Tag Archives: money

Finding Ways To Treat Myself (or I Wish Money Wasn’t An Issue)

Posted on June 29, 2018 | Comments Off on Finding Ways To Treat Myself (or I Wish Money Wasn’t An Issue)

This post is similar to what I’ll be writing when I do my recap of how my monthly challenge went, but it’s a bit different. I’ve been working on reconnecting to myself and doing things that make me happy. And as I’ve been working on that, I’ve discovered one area where I’ve been not really able to work on things. And that is doing things that feel special to me or treating myself.

It may seem like I treat myself a lot because I do fun things. But most of those things are something I’ve saved up for to do (like my Pantages tickets or my Disneyland pass) or things that I get to do for free or at a discount because either I review them on here (and I will always disclose when I get a discount or free item for a review) or because I have a connection with someone who can help me out (like when I got to go to the friends and family day at Face Haus). But beyond the things that have been planned for a while or that I have a connection to, I really don’t seem to go outside of the set things I spend money on.

Of course, a lot of this has to do with lack of funding. If I had unlimited money (or significantly more money), I would not hesitate to spend on things I wanted to do. I’ve been wanting to get my house professionally cleaned recently. I don’t need a weekly or even monthly cleaning person, but I’d love to do a deep clean from someone who knows what they are doing once or twice a year. This doesn’t have to be expensive, but it’s not in my budget right now. I’d also love to either buy fresh flowers or have a delivery of fresh flowers on a regular basis. I have some friends who do this and it always seems so nice to have flowers in your home. Plus, flowers always seem to put a smile on your face, even when you ordered them for yourself. And then there are all the fun monthly/quarterly subscription boxes that so many people do and love. I have a list of ones I’d want to try if I could afford it.

All of those things are more of luxury splurges because I could be fine without any of them. But then there are the more basic splurges that I’ve been not doing either. I don’t get pedicures regularly, but I try to do it a few times a year (I have issues with my toenails sometimes and a pedicure is cheaper than an appointment with a podiatrist). I’ve been saying for almost 3 months that I was going to set aside time to go get a pedicure but I haven’t done it yet. Money is a small part of why I’ve been putting it off, but I also just don’t feel at times that I deserve it or should do it. It’s the same with buying clothes. I would love to buy the rare nicer piece of clothing that doesn’t feel as much as throwaway clothing. I’ve got some things picked out that I’d like to get and I haven’t purchased them. This one is a bit about money but also a bit about wanting to wait until I’m a different size to buy stuff. Either way, I’m delaying doing something that I’d like to do.

Obviously I can’t just go out and buy all the things I want and do all the things on my list. I do need to budget and find where the money is in my budget to spend. And some of these things may need to be something I save a few dollars a month for and then later this year I can do it. But I’m also looking at adding another job to what I’m doing. I’ve got one job that should be very part-time and won’t pay a ton of money, but I think it will cover at least my cable and power bills each month. It should be starting in the next month or two and I’m excited about it. And I’m meeting with someone soon who knows me through the podcast I work for and wanted to see if there is something that they can hire me to do. They don’t have a specific job for me to apply for, but they wanted to see if we could work together.

If I have these new jobs, they will probably fit into my schedule with my current ones. And I plan on doing them all if possible. I could use all the additional income toward my debt and then once that is eventually paid off I could reevaluate things. The priority is to pay off my debt as soon as possible, but I also know I need to allow some flexibility to have some fun money. But until I have that extra income, I think my list for how I want to spend the fun money is going to have to just stay a list for now.

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Default ThumbnailSpreading Some Holiday Cheer (or Finding Cheaper Ways To Make People Smile) Default ThumbnailWorking On Money Priorities (or What’s Worth The Splurge) Default ThumbnailGoing Back To An Old Habit (or Finding Control With Budgeting) Default ThumbnailFinding New Money Issues (or Looking At Doing A Fresh Budget) Default ThumbnailWorking on Budgeting (or Spending Money To Save Money) Default ThumbnailWorking On Money (or A Prosperous Heart Update)

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Posted in Beauty, Fun Stuff, Saving, Shopping, Tough Stuff

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Food And Budgeting (or Combining The Two Things I Often Struggle With)

Posted on April 10, 2018 | Comments Off on Food And Budgeting (or Combining The Two Things I Often Struggle With)

I’ve written several posts about my struggles with food. And I’ve also written a lot about issues with working on a budget that is manageable and will help me pay down my debt. Both of these things are things that I struggle with a lot and it seems like whenever I get a handle on things, something changes and I have to start from the beginning again. I know there is a connection between addiction/eating disorders and debt, but the connection for me is just starting to register.

Since food is something I will always need to buy, I have to budget for it. But things change week to week on what I need so I’m much more flexible with my budget in that category. I try to stay within a budget that I set for each week, but if I have to buy food and I’ve already hit what I wanted to spend that week I still have to get food. I know that some of this extra spending is due to lack of planning, and I’m working on that. I also have realized that I’ve been letting food go to waste if I forget to eat it and that adds to my expenses. So I’ve been working on fixing both of these problems at once.

Recently my dermatologist put me on an antibiotic that I took twice a day for 2 weeks. I had to take the medication with food and I couldn’t take it at the same time as my morning medications because of issues with the antibiotic and a multivitamin. So I planned on taking it at lunchtime and dinnertime each day since that would work with taking it with food. At that same time I started working out at the Culver City Orangetheory location, which meant lots of early morning workouts. And I can’t really eat too much before a morning workout, but at the same time I can’t work out on an empty stomach. So I had to start experimenting with what I eat and when I eat.

This can totally change (because like I said, things always change when I think I finally have a handle on it), but right now it’s been working to drink a little bit of chocolate milk before my workout and then having a meal around 11am (brunch?) and then dinner. While I know that I should be eating 3 meals a day at least, this plan has been working for a bit for both my weight loss and my budget. When I only have to think about 2 meals a day, somehow it’s easier for me to meal plan. And it’s almost more like 1 meal a day because I eat pretty much the same thing each day as my mid-day meal.

I know that for some people this is a no-brainer. Eating the same thing every day is a weight loss strategy that works for many people. Having a lack of variety does work for some people, but it’s never really worked for me before. The only exception to this was when I was doing the UCLA diet when there was no variety as I had the same thing 6 times a day. But when I could choose from whatever I wanted, having a lack of variety would lead to me doing last-minute grocery store runs to get something else to eat because I was bored with the plan I had.

I don’t know if it is timing or doing the morning workouts, but the lack of variety is working for me. The number on my scale is slowly going down and I’ve been able to limit how often I need to go to the grocery store. I still have some wasted food, but it’s significantly less than it was before. And I know that if I work on planning things out a bit better, I can improve on the budgeting even more.

Even though I’ve known that my food budget was a bit out of control, things just finally clicked with me recently that I needed to work on this. It’s one of the few areas in my budget that has flexibility and I know that it is possible to eat what I need to while spending less money. Hopefully having this plan will not only keep my budget in a better place but will continue to limit how often I have to confront what I want to eat. If I don’t have to think about it, I can avoid grocery stores when I know that I am just looking for junk food to eat.

Just like every other time I think I have things worked out, I am hopeful that this may work but I am also realistic that this could just be something that is working temporarily. But I hope that whatever skills and tricks I learn while this is working are things that I can keep using even if I can’t keep up the current plan.

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Default ThumbnailTime For Some Planning (or Trying A Challenge Again This Month) Default ThumbnailRoutine Time Again (or Getting Back On Track) Default ThumbnailBudgeting and Spending (or Sharing YNAB With A Cashier) Default ThumbnailFood Scheduling (or Trying Out New Things) Default ThumbnailGetting Back To Better Food (or Finding My Own Balance) Default ThumbnailStill Figuring Out Meal Planning (or Will Food Ever Be Easy For Me?)

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Continuing To Be Inspired By Podcasts (or Turning A Passion Into A Paycheck)

Posted on April 5, 2018 | Comments Off on Continuing To Be Inspired By Podcasts (or Turning A Passion Into A Paycheck)

I’ve written about how much I love podcasts on here before. Podcasts are one of the main forms of entertainment in my life along with tv shows and reading. And while many of the podcasts I listen to are educational, there are some that I listen to just for how fun they are. But the best ones seem to be the ones that mix fun and educational.

I was listening to a new episode of a newer podcast, Bossed Up, yesterday and the most recent episode really stuck with me. Bossed Up is all about empowering yourself in whatever you do for work. For many people that means branching out on your own and becoming your own boss. But you can still be a boss at work even if you aren’t a boss by title. And a lot of this most recent episode was about feeling unqualified in a position you may hold at work. But what really connected to me was a brief part of that interview that discussed doing what you love for work.

They were talking about how sometimes you have to take chances and go for a dream job and other times you need to take a day job while you figure out what your dream job is and how you can accomplish it. You may need time to figure out how to turn your passion into a paycheck and there is nothing wrong with that. While some people are ashamed about having a day job while they are pursuing their dreams, pretty much everyone has to have a day job at some point. It’s extremely rare to not need to have a way to make money between jobs at least for a little bit of time.

I’ve never been ashamed to have day jobs. I’ve talked about them on here before and I’m always happy to talk to other people about what I do for work to support myself while I’m pursuing acting. But at the same time, I do feel like I’ve been settling in my day jobs a bit. I’ve gotten into a relatively comfortable space where I know what I need to do each day and I’m good at doing them. But things aren’t in my control like how one of my day jobs had to cut back my hours significantly. And when that happens, I’m in a bit of a tailspin trying to get out of the situation and making sure that my budget isn’t totally screwed up or that I am struggling.

This podcast episode reinvigorated me and made me really think about what I want to do as day jobs while I pursue acting. I have no intention of leaving any of my day jobs soon. Even if I found another job to do, I’d try to find a way to keep my current jobs so I could have more money to put toward paying down my credit card debt. But I would love to transition my day jobs at some point in the future.

It would be nice to have a day job that I enjoy doing instead of just tolerating at times. While it’s nice to have a ton of downtime and I can goof off while I’m getting paid when there are no customers to help, it would feel amazing to feel productive and know that I’m working. But at the same time, I need a day job that is flexible and would allow me to continue auditioning and doing other actor related things. That is not an easy combination to find which is why I am so grateful in my current situation.

But maybe it’s time to think about what I could do on my own to support myself. I do have skills that I’m not using to their full potential that I know others would probably pay me to do. I need to be a bit more aggressive about those things and seeing who would hire me. And I probably do need to strengthen those skills a bit more as well so I could be at the top of my game. But with those skills, I’m still a bit unsure on how to combine them or how to market myself to try to find work doing that.

While creating my own day job right now probably isn’t going to happen, that doesn’t mean I should just sit back and keep doing what I’m doing. I should work on building those skills and seeing what jobs are out there that are similar to what I could do. I might need to start networking myself with those skills (instead of just marketing myself as an actor). And maybe there is something I haven’t thought about or considered that I will discover and it will take me down a path I never imagined.

I really have no clue what my future holds, but I do know that I want to be more proactive and try to make some more changes to my life and my work situation. And I’m so grateful that I was listening to a podcast episode that inspired me to get my butt in gear about this.

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Default ThumbnailLive Podcast Episode (or Another Way You Can Support Me) Default ThumbnailContinuing To Find Ways To Be Creative (or Podcasts and Online Shows) Default ThumbnailUsing Podcasts To Better Myself (or Continuing To Be A Podcast Addict) Default ThumbnailSharing My Union With A Friend (or Continuing To Be Inspired And Involved) Default ThumbnailTurning Myself Into A Morning Person (or Continuing On My Productivity Kick) Default ThumbnailPodcasts and Twitter (or An Evening Out With Some Actors)

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Posted in Acting, Fun Stuff, Work

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Tax Time Again! (or It’s A Taxes Miracle!)

Posted on February 27, 2018 | Comments Off on Tax Time Again! (or It’s A Taxes Miracle!)

I’ve been getting my taxes done by Daphne at Sloan and Associates for a few years now. First of all, if you are in any creative field or have any type of nontraditional work life, I highly recommend going to Daphne or anyone else at the office for your taxes. The way she understands how to help me organize my taxes is amazing and I have learned so much from watching her work that has made me better at tracking my deductions.

Even though Daphne has been amazing with my taxes each year, I do still get nervous before going in because I never want to owe more than what I saved. And while I am pretty good with keeping track of expenses, somehow in 2017 things didn’t go exactly how I planned. I knew I screwed up a bit with my tracking of medical expenses in the beginning of the year. That’s because I was expecting to have surgery and I figured that I would hit my out-of-pocket maximum and that would be what I deducted on my taxes. But when I didn’t need surgery, I realized I didn’t track all my medical tests and things. Also, somehow I lost several receipts for meals I had that were business related. Even though those don’t add up to a ton, I like to be as perfect as possible.

So when I went to my appointment with Daphne last week, I was a bit scared that these little mistakes would cause me to owe a lot. I still felt confident that I would owe less than I saved, especially since I paid all my estimated taxes, but it’s always nice to have extra money to help with expenses (like my Pantages tickets which I just renewed). I had spent a few days before the appointment getting extra organized and making sure I had all my forms filled out to the best of my ability. Doing that makes Daphne’s job easier and that gives her time to see if there are any things I missed out on that I should be aware of for the next year. I always err on the side of caution, but because so much of doing taxes is being aware of what deductions I’m eligible for and making sure I do things right, I feel like it’s a game.

When I got to my appointment, I was pretty excited to see Daphne. She’s awesome and we always have fun, even when she’s doing my taxes. And I know she likes how organized I am and it always makes her happy that her job is easier. And just like she had the past few times, she showed me the worst-case scenario first before she put in my deductions so I could breathe a little easier knowing things would be ok. Although this year was the first year that the worst-case was actually higher than what I saved! But I knew it would be going down a lot. I had a lot of work expenses like liability insurance that I had to buy and my home office (which is usually a risky deduction, but in my work contracts it states my office is at my home).

While Daphne was entering in all my deductions and income, we also had fun chatting. She recently got a Disney pass so we were talking about how we want to have a Disney day once tax season is over. I know she’ll need some fun after doing everyone’s taxes! She’s also a musical person and I was telling her about the shows coming up. She can’t do season tickets, but she might join us for a show either this season or next.

It seemed like this year it was much quicker for Daphne to enter everything into the system for my taxes. I didn’t know if that was because I had fewer deductions than I did in the past or that things were just easier now. It did make me have a few moments of minor panic that I didn’t do a good enough job. But when she was done, she told me to look at the screen at what she was about to click on.

She was clicking on the button to say how I wanted my refund sent to me! I couldn’t believe I was getting a refund! I thought she was kidding at first and thought it was a joke, but she was totally serious! Between my estimated payments, my deductions, and the money I get back for overpaying my health insurance (my subsidy wasn’t at the right amount for my income level), I actually was getting a small refund! It was unbelievable but also proof that if I listened to what Daphne taught me each time that I could make sure that I don’t owe much (or anything) at tax time. Everyone is fearful of working 1099 jobs because you owe money at tax time, but if you do everything you are supposed to do it doesn’t have to be that way.

After everything for state and federal was done, I do technically owe a little bit. I owe $30 more in my state taxes than I am getting back in my federal refund. But even owing $30 is nothing compared to what I’ve owed in the past or what I was prepared to owe this time. I know a lot of it was because my estimated tax payments were so high, but paying it throughout the year is so much better than paying it all at once. And it saved me from owing a penalty on federal taxes as well! My estimated payments for 2018 are about what I paid in 2017, so I’m hopeful that I should be able to keep my tax bill at tax time next year low again. I don’t know if I’ll get it down so much that I get a refund (I probably won’t get the money back from healthcare as my subsidy was corrected and I shouldn’t have as much in healthcare expenses), but I am more confident in my ability to track the expenses for work so that what I save for tax time doesn’t all have to go to taxes.

I’m so happy that I do have some extra money that I wasn’t planning on. Some of it needs to go to things I have already gotten (like paying back for my Pantages tickets) and I will use some for bills and toward my credit card debt. But I do want to see if there is something else that is small but fun that I want. I’m not going to use a lot of that money, but maybe getting a purse I’ve been wanting that is not cheap or doing a fun spa day could be a nice reward for the hard work. But I might just put it all toward my debt because that is the more responsible thing to do and I want to get that number to 0 sooner rather than later.

But whatever I end up doing with the money that I have leftover from saving for taxes, I am just so glad that my hard work paid off and that I am understanding how to manage my taxes so much better now. I feel in control with taxes and understand so much more than I ever did. I know what I need to track and what expenses to be aware of. And I have Daphne to thank for that because she really took the time to make sure that when I leave each time that I don’t have any questions or confusion about why my taxes were the way they were. I know she was giving credit to me for working hard and doing all the right things last year on my taxes, but I give her the credit because she is the one who taught me how to do that.

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Default ThumbnailA Fresh Budget (or Starting Over With YNAB) Default ThumbnailFinding New Money Issues (or Looking At Doing A Fresh Budget) Default ThumbnailTax Time (or Happy To Owe The Government Some Money) Default ThumbnailIt’s Taxes Time (or Seeing My Hard Work Pay Off) Default ThumbnailNot Quite Winning At Taxes This Year (or Owing Money And Seeing Car Accidents) Default ThumbnailIt’s Tax Time (or Seeing My Tracking And Organizing Pay Off)

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Posted in Fun Stuff, Saving, Work

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Finding New Money Issues (or Looking At Doing A Fresh Budget)

Posted on February 23, 2018 | Comments Off on Finding New Money Issues (or Looking At Doing A Fresh Budget)

I’ve written about using YNAB to do my budgeting on here before. And I’ve written about doing a fresh start in the app when I felt like things weren’t moving the way I was hoping they would be. It’s been a while since I did that fresh start and things were getting much better and I was feeling so much more confident about money. My credit card debt was going down, I was saving money for annual expenses so they weren’t as overwhelming, and I felt like I was finally getting on top of things.

Unfortunately, that feeling has left me lately. I’m at a point right now where I have less in my bank account after paying my rent for next month than I’m used to. I think it’s lower than it’s been since I started using YNAB and that’s not a good feeling. I was trying to tell myself that this could be that I’m getting paid weekly instead of twice a week so I didn’t have a big paycheck recently. And I’m still waiting on a check from one job. Also, one of my day jobs recently cut back my hours by 2/3rds. They are hoping to find some other work that I can do to make up some extra hours, but there is no guarantee that I could do that.

Because I’ve been budgeting for a while now, I’m on a bit of autopilot. That can be a good thing because I don’t have to think about adding transactions to the app anymore. I just do it automatically as I spend the money. But because I’m on autopilot, I don’t think I’ve adjusted to my new income level and I have been spending the way I was when I was still working more hours. It’s a difference of about $800 a month which is a significant amount. I am looking at ways to make up that money, but so far I haven’t found another job to add to my collection.

I could just start adjusting my budget in the app to start reflecting the amounts that I should be spending in each category. I know that I could be better about meal planning so I spend less on groceries and I don’t buy as many frozen or pre-made meals (which are more expensive than just buying ingredients). And I know that I need to go through my monthly recurring charges to find what I can either cut back or eliminate completely. I can’t keep living as if I was making the same as I was before because it will put me into a really horrible financial spot.

But even though I could just be adjusting my current budget, I’m looking at doing another fresh start now too. In some ways, it would be nice to have a clean break from how my spending was before to what my spending should be like now. But on the other hand, it would be good to learn the skills I should have to adjust my budget when necessary. Money fluctuations will probably always be a part of my life and I need to be better about planning when things aren’t stable. You can’t always start over so I should know how to adjust and be flexible.

As I’m writing this, I’m about to have my taxes done (when this goes up, it will be the day after my taxes are figured out). I think that once that is done and I know how much money I will have left from my savings for taxes (hopefully I will owe less than I saved!) I can make a more educated plan on what I want to do with my budget. It may be the perfect time to have a fresh start because then I will know what my money situation will be like with what I have to spend. It is a bit tough to budget when I have one bank account that I can’t really touch except for budgeting for my taxes, so I’m thinking about eliminating that bank account from my budgeting plan. I think maybe it was misleading because I felt like I had more money than I do.

I know that budgeting needs to be a big focus of mine right now. I need to get back on the track that I was on and I can’t just believe that somehow things will work out. That’s how I got into the financial situation that I’m in right now. I was trying to believe that everything would be ok and that I didn’t have to worry about it. I was wrong. I should have worried and I regret not worrying back then. But now I am so much smarter about how I need to be in control of my money and how I am spending it and hopefully I can fix this problem quickly before it takes away the hard work that I have been doing for a while.

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Default ThumbnailGoing Back To An Old Habit (or Finding Control With Budgeting) Default ThumbnailBudgeting and Spending (or Sharing YNAB With A Cashier) Default ThumbnailA Fresh Budget (or Starting Over With YNAB) Default ThumbnailFinding Ways To Treat Myself (or I Wish Money Wasn’t An Issue) Default ThumbnailWorking On Money (or A Prosperous Heart Update) Default ThumbnailWorking on Budgeting (or Spending Money To Save Money)

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Posted in Saving, Tough Stuff

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Working On Money (or A Prosperous Heart Update)

Posted on August 17, 2017 | Comments Off on Working On Money (or A Prosperous Heart Update)

I wrote before about how the podcast I work for was going to do the 12 week journey in “The Prosperous Heart”. We just got to the end of the 12 weeks and I figured it was time to do an update.

I’ll admit that I did not follow the 12 weeks as strictly as I did with “The Artist’s Way”. The main thing I did do was the morning pages. I struggled with the morning pages when I did “The Artist’s Way” and I really didn’t enjoy them. They became something that annoyed me at the end of that journey and I really was not enjoying having my mornings start off on such a negative note. So I decided that for me, doing the morning pages wasn’t going to benefit me the way that it should so I didn’t do them.

I know that some people will argue that I didn’t really do the 12 week journey this time if I left out doing the morning pages, but that’s ok with me. I have to do what is right for me and I would rather try to do the journey the best that I can instead of not doing it at all. I did do the weekly reading and the questions at the end of the chapters, so I feel like I did a majority of the journey.

The biggest thing about this 12 week journey is to track every single penny that you spend. Since I already do that with YNAB, I figured it would be pretty easy for me to keep doing it. And fortunately it was pretty easy for me. The only annoying this was with credit card spending. I track it in YNAB and it was a bit weird to have to track it in a second location as well (for “The Prosperous Heart”, I tracked everything in a little notebook). I didn’t like having to do everything twice, but it was a minor issue.

But while I track all my credit card spending, tracking cash was a new thing for me. I was looking forward to seeing how being extra aware of my cash spending would help me out. And for the most part, I got much better about being more cautious on what I was buying. There were a few times I forgot to track my cash spending (mainly laundry money or parking meters), but I would say I tracked all but maybe 10 times I used cash. It’s not perfect, but I’m pretty happy with being close to perfect.

I think that many people in our group weren’t as into this 12 week journey as they were with the other one. Some of us felt like the book didn’t speak to us the same way. Some people felt that the chapters were repetitive and a bit disconnected. It was not easy for us to admit that we didn’t enjoy this journey as much as the other one since we all felt so great after finishing “The Artist’s Way”. But it’s important to admit to yourself when you don’t feel like you are getting what you want out of a book/class/lecture.

We tried to encourage each other to stay on top of the weekly chapters and the lessons, but this time the group online wasn’t as active and sometimes it felt like we were each on our own journeys instead of doing it as a group. It’s not bad to do it alone, but it was different. And I don’t know if I preferred the group version or being a bit more on my own. Each journey was so different because of what was in it, so it’s not easy to compare them to each other.

Now that this is done, I’m going to keep some of the lessons and challenges going but I’m not going to keep all of them. I might continue to track cash spending, but I think just having the extra awareness I have now will be helping me so much. And for credit card spending, I already track that and I have noticed that I haven’t been charging as much stuff as I did before. So it’s nice to know that I did learn something and that I’m not spending as much as I did before. I’m not saving as much as I’d like, but it’s baby steps toward that.

Overall, I’m glad that I took this journey. Even if I didn’t do everything that was supposed to be done, I feel like I have made a change and I’ve learned new things about myself. I’m hoping that I can continue to spend less and focus less on things that cost money and look for things that are free that I like to do. I know that I need to get my credit card debt paid off and I really want to get it done soon. I just need to buckle down and work harder toward that. And hopefully the lessons I learned from “The Prosperous Heart” will help me over the next weeks and months to accomplish that.

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Default ThumbnailA New/Old Challenge (or Using An Idea From Therapy This Month) Default ThumbnailBudgeting and Spending (or Sharing YNAB With A Cashier) Default ThumbnailAnother Monthly Challenge Down (or The Prosperous Heart) Default ThumbnailWorking on Budgeting (or Spending Money To Save Money) Default ThumbnailWorking On Money Priorities (or What’s Worth The Splurge) Default ThumbnailFinding Ways To Treat Myself (or I Wish Money Wasn’t An Issue)

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Posted in Fun Stuff, Saving, Shopping, Tough Stuff

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Work Begets Work (Old Bosses Possible New Jobs)

Posted on July 21, 2017 | 1 comment

Work has been pretty busy for me lately. Busy can be good sometimes though. For my research job, I just finished working on the big database update we do each year and doing that job means I get to make more money (it’s on a different contract than my main job). And extra money does always help out with things. My main box office job is the same as always, although we are getting back into the busy season again so things have been a bit crazier. And I’m still doing my occasional in person box office job and might be working a few shifts this fall.

I’m in a pretty stable place with my day jobs right now and that’s something that has been hard to get to. But of course, nothing ever stays stable with work but this time it seems like the change might be all positive.

With my research position, there is a chance there will be a job opening that I would be right for. It would be a full-time position so I’m assuming I’d be making more money. It would still be a remote position so I could work from home. And depending on what the pay would be like, there is the potential that it could be the only main day job I would need. I don’t plan on quitting my main box office job any time soon (I wouldn’t do that until I have paid my credit card off completely), but it would be nice to have the potential to only have one main day job.

I don’t know when this job would become available or if I would get it. But it is nice to know that my boss knows that I am always looking for better opportunities for myself and thought of me. But even if I don’t get that new position, I’m very happy in the job I have now and the flexibility I have with it. It’s a luxury that I appreciate so much.

And there are more potential changes with other work. My occasional box office job is a job I got through my old boss at my telesales job (that’s the job I was working when I started this blog). I rarely see him since I work the job when he can’t be at the venue for the shows, but we still stay in touch pretty often. And he let me know about a job possibility that is actually at the old company I used to work for.

This job would be a temporary telesales position for the next month or so. I would be able to work from home and it would pay only commission (no hourly pay). But the commission would be much higher than any job I’ve had and the potential is there to make a pretty decent amount of money in a short period of time. I do miss commission jobs a bit since it was always nice to have a paycheck that was double or triple what I had the paycheck before. It always felt like a nice present!

My old/current boss is passing my information on to the people who are running this telesales campaign and they are supposed to get in touch with me soon. But from what I understand, it’s looking very likely that they will hire me to work this gig because they remember how much I was able to raise when I worked the old telesales job.

It’s good that this job would be temporary because if I do it I’ll be getting close to working 80 hours a week. That’s a lot, but since most of my jobs can overlap it’s not really 80 hours a week. But I don’t think I could maintain that sort of schedule, pace, or balance for more than a month or two. So hopefully I can make a lot of sales in that job and then when it’s done I’ll be able to relax and know that I made a nice amount of money.

If I do get that telesales job, I would love to put all the money I make from it toward my credit card. If I could cut my credit card debt in half, that would be incredible and I would be so happy! And there is a chance that this job would actually allow me to do that! I know that I’m not just working as hard as I do right now to pay off debt, but to have that weight off my shoulders would be so nice and is a goal that I’ve been working toward for a very long time.

As of right now, both of these new work possibilities are only maybes. Hopefully in the next week or month I’ll have a better idea of what might be coming up. But I have to say that I’m feeling really optimistic about work stuff right now and it’s been a while since I’ve felt that way. It’s nice and I’m really feeling like things are turning around for me in this aspect of my life. It gives me hope that more things will change for the better for me soon.

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Default ThumbnailBusy Busy Busy (or Triple Job Day) Default ThumbnailDouble Shift Days (or Hoping To Make Enough Money By Payday) Default ThumbnailUnderemployment Is Frustrating (or Trying To Find The Balance Of Flexibility And Work Hours) Default ThumbnailGoodbye To July (or Looking Forward To Having Steady Work In August) Default ThumbnailWork Work Work (or Another Very Part Time Job) Default Thumbnail2 Jobs 1 Day (or What My New Normal Might Look Like)

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A Goal Setting Experience (or Mindfulness Seems To Be A Theme)

Posted on July 5, 2017 | Comments Off on A Goal Setting Experience (or Mindfulness Seems To Be A Theme)

I’ve been pretty good about setting goals for myself. I set goals each year that I want to be able to accomplish in a year. I also set weekly and monthly goals in my Volt Planner. While goal setting is relatively new to me, I feel like I’ve gone in head first and really have embraced it. I like to have things to try to achieve and while it is frustrating when I don’t make a goal I’m learning how to be ok with that.

So when the podcast I work for was going to do a goal setting workshop, I was so excited to be able to participate! I ended up hosting the event at my house because it is a pretty central location and my living room is a good space to hold events like this. It ended up being a pretty small group, but I think that allowed everyone to get more out of this workshop than they would have if we had more people.

The workshop was based around the idea of the 4 Tendencies that Gretchen Rubin created. There was a quiz to take to help us figure out what type of person we are. Of the 4 Tendencies, I was a pretty even mix of 3 of them (Upholder, Questioner, and Obliger). I don’t know what I was expecting, but I knew that I wasn’t going to be the other type (Rebel). But to be a mix of the other ones was interesting.

I know that some of the reasons I’m a mix is because of my OCD and panic/anxiety disorder along with me wanting to be a perfectionist. But I totally want to look more into these things so I can learn more about each type and see if there is a way I can maximize knowing this to help me do better with my habits and goals for the future. I haven’t really thought about how I could adjust my goal setting process to benefit me so this was really educational for me.

After learning about what type of person we were, the next step was to work on our goals. I’ve already got so many goals for the year and I really didn’t want to cover something that I already am working on. We were advised to try to only set goals for parts of our lives that we need to work on. If we have a goal but are making good progress, we shouldn’t be writing it down since that goal is working.

So for me, the first thing I wanted to do was to write what is working in my life so I can remove my focus from that. The main things that are working for me right now are my day jobs and my exercise. I do have goals for both of those things right now, but I’m doing really great with them so I didn’t need to brainstorm more about it. And once I had that written down I worked on focusing on what I wanted to do.

I got it narrowed down to 3 aspects of my life that I know I want to set goals in. I want to have new goals in my personal relationships, financial life, and my recovery effort. I wrote down several things within each aspect that I know I want to accomplish in the long-term. Most of them are pretty basic, but again it’s always good to write stuff down. I don’t have a lot of variety in what I want to set goals to do, but those few things that I’m focused on aren’t necessarily the easiest.

For personal relationships, that’s about dating and friendships. I want to be more active on both sides. I need to set more plans and not have my relationships just be virtual (FB with my friends and online dating with dating). I want to be ok with being bossy or forceful with trying to make plans. I’ve been ok with being wishy-washy and not trying to get something scheduled. But I don’t want to be ok with that anymore. That’s how I can go months without seeing a friend or spend weeks messaging back and forth with a guy online. I want to be more aware of the relationships that I’m focusing on and not getting as distracted.

For finances, I want to stay aware as well. I’m doing pretty great with that so far but I want to make sure that it continues for a long time. Mindless spending is easy to do (especially with online shopping) and I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to use shopping as a distraction for something else. And hopefully by doing that I will reduce my spending, get my debt more in control, and be in a better place financially.

And for my recovery, it’s a very similar thing. I want to work on being more aware. I want to use what I’ve learned recently in therapy and really work hard and seriously on taking those steps. I don’t want to make excuses for myself and to take responsibility for whatever I chose to do. I don’t want to let my eating disorder rule me. I want to be making choices, even if those choices are bad ones.

After writing down these ideas and 90 day and 6 month goals for each one, I totally noticed a theme. Everything is about being mindful and aware. I don’t know why this has become such an important thing to me now, but clearly it’s something I need to focus on. I don’t feel like I’ve been on auto-pilot, but maybe I have and I just didn’t realize it. Maybe I needed to combination of my appointment with my therapist and this goal setting workshop in the same week to come to this realization.

Whatever brought this realization to me, I’m glad that it’s more obvious than ever on what I want to focus on and what I think I really need to do. Saying that I’ll be more mindful is easy to say but hard to do. But I think that having some action steps and ideas is going to help me get closer to accomplishing this mindfulness now and hopefully things will snowball from there in the right direction.

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Another Monthly Challenge Down (or The Prosperous Heart)

Posted on June 1, 2017 | 2 comments

A new month brings the end to one monthly challenge and the start to a new one! I’ll admit that last month’s challenge was much more challenging than I thought it would be, but I’m glad that I got through it.

I originally wanted to do the plank challenge to help connect myself to my body again. It’s been weird feeling so disconnected and I had high hopes that this would help bring things back to normal. And this challenge didn’t do that at all. Sometimes, it almost made things worse because I was comparing myself to how I could do planks 10 years ago and the lack of core strength that I have now.

But even with this challenge not doing that, I finally do feel more connected to my body again. It had nothing to do with the challenge, but through just getting back to life I feel more like me again. I think I needed this challenge to force me to work on connecting with my body again, it just wasn’t the thing that did it. But having something push me to work on it was good. I might try another one of the fitness challenges in the app, but I’m not as concerned about doing them as I was before. But I’m glad that I tried and that I made it through.

And for this month’s challenge, I’m actually going to do something that I started earlier this week. The membership of the Inside Acting Podcast has done some fun book club type things this year. At the beginning of the year we did the 12 week process of “The Artist’s Way”. I’m glad that I did it with the support of the membership because I’ve never been able to complete the entire 12 week journey before on my own. I didn’t love the entire process, but I learned a lot and I’m seeing changes in my life because of it.

And this past Sunday, we started our next book within the podcast membership. This time, we are doing another book by Julia Cameron, “The Prosperous Heart”.

There are a lot of the same concepts in both books, including the Morning Pages. I didn’t enjoy the Morning Pages before and I’m not going to stress myself out doing them this time. But this book is much more focused on money and financial things.

I’ve been tracking my budget for a while now using YNAB. Using a budgeting app has been really great for me. Even though I’m still struggling a bit financially, I feel much more in control of things and understand how to pay down my credit card debt now without feeling overwhelmed.

Part of this book is to track every single expense you have. This will be pretty simple for me since I’m already doing it, but I’m going more detailed now and that’s what my monthly challenge will be. I’m not only going to track what I do bank transfers for or when I use my credit card. I’m going to track every single penny that is spent.

A lot of times, I’ll get cash at the beginning of the week and plan on using that for random things. But before I know it the cash is gone and I don’t know where I spent it. Or I don’t know where all the quarters I got for laundry went when it seems like I just went to the bank to get a roll. Some people don’t spend as much when they use cash, but for me using cash has become mindless since I don’t track it in YNAB. I need to stop this because I want to track my money better. And using this as my monthly challenge is a great way for me to get into this habit.

More often than not, my monthly challenges become something I do all the time. So if I take this month to work on tracking my money better, I have a feeling that I will be able to continue to do this and hopefully it will only help me in my money management skills. I know that I’ve been doing a lot of great work with money, especially in the past year or so, but I need to do more and this might be the perfect thing for me to do.

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It’s Taxes Time (or Seeing My Hard Work Pay Off)

Posted on March 7, 2017 | 1 comment

I don’t think that anyone is excited to do their taxes and owe money. Because of my jobs, I know I will owe money each year. None of my jobs take my taxes out for me, and even though I do my estimated payments like I need to they are usually not enough to cover what I owe. I know this is the situation I’m in so I am as prepared as possible for tax time. I save all my work related receipts (and there are a ton of them) and I save money out of every paycheck to use at tax time. But even with that, I’m always nervous that the news is going to be bad when I get my taxes done.

I went to Daphne at Chuck Sloan and Associates again and I’m so glad I did! First of all, everyone at Chuck Sloan understands actor and creative type taxes and the unique situations we are all in. They aren’t scared by dozens of jobs and the forms and all the weird deductions we need to do. And they understand how stressful tax time can be for us all. But I’m so happy that I have Daphne doing my taxes because she’s extra awesome! We bonded the last time she did my taxes over Disneyland and since I was going to Disneyland after doing my taxes with her I knew we’d talk about that.

Last year, Daphne showed me the worst case scenario with my taxes before she put in all my deductions so that I would feel better about how much I had saved up. I had asked her to do that for me again and once again it was less than what I had saved for my taxes. That’s always a huge relief because I know that no matter what I will have enough money to pay what I owe. But since now I’m feeling more comfortable with that, it was all about how well I tracked my work spending and tracked my deductions.

I like to think that I’m a pretty organized person and that I did a good job tracking expenses in 2016. Since I had my taxes done by Daphne once already, I knew what I should be aware of and what can be deducted. There are so many accountants that let you deduct things that aren’t totally on the up and up, so I’m glad Daphne is very careful in her work and tells me when things look weird (like how I accidentally tracked buying my new computer twice). I’m sure that there is more that I can deduct, but I’m still learning how to do the best that I can.

And even though I thought I had done all my tracking without missing things, there were a few things that I totally forgot about and I’m so glad we went over any other expenses I might have had in the year. I forgot that I got a new phone (which I do have to use for acting and my research job) and for some reason I never tracked the money that I spent to produce “Single Parent Date Night”. This is another reason I love having Daphne do my taxes. She knew to ask about these sort of things just in case I didn’t remember to track them on my paperwork (I’m sure anyone at Chuck Sloan would do the same since they know to look for these things).

In the end, I owed less than half of what I had saved for my taxes. This is so much better than I ever could have imagined! The money left over is going to be saved for another trip to New York that my sister-in-law and I are hoping to take next year. I still have more time to save more money, but I think what I have left over from my taxes savings should be able to cover pretty much the entire trip! I was only hoping that I would have about half of what I needed for that trip leftover so having this much is a big surprise to me and it making me relax a bit about how I will be able to afford that trip.

I’ve already written my checks to the IRS and sent them off so I’m now totally done with doing my 2016 taxes. It’s nice to get them done early enough so there isn’t a huge rush to do them at the last minute. And I’ve already started planning on what I can do this year to make the taxes easier next year. I will be paying more in estimated taxes, so that will help how much I owe. But I also now will be tracking my expenses even better because I learned where I was slacking last year that caused me to miss out on some potential deductions.

While it was nice in the past to be very uninvolved in my taxes, that’s not a luxury I can afford anymore. I know that with my current jobs that I will always owe money at the end of the year and I like being able to sit down with Daphne and go over everything so I understand why I owe what I do. I can see what deductions took off what and where I could have done better. I guess being more involved with all of this is just something that is required when you want to be more responsible and acting more like an adult.

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