September to remember

I would like to introduce a 36 hour day.

It is now the end of September and this is my first post. The last time I wrote a post I was living at my old apartment, I am now fully moved and almost finished settling in. As with every other procedure that involves the Jamaican government offices I could not get the new place certified in time but I still had to move since I gave notice. I ended up moving into a place with no power and suffering for two weeks.

With no power and no fridge I survived on my tea candles, 3G dongle and my laptop to get me through the nights when I got home from work. For the weekends I crashed at a friend's house and she treated me like a king. Eventually the power service was turned up and I quickly got my security grills and curtains installed, I could now rest with piece of mind and with privacy.

Of course in the mix of everything is still school. I have already completed two courses, submitted one research paper and sat one exam already. The first exam wasn't so bad, I finished with about an hour to spare probably a first for me. Lets hope I passed with flying colors :p. Other than that UWI has changed greatly since I've left. They have added a special section to the library for postgraduates only and I am loving it.

Between the school tuition, moving to a larger apartment, having three mouths to feed and general homeowner expenses has put me in a situation I have not been in for a while.. broke. It is just really a matter of cash flow and normally it wouldn't be much of an issue but I am looking to upgrade my couch and I saw a really nice three piece leather living room set that is now haunting my day dreams. I quickly wrote it off as being unaffordable but I saw in a magazine today the price has been slashed by over 20% to something more acceptable. It's time to reshuffle the budget to get in on these sales prices!

Surviving p.2

I found this video on the Jamaica Gleaner's[local paper] youtube channel a few months back and I had to make note of it. To bring everybody up to speed in one sentence Cash plus was a company that tried to pass them self off as an investment club that offered high returns that of course turned out to be big pyramid scheme and a lot of people lost their money. The big boss of cash plus, Carlos Hill, has recently making the nightly news as he has now been evicted from his house as it is to be liquidated to help pay the receivers, investors, cash+ ex employees, .... long list of people he owes. It is a very sad situation for the people in the video but I do not feel sorry for them, the local regulatory bodies went far beyond their duties to tell people to stay away from these schemes and to date they have all toppled over.

I too have lost a significant amount of money in legitimate regulated investments as well with the down turn of the economy. I have essentially written off my stock and equities based unit trusts as they have lost more than 50% of their value with no signs of coming up anytime soon but the difference is I knew the risk going into them and I could afford to take the hit. I just need to pretend they don't exist and if the companies don't wind up I could probably break even[- potential interest] if the companies/economy recovers in a couple of years, so all is not lost yet.

I see on stunner's blog that they made his entire dept. under him redundant, I also heard today that 20% of the people in my dept. will also be made redundant. I should be worried but for some reason I feel safe[foolishly?] for now. So what have y'all been doing to weather this storm? I have been mostly against this due to time restrictions but I took on a small job on the side for May/June as a consultative type role. I drafted my first invoice and was proud. I could totally keep doing this if I had the time but my day job keeps me pretty busy. One still has to be mindful of the fact that they are cutting people left right and center so I should probably explore other opportunities. I do have some skills I should be able to capitalize on:

• Photography
• micro controller application
• programming/web dev
  
• fsf consultation
• personal accountant/debt advisor

Clearly I got jokes.

On the horizon

Anybody knows this view and where it was taken from?

• I got a bill via email from my attorney last week and it looks like they are finalizing the transaction. It has been a long time coming, I've been waiting about four months now and it looks like I should be able to move in to the new apartment next month. Anyway the bill was fat. 1/2 stamp duty, 1/2 registration fees, my lawyers fees and other misc fees left my once health bank account empty. Seriously I could use the closing costs to purchase a car, this money would have been so much better else where. That is water under the bridge for now and I am just eagerly waiting to get my keys and tell my landlady to chuck it.
• Who remembers when I told my boss I wanted his job? Well it is clear that he isn't going anywhere soon but recently other possibilities have presented themselves. Yesterday my boss and my boss' boss' boss[big boss] were casually talking about the lack of a supervisor for the team in Barbados. The big boss proposed that I go there and take that role and I instantly told him sure I would be interested at which point in time he pointed out that he was dead serious and I confirmed that I was up for the challenge. It would be interesting if I can get it, the job will have to be posted and I would have to beat all other candidates in Barbados who may apply for it as they would get preference but at least I know the people who are making the decisions already think that I am capable.
• I have to go to work later, starting at midnight. The last time this work was attempted, the vendor's engineers corrupted our database and what was to be three hours of work turned into eight. This is not going to work tonight as I have to wake up tomorrow at 6am to head to the airport for the first flight. I hate travelling when I'm not well rested but I was requested to come in at the last minute and I have some fat bills to be payed. Let us hope that all goes well and I can be in and out in 30 minutes lol.

Definitely interesting times ahead. Time to go pack.

Surviving

Today the government explained today how they plan to finance their '09-10 budget and as everybody suspected it's taxes all around for everybody. One of the big ticket items was an increase of approximately $8 per litre in gas taxes. The last time they tried this there was an all island riot. There was a bit of hysteria on the floor at my office and they let us off at 3pm. Nothing happened, things seem pretty calm so far but it is still early. I guess things won't be so bad this time around as they will be taxing less of our income which should work out to $50k more in our pockets, it should break even for me.

Over the past few months I have noticed the price of things have generally trended up and I have had to adjust accordingly. This week baby mama pointed out that I was one of the two people she knew that could survive. lol recognition. It is in hard times I often remember a friend, lets call her Gia, I met 4 years ago when I started working downtown. She and I became good friends quickly and she had a little crush on me but I kept my distance out of sheer respect for this girl.

To bring y'all up to speed here is a few excerpts of her life story that flattened me. She was rejected by her parents and was forced to live with extended family that didn't care for her much at a tender age. They treated her badly, they locked her outside, who does this to a 7 year old? Luckily for her a couple who knew the family saw what was happening and saved her. They took care of her and she went to live with them, this was to be her new family. They didn't have much but they made sure she finished high school.

Fast forwarding to 2005 when I met her and she is twenty one. She had a job and was putting herself through school. At this time she was still living with the people that took her in, only thing the lady migrated so it was just her and the man. He was old, had lost his job so she was taking care of him and things at home by herself, she was so responsible. For those of you who remember 2005 Jamaica saw a few hurricanes or tropical storms and of course she was up on her roof with a hammer trying to secure it before the storms passed.

I was humbled, I have yet to meet anybody with her work or life ethic. She changed my view of people and she set the bar so high that most people just seem ungrateful when I hear them complain about their hardships that often pale in comparison to what Gia has gone through but yet still presses on. What to do when life gives you lemons?

Life updates

The commenters have gotten bold and demanded an update on my life. Who knew I was so interesting? lol let's get started. On Thursday I apparently left a large window open in my apartment and when I came home from work there was ash everywhere. I looked outside to see if I could identify the fire but there was none, it was a bit puzzling. After sweeping and vacuuming I closed up all the windows and left for work on Friday and yet still ash(a lot less this time) found its way back into my place by the time I reached home. The Friday night news cleared it all up, there was a large bush fire in Jacks Hill that I was totally oblivious to. Yup it is fire season once again for the hills of St. Andrew, every year around this time Jacks hill and its surroundings blaze up.

I didn't walk with my camera today but if I did you would have seen this same hill naked with a layer of black. These pictures were actually taken back in '07 after hurricane Dean I think, if you look closely you can see the twigs(or trees) on the hill are all broken, well now they are burnt off. I am amazed by the size of the fire and how it completely missed me, normally when there are fires in the hills I can spot them at night but over the past couple of days most of this hill went and I didn't have a clue.

The pictures above were actually taken from my (only) favorite and most hated walking(or climbing) hill. It is soooo steep but us Kingstonians seem to love to park our cars at the bottom and make the 20-30 minute walk up. I have it in my to do list to walk with my new camera to get better pics of the trek up.

Boring eh? on to other topics.. how are y'all surviving the economic downturn, recession, depression, ...? I see a lot of other Jamaican bloggers writing about the jobs being slashed.. *sigh* I am no stranger to this, my company has been slashing since I've joined a couple years back and I am glad I have survived thus far.

The last time I checked interest rates were dropping on the world markets but some how Jamaica is busy hiking their rates, good for local investors bad for borrowers. I had the deposit for my house invested[legitimately] before they raised the interest rates and the monthly interest could cover all my expenses(rent, food,car,...) easily. I would be living on easy street now if I didn't take all that money and give to my attorney as payment for my condo and moved myself to the other side of the fence to a world of debt.

I have a theory on how the Jamaican economy reached this state. Bear with me, this isn't really my subject.
- 1. mortgage crisis causes credit lines to tighten. the movers and shakers on the world markets drop interest rates to stimulate the economies.
- 2. Jamaican investment houses make a run USD currency to pay off their investments to avoid margin calls.
- 3. The value of the Jamaican dollar drops fast due to item 2.
- 4. The BOJ tries to stem the devaluation by raising interest rates to mop up liquidity and encourage the people to keep their JMD investments. really who can turn down 20+% rates?
- 5. Borrowers get the shaft. I hear my coworkers and friends cussing about their loan payments increasing due to item 4.

Who knows whats going on? I hope I was close. Anyway my stock portfolio lol sucks. It has lost more than 1/2 its value. I have written it off for now, I am in no immediate need for the cash so I guess they can sit there and lets hope they will revalue eventually. Under my mattress is looking attractive now.

a time to catch up

Where does the time go? I took this week off to catch a breath and it's almost Thursday already! not to mention it's almost December.. but the year just started. I have observed that as I get older my perception of time speeds up. *sigh* I just googled it and apparently I am not the only one. I haven't read that article though, it looks pretty depressing for me to stop and read now, it will probably change the whole tone of this post. So what have I been up to? time to make another list

• I got myself a 22" wide screen LCD for my computer and it's officially larger and much prettier than my 21" regular tv that I am now ignoring for several reasons. This larger monitor is great for editing photos and watching HD video :D
  
• I went to the UWI to get information on their post graduate degrees. All the kids there look so young and it's only been 4 years since I've left that campus :-(. I am looking forward to going back to school again, it should be interesting trying to fit classes, exams and projects into my busy work schedule. yay!
• I got a call from a guy in my section on Monday, he just came back from vacation and got his walking papers from our HOD. So my section now has 4 members.. I am not looking forward to that extra work. I like my work though, I hope they keep me.
• It's all gravy. 11 months ago I made a resolution to spend more. I checked my finance app and I have spent a bit more than the same period last year but I am still way ahead of my end of year savings target.. so far ahead I can cut a check and pay for my post graduate degree in full and still be within my budget. I guess I can mark that down as a failed resolution.
• I viewed a townhouse in New Kingston and an apartment in Kingston 8. I loved the location for the New Kingston place but the 18yo place left a lot to be desired in terms of maintenance, if a next real estate agent says bachelor pad I will know to lower my expectations. The uptown apartment was absolutely gorgeous! It's not in my ideal area[right in the middle of things] but I made an offer a little shy of the asking price, I hope I don't get it. I don't know whats wrong with me, I want to hold out until I can find the ideal place in the perfect area.

Let's hope I get some rest and post some more before I go back to the rat race.

postings from the couch

It is Thursday night and after 200+ km and a twisty turny trip though Sligoville I am now sitting on the couch not the guest bedroom as promised. What am I doing in Montego bay in the middle of the week? vaca, I needed it badly as Ruthie may have noticed. Being over here wasn't 'plan A' but the stars lined up right and I had to jump on it, the stars don't often line up for me.

Anyway for those who follow this blog you may have noticed last month my sister moved shop to Mobay and her parents followed her up here to help her get settled in. When they came back to Kingston and said they loved the townhouse complex that my sister moved to so much that they were going to buy one. Fast forwarding to this week they made the final payment and have now taken ownership of a unit. Will I ever be that cashy? I guess I will just stick to my window shopping for houses while I save my pennies.

So they decided to take a road trip to see their newly acquired property and coincidentally I was on leave this week so I could get to go(yes this is what I get when the stars line up). Of course my parents won't be moving to Montego Bay anytime soon so they just planned to rent it and use it as income since they are retired. This is a good plan but had a major flaw, they decided they will rent it to their daughter(for now) at less than 1/2 the going market rate. WTF! yup when the stars are lined up for my sister and actual ruler is used and I guess I get a best effort eyeballed 'straight' line scribbled by a kindergartener.

Pushing bad mind to the back burner these row houses are pretty sweet, they are up in the hills and have a view of the city and Mobay harbor. Crown molding, granite counters, double paned windows, these people know how to please. I hope the sun comes out tomorrow so I can go to the pool and bake myself to a cripsy brown lol. Maybe the stars will line up a cute girl for me by the poolside? lol wishful thinking.

I am alive.. somewhat

I will not call names but I am not one of those people that have forsaken blogsphere, I try to update this thing at least once weekly but as GC may have noticed I have been spread a little thin lately. So what have I been up to since early June?

• I have learnt art is where the money is. I went to a swanky art show at somebody's house in the Acadia suburbs of Kingston. Free wine, free food, 1/2 naked models bouncing up and down the runway, bumping elbows with people who buy paintings and prints at $400,000 a pop.. it was a good night. I think its time to pick up a paintbrush and a canvas.


• I passed through Caribbean Fashion week and a few of the parties. At two of the events fate would have it that r-dawg, my x from about 4 years ago, would cross paths and have plenty of time for awkward silence and to catch up. She is doing well she is now a medical doctor.. congrats r-dawg lol. Anyway the picture on the left does have some relevance. The promoters of CFW advertised a bunch of b-list celebs associated with the event and made a big deal about it. Now can someone tell me what does Nia Long, Eve, some lady from soul food have to do with Caribbean Fashion Week? You can't really see it in my picture but Eve has put on a lot of weight or was she always that fat? Does the TV camera hide the pounds? It took me about 20 minutes to figure who the fat lady was beside me at a party that everybody wanted to talk to. meh, maybe I'm just slow.
• The price for everything is went up yet my company has found a way to make savings by cutting my pay. I used to work at least 123 extra hours on a standby arrangement per month but effective July that figure has moved down to at least 67 extra hours. It's understandable though.. the timing is just bad given the current inflation trends. This will now free up some time for me to enjoy my nights and weekends more. They may be cutting my standby pay but as of recent I have been clocking some major overtime hours. Even later on tonight at midnight I shall be going to work to add 4 more hours to the meter. I'm not sure how I will make my meeting tomorrow at 9am after tonight's work.
• I went to the beach and got sun burned as usual. What was unusual was the two couples I saw doing it in the water. I always heard of people having sex in the water at the hellshire beach but this was the first time I was spotting it for myself. Should have brought along Tami the paparazzi to capture evidence. I guess it is time to find a new secluded beach.
  
• Everything at my company is last minute so when they asked me at Lunch time on Friday if I was able to attend a meeting in Florida on Monday I was not surprised. I looked on the itinerary and saw that I would be staying at a hotel right in front of Sawgrass Mills mall in Fort Lauderdale and my weekend instantly took a turn for the better. By early Sunday afternoon I was unpacked at trodding the 1+ mile of mall. I must say even though they have added two new sections since I've last been there the mall seems a lot smaller than I remembered.
• I have sold my trusty sidekick Olympus camera this morning and got $200 for it. I didn't want to sell it but after stepping up to the even geeky-er 400D Canon DSLR I could use some of the extra cash to help buy a lens. So far I've spent around $900 and I only have a starter kit, I need to budget like $600 more before I can start putting out some good quality pictures. I guess I should make photography my new hobby, or maybe I can make some money off it based on what I saw at the show mentioned in the first bullet point.

That's it for now.. hopefully I can put out more than 3 posts this month. I think it's time for some leave.

It was written in the stars

*sigh*

Once upon a time there existed such things as $1 and $2 JMD notes.

Also there once existed a 7 year old boy who saved his dollar bills in a cardboard box. I guess it explains why I am like this now.

What does the future hold? The immediate future looks grim, I wouldn't be surprised if inflation surges past 20% this year.

3/4 left to go

Well it's spring now (not that Jamaica has seasons) and the first quarter of the year has flew past me. So whats new?

• Much to my shock(and horror) my company moved my dept. back to I.T. *sigh* It also looks like they are trying to dump a whole lot of extra work in our laps too. The company has gone through some organizational restructuring and many heads have rolled. I got a call from a guy today who was employed with the company for 15 years asking me for advice in moving his career into my field. That will probably be me in a few years time when I get placed on the chopping block but until then I shall stay on milking this corporate cow.
  
• Another one bites the dust, crashplus looks like its about to be wound up and liquidated to see if it can meet it's liabilities. lol good luck with that. I do not feel sorry for those who ignore all logic and put $1 in a black hole expecting to pull out $2.
  Tip-of-the-day: don't put money into anything that has more liabilities than assets.
• Thanks to google my blog, throughout its lifetime, has been discovered(not that it was hidden) by several friends and of course subsequent phone calls/emails followed. They mostly say it was my profile picture that that gave away the owners true identity so to avoid passers by from quickly identifying me I have replaced my face with my foot. Now any friends in the future that want to pass by and "discover" me will now have to actually stop and read the blog.
• So I noticed my past few blog posts had been picked up by people and passed around via email and was even posted to a facebook group.. *pops collar* I wonder what they are saying in the emails.. any lurkers out there care to share? What was entertaining is that a young lady on facebook pointed out that my blogger profile stated that I had "none" for my favorite books and she was turned off. I racked my brain and updated my profile, go check it out.. maybe now I can get me a girl!
• RE: new years resolutions.. I think inflation pretty much dealt with that.. did it hit 18% last year? other than that I guess nothing has changed, maybe the haters where right. I'll have to check and get back on this one.

I actually woke up and jogged this morning! great way to start Q2 `08. How are things with you?

On saving money

So for Christmas I got my mother this nice brushed stainless steel toaster oven pictured above to replace her 20+ year old tiny rusty toaster oven. She loved it and claimed she didn't know how she managed without one for so long (*pops collar* yup my gift was great :p). Anyway since my birthday was last week and they had no idea what to get me they asked if I wanted a toaster oven too, how original. What was funny was that she asked me if I wanted the same one or a cheaper plastic model which costed 1/2 the price.. and she was serious. Silly questions aside I am now less one item away from having a fully stainless steel kitchen.

On to the matter of closing investment accounts.. intrest rates have been trending up but I noticed that it wasn't trickling down to me. So I called my bank and pointed it out to them and they told me they don't know when they will adjust their rates and they don't do private negotiations. I then enquired as to what kind of penalties I would face in closing my account, she answered then she swiftly ended the call.. she probably didn't even hear me say bye. So I drove over there on the way home from work to tell them cya and it was a different story. After much boot licking and time wasting I rejected their 100 point increase and was on my way to their competitors to build my cd ladder.

On to the matter of me being a bank, recently a friend asked me for a 7 figure($#,###,###.##) loan.. really now. He wasn't broke just having liquidity issues and made the terms of the loan very attractive but as I said before I'm not willing to take on that form of risk. It didn't really speak much for his "investment club" that every John and their dogs are starting these days which he was trying to get me to invest into.

'08, now what?

Everybody seems to like to make new year resolutions(which always get broken a few weeks into the year). I am not one of those people. Every now and then I might think of a simple one for myself and try to stick to it. Last year was one such year and the resolution was to keep my two plants on the windowsill alive and healthy. All that really meant was that I needed to water them regularly and maybe re-pot them but I managed to fail as they are mostly dead now. I guess my thumb is brown.

I have made a new resolution for this year, to spend more money... kind of contrary to a few people's goal of saving more but I think I have the saving down pat. Lets see me mess this one up.

Broke ass friends

I'm sure everybody has friends who just can't seem to hold on to money but some of my friends take it to the next level. Now this same girl saw me online again recently and asked for a big favor. I instantly knew her request would be interesting but she surprised me by asking to borrow a couple hundred thousand dollars to fund a project she was trying to get off the ground. She claimed it was a sure thing and could provide me with documents stating that she would be paid upon delivery of her product so that in turn she could pay me back.

First problem with this situation is that my conservative nature makes me the furthest thing from a venture capitalist and she knew this. Problem number few was that I, along with anybody else who read that post on her was painfully aware of her financial standings which still haven't improved much since May. The third problem is that I tend to have to write off a portion of the money I have previously lent friends as there is normally no hope of getting it back.. no matter how small it is.

I asked her if she approached any financial institutions on a business loan and she explained that there was no way she could get one due to her bad financial standing. The answer was clear, no. She offered the title to her car to secure the loan, it made no difference.. what does she expect me to do repo her car when she defaults? lol that isn't risk I would take on but she didn't seem to be too understanding. What I found funny was that in her pitch to get capital from me she mentioned nothing of my return on investment. Reality is a bitch eh? Welcome to to adulthood.

coincidence?

A coworker of mine recently started selling apple iPhones for ridiculous sums of money. He sits about 10 feet away from me and is very vocal so most people in our general vicinity knows his business so when he came in last Friday we all knew he was quite cashy. Some of his friends in the office were troubling him that somebody might rob him and one guy even said it was too late, he already sent the guy to do it. Needless to say when he came in on Monday morning he told us he got robbed at gun point over the weekend.

He was in town on his way to the airport with 1/4 million in cash cool under his gym bag in his car and they held him up took the cash and two cell phones from him but left him, his car and his mac notebook to leave unharmed... that is a bit too coincidental for me to handle.

As I have grown more paranoid over the last few years this is how much they would have lifted off of me.. a cool $150. They would have been so pissed they would have probably taken my car to make up for the rest but insurance should cover that. I'm not sure what $150 would buy but I pretty much use my credit cards for everything. I know of a few friends and my sister use this no money approach and it is a pain to get them to pay me back monies owed to me as they always show me the moth flying out their wallet/purse when they say "I don't use cash". Bastards.

I am still amazed at how quickly he got over it though, the only time he seemed upset(understandably) about it was when a coworker was teasing him and laughing about it. Although I wasn't pissed for long either after they stole some stuff from my place last year. Thankfully in that incident my company only charged me about $25,000 for carelessly leaving the laptop in the car so my losses totalled maybe $40k at most. You live and you learn.

Bon voyage sun

The past couple of days have been rather wet here in Kingston and I am loving the rather cool weather the torrential rains have brought with it. I had plans to go to the north coast this weekend but of course that had to be scratched due to the inclement weather at hand.

All this rain has also highlighted the fact that water leaks in the trunk of my car. Water also drips from the roof in my kitchen but I have long accepted this problem will not go away due to the laziness of my landlady and I have just have a bucket under the leak all year round. Leaky roofs doesn't seem to bother me much as it would leak over my bed occasionally at my parents house. I would be sleeping and be awoken at 1am in the morning by some cold water dripping on my shoulder and would have to go for a container to catch the water them move over to the other side of the bed.

Aside from the rain flooding my trunk, turning the roads into a long parking lot in the evenings and squashing my North coast plans I spent a lot of cozy quality time with noodle at home. The artist Busy Signal also passed through the canteen one day for a signing session. I like some of his songs but I'm not really a fan of him as he beat up(wickedly) one of my friends who was one of the sweetest most harmless girl I knew. If you look at the pictures you might notice his knuckles are bruised.. I guess he gets into a lot of fights, one day he will get whats coming to him :p. Last week Beanie man also passed through too, my camera was in the car though so there were no Kodak moments captured by me then.

My father's birthday was last week as well so today we went out to lunch at the Terra Nova as usual to celebrate. I am usually rather tired of there food now but today their supposedly 80 item buffet was extra delicious. If I knew lunch was going to be that good I would have skipped out on the eggs, jerked sausage, bacon and hashed browns I had for breakfast this morning(thanks frozen food isle). Lets hope the food doesn't haunt me like the last time I went out with my father to lunch at Dragon Court(where I spotted a roach) three weeks ago which gave me the runs for the next few days. They claimed the food was that much more tastier and left with big smiles since it was my turn to treat and I footed the bill. I've had my eye on Ambrosia recently maybe we can go there next but it's so hard to leave the tested and proven Terra Nova.

One topic at lunch brought up by my sister was my apparently my ability to properly budget and manage money. Apparently she says she is getting old(late late 20's :p) and needs to settle down with this aspect of her life. She wanted a copy of my GnuCash to run on her mac laptop.. and she wonders why she has no money. Anyway GnuCash and its double entry book keeping system isnt for everyone so to spare her that pain and my pain of getting it installed on her OSX I recommended that she use one of the many free money management sites out there. Coincidentally recently I was helping Noodle set up and track her budget so all the following links were fresh in my browser.

• Buxfer - Good for keeping track of budgets and shared expenses such as shared rent/utility bills among room mates.
• ClearCheckbook - Haven't used it yet but it looks good from the tour.
• Expensr - also looks promising from the tour.
  

Also for y'all windows users I guess there is Quicken and MS Money if your willing to spend some cash on them. I also think the with the latest release of GnuCash they have ported it to windows.. I can't vouch for that one but I can say the unix branch is a stable solid piece of software.

H.E. Pennypacker move over

Some people make small budgets in their heads or on spreadsheets. I find that to be boring as the real advantages of keeping track of ones spending comes from the reports which will only be generated from a proper finance tool such as MS Money, Quicken or GnuCash(my fav. open source alternative) and as such I normally knock out expense reports on a monthly and quarterly basis. It doesn't take much to maintain, I just keep my receipts and sometime on the weekend I reconcile and update the books.

I started doing this in 2005 and now have a few years of data to work with. I must say I am pleased with the insight these reports provide, the chart above shows a quick overview of my income vs spending and I have highlighted the results from the 2nd quarter of 2005 2006 and 2007. There are a few more weeks left in this quarter but I don't expect the figures to change much, I also used conservative income estimates so if anything it should change for the better.

One thing that pops out at looking at that chart is that my expenses for 2007-q2 is the same as 2005-q2.. who said your expenses grows as your income grows? Well according to the reports my opex(utilities, car, food) spending has increased as expected, I have no control over inflation but since I started generating and reviewing my detailed quarterly expense reports I think I have clamped down on unnecessary capex.

These reports are always at the back of my mind I was drooling over some 44" plasma TVs the other day but decided to delay such purchases till the end of the year if there is any surplus in the budget. Last year I was drooling 26" LCD TVs but the car incident sopped up that surplus so hopefully nothing terrible happens between now and the end of the 4th quarter *knocks on wood* and there is also a surplus.

Do other people budget and plan like me or am I the only Pennypacker in blogsphere?

Last week..

Last week was a bit busy for me.. lets look at the highlights

THE DIRTY COP:
Monday morning I decided to work at office #2 and upon pulling up in front of the building at 8:30am I got a call from my boss saying there will be nobody at office #1 so that's were I should be, I just made a u-turn and drove down to the other office to please the bigger heads. Upon settling in at the other office I brought up the JSE stock ticker and saw a stock I've been eyeballing take a big plunge due to poor quarterly results just published, I grabbed my check book and ran off to the stock brokers to buy buy buy lol. Now on my drive back to the office some police stopped me because I didn't come to a complete stop at a stop sign. He said he was going to write me up a $4000.00 ticket and give me 6 points, I didn't argue.. the sign didn't say slow, it said stop so I am guilty and was willing to face the consequences.

As usual this cop didn't start writing the ticket, he had money on his mind but I was to busy to notice cause I was some what floating on a high from my recent investment and just wanted to reach back to my office before all hell breaks loose. So he went on jibber jabbering and eventually I heard "OK I will let you off with a warning" and gave me back my license and papers. Normally at this point in time I just grab them and go, the last time I walked off while the cop was still trying to imply I give him something for his pardon but this time this cop was bold. I guess the blackberry on my hip, the treo in my hand and the checkbook on my front seat fooled him but he asked for money as I was walking back to the car?? Today was his lucky day.. I was in a very good mood lol so I took out my wallet and gave him $100 lol I'm not sure what that can buy but it's a lot better than the alternative of me reporting him.

THE CHANGES AT WORK:
My company moved my section out of I.T. into some managed services division a few months ago, it was just a paper change as my job function would remain the same for the most part or so I thought. Before I was a enterprise server admin focusing on Unix, vms and supporting data centre infrastructure, now apparently we will also be responsible for windows, Linux, voip services, database admin and networking. I now feel like we will be a Jack of all trades but master of none. This move isn't completely bad though as I doubt more than 5 companies out here would be able to use my current skills as an enterprise server admin so if I am looking for another job the market will be more open for me :D. Hopefully I wouldn't be on the job hunt soon, I luv my company. I was looking at my pay slip for this month and couldn't find how much I was getting paid, none of the numbers made sense until I realized I got a raise(thank you union) and they paid the bonus I mentioned before... I wasn't expecting it till next month, a nice surprise for me.

THE LAMEST CAR SHOW:
The place was empty, there wasn't much to look at and there were no hot girls as advertised but what would the lamest car show be without the lamest car? Enter Chery QQ, stage left:

This car has been creating a small stir in the Jamaican market recently, I would never buy it.. it looks so gay. I also looked up the crash test rating on it and it didn't do so well as expected, it's so tiny a bicycle man could crash into you and you'll get crushed to death.
All wasn't lost though as they had a few cars there that actually caught my eye. I am not a fan of SUVs in general but if I had money to burn then this is probably what I would be driving :D one can only dream :(

Money efficient

One of my once close friend's birthday is this weekend, so a few weeks ago I saw her online and asked her what she was doing and what she wanted for her birthday the reply was nothing and not sure respectively. I told her to give me an idea of what she wanted(I knew it should be entertaining) and of course the next day she sent me her wish list lol.

1. a camera
2. a new cell phone
3. shoes
4. a nice hand bag
5. DVDs
6. 2GB jump drive
7. a book (she said if I got the book I needed to supplement it with something else.. like item 5)

I was expecting the outcome to be funny but she out did herself, the list went to 10 but I had to cut it off there.. she even started pasted links such as what type of phone I should get. I had to point out to her that phone wouldn't even work with her current mobile provider which just goes to show her desiderative greed. I was initially going to get her a gift certificate for a day at a spa but her wish list has changed my mind and shes probably just going to get a card.

I'm not downgrading her gift cause I'm cheap money efficient, there is good logic and a background story to this chick. She lived in the lap of luxury when she was going to school spending her mother's money getting everything her little heart desired(also bankrupting her mother in the process). She finished university and got a job that didn't pay too well and her mother pulled out the teat from her mouth and life gave her one big slap out of the lap of luxury back to reality.

She couldn't go to the hair dresser every week, shop for clothes or whatever girls buy, etc.., she was broke as a joke. Being the prudential financial advisor I like to imagine myself to be I guided her throughout her hardships helping her manage her income/expenses/credit card debt and it was all good, her books were balanced and not in the negative. She eventually got a good job last year and claimed to be managing fine now that she had extra money, I stopped paying attention to her finances as she seemed to be getting by on her own with the better pay.

That was 1 year ago, she is now jobless as her 1 year contract ended Friday gone. My basic calculations of her take home salary tells me that she should have paid off her school fee(she was pursuing her MBA in finance.. the irony) and be in good financial standings over the last year, this is not the case though. Last month she called me asking for assistance in getting her DSL back up as it was disabled due to her outstanding bills. She asked me to log on to her bank account and pay the bills then contact the ISP to get the service reactivated, I obliged. Her bank's dashboard showed me a very empty savings account and two maxed out credit cards both of which had late payment fines with growing interest on the outstanding balances... wtf. I ignored and payed her bill and got the internet service reactivated and spared her the lecture on being responsible.

How is it possible that the girl dig herself into such a hole in such a short period of time? I washed my hands of her after her long distance BF came to visit her for three months and she refuses to see my points on how unhealthy there relationship is for her. She claimed she tried to break up with him 3 times in January after I spoke to her about it but he didn't accept it. He is now back in that other country probably with the other girl he lives with(just for sex and to assist him in getting citizenship according to him) over there and now she is here by herself engaged to get married to him next year... I kept my comments to myself.

In the weeks after looking at her bank accounts she called and I learned that not only did she have credit card debt but she also took out a loan and still have tuition outstanding. Not to point any fingers here but it is my assumption that her dilemma is also assisted by her bum of a fiance who is full of crackpot schemes. I am not being mean, I have never met the man, I am just repeating how I've heard her refer to him previously.

EDIT---
It seems I went off into a rant there for a bit.. all of the above was written on Friday, it's now Sunday and her birthday has passed lets just wrap up this post. I had to write about this because most of her list violated my gift giving policy for girls which clearly states not to buy something for a girl she can't afford herself, hence she got a birthday Hallmark card. Of course there are subclauses that allows for exceptions in cases where the girl is responsible but life deals them a bad hand and hence can get a nice expensive gift but this is not the case for my friend.

Jamaica: the land of Kleptocracy

I was looking at this bit of money that normally litters my desk and I got to reminiscing of the days $2 JMD could buy me lunch and have change, I may have been young but I can still remember. Fast forwarding to current times it requires at least $200 to get something worthy of being called a meal.. why is this? I blame the government!

I many not know much about politics, economics or accounting but I know this government is running their country into the ground. The government is currently operating at $900+ billion in the red with them quick to borrow more to finance the next fiscal year's budget, how can they spend money each year that they don't have? They need to take a page out of Barbados' book.. I can see us reaching Zimbabwe's level in the future.

Where does the money go? into the prados and fat pockets of the politicians and their friends. I pay my 16.5% gct, 25% income tax, 1-40% cess/stamp duties, transfer taxes... for what? for them to take $2 billion out of the people's pension funds. These crooks should be held and charged for the injustice they have done to Jamaicans as the head of any other company would be prosecuted by its stakeholders if they ran their company into red.

.. don't mind my ramblings.

The Bulls are rallying $$$ :-D

The JSE has shot up quite a bit these past few days as the trends predicted and I am smiling all the way to the bank. I swear investment is my second calling, if I could turn back the hands of time and didn't have a successful career as a systems administrator I would have set my goals out to be an investment analyst, stock broker.. something big in that industry. I guess I can use this to pay the insurance excess for my damaged car, the universe has balanced itself out.

I saw an interview on CNBC with Warren Buffett about his 38 billion USD charity donation, its old news but new to me, and I was inspired. The new plan is to get rich, buy a yacht, build a deck, grow old then donate the majority of my money to some charities.