I had my tuition money saved up and tucked away, but it still hurts authorizing a $2021 payment.  Especially after all the headache, pain, and phone calls needed to simply accomplish registration!  Apparently I hit some kind of odd glitch, even though the registrars office refuses to call it that.  I ended up talking to the chemistry department chair to get an override to get me into a class that I was already qualified for.  His called the registration software system “a challenge at times.”  I informed him he was much much more diplomatic than we students are.

I never thought I would miss the days of physically going to campus to register for classes using pieces of paper and standing in line …. but at least then we could talk to real people when problems popped up!

I have not only been expecting this, but have planned for it all summer long.  Next week I will probably be authorizing an online payment for my own tuition, so August is the dreaded “tuition month” for us.  I’m expecting my tuition to run $2300-2500, and that will seem easy after this one.

The good news is son’s tuition is for the entire school year, and frees up almost $500 per month since last year I didn’t have enough saved to do the one payment and instead dragged it out over the year.

This year, being debt-free-but-the-mortgage gave us the opportunity to do this all at once.  I thought I would feel good walking in and just writing the check, but now that it’s done all I can think is “Holy cow!  That’s a lot of money!”

Five thousand nine hundred and no/100s dollars.  Wow.  It actually feels weird “moving up” in the world like this.  Maybe it will feel better in a few hours.

Then again, a few years ago writing any four-figure check seemed huge.  Now I can write out $1xxx checks without really blinking an eye (as opposed to nearly having a hairy cat fit in January of 2007 when writing the $1140 check to fix the heat).  Checks for $2xxx (like MY tuition) still make me blink, but don’t quite provoke the “ouch” response like this one did.

Five thousand nine hundred and no/100 dollars.  It’s there.  It will clear.  It will be rebuilt before the first frost.  Wow.  I love not having consumer debt anymore.

Minimum wage went up 70 cents an hour, and to compensate the boss man cut our per-delivery pay by 53 cents per delivery.  Since I could only find two nights recedntly where I only ran one delivery per hour or less, this is actually a PAY CUT for me.  Last weekend I was running 2 or 3 deliveries per hour.

Gas prices have eased a little bit in the past week, coming down from $3.99 per gallon for 87 octane to one station only charging $3.65 per gallon.  Since I can remember $0.68 per gallon in 1999, I say “only” with my tongue firmly in cheek.

What my number-crunching this afternoon showed me is my earnings delivering pizzas has taken a nosedive.  When I started driving just one year ago, I was making an average of $14-15 per hour when figuring in hourly, gas offset/per-delivery pay, and tips.  The numbers from these past two weeks has only been $8-11 per hour.  That’s BEFORE gas expenses are deducted.

I just told the boss man to not schedule me anymore, unless one of two things happens:

• Gas comes back down to $3.25 per gallon or less; or
• He raises the per-delivery pay

He didn’t look the least bit surprised when I said it.  We drivers tried to stage a mini-revolt last weekend at the employee meeting, and the Boss Man reminded us that Tennessee is a “work at will” state … which means it’s our choice to work or not.  The insiders have been grumbling that they think we drivers were being paid too much before this pay change.

The Boss Man may not have looked surprised, but he also told me he’d look into whether he could raise our per-delivery rate.  For now, I am not going to be scheduled, by my request.  The economics have changed, and it’s just not worth the time away from my family at present.

We’ll be okay financially … that was the point of getting out of debt!  We just won’t be moving as fast towards our financial goals.  Only owing a mortgage and utilities gives us the freedom to make quality-of-life decisions like this.

Next step: registering for classes on “drop day” then paying the bill right afterwards.  “Drop day” is when the registrar drops everyone who hasn’t already paid their tuition bill from all their classes.  I’ve used “drop day” to get the classes I want at the times I want for five semesters running now, and it’s how I will get into two “full” classes for this fall.  The key is having ALL of the tuition money on hand before drop day, because at midnight each night the registrar drops anyone who isn’t paid in full or has a payment plan in place already.

Speaking of payment plans, let’s get this carnival started!  Here are my picks of the 18 posts that made the cut this week:

• Brainy from Pants in a Can writes about “Red Zone Finances” which is a football analogy for his level of motivation in eliminating his debts.  I like football, I LOVE killing off debt, so this one is a home run (to mix sports metaphors)
• Frederic Premji from I Need Motivation writes “How I Paid $25,000 in Debt Within 18 Months“  Nothing like a kick (donkey) success story to really help folks get fired up!
• Phil For Humanity has an idea that is not only near-and-dear to my heart, but one I wholeheartedly endorse: STOP USING YOUR CREDIT CARDS!  Seriously, give this one a good read.

Those three are my favorites, but the rest are definitely worth reading here:

• Hanna from College Finance 101 writes about Budgeting (part 3)
• RC from Think Your Way to Wealth wrote about Creating an Aggressive Credit Card Debt Elimination Plan
• Broke Grad Student is Paying off student loans by making money online
• Our Four Pence Worth discusses Resisting the urge to splurge
• Heather guest posts at the Happy Rock and lists 5 creative ways to reduce your debt
• The Money Answer Guy talks about why Store credit cards are a ripoff
• Discover Debt Freedom has 5 Simple solutions to save $500
• Silicon Valley Blogger asks “Your free credit score: Is there such a thing?“
• Debt Free warns about Mortgage Consolidation Loans: what to watch out for
• Gather Little By Little warns “Somebody is Watching You” in everything you do … even finances!
• Bible Money Matters goes straight to the horse’s mouth with Dave Ramsey explains why the Debt Snowball works (note: I used this method myself)
• J. Money from Budgets are Sexy recounts the smartest money advice I ever got (love the quote)
• Ryan from Debt Reduction Formula asks “Is bad news better than good news?” when it comes to pf blogging and comments
• Living Almost Large provides some commentary on the new credit card laws and a link for your input to the Fed
• Coupon Artist says “All this debt is complicating my life!”

And there we have yet another quality week for the Carnival of Debt Reduction!  Thanks to all the submitters for all the good reads.  Now it’s time for the reading and commenting to begin! :)  Meanwhile, I’ll be prowling the online class schedule and plotting out which class I want to take at what time for the fall semester.

The big thing that changed was federal minimum wage went up this week to $6.55 per hour.  That’s a jump of 70 cents from $5.85 per hour, and I knew my boss was dreading it.

He warned us a few weeks ago that when minimum wage went up, he would have to lower the per-delivery gas offset pay … but I didn’t realize he would lower it this much.  We have gone down from $1.28 per delivery order to only 75 cents per delivery order!

We have an employee meeting this morning, and at least one other driver intends to mention to the boss man that this is not enough to keep our vehicles on the road.  In fact, this other driver told me last night he will be putting in applications to other jobs.  My comment was I am surprised it took him this long (this is the one who drives a truck for delivery).

As for myself, I will let the boss man know I will continue to work (for now) but I only want to pull three long shifts, with a minimum of 7 hours per shift.  The store is eight miles from my house, and I drive an average of 100 miles per shift.  Working only three days will bring back down to only one tankful of gas per week while still pulling the same amount of hours.

I have to wonder if this kind of thing is happening at other stores.  I’m also wondering if the gas prices may be the end of pizza delivery as we know it, especially with tips continuing to dwindle.

This should be an interesting employee meeting.

For those who missed the news, the official CPI numbers for the month of June came in at a scorching 1.1% … WITH seasonal adjustment still in effect.  I didn’t comment about last month’s 0.6% because that shocked me coming in that high.  Some “fun” and simple math:

• 0.6% x 12 months = 7.2% annualized inflation based on the May numbers
• 1.1% x 12 months = 13.2% annualized on the numbers for June!!!

Break out the disco now, the BLS can no longer hide the doo-doo we are standing in, inflation-wise!  Not even with seasonal adjustments, not with hedonics, not with substitution bias.  I could have lots of fun raking Ben Bernake and 8 others from the FOMC over the coals here, but that’s pretty much like shooting fish in a barrel.  Oh yeah, the “good” news: those rate cuts that went on from fall until April still haven’t worked into the economy completely … which means inflation will keep going up for a while.

Thankfully for me, the state board limited my college to “only” (?) a 6% tuition increase, but I am pretty sure they will hike the unregulated fees to cover that and the budget cuts the state is handing them.  Eh, I’ll tackle tuition next post.  It’s going to be on my mind constantly for the next month until I get both mine and the Teenager’s tuitions paid up.

Previously suggested topics from the spring include:

• the Fed and the interest rates
• my strange, unclassifiable political views (it is a political blog, after all)
• my theory of stagflation being back
• …???  open to suggestion

So, for those of y’all brave enough to listen to my rantings instead of only reading them: What would you want to hear about?

On the bright side, it’s hours and tips for me which equal more money.  On the negative side, I am tired and am doing to much thinking in the Pizza Taxi and very little thinking at all in front of the keyboard.  I just can’t remember what was on my mind the night before once I finally get that first cup of coffee down.

I’m not very confident the boss man will be able to hire another driver, either.  It’s not that he can’t afford it; it’s that I am seeing “Drivers Wanted” signs at ALL the pizza places that deliver in my area.  I also haven’t seen the Ford Explorer that drives for PJ’s lately.  I think we are seeing yet another gas-price-related trend here … a lack of people willing to deliver pizzas.

I’m *REALLY* wondering what pizza place managers/owners will do if/when drivers start refusing to deliver to the notorious NONtippers?  Now that’s an interesting thought … !!

• Gas prices are much higher in Florida and Atlanta.
• Higher gas prices have NOT improved Atlanta’s rush hour traffic.  It is still my least favorite city to drive through, especially when fate decrees you hit it at 5 PM almost exactly.
• Fewer RVs on the highways from what I saw, which is an improvement in my very opinionated opinion.
• Lots of Florida and Georgia plates on vehicles in St Augustine (lovely little tourist trap town, we simply must go back again!) which means folks are staying closer to home for their vavcation fun.
• As a related note, we picked up several Tennessee tourist info brochures on the way back so we can do little day-trips for fun before hubby deploys.

I’ll gather up coherent thoughts in a day or so for an update on hubby and investing (other than his desire to buy lotto tickets).  Right now the dog and cats are oh-so-happy we are home, and making it difficult to do much LOL

Gas Prices

The Pizza Taxi takes between 8 and 10 gallons to top off from just under a quarter of a tank.  The last few tankfuls I have gotten the following fuel economy/gas mileage/MPG:

• 36.0 mpg
• 33.1 mpg
• 32.9 mpg
• 36.0 mpg

It looks like 33-36 mile per gallon is my upper limit on summer-blend regular unleaded gas for pizza delivery.  I can live with that.  It now takes $32-40 to fill that bad boy up, depending on how good I can get at the pump price comparison game, and with my Kroger Plus shopping card.

Tips

Overall, tips at work are slowly declining.  There are some gems of customers who have upped their tipping to help us drivers out as they do see gas prices rising, but unfortuneately those gems of customers are few enough that all of us drivers have their addresses memorized.  The trend I am noticing is that people who used to tip $3 to $3.50 per order are now tipping $1.75 to $2.50 per order.  Some have slid down to the insulting range of $0 to $0.75 tip, and of course those customers always tell me “Have a nice night!” when they do it.

Gas Offset Pay and Minimum Wage

I’ve talked to the Boss Man (the owner) several times over the past two weeks, and he has laid out the economic realities for me: He cannot afford to increase our gas offset pay.  He raised the delivery charge by a quarter, but says that is to absorb rising food costs for him.  He is afraid to raise his menu prices because of new competition that opened up in the area over the winter, and dreads the upcoming increase in the federal minimum wage in July 24th.  Federal minimum wage will jump up to $6.55 per hour which is a whopping 70 cents more an hour.

Maintenace and Upkeep on the Pizza Taxi

I’m due for another round of maintenace and upkeep.  Oil change is due/was due about 250 miles ago … which is only about three days in delivery terms.  Since the Pizza Taxi is over 93k miles, I may ask my mechanic about that special oil for high mileage engines, and see if they think it is worth the extra cost.  It is also time for my annual brake check (and probably replacement).  I’ve been putting that one off, which I know I shouldn’t do.  I’m also debating the merits of a tune-up since I passed the 90k mark on the odometer.  I’m looking at $200-500 dollars, depending on the brakes, possibly more if they’ve raised their prices.

Am I Still Making Money Delivering Pizzas?

Bottom line is: Yes, I am so I will continue doing it.  The rising costs have taken a bite out of my money though, so it is not nearly as profitable as it was before the big spring run-up on gas prices.  If I didn’t get as good of gas mileage as I do, it might not be worth it for me.  I have a coworker who says he only gets about 19 mpg in his truck, and I honestly don’t see how he is making any money doing this.

Last summer, I had called 25 mpg the point where pizza delivery makes good money, and I think I need to revise that to something higher.  Maybe 28 mpg now … but if gas prices continue their climb it may end up only cars that get better than 30 mpg will make money.

More posts about the economics and realities of delivering pizzas as a part-time job:

• Safety Tips from your Pizza Delivery Driver (may literally save a life)
• Gasoline Saving Driving Tips (non-delivery folks will find it useful as well)
• Tip Your Pizza Delivery Person!  oh … and read the comments on this one!
• How Much Can I Make Delivering Pizzas?  (from last summer)
• Pizza Delivery Expert (from waaay back, when I worked for Domino’s)

Happy reading!