Back From The Hiatus with Endless Random Thoughts

Wow, it's been a while since I've really posted. Thanks for all the kind words, things worked out in the end. M's great uncle got sick and things took a rapid and surprising turn for the worse. He passed away, but it was for the better if such things could even be possible. I guess modern medicine makes it possible, with the opportunity to live longer there's always a question of quality of life. On a selfish level I may wish the old guy was still here so I could kick his ass in cards, but honestly he was more than ready, and openly said so. I lived a good life, quote unquote. I hope that when the day comes for me I can say the same.

Then I went home to Buffalo for a while to visit my family, and I had a talk with my mom about her impending death, which she seems to bring up repeatedly despite being in fine health and a hair above a youthful sixty years old. I also moved my sister into a new apartment, and her money woes frankly just make my head hurt.

Being away from the city and my day to day life these past few weeks made me think a lot about money. I know I obsessively save, not in large amounts but with a certain consistency, and I read a lot of bloggers' paths to the long road to retirement as well. But from the struggle to get M's great uncle proper medical care, to my mom's sincere freak out over the gyrations of the stock market and her own retirement right around the corner, financial planning is no joke. There is a very real end of the road, and a reason why we do these things to begin with; live below our means, save, plan for retirement.

Sure, I'd love to have a Prius. I can even rationalize that to have a short car loan will boost my credit score. And driving around for a thousand miles before I fill the gas tank sure sounds like more fun than pouring money into my Roth IRA that keeps on sinking like the damn Titanic, but this choice is a privilege. How so?

Take my childhood, for example. Working class family below the poverty line before Reagan bumped it up. Not consumers, by any stretch of the imagination, there simply was no money. Also, not savers, no 401k, etc. Fast forward into my adulthood, when my mom finally gets a retirement plan from work, into which she diligently saves. But there's a lot of lost time that can't be made up, so I know that when she's watching the Dow she is really really worried, and I'm worried for her.

And me? I'm a consumer. I save, sure, but it comes from the money allocated for my consumerist ways (aka disposable income), and I could always save more, no matter what I say on this blog. That's the difference. Nowadays we are a nation of consumers, and we have thousands of dollars of credit line(s) to keep up the habit. So that privilege I was talking about before? The privilege is not in the decision to save, it's in the decision to spend.

In the end- nobody's perfect, I know I'm not exactly giving up my material goods for a higher cause any time too soon. But there has to be some middle ground, and if I never laid out what it took to retire like a normal person, then I might have never found that middle ground. Because I will always lust after things like a Prius...

Spending $100 million

I've been missing in blogging action this week, so my apologies. I've been too busy spending $100 million in fantasy baseball. Yes, you read that right, I love playing fantasy baseball. Some people knit leg warmers, others make those glass bottles have wee wooden ships. I, however, act out my fantasy of owning the New York Yankees, apparently by overspending. Let me tell you, I give props to those small market teams because this is hard, and clearly overtakes my life. I think I even lost weight, now there's a minor miracle.

Now that you have read absolutely nothing relevant to finances, know that I'll be back next week ( I'm off to Boston for the weekend). For those who celebrate it- Happy Easter. And for everyone dying for the heels of summer to kick us in the pants, Happy Spring!

... Oh, wait, I do have relevant information! The piss poor economy is stunting overdevelpment, in particular the Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn. See, not all bad news is, well, bad.

Baby, Let's Cruise...

PiggyBankBlues will be dark while I go on a cruise tommorrow through Saturday. That's right, a cruise. I will play shuffleboard and lounge poolside with my all-you-can-eat belly hanging over my swimming trunks. Oh, and attend a friend's wedding :)

So Fort Lauderdale, Belize City, Cozumel, Key West, and bride & groom- here I come! But first, I will try to sleep through the ruckus outside my window after the Giants just played the greatest game in Superbowl history. And perhaps, lucky readers that you are, I just might find time to post from the high seas ;)

Dear Student Loan, I'm Leaving You

Dear Student Loan (aka ball & chain),

I'm sorry, but it's over.

Yes, I know that we've been together a long time, almost 15 years is no joke, but it really has been all about you, and I've had it. Not once did you ask me if I was okay leaving one job for a bartender's gig so I could be with you more often, not once did you ask if I really liked eating ramen all the time, or if I felt comfortable living near a crack house. Sure, you weren't the only relationship I had. I had others. Rent, phone, food. But you were the one that broke my heart, because you were the one that made me choose between feeding myself or clothing myself.

But to be fair, that was only in the beginning. The fact is I just got with you before I was ready, and after a few years we settled in quite comfortably together. We always knew we had each other no matter what and it was an habitual co-existence. But then I found that oppressive. I wanted my independence, a life without you, and so I left you. It wasn't my most shining moment but I just didn't know what to do, and I guess I should have written or called, but I just left you without a word.

A few years later I came back, tail between my leg, and man did you make me pay for it! But it was for the best. I learned a lot from that breakup and makeup, and it helped my other relationships, particularly that brief fling I had with Providian. And even though I'm leaving you, know that I don't regret what we had together. I had a phenomenal four year education because of you. It's not that I don't love what you've done for me, it's just how you've done it. But again, it's not your fault. I could blame it on your parents, but they change every four years. No wonder you're messed up.

But I have to be honest with you-- you have a tendency to take advantange of people, and this is the real reason I'm leaving you. I'm sure you won't even miss me when I'm gone, someone else will take my place, but you should really learn to treat people better. Right now you've got it good and you can act however you want to, but someday, someday soon I hope, you're not going to be the only one. I know, I know, you think Grant isn't even the same league as you, but she's got your number, and you better start acting like you know.

It never bothered me that you've been with millions of others, but you take advantage where there should be none taken. Again, it's not your fault, it's how you were raised. I'm just telling you this now because you have a lot to offer people, if only you'd stand up for yourself and do what you were meant to do.

Make no mistake about it, it's not merely that I was unprepared when I went into this relationship to handle the responsibility of being with you. It's that you are not prepared to handle the responsibility you have with us. And now, I cannot believe it took me this long to leave you. If only I knew then what I know now. So goodbye Sallie Mae, or Nellie Mae, or Chase, or whatever you're calling yourself now. It's over, and I can honestly say that in this case, the grass is greener on the other side.

No Longer Yours Forever,

PiggyBankBlues

Howdy!

There's been a slow and steady uptick in readership the past few weeks, and PiggyBankBlues would like to welcome you to the fray. And now, I would like to commence with the blog whoring...

-- Please take a moment to subscribe in a reader via feedburner. It's pretty simple, you just click on what kind of homepage you have and it'll be added in a snap. Or you can have it sent to your inbox, in case your inbox is lonely. Some personal information, my inbox is not lonely. It is filled with vi@gRa and hot chixx.

--You can read my very first post here. Not my best work, but you get the drift.

-- Speaking of drift, I do like to drift... I can wax on (and on) about anything from saving for retirement, to the purpose of the Federal Reserve, and even send you off to other wax on'rs, like Barbara Ehrenreich's open letter to college students.

-- King Lear, Jay Z, Grandma and Grandpa, and Atlas Shrugged have absolutely nothing in common, except that sometimes I just write what tickles my fancy.

-- I'm a writer. Though you'd never know it by reading this blog's sentence structure, grammar, and missed metaphors. I'm working on a novel, but manage to find time to join the workforce regularly. I have two cats and one girlfriend, certainly not in order of importance. I love the Yankees and play fantasy baseball with an exuberance normally reserved for open bar. I'm strung out on Scrabble via Facebook. I read voraciously. I eat that way too. I love meat and hate vegetables. And for most of my life I worked the downtown Manhattan restaurant/bar scene. Somewhere along the line I figured out how to default on student loans and rack up credit card debt and couch surf for months because I didn't have an emergency fund. And then I figured out how to reverse that trend of financial wreckage, and like a smoker turned non-smoker, I've become giddy with my addiction to the healthy opposite.

So I'll end on a little kumbaya moment and welcome you with a hearty handshake. Even though I'm sure that you, like me, are simply killing time and procrastinating online before you start your really important work. But hey, even though I might cost you time I'll save you some bucks (not the least of which is the blog whoring I just did for free). So welcome to PiggyBankBlues, and I hope you enjoy the commenters as much as I do! Have fun :)

photo of me in a Jeepney at Batad, Philippines

My Progress Bars

It only took me months and months of failed attempts and technological ingratitude, but finally I put up some progress bars. I've been thinking about my progress bars for a while now, eyeing them on other blogs like a parked E-Class in the driveway next door. Not that I live in a place with driveways, but neveryoumind. I got my progress bars (thank you ms. m&p!)- and just in the nick of time, because I'm going to pay off my student loan this month!

Nine months ago I stashed M and my emergency fund in a CD. Since interest rates were going to drop even further I locked in the high rate. For a while, interest rates have remained higher than my student loan interest, so I chose to save over pay off the loan. Plus, student loan debt is "good" debt that was boosting my credit score, and my unemployed self was feeling a little clingy to the savings account. But now the CD is maturing (after having earned $235.73!) and the new interest rate is below that of my student loan. Basically I'll be earning less interest than paying out in interest on my loan, so when the CD matures I will pay off the balance of my student loan with most of our small emergency fund. However, I will continue to "pay" the same amount as my student loan payment, but I'll put it back into our e-fund and replace the money I took out.

Juggling debt and saving is something of a long haul, and I have to say that I will be relieved when the last of my big debt is gonzo. It's a nice way to start the year :)

'Tis the Season

I live in a city with 1.6 million people living below the poverty level (1 in 5 New Yorkers). And for what it's worth, the federal poverty rate is currently a family of 3 surviving on $16,600 a year. Can you even imagine? Over half of all babies born in NYC are born into poverty. Poverty rates soar while public assistance has plummeted. Only 44 percent of students in NYC graduate from high school in 4 years (it costs $13,755 to educate a NYC student per year). 40 percent of children in foster care end up in prison (it costs $100,000 to incarcerate a person per year per--you do the math). And as it says on NYC non profit Robin Hood's homepage, 34,000 people slept in shelters last night, nearly half of whom were children. One cannot live in NYC and not understand that the poverty is staggering.

I don't come from money. I grew up in a working class family in a proudly blue collar neighborhood. It was during the devastation years when the big factories like Bethlehem Steel closed down and threw Buffalo, NY into the brink of economic oblivion. I grew up with government cheese (those bright orange bricks were mighty tasty!) and gas lines in nearby Canada that went for miles. Like any other kid, I thought my life was perfectly normal and relatively happy. If you don't count high school. Then, as the first kid to go to college in my family, I arrived at a swank Northeast liberal arts college and gawked at the students who arrived in limos, at moms decked out in Chanel suits speaking Portugese with a Brazilian lilt. There was a lot of gawking that first month for me. Eventually I became immune to stories of fox hunting with the Rockefellers and when my mom asked me tentatively over the phone, how I felt coming from a lower class, I sincerely answered that I was proud of where I came from.

But I had advantages that many do not. I know that my family, as working class WASPs, sheltered my brown immmigrant ass from a lot of torture. As many of you know, I was adopted as a baby, so while I'm ethnically Filipino, coctail hour and -albeit government- cheese plates in my life was absolutely de rigeur. Because my own complicated identity crosses a lot of borders, I know in the marrow of my bones that if it weren't for some serious life changing luck outside of my control, my life would be very very different. My mom, my sister, and I moved into my grandparents' house when I was six. My mom chose this over public housing when her husband left her high and dry with two kids. If I did not have my grandparents, who were able to buy and pay off their house without predatory lending, if I did not have my mom who was able to get a job as a church secretary during a time of double digit unemployment with the basic but necessary skills she learned at the local high school, if I did not have the cheap local track team to keep me busy and sprinting my way through childhood, the backyard to safely play football, the after school programs at the local church, the free lunches at school, the well stocked shelves of the local library, then my life would be markedly different. And make no mistake, a working class suburb hugging North Buffalo is not the same as Brooklyn.

My grandparents passed away in 1999 and 2000, and I think of them every day. I miss them terribly during the holiday season. And it is because of them that I will never forget where I come from. There was a lot of giving thanks in my childhood, and this time of year was when you remembered others. So thank you, Nema and Grandpa, for making my life so fortunate. Hopefully somebody up there can explain the word "blog", because we were stuck on translating "answering machine" and never made it to "internet"...

That's an important word, Fortunate- Receiving good from uncertain or unexpected sources. While hard work and an honest education may be a best selling ticket to prosperity, there's a lot of division among the uncertain and unexpected sources. Non profits and charities help bridge this division. This is our city, our country, our world. And even if I have piggybankblues, I am fortunate enough to even have a piggybank. Whether it's a religious/cultural holiday, or simply the retrospection of filling up the new year's dance card, 'tis the season to remember that ten dollars a month to your favorite charity is $120 worth of annual giving. Just remember- charge it to a no-fee rewards credit card, and pay it off in full each month :)

Here are a few of my favorite charities that allow monthly giving in smaller amounts, please feel free to share your own.

Food Bank for New York City

Robin Hood

New York Asian Women's Center

Transportation Alternatives

Astraea Foundation

New York Cares- search engine to volunteer in NYC

Charity Navigator- evaluates the financial health of charities nationwide

photo by |Shrued via flickr

My Birthday

I hope everybody had a great turkey weekend!

Tommorrow is my birthday, so I probably won't post. Last year I went to Woodbury Common Outlets and had a blast. Of course, it hit my wallet a little hard, and since I just went nuts the other weekend in Northampton I thought I should avoid the urge to shop. So I think I'll have lunch at the MoMA with M, check out the exhibits, maybe go to a movie. While I love parties, I do not like parties that are about me, so I usually do something very low key.

Yesterday I went to Coney Island with M and some friends. It was so nice out, the water was this deep blue and the sky was clear. I get kind of retrospective around my b'day, and this year has been a little hard, to say the least. Nothing like a gorgeous walk along the shore to ease me into my new year. We walked the boardwalk from Coney Island to Brighton Beach and ended up eating in this grand Russian dining hall, Primorski Restaurant. The beef stroganoff was divine, well worth $12. We were there for lunch, so we missed the live music. That could be a very good or bad thing...

I was thinking soup dumplings for dinner tommorrow, any suggestions?

Juggling Student Loan(s)

Juggling student loan debt is about as fun as juggling chainsaws on high speed. Not that I've ever tried the latter, but I'm all too familiar with the first.

I graduated in 1993 (now I just aged myself!) with $18,000 in debt. I went to one of, if not the, most expensive school in the country. After graduating I got a lease for a two bedroom on East 12th Street between A and B for $800 a month. It was a king's ransom for both myself and my friend, but we had our own apartment in the East Village with all the other recent college grads. Think Williamsburgh but with crack houses and affordable rents, and not a whole lot of bars and restaurants. I've held nine-to-five career-ish type jobs for the grand total of about two years of my life. My first job out of college was as an editorial assistant at a publishing house in the city. I share the opinion of this young man just out of school- paying off huge loans limits who we become. After a year of living off of coffee trucks for breakfast ($1 dollar special coffee and a donut) and ramen with bacon, I was done. I had worked in restaurants in the city during college, and I went back. I worked the swing shift at The Coffee Shop in Union Square, made boatloads of money, and in between dancing the morning away at Sound Factory I began my first novel.

And my student loan debt? Well, lucky reader that you are, that's another story.

According to a study recently reported in The Chronicle for Higher Education,

...borrowers who graduated in 1992 or 1993 with $15,000 or more in debt were three times as likely to default on their loans over 10 years as were borrowers with less than $5,000 in debt. Students with the lowest salaries in 1994 were more than four times as likely to default on their loans over that period as were students with the highest salaries after graduation.

So yes, I defaulted. Then there was that time I moved to LA to follow a girlfriend that I broke up with the day we left, well that miserable "year abroad" was another banner of a default year. I came back to NYC and jumped into my second, and last, real nine-to-five gig, Associate Director for an art gallery in the city. Again, not a whole lot of money and I didn't write for a year. Finally, I left to go back to bartending. The liberal deferrements were ending and my loans had ballooned. The interest was low, but still, they weren't coming down and remained out of reach. So I bit the bullet and tried to begin repayment. Problem was, I had moved around so damn much, and didn't go out of my way to let them know where I was, that they would only accept full payment. I was royally pissed off at myself and determined to change. So I read the fine print of every piece of paper I was given. I wrote certified letters, cc'd to the CEO of Sallie Mae, that were armed to the hilt with their own legalese as examples why I had the right to make payments. Six months later, I had consolodated my loans and was well on my way to paying them off.

Graduating with student loans is like having irresponsible debt without the irresponsibility. It's debt for something that has come and gone, and it's more often than not a pretty hefty sum. It's not like a mortgage and you get a house. No, it's an intellectual vacation of a lifetime that lasted four or so years and just ended. Best of all, you just won yourself an entry level position, or better yet, grad school. And suddenly, your financial literacy as a just-unleashed adult is to constantly "fix" all the things you keep fu*#ing up: a hacked up credit score, late fees, defaults, your parents have to co-sign your lease, overdrafts, the feared phone calls for eternal forebearance, the list is endless.

Count me as long ass lesson learned. As you can tell by the length of this post, I'm feeling generous. So if you want some friendly unsolicited advice...

Do whatever you can to pay off your loan and keep in contact when you can't. I preferred the head-in-the-sand approach, and if I had only talked to them I would be better off. And the damn loan would be paid by now.

Educate yourself, because the student loan industry will take you for a ride if you don't.

Know the statistics on defaults and avoid the traps. Again, if you have over $15K in loans you're almost 3Xs likely to default than a person with $5K. Paying off a big ticket item can become unreal, just like saving for a big ticket item (like retirement) can be unreal. Like saving for retirement, statistics make it real. Another stat, African-American graduates had a default rate more than 5Xs that of White graduates, and Hispanic graduates' default rate was more than 2Xs that of White graduates. Yet again, I fail to fullfill the Asian-American stereotype (but at least this time I'm not giving it the middle finger), since Asian-American graduates have the lowest default rates.

Play with your calculator. Fiddle with the figures and just know your big picture. Knowing what it takes to pay it off in ten years and what it takes to pay it off in twenty is a good kick in the pants.

Defer. If you have other debt, and you can defer your student loan(s), pay off your other debt first. This is the tricky part. If you have high credit card debt, for example, but you are well on your way from financial mess up to financial clean up, then free up some money. Credit card interest is high, and like all debt (except for, arguably, mortgages) you should pay off the highest interest rate first. Just be careful not to default.

Watch your deadlines. Mark one of those free calendars of cute endangered animals that you get in the mail every year. In big marker. Mark when your loan is due, when your forebearance ends, when the deadline is to call to change your automatic draft so you don't overdraw your checking account and miss a payment. Mark down the date, time, and reason for every call or correspondence with them. And of course, keep every piece of paper and email they send to you.

Look into consolidating your loans. The Boston Globe did a great piece on loan consolidation. Make sure the offers are legit, read the fine print, and research as much as you can. Student loan consolidation has great benefits, but it's a maze and a minefield.

And last but not least, talk to as many people as you can about their own experience. Whether you do it on a blog or over dinner with some friends, know the horror stories and the I-can't-believe-she-was-so-nice stories. Know that most of the time you call up they won't even be able to find you in their computer. Know that half of what they say to you will sail right over your head and you'll have to write it all down and get back to them. Know that no college degree equips you with the ability to decipher your loan packet, but you have to try your damn best. And know that if I can mess up and flip it around, anyone can. And this spring hopefully I'll be dancing around Prospect Park screaming, free at last!

Thanks, But No Thanks

Well, after a long weekend of too much thought, I declined the job. In the end, I realized that my writing was going just too well to jeopardize. Plus, there are some other freelance type opportunities cooking on the backburner that are far more rewarding than the service industry, albeit less paid. I will have to get a couple shifts a week at a restuarant in the meantime, but it is not the responsibility or soul suck of actually running the place. Thanks for all the advice, on and offline!

Job Interview

Yesterday I had a job interview. It is a General Manager position at a well known restaurant with an upper echelon Zagat rating. The problem is that it is 5 days a week and 10 hour days. I would get home at 3am some nights, and work directly under self-professed "anal retentive stubborn control freaks."

M works days, Monday through Friday, so we would go back to our lives of not really spending a whole lot of time together. My writer's group meets bi-weekly during the work week, and I would have to negotiate that evening off. They have never had a manager, and admit that they do things "not exactly the right way." But they seem anything but eager beaver to change their ways.

They are owner/chefs. Some of the best food in restaurants comes from chef-owned establishments, but some of the worst places to work are the exact same places. Before owning this restaurant, they have never worked, let alone run, the front of the house (the dining area, ie waitstaff. The back of the house is obviously the kitchen). They have the stereotypical back of the house disdain for the waitstaff and have a high turnover. It pretty much looks like they run their waitstaff to the ground.

The restaurant has been open for a while and they cook every single day. To say they are overworked is an understatement. But they have to pay for a better quality of life and I am unsure if they realize was the going market rate is for that. Hell, I had to ring up a friend and ask him myself. The restaurant is a definite advancement from my last job. I'm supposed to think it over this weekend and call them on Monday. It is not a given that I will get the job, but if I said yes I think they would give it a whirl. I think I will run a couple of my suggestions by them, see how they react to advice from another, and let them know that I won't do it for under $70,000. It's an $80,000 a year job, and if I'm still around by year 2 that's what I want to make.

If they say yes, which there is a good change they won't, then I feel like I can't so no to the money. Especially right now. But I will be eliminating my life- my social life, my writing life... I just don't know. It will be a long weekend.

Atlas Shrugged

Last year I tore through Steinbeck's East of Eden, and became a reader emboldened with the idea that indeed I could still read a big book. So I picked up Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I read The Fountainhead in high school, as all voracious high school readers have, and remember very little of it. Of course I knew that Ayn Rand was a philosopher-writer, and so of course in my adult life I have avoided reading her for pleasure as much as one avoids Wittgenstein on a beach blanket. But again, Steinbeck wooed me and so I picked up the heavy paperback thinking that I could climb the Great Books mountain once again.

Reading Atlas Shrugged was like rubbernecking on the great literary highway. I was staring at a gruesome accident of literature and couldn't look away. I had a crush on Dagny for three weeks. My own girlfriend would cast sidelong glances at the cover and frown. Friends were like why the hell are you reading that?! If I wasn't a writer I don't think I would have enjoyed it. While I found it a month long frustration with style and content (dear god what else is there?), I thought it was a helluva good story (oh, right, narrative...).

The reason I bring up this not-so-interesting story of my Atlas Shrugged experience is because a couple of days ago I read an interesting New York Times article, Ayn Rand's Literature of Capitalism. Who knew Ayn Rand outsells Jack Welch, and that Alan Greenspan wrote for her magazine, The Objectivist, several times? While I had a fun time reading Atlas Shrugged, I'll take Jay Gatsby over Dagny Taggart anyday, and Sinclair and Steinbeck and Dickens could outwrite Rand with their hands tied behind their backs. But America's CEO's are like any other readers, everybody has a novel where somewhere within the text there is inspiration, and a character becomes your hero.

Singing the Blues

Welcome to PiggyBankBlues. This is for all you artists and other ilk who are waitresses and bartenders, college professors and grad students, non-profiteers and cash cow hustlers. I like to think of you as my friends and family. I, of course, am one of you. The not so nine to fiver. The one with the gargantuan student loan and four year degree in an intellectual bar of gold and not much else. Okay, I slogged a bit through my four years, an intellectual bar of sterling silver.

So why PiggyBankBlues? I'll tell you why. Because I have too much time on my hands. Which brings me to a story. Once upon a time there was this little market anamoly known as the tech boom. You might have heard about it, it was the roar before the crash. New York City was flush, and boy oh boy I do mean flush. Two hour wait for my table and I was walking out of work my pockets stretched. After waiting tables we would go out and have lobster dinners and knob creek until four in the morning. We would buy fancy clothes, go to South Beach for the weekend, and put the "disposable" in "disposable income" in big bold font. Around this time I was trying desperately to clean up my student loan mess. Spending so much money, I had a vague sense that I should have accumulated more, and was trying to do band aid sort of things. I got a secured credit card. I opened an online brokerege account to buy some internet stocks. After a little while, though, things didn't feel right. And then the market started skidding.

After September 11th, 2001, a fellow waitress and I bought shares in American Express because they had announced that, unlike scores of other companies, they were staying in downtown Manhattan. It was then, along with many other things, that I sarted to pay attention. Because now, not only was my city devastated, so was the national economy and right down to my personal bank account. All this money and we had nothing to show for it.

I became, as many of you know, a little obssessed with finance. But don't get me wrong, I'm no Benjamin Graham (for those of you who don't know, he's an intelligent investor who is also famous. I guess i'm an intellegent investor, but not famous, and certainly not AS intelligent). I'm a dyslexic writer prone to the run on sentence. Up unitl recently I hadn't progressed past 11th grade math. I thought it would be a good idea to become a Certified Financial Planner (CFP) for my closest friends and their dearest associates. Half way through the training, though I enjoyed every moment of it, I realized that this was serious business, the kind that doesn't allow for the writing of the great american novel (purposefully lowercase). Well, that and I found out that I couldn't manage money that was, um, mostly cash. See, the idea was to help people cut off from things like 401Ks, people who don't live in a city where 5% down and a $45,000 annual salary get you and your family an affordable home and mortgage, people who have lots of questions and no accountant to answer them. People with the PiggyBankBlues.

So after much hemming and hawing, I decided to start this blog. Because I don't wait tables anymore, thank you baby jesus, and I can't harrass you all about maxing out your Roth IRA with dollar cost averaging. But boy can I do it here.