Rae Has an Upswing

So I'm sure that reading this blog has been a little depressing of late. Posts admitting that I'm not doing well, etc. But this month has been going... weirdly well. I'm kind of baffled. And the fact that it seems to be a good result of my efforts, rather than raw luck, makes it even more baffling.

Something I did.... paid off?

Okay, so I had 2 medical bills left over from my ER visit when I had the miscarriage. It was just the last bits that finally finished the billing process - you know how long those things can take. They totaled to about $200 that I hadn't budgeted for. I did have enough in my checking account to pay them off of course, and initially I kind of borrowed it from my unallocated funds that should have gone toward next month's budget. To be honest, I was very fortunate that my work insurance covered the more than $4k it would have been otherwise. But wait, there's more!

I saved $138 on my phone bill budget by switching from Sprint to Google Fi as I mentioned a few posts ago. No joke - by using wifi and being data-conscious while away from wifi, we ended up spending just about $25/phone after taxes and fees. So our phone bill was $50 for the month instead of $188 or even the $80 or so we expected.

I also got my deposit back on my natural gas by being in my apartment for a year - an unexpected windfall which negates my $25 monthly bill for almost 3 months.

Just those two things almost cover the medical bills.

Then I got my first bi-monthly paycheck on the 15th. My raise went through, and it looks like my take-home pay is going to be $160/month more than previously. So the unexpected expenses are now completely covered and then some.

And then, something I did not mention on my previous post - Corey got the job! It's full time but it is a small business, so he does not get benefits - but he is still overwhelmingly happy there. He also put in some training hours at the new job while offboarding at the old job, so his paychecks are going to be increasing either way.

Phew. Looks like we finally get to start saving something again. Now I just need to lose some weight and work on getting my credit card bonus money without overspending on the credit card. I may also look into selling platelets since it's for a good cause and doesn't take a lot of effort, and I'm also trying to get our annual gift-giving, like Christmas and birthday presents, organized so that we can buy things on sale and set up crafted items to give instead of spending a lot of money or making last-minute purchases.

It's a lot, but... hey. If it works, it works.

Rae Gets a CC

So in general, I have not been a big fan of credit cards. I ended up doing your typical college sign-up and over-charge and pay a lot of interest. We no longer carry a balance on the one card I've had for 12 years, so I've been happy with just using it for things that you can only use credit cards for.

Recently, I wanted to verify that my single credit card's balance is 0 recently (I've had times where I thought it was 0 but I really owed a couple of cents that kept gaining 29% interest and accruing late fees) and out of curiosity clicked on the free credit report. My credit was lower than I expected. And one of the main reasons was that I don't have enough credit, even if the revolving credit I do have is unused and I have a history of years of on-time payments.


With that thought in mind, and wanting to build my credit a bit if I can, I went looking for answers. According to Reddit, if you have a higher credit limit, even if it's unused, that can contribute toward a higher score. So having another credit card might be good. Okay, cool. I also poked around Mr. Money Mustache... and found the concept of credit card churning.

Now, I was skeptical about whether this would be good for my life. Still am. We also don't travel a lot, though that's more because of the financial blocks than anything else. But I found a credit card that gives a $150 cashback bonus if you spend $500 in the first 3 months, along with general cashback that would be more than the $0.10 per purchase that my debit card gives. My other credit card gives nada for rewards.

I applied and I was approved immediately. I also checked, and Corey could apply as well. So... really, why not?

I still don't like the concept of churning, though. I feel like it might be safer to take it one card and one step at a time, mostly because of our spending habits and a fear of reprisal for "manufactured spending." But if we pick the best reward, get the card, earn the reward, and do it again in 3-5 months or so to keep it from hurting our credit too badly... well, it could be kinda neat. And if a cashback card saves us more money on the purchases we would have made anyway, that's an extra hundred or so per year in our pockets. Maybe we'll even get one of those airline cards and go on more trips or something. It could be good for us.

Oh, I also bought a drying rack, also per MMM's suggestion. More on that later.

Rae Finds the Weight vs Money Link

One of the things I've been wondering about for a while is whether losing weight will actually, realistically save money. I know that in an overall sense, being overweight causes healthcare issues that not being overweight would prevent. My back pain is a big part of that, and I'm a little nervous about the looming concept of diabetes, though I've never been tested. It's always been kind of abstract, though.

But here it is. I finally found something concrete. The whole article is worth a look, but here's what it boils down to:

The overall, tangible, annual costs of being obese are $4,879 for an obese woman and $2,646 for an obese man. The overall annual costs of being overweight are $524 and $432 for women and men, respectively. For both genders, the incremental costs of obesity are much higher than the incremental costs of being overweight. 

Adding the value of lost life to these annual costs produces even more dramatic results. Average annualized costs, including value of lost life, are $8,365 for obese women and $6,518 for obese men. 

That is a lot of money. A lot of money. Basically, by going from obese down to normal weight over the next year, I'll get a $4879/year raise. That's 50 bucks paid annually per pound I lose. A dollar per 70 calories burned.

Investing $4879/year with compound interest at a 7% rate would be 500k by the time I hit age 65 (thanks, online calculators). That's a retirement level amount. Seriously. Holy crap.

Kind of a nice way to look at things, and it might be the motivation I need to get back to my goal.