Net Worth

It's been a really long time since I checked in with my Net Worth here.

2012

US Net Worth

Total: $16,677.83 USD

NZ Net Worth

Total: $35,022.29 NZD

2013
US Net worth:
Total: $25,406 USD

NZ Net Worth:
Total: $51,446 NZD


2014

NZ Savings
(Cash) 
Bonus Bonds: $100
Raboplus: $39,123.55

(Retirement)
Kiwisaver: $16,567.46

NZD Savings Total: $55,791.01

US Savings
(Cash)
HSBC: 9,207.44

(Retirement)
Roth IRA: 5,047.33
Traditional IRA: 8,628.85

(Taxable Investment)
Vanguard: 7,121.06

USD Savings Total: $30,004.68

Not very impressive, but at least everything is moving in the right direction, slowly and surely??

A New World Order

Lately I've hardly spent any time with my best friends in NZ. They are both wifed up (manned up?) with serious boyfriends--living together--and in the extremely busy end stages of their PhDs. I love them, and I'm sad about this turn of events. For one of them, I literally only see her at work now, and only in passing, even though our offices are only two doors down from each other. She just never has time, and turns down all of my invitations. I understand that she is busy, but it still sucks.

The other one just started on a new career journey, even though she is in the end bit of her PhD. Her BF goes with her everywhere. So she is busy and I never see her by herself.

So no alone time with my best buds. In the meantime, I've started hanging out with new people. They are in their 30's!! YAY! I had been wondering where they were all hiding...

In any case, because they are older, they are also way further along the academic ladder than my old friends, and way further along than me as well. It is amazing what that does to the dynamic when going out. With my old friends, all PhD students, I always made it a point to treat them to a drink or pay for a meal or ticket quite regularly. I've noticed that these new friends make it a point to do the same to me--particularly since I announced that I was starting my PhD. Luckily, they've all gone through the process and know what I'm in for...and make a lot more $$ than I do.

Just this past week, I had lunch with a friend--I invited him--and he paid. I had a huge night out last night, and only spent $14 even though I drank a ton. Crazy.

So maybe getting a PhD pays off in more ways than one?? :)

Booooo, Taxes.

It is that time of year again.

I used to LOVE filing my taxes when I lived in the States. I was obsessed with tracking my money anyway, and my situation was simple enough that it was pretty straightforward. Plus, I felt very smart and adult for 'doing my taxes' each year. It still feels quite grown-up to say.

But now there's FBAR to report every foreign account I have and NZD to USD conversion rates and SO MUCH MATH because NZ's financial year runs April to March instead of Jan to Dec. So instead of having a handy W-2 handed to me every year, I have to look up each individual paycheck stub and add it all up (it varies sometimes...). Plus the retirement accounts and taxable accounts and savings accounts in both countries to report...whew.

This year I have the added joy of filing state taxes because I had to renew my US driver's license so I could be legal to drive without having to take another test when I visit home or eventually move back. Unfortunately, I couldn't renew the license in the state I used to live in because I no longer have an address there to send things to. Doubly unfortunately, my parents' state requires you to file taxes even if you do not live in the state. And I can't go without declaring a state affiliation because, guess what? You can't: a) have a driver's license and b) you can't vote without that.

The US makes living outside of the country A HUGE PAIN. If anyone has a good US/NZ tax attorney they want to refer me to, I'm just about ready to pay for this task to be done for me.

Soylent Green

Funding for the PhD is officially in writing! Shiz is getting real.

In preparation, I've been focusing on making my lifestyle a little healthier, and learning as much as I can about doing a happy PhD. They are quite rare occurrences. Any advice I can get my hands on about doing PhD's, I collect and read ravenously. This is my way: prepare like crazy, then let the chips fall where they may, because something will always go wrong. Something will happen to throw off your plans. But at least I tried...

I've made a few purchases that I'll add to my PhD Costs tally. They should help me with the PhD, both to make me happier during it and to hopefully make it easier:

The Livescribe Echo smartpen.

This sunlamp.

The way things are going, though, I won't even need the sunlamp. I've been SO HAPPY lately. Things that would normally bug me don't, and I catch myself smiling and feeling giddy a few times a day. It's weird, but I'm loving it. It's a genuine, deep happiness that persists even when things go terribly wrong, like my apartment being sold out from under me, or my recent work failure.

I was on the radio last week and did really badly. I feel bad that I was the one representing work, but I honestly did the best that I could at the time. I was caught off-guard. I will work on it, learn from it, and do better in the future.

See? Normally I'd be obsessing and feeling horrible for days and days afterward. Weeks even. I'd use it as an excuse to never do another interview again. Instead, I'm motivated to redeem myself.

There is only one thing that I can think of that is making a difference. OK, two, but I think the second is more likely...

Firstly, I now have A Plan. The PhD, though it makes me broke and shackled to NZ for another half-decade, provides some much-needed stability in my life. I am going to be here. Forever. Given my mixed emotions about that prospect, I don't think that is why I'm feeling so good. Unfortunately, I think it has to do with #2:

People. I'm hanging out with new people. I say 'unfortunately' because people are quite flaky in general. One should never ever depend on someone else for happiness. One of my Truths is that as happy as someone can make you feel, they also have the capacity to make you feel just as bad. Yet, a stable group of a few good friends is the one thing that makes me happier than anything else. When my life fell apart around me in grad school, my friends were the only thing that got me through it. They cried with me and held me as I sobbed uncontrollably--the only time I've ever fallen apart in front of anyone--on a bench outside my office building after that horrible phone call about my sister being suicidal and psychotic. I'll never forget it, or them. As introverted as I am, and as hard and independent as I try to be, People are my rock. I need them to be happy, full stop.

This is a new group--the friends of my old Crush...the one who (yes) made me feel awful a few times recently (but then I got over it very quickly...because I'm happy now!). I wouldn't put these new people in the grad school category yet, but we'll see. So far it is just fun. I've been needing more people to hang out with because my old friends, while they ARE grad school quality, are very busy with their studies and have very serious boyfriends that take up nearly all of their non-work time.

I'm loving hanging out with these new people because they are closer to my age than my other NZ friends and can relate to me and this life stage I'm in much more easily. They are also really into their jobs like me, and love being busy and doing really silly, awesome things like I do. They are higher up the academic ladder than I am, and I can turn to them for advice instead of always being the older, wiser one, as it has always been in the past here. They are incredibly social people, and most of them are also quite supportive and kind. There are invites and emails and texts and phone calls nearly every day from one or more of the group. They have invited me into the fold with no questions--just open arms, willing to take me as I am. I feel ridiculously lucky, and kind of hesitant to believe my luck. I haven't even added them on Facebook, my normal knee-jerk reaction to liking someone, because I feel like they might go away as fast as they came into my life.

So yes, the secret ingredient to my happiness is the same as soylent green: people.

Official

Some official pieces of news:

1) I have officially submitted my application to start a part-time PhD. All but one or two official documents have been submitted: one a ref letter from one of my bosses here in NZ and one an official transcript that I didn't know I needed until the last minute (they just asked for unofficial). Oh. And funding has to come through. If funding doesn't come through, I'm out. I can still walk away. I had an offer of funding to expand the outreach program recently, and that would bump my 80% salary up to 100% next year if everything stayed the same here. However, I turned it down contingent upon the PhD. I'd love to do it, but I'm over-committed as it is.

2) My apartment has been sold. Word is that they want to move in their relatives from Malaysia. The new owners have yet to contact us, so we don't know what will happen. I'm looking on TradeMe, though...so far nothing is amazing as my current place. I am torn between getting another apartment in the city and having a very short commute to work (between the PhD and normal work, I'll be there 7 days a week), or getting a place out further away and being able to have a garden, a car, and maybe a dog (if the house already has one; I'll be away too much to have sole responsibility for a dog).

Sleep Disorder

Oy! I have found my biggest problem habit: going to bed early. My 10:30 pm goal lasted one day, then I had tennis lessons til 9 pm (got home at 9:30) and needed WAY more time to decompress at the end of the day. It changed to mid-night, then Thursday and tennis rolled around again and I realized I'd promised one of my bosses something the next AM, and also had an early morning meeting, and ended up getting only 4 hours of sleep. I have GOT to kick this if I'm going to live more healthily during my PhD.

If I'm not tired...I'm just not tired. No amount of laying down will make my brain shut off and be tired if it doesn't want to be. I've tried lavender, tea, meditation...nothing works. Sometimes out of desperation I take a sleep aid, but I try not to do that except in extreme circumstances where I know I need to be on point and rested the next day (and that works only a little bit, as the sleep aid doesn't produce the best sleep ever, just a longer duration of it).

I think I suffer from some mild form of an altered circadian rhythm where by my days are longer (28 hours?) and so I want to stay up longer than is socially acceptable. Then I end up sleeping in longer. It sucks.

Any tips to keep myself on track?

Changing Habits

Publicly, I am declaring that I will go to bed, lights out, computer off, by 10:30 pm midnight every weeknight for the rest of March. This is in preparation for starting my PhD. I'm tired of staying up too late and being really tired the next day, and not performing my best. I NEED 10 hours of sleep to be at my best; I know this about myself yet I persist in this futile endeavor to cheat the system.

Feb was about getting my workout schedule down. I am pretty proud of myself for following through on that. Last night I ran 8.6 km in 50 minutes. My goal this summer is to run a sub-hour 10K. At that pace I'll just make it. I usually do 2-3 runs a week. One is always a long run where I warm up with intermittent running and hill climbing for about 45 minutes and then tackle that very long run (every week I add five minutes to this time), and at least one other run is a short, speed building run where I try to go as fast as I can over about 45 min to an hour ("short" runs still eat up a lot of time). Once I hit 1 hour, I will scale back as I'm starting to have issues with my right ankle no matter how much I stretch. By that time, it will have started to get colder and rainier anyway (fall has already started. :(((( ), and I probably won't be running outside as much anymore. Running for me is purely a summer phenomenon--I hate running in a gym. I've started making plans for replacement activities.

I'm trying out a crazy intense yoga program tomorrow, I'm taking tennis lessons 3 hours a week (and have partners and free courts to practice with/at and a beginner's class to attend when I'm done with the course), have bought 14 pilates classes to use this fall/winter, am planning on taking dance classes, am going to try a martial arts or kickboxing class, and will sign up for the Uni gym at student's rates when I am eligible. I am also going to do this every day I don't do a class or major workout. It's ridiculous to think I can't fit in 7 minutes for my health every day...

So hopefully physical health is sorted for me throughout my PhD and this will remain a habit. I mean, it will be really difficult, but I like myself better now that I have started on the path to take care of myself.

Creating healthy sleeping and eating habits are my next goals to tackle.
March: sleep
April: healthy eating
May: mental health (seeing a therapist, meditating every day)
June: organising and working efficiently.
July: tune-up month

Actually, I may start meditating every day anyway...time to do it now, in fact!

February 2014 Spending

February was another weird month. There were boy issues, I had a complete hissy fit at a restaurant, I ran a 30 minute 5K several times (and got up to 45 minutes straight of running), I got into a fight with my neighbors (who are buying our apartment), I started tennis lessons, and I had a great time with some overseas visitors. I also did some freelance work which allowed me to fund all those exercise activities. The ups and downs, excitement and disappointments, continues. But that is life, right? And I'm living it. That makes me happy overall.

	Feb Budget 2014
Category	Spent	Budgeted Amount	Balance
Rent	$840.00	$840.00	$0.00
Groceries	$484.09	$400.00	-$84.09
Internet	$56.50	$50.00	-$6.50
Electricity	$64.19	$75.00	$10.81
Eating Out	$168.95	$125.00	-$43.95
Charity	$0.00	$25.00	$25.00
Cell phone	$114.38	$50.00	-$64.38
Medical	$24.10	$100.00	$75.90
Misc	$677.94	$275.00	-$402.94
Savings	$600.00	$600.00	$0.00
Total	$3,030.15	$2,540.00	-$490.15

Income: $3203.59 

Spent: $3030.15

Overage: $173.45

Groceries: $484.09. Way over--I bought a ton of stuff for my guests.

Internet is over a little bit due to changing our internet plan to unlimited mid-stream. My flatmate uses a LOT of bandwidth.

Electric is under (summer!!)

Eating out is also about $50 over due to guest visits.

I need to contribute to a charity next month!

Cell phone is over as I renewed my skype subscription for another year. Thinking of cancelling it though--my sister is the only one that uses the Skype number feature.

Medical: Under. I tried to get an IUD fitted twice last month, and it didn't work out either time. Lots of pain for NOTHING.

Misc: again, way way way over. I need to figure something out for this category as it is budgeted too low for reality. I spent: 

$27.50 on alcohol

$12.55 on entertainment (rented three movies, hot spot shield international)

$470 on exercise: tennis lessons and pilates classes (x10)

$40 on fees (parking ticket)

$9.40 on gifts 

$58.49 on goods and wants (American store foodstuffs and toiletries) 

$60 on travel

I'm going way overbudget lately. It doesn't make me comfortable, but so far I'm saving my normal $600 to long-term goals OK. It is just my short-term goals that are getting shafted because whatever I don't spend each month goes to them. It is great that my savings account is earning about $80/mo now, though!!