Queercents

This weekend I’m going to my alma mater’s graduation ceremony. My congratulations go out to all those graduating this spring: good luck and all the best!

• An awesome May tip for any college town–we always went to the Goodwill in June for this reason. (Read it at Get Rich Slowly)
• True story? My cell phone broke about four days after my sister stole my two-year upgrade. Damn family plan. (Read it at Finance for a Freelance Life)
• Get it, Penelope–I always like a good reason to stop complaining. (Read it at Brazen Careerist)
• I also like how things that are good for your body are usually good for your wallet. (Read it at brip blap)
• Heidi looks at the wedding industry’s recession problems. “Problems.” (Read it at BankerGirl)
• And here’s your Tegan and Sara moment of zen–tour the bus! (Read it at RollingStone.com)

Queercents Rehash: Saving for College Graduation: A little bit on how I managed it….

 As I’ve mentioned a few times, I spent last week on vacation, visiting a friend in Portland, Oregon.  I learned a great deal about composting, cereal, kayaking, heterosexual drama, and microbreweries–as well as a few things about career and finance.

First of all, saving up leave for a big vacation was definitely the way to go… I think.  I was so burned out before I left that I was trudging around like the end of the world, but my luxurious, worry-free week has me feeling like a new woman.  An extra three-day weekend in there might have helped, but clearly woman does not live on three-day weekends alone. Shifting back into gear hasn’t been too hard, either, although I did fall asleep on the couch at 7:30 last night.

That said, I do think it’s more important to take care of yourself all the time instead of letting one week every eight months do it for you. Read the rest of this entry »

Hi, everybody–since I’m not keeping up with the blogosphere during my vacation, here are some great online finance resources for everyone from beginners to experts.

• Kiplinger Magazine’s Starting Out is one of the few intelligent, comprehensive professional resources for people in their twenties.
• The BankRate Calculators are comprehensive without being complicated, and good for motivating yourself to behave.
• PFBlogs aggregates finance blog headlines, good for getting a variety of opinions and seeing trends.  You can do the same thing at Alltop.
• For news and features, Your Money at the New York Times has a variety of interesting content without preaching at you.
• For preaching, nobody will help you stay the course like CNNMoney’s Personal Finance.  The introductory classrooms, columnists, features and experts all hold a strong party line in favor of sensible asset allocations and buy-and-hold investing.  It’s a soothing port in a storm.

Happy reading, Queercents! I’ll see you next week.

Hello, readers–by the time you all read this roundup I will be on a plane to the other side of the country. Wish me luck! This week we have some pretty heavy articles to keep you busy.

• Wait, so the KISS principle isn’t about kissing girls? Or is it? Or did I just want to bold “kissing girls”? (Read it at Million Dollar Journey)
• Scrambled eggs and the meaning of life. (Read it at brip blap)
• Queercents’ own Moorea points out that at least Satan gives a lot of money to charity. (Read it at Moorea’s Myspace)
• Will the sale of two of gay print’s biggest publications change advertising focused on the LGBT community? (Read it at Out Front)
• And for something lighter–a roundup of spring and summer’s free ice cream from different companies. (Read it at Wise Bread)

Queercents Rehash: Is anyone responsible for your luggage when you travel by air?: Good question…

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Tegan and Sara for a visit to Massachusetts-based folk singer Chris Pureka.  Seriously click that link.  You will not regret it.  This is the weekend of two Chris shows in three days, and I’m loving every minute of it.

• Penelope Trunk on the economics of buying a spouse when you don’t have a stay-at-home partner. (Read it at Penelope Trunk)
• JD has a fun roundup of personal finance bloggers, including Queercents’ own Nina, admitting to their regular splurges. (Read it at Get Rich Slowly)
• Steve tries to tolerate his son’s religious education in exchange for the better quality of a local Catholic school–a conundrum queer parents might be interested to consider, as well. (Read it at brip blap)
• Boycotting doesn’t work anymore. (Read it at Wise Bread)
• Trent makes laundry detergent from scratch–an interesting science experiment, though I wonder if it would wear my clothes out faster. (Read it at The Simple Dollar)

Queercents Rehash: Free Air Conditioning for the Home: Okay, it’s probably not yet time to think about air conditioning… but I’m going to pretend it is.

Making the rounds of my accounts this week, I was pleased to discover that after a few months on a regular prepayment plan, the minimum payment on my private student loan has dropped a sweet twenty bucks.

Twenty bucks! That’s like a happy hour and a half a month! Or six empanadas! I mean, of course I’m going to keep funneling the same amount towards the debt, but it’s nice to watch my cash flow swing a little bit in my favor–and to know that more of the money I give Sallie Mae each month is a choice, instead of a desperate attempt to keep them from garnishing my wages. I’m also delighted because for some reason I thought prepayments meant that I shortened the term of my loan, rather than lowering the minimums–it’s nice that the extra payments have a more immediate effect on my cash flow.

Saving less hasn’t been as bad as I feared. The only time I’ve gone into my savings since I struck out on my own was to pay for my dental surgery, and that was lower than I’ve expected, so they’ve come along pretty nicely. Once I get my tax return, a third paycheck in May, and then my stimulus check, I’ll have a fully stocked emergency fund and enough in short-term savings to cover my spring and summer travel. (Although I’m thinking I might use the stimulus to buy formal dresses for work. Besides that I’ll need them, I heard if I put that check in the bank the terrorists win….) Read the rest of this entry »

It’s spring in DC, which always seems like a good idea in theory. In practice, it’s more like a gray, muddy mess of steady rain to make a public transit commute miserable and foil the best laid running plans.  May flowers, anyone?

•  With April comes the day of cheesey pranks.  Lazy Man wrote the only April Fools article I really enjoyed. Why? Because I want a tank. (Read it at Lazy Man and Money)
• Trent is analyzing Born to Buy book-club style, including this interesting post on the process of branding. (Read it at The Simple Dollar)
• I always like reading about student loans–Mrs. Micah has some suggestions about ways to handle a deferment period. (Read it at Finance for a Freelance Life)
• Sarah looks at balancing health and frugality in grocery options. (Read it at Wise Bread)
• JD tells a story about a bad purchase–how to turn $500 into $7 the hard way. (Read it at Get Rich Slowly)
• Steve introduces his super-simple productivity system. If there’s a problem, yo, Google Apps has probably already solved it. (Yeah, I went there.) (Read it at brip blap)

Queercents Rehash: Is A Swimming Pool A Money Pit?: In hopes of warmer weather to come….

I bought gas this evening–a pretty rare event for me. I rely heavily on public transportation, so I only need to fill up my car every five or six weeks. The Sunoco station has little TVs playing the news above each pump, presumably to distract you from the astronomical amount of money you’re dropping on that gas, and I noticed an economic pundit say something about, “including the possibility of the r-word.”

Not, “including the possibility of the r-word, recession.” She didn’t need to explain it: everyone knows what the r-word is. What’s that joke–the media has correctly predicted two out of the last 97 recessions? Obviously, they’re talking about it enough.

On the one hand, I find the truly apocalyptic economic forecasting pretty convincing: fuel and food prices affect more people more deeply than most other economic markers, and they’re getting out of control. I believe that the people directly affected by the subprime meltdown are in real trouble, and that letting the market correct itself around them is socially unconscionable. Read the rest of this entry »

After college graduation, I gave myself a break from intense reading–for a couple of months, I read nothing but light novels and graphic fiction. I love fiction and comics all the time, and don’t always see them as fluffy–but after writing my thesis and loading up on literary theory and cultural studies courses at the end, I consciously gave myself a break.

The first genuinely challenging thing I read that summer was How To Be Alone, a book of essays by Jonathan Franzen. It was the perfect thing to start understanding all that literary theory and cultural studies in the context of a 9-to-5 and life outside academia.

How To Be Alone is about the problem of individuality–all the arguments, from the perspectives of brain function and social construction, that what we think of as our personalities are less under our control than we hope–and then his struggles towards individuality anyway. (If you can imagine, for Jonathan Franzen, being an individual has a lot to do with reading literary fiction.) Read the rest of this entry »

That is all.

• To start off, Flexo asks the readers how they handle personal spending in money-merged relationships.  The comments have an amazing variety of answers. (Read it it Consumerism Commentary)
• Steve examines the psychology and motivation behind dwelling on an upbringing of poverty. (Read it at brip blap)
• As a big fan of wise and judicious quitting, I love reading about the sunk-cost fallacy.  Mrs. Micah has two ways to handle these poor choices. (Read it at Finance for a Freelance Life)
• J.D. analyzes an article about the falling savings rate and high available credit.  A little apocalypse with your coffee? (Read it at Get Rich Slowly)
• And now for a little weekend entertainment!  First, you can go find out your dating personality… (Read it at The Guppie Life)
• …then, you can go watch Tegan and Sara harass/be harassed by European teenagers! Also there are raccoons! (Watch it at Tegan and Sara’s Myspace)

Queercents Rehash: Procrastination Can Be Fun, But Not For Finances: Not that I ever worry about procrastination–as you can tell from this post, my actions are always filled with purpose and meaning.