Heading back to USA!

Today is my last day in Norway. Visiting Hamburg, Germany tonight (friday night) and flying back to the USA saturday morning. Good bye! good riddance! Hello L.A.! hello Elizabeth! As I am watching the sun rise at 5:17 AM CEST time, I find myself struggling to finish up some coding I am doing for my client here in lovely Oslo. I got stuck on a big hurdle that set me back a few days. Turned out it was actually quite easy and simple to overcome, it just took me a while to figure out how. This is why I am not a programmer/developer by profession. My company tricks me into it by selling the 'visit a foreign country' aspect. Haha. I think I am going to start another blog for my finance journal.

Freezing in Norway!!

I'm in Oslo, Norway right now doing some consulting work for a Norwegian telephone company. I was hoping it would be a little warm since it is the end of March, but it is most definitely not. It was 0 C degrees last night when I was walking to my hotel. AHH!!!

This is the "National Theatre" in downtown Oslo. It's one train stop east of Skøyen, the area where I'm staying.

Car wreck , BofA sucks

Last Wednesday on the way back from my dentist's office, I got in a nasty car wreck. I was making a left turn and a car driving north (oncoming traffic) hit me right between the passenger door and the rear wheel. Really sucks, did not see the person coming at all. There was a car up ahead making a left turn as well and was blocking my sight of the oncoming car. Even worse, I found out my insurance had been canceled, due to a suspended license, which I found out was due to an outstanding speeding ticket I had gotten in early 2007. I paid the ticket, had it cleared, and paid the reinstatement fee to Arkansas for a suspended driver's license. I also made an agreement with the lady who hit me to pay her in cash for her damages. Her damages were about $2k. I don't know how much mine are yet, I paid a friend $350 to fix my dent and fill/sand/repaint the area. It looks like a $350 job, but looks way better than it did with a dent. Sigh. I think I have a bent rear axle that is going to be a pain in the arse to have fixed.

I was in the process of moving my banking needs to a different bank, and began ramping down my use of my BofA checking account. Bank of America had kept a charge from posting for a while (who knows why) and so after I had my "check book" balanced, BofA proceeded to charge an account fee for not having any direct deposits which caused my account to go negative, then they charged a $35 overdraft fee for the $7 charge which posted 2 weeks late. Today I went in and closed my BofA Checking and Savings accounts in California. Good riddance. I also reported my Debit card for my BofA Kansas Checking account stolen so 24 hour fitness would stop charging me a monthly fee. They wouldn't let me cancel it at one of their gyms, and I kept getting the runaround when trying to cancel over the phone.

My new favorite site + New York Comment

Mint.com

And with the mint.com iphone app, I can remind myself every day of how poor I am at the moment. :)
Also, Bank of America sucks. I am going to be closing my california checking/savings account and just keep my Kansas account so I can make deposits quickly at local branches if necessary.


New York, NY
Is not that great. It is way too cold. And the entire week I was there, I hardly ever heard anyone speaking English. It is kind of like LA but with a lot less "pretty people". I rarely saw "pretty people" that I see tons of on a daily basis in LA. And I was all over Manhattan, night and day. It wasn't just the area I was staying in. It was fun going up on the empire state building, seeing the statue of liberty, seeing the brooklyn bridge, see where the WTC used to be, etc. Bonus points also for having groovy mom and pop restaurants everywhere within walking distance. The public metro transit system is also fantastic, albeit extremely dirty and crowded with lots of people who don't bathe more than once a week.

Money and stupidity

I had a big realization this week. I don't want to work for "the man" anymore. I don't want to grow up and be poor like my parents. I need to work smarter, not harder. I had an interesting conversation with my older brother, and he explained a lot of his experiences and gave me some sound advice, as well as some book recommendations. I read one book already and it compounded on that same realization. Man I have been so stupid. I have been working since I was 18, straight out of high school. That means I have been working for 7 years.

In the past 7 years, I have earned over $360,000. After all this hard work and solid income, what do I have to show for it? well I paid off a lot of dept from making expenses above my income in previous years. But after that .. let's see....

-7 years worth of W-2's showing the government taxed 35% of it
-$12k in credit card debt.
-$15k in debt on a former "new" car I'm making payments on.
-A house that is foreclosing
-A motorcycle I paid cash for
-$3k in a 401k from previous employer i have left sitting around
-Braces for my teeth that are in-progress I paid $5.5k upfront for.
-Bunch of designer clothes worth very little used.
-Credit score of 599
-No savings.
Total value = (-)$30,000

Wow. I am dumb. Its been a fun 7 years, but I need to get things on track. For the next year...
-Stick to budget geared towards 25-30% savings
-Groceries > Eating out
-No buying new clothes except underwear.
-Pay off credit card debt ASAP, it is mean and evil
-Save at least 25% of gross income to be used for investments
-Start a money market account. Earn interest off savings.
-Invest some in stock market. High risk, high returns.
-Use the heck out of my BoA debit card. Any uneven dollar amount purchase, they contribute the remainder to make up a full dollar into my savings account. "Keep the change" program.
-Transfer my Merrill Lynch 401K to something that I can use and grow as an asset.

I am confident I can have $100k in assets in the next 3 years.

Seacliff / Ventura, CA

This is the beach in Ventura. 60 miles northwest of hollywood. A bunch of seaweed, flies, and hot sand. Don't care to ever go back.




Happy birthday to my little brother, John!

Sigh

Life is so complicated. Emotions, egos, logic, and to top it off... we're living animals. We have to eat, crap, exercise, etc. Nonetheless, I'm infinitely grateful at the once in a lifetime opportunity.

P.S.
I'm pissed i miss the earthquake because I was traveling out of town. Whatever.

Warming up a bit

Yesterday I had to drive over to Temecula,CA to see my plastic surgeon. It was a bit warm that far away from the ocean.

My new setup :cool:

So I decided to retire my set of Technic 1200 MK3 direct drive vinyl turntables (pictured below under the table) in turn for some CDJ players. The pair of Pioneer CDJ-800 MK2's are very nice. They play well with my DJM-600 mixer and they make it worth ditching vinyl. Here is a picture of my setup. Currently I have the audio out from the mixer going to a RCA cable that feeds into the CD input channel on the back of my Yamaha home theater receiver. Then I have my computer "surround sound" speakers hooked up to the headphone out jack on the front of the receiver. I am using some old Sony headphones with the 'Headphone out' jack on the mixer to cue the other channels while mixing.

LA Nightlife: Chris Lawrence at Vanguard

One of my favorite things about living in LA is the nightlife. There is always something happening every day of the week. In order to know what's going on most of the time, I have to keep up with promoters and calendar events. The rest of the events are all about who you know, and who can get you in. On March 1st, my roommate, her friend, and I all went to Vanguard in Hollywood to see Chris Lawrence, who happens to be an amazing DJ. Vanguard is just down the street from where I live. 10-15 minutes walking distance. We were supposed to be walked in the door (skip ticket lines, guest list lines, etc) by a certain individual who let us down, but we won't talk about that. I had a lot of fun anyways.




I was on the left side somewhere.