Finances are Hard, but they’re harder when you’re stupid

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Earlier this year, I was wandering around wishing sometimes that finances wouldnt involve such difficult choices.  Of course, I quickly realized that the fact that I even had these choices to make was a blessing.  I’ve been not wanting to write this post for the better part of a year, mainly because it’s filled with some pretty extreme examples of my stupidity – even a few things that I didnt see coming.  These are probably the dumbest things I’ve done (financially) for the last 12 months.  Lots of these things I initially attributed to the house search/marathon training, etc but once those were over, they kept coming.  Here they are, listed in no particular order:

  1. About a year ago, I went to do some field work for my job.  We were just getting ready to close on the house, and had a final walk through scheduled for 4pm on the day that I was supposed to get back.  I left my hotel early in the morning, assuming that the “express” checkout worked just like it did at all the other locations at this chain.  I simply left as normal, and expected them to check me out like they normally did.  Unfortunately they didnt, and when I called and asked what the deal was, they said that I was still in the room (not true) so they charged me an extra night.  There wasnt really much I could do about it, so I just paid it and moved on.  Approximate cost $100.
  2. It seems like just when I think that I remember to turn in my library books on time, I get a letter in the mail saying that I need to turn in a book.  This seems to happen all the time to me, and I thought I had it fixed by inputting a calendar entry for when the books are due.  Seems like sometimes I forget to do that.
    Approximate Cost: $8, but ongoing
  3. Around tax time last year, I filed my taxes and something didnt seem right.  I had a feeling that I should owe money because of my job change, etc and turbo tax said  I was supposed to get some money back.  Well, I went ahead and filed and had someone look them over for me.  I screwed them up, so I had to go to a tax professional in town and pay her to sort everything out.  I miscategorized my 401k rollover and ended up owing 1000+ on top of getting the pleasure of paying an accountant.
    Approximate Cost: $110
  4. When we were coming back from the home improvement store with a long section of pipe that I used for working out occasionally I put it in H’s car and tapped the truck shut.  It didnt quite latch all the way, so I pushed it a bit harder and it closed.  Little did I know that the pipe was too big, and when I walked around to the front of the car, there was a nice big crack in the front windshield, exactly where the point of contact with the pipe was.  Needless to say, H was not happy with me.  We still havent gotten it fixed yet, either.
    Approximate cost: 200

Thankfully, these were mostly one-off events and I didnt need to do that much except take the hit when fixing this stuff, as it all eventually went away.

Readers: What financial mistakes have you made lately?  How bad were they, and how did you correct them?

Later always comes

Hey all my awesome RSS Readers.  If you’re using google reader, they are going to shut it down in mid june.  If you’re still interested in subscribing by RSS, Check out feedly, which is what I’ve switched too.  I’ve also got an email list, or you can like me on facebook or follow me on twitter.

H and I have been back from the wedding festivities and honeymoon for about a month (more like a year) now, and I’m starting to get back into the normal routine again, which is nice.  I feel like I basically left everything (bills, house stuff, work stuff, blog stuff, etc) alone for the better part of a month, then came back to a huge pile of stuff –  slowly, I’ve been working through it all, and I feel like I’m about half way done.  Unfortunately, it’s time for all of those purchases that H and I put off till “after the honeymoon” to happen, and we are spending a boatload of money on house stuff and other stuff that we need to finish projects and move upstairs (finally).  It’s crazy, but we are just hanging on and trying to get all of our “married stuff” sorted out (insurance, bank accounts, etc).  It feels like there’s so much stuff to do, so it’s easy to see why people put a lot of stuff like this off and never bother to do it at all.

Unfortunately, those things are important, and as I found out on the honeymoon “Later will eventually come”.  When I booked the honeymoon, I booked the flights and the tour in november, and basically waited until later to deal with the rest – which I had kept telling myself that it wouldn’t be that big of a deal.  Eventually, “later” came, and we were still trying to find places to stay and flights right before we left!  There were places to stay we needed in tokyo, and bangkok, as well as a flight to tokyo from bangkok that we didnt book.  I had always just put it off and was hoping to make some time for it, but I didnt until my hand was forced – I think we ended up spending a bit more money and wasting some time because of this.

The flight we used miles for, and it cost us each 15k miles and 22 bucks, while a comparable ticket was around ~1300 per person, so we saved a ton there.  I think the hotels could have been a little cheaper, and I know we would have been able to see a lot more stuff in bangkok because we didn’t get to the river express boat until 2 hours before closing – which was crappy, but that is just what it was.  We still got to see a ton of cool stuff.

Now, it’s back to getting together and figuring out how we want to run our finances, insurance and our lives from this point forward.  H still has some name changing stuff to deal with, and we really cant do much until that is all finished.  She seems to have had a relatively easy time doing all of that, except for the requisite super long line at the local DMV.  I’ve only been married 3 weeks, but it has been pretty awesome so far – we’ve gotten a lot of stuff done with the house, and we are almost at a point where we can move upstairs!  I’ll share more pictures right before we do that, of course.

Readers: did you ever spend a teeny bit too much and regret it when the bill came?  

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Hey all my awesome RSS Readers.  If you’re using google reader, they are going to shut it down in mid june.  If you’re still interested in subscribing by RSS, Check out feedly, which is what I’ve switched too.  I’ve also got an email … [Continue reading]

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