease of access during next year’s tax preparation.
5. I started reading, and have nearly finished, another personal finance book, which I may or may not review here in the near future.
6. Inspired by said book, I set up a fully automated online banking system to make sure that, even if I get lazy about being money-conscious (because, as I’ve proven with repeated absences on this blog, I tend to get lazy about everything from time to time), my money will keep saving itself.
7. Also following the reading of said book, I started an account with Mint.com, which is very sleek and amazingly smart, and very easy to use, but inferior to my former budgeting system in many ways (upcoming blog topic?).

Anyway.  This post was more for myself than for anyone else…I need to get back in the habit of writing in general, as well as writing on the blog that I pay money to maintain (ironic for someone who writes about trying to save, isn’t it?), and I was hoping that this practical use of a lunch break at work should be a good start.

So, in short, I’m back!*

*until I disappear again.

I’m the sort of guy who likes to have a road map.  I’ve never really thought of myself as such, but it’s true.  Hell, I’m the kind of guy who likes to memorize a road map…before I take on a task, I like to know exactly what to expect and exactly how to cope with anything that might go wrong.  I like to feel like an expert before I even get my feet wet.  I find, though, that people with the exact opposite tendency seem to have a lot more expertise in whatever subject I’m approaching.

Take Katie the Girlfriend, for example.  Where I’ve read several cookbooks in their entirety just to learn the theory behind cooking, she’s been known to roll her eyes at my technical approach and just cook, since she learned how to do so by actually, you know, doing so.  She doesn’t wait for a precisely preheated oven, she doesn’t use exact cooking times…she doesn’t even use exact measurements of ingredients.

Another example:  at the end of the winter (still arguably in progress given last night’s weather), I commenced in reading two gardening books.  While I was busy highlighting passages, taking notes, and sharing my newfound wisdom aloud, she was busy planting seeds, caring for seedlings, and transplanting plants outdoors.  Every time I would point out an error in her ways (“Um, the book says we shouldn’t move them outside for another few weeks”) she simply responds, “Oh well.  This is what I did last year and it worked fine.  We’ll start over if we need to.”  And I don’t know why this logic doesn’t sit better with me.  Clearly she’s more experienced than I am.  I, after all, am not the expert that wrote the book I’m reading.  Actually, I’m pretty dumb in comparison.

Enter tax season.  I don’t know a single thing about taxes.  I (I’m ashamed to admit) have never even prepared my own taxes before.  My dad has always taken care of them for me, and due to the fact that I’ve always been 600 miles away from my parents’ filing cabinet during tax season since before graduating high school, he’s never gotten around to teaching me how.

Now, since I’ve started finally growing up and putting effort into taking care of myself (a change that came far too late in my life), I simply won’t sit around and let other people do my taxes for me.  But, for some reason, I didn’t follow my usual routine and read 600 websites that instructed me on how to file…I just went in blind.

Why, with something so frivolous as grilling a pork chop, am I willing to read a 300-page cookbook, when I’m unwilling to read even a summary webpage in order to learn, for instance, what a 1040 form is?  I perplex myself sometimes…

Now more than ever I’m short on free time.  I’m in class four days a week and I work six (in order to keep full-time hours, therefore keeping myself medically insured).  My only day off is Sunday, and Katie and I usually make a point of devoting our Sundays to the inherently low-cost activity of lounging around the house and enjoying what little free time we share.

Of course, along with the glory of saving-money-whether-I-mean-to-or-not comes the stress of having little to no free time.  This is where the positive aspects of my busy schedule is often overshadowed by the negatives.  I hardly see my friends any more…not that I make as much effort as I could, but then again, I do legitimately prefer to spend my free time relaxing rather than going out and putting all that effort into being social (yes, I’m that big a hermit–it takes a lot of effort for me).

So, is saving money that I’d otherwise spend on maintaining my friendships really worth the 1.4% interest I get by putting those savings away in an account when the cost is a dwindling social life?  Unfortunately, until my final exam (four weeks and counting!!!), I don’t really have much of a choice.

In the Spring of 2007, or thereabouts, I was very used to the idea of “too much month left at the end of the money,” as Dave Ramsey (and others before him, I’m sure) puts it.  As a fairly reckless 23-year-old, I’d regularly run out of cash long before my next paycheck was due, at which point I didn’t worry too much because I had a credit card to cover my costs.  (Let me say, too, that my “costs” included a fair amount of video games, tons of concerts, books, CDs, and far more alcohol than I should’ve been consuming on a daily basis.)

Eventually, I discovered that banks place a limit on how much credit they’ll extend to you.  Apparently it’s called a “credit limit.”  (Who knew?)  After this point, one must find real money to exchange for goods and services, as the fake plastic kind of money doesn’t work past, in my case, the $5,000 milestone.

I’ve since grown used to the idea that eating cheaply and limiting discretionary spending can stretch a paycheck far past a single pay period, but I recall one occasion in particular when, after an enjoyable week of drinking at bars, attending concerts, and buying books, music, and movies, I still had a full week to go before my next paycheck.

At the time, I was fortunate enough to have a fair selection of not-quite-expired nonperishable foods, which lasted several days…after which I had nothing.  I think there were about three bleak days left when my kitchen cabinets were finally empty.

I decided with a significant amount of shame that I could probably manage to “borrow” a meal a day from a charitable friend.  So I made some calls, penciled some lunch plans, and spent three days eating what probably amounted to about 500 calories a day.  I was shy about money and embarrassed about my irresponsibility, so I told a few minor lies and treated the money situation as though I just didn’t have any cash on me at the time…”Crap, I forgot to go to an ATM, would you mind covering me for a sandwich?”…not an uncommon back-and-forth exchange in most of my friendships, so I didn’t raise any suspicion and didn’t have to admit to my circumstances.  Dishonest, I know, but the thought of confronting my issues terrified me.

I will say that going [mostly] hungry wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be.  If I recall correctly, I had all three days off from work, so I had the option to be sedentary (watched a lot of those movies I’d wasted my $5000 of credit on), and was able to keep my stomach filled with water…not to mention taking home leftovers and stretching a single Jimmy John’s sandwich into three tiny meals.  Certainly, I’d like to avoid ever being put in the situation again, but it wasn’t so intolerable that I broke down and begged a friend to loan me fifty bucks to get through the week.  Not that they wouldn’t have happily come through for me.

Anyway, that “not-quite-a-conclusion” to the fairly-long-winded story about my not very traumatizing financial trauma brings me to my point:  I have money now.  Money to spare.  I’m working the same low-wage job as I was then for what probably amounts to less pay (comparing my raises against inflation), but I have a positive net worth and plenty of cash reserves for rainy days.  And it’s great, not just because I know that I’m in a position to take care of myself, but also because I’m now in a position where, if one of my friends ever ran out of money, I could repay my karmic debt with actual cash.

That last broke day three years ago, when I was taking the last few bites from the sandwich with which my friend Rob had unknowingly made my day, I was too wrapped up in self-pity to really realize how great a thing friendship is, and how much more valuable that sandwich was than the $5 bill used to buy it.  I’d love to repay that sort of debt, and it’s an amazing feeling to know that, finally, three years later, I can.

See, the weakness that cost me $8 cash today is the same one that costs me $8 cash at least once every other week (though usually more often than that).  That weakness is Thai carry-out.  I’m absolutely insane about Thai food…favorite ethnic cuisine, hands down.  And I’m a loyalist to one restaurant, too…have been for five years now:  Thai Avenue in Uptown Chicago.

Now, I share a common suspicion about independently owned foreign cuisine restaurants:  that we open-minded, curious, yuppie and/or hipster and/or college-aged urban professionals aren’t trusted with the total experience of cuisine.  The lamb brains at the Indian place aren’t offered on the menu written in English; waitresses make sure you understand what you’re getting when you order lengua at a Mexican place; and, slightly more relevant to the post, Thai restaurants take it very easy on you when you order an already-hot dish “extra spicy.”

Having dined at and ordered from Thai Avenue regularly enough over a long enough period of time, the woman running the place (who I assume is the owner, though I’ve never clarified) has come to known me by name and to know my tastes in food.  Perhaps I’m imagining that there’s a steady pattern, but it seems that, over the last six months or so, my “Extra Spicy” pad kee mao has been getting progressively hotter and hotter, to the point where I might actually be getting the same thing a Thai transplant might get if he were to order the same thing.

Anyway, that’s a circuitous route to share a basic discovery I’ve made about myself:  spicy food is difficult to eat in large quantities.  I’m a bit of an over-eater.  I’ve been known to eat until I absolutely can’t fit another bite into my stomach, wait fifteen minutes, and have dessert.  This is particularly an issue with delicious and amazing food, such as that from Thai Avenue.  So, when I get my usual carry-out order of pad kee mao that could easily feed three people, I devour it in entirety over a small portion of my half-hour lunch break.

But it’s so easy to stretch one $8 meal into three or four when said meal is rapidly melting your tongue out of your intensely painful mouth.  One’s stomach fills quite quickly in such a situation, which extends the value of the food and limits the calorie intake.  (Note that I do not harbor any delusions that even a small amount of Thai food fits within the parameters of my diet.)

So, my advice for the next time you’re blowing ten bucks on Mexican instead of making a one-dollar sandwich at home:  order it spicy.  And the real spicy, not the sympathy-for-the-naive-white-guy kind of spicy.  You might get several [uncomfortable, painful, or even exruciating] meals for the price of one!

Anyway, I didn’t set any goals for March because I seem to have forgotten I even had a blog to record them in.  Had I, though, I would’ve passed them and then some, thanks to the month’s third paycheck.  As I discussed last night, I’ve now passed my initial $1000 goal for emergency savings, and have paid off my largest outstanding debt, which leaves:

April New Month’s Resolutions

1. Pay off sole remaining debt:  I still owe about $180 to a veterinary care credit, due in large part to the mighty Thor’s advancing age.  In addition to paying it off, I’d like to avoid acquiring any new debts as well.  I’ve spent so much energy paying off my credit card every month that I run up a weekly bill with my girlfriend, who does grocery shopping and the like while I’m at work.  I need to re-evaluate my expenses and work harder at keeping costs low so I’m not owing her more money than I have to give.  After all, my next 3-paycheck month won’t be ’til September…
2. Continue to save 25% of income after Resolution #1 is accomplished:  now that I’ve hit $1000 in my emergency fund, to which I’d been contributing 25%, I plan on diversifying my savings…10% to emergency savings, 10% to the retirement fund I hope to put toward a new IRA by the end of the year, and bits and pieces here and there into various other savings sub-accounts intended for vacation, a car (a theoretical car, to be purchased in the distant future…I love my public transit), and maybe some sort of absurd present to myself, like a new TV (yeah, right).
3. Continue to focus more on school than on blogging:  yes, it’s sad to embrace it so openly, but my spotty upkeep here at No-Kill Finance over the last month has been the product of my increased focus on schoolwork, which, no offense to my readers, is a lot more important in the long run.  I’ll try to set more realistic goals for myself (see Resolution #4) so I tune in more often, but I was getting a bit too obsessed with drafting new posts, reading peer blogs, and combing through Google Analytics data…a pointless pursuit when you only have 30 or 40 hits a day.  Simply by ignoring my blog, I have hugely increased my capacity to understand the big, confusing words my chemistry professor is rambling through during each lecture.
4. Blog twice a week:  most important in succeeding at this goal will be my acceptance of the fact that blogs don’t NEED to be 1000 words long.  In studying fiction writing, I was trained to write, re-write, re-write again, then walk away for a few hours and re-write again.  This method does not work well for someone with a limited amount of time to spend on writing.  Decreasing my weekly quota, and maybe lowering my standards a bit in terms of…not quality, just fine-tuning…I think I’ll be able to keep up.
5. Work out at least twice a week:  nothing to do with finance, I know, but I’ve gained about 15 pounds since starting this blog, and I feel like being healthier will motivate me in every other aspect of my life (more alert, more energetic, more willing to blog and maybe do a few crunches instead of eating chocolate and watching television).

So, I’ve had mixed success with my resolutions in the past months (March being a noted exception:  I succeeded at living up to all zero of my resolutions that month!), but I have a good feeling about April.  This morning, the sun is out, I’m well-caffeinated, and I officially only have one month of school left until summer vacation.  Spring is great!

I’m sure you’re all familiar with this phenomenon, but:  following a bi-weekly pay schedule, 2 months a year there are  3 paydays within a single month.  March is one of 2010’s 3-paycheck months for my pay schedule.

Admittedly, I haven’t investigated the long-term mathematical consequences of spending this money hastily, but nonetheless, I accomplished a lot this evening:

• I posted the final $159.40 into my emergency fund to reach the $1000 mark.
• I paid April’s rent and still have over $500 in my “rent” account (separate from my other various savings sub-accounts).
• I repaid the rather sizable (as in, say, half a grand) debt I owed my darling girlfriend.
• I managed, after all of this, to retain plenty of money to comfortably get me through to my next pay period.

All in all, a great success, and worth bragging about in my opinion…if I’m to brag, I wanted to remember to do it now.  (Ideally, I’ll be writing again tomorrow to celebrate “Happy New Month!”, but given my recent track record for blogging, I may forget totally.)

So, please forgive me for patting myself on the back so publicly, and try to have as good a night as I’ve had…I’m off to bed.

Add to the list the convenience shop in the student center at UIC.  In between classes today, I got the idea that buying a bag of Doritos was the right thing to do.  (Note:  I was wrong on two counts, as I am both on a budget and on a diet.)  Upon purchase, though, the cashier took my five dollars, gave me four in change, crumpled my receipt and threw it in the trash can behind the counter.

What?  That receipt doesn’t belong to the trash can.  It’s MINE.  I paid good money for it, and will need it when I go to record my expenses (I shudder to call Doritos an “expense”) at the end of the night.  It’s not your right to throw it away like some common piece of trash.

Oh well, UIC junk-food depository.  We had a good run, right?

But what’s even worse?  To top off the fact that I’m now being forced into boycotting my main on-campus Doritos source (which will seriously impair my ability to cheat on my diet/budget), I’m going to be known as the jerk who asks, before every transaction, “Can I keep the receipt?  I’m on a tight budget.”

…when buying overpriced snacks.

I was in California for a memorial service.  My grandfather passed away last Fall, and the family was only now, at the beginning of Spring, finally able to gather together and scatter his ashes in Monterey Bay.  I won’t go into the emotional impact this trip or his passing had on me, but I will say (and perhaps I should apologize for the cliché) that my grandfather was pivotal in making me the person I am.  Above everything, he valued his capacity to care for his friends and family, and he seldom if ever expected anything in return.

My job in the Tree House Clinic has given me the ability to exercise the values that he passed on to me and to all the people who loved him.  While I am by no means the sort of magnanimous man that my grandfather was, I like to think that the work I do here would make him proud, that by caring for sick and injured beings (even though they may not be human beings), I am increasing my capacity to do the occasionally thankless business of sacrificing myself in some way for the good of others, something he never stopped doing.

Of course, I should temper this high praise for my own work with some harsh modesty:  I often get incredibly tired of my job; I think we all do.  Every day we see illness and death, an overpopulation problem that seems hopeless, a public that largely does not understand or care about the things we do, and an economy that cannot support non-profit organizations’ abilities to operate at anything but a bare-bones level.  It’s tiring, frustrating, and sometimes incredibly difficult work, and I say that not to pat myself on the back for doing it, but to reiterate that these moments when I am reminded of its value are few and far between.

I’m working toward vet school right now, trying to maintain my sanity as I struggle through monotonous science classes, and trying to keep in my sight that some day, as a veterinarian, I might be able to make a difference in the lives of both animals and their caregivers for decades to come.  But as the stress of this hypothetical career path mounts, I forget that, to a lesser extent, I’m already serving that same purpose.

Those eight cats that were adopted while I was away:  some of them weren’t eating on their own in their time here and had to be syringe-fed by clinic workers so they wouldn’t take ill and die; some of them were terrified by humans and had to be coaxed and calmed by Tree House employees and volunteers before they stood a chance at finding homes; some of them had and still have serious illnesses, and wouldn’t have stood a chance at survival if left on the streets from which we took them in.

Those eleven cats that we admitted:  perhaps some of them won’t make it, but they probably all will; they’ll probably live to find homes, to find happiness, and to serve as loyal (if fussy and feline) companions to those who adopt them, and they’ll need our help and patience along the way.

So, in short, I guess the work is only thankless if I make it that way.  I can choose to focus on the negative, as I so often find myself doing, or I can take comfort in the fact that, as my grandfather would have wanted, I’m doing a bit (if only a small, cat-sized bit) of good in the world.