So it’s been a while. A lot of things have changed.

I’m back in my own place, after living for 5 years with my grandfather, whom I am deeply appreciative of.

I started a new career as a truck driver. I absolutely love it, and I’m making more than twice as much money as I was doing warehouse work.

I started a new business, 3DPD Supply, selling plumbing and heating supplies on Amazon. I put the only $4,000 I had to my name at the time in to it. It was very stressful starting out, not knowing if it was going to pay off, but it has. I did $130,000 in sales last year, and my goal for this year is a half million.

I couldn’t have done any of this if it weren’t for the fact that I finally went to my doctor and got treatment for the depression that had been plaguing me for years.

And my debt? Well, I certainly missed my goal. I still have about $14k on Sallie Mae, and $3k on the credit card that I lived off of while I was in training. They’ll both be paid off soon enough. While I look forward to being debt free, I’m honestly not too worried about it anymore. It does not dominate my life. I’m not stressed about it.

I still haven’t decided whether to return to the financial blogosphere. I’ve gotten plenty of offers to buy this site, all of which have been ignored – not for sale. I fear I may not have anything to write about, but it’s a chapter in my life that I’m not ready to close just yet. Besides, I’ve met a lot of great people over the years through blogging. I wish I could even attend another Financial Bloggers Conference, but maybe I’ve been out of the game far too long to do that.

Either way…

…I am well.

Following directions…

Yeah, I don’t do that so well…

2012 was a miserable failure of a year, so this is going to be short and uninteresting.

Money Numbers

• Debt service – $10,141.70 (down 35% from 2011)
• Debt reduction – $9,618.18 (down 35%)
• Spending money – $11,233.76 (up 68%)
• Total take home income – $30,555.21 (up 18%, actually down $400 if ignoring life insurance check)

Blog Numbers

Everything down 25%, pretty much.

Goal Failings

• Reduce debt 50% – yeah, no, try 32%. Currently projected to miss my debt-free goal by 4 months.
• $3,000 emergency fund – The one thing I managed to achieve, through no fault of my own. I had it up to around $1,500 when my mom died, so I made it a nice round 5k with that. I’ve since needed to tap in to it a few times (brick through a windshield, new fuel pump), but it’s still above 4k.
• Run a 6:30 mile – Apparently I only went on one run all year, and did an amazing 9:14 mile. After that, I just stuck to cycling and put about 500 miles on my new bike (which is now hibernating for the winter).
• Junk out – I did make significant improvements to the attic and shed, but my office is permanently in a state of disarray.
• $10,000 side hustle income – I put zero effort in to this, ended up at $2,375.
• Half hour daily Japanese  – I think I did a half hour all year.

Well, that’s about enough of that. No goals for 2013. I’m out for a bit.

From November 1 to December 1, my net worth increased an average of $49.68 per day, or $1490.32 overall, to -$13,692.48. This is a 10.88% increase, and results in a projected zero net worth on 11/30/2013.

Three paycheck months are always nice, but at the same time, it seems like I always overspend during those months, this time in a big way. I really need to get a handle on it. It was certainly nice to have a ton left over to throw at my student loans for the first time in quite a while, though, and they’re now officially under $20,000. We’re getting towards the home stretch.

At the same time, though, I’m thinking about going back to school. Specifically, I’m looking at maybe getting an associate’s degree in accounting. While I’m pretty sure I could pay for it as I go, I think I’d probably take loans out anyway for the sake of protecting my cash flow. It wouldn’t hurt to get a little more history on my credit report, either. I’ve checked employment ads and there definitely are opportunities out there for someone with an associate’s degree. I just can’t see myself getting a bachelor’s anytime soon.

In response to last week’s 2% raise post, commenter jmc had this to say:

I don’t understand the ideas of “demanding” and “accepting” things from your employer. You agreed to work for a certain wage, if you don’t want to work for that wage anymore, look for a new job.

Here’s where you’re wrong, jmc: You agreed to work for a certain starting wage, not a perpetual wage. This is why many employment ads list their pay as “Starting at $XX.XX/hr.” As your experience and knowledge of your job grows, so does your value to your employer. If your value goes up, doesn’t it make sense that they should properly compensate you for that increased value? That is where the “demanding things” that you mentioned comes from. If you are a quality, knowledgeable worker with a few years under your belt, you are much more valuable than someone walking in off the street. Your boss knows this. Turnover and training are expensive, and the company will be much better off long term by keeping quality employees around. It’s much cheaper to hand out a 5% raise than it is to hire someone else and wait a year for them to reach the same productivity and job knowledge levels.

Furthermore, every manager with half a brain knows that a happy employee is a productive employee. While raises do not offset any problems in the workplace that make for unhappy and unproductive employees, a complete lack of raises will in even the best of workplaces lead to unhappy, and therefor unproductive, employees. When employees say to their supervisor something like “I’m doing $10/hr worth of work,” you’ve got a real problem on your hands, and it just so happens that I’ve heard that phrase uttered quite a few times in my 4 years with this company.

On top of that, we mentioned inflation in the last post. As the cost of supplies, materials, product, and generally running the business goes up, a company raises it’s prices to compensate. It only makes sense that labor costs should be subject to inflationary increases as well, as employees are also consumers of the products and services every company churns out. I can’t find a link to it right now, but when Henry Ford doubled his employees’ wages, cut their schedule to 40 hours a week, and gave them two days off a week, he wrote a letter to his fellow industrialists suggesting that they do the same. Not only did he cite the increased productivity of a shorter work week and the higher skilled workers that he attracted with the increase in wages that we usually read about, he also brought up the fact that everyone’s employees are also their customers, and those employees need more time off and higher wages in order to purchase and enjoy the very products they are manufacturing day in and day out. Ford had a huge workforce; if he didn’t pay them enough to buy a Ford of their own, then who would?

Employment is a two-way street. Unless your building has a revolving door out front with a sign advising people not to let it hit them in the ass on the way out, employees are assets, just like anything else in the building, and as those assets appreciate in value, you have to pay for them properly.

Picture this: You work for a company that is consistently ranked as one of the fastest growing companies in the region. Almost every week there is a new daily sales record. New markets and acquisitions happen like clockwork. You bust your ass day in and day out. You can’t take a second job even if you wanted to because you never know when you’ll get out of work on any given day, and you never know if you’ll be working Saturday until the day before. You care about doing things right (unlike seemingly most of your coworkers), and you do your damndest to make sure the customer (who you never see, and never will see) is happy. For all this, you take home $20,000 a year.

Would you be satisfied with a 2% raise?

Local FinCon meetup in New York. Drinking aplenty.

From October 1 to November 1, my net worth increased an average of $11.39 per day, or $353.04 overall, to -$15,182.80. This is a 2.33% increase, and results in a projected zero net worth on 12/12/2013.

Given that my last net worth update was four months ago, it’s a bit of an understatement to say that a lot has happened since then. I overfunded my emergency fund with the life insurance check. I then quickly tapped in to that emergency fund when my windshield took a brick to the face. I drove up to New York (first time being there since I was but a wee lad) for a local FinCon meetup at a little Korean place. I forgot to get gas on the way home and sat on the side of I-78 for an hour and a half so that I could pay $75 for five gallons of gas. Then I lost the receipt, which makes it infinitely more difficult to take said receipt in to my insurance agent. Hurricane Sandy took a chunk of plastic out of my scooter, and I still haven’t figured out how much that’s going to cost me. My debt payoff goal is far out of reach. I haven’t been writing here. I have a tooth that needs ripped out before it infects my brain. My scooter is out of inspection (though that’s pretty much the norm). I need to find a new doctor. I need to find a new dentist. I need to find a new job. I want to get a new phone since I’m damn sick of my iPhone 4. I want to put a new Linux distribution on my computer. I want to move all of my websites over to a VPS. I want to do this. I want to do that. And yet, I can’t do anything.

The most serious problem with debt is that it can escalate quickly; one debt that cannot be met will accrue interest and the debt becomes larger, and then other debts may be taken on to try and pay off the first round of borrowing. Before long, the descent into a debt spiral becomes a very serious issue.

With the economy as it is, many people are having to tackle repaying multiple debts – from credit cards, mortgages and loans – while facing a rising cost of living and little wage growth. But how can you prevent a situation where you are paying off multiple credit lines from descending into a destructive debt spiral? This advice from the Federal Trade Commission is useful, but here’s a quick rundown on what to consider:

Get help

If you feel your debt problems are beginning to get out of hand, it is important to seek help at the earliest opportunity. There are services which offer free counseling on credit issues, and these can be very valuable. Even if it is just looking at your payment schedule with a fresh set of eyes, you may find a way to restructure your payments to make things more manageable.

Prioritize your payments

Some people naturally attempt to pay off the largest credit sum first, but the ones that should be targeted are those which are accruing the largest amount of interest. Larger loans with low APR are usually not as threatening to your short-term financial health as credit cards with high interest rates.

Set a budget

Setting out a strict budget is important if you want to tackle debt problems, and will also help to reduce your stress levels. However, you must be realistic; a budget is no use if you have no chance of being able to stick to it.

Downsize

If you’re struggling to gather enough income to meet your debt commitments but have assets, you may want to consider downsizing. Moving to a smaller home or trading down to a more economical car could free up a lump sum that will put a big dent in your debts. The property market is fairly stagnant at the moment, however, so if you want to sell your house fast a property-buying firm such as Tom Craven may be worth a look.

Even the best of us run into financial problems from time to time, and if you’re not careful it’s easy to get sucked into a spiral of debt: borrowing money to pay off creditors, which then goes on to accrue interest and costs us even more to pay off in the long term. This causes an untold amount of misery for thousands of people and their families every day, and if you want to avoid the traps, follow these guidelines:

1. Use a trustworthy, transparent bank

Unfortunately, as we have seen in far too many news stories over the last few years, many banking institutions have no compunctions about taking their customers for all they’re worth. Payment protection insurance mis-selling, hidden charges and exorbitant interest rates are just some of the ways banks have behaved badly in the past.

Make sure your bank has a reputation for treating its customers fairly and that it does not levy overdraft charges. Some institutions, like Secure Trust Bank, will allow you to set up an account without the need for a credit check, which can be a valuable lifeline for those who have had debt problems in the past.

2. Prepare a personal budget

A personal budget should consist of all the outgoings you have every month – bills, grocery shopping, mortgage or rental payments, car running costs and so on – balanced against your income. If you have any expenses you pay quarterly or annually, such as car insurance, divide them accordingly so that you can account for them in your monthly bill.

As well as highlighting whether your spending situation is tenable, making a personal budget helps you to identify where you can cut costs. If you’re spending a lot on gas for your car, use a website like this to find the lowest prices near you. On the other hand, it may highlight that you’re making lots of impulse purchases every month, which could prompt you to re-examine whether you can afford to keep doing this.

3. Be careful with credit

For many of us, credit is an unavoidable fact of life – but that doesn’t mean debt has to be. Resist the temptation to buy anything with a credit card that you couldn’t normally afford, and ensure you have enough money to repay the balance in full at the end of each month. If you cannot, try to pay off as much as you can – with interest charges, minimum repayments mean it can take years to repay a debt.

If you’re still paying out more each month than you’re bringing in, it’s time to contact a credit counselling service. It’s vital to always use a non-profit agency, such as American Consumer Credit Counselling – using any other kind is only likely to lead to more problems.

Over a year ago, I learned of Simple and their nefarious plans to start a no-hassle bank via Hacker News. Intrigued, and admittedly a bit excited, I signed up for an invitation right away. My invitation finally arrived last month, though, and I was completely uninterested. Why? Because while I was waiting over a year for my invitation, I found, switched to, and fell in love with Perkstreet.

Simple’s main selling points are low-to-no fees, a tiny bit of interest, good customer service, and an integrated money-management tool.

Money management

Granted, I haven’t tried it myself, but purely based on the screenshots of Simple’s web and iOS based money management tools, they appear to be lacking. Sure, they look nice, but UI isn’t everything. It appears to break down your spending for you, but that’s about it. No budgeting. No future planning. While it may not have been intended to be, it quite simple isn’t an adequate replacement for good budgeting software like YNAB. I know from personal experience, too, that sometimes you have to go through a few different platforms before you find the right fit. It’s not something worth switching banks over.

Interest accrual

Who doesn’t like interest? As long as it’s coming in, instead of going out, interest is great. However, as they themselves admit, Simple’s interest rate is pretty dismal. Assuming it’s lower than Ally’s (who generally are close to the top of the list), you’d be lucky to earn $10 every year while keeping one to two thousand dollars in your account. With Perkstreet’s amazing cash back program, I’ve earned almost a hundred dollars so far this year. Remember, I’m not a shopper. I make $11/hr. All I do is make sure to use my debit card wherever I can.

Low fees

No ATM fees, monthly fees, low balance fees, or even low balance fees. Sounds great! I’ve been a victim of the fee dragon myself, and it’s not a fight you can win. Not even in a 10-man raid. However, I think that if someone were savvy enough with their finances to completely switch over to an internet bank like Simple, they probably don’t have to worry too much about fees in the first place. Back when I was down in the dumps and flat broke, if Perkstreet or Simple had been around at the time, I wouldn’t have even considered it then. For one thing, in such a situation it would’ve been far too much of a hassle. On top of that, when dealing with a constantly overdrafting account and other problems associated with it, it’s much easier to talk to and try to reason with a real person.

Customer service

I can’t really say anything about Simple’s customer service, having had no experience with them. Perkstreet, I know, has been fantastic. I actually met them (and partied with them) at the first Financial Blogger Conference, and have the sticker on my netbook to prove it. I joke with them on Twitter occasionally. I recently asked why I didn’t get 1% cash back on a purchase, and their reply was to give me 5% cash back on that purchase. Three dollars goes a long way toward customer loyalty. Great customer service is a great selling point. In fact, a lot of younger companies are touting their great customer service so much lately that I believe it’s becoming the norm again.

Low fees, half of a money management tool, and a priority on customer service are all fine and swell, but I don’t think it’s enough to convince somebody to switch banks. One, two, and five percent cash back on everyday purchases, however, is.