Dear Interwebs

[Luet]

Yeah, right? We haven't had a house phone in over 5 years. I guess that's why I can't imagine not having a cell phone.

[Syphon the Sun]

Some interesting data:

Percentage of 18-24 year olds living in households with only cellphones: 37.8%.
Percentage of 25-29 year olds living in households with only cellphones: 48.6%.
Percentage of 30-34 year olds living in households with only cellphones: 37.2%.

I imagine these numbers (particularly the first set) would be higher if you removed people who lived with others outside that age bracket (like an 18 year old living with his 50 year old parents).

[Eaquae Legit]

I wouldn't mind ditching my cell, but right now I'm just too mobile.

[jotabe]

Over here home phone is packaged with internet connection, so there isn't much of a choice.
Well, Vodaphone packages it with the mobile phone, which is quite more expensive.

[Jayelle]

Canadians still have home phones? Weird.

Haha. I suppose lots of people use a cell as a home phone, but our apartment needs a home phone to let anyone in the door.

Also... we'd have to have two phones, since there are two of us and that's too expensive for us.

[Rei]

I quite prefer having my cell phone right now. I'm simply not home enough for a landline to be practical at this point in my life.

[megxers]

Dear Interwebs,

How many jobs should you list on your resume? Is it okay to leave off ones that were semi-recent if they have no relevance? At what point though, should ones that ARE semi-relevant be phased off because they are years old? THANK YOU.

[Syphon the Sun]

I generally leave off anything that's not relevant. If there's a gap that needs to be explained between relevant jobs, however, I'd suggest adding something along the lines of "Other" at the bottom of the work experience, and then listing companies and dates (and maybe title, but certainly not a full job description).

[megxers]

[woops double post. silly internet connection]

[megxers]

Thanks. Yeah, I'm worrying about gaps, but the more I think about it, I don't think there's that much of one even if I'm super diligent about dropping ones. But it is amazing how much things can be stretched to relevancy....

[GS]

I agree with Syphon about the gaps. They will always bring up questions. And stretching things to relevancy might not be a bad thing. I have a tech job that involves zero customer/client interaction. But they loved that I had experience working in customer service type roles during the interview. And I was nervous about leaving that stuff on there. It was more for the fact that I didn't want gaps.

[Jayelle]

Dear Pweb,

Someone explain Tumblr to me like I'm an idiot.

[megxers]

Dear Pweb,

Someone explain Tumblr to me like I'm an idiot.

I mostly use it to snag graphics to use as desktop wallpaper. People post pictures & or text/music/etc in "micro blogs" or something? I've had one two years and still don't see the point. (Also, you can change your layout & such but its kind of pointless since you view everything through your "dashboard" which boring)

[Rei]

I have a friend here who loves it and she has told me that someday soon we will sit down and she will explain tumblr to me and why it is so amazing and how to use it. When that day has come, I will pass on that knowledge to here, unless someone else who loves it beats me to it!

[fawkes]

Dear Pweb,

Explain Reddit to me.

[steph]

I am looking for a dress that can double as a gown for our upcoming "Gone With the Wind" Prom and to add to my pirate repertoire. I've found 2 that I just LOVE, but I want to know what other people think. I guess I should say that i'm not even sure we can afford on at all, so I may end up buying nothing. But if I were to buy one, which one do you think I should buy, knowing me as you do. (Also, I may not listen to you, like I didn't when I named my baby. )

Which one?
Green Dress
Black Dress

[Syphon the Sun]

I like the green.

[thoughtreader]

i like the green, i'd like it even better if it was blue

[VelvetElvis]

Green all the way.

[Luet]

Sorry to be the dissenter but I like the black better.

[LilBee91]

I too prefer the black. It's a little more pirate-y while still being Gone with the Wind.

[Mich]

Black more if you ARE a pirate (although something seriously disagrees inside me with female pirates wearing big dresses) and green if you aren't, I suppose. I like the green one better, overall.

[steph]

Black more if you ARE a pirate (although something seriously disagrees inside me with female pirates wearing big dresses) and green if you aren't, I suppose. I like the green one better, overall.

Pirates often kept the finery of clothing when pillaging to wear later to show off status. In our "pirate crew", Brian is Captain, which makes me the Captain's wench. He would keep the finest of the dresses for me, to show off his status. The black dress would be such a dress, in my mind. The green dress would is more of the kind that maybe I would have worn as the rich merchant's daughter, before I ran off with a pirate. I would probably wear it without the white underskirt sometimes (pants instead), depending on the "formality" of the "event".

[Petra456]

I love the green dress!

[VelvetElvis]

Black is for mourning in the South.

[fawkes]

I like the criss-cross ribbons on the black dress.

[steph]

I still can't decide!!! I think the black one would be more overall useful; pirate, renaissance festival, etc. But my heart aches to not get the green one, since it's so awesome. I really want both. This is such a rare problem for me. I usually buy nothing at all because I don't love things enough. (I have to love it to buy it.) Now I love 2 and it's hard for me!!

[Young Val]

Steph, I do love the green best. Mostly because I think that the criss crossing ribbons on the neck of the black one would drive me nuts if I were the one wearing it, personally. But I do think both are lovely and would look great on you! If you do end up buying one, please take pictures when you wear it!

(Wow, um, what follows is like the longest post ever. Forgive me).

Dear Pweb,

How do you handle your money? I know money is a private, personal, emotionally-charged thing, so I'm not asking for specific details like how much you make or spend or save. I'm more interested in your systems, if any, especially for people who are contributing to a household, be that with your spouse or SO, your roomate, or your family.

Personally, I grew up in money-hell. I don't want to get into details, but money was a large factor in my parents' divorce, and in some huge, huge problems between my mother and myself. I have this strange duality about money where I am both insanely cautious and meticulous about it, and then can go off in total fits where I feel like I'm just throwing it away by the fistful. The gap between the two closes ever tighter as I get older, and now I'd say I have a pretty good grip on my money and where it's going. I have an excel spreadsheet that contains my monthly budget. I budget every last dime of my paycheck and try to keep as accurate an account of my expenses as I can. I admit, I get lazy about this. I really should update my spending in the spreadsheet every day, but usually it happens once a week. And SOMETIMES if I'm REALLY lazy, I tote it all up at the end of the month, which sucks, as I'm usually sitting in a pile of receipts punching numbers into my calculator and driving myself insane. So I try not to let it get to that point.

I have a significant amount of student loan debt that has been through every stage of good standing, deferment, and yes, default. There's a reason for the default (though not an excuse) but I'm not going to share that. My student loans are all now in good standing and have been for the last few years. It is my intention to never allow them to be otherwise again. I do not have, and have never had, any credit card debt.

David grew up in a family with even more financial difficulties than I did. He, personally, inherited a small fortune when he turned 18. He spent all of it over the next few years. He was young and basically had no real comprehension of how much money he really had (a LOT) or what to do with it. He bought some boy stuff (a brand new cadillac he got rid of just a few months later). He invested some. He put some of it toward school (undergrad and grad) but mostly he traveled. He lived in Korea for two years and in Germany for one, and spent six months wandering all around Europe besides. He has more student loan debt than I do, and 3 credit cards with no current balance (he pays off all his purchases right away). He has the highest credit score of anyone I've ever known. He starts school again in August and so will have even more student loans to add in. His salary is double mine.

Since I've known him, David has always been very good with his money, keeping a rough tally in his head, always paying off his bills, always knowing his current balance. But he never really kept track anywhere. And never saved anything. This used to drive me quietly insane. He is a spender (though not an extravagant one. He never, ever lives beyond his means) and a spontaneous one. Whereas if I don't keep meticulous track of every penny, everything just implodes for me. I also am determined to build up savings. Even if I'm only putting $20 in there at a time, that's $20 more than was there before. Over time David became more interested in my method. He asked to see my budget and I showed it to him. He took it and modified it, making it waaaaaaay more useful (I use his version now) and started bugeting and saving for himself and was amazed at the results. He's now pretty obsessed with it, and arguably tracks his expenses far more carefully than I do (although I'm still the better saver).

Currently, we live like roomates. We have separate bank accounts and split everything 50/50. Usually, this means that David makes all the outright purchases, given that he has more money on hand, and I write him a check for my half at the end of the month. We've been living together for just about 2 years now, and this is how we've always handled our household expenses. It has worked well.

When we first moved to Minnesota we rented a UHaul to drive out here. David put it on his credit card so we could conserve cash. Likewise, when I was unemployed last winter, David paid for everything himself (he makes more than enough for us to live on, thankfully). In both cases, when I had a steady income again, I paid him back in installments over a couple of months.

The Minnesota state government is going to shut down next week (I'll rant about that elsewhere) and David and I will both be temporarily laid off as of July 1st (yes, this does put my plans to open an agency on hold. More about that elsewhere, too). We have been talking about how we're going to deal with our expenses in the face of that, and the plan is pretty much the usual. David will put things on his card, we'll conserve cash for rent, I'll pay him back when money is coming in again.

But this has also led us to start tentatively (very tentatively) talking about combining our income.

It if were solely up to me, it would look like this: All money that comes into the household is OUR money. No matter who makes what. No matter if one person is working or not. Likewise, all debts are OUR debts. It doesn't matter to me that student loans were incurred before we met. That education is going to help us as far as getting jobs, raises, things that the household will benefit from NOW, regardless of the fact that the loans were taken on THEN. We would have a joint checking and a joint savings account, and would continue to use our excel spreadsheet budget, updated to reflect the single household expenses and savings. David would probably be in charge of the day to day expense tracking, since he is naturally more inclined to be on top of that than I am. I would still have full access to look at the spreadsheet at any time. I would be in charge of our savings, namely, insisting that we have some. All expenses, rent, bills, groceries, loan payments, etc. Would come out of the joint checking account.

Also, anything we spend together. Eating out, movies, dates of any kind, would also come out of the joint account. A set amount would be budgeted for this every month, naturally (We essentially do this now, just split 50/50).

We would also get pin money each month. Basically, an allowance. We can do whatever we want with that money. Spend it. Save it. Donate it to charity. Burn it. Whatever. If I go out for coffee with a pal, that comes out of my pin money. If David wants a new fishing rod? Pin money.

The pin money would vary. In hunting season, David might need more pin money to buy new gear or ammunition or something, and so his pin money might be higher that month. Or it might be planting season, I might get more pin money than usual to buy my seeds and potting soil, etc. Or we might be broke and neither of us gets anything. The allowances are variable, depending on how much disposable income we have, and what our needs are. Our main goals, in my mind, would be paying down debt and building up savings.

Of course, it's not just up to me. And if we ever do combine finances, it may not be until we're engaged, or even married.

I guess I'm just wondering how other people handle this. Do you split your expenses according to earner percentage (60/40)? Do you you track your money? Do you fly by the seat of your pants? What does or doesn't work for you? How do feel about sharing income? Now or in the future?

[steph]

I'll probably miss some questions, but I'll make some points about our finances.

-Well, since I'm a stay-at-home mom, our finances are completely combined. Actually, they were completely combined before I stayed home.

-We are not good about tracking each thing we spend; I do need to be better about that.

-We have a spread sheet for our monthly bills and each pay check, I calculate what needs to be spent on those bills. Then I put our set amount into our debit account for all spending (groceries, gas, sports for the kids, clothes, day trips, etc.). Once the money is gone for the pay period, it's gone. (unless it's a true emergency, like needing to replace our brakes this week, then we transfer from savings). Whatever we have on the pay check that is above the amount for bills and spending we put first toward our emergency fund (our goal, eventually, will be 3-6 months of salary), then into our "fun" savings account for vacations or "toys."

-Brian and I are both easy going about sometime one or the other needing to spend more of the money. If one of us was "jealous" about such things, I think we'd need to have allowances.

-Being unemployed several years ago really screwed up our financial situation. Having to put every day expenses on CCs and not being able to pay them off, combined with getting in the habit of using CCs was not good! We've been working VERY hard to get our debts paid off. An inheritance from Brian's grandparents really helped us get in a better place. We should be debt-free (minus the house....that's a different kind of debt) by next year.

-Ummm...I can't think of any more right now.

[Luet]

I guess I'm just wondering how other people handle this. Do you split your expenses according to earner percentage (60/40)? Do you you track your money? Do you fly by the seat of your pants? What does or doesn't work for you? How do feel about sharing income? Now or in the future?

Heh, I'm glad we don't split expenses according to how much each of us earn...since I don't work.

But seriously. Mark makes all the money and I manage the money. Our total income is more than double what it was when we first got married (14 years ago), so comparatively finances are much less stressful now. The early years were pretty tough but we never had debt and I was always good with our money. We just lived very frugally.

My system is this: I have an excel spreadsheet with each bill listed by date. I don't pay things at the DUE date because that's too stressful, but I pay them soon after the bill comes. Almost all my bills are emailed to me and paid either automatically or electronically. So, I have the bills listed in excel by date. I then list the dates that Mark gets paid and I check off which bills will get paid with which checks, so that I won't get surprised with multiple large bills out of one check. Further down on the spreadsheet, I list the other expenses (food, shopping, doctors, etc.) and add them into the bills list to get a total expense amount. I always want to know that it's well below what his income is. The way I come up with the figure for those other expenses is kind of tedious. Once or twice a year, I will go through the last three months of my checkbook and write down every single entry into categories - eating out, groceries, gas, shopping, etc. And then average out each category per month to see what I'm actually spending. I also add in amounts from my credit card (see below). I've gotten so used to my system that I only really check in on the spreadsheet occasionally now; maybe make a few adjustments here and there. Mostly I just pay the bills and fill in the checkbook.

I'm not good about savings, which I need to work on. We have a few hundred dollars in our savings account, which is always there "just in case" but I never add to it. We do have a small mortgage on our mobile home and I always figure it's better to put any extra money towards that, rather than into savings. I hope to have the mortgage paid off in a little over 5 years (instead of 10).

We do have a credit card that we use mostly for gas and groceries because we get cash back from it. We've gotten over $300 in the last year! But I pay it off every month. If we use it for a big trip, like we just did, sometimes it takes me a couple months to pay it off but never more than that.

I go to my bank (credit union) online every couple days and write down everything that has come out of my checking account. That way I don't have to save every receipt from using my debit card. I do love my credit union. There are no fees for anything unless you use an outside ATM.

As far as buying stuff goes, we really trust each other so it's never really an issue. If it's more than like $30, we probably will talk about it first, just to make sure the other one is okay with the purchase.

So, that's probably more than you wanted to know but hope that helps.

[Young Val]

Nomi, I just switched to a credit union (My first ever bank account was through my mother's credit union, then when I became independent I switched to big banks. HATED them). Just this week closed out my old bank account and am now operating fully with my credit union. SO much happier!

[steph]

I may need to switch to a credit union. Our bank just added monthly maintenance fees for checking accounts that don't have auto deposit. I don't want auto deposit in my spending account because I want flexibility to transfer when the checks come, not on a scheduled date every month. Besides, it's a lot harder to see how much Brian's pay check is if I have to go to 2 different accounts and add the total. I want to be able to glance back through our checking account and see what the paychecks were in full, dang it!

I forgot to add in my post that we do have a set amount that automatically transfers to savings every month. Some months I have to pull it straight back in order to pay bills, but some months it builds enough that I can pay cash for a new washer/dryer set.

[Luet]

Evil banks and their evil fees.

[Syphon the Sun]

One of my wife’s rules is that I’m “in charge” of our finances, because I can keep a better tally of what we have, what we’ve spent, and what we have coming due in my head at all times. And financial stuff doesn’t stress me out as much. But all income is our income and all debts are our debts. We have a joint checking account and a joint savings account. Our paychecks are deposited in one or the other. Usually checking, because neither of us make a lot, but we’ve built up a pretty decent emergency fund (some of which will be depleted in August when I move to a new city to start a new job, but which I plan to “repay” as I can).

We pay for everything with credit cards (except student loan payments, which are electronically deducted from our checking account), so we can get “rewards” for purchases we’d be making, anyway. The balances are typically paid off 2-4 times a month (it’s just easier for us that way, and we avoid interest charges because nothing ever sits unpaid for more than 20 days).

I also started using Mint a few months ago. It works for us because we don’t really use cash for anything. I like it because it lets you analyze what % of your expenditures are going to what category, etc. My budget has always been in my head, but I can put it into Mint and (assuming the credit card inputs the charge under the right category) let it do the work for me. I haven’t given up my method, but I like having my head-budget double-checked with the Mint budget.

We don’t do “pin money” every month, but we do have a little extra spending money each month that we can spend together, or spend with the other’s approval. I might get a new bluray one month, or she might get crafting supplies, or we might go visit people for a few days. And around birthdays, Christmas, and our anniversary, we budget a little extra for gifts (typically with a specific dollar amount that the gift(s) cannot exceed).

Each of us also gets around $500-$600 every year as gifts from her well-off grandmother (half for birthday, half for Christmas). Each person gets that money to spend on whatever they want. Sometimes we decide to pool our Christmas money to buy something or go somewhere. Our birthdays are so far apart that by the time mine rolls around, her birthday money is gone, and vice versa. (Though I’m still not used to/comfortable with getting that much money as a gift, so some of mine usually ends up going towards bills.)

As for the future, the goal is to have one of us make enough to live on and the other use their earnings to pay down debt and build up savings. I have no idea what we're going to do when we start trying to have kids. Hopefully we'll have enough extra disposable income, and enough debt paid off, that it won't matter.

ETA: I guess I should add that we have a "local" bank, where the people are friendly and know us, and don't charge any fees (except NSF checks and whatnot, which we haven't had to experience, thankfully).

[Syphon the Sun]

Also, for those who don't know their credit score, Quizzle, owned by Quicken Loans, will give you a free copy of your credit report and your free credit score without requiring you to sign up for monthly tracking, pay any fees, enter your credit card or social security number, etc.

(Found through today's Lifehacker. I had never seen my score until today.)