Fiscal Fitness

So here we are, already half-way through 2008!

Time to take stock.

I've posted my goals on the sidebar, and so far, I'm not terribly happy with my progress. I really doubt that I'll either save 15% of my income OR lose 15% of my weight in 2008.

So far, I've saved about 5% of my income. This is far less than planned. On the other hand, one thing that I did not really take into account sufficiently in setting my goals is that I suffered a fairly big salary cut (17%) back in September. I'm still getting used to living on a reduced income. I did well at saving last year because I had more income. Now I'm living on less income *and* prices are higher--yet I've still managed to save *something*. So I really should be happy about the savings that I *do* have.

I did have some "extra" expenses during the first half of the year (medical bills, a plane ticket, and $560 worth of textbooks for courses I am taking), but I'll probably have about equal "extra" expenses during the second half, as I am having a home repair done, and need to take my car in for inspection. There's usually about one $300-$500 car repair bill during the year and I haven't had one yet, so I won't be surprised if something of that size needs doing in July when I get the car inspected.

Food costs haven't decreased at all--not surprising given inflation but there are still some bad habits I can improve on. I'm going to try to be more mindful of them as the year progresses. If I can make some changes habitual over the summer when my workload is lighter, perhaps some of that will carry on through the fall.

Weight loss isn't happening--I *did* lose 9 pounds during Jan and Feb, then gained it back in the interval since then. Going to try to lose it again during July and August.

Career change progress, mortgage paydown, and investing are going reasonably well. The market is down horribly as are my retirement assets, but I'm in for the long-haul so not panicking over short-term decreases. I *do* think we're in a recession, but recessions don't last forever. The economy will turn up at some point and I'll be in the market to take advantage of the increase when it does.

I know some of you are laughing, but that's pretty major for me! Three in a row, and seven total this month.

Despite the no-spenders, I went over total anticipated spending by quite a bit.

Dental Emergency: $430
Veterinary bills: $500
New Glasses: $470
Plane Ticket $400

All of these events *were* planned for, at some point, just were not in the original budget for the month. Medical expenses (both human and animal), of course, are hard to plan; I knew I'd get glasses and buy the plane ticket this summer, just wasn't sure on June 1 whene I'd do those things. On the other hand, I *thought* that the gutter replacement would be done in June, but it will be done in July. Here's hoping for no medical bills in July and that the gutter project comes in as budgeted.

Yay, today was a no-spender!

I also received an invitation to participate in a marketing study which will require 6 hours of my time but also compensate me $200. I'm a member of a marketing panel run by my grocery store--they invited me on to the panel about a year and a half ago, and every month that I log on and participate each week, they give me a $10 credit towards groceries. I've earned it every month except one, so that's already about $170 I've gotten from participating on this panel.

Last week they asked for participants for a Health & Wellness study. Part one involved keeping a journal of activities and recording them for 5 days; that took about 2 hours and that part paid $50. On the basis of responses, they selected a subset of people to participate in an in-home interview and grocery shopping trip; that will take place Wednesday morning and will pay me another $150.

Nice to bring in a little extra money as I've not been working this summer, just living on my 9-month teacher's salary that gets paid out over 12 months!

I need to think ahead about how I'll handle "extra expenses" this summer, given the change in my summer plans (my previous entry). So I'm "thinking out loud" here.

My income from my FT job will handle my basic expenses, but cannot handle multiple extraordinary events--eg a medical or veterinary emergency or a major car repair--there's the emergency fund for that, but if I'm just living off the FT income, as I am for the next 3 months, it's hard to rebuild the emergency fund when I go into it.

Right now the only known additional income is a $300 gift from my mother. I may be able to add some part-time earnings to this.

And there will be multiple extra expenses this summer:

Home Repairs: 1200-1700
Tuition: 400
New Glasses 400? (it's been 4 years since I got some, so it may cost more now)
Trip to L.A. 500 (should visit Mom; it's been 2 years & she turns 75 soon)

That's $2500 that might have to come from savings, and I would expect at least $500 more in either unexpected vet or car repair bills, just based on past experience.

So that's potentially $3000 from the E-fund, minus the $300 gift = $2700 from the E-fund, or 28% of it. Certainly doesn't deplete it but also it will take most of the rest of the year to build it back up again.

I'll have to see what I can do about earning some part-time or temp income over the next two months. In addition, I'm trying very hard to cut back on my food expenses especially (the most malleable), and hopefully luck will be with me and there will be no major vet bills or car repair expenses this summer.

I've decided to change my original summer plans. The original plan was to take one summer school evening class and to find an accounting internship during the day, as I don't have any actual accounting experience, just 3/4s of an undergrad accounting major completed (this is a post-BA certificate; I already have a Ph.D. in another field but after 20 years have given up on getting tenure in academia; hence the career change).

Alas, I really dropped the ball on getting an internship--it's something I should have gone after in February and March. But I didn't. The past two years, I've been working one full-time teaching job at a day college, a part-time teaching job at an evening college, *and* have been taking a class a semester, too. It's an intense schedule and so I didn't get around to applying for the internships when I should have. So I told myself, well, there's "Accountemps," or I can try asking a couple "friends of friends" with small local CPA offices if I could do some work for free.

The school semester ended in mid-May, and I spent the first two weeks after getting life organized around the house--housework and home maintenance are relatively low priorities given all the other stuff, and some things were in need of attention. Then my summer school evening class started. But as we got into June, I began feeling like it was really late to ask for a summer internship. I also was feeling panicky about the fall, when I am currently scheduled to take *two* classes on top of my usual full-time plus part-time teaching load. One has really been as much as I can handle, and I even had to take an incomplete on one last fall. So I've been feeling as though the fall will be an impossible task, but I contacted the instructors and got hold of the textbooks ahead of time and said to myself, "maybe I can do this if I get most of the reading done ahead of time." But that reading takes time, of course.

To shorten an overly-long story, I've given up on the internship idea for the summer. Instead, I am going to take a second course for credit that starts via distance learning on Monday. I may take a third class as well (during the evening in second summer session), albeit one that is not a requirement, so I may audit it rather than take it for credit. And, so I start getting out there in the accounting marketplace, I am going to contact one or two of those "friends of friends" and do some informational interviews and seek mentoring. The actual accounting work is going to wait.

This plan will make things financially tighter--I have my base salary coming in, but no second-job salary, so my income is down 23% for June, July, & August from what I'm used to. And there are some big expenses coming up that may require me to dip into my savings. I'd been planning on some income from an internship to replace some of that second-job income. But the new plan *greatly* reduces the panic I've been feeling, and it will make the fall much more do-able, as I'll only have to take one class on top of the full-time & part-time jobs, and I know I can handle that. Plus now I can think more seriously about visiting my mom sometime this summer, during July or August.

Now that I've been a homeowner for 2.5 years, I have my first major home repair to make--the gutters on my front and back porches have rusted through (they're old steel half-rounds).

So I've been getting estimates--I contacted 5 contractors; 4 have been by so far, and I have 3 estimates in hand.

In any case, I'm going to get seamless aluminum "K" gutters--no need to worry about rust again.

The choice seems to come down to either spending about $600 for .027 gauge "industry standard" gutters, or spending about $1200 for .032 gauge gutters--he showed me a piece of one and it really does look much more sturdy than the typical gutter. The .032 gutters come with a 10 year warranty on workmanship and 20 years on the parts.
I need to call back the contractors for the .027 gauge gutters and ask about a warranty, since neither contractor whose estimate was in this range spontaneously mentioned one.

As I'm writing this, I'm convincing myself to go for the $1200 gauge gutters, at least in the front. The front porch has a roof that still is under warranty for another 10 years and is in good condition. I'm not sure about the condition of the "soffit" or section underneath. The back porch has a stationary aluminum awning which the gutter hangs off of--it's attached to wood strips that are screwed to the awning supports. The awning supports are beginning to rust a bit, and one contractor (the one who hasn't gotten back to me yet) said that he recommended replacing the awning instead, and said he'd give me the name of the contractor. He tried to scare me that during an ice storm it could collapse on my dog. While it might need some new supports on the far side of the porch, the awning itself is perfectly good, and it is firmly attached to the house, so I just vowed for the moment to get a roof rake before next winter. I'm hoping to have that awning last another 10 or so years--if I'm still in this house (and the only reason I wouldn't be is if DBF & I get married), I'm hoping to renovate the kitchen and expand the house by about 3 feet into the patio, which would entail redoing the concrete patio as well.

Also this summer I need to have the roof silvercoated, the furnace serviced, and I desperately need new glasses (it's been 4 years and I'm reading thru scratches). That's at least $1000 in additional expenses there--and, to be prepared, I should probably expect about another $500 in unexpected expenses, either a big car repair or a big vet bill. Praying neither comes to pass, but I can't ignore history, and I haven't had either of those since a $500 vet bill in February, and I usually experience about 3 major "unanticipated expense" events a year. (Hopefully the laws of probability will work in my favor--if things work out to average, I'm still way ahead in expenses paid on based on the $8000 I spent on Henry the year I adopted him!)

Also I really should travel to L.A. and visit my mother this summer--another $500 expense.

Summers always end up being pricey, and this summer my income is low, which means that some of these expenses will get paid for out of savings. I have one more year on my job and then need to make the big career change, so I hate going into savings to do this--which is the one temptation to go for the $600 gutters. They might not last as long or look as pretty, but that's about what I had originally planned to spend (based on the first estimate that I got way back in March when a contractor was working on a neighbor's roof).

The New York Times featured an article on this yesterday. The five rules cited in the article were
1. Investing is simple (use index funds);
2. It still may be worth paying for help;
3. Peers may know more than professionals (example web sites cited; Savings Advice would qualify but wasn't among the examples);
4. Everything can (and should) be automated (bill paying & investing);
5. Have the talk (with your parents & children to ensure everyone can be taken care of).

I have seen some other good summary posts on blogs in the past--e.g. the "five index card" post at The Simple Dollar blog and the "Three principles of Personal Finance" at mint.com.

Inspired by these, I decided to come up with my own. I posted them at my own site at fiscal-fitness.blogspot.com/--you can go there directly by clicking on Fiscal Fitness Professional under "Sites I enjoy".

What are your rules?

This weekend has been the antithesis of last, much quieter and laid back. Good thing, too, as I am exhausted and have been for several days.

Friday I was too tired to cook but the contents of my fridge weren't inviting, so I went to my favorite little Korean restaurant, where Kim cooked me a lovely 5-course Korean meal for $12 (dumplings, soup, a selection of 4 salads & kim-chees, chicken & rice, and vanilla ice cream topped with strawberries & kiwi for dessert). It was too much to eat so I took the leftovers with me and dropped by my BF's on the way home--I left the leftovers with him for a snack and he made me a cup of coffee). (I'd invited him to eat with me, but he'd already eaten by the time I called). I got home around 8:30, watched an hour of TV, talked to my mom on the phone, and went to bed by 10.

Saturday I mowed the lawn first thing, went to the vet to pick up Henry's prescription food, then stopped by the gardening center and got some weed block cloth for the foot-wide weedy patch of dirt under the fence on the north side of the yard.

I got the existing weeds out as well as I could with my limited assortment of tools (I'm sure there must be better tools, but I have no idea what they would be; I grew up in L.A. where every middle-class family (except those with teenage sons) hires a gardener to do the yardwork), and I cut and pegged down the weedblock cloth. It's a bit messy, as every physical thing I do tends to be, but I'll get some mulch to cover over and hide the messiness. (I love the *idea* of being self-sufficient, but not the implementation; I have little patience and even less knowledge when it comes to doing anything but the most basic of physical tasks--and I often struggle with the most basic as well.)

I also spent two hours yesterday ensconced in my favorite activity: browsing at the bookstore. I buy a cup of coffee and find an armchair in the coffee shop and browse to my heart's content.

Last night DBF and I had take-out Chinese and again I crashed early.

This morning, I did a few errands (grocery, fill up the tank, deposit $$ at the ATM) and chores (dishes, vacuuming, cooking). It's now 6 pm and I'm hunkering down to do some grading of exams. I really don't know where the day has gone; I DO know that I'm exhuasted again and feel pretty much ready for bed right now!

After the grocery trip and filling the gas tank, I think I am done spending for the month, barring any unforeseen emergency, and am coming in at $2206, close to what I spent in February. That's good as it allows me to put a bit of money away.

My take-home full-time salary is about $2600/month, and I've been working a part-time job as well to bring in another $700/month, but I'm not sure if I'll have any extra income this summer.

I have to prioritize my summer projects:

Furnace yearly servicing $109
Have the roof silvercoated (?$200-$400)
Replace the gutters ($600-800)
New eyeglasses (~$400-500)

Hopefully I'll earn enough this summer to at least cover these additional expenses.

One nice thing is that my Mom called today to tell me that she's getting me an early birthday gift (my birthday comes at summer's end). I had been talking about maybe getting a grill for my backyard this summer, and she went and ordered me one that should arrive this week, so that's one item on the summer expense list crossed off already!

What a busy weekend this has been! Started off Friday with a "date" with my BF. He treated me to dinner at a Chinese restaurant that opened near him about a year ago; it was a bit expensive but really, really good (and has won an award as one of the Top 100 Chinese restaurants in the U.S.).

Saturday morning there was the annual undergraduate research conference in my field at the nearby U.; I went to hear the keynote speaker and cheer the students on and see a few colleagues from other institutions. Then a quick trip to the grocery store and home to do some chores and walk Henry and cook my contribution for the night's seder. The seder was fun--my friend who invites me every year purchased a small farm 1.5 years ago and is raising llamas. The seder was nice but went on a bit long for my taste. The hostess wanted to sing every song in the book, just about. I agree that a seder should be a leisurely meal, but 2-2.5 hours, not over 4 (the point at which I left) is more to my taste.

Today I pulled the lawnmower out of the basement and did the first mow of the season after first cleaning up the yard of sticks etc. The grass was actually a bit long for a first mow so it was slow going. I also did another grocery shopping trip (yesterday's was mostly for my seder dinner contribution) and stopped at BJs, and at home I'm doing laundry and cleaning and working on data analysis for a dozen undergrad projects.

I'm supposed to go out to another seder tonight but I really don't want to--I have a test to grade as well that I'd really like to have off my back. Not quite sure what I'll be doing yet.

Oh, and of course there was yesterday's hour-long talk with my sister (who was at Mom's, while Mom was out grocery shopping, which means another hour today talking to Mom).

One thing I'm NOT doing today is going to Hillary's talk at the local H.S. a mile away. I've already heard Bill in person, and Barack, and I've made up my mind. If she had come a month earlier, I might have gone. Bill has been in the area 4 times, Chelsea at least twice, and now Hillary. All I can say is that I was really frustrated by Tuesday's debate and the way the moderators emphasized trivial questions for the first half. I don't watch TV much so I've missed the barage of TV ads, but my mailbox has had 1 or 2 mailings from Obama every day this week. I'll be glad to get the PA primary over with. Back in January the local paper was hosting a "Pretend your Vote Matters" poll on its website and PA has turned out to be anything but that!

It's going to be a loooonnnnggg time until November.

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On the spending front, so far it looks good for my coming in with another ~2000 spending month, but there's still 10 days to go. I did buy a couple of books cheap at BJs plus ended up buying an 8 gig thumb drive to transfer a bunch of files from home to work since my DVD burner won't burn disks (but plays them fine), so there have been a few extras but not too many.

I've already planned to buy some Earth Boxes for container gardening and a barbeque grill for my back porch next month. This is my third year in the house and every May I buy something to liven up my outdoor living space. Other than a concrete bench for under the dogwood, this will complete the annual May outdoor buying spree, I think. My two porches and my lovely small backyard are one of the favorite parts of my house, and this is the only area where I've splurged and bought things mostly new rather than used.

Well, March was a spendy month; I spent about double what I spent in February (gulp). Much of the addtional spending was justified but still I hate to see so much variability--and I *really* hate it when my spending for the month surpasses my income for the month, even with the tax refund.

Extra spending was as follows:

$600 another expensive vet trip for Henry and his allergies
$165 getting a broken tooth fixed at the dentist
$500 buying the beginnings of a new professional wardrobe as I prepare to transition from academia into the corporate world
$200 in professional expenses (books, software)
$100 stocking up on wine, beer, sodas and extra food for a party
another $200 in extra food expenses--not that the food was wasted, but that it was eaten out or bought prepared, thus unnecessarily expensive
$82 to buy 200 "forever" stamps before the price increases on May 12
$132 prepaying an extra month early on my home gas bill--they changed the date the bill was due and refused to change it back, and I really like to pay my bill immediately after my monthly paycheck arrives and not a week before it arrives, so I decided to get a month ahead to avoid any late fees.
$90 extra prepayment on the mortgage to get it down to 89K.

As so often happens, financial and weight control go together--I slacked off a lot on exercise during March, and gained back 2 pounds. Still down about 7 from the end of last year, but I can feel those two pounds.

So the goal for April is another personal "challenge" month to see how close I can keep my monthly total spending to about $2000. No "extras" this month (unless I get a job interview, in which case I still need a professional pair of shoes), and I need to start back shopping more at Aldi's and Giant, much as I hate them, rather than at my beloved Wegmans. And I pulled out the pricebook I put together two years ago--time to update it since the last time I used it was in 2006. Should be interesting to see how food prices have changed in that time.

And it's a challenge month for health, too--I've joined an online "April Boot Camp" challenge on Leslie Sansone's walk club board, the goal of which is to lose 8 pounds during April. So I'll tighten up and refocus on fitness, too. I just started another round of "First Strides," the local women's walking/running program (that was another $40 out the door); those two workouts a week with other people (in addition to the two mornings a week I walk with my friend Anne) should help keep me from slacking off).

I am about to send out resumes looking for a summer internship, and in the fall will start hunting for a job in the business world (accounting). After a lifetime in academia, where my standard Lands End/LL Bean wardrobe has been sufficient, I decided that I needed at least a few more upscale pieces. So I bought 3 blazers, a pair of pants, and a skirt (mostly Jones New York brand) in preparation for the transitition. I also bought a bit of makeup since I almost never wear any. All in all, I spent about $500, although if I'd paid full price, the price tag would have been about $720, so I saved about 30% by virtue of sales and (eek) opening a Macy's charge to take advantage of the 20% discount (I'll close it shortly after paying the bill).

I feel queasy spending so much on clothes, but then, working at a college, I sometimes see students dressed up in their job interview clothes and realized I had nothing so high quality in my wardrobe, so I figured it was time to bite the bullet.

I suppose I should also have something a wee bit more corporate than my embroidered basset hound handbag to carry papers in, too!

My February Challenge was to do a "fiscal fast," minimizing extras and sticking to spending on monthly bills, food, fuel, and medical emergencies. Total goal for spending was $2000.

On the one hand, I overspent my budget by about 10%, so that the total spending for February was about 2200. And yes, about 200 worth of expenses could have been either postponed (most of them) or avoided (a few of them), but only $5 is spending I regret. And on the other hand, that $2200 is the lowest monthly spending in quite a while, as my monthly spending for 2006-2007 has averaged over $3000.

Spending included 10 no-spend days--more of them in the first half of the month. The second half I ate out more (but had lower grocery expenses) as midterms at school kept me busy (busy for teachers as well as for students!) (note that by "eating out" I mean grabbing a sandwich or bowl of chili at a fast food restaurant and not a full-sit down meal at a real restaurant, of which I had only two, one after doing a 24-hour fast for a medical test, and one after seeing a play (for $5 each) with my sweetie as our belated valentine's celebration.

This month I'm going for a monthly total spending of $2700--still a cut but not nearly as much because I anticipate car repair and veterinary expenses, plus I need to buy at least one nice job interview outfit since I will be looking for a summer internship and getting ready for "real" job interviews come the fall.

We've been hit by the winter storm, and I cancelled my classes today, although the college was open. Over 90% of the students live on campus and half of the professors are within walking distance, so they almost never shut down (although the support staff often are given a late start). I live driving distance AND on a hill. If I didn't have classes first thing in the morning, I could make it, but at 7:30 in the morning on a snow day, my street is always a snowy icy mess.

I'll remember not to schedule such early classes next spring term!

I took advantage of the snow day to sit home and finish reading a novel I had started (reading chapters in between bouts of shoveling).

Tonight I'll sit down with the exams I have to grade and get a start on those. I have a set of exams and a set of papers to grade, and a first year seminar proposal to write this weekend, so I just took my "fun" time first. I'll also be going to a play on campus on Sunday--hopefully the work will be done by then.

I finally finished the "incomplete" from the course I was taking last fall on Monday. It's good to have it completed, but with one thing and another I didn't devote the study time to it that I'd have liked, and I actually failed one of the exams (the only exam I've ever failed in my life; personally quite traumatic, although I ended up with a B+ in the course). I'll have to go back and practice those 4 chapters and learn them thoroughly before the CPA exam.

Today was a no-spend day, bringing to 10 the number so far this month. I've received my monthly paycheck and paid all the bills--current monthly spending is $1983. I'm not going to bring it in under $2000 as I need to fill my gas tank and to buy groceries for the week, but I'm still hoping to come in fairly close to that $2000 goal. Doing so counterbalances the heavy spending I did in January and puts me on target for my annual savings goal.

After spending $130 at the grocery store last week, I was going to try not to spend anything there this week.

No go on that. All the things that I use the most--soymilk, sliced turkey breast, cereal, fruit, salad fixings, frozen burritos--were used up, so I did replace those. That "basic grocery shop" used to cost me about $35/week if that was all I bought. Now the same basket of goods costs $40/week. Inflation.

Only 1 no-spend-day during the week, but 2 more this weekend, for 8 days out of 17 so far this month total. The kitties ran out of litter and I ran out of feminine protection. Both are items that I order in bulk online, saving money over the long term but requiring an inital outlay, so that was about $100 out the door, but now I'm stocked up on both for 6 months.

I also ordered tickets to a play on-campus for my sweetie & I to attend as a late Valentine's celebration. That wasn't too bad--community members pay $15 per ticket, but as a member of the campus community, I can go for $5/person, so that was $10 out the door.

Total spending so far this month $732, still on track to bring the month in at about $2000 total, barring any household/car repair or medical emergencies. I *thought* I was going to have a big vet bill for Henry, but we managed to avoid it. He has a wart on his nose and scratched it so that it began bleeding intensely--I look up and there's blood EVERYWHERE and it's still pouring down his face. Fortunately applying pressure (and hydrogen peroxide) to the spot managed to stem the bleed. Darn wart's still there, though.

My February Challenge is doing a "fiscal fast," minimizing extras and sticking to spending on monthly bills, food, fuel, and medical emergencies.

This week was so-so. I *did* have two more no-spend days (and I expect tomorrow to be another, as I'm planning not to leave the house and to spend minimal time on the internet), so that's 4 so far. If tomorrow is indeed another NSD, I'll be batting .500 as far as NSDs go, which is pretty good for me.

I *did* buy a couple of unplanned extras. Both were not really unplanned, but not planned for this month. I was called up on Monday and asked by the Dean of the Evening College to supervise an independent study class for a student (which will bring in over $600 more income this term). The class I am supervising for her is one that I am not otherwise teaching this term. I taught it last term. A new video very relevant to the class appeared in January, and I decided at that time to buy it the next time I taught the course; but until this week, I thought that wouldn't be until next January. In addition, I replaced a copy of another videotape I use which was wearing out with a DVD of the same, since both purchases were from ABC video. So that was an unplanned $65 in unreimbursed business expenses.

Then today at the grocery store, I fell prey to the sale bug and bought two pretty glass carafes and a new coffee mug, for $13. These had been on the "to buy" list so were not totally impulse expenses, just taking advantage of the sale.

I did end up spending $130 at the grocery store, so I'm going to do my best to have that last two weeks if I can and skip my regular grocery shopping trip next weekend.

Finally, this week my local public library decided to charge me full price for a book I'd borrowed, as they said it was "too damaged" to go into circulation. I got a lecture from Miss Priss the librarian on the phone and was relieved not to have another one when I went in to pay the fine. I was thinking that I must have written in the book more than I thought, but no. Yes, I KNOW one is not supposed to write in library books--I'm a librarian's daughter. My mother and I used to fight about my habit of writing in books. I do minimize this for library books. (And I frankly I cannot understand people who can read nonfiction books and get involved with them *without* writing in them. Reading a book is like having a conversation with the author, and one has to record one's own side, is my view. Just like "an empty desk is a sign of an empty mind," an unmarked page of a nonfiction book is a sign that the reader was not involved in the reading, IMHO. But really, I DO limit my extensive conversations to books I own.) The "writing all over the book" turned out to be approximately 8 pen dots, lines, and exclamation points marking key passages, and one 6-word annotation pointing to another book on the same issue which also appeared last month (the book in question was Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food," which I am just as happy to own, and the book I referred to was Gary Taubes' "Good Calories, Bad Calories," which Pollan eventually mentions, about 25 pages after the point at which I first found it relevant. Personally, I am happy when a link to a related reference is posted.) Anyways, that ended up costing me $30.50, for the book, the processing fee, and late fees for a couple of other books I was not allowed to renew earlier this week because of the charge.

Despite the couple of extra expenses, it's still looking as though I'll come in under $2000 in total expenses easily (current projection is for $1825 total), just so long as the pets stay well and no other crisis emerges.

I also got another $25 reward certificate from amazon.com if the spending bug really hits.

As far as my other major goal for the year, I've lost 9 pounds so far. I've been keeping track of my miles walked, both for exercise and otherwise, via a pedometer. To date, I've walked 170 miles so far this year, 74 aerobic miles and 96 other. Much better than I was doing in 2007!

I've had two no spend days in a row the past two days--yay! And the scale reached a new low (for the recent span of time) this morning. I was hungry hungry hungry today, so it'll probably take me a week to regain that number. Didn't do huge damage--just ate the number of calories that I ate last year. One day won't do damage but daily eating at that level puts the weight right back on. I rationalized it by telling myself that I needed to let my body know it wasn't starving because of the lower calorie intake of late--when your body figures that food is scarce, it lowers the metabolic rate.

When I got home from work I had a phone call from the Dean of the Evening College I teach at. The upshot of it is that a student needs an independent study in order to graduate in May. I agreed to supervise. It means an hour weekly meeting (plus a couple extra to catch up since we're now in week 4 of the term) and a bit of additional grading, and $600 extra bucks (before taxes) in my pocket this term.

Final thought: Maybe that was a gift from Dad (who passed in 1990). I maintain a pretty rationalistic approach to my spirituality, but sometimes it's fun to indulge. Today would have been my father's 90th birthday. It's just nice to think that he's celebrating by giving his family gifts. Makes me a bit sad, too--although I was 28 when he died, I still feel like he didn't get to know me as a "real grown up." I hope he'd be proud of how I turned out. He was always a button-bustin' papa, so I'm sure he would be.

Quiet weekend here. I went grocery shopping in the morning, then the rest of the day has been chores, exercise (in-home walking), having DBF over for a pizza & salad dinner, and, for the rest of the evening, studying. I'll end by watching an episode online of Extreme Home Makeover. I'm actually considering canceling my cable ($15/month) since 90% of the time, I end up watching shows online rather than via cable. That 10%, however, seems to be key news events, and $15 is relatively cheap, so so far I've kept it.

Tomorrow will be all studying--trying to do the final exam for my intermediate accounting course from last term, or as much of it as I can manage--there's still one chapter I haven't even looked at yet. And even when I finish the final, I'm not done with the course--I still have exam 2 to do, too--I just started with the final since that material is freshest--but after 6 weeks, *nothing* is really fresh.

I'll be at home all day tomorrow, so it should be a no-spender. Other than studying, I'll probably make up some food for the week--I'll cook up an entree of beans & greens and have that for lunch, and put a pot of split pea soup on to cook all day and have that for dinner. Plus I'll do an exercise video--I still haven't tried all of the 15 that I bought last month in my fitness frenzy. I've been doing good with the weight loss and exercise--8 pounds down since Christmas, and I've walked more than 10,000 steps per day for all but 2 days out of the last two weeks. Three more pounds and I'll be back to my Jan 1, 2007 weight; 10 more gets me back to October 2006 and Henry's surgery, which marks the time that I started putting the extra weight on. There's still another 50 pounds to go after that, but I'm taking it a step at a time. February is a busy month, so as long as I lose at least that 3 pounds, I'm happy.

Spending so far in Feb:

Fri: forgot my snack & lunch, so bought those at the convenience store for $7.41

Saturday: grocery store: $81.81, includes about 68 in groceries, 7 in pet food, and the rest in toiletries. Late addendum: responded to an urgent appeal from my favorite charity, my local Basset Hound Rescue, $40. Total spending: $129.22, which is 6.5% of my $2000 limit for the month.

My challenge to myself for February is a minimal-spend month. All the bills will get paid, of course, and I'll eat and buy gasoline to get to work as usual, and if I run out of household supplies like paper towels or light bulbs, I will replace them, and if I or the furkids needs any medical attention, that will be taken care of. Also, February is Valentines Day and I'll buy my sweetie a valentine and some chocolate, but that's to be the limit of my discretionary spending. No books or DVDs or clothing or tools or gadgets or garden supplies or new supplements at the health food store or restaurant meals (though grabbing a salad or sandwich at the convenience store when I forget to bring my lunch, as I occasionally do, is allowed), and (as usual) no going out to the movies or other entertainment (though I'm not cancelling the Netflix account). I'm also hoping that it will be a low pet-bill month, too--I *think* I have enough food in stock to keep Henry the Hungry Hound fed for the month, though the cats are almost out of food. Without these additional expenditures, I'm hoping to bring the monthly total in under $2000, which would be a real achievement (haven't done it since August 2006). If successful, that will compensate for January's extra expenses and allow me to make progress towards my savings goal for the year.

I'll do this now, since I get busy during the week. Also, I started my fitness and diet plan on Dec 27, so it really IS a month.

So far: 7 pounds down (about 3% of my weight). I've exercised all but 5 days since starting. Food spending was about 10% lower than last year's monthly average; I should do even better in February, when I won't have out-of-town company coming to buy for. I ended up buying food [bagels & cream cheese, tortilla chips] that the visitor didn't eat and which I just gave away to my boyfriend because it's not on my health plan right now.

In terms of savings goals, I haven't saved *anything* so far--in fact, I overspent in January--$220 on exercise DVDs and equipment and new walking shoes, an unexpeced $500 vet bill (well, not totally unexpected, as Henry ends up with about 4 of these per year; just not expected this month); over $200 in textbooks for the school term, and $116 for a new 3 handset phone system when my old cordless phone died. Some months are like that. Everything was put on the credit card, which I pay off in full each month. My goal for the next month, however, is to limit expenditures to basic bills, food, gasoline, and any emergency medical/vet bills that arise--in other words, I'll eliminate discretionary spending other than that which I routinely get billed for (the $19/month gym fee; the minimum $5.23 most basic Netflix subscription) and see if I can thereby catch up on my planned savings.

The other big goal for the month is working towards the career change. I've got a big hurdle in the next 2.5 weeks: I finished last semester with an incomplete in a critical course, and now have just 2.5 weeks left to complete two exams and the papers. I wasn't able to focus on working on this last month when I found my job unexpectedly up in the air, and the past week, I've been feeling on the verge of a cold and end up going to bed early each night rather than studying. I'm going to be pretty frantic until my Feb 16th deadline.

Knowing that I have a job in hand through summr of '09 (the point at which I finish my accounting studies and am ready to move on to the new career), I felt like celebrating this weekend. It worked out well that I already had an out-of-town visitor scheduled, a trip rescheduled from before-Christmas. I spent Saturday morning doing some grocery shopping and tidying up, and Donna arrived around 2. After hanging out at home for an hour, we went to a nearby town having a "SnowBlast festival" to look at the ice sculptures. I drove her home past my workplace and with a stop at the Farmer's Market. Our Farmer's market is open Thurs, Fri, & Sat. If I go, it's usually Thurs or Fri since I work nearby. I hadn't realized that on Saturday the hour or so before closing, the merchants steeply discount their wares, since they don't want to have to pack them up again. It might be worth the occasional Saturday trip in the future.

In the evening, DBF came over to join us for dinner, which I cooked (salmon with Asian stirfry veggies in a citrus-soy sauce over brown rice). Donna and I split a bottle of wine (DBF abstained). I got quite the buzz on and paid for it later that night. A drinker I am not.

Today we puttered around home until 10:30, then went to Granny's Tearoom for brunch, and to the local bookstore and a couple of giftstores, all along Main St, to browse. The tearoom had a special whereby they were selling Windsor teapots for $10 if you bought some tea; so I picked up a package of white tea with blackcurrent and a cobalt blue teapot, as I have recently switched from coffee to tea as my default drink of choice. I also bought a book on Green Housecleaning at the bookstore since it seemed to have some very useful tips when I browsed through it.

After we got home, Donna left, and I ended up puttering around the rest of the day--went out to Lowe's and bought a new trash can since one of my two finally split completely down the middle last week, and otherwise hung around and drank tea (plus I did one of my in-home walking tapes so I'd get some exercise).

Tomorrow I have off from teaching, but it will be a work-at-home, preparation for the workweek day. Now that I know that my plans are in place for the next 1.5 year's it's time to stop worrying and blast full-speed ahead!

I mentioned about 3 weeks ago that my job (which runs on yearly contracts) was iffy for next fall (teaching, so starting in September). I just found out that I indeed have one more year! This is great not only for next year, but because it makes my planned career transition so much easier. I've been taking classes in accounting in the evenings/summers, and I'm getting close to being done with requirements, but there are still three key classes to take. This gives me the opportunity to take the classes before I move into the accounting world. Since I teach at a college, I can take the classes here for free, so that saves on tuition, too. Also, most of the job searches for beginning accounting jobs are currently done in the fall for jobs that start the following summer. I should be able to do an accounting internship over the summer, then interview for jobs in the fall, and walk out of next years' teaching contract into my new career! I am so relieved I can't even begin to say!

Today's the end of my vacation--the only time all year that I have time to do more than catch up on sleep and laundry (given that my schedule is that I work a full time job, a part time job, and I go to school part time--I used to have more "fun" on my vacations when I "just" worked full-time; now it's just recovering from exhaustion). During my month off, I didn't manage to do anything like go to a movie or take a daytrip to Philly, but I did browse at the bookstore half a dozen times, and, more productively, I did a lot of cleaning and reorganizing at home, and I got myself started exercising regularly again and lost about 5 pounds. Those things feel good.

When I manage to get myself to the point where I "just" have one full-time job (ideally as of June 2009), I'll have to start planning for a "real" vacation--maybe in December of 2009. The last time I took a week off and traveled anywhere was my obligatory trip home two years ago. I can't even remember the last time I went anywhere for more than a weekend just for fun--it's been about 10 years.

Good thing I've only got a year and a half more on the "work full time and part time and go to school" plan. I'm beginning to get burned out.

*****
As for my last day of vacation--well, I spent the morning finishing the kitchen reorganization project, and making applesauce and braised cabbage (yesterday I made Chicken Cacciatore, so I have some food laid away for the week ahead) and the afternoon doing syllabi for one course. Tonight I really should finish the other syllabus, but I think I'm going to bed early, since we're expecting some amount of snow (2" to 5") and I'll have to dig out before the morning commute.

My almost month-long vacation (college school break) ends on Monday. Something I've found as I've been tracking my expenses for the past few years is that I typically end up spending a lot more on my time off. It's the only time I have to devote to thinking about household purchases, so that's always a big category when I'm on break.

Here are the "extras" I've been buying:

Replacements for broken items where the cost of replacement beats the cost of repair

-new phone system (3 handset Dect 6.0)
-new shop-vac (which I use for my general purpose vacuum cleaner)


New items to make life more organized
-shoe rack for where I end up tossing my shoes in a corner of the living room. Now they take up less space.
-kitchen trash can--old one was too small and I'd have to empty it too frequently so I converted it to hold my birdseed supply outside since the lid has a nice tight fit. For the past year & a half, I've been putting trash in a bag in half of the kitchen sink--it needs to be kept out of the dog's reach (he's a basset and can't reach that high). But I got tired of having the trash be the first thing I see walking into the kitchen. Now I have a nice shiny stainless steel can that the dog won't knock over or be able to get into.
-a few plastic storage boxes for the accumulation of books and notes from the past semester.
-breadbox--to put in bread and my dog's assortment of treats and meds which have been scattered out on top of the counter or on top of the refrigerator. Hiding the mess.

New things generally related to self-improvement or self-care
-New walking shoes. I buy expensive ones because I've had foot problems in the past and it's worth it to me to pay for the quality & support. I'm re-inaugurating my walking program that I was lax on last year.
-Two textbooks for classes I'm auditing this term.
-A portable CD-player. I've had bad luck with MP3 players and wanted something to play podcasts and audiobooks on, so I got a CD player that plays MP3 format to entertain me while I walk.
-Half a dozen fitness DVDs/videos--bought used or as overstock so I didn't pay full price.
-I also got a heart rate monitor & blood pressure measuring device but those were paid for by my credit card rewards, so didn't take any additional cash out of my wallet.

other large expense
A $140 vet bill for Henry's skin infection, and another $150 for a 6-month supply for one of his meds

On the positive side, my gas (heat) bill was actually really LOW this month because I pay on the budget plan and January is when they rebalance and set it to zero. I'd previously overpaid so this month's bill was only 20% of the usual bill. Also I've mostly been avoiding eating out and am focusing on healthy eating, so the food bill will come in (as planned) lower than it has been.

Once I go back to work, the "extras" spending will stop, and I think I'll make February a no-extras spending month and limit expenditures to food, fuel for the car, and the usually monthly mortgage and utility bills.

I thought I'd write up what my typical eating patterns have been like the past few months compared to now, after making a conscious effort to "detox" my diet both for health and financial purposes. I'm listing two days worth of eating since that gives a better picture than one.

In both cases you'll note that I eat 5-6 times a day--that's the only way my hunger stays in control. Once I've done this for a month, I'll compare the financial savings--right now there's a little financial data but mostly calories:

Then: Typical Fall semester eating days

Get up at 6, have a bowl of cold cereal & soymilk and coffee
Go in to work at 8, hungry & buy an egg & cheese on bagel sandwich & a cup of coffee for ~$3.50
Teach. Lunch at desk--Easy Mac.
Go home. Afternoon snack--fruit & yogurt.
Dinner. chicken soup reheated from crockpot cooking, bread, salad.
Evening snack: bread & cheese

Breakfast: pb&j sandwich, soymilk
Lunch: at home, Amy's roasted veggie wrap, salad.
Snack: energy bar & coffee on way in to office; ~$2.50
Dinner: Taco Bell or Burger King or turkey & mashed potatoes from the convenience store ~$6
Snack: fruit & yogurt

Eating out average $6/day
# bought meals/snacks: 1.5/day
# prepared food meals: 1/day
# meals from home ingredients: 3/day
average calories/day: 2300

Now: Current eating
6:30 oatmeal & hardboiled egg
9:30 whey shake, fruit
11:30 lunch; beans & greens soup, quinoa, salad, fruit
5:30 dinner: tilapia, asparagus, kale & onions; grapes; acai sorbet
9: rice cake & soymilk

6:30 oatmeal
9 egg, whey shake
11:30 arugala salad, baked tofu, fruit & nuts
2 hummus, carrots & celery
4 apple
7 1/2 spaghetti squash, 1/2 cup tomatoe sauce, asparagus, berries
9 whey shake

Eating out average: once in 10 days so $1/day
only prepared meals I'm having are the whey shakes and the baked tofu
more veggies, fewer grains
average calories/day: 1800

In line with my joint emphasis on saving, especially on food, while also trying to lose weight, I've started the year off with a detox diet--based mostly on Cathy Wong's "Inside Out Diet" (I also read Mark Hyman's "Ultrasimple Diet" and Roizen & Oz's "You Getting Younger" in preparation for this. )

The goal is to eat both more healthily AND to eat less. (Also to exercise more--but that's a lot easier for me than cutting down on the calories.)

I spent a week before starting my food plan getting mostly off of caffeine--which meant feeling sleepy for a week (headachey for one day). I'm not completely off of caffeine, as it does have some health benefits, but I did switch from 5-6 cups of coffee to day to drinking a variety of teas (white, green, red, herbal, and yerba maté for when I need a bit of a caffeine kick). I'm sure that I'm drinking only a quarter of the caffeine that I was.

I started following the plan I worked out for myself on the 30th, so I've just about completed 4 days now. Weight loss as of this morning was 4.2 pounds. I know that's mostly water weight, but the best thing is that so far I've managed to consistently eat about 700 calories/day less than I have been eating without feeling hungry. And that's what I need to be able to do over the long haul in order to lose the weight.

Right now I'm focusing more on the food side than the financial side of this, but I do believe that I'll ultimately save money on food if I can keep eating this way--mostly because I typically spend so much money on eating grab-and-go food from convenience stores and sub shops.

One thing that I've found that helps is that I've been snacking on dehydrated vegetables--a company called "Just Tomatoes" puts out containers of various sizes and they're easy to eat like popcorn. First I bought a 4 oz container, then when I finished that in 3 days, I bought a pound. Next time I'll buy in bulk to reduce the cost. I've also been looking at alternate companies that produce dehydrated food for storage (I remember reading a lot about this back in the days of Y2K fears). I'll probably order a sampler pack from Walton Feed to compare the quality, since their food is cheaper (but they emphasize using their food rehydrated, not using it to snack on in the dehydrated form, so I don't know if it'll be as good eating it dry.

Other than eating lots of veggies, I'm eating fruit, brown rice, quinoa, and oatmeal, beans, tofu, eggs, and fish, and allowing myself the use of extra virgin olive oil as my primary fat (also raw nuts & seeds and avocado). I've allowed myself the use of an artificial sweetener, but minimally (just with morning oatmeal). I'll probably add kefir in in a few days since I typically drink it daily for its probiotic benefit.
I'm also taking fish oil capsules for the omega-3s.

So there have been some startup costs to switching to eating this way (eg the fish oil capsules, the variety of teas, etc) but that's still within my typical food budget costs since I haven't eaten out at all.

The general premise behind the diet I'm following (bringing together info from Hyman and Wong here) is that our livers are overtaxed by the increasing burden of pesticides as well as consuming too many refined carbs or not enough carbs and too much of the wrong kind of fat. When you start dieting, toxins stored in fat are released, taxing the liver further. So the idea is that you start a diet by eating to provide liver support. The liver plays a role in blood sugar control and in digestion of fats, so having it function optimally decreases your hunger even as you cut back on food. Then when you start adding foods back in, you test for food intolerances/allergies, since these increase inflammation, which in turn leads to increased propensity for obesity.

From my perspective, the most important thing is that I've not been feeling hungry, which is the reason why I've had such problems losing weight in the past. If I can continue not to feel hungry at a 500-700 calorie/day deficit, the weight will come off. And that will have all kinds of benefits, both physical and financial. I know that if I get even just 20 pounds off (I've stated 33 in my goal, but really, I could stand to lose 60), the arthritis pains and heartburn I've been experiencing will decrease, and my risk of all kinds of chronic illnesses will decrease.

Here's how I spent my New Years Day: in the morning, I went over to my friend Anne's for tea and a chat. We made a plan to walk on Tuesday & Thursday mornings at 6 from now on. This is great because one thing I have learned about myself is that I am most consistent with my exercise when I make it a social commitment. Also Anne lives only half a mile away, which makes it easy. I lost my last walking buddy when I moved from the next town over. We kept up our walks for the first year after I moved, but it was a lot easier to skip a walk when we each had to drive 5 miles to meet, and eventually things fell apart when our schedules changed. Now I'm going to approach my next-door neighbor about walking, too--we'd briefly discussed it over the holiday. It will be twice as good to have *two* nearby walking buddies--get me out there twice as often!

When I went home and checked my email, I learned from my rabbi that an elderly couple in our congregation were both in the hospital today, and eager for visitors. I decided to go, since I can remember how much I appreciated visitors the time that I was hospitalized for 7 weeks. I ended up spending three hours visiting with the wife and just talking to the husband (who's in a different wing) over the phone. She ended up taking a trip down memory lane, and told me many stories from her younger years, which was fun since she's a person whom I didn't meetuntil she was 65 (she's 80 now). I was taken by her love for life and its pleasures. This is a woman who, after falling and breaking 8 ribs, did not want to miss the cioppino dinner that a friend was bringing over, so she had herself helped into a chair, laughed and talked through dinner (she said she was fine as long as she didn't move), took two Tylenol PM to get through the night, and then went to the hospital the next morning! She says she's glad that she did it as it has given her a good memory to savor during her stay. I hope I have as much lust for life when I am her age.

While I do take advantage of the free annual credit reports you can get from the three reporting agencies. those reports don't tell you the actual FICO score. I haven't seen my FICO score since I bought my house two years ago, so today I decided to check up on what it was. I paid for a report from one of the agencies (of course, I checked online and found a promotional code so that I paid $12.76 for the report rather than $15.95), and my score is 770. That's within 20 points of where it was two years ago. I was surprised to note that one "negative" factor on my report is that my oldest account is only 8 years old--the report said that people in the top category have accounts that are 19 years old. I've certainly had credit for more than 19 years, but I guess I've changed banks as I've moved bewteen California, Michigan, Vermont, and Pennsylvania. Eight years ago is the time of my last inter-state move, so I guess that makes sense.

Another slightly negative factor is that I've applied for credit recently. My mortgage company offered me a card that gives me 1% back on my mortgage, so I applied for and received that. I figure that, in the long run, that's worth more than getting myself free gifts on Amazon.com (since my current rewards card is from Amazon). I did just yesterday decide to redeem about $125 of the $225 in rewards certificates I've earned this year.

While I was checking my account status, I noticed the Chase Freedom account banner. While the Amazon.com card gives me 3% back on amazon.com purchases and 1% back on everything else, the Freedom card gives you 3% back on your top three categories of spending each month, whatever they are and whereever they were spent. Additionally, it allows you to redeem that $ back either as points that you can exchange for gifts, OR as cash back. After thinking about it, I decided that by getting cash back and then sending in that amount in extra mortgage payments, I would be able to put even more extra towards the mortgage, so I decided to apply for that card as well. I'll cancel the amazon.com card when it comes so as not to have too many credit card accounts outstanding. I *was* going to cancel another VISA card I have until I realized that it is the oldest card in my wallet, two years older than any other. I may cancel that too, eventually. The additional credit card application may lower my score some temporarily, but I have no plans in the immediate future to apply for a loan, so a temporary lowering should not make much difference.

Today was the first day of a three day "detox" I am doing. This is the first step in trying to get myself in better shape this coming year. I've been so busy with my career change that I've let my health go over the past year. While for the past several years, I've religously exercised 3-4 times a week, this past year, I let exercise become sporadic--in part because of busyness and in part because a series of injuries foiled my attempts at maintaining my walking program (my main form of exercise). During 2007, I had a strained Achilles tendon that gave me problems for 6 months until a physical therapist gave me some stretching exercises that finally relieved the problem. Then I started walking again over the summer, only to be foiled by first a sprained ankle and then, when that was healed, a broken toe. I probably walked only 50 aerobic miles this entire year, about a tenth of my usual walking.

As a result of not doing much exercise, I gained 15 pounds (since I didn't cut down my food intake at all). I also pretty much wasted $228 on my gym membership--I have a pretty good deal at just $19/month and it will cost me double that if I quit and rejoin. But I hit the gym less than once a month this year, so that's about $20 a visit. I'll resume going at least once a week in 2008.

In addition to/as a result of the weight gain, I once again begain experiencing joint pain in my hips and GERD, and I've been feeling quite low about my physical appearance. And of course, some clothes don't fit and others don't look as good. So I've got to get the weight off.

I'm starting with a short "detox" diet to test for food intolerances. I spent the past week getting off of coffee--I usually drink about 4-6 cups/day, so that was a challenge, and I pretty much slept through last week because of it. There was only one bad headachey day, though, and now I feel alert with just a few cups of green tea. For the detox diet, I'm removing gluten and dairy from my diet for a few days, and eating mostly fruits, veggies, rice, beans, and fish. Then I'll start adding back in dairy and gluten-based items one per day to see if those make any difference in how I feel.

I did my last grocery shop for the year to enable this detox. I bought lots of veggies, and hummus, and a bag of tilapia filets (which are bottom feeders so low in toxins compared to other farmed fish). Then at home today, I steamed up several artichokes (which are supposed to be good for taming ghrelin, the hormone that makes you hungry); some carrots and beets for a carrot/beet/cucumber/pea salad; and I made a pot of "beans and greens" soup with cannellini beans and escarole. I also made a quinoa pilaf. I still have a 5# bag of apples to peel and quarter and stick in the crockpot to make homemeade applesauce.

And I'm back to walking again. For 6 mornings in a row, I've managed to get up and do *something* physical. The past two mornings this has meant jaunts around the neighborhood in the dark at 6 am. I'll enjoy these just a bit more once there's a hint of dawn at 6. Tomorrow I might go to the gym then for a change of pace (and to use my membership one last time this year).

In honor of the new year, I'm renaming my blog to Fiscal Fitness. This not only reflects that two of my main goals for the year are to improve my finances *and* my fitness, but it also reflects my intention to make some additional entries to another blog I maintain under the same name at blogspot (see links). While this is my personal blog, the other one reflects my professional interests.

I had thought that I had plans in placed for a seamless career transition from teaching to accounting, but a wrench just got thrown into the plans. I had been *informally* told by my department chair that, if certain things happened at work, they would be able to offer me one more additional full-time contract for the 2008-2009 year. It looked likely that those things would come to pass, and indeed they have, but I just learned that they are planning to hire a post-doc (whom they can pay $10000 less than they pay me even after they cut my pay by $9000 this year) instead. I was never even told directly but learned this by being on the department email list, where they have been discussing how much they would have to pay such a person. The chair seems to have forgotten what she said back in September. This has induced an instant panic attack--my heart is still beating wildly an hour & a half after opening that email. I've sent a note to the chair, but it sounds as though this new plan is too far underway for them to turn back. Now I don't know WHAT to do for the fall--do I apply for more adjunct teaching, which pays very low, or do I hope that, even though I'll still be two classes shy of the coursework I need, that I'll be able to find an accounting job for this fall? Things would work out so seamlessly in the career transition if I had another year in academia 2008-2009; if I have to fully transition in 2008, I'm much more unsure...and frankly, terrified. And angry.