We live in a master planned community of ~3000 homes and as such, we have a fairly thorough set of HOA covenants. They’re not idiotically written, but they can be a pain at times when you want to do something simple like put in a playset in your backyard. Recently, they sent out their monthly newsletter notifying everyone that they would be “focusing on fences”, as there have been some homes that are staining their fences (not approved – sealing is fine, staining is a no-no) replacing their cedar fences with non-approved woods other than cedar (gasp-the horror!) and have rundown fences that need repair or replacing. We didn’t think anything about it as most of our fence is in good shape. Although Mrs. SSC and I disagree on this, because our views of “good shape” are highly divergent. However, one of our neighbors want to replace their fence and split the cost to replace the side we share with them. Now we’re arguing discussing which one of us is right. Oh brother…
As you may know, Mrs. SSC has been looking for teaching jobs, so every week she gets emailed new postings and if she sees something that looks interesting for me, she will also forward it along. I had an interesting job opportunity forwarded to me from Mrs. SSC that we both would seem to fit, and the company wanted both a geophysicist and a geologist. Double bonus! We figured it could fit our needs if we both got an offer, so we applied.
Last week, I got an email from that company saying that they would be interested in talking with me about the position. I returned the email and gave them some open dates and they responded with, “Would you be free tomorrow morning around 9am?” I was excited because who doesn’t like getting picked, but the down side was that Mrs. SSC hadn’t been contacted, bummer…
During the call, I found out about the position, job responsibilities, office setup, and more and it sounded great. Better yet, I qualified to start on the upper end of the pay spectrum, around $95k/yr! My schedule would stay the same with 9/80 style, and there were some other Lifestyle Change perks as well, but it was looking pretty good.
Then, reality struck, hard and heavy. We had already vetted some cost of living (COL) increases in this area, assuming we would both get offered positions. Even then, we knew that with 2 salaries it would be tight, because I haven’t mentioned this part yet, but this job was in California… GAH!!! We thought it would be worth it though, because we could start our Lifestyle Change a bit early, but just take a different path than we planned. I mean who wouldn’t want to live in California for a few years? This would be in Camarillo, which is near Ventura and Oxnard, and has topography, and well a milder version of seasons, but at least different from Houston. Also, there are a lot of parks and hiking around there, as well as the beach, and other fun stuff to do with the kids. You can even see snow on the surrounding mountains in the winter! Oooohhhh….. 🙂 Based on those types of things that we want in our Lifestyle Change, we thought it would be fine to go there for a few years, even if it would delay things a bit. We’d have better work schedules, and be living in a better geographically pleasant area.
I started doing some rough calculations based on what we spend now per month on essentials to see where how good or bad it might be. Since we’ve got a solid year plus of tracking that info, it was easy to ballpark the COL in California. When I started adding these up we were left with about $265/mo left over. This was assuming no daycare costs with Mrs. SSC staying at home, and other minor adjustments like no maids, no cable, no gym, etc… When I got to the end of the month, I had very little left over… It was depressing, as you can see in the chart below.
Even with big unrealistic cuts, it’s tight.
Between taxes (27%), 5% contribution to 401k, and housing which was about $2600-$3600/month for a 3 BR house, we were left with enough to survive and that’s about it. This would mean that we wouldn’t be able to add anything to our “extra” retirement savings, no college savings for the kids anymore, no allowance money, no replenishment of the emergency fund if/when something happened, and no extra money for anything. It’s good we’d be in beautiful CA, because we couldn’t afford to leave to travel anywhere else. With realistic tweaking of the budget averages from last year we would only have an extra $3100/year. Per year… That was not adding in the real adjusted COL to our averages, rather assuming we could cut ~10% and the rest would take care of itself in the wash.
I looked at our highest spend categories to see what other cuts could be made. Our car insurance is about $182/mo for both cars, but we have another year of $323 car payment on Mrs. SSC’s vehicle. So even if we paid it off before we left, which would be entirely doable, that still only frees up another $3900/yr to buffer the budget. Also, I asked Mrs. SSC, “What’s the house and misc. shopping, do we spend that much just shopping?” She said, “Well, that would be your clothes, my clothes, the kids clothes, light bulbs, toilet paper, stuff like that… You want toilet paper right?” Hahahaha Not a whole lot of wiggle room there either, especially since our allowances wouldn’t exist and they used to cover our clothes. We don’t want to derail our FFLC plans this close to the goal, so I ultimately had to turn the position down because it would put us in a negative/neutral financial position.
Thinking about this from a standpoint that we’re in now though brought me back around to the positive side of things. First, it’s good to know that in a few years, this position might be open again, and I would be an effective shoe-in to get that spot. Second, since we’d be at our FFLC number, we wouldn’t have to worry about whether we have extra savings to add to it, because according to our plan, we’d be living off of it solely without any extra income. A position like this would effectively allow us to live in CA with the only real expense being me working for a year or so. Since we wouldn’t be touching our savings, they’d just grow too. Now that’s a win! Third, this is exactly what Mrs. SSC has been talking about in the sense that if a geologist job or other random teaching type of position opens up, it’s fine if it only offers $30-$40k/yr if it’s somewhere that we would like to live for a few years. We could live somewhere fun and interesting, explore around there for a few years or more, and then move on to the next cool place.
This whole exercise did make me realize that our budget for FFLC is looking pretty nice though. Even with it re-adjusted since we’ll be renting for a couple of years, and then possibly buying in a more long term area, we should be doing well and living fairly comfortably without a lot of worries about needing extra income. Also, I realized that if any unexpected expenditures that come up, we have our allowances to use as a buffer, which is comforting too. In the end, it did end up with me feeling a lot better about our numbers, plans, and expectations of our Lifestyle Change. I’m even more excited now, knowing in another year or so, we’ll be in full control to do what we want, and not have to be constrained by the thoughts of “Can we afford to live there on that salary?” That is a pretty cool feeling. Until then, we’ll just keep sticking to the plan and counting down days. On the plus side, we’re under 850 days to go until then…
breakdown from Smartasset.com and their tax calculator
Soft skills offer you glimpse into a persons personality.
With all of this talk about layoffs and possibly looking for a new job soon Mrs. SSC has been working on her resume. Don’t worry, she’s been working on it before now, but it keeps bringing up this debate over whether or not to highlight soft skills. If you do list them, to what degree should they be featured and what is the best way to incorporate them? We have opposing schools of thought on this concept. I think they show a side of you that your technical skills may not reflect, while Mrs. SSC tends to go the more traditional route and downplay or not list soft skills at all. Let me elaborate on some of my more humorous soft skills and then I will show how they can be interpreted on a resume.
Soft Skills:
Advanced Banjo, Guitar, and Dulcimer player
Excels at Small Talk: Voted “Most Likely to be in Someone Else’s Office Chatting” by my previous company
Excellent Gardener: Produced 1 perfect tomato from a single plant – expects to double success this fall
World of Tanks: Blitz!: Deputy Tank Commander of VOLT clan. Achieved a 64% Win Rate
Excels at Weeding: Uses hands to pull roots instead of indiscriminately using chemicals
Franchise owner in Madden XXV: 8 consecutive Superbowl Titles, Developed 2 MVP quarterbacks from Rookie status
Candy Crush Soda: Achieved Level 368 – current level progress may be higher than listed
Interpretation of Soft Skills by Hiring Manager
Creative, and disciplined to become advanced on an instrument – instrument choice shows outside of the box thinker
Good office personality, probably well-liked by colleagues. Would transition well into any group. Plays nice with others.
Prefers quality over quantity! Willing to put in the hard work for little reward. Probably would accept more work for same pay and not complain…
Knows how to strategize, lead a team, and manage risk. Can quickly assess a situation and determine the best scenario to achieve success!
Not afraid of hard work, selective in his thought process and work methods.
Good manager, and can develop people – possibly mentor material and/or leadership position
Persistent, driven to win. Won’t accept defeat, but continues to strive for victory
Interpretation of Soft Skills by Mrs. SSC
Choice of instruments sounds like a hippy, maybe not corporate material
Doesn’t stay on task – disrupts others – could be counter-productive to the whole floor if left to roam the halls on his own
Can’t grow anything – must not use internet for help or reach out to others when needed. Who grows only 1 tomato?!
Spends too much time playing games – 64% win rate?! That doesn’t happen overnight…
Weeding by hand?! Who does that – this guy is stuck in the past – chemicals are around for a reason, sounds like a typical work harder not work smarter situation…
Again with the games?! Does this guy have a social life – probably just everyone he chats up at work…
??? Shows ability to get obsessed with things that don’t matter. Probably heads down lots of rabbit holes in his current work projects. Probably easy for him to get distracted and stay off task…
Clearly Mrs. SSC is a bit more harsh than the hiring manager’s interpretation of my awesome soft skill set, because I did get hired by a different company. They tend to like the out of the box soft skills I’ve spent a lifetime developing, but I can’t seem to get Mrs. SSC on board with that. She keeps rolling her eyes and telling me I’m ridiculous and those kind of soft skills would get her passed over for an interview, much less a position. I have to disagree. I mean, I added some soft skills like mine to her resume, and she didn’t protest at all. Although, I didn’t tell her, so maybe she hasn’t noticed yet?
What are some soft skills you would put on leave off of a resume? Have you ever seen anything as ridiculous as my soft skill set on an actual resume?
Over the last few days, we’ve all seen the stock market crash. Following that, there have been a plethora of articles that have come out regarding what to do, what to buy, how to adjust, etc… This is not one of those articles. Inspired by all those articles, the talking heads on tv, and boredom at the office, Mrs. SSC and I have been having an impromptu haiku contest related to the stock market performance. 🙂
Here are some of our back and forth haiku below:
Be a young willow
Bend in the downturn breezes
Stay strong, be patient
No selling when low
Stay the course for tomorrow
Until then, just be
Goodbye ER plans
Stocks, why did you fail me so
I sit at my desk
The sky is falling
Hope is lost! Dreams crashed! Sell! Sell!
We are doomed! Doomed! DOOOOOMED!
We now return you to your original programming, please enjoy the rest of your day.
If you would like to add a haiku of your own in the comments, please do! I’d love to hear some other peoples haiku, just remember 5-7-5 for structure. 🙂
SUCK-ville! Don’t worry, we were stopped. For a while…
These last 2 weeks have been awesome! First, Harris county was on Spring Break, and then the outlying counties have been on Spring Break! Hopefully next week some other set of schools is out on Spring Break also. Why do I care about Spring Break since neither me nor my kids are even in school? I’ll tell you, because “Traffic has been great!” (a phrase rarely uttered anywhere near Houston freeways) I’ve been getting to work in 30 minutes, traffic is flowing well, and even when it is storming outside (which normally causes HUGE delays everywhere) traffic is still moving fine.
I remember last summer when I started my new job. (Initiate dream sequence music and sparkly fade out) It was mid-June, the birds were singing and the commute was nice. Traffic flowed well, there were no major headaches to deal with twice a day. Better yet, it was almost the exact same as my last commute. Then one day, everything changed and it went from “nice” to “SUCK-ville” overnight! Clogged highways no matter which one I took. Worse, the surface streets were just as clogged and slow too! I started looking at different commute routes but it didn’t make a difference overall. Somehow my commute had increased a consistent 10-20 minutes each way. I just couldn’t figure out what changed and then someone mentioned school. Oh… school… Riiiight… Man, that makes such a big difference. I guess people take vacation time off centered around Spring Breaks, Christmas Breaks, Summer Breaks, and other school closures.
You wouldn’t think that a few schools out would make that much difference, but based on how empty my office building and parking garage has been the last few weeks, it seems everyone with kids takes off this time to do something with family. It could be that there isn‘t a vacation, but rather a forced stay at home to babysit the kid. Most people I talk to though turn that into a vacation of some sort instead of just sitting around the house. I never ran into this too much growing up because my mom was home for most of our school age. For us, it was just another week to not have to go to school, which is still awesome in and of itself!
Note the string of cars on the bridge. FYI, they’re stopped too.
Does this do anything for me financially? No, not really? Does it help me get to FIRE quicker? Even more so, nope. However, if traffic was like this every day, I wouldn’t be in such a rush to pull the trigger as soon as financially possible. I’d be a little more content putting it off for another 6 months, or maybe even a year and build up that comfort factor and savings. Then think, “Well, if I give it a few more months I can stick it out until bonuses get here, and it’d be crazy to give up that much money only a few months away.” This situation still may happen though even with the blech commute. We might have Mrs. SSC going to part-time at her job, and since I don’t think my company offers that, I’ll probably stay full time until things get really serious. Although, I don’t have anything to lose asking for part-time, so I will definitely ask when the time gets here.
From everything I’ve read though, once people pull the trigger and retire their biggest regret is not doing it sooner. Granted, these are mostly older people, but even some of the FIRE blogs I read echo that same sentiment. I’d love to make it sooner, but there are certain thresholds that need to be crossed financially before that can happen. Until then, I enjoy working where I do, with the people I work with and am happy plugging away at our goal until we get there. In the short term though, I’m counting down the days until school is out, and I get this traffic reprieve for a few months!
Man, commuting together did make a big difference!
When we knew we were going to be moving to Houston, our biggest worry was about the traffic and commute distance. We limited our housing search to within 30 minutes of our office, while still being within a good public school district. Man, did that limit our choices. After finding lots of houses with aluminum wiring, or needing tens of thousands in repairs and upgrades, we started looking at the suburbs… Gah!!! We realized this would cost more in the way of gas, tolls, and time in the car, but ultimately, we were able to spend almost $100k less for our house.**
I mention this because I recently looked at our toll usage on Harris County’s Toll Road Authority page and I noticed it was easy to put a narrative to. When I switched jobs, you can see the increases associated with trying to figure out a best commuting route, and even the effect of airport trips and other around Houston travel. It was eye opening and amusing.
When I was looking for a job, I needed it to be near downtown since we do not live near the energy corridor. I found a company with a great job opportunity that fit that criteria, and the only downside was that we wouldn’t be able to commute together anymore. Well, there was more than that, but that was the biggie. Mrs. SSC had calculated it would be about $8,000 more per year in commuting cost, post-tax (~$12k/yr pre-tax) if I took a new job. This was assumed wear and tear on the cars using online calculators, and doubling our gas usage, and toll costs, since our commute was still almost the exact same distance just to different places. Also, Mrs SSC would have to pay $70 a month to park, since we wouldn’t get the free carpool parking. Ouch!
You can see in the first months on the graph, we’re at an even $45 +/-. This was commuting together and the occasional use of the toll road on the weekends, but it was fairly consistent. In June, I started my new job and you can see the toll bill almost double, and I didn’t even start until Mid-June.
In July, it actually doubled… Something had to be done, because this was ridiculous. I’m all for efficiency but at what cost? Not this one. I first noticed that by getting on one exit later, the toll went from $1.15 to $0.75, which would save about ~$8/month or $96/year. This is assuming 4 weeks off due to holidays and vacations. Every little bit helps though.
Also, I found that my normal route of egress from the neighborhood had turned from 3-4 minutes to upwards of 8-10 minutes due to heavier traffic. I started taking a back route that got me to the same point consistently 4-5 minutes faster than going “the old way.” Plus, it avoided the toll roads totally. This was in August and you can see a big drop on the graph from ~$88 to $65. So that little measure saved $0.75 each day. Which is ~$15/month or $180/year saved. That’s getting better!
September, Mrs. SSC decided that getting on an exit later in her direction was costing more time than the $0.40 was worth so she began resuming that route, but still getting off an exit early coming home. There was a little increase, nothing big, just the ~$8 of savings previously.
It all looks red or orange, every day….
October: I have no explanation. None, I can’t remember anything going on in October commute-wise or otherwise that would drive that up. Let’s see…. We did do a mini-surprise anniversary vacation on a cruise, so that entailed tolls down to Galveston and back. That was a bit of it, we did a lot of play-dates, and I think just got really lazy with avoiding the toll road on the weekends, and look how it added up. Almost $25 higher than average. Not counting Galveston, that would be about $20 of tolls related to not avoiding the toll road on the weekend. Maybe the kids were especially cranky when we got to that junction each time in October and the 5 minutes less in the car was worth $1.15. I’m SURE that was it, or something similar. J
As the graph points out, you can see the average levels off to ~$67/month except for months when we are flying places or have training classes in other areas of town that are easier to access with more tolls. Booo…. In general though, the overall tolls came out way better than expected. I’ve looked into getting off at earlier exits, but those Highway Robbers have the 3 closest exits to my neighborhood costing the same amount to get off. So, I skip 6 more stoplights and stay on the toll road doing 70 mph for a few more miles.
Overall, I’m still glad I switched jobs, as I really like my new company, new position, and all the people I work with. Had I drug my feet and waited until this oil price downturn, I might have missed my opportunity to leave altogether. While it did have some financial costs associated with it, I feel they are more than made up for with salary, job satisfaction, and the extra amount we are able to save towards FIRE.
** I know this strategy doesn’t fit with the MMM philosophy of live within walking distance to work, but for us that would be an extra $100k in housing costs, plus ~$12-$15k per year per child for private school when they reached school age. The public schools close to our work were rated horribly, and we didn’t see the payoff for closer living to the office.
Have you had a similar experience before with new costs associated with a new job?
Does anyone else have commuting issues like this that you deal with?
Have you been able to escape this part of the rat-race already and this post makes you even more glad you did so?
Hearing about the travel blights caused by winter storm Pandora, reminded me of my own recent weather related travel woes. So for those of you stuck in the airport, here’s something to read while you’re standing in endless lines… A few weeks ago, I got to go visit my brother and his family outside of Nashville, TN and I got caught in winter ice storm, Octavia, that shut down a lot of flights. It turned into an interesting time to say the least.
Not canceled yet…. so optimistic!
I got up that fateful morning and everything was iced over, but it still looked doable. I started checking my flight status online and nothing cancelled yet. We were about halfway to the airport when Southwest cancelled ALL their flights for the day, but I was on United. Ever optimistic we plowed on, literally, because there was about 8-10” of snow and there were no plows anywhere. I got to the airport around 9 am, just as they cancelled my flight. Not that I wasn’t expecting this, but my philosophy is, I’m not going to get home by hanging out at my brother’s house. It’s time to put on a smile, deal with lines, and try my darndest to get home as soon as possible.
I got to my gate and found the shortest line to an agent and started waiting. She was flustered already so I put on my best smile, asked her how she was doing, joked some about cranky people, and did my best to be “Mr. Nice guy you want to get to his destination.” I’d already rebooked my flight for later that day, but I wanted to get my name on standby, if possible, for an earlier flight. She checked and amazingly the 8:40 am flight hadn’t left yet, and I could get standby for that flight. This was excellent, I thought! I then realized I had eaten very little prior to leaving, due to wanting to get to the airport and on standby ASAP. Silly me. I left a refrigerator full of “free” food to come to the airport for a long day. Lesson learned. So I sought out a place to get a bite and a beer. I ate and relaxed a bit before heading back to the fray to wait, wait, and wait some more… I noticed activity near our gate, and low and behold, there were planes coming to our gate, and better yet, Sunshine! A break in the weather, and a few planes were getting de-iced, and there was even one lucky plane heading out to the runway to escape! They made calls for our plane to board, and then called my name and I had a real seat! Haha!! I got on the plane at ~2pm and everyone getting on had a grin like the cat that ate the canary! We were escaping! We just needed to get de-iced and we were on our way. Woo hoo!!
40 minutes later, we were still sitting with nothing happening when the captain made an announcement, “Um folks, there’s been a problem with the thermometer on the de-icing equipment and they’re not sure how hot that fluid is coming out. Since that’s pretty critical to us staying in the air, they’re going to switch out trucks and then de-ice us. It should only take 20-30 minutes before they start de-icing us, then we’re on our way.”
40 more minutes later, we were still sitting at the de-icing spot, and they finally started de-icing our plane. It was about 30 minutes after that when we heard another announcement, “Uh, folks, this is your captain speaking. Uhhhh, as you can see they’re de-icing us, but they still have to apply the final solution and we can be on our way. Unless they take longer than another 30 minutes, then we’ll have to go back to the gate and top off our fuel so we can make it to Houston. In the meantime, our weather window has closed, so Uhhhhh…. Uhhh…. We’re waiting on word from Headquarters for a weather update and then we’ll be on our way….?” He literally finished with an uptick in his voice at the end like he was asking a question.
Free at last – but still in Nashville…
The de-icing finished up, and we got tugged back to the gate to top off fuel since we missed our weather window anyway. Then we hear an announcement, “Folks, this is your captain again. Ummm, we’re going to have the flight attendants bring some refreshments around since we’ve been out here a while. We just need to have this snow dissipate and we’ll be (you guessed it) on our way….” It has been ~3 hrs and then we got pushed away from the gate again and taxied out to get the final de-icing solution sprayed on. That happened, and we went and got in line out by the runway. 40 minutes later, our captain cancelled our flight officially, and we made our way close to the gate to debark onto the tarmac.
I’d gotten to reschedule my flight while all this was happening but I had no options for staying the night somewhere. I suggested the airport was doable, but Mrs. SSC found me a room for the night instead. I got off the plane, already booked for Wed. at 6 pm, so I headed to my hotel.
At check in I decided to extend it one day more since I wouldn’t fly out until Wednesday. Bad move there. I kept calling United and after a few hours, a single seat opened up for Tuesday afternoon at 3pm. I went downstairs to cancel my Tuesday night room and this is where it gets fun… I was told they could cancel but there would be a fee due to it being less than 24 hrs… Seriously?! With the ice storm and travel disruptions, they couldn’t waive the fee? It was almost as much as the room, too. The topper though, I was told to “take it up with corporate, but we can’t do anything here.” Gah!!!
I tried to stay positive and just went to bed. The next day, I tried again at the front desk, but to no avail. An even crankier lady was working and she got defensive from the get go. It actual put a smile on my face her tenacity was so impressive. Side note – I don’t think that helped my case much. Same song and dance, “Take it up with corporate.” Then I asked about checking out. In a cranky Southern voice “Well, you can check out if you want, but you’re getting charged for the room!” Mr. SSC: “Yes ma’am, we’ve established that, but can’t I get something saying I checked out or tried to check out to show corporate?” Front desk: “Well, you can, but if your other flight gets cancelled again and you come back here, you’ll have to get another room, because you let this one go because you checked out! You already paid for the room! Why would you want to check out?!” Mr. SSC: (inward monologue – “So I don’t have to deal with this for one more day?” lol) “That’s a great point. You have a nice day, stay warm!”
I got to the airport, and found the shortest line and again I got on standby – just in case. All flights were “full” until Wednesday night, but I wanted to remain optimistic, because there’s nothing else to do… After a couple of “Your flight has been delayed.” I heard “Your flight is cancelled –kidding, we’re just delaying it some more.” I literally heard a gate agent say that. She got the look of death from the passengers and her co-workers after making that joke. She must’ve been new is all I can think because you just don’t mess with people like that.
Ultimately, I was able to fly home Tue night and I got in around 9 pm. Even better, I did take it up with corporate, and I just got an email stating that they would waive my fee for the 17th, and apologies around, someone must not have gotten the notice that the cancellation fee and policy was waived during the storm. Win!
Have you ever run into some situation like that? Did you keep it together or did you lose your top? Better yet, have you run into a situation where you also “lost your money”?
Let me know, so I don’t feel like the only one that’s dealt with this sort of thing.
