April Net Worth

Well, I'm back to thirty thousand. $30,589 to be exact, an increase of 3.88%. It's so dinky, yet I feel so warm and fuzzy. I love being in the black...

I know I should have other goals, like a good pf blogger, but right now I'm just trying to gather enough together to max out my Roth IRA every month. It's seriously putting a dent into my cheeseburger budget, but I guess it's important to be able to even afford a cheeseburger when I'm seventy. Of course, when I'm seventy I'll probably be banned from eating cheeseburgers because, well, I ate too many for sixty nine years.

But back to the relevant stuff. M and I do save every month in our ING savings accounts, so I guess those count as goals.

$100 christmas fund (gifts and travel)
$100 car fund (for surprise repairs and a "new" used car in 5+ yrs)
$100 gym fund (annual gym membership for both of us)
$100 vacation fund (tax returns pad this fund, we go away a lot...)
$200 emergency fund
=$600/month in ING

It might seem like a lot, but remember it's a joint account, so really my share is only $300. Better to pay a savings account that much rather than Amex.

At least once a year four of those funds get drained (not the emergency fund, if life is kind), which is why my net worth spiked in December and then took a tumble. But I kind of figured out what things really killed my credit card every year, and just decided to save for them instead. So far it's worked out. Plus, now that those infamous stimulous checks are on their way, my savings account has a small something to look forward to.

How Much Do You Make?

A recent NY Times article, Not-So-Personal Finance looks at the question of should one talk about money publicly. In particular, paycheck size.

For people old enough to remember phone booths, a blunt reference to salary in a social setting still represents the height of bad manners. But for many young professionals, the don’t-ask-don’t-tell etiquette of previous generations seems like a relic.

I guess I'm of the phone booth relic for nine to fivers, but in the restaurant industry it's fair game. I have no problem asking how much someone (I know, even casually) makes in tips at another joint, and within the same restaurant there usually is a fair amount of transparency between, say, the floor and the bar. Especially if the floor is tipping out the bar. But if you earn a paycheck paycheck? No way am I asking you how much you make. Not unless you're one of my best friends. But that's just me, I wouldn't be offended if someone asked me how much I made, I'm just not really going to go around asking people that question. I guess because I think that they themselves don't do that.

There are definitely benefits to sharing salary information with friends in the same industry. Also, I think that women have a tendency to inadvertently sell themselves short because they don't talk about money as much as men. But that is a totally uneducated assessment (however I would like to point out that I am very skilled at the uneducated assessment, so it's not without merit). And honestly, I am all for people talking more about money in general with each other.

Apparently, if you're under 35 you already know how much all your friends make. And those extra two years of me sometimes wishes I was under 35, so guess what. I make $2300 a month (a mix of before tax and after tax, don't ask), but that's mostly freelance work so it can easily change.

And if I asked you how much you made, would you cringe or tell all?

iTunes Free Single of the Week

iTunes' free single of the week is Melody Gardot's Worrisome Heart, a smoky jazz title track from Verve's reissue of her debut album in 2006. It's a nice song for this overcast day, so head on over to the iTunes store for the free download. And then quickly exit the program before you, like me, start snatching up random songs from bands like Journey (listen, Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin' is a good song!)... and Busta Rhymes' new single... and, oh never mind.

New York's Finest

One of the great things about having people visit you in the city is that you get to show off all your favorite things to do. Not necessarily the big things, like shoot up to the top of the Empire State building, but the little stuff. Like watching the sunset from Fairway's outdoor cafe in Brooklyn.

Fairway is a large supermarket. Like 33,000 sq. ft. large. For a city that like to grocery shop in corner store bodegas, that's one hulking store. For those readers who don't live here, it's also a New York institution with a store originally in the Upper West Side and Harlem, and the fact that one moved to Brooklyn was a huge deal that had people shaking with excitement over the prospect of fresh fruits and vegetables (we must have the worst produce in all of the US) and legendary store prepared food. Okay, we New Yorkers love the hyperbole of our institutions, but it really was a big deal. The Brooklyn store sits right on the waterfront in Red Hook, in a restored five story brick building from 1869 that was originally a coffee warehouse.

We got some picking's like Italian olives and Fairway's killer guacamole with chips, and each picked up some dinner. Basically an outdoor picnic. Then we headed out the back to the cafe and watched the sun slink down behind Jersey, and watched the New York harbor just slide by. Kayaks(!), tug boats, the Staten Island Ferry, and of course a fantastic view of the Statue of Liberty. We even saw the FDNY pull up to the dock right at the foot of the cafe, get off the boat in full gear, go inside to grocery shop, then get back on the boat and float off into the harbor.

Everybody has their favorite spot to watch a sunset, and I have to admit this is one of mine. It's waterfront dining at its finest, and without killing your budget.

photo by HanlongPhotographic via flickr

Bananas Going Bananas

Yesterday I was at the Park Slope Food Co-Op and I noticed a sign above the boxes of bananas. After a long haul of 69 cents per lb., organic bananas are expected to hit $1 per lb., with no price ceiling in sight. There goes the one and only fruit I actually enjoy eating. If cheeseburgers had the caloric and nutritional equivalent of asparagus, I'd be golden. But alas, I'm mourning the price of bananas.

I tried to google my way to knowledge about the banana situation, but I couldn't find much. I recently wrote about the world food crisis, but just this past week The Economist put out an excellent article, The New Face of Hunger.

“World agriculture has entered a new, unsustainable and politically risky period,” says Joachim von Braun, the head of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, DC. To prove it, food riots have erupted in countries all along the equator. In Haiti, protesters chanting “We're hungry” forced the prime minister to resign; 24 people were killed in riots in Cameroon; Egypt's president ordered the army to start baking bread; the Philippines made hoarding rice punishable by life imprisonment. “It's an explosive situation and threatens political stability,” worries Jean-Louis Billon, president of Côte d'Ivoire's chamber of commerce.

Some of the shift has certainly been an issue of supply. In the case of my beloved bananas, there was a devastating flood in Peru where the Co-Op purchases its supply from. But it is also largely an issue of demand. Countries like China and India increase their consumption of grain and meat as they become wealthier. In the meantime, biofuel production is pegged to Western governments' targeted goals, shrinking usable farmland (for food) in the process. Farming is not limber, and it is notoriously slow to respond to market forces. There are large swaths of unused land in Russia and Brazil, for example, that will take at least a decade before they are farmable. If that's a word. Farming, it seems, is experiencing some serious global growing pains.

But the food scare of 2008, severe as it is, is only a symptom of a broader problem. The surge in food prices has ended 30 years in which food was cheap, farming was subsidised in rich countries and international food markets were wildly distorted. Eventually, no doubt, farmers will respond to higher prices by growing more and a new equilibrium will be established. If all goes well, food will be affordable again without the subsidies, dumping and distortions of the earlier period. But at the moment, agriculture has been caught in limbo. The era of cheap food is over. The transition to a new equilibrium is proving costlier, more prolonged and much more painful than anyone had expected.

“We are the canary in the mine,” says Josette Sheeran, the head of the UN's World Food Programme, the largest distributor of food aid. Usually, a food crisis is clear and localised. The harvest fails, often because of war or strife, and the burden in the affected region falls heavily on the poorest. This crisis is different. It is occurring in many countries simultaneously, the first time that has happened since the early 1970s. And it is affecting people not usually hit by famines. “For the middle classes,” says Ms Sheeran, “it means cutting out medical care. For those on $2 a day, it means cutting out meat and taking the children out of school. For those on $1 a day, it means cutting out meat and vegetables and eating only cereals. And for those on 50 cents a day, it means total disaster.” The poorest are selling their animals, tools, the tin roof over their heads—making recovery, when it comes, much harder.

I encourage you to check out the article. It's a little long (it is The Economist after all), but I learned a lot about how agriculture plays out on the world stage.

photo by missha via flickr

Airlines to Charge $25 for Second Bag

Yes, it's official. Shortly after a handful of airlines announced they would charge $25 for a second checked bag, most major airlines now will do the same.

I am a freak about traveling with carry on only, to the point where it drives M nuts, but now it will save me money. My fear is that now everyone will sneak on a decidedly not within 45 linear inch bag, overstuffing the overhead bins.

The new fee of $25 for a second bag is being levied by Continental, Delta, Northwest, United and US Airways. The low-fare carrier AirTran has announced that it will charge $10 for a second checked bag. Airlines have long levied fees for checking a third bag. Some carriers have recently increased those as well, and the fees on the major carriers now run as high as $100.

Average Manhattan Home $1.6 Million

Housing slump my a$$. The average Manhattan home now sells for $1.6 million. The city average is $853,000.

What does this tell us? It tells us that the wealthy remain unscathed by the national economic turmoil, and the rest of us are left with even less affordable housing than before. And the before wasn't so great to begin with...

Thank god for Brooklyn.