Going Part Time

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So today as I was beginning my final walk for the day I found an awesome table sitting on the side of the road.  With that table was a sign with that glorious word written on it:  FREE!  I am now the proud owner of a new, freegan acquired table to either use outside or refurbish and use in my living room – I still haven’t decided.

Also, before someone points out that we are now well into June and an updated Poop Report hasn’t gone up in weeks or Monthly summary hasn’t gone up for May let’s go ahead and summarize both:  It probably sucked and I probably didn’t make nearly enough.  How do I know?  Because I’m starting to feel the pinch.  However, just so I can more accurately depress myself I present to you….

May 2010 Monthly Summary

Otherwise Known as

The Poor Report

See what I did there?  Do you see?  I astound myself sometimes…

Okay so here is the breakdown of May expenses:

According to the simple ledger I cam out 117.19 ahead of normal expenses last month.  What isn’t accounted for on this list are two very large expenses that will work themselves out next month (and that I embarrassingly used plastic money to pay for during this period).  Those two things are the new puppy, which will be accounted like my rent next month.  He and my rent are both $600, but good news for him is I’m not paying rent next month!  The other expense category is my car.  I have had to sink a whooping $254 into the silly thing in excess of the usual due to both the car accident and the repairs it went in for.  If all goes well I’ll get $154 of those dollars back still keeping me in the black by $17.19.. if not I’ll dip by more then I’d like to think about.

There are the expenses… but how much came in?  Before celebrating let’s see what money there was in the accounts.  And that number would be… 1299.08 ?

1299.08?!  Crap…  So while expenses were lower overall I’m hemorrhaging money this month to the tune of 458.09.   Looks like I’ll need to talk to the P.A. client  about those other clients she wants me to talk to…

Over the last few weeks little has changed in the day-to-day operations of this part-timer. I’m still waking up and walking dogs for about 2-4 hours every morning. I’m still working as a P.A. for only one person. I’m still stressed out about finding a house and moving by the August 1st deadline. But now we have this to cuddle up to:

Granted the stress he brings is almost equivalent to the calm but it’s nice to have a licky little puppy running around the house to show Killian whose boss.

Unfortunately, we are not doing all that wonderfully overall.  Stress is at an all time high with the first house inspection going so poorly we had to back out of the deal, our landlord becoming petty and more difficult to deal with as we ride out the end of our rental agreement and the puppy waking up at 3AM to go potty.  Life is becoming a blur of phone calls to vet offices, pet owners, the client and real estate agents… so… tired…

Good things did happen though.  I finally got my car back.  After the accident repairs were completed Cho and I pulled into a gas station to fuel up from below the empty tank line.  And wouldn’t you know it?  The fuel door failed.  No Entry.  It was then I began thinking my car hates me.  So, it was decided that it needed to go into the shop for that and to stop the groaning noise that happened every time the car accelerated from a stop.  You know, bring back the car love.  For a mere $100 deductible the extended warranty I purchased a little over a year ago covered what would have cost me $2,500 in repairs.  Not too shabby.  Well… assuming that the repairs don’t go bad in the next few weeks and it needs to go back in for something not exactly the same but related.

Today we go back out for the third time this week to look at more houses.  Earlier this week the home of our dreams slipped through our fingers because we viewed it one day too late.  Someone else stepped in an made an offer 12 hours before we sent one in and they were accepted.  Our luck here is completely horrible folks.  Totally suck even.  I’m not sure what’s worse – not finding the right home, the prospect of having to move in with a relative for a few months while we diligently keep the search going or the fact that everyone is telling us to stay positive.  I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but the positive has just about left the building.  Telling us to stay positive is just making things seem even more hopeless.  ;;sigh;;

The only other semi-good news to report is that the current P.A. client is starting to ask me if I want more clients.  It’s insane to think that I might actually be able to tell the “boss” her business is run like crap and that I no longer want to deal with the puggle that bites joggers or the havenese that enjoys sniffing every last little puddle of bird poo…  Insane to think that I actually need a bigger desk and some home office equipment.  Heh.

So the number totals are:

Estimated Income Wednesday to Friday:   $360.00          Hours Worked:   30

8:00AM – Wake up and check email. Resolve two problems, ask PA client if she can confirm something. Follow up with real estate lawyer and copy the real estate agent to get input on home inspection results.

9:00AM – Email back from real estate agent says we have until 2PM to make a decision. What! Can’t make a decision yet, we don’t have a quote from a contractor. That happens tomorrow.

10AM – Take a shower and call the “boss” I need my keys back. She has the keys, but not the dogs… she’ll call back later when she has them.

10:30AM -Phone with the mortgage lender. She’s now suggesting a 403(k) loan. How did my dream house in good, move in condition turn into a rehab so quickly?

11AM – At the PA clients home… my iPhone is acting strangely. Once it kicks back on I’m able to get in touch with the most helpful doctor’s office receptionist on the planet. Have documents faxed and actions taken. Also realize the last PA did an absolutely horrible job on organizing the filing cabinet.

12AM – still no word from the “boss” so I call back. 2 hours behind schedule she tells me to meet her in 20 minutes, her place, for the dogs.

12:30PM – Still no sign of the “boss”. On the phone again trying to hammer out details regarding my additional car warranty. I need to bring in because the groaning noise on acceleration is getting worse, the fuel cable snapped and the cooling fan stays on for a scary long time. Find out that I need to get it diagnosed first – that comes later!

1PM – Yay! I have the dogs in my possession. Get them home and walked and watered and off to Prime Honda on the VFW for some diagnosing.

2PM – So they can’t really do it very quickly. Phone starts ringing uncontrollably. While I’m trying to negotiate the drop off and the loaner car I’m fielding questions about IVF, dogs who need night walks and home inspections! Gah! Bonus moment: Prime gave me a free loaner car while they do the diagnostic. Phew – one less thing to worry about.

3PM – Take the loaner Accord to the grocery store. While I’m grabbing the Silk milk I realize I haven’t eaten anything all day long. Just as I come to this realization the phone rings again. Looks like the landlord needs me to be home at 5:30 to give an apartment tour. Sure! Why not?!

3:30PM – Call the insurance company of the woman who hit me two weeks ago. Get transferred around a bit and then sent to voicemail! Looks like she leaves work at 3:15.. 3:15?!! WTF…  Next Day Update: Called back by this woman by the way.  Seems like the person who smashed into me says hat they were sitting in a line of stopped cars when I smashed into them.  Yup.  Still hate Mattapan.

4PM -  Wash dishes, sweep up, spray down the counters and viola!  Half hour later – clean enough to show.

4:30PM – RUN to the clients house, walk the dogs, get stuck in a little traffic and WHOOSH back home.

5PM – Talk to National Grid.  They won’t do the whole gas conversion, they’ll just bring the gas pipe from the street to the house. It would cost at least $1,200.  On top of that, they can’t guarantee that we’d be allowed to because the town has a rule about repaved streets staying untouched for 5 years.

5:30PM – We are experiencing and odd lack of potential tenants visiting the apartment.  I bring Killian outside and watch them drive by though. Guess they weren’t interested.

6PM – Spend the rest of the day doing as little as possible.  WoW was a deserved pleasure this evening.

Estimated Income Wednesday to Tuesday:   $265.00          Hours Worked:   20ish?

Have you ever had to call mortgage lenders and ask for a good faith estimate on a loan? I have to say that it has to be one of the most excruciating things I’ve ever had to deal with.

First, this sort of job seems to attract people who like to hear themselves talk. They talk on and on about how wonderful their rates are and how they would just love to be sitting right next to you at the closing table.  How quickly they can close the loan and how freaking happy you’ll be with them.  Secondly, they seem to try and reassure you that everything is going to be okay – even when you haven’t done anything to prompt them to thinking your concerned.  Thanks for the consolation?  Are you expecting me to go bat-shit crazy or something?  Do you think because I’m a first time home buyer I’m an idiot?  Third, they are a select group of individuals who can never give you a straight answer.

While most of this is true for all mortgage lenders, I finally called the woman that my real estate agent has been recommending pretty much since day one.  Silly me.  Thought I didn’t need any help finding something as straight-forward as a mortgage lender.  You call a bank and viola!  They answer your questions, make you fill out an application and let you walk away with the money.

(Just in case you were wondering… nope… there is not a corner of Massachusetts where it actually works that way.)

This woman, much like my real estate agent is WONDERFUL!  Didn’t even have to ask her half of the questions as she gave the answers anyway.  I wasn’t being talked at and I was able to get the information I needed without getting the stomach sinking feeling of getting ripped off.  I think we’ve found the lender folks.  Now I need to sell Cho on it.

In other news, after the stiffling hot dog walks this morning I headed over the the P.A. clients home.  She’s getting some painting done so I felt like swinging by might pay off.  Boy is she stressed out!  Poor woman.  Good news is I was able to get a few things done for her – including setting up the grill for her BBQ on Thursday.  In light of what I found in that thing I don’t think I’ll ever “de-winterize” a grill again.  It was absolutely crawling in spiders.  Eck.  And of course, one of them set up shop right over the propane tank valve so it made turning it to test it a bit tricky.  Now I’m having a moment where I’m not sure if I turned the tank off…  hmmm… well good thing I’m picking up a spare tank for them anyway – that and it’s only Tuesday.  We’ve got plenty of time.

And just because I can, a picture of me and Cho from almost exactly three years ago:

Ahhh, to be young and still living in your parents basement without a mortgage and home repairs to think of…  Come to think of it, I was making more money then I am now.  Getting older is a bummer all-around isn’t it?

Estimated Income on Monday:  $80          Hours Worked:   5.5

Estimated Income on Tuesday:   $55          Hours Worked:   3.5

With August 1st rushing quickly to meet us, Chonny and I’s house hunting adventure seems to have little hope of actually finding something that we would like to both live in and commute from.  While we are concentrating our effort on Marlborough and Framingham, occasionally something pops up a bit closer to home that is worth taking a quick peek at.  After running around all weekend due to a plethora of other social obligations – all of them fun mind you, but all of them equally relaxation prohibitive – we were in the midst of the Sunday night wind down when I got a great idea:  “There’s an open house in Mattapan” I said, “It’s two ten now and if we leave now we can make it before it closes at two thirty.”

For those of you who don’t know the area very well I’ll describe Mattapan as best I can.  While it’s only about a mile south of Roslindale the only main roads that come in and out are the Cummins Highway and Blue Hill Road so it takes an amazingly long time to get there due to an extremely high population of people who can’t drive added to the extremely high population of jay walkers.  Now you might think I’m over reacting here but every time I am thick headed enough to try and go to an open house in Mattapan I am quickly reminded that I couldn’t live here with people who walk into the road without caring if there is an oncoming car, or people who listen to music so bad and so deafeningly load it gives me heart palpitations.

As if all that isn’t enough, Mattapan has a really bad habit of shutting down entire swaths of it’s streets to host things like ethnic pride parades.  I honestly don’t care what they want to celebrate – I shouldn’t have been there in the first place and I don’t expect an entire city to cater to me by any means – but who shuts down the only road in town that easily gets you to and from anything just so you can have a dumb parade?  I grew up in a town like this so I’m a parade hatter through and through.  “What do you mean I have to wait 2 hours for the stupid Horribles Parade to be over before I can go to work?”  Oh Winthrop… you sucked more and more every passing day.

Even with all of these obstacles in our way we finally made it to the open house.  Surprisingly the house was okay.  It was on a quiet street, something that I didn’t actually know existed in Mattapan, it was a good layout and it had a big enough lawn for a grill, patio set and veggie garden.  If it weren’t for the experience we had leaving that fine Boston village we may have actually considered it.

So, there we were, on a congested road – making our way back home… really needing to pee mind you… when some lady comes blasting out of a side street through her stop sign to introduce our two cars in the most intimite of fashions.  Yup folks.  She hit me.  With her dumb freakin SUV.

Lesson learned:  Don’t go into Mattapan unless you expect your car to get smashed into and cost you at least a week on a rental car, a $500 deductible (which I’m still not sure if I’ll get back or not), in addition to the wasted time spent on the phone with your insurance agent.

Mattapan sucks.

Amount made between May 12th and May 21st:  $330.00

So I promised the Poop Report and it didn’t go up yesterday and now its Friday and we have seen the worst update week imaginable.  I’d be sorry, but what you didn’t know is that I was really just doing you a favor – less to read here means more time to enjoy the beautiful weather outside!  (*ahem…  sorry, I know… more lies).   This post will be long, it may be treacherous, but it should put the blog back in order and get it updated   To cover today:  updates for Thursday and today, the full P.R. and if I haven’t bored you to tears by then, a proper month end budget recap.

Daily Updates:

The recaps for both Thursday and Friday are almost one in the same.  Both were beautiful days, both had their ups and down.  Ups for Thursday include seeing my first monarch butterfly of the season. Downs being the last dogs of the day being relentlessly annoying and one of them almost causing me to break up a dog fight.  ;;sigh;;  Friday was much shorter as my last dogs were canceled and after yesterdays performance I’m not too broken up about not bringing home the extra cash.  Only down I can think of is now Killian will be wired due to not getting a 40 minute stroll with his ladies.  Getting away from dogs a minute, work for the P.A. client has been minimal because this is one of her out-of-town weeks.  She’s a great person, and I sincerely mean that, but I’m kind of glad she’s only in town for a week at a time.

Thursday Daily Estimated Income:   $75          Hours:   5

Friday Daily Estimated Income:   $36          Hours:   3

Poop Report Statistics April 28th to May 4th  (Total Income = 459.50)

Dog Walking Income:   $196

P.A. Income:   $263.50

Hours Worked:  25

Average $/Hr:  $18.38

So the P.A. job is starting to overtake the dog walking.  Not entirely surprised but the Client was in town until Sunday night.  Hours will definitely be going down a bit now that she’s away.  While that is a bit sad, it is very nice to see that I came very close to the $500 a week goal.  Only missed it by a little over $40 this week – even with the dog walking income adjusted down for taxes!

End of Month Budget Analysis:

Do you see this picture?  Do you understand what it is?  Not only is it one of the most asinine advertising gimmicks of the modern world, but it serves double duty as a motorized tribute to something that I love very,  very much.  My affection for this iced coffee knows few bounds.  Which is why I am truly saddened to say that I have spent the last month of my life sans Dunkin Donuts iced coffee.  While kicking the habit has managed to shave an impressive minimum of $54 from my monthly expenses,  (and probably helped in the waistline shrinking initiative), its absence has begun to permeate my dreams.  It’s gotten bad enough that I’ll be walking four dogs and all I can think about is an iced coffee.  Not that I’d have a spare hand to hold it or anything.  Bonus to not having coffee though is my dog can keep his kibble.  There are definitely worse trade offs.

Other things I miss but didn’t have the iced-coffee iron clad resolve to stay away from completely?  Newport Lights.  Right before quitting the last gig I was a full blown, 2 to 3 pack a week smoker.  Now, to my credit I think I’ve smoked an entire pack this month and that was mainly due to some heavy drinking nights, but the habit isn’t entirely gone yet.  What I can say is that by even reducing the habit this radically another $80 has been saved.  Don’t really know about you, but that’s only $20 shy of my internet AND my electric bill these days.  Kick smoking or keep my utilities – think I’ll keep the lights on thank-you-very-much!  Once I get the habit gone entirely there’s another $8 in my pocket and hopefully, a healthier, longer living me.

Another equally gratifying money saver is the reduction in gas being used.  Due to the now nearly non-existent mileage put on for work I only put about $10 a week into the tank.  Granted, that can double to $20 depending on how many Marlboro house trips we go on in a week – but $10?  Compared to the $20 a week from before I’m halving the expense while helping the environment!  Not bad – and $40 a month in my pocket.

Now for the cold hard reality of where the money was spent and how much went to who.  If you recall, when I first started this quest to $100 a day I set up an exacting budget for myself.  Going line by line here’s the breakdown:

Aside from now seeing that I spelled “difference” wrong, on the whole we are looking pretty damned good!  A whole $131.66 UNDER budget.  Now I’m pretty sure that even in my best attempt at reconciling everything from my account over I missed at least a few expenses.  At this point I’m thinking that it might be time to reinstall that home version of Quicken.  Overall though, looking good!  And here I was doubting myself being able to stick to the budget.

The bad news here, as you may recall, is that I only made $1,493 for April which means if it weren’t for my measly savings I’d have gone under this month by $229.12.  Youch.  Still – not too bad and definitely doable to make up this next month.