Your Charity Choices

Thanks again to everyone who suggested charities for me to donate to. I donated $50 each to these 10 charities randomly selected from the comments:

The Trevor Project

Planned Parenthood:

New York Public Library:

Joshua's Wish:

Donors Choose:

Doctors Without Borders:

Charity:Water:

Catholic Charities USA:

Brooklyn Animal Resource Coalition:

Americares:


Thanks again to all the loyal readers of this blog! Happy Holidays!

November 2010 Recap

It's a bit late for this, but I'll get it out of the way before I have to move on to December!

First of all, it was a big month for income: $23,536 in total. In addition to my salary, I received $15,000 as part (not all) of my inheritance from Great Aunt Minnie. (I had thought that would be the full amount, but I got another $9,000 in December. I continue to be bewildered, amazed and grateful whenever I see these numbers.)

Gift Received	$15,000
Interest Inc	$36
Salary	$8,500

As for expenses, nothing too dramatic to report. I returned a few pairs of boots I'd bought from Zappo's last month, so the clothing line is negative. Travel is high because Sweetie and I settled up what we'd spent on our vacation back in September and I owed about $800. And I started doing a wee bit of Christmas shopping.

Taxes	$2,830
Housing	$1,716
Travel	$1,066
Dining	$769
Utilities	$176
Medical	$113
Misc	$100
Gifts Given	$80
Subscriptions	$58
Household	$43
Entertainment	$26
Business expense	$9
Clothing	-$759

The net is that I saved $17,309 in November, which is pretty good even without the $15,000 inheritance.

As for my net worth, it increased $20,493 from last month (+4.47%) to $479,273.

	10/31/10	11/30/10	Var.	Var. %
Cash	$45,665	$59,662	$13,997.00	30.65%
Stocks	$49,780	$49,704	-$76.00	-0.15%
Bonds	$5,091	$5,197	$106.00	2.08%
Retirement	$282,052	$284,341	$2,289.00	0.81%
Home	$81,856	$82,223	$367.00	0.45%
Credit Card	-$5,664	-$1,854	$3,810.00	-67.27%
	$458,780	$479,273	$20,493

So far, the inheritance has just gone into cash savings, but I'll probably add some more to mutual investments soon. The only other change of note here is that I finally updated my savings bond values, which I don't do every month.

December will probably not be a big savings month, considering charitable donations and holiday gift-giving, but I think 2010 overall will look pretty good, and I should exceed my year end net worth goal even backing out the inheritance. But what's next for 2011? We'll see...
Onward and upward!

Giving (including $500 to YOUR favorite charities!)

After writing the last post, I realized that another happy effect of my sense of financial comfort is that I'm more comfortable giving generously. Of course this is the time of year when charities are asking for money, and I want to increase my donations to some of the causes I usually support. It's also when a lot of tipping goes on. I've already put much larger amounts in the office collection for the cleaning ladies than I ever have before, and I've made a list of other people I deal with regularly that I want to give something extra to as a holiday tip. I've bought small gifts for people I work with, although my office doesn't usually have a big gift-giving culture.
In past years, I found myself feeling more constrained, worrying that lots of little gifts added up too fast, and feeling grumpy about the rampant waste of holiday consumerism. I've also tended to worry about giving to charities now when there's so much uncertainty about needing to help my own family with that money later. But this year, at least, I just want to spread my good fortune more freely.
And in order to spread my giving even further, I'd like to thank the readers of this blog by donating $500 to charities you suggest-- please leave a comment about your favorite charity and why you think they deserve it. Depending on how many comments I get, I'll split the $500 into as many as 10 donations of $50 each to the charities you choose, picking random recipients if I get a lot of responses. (The $500 will come from my "personal" charitable giving, not the ad proceeds of this blog.)
I'll take suggestions until Friday Dec. 17th at 11:59 PM EST and post the final list of donations next week.

It Gets Better

You may have seen a series of videos that have been popping up on You Tube over the last couple of months with the theme "It Gets Better." They're mainly directed at teens and young adults who may be feeling suicidal because of bullying due to their sexual orientation (actual or perceived). In the videos, various celebrities such as Project Runway's Tim Gunn talk about how they struggled with the same kind of misery yet eventually got through it and lead happy lives today.

There are so many reasons that being young can suck-- you haven't figured out your life yet, you haven't figured out who your true friends are, and half the people around you who feel the same way cope with it by being really mean to anyone who seems vulnerable. But another thing that can be especially miserable for young people is worrying about money.

If I could send a You Tube video to my younger self... well, first of all, I'd only shoot it from the waist up so she wouldn't be shocked at how big her butt was going to get. But otherwise, I'd have a lot of reassuring things to say to her. When I was much younger, I didn't know what I wanted to do but had some vague sense that I'd be really awesome at whatever it was. I didn't really have any idea what that might mean in terms of supporting myself.

But by the time I graduated from college, I realized I wasn't particularly awesome at anything and had no great prospects for making money. Facing that sudden responsibility scared me to death. It wasn't that I was totally clueless about money-- I'd grown up in a family where money was always a source of anxiety, so I knew I needed to make money and save a lot of it. But in those first few years, that was so hard to do.
Then once my career started to settle in, it was easier to save, but I was aware that every year passing meant I'd have less time to reach my goals. And as I thought more and more about the realities of this country's economy and my place in it, it became harder and harder to imagine that I could ever get to a point where my financial life would feel comfortable.

But in the years that I've been writing this blog (about 5 1/2), I somehow turned a corner. I advanced in my career, bought my own home, saw my retirement savings grow a lot, and built up additional savings and investments. I watched myself like a hawk, calculating budgets and projecting various scenarios of what my net worth might be by retirement... but then I started to let it go a little, when I realized I could relax and put my finances a bit more on auto-pilot.

This is not to say that I'm somehow "done" with what I need to achieve financially. I have to keep saving, investing and increasing my earnings. A lot could still go wrong in terms of the economy and the real estate market in ways that could really set me back. I could be hurt by things I have no control over. But I finally feel like I have a good sense of my goals, and I think I can reach them. In terms of how I manage my own life, I've found a kind of balance, and what's more important, I have a faith in my ability to take care of myself that I didn't have when I was younger. Things did get better.