I started keeping track of my net worth on NetworthIQ around the same time as I started keeping this blog. It's good to see that things are moving in a positive direction. Increases are mostly a result of increases in the estimated worth of my house (I use Zillow.com for the estimate for my house, and also Kelly blue book for an estimate on the worth of my car) and the rising value of my retirement accounts, since what with the unexpected $5000 in veterinary expenses I've had over the past few months, I've actually spent a little more than I've brought in in income during the past 5 months.

My kind of holiday. I remember vividly attending the chaos that accompanies Black Friday sales 30 years ago, and have avoided shopping malls at this time ever since. For years now, I've made it a point not to enter a shopping mall between Thanksgiving and New Years...not too difficult since I probably only stop in at a mall 2-3 times a year.


Check out the home video below and the organization that has promoted the concept for the past 9 years, http://adbusters.org.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMhQy9ZikZs

I sat down and did a little bit of checking on my public records today. I haven't seen my credit report since I bought the house 9 months ago, so I thought it was time for a look-see at that. Also I've been considering changing auto insurance, so I checked my claims history there to see if it was what I expected it to be.

Here's info about the sites that I used for future reference and in case anyone else finds the info helpful.

You all know about http://www.annualcreditreport.com, I'm sure--the source to get your credit report once a year from each of the three major credit reporting agencies. You can opt either to get all three at once, or space them out and get one report every 4 months from a different agency. The downside is that you don't get your actual FICO score.

You *can* get those for free, but it involves signing up for a 30-day free trial at one of the services who offer monthly monitoring, and then remembering to cancel before your 30 days is up! More info at http://www.cardratings.com/creditratert.html

Another helpful site is http://www.choicepoint.com. This one has info on how to get your employment history, tenant history, insurance claims history, how to get copies of your birth, marriage, & divorce certificates, also applying for a passport or visa, and also info on screening workers who come to your home and doctors for suits filed against them. Most of these reports cost a nominal fee, but you can get the record of your insurance claims for free.

Browsing around on some personal finance blogs this morning, I came across this entry http://www.mdmproofing.com/iym/weblog/2005/11/more-on-househ... , which in turn led me to this site with comparison information from the government about recommended food budgets--see http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/FoodPlans/Updates/foodoct05.pdf.

The liberal plan suggests that a "moderate" food budget for a person of my age & sex (female, 20-50) would be 46/week, and a "liberal" food budget would be 60/week, with a 20% increase for being single, bringing the total to 55 to 72 a week. Since I'm having trouble bringing the food budget down anyways, I'll use the more moderate figure as my goal. With 4.3 weeks in the month, and $72/week, that leads to a budget of $310 per month for food. I'm setting that up as a goal for August, and I've also revised my budget files to keep track separately of food and household supplies (paper goods, toiletries, etc). I also need to separate out pet food (treats for the dog and food for the cats) that I buy at the grocery. *Including* the toiletries and pet food, my monthly average grocery bill this year has been $422; assuming $8/week ($32/month) for pets and $12/week for household items ($48/month), that's a "real" grocery bill of 362. So my first challenge is to get it down to $310, and then I'll see if it's reasonable to move down to the more "moderate" budget level, which would be $237/month.

It's interesting to note the "single surcharge" of 20%; I'm actually a little surprised that the loss due to no "efficiencies of scale" is that high. I know that, as a single, one definitely ends up paying a lot more for some things--my boyfriend and I often do talk about the inefficiency of havig two houses, two sets of utility bills, etc--but I would have though the inefficiences would be a little lower in the food category, since, after all, one doesn't eat any more as a single than as a married person.

Yesterday was another no-spend day. Iforgot to say that then. That's two in a row, and three for the week!

I found a great little tool for tracking goals: joesgoals.com. It allows you to input goals and put a little green checkmark (by positive goals, that is, things you want to do) and a red X by negative goals (things you want to avoid doing). So I've set up "no spending" as a positive goal since it's something I want to get "rewarded" for; and I've set up "eating out" as a negative goal. since it "punishes" you with the red X. I also set up goals for aerobic and strength training exercise, maintaining a calorie deficit, updating my "You Need a Budget" files and writing. The site will send you a reminder if you don't update for two days too (you choose the reminder period--I set it for two days since I want to get frequent feedback).

I discovered a nifty site, BestPlaces.net, that allows you do comparisons of the cost of living in different cities and towns. They have data by zip code, and the average index value for the United States is set to 100, so that you can compare whether your locale is cheaper or more expensive. They also provide separate indices for housing, utilities, food, transportation, healthcare, and "miscellaneous."

I currently live in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. There's some variation in the cities and towns here; the index value for my town is 94.4. We're relatively low (74) in terms of housing costs (not for long...the area is being invaded by people moving in from New York and New Jersey, so we have the hottest housing market in the state, one of the hottest in the nation, and above-average inflation to boot.

However, it's still pretty good compared to where I came from: the west side of Los Angeles, with an overall index of 193.2 (339.6 for housing).

Actually, looking at all the places I've lived, I'm ending up staying in the cheapest: Ann Arbor MI comes in at 114, and even the little town, population 3000, that I lived in in Vermont for 3 years has an index of 98. But things could be even worse than L.A.: I was at Stanford for a year and lived a mile from campus. The index there is 387, with housing at 860!

You can find the comparisons for your locales by going to http://www.bestplaces.net, typing in your city or zip code, and then clicking on the tiny link in blue letters that says "Cost of Living."

To compare the cost of living in two cities, you can calculate cost in city1 x (city2 index/city1 index), which will give you the cost in city2. For example, a $50,000 salary where I currently live would need to be $50,000 x (193.2/94.4) = $102,330 in Los Angeles to buy me the same menu of goods and services. (!!!)