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Archive for November, 2007

I'm not the most responsible...

November 8th, 2007 at 05:01 pm

...as far as money is concerned. But if you take my fiscal irresponsibility and magnify it by a billion times, you will probably about equal the fiscal irresponsibility of our government. Well, technically not MY government 'cause I can't even vote. But why do voters sit idly by while our congress and president are making a mockery of our public account. Did you know that over 2/3 of our discretionary budget are military/national security expenditures? That's equal to $717,000,000,000, or about $3,000 per tax payer. We're also paying about $1,000 per tax payer on debt interest. Furthermore, to fill the budget deficit gap we need to pay about $1,000 per tax payer, or reduce our spending by the same amount. My question, however, is, who's going to pay our debt? If we're not doing it right now, our children will have to. And is that really how we want to treat our future? Our government certainly thinks so.

Check out this graph:

http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/site/

My question is: Do we want to be fighting wars, or do we want to pay more taxes? Because we can't just decide to go fight a war and not pay for it. Moreover, if we didn't have any debt, we probably WOULD have enough money to go fight wars whenever we feel like.

My parents are great

November 7th, 2007 at 03:16 pm

Great savers that is. If I had the discipline they've had I would be rich already. In any case, they just sent me $2,000 to help with my wedding payment. On top of the $15,000 they paid last year for my house down payment. Well, they always say it's all being subtracted from my inheritance. Somehow I'm not worrying about that right now - my parents are in great health.

I got a new appointment at the University for 50K at 70% time. That's a 3% drop from my previous rate, but I get better benefits...I think. We'll see how that goes. Also I'm foreseeing a raise in the future, my boss is anyway (he told me so), because I will be taking on more responsibilities at work. I'm counting on it....

Back from Hiatus

November 6th, 2007 at 06:53 pm

Got married in July. Now I'm getting finances back in order. We went over budget. A LOT over budget, and it is hurting. Well..., not literally, but it wiped out at least half a year of savings. Luckily we were able to spread out the pain thinly over the year, so it didn't seem that it was hurting us too much. I've been not spending any money on anything frivolous over the last two months, and it has paid off...somewhat. But then came last month. (We) did some major spending:

New Luggage: $300
Purses: $300
Laptop for my wife: $1200
Wedding Album, Last Payment: $900
Wedding Family Loan Payment: $1000

I always allow myself to buy something "big" each year:

2004: New Computer - $1100
2005: New Laptop - $1300
2006: 40" LCD TV - $700

This year I think I'm passing on that.