VISTAs looking for good deals

Having been a VISTA for the past 9 months has really helped me hone in on finding and evaluating good deals.  I think it's time I share these with the rest of the world! B/C how annoying is it, when you look at yelp reviews, but have to take everything with a grain of salt, because there are no prices anywhere! Yes, the service may have been great, but did you also pay 3x the amount it's supposed to cost?

This grief, as you may be able to tell, comes from personal experience. Now that it's been over a month since I had to get my car fixed, I think I am ready to share the experience and what I learned.

It all started when I decided to get an oil change for my car - for the first time in Marin County. I have gotten oil changes before and it's been a quick and easy experience and about $20 max (I've found places that did it for $15 in Orange County, but that was a while ago). Anyways, I had no such luck in Marin County. After extensive research on yelp and the internet in general, I went to Wheel Works for $30. Now yelp did warn me, with many negative rumors about their service, but it all had to with the wheels not oil changes. So I went for it anyways, mainly b/c it was cheap!

Well, not only did they give me a list of things that were wrong with the car, but they told me that when they did the tire rotation something got stuck and they had to remove one of the studs or I would have to get the car towed!

So my only plausible option was to have them remove one of the studs. Now, he said that it would be ok to drive like this for a little bit, and for short distances, but at some point, I would need to get it fixed. They were even so nice as to give me a printed estimate of how much it would cost...over $300!!!

I said thanks and left. A day after the oil change, I had the check engine light go on as well. FML

Before I went in there, my car was working fine - now I have numerous things very seriously wrong with it!
and $300 to just to fix one of them!!

I was done with this place that was for sure! There was no way I wanted to go back there- I may not know who was at fault for the stud breaking, but I wasn't feeling generous towards them either way.

Now, this is the point at which my research and perseverance really came in. First of all I called my dad! He didn't fully understand my story, because I didn't fully understand what the mechanic was saying (the mechanic actually changed his story half way though, which didn't help), but he did some research on what needed to be done next.

Turns out, that with a stud missing there are two main scenarios and two main price categories. If it's a certain type of car, it's really easy to replace the stud, and if it's another type car, it's more difficult.

Well to install a stud for my car I found out it's actually easy... if you take it to a wheel specialist. I found a place on Mills and Hoag, in the Canal District. Just two guys working on breaks and wheels. It cost me $60 total for the bearing and the labor to install it.

I couldn't believe it! Wheel works (you'd think they would be a specialist in wheels, but apparently not) wanted to take out the whole wheel/bearing and make things super complicated when all we needed was to install one stud (takes half an hour).

I just felt so abused and taken advantage of. But in the long run, I think I learned a lot from this experience, and I will make sure to take my time researching before hand. You should too!

Budget blues update #2

I'm feeling a lot better about my budget these days.

I'm not saying it's perfect, but yesterday I decided to make my meal planning official - I bought one of those composition books ($3.14 - didn't they used to be a lot cheaper?!).

Anyways, I decided I was going to keep track of my meal plans in this notebook. Not only am I writing down the ingredients I need to buy at the bottom of the page, but I am keeping two columns: one for the plan, and one for the "actual" (what I actually end up eating/buying).

It sounds kind of over the top now that I'm describing it, but I actually think this could lead to other positives besides better meal budgeting...such as exploring different recipes, ensuring healthy and balanced eating habits, etc. As you can see by last week's excerpt - my previous meals were not very sophisticated, and probably not the healthiest, either!

This evening, I am going to try to make this dish my Grandma (Oma) makes really well. It's salmon with spinach and some sort of yummy sauce. First step: ask my mom for the recipe! Next step: go shopping (but stay within budget!)

I've been debating this rhetoric of the american dream for a while now

...and more and more people are starting to see the disconnect.

I just read an interesting article that touches upon it called "American's Don't Resent the Super-Rich Because They Think They Are Super Rich" by Kiri Blakeley (Forbes: Americans Don't Resent the Super Rich.  She introduces the topic by recalling different riots that were meant to start revolutions throughout our recent past, such as the 1992 LA Riots, pointing out that Americans will fight back against injustice.  However, when it comes to the injustice of our tax system the fight is lacking. No one will riot against the super rich not being taxed, because most people believe in the American Dream. The American Dream dictates that hard work alone will bring you success and so it is up to you to become super rich, and once you do you will be rewarded with lower taxes!

Blakeley brings up individuals such as Bill Gates of Jay Z as examples of people who worked hard and became super rich, but she also points out the resources and little bit of luck they had to help them achieve great success.  She mentions the author Malclom Gladwell who "points out over and over again that success is not just a function of hard work, brains, and dreaming big—but of privilege, timing, and often in the form of government help via loans or programs." So while the average american supports lower to no taxes for millionaires, thinking he will benefit from it someday, he is becoming poorer and poorer by not taking advantage or resources that have been proven to help others succeed. 

It seems to me that this "American Dream" is a little destructive.  Instead of valuing the community and what the community can do for the individual to succeed, it values solely the individual and his or her ability to become super rich.  And this relates directly to the whole debt/budget crisis. There is a division between people who believe in the individual and his ability to fix the economy through small business and the people who believe strong communities helping each other in time of need will fix the economy.  One believes taxes will debilitate the economy and the other believes extra taxes will bring more money to programs that are making our communities stronger.

budgeting blues UPDATE

So my meal plan is working... to an extent. I may not always stick to the exact schedule, but I can still budget out what I need to buy for the week, and this is making me more conscious about what i'm buying at the grocery store and how much I'm spending.

But the main revelation of the week...I figured out I need another budget item! - for alcohol! (separate from the entertainment budget) because this drunk person to the left needs a little bit of money allocated to going out, having fun, and exploring the city!

and you know what? for a while now I've been telling myself I am not allowed to go out because I need to have a certain amount of money in my savings and I'm not earning enough to live the same lifestyle as before. But, I had a revelation! Who am I satisfying by this self-deprivation? 

If it makes me happy to go out and have fun with my friends, I need to figure out how I can allocate or even SAVE for these occasions. Maybe I don't go out every weekend since it's so expensive, but I can afford one or two? WITHOUT feeling guilty for going out. Right?

budgeting blues

I thought I was doing great. I thought I was in full control of my finances! until I tried to figure out how much i spend on food.

I have been using mint to track my budget. So i utilized its "trends" section to see how much I was spending on food. It was great because it gives you the option to check out the current month, or compare many months, or give you an average of since you've been using the program. It gives me a nice bar graph depicting my expenses each month. So I typed in groceries and it pulled up how much I spend on groceries each month. Great! I now know I spend about $150 on groceries each month (plus the $50 on prepared foods/restaurant/fast food). Really $150 for one person per month?? That seems like a lot.  Well it turns out there were different reasons for my monthly grocery spending - and each month was different from the next.

To get to the point, all this info didn't really help me figure out how to budget for food. I realized that it wasn't enough knowing how much I spent on food to fix the over spending and carelessness. I needed to come up with a weekly plan for food. How am I supposed to budget for food, if I have no idea what I spend it on?!

It's not that I'm bad at budgeting, I'm bad at planning meals or cooking for that matter!
So here are the steps I'm going to take to fix my carelessness about food spending:

• I'm going to start thinking about my meals at the beginning of the week, and plan ahead. This way I will have a rough estimate of the ingredients I need to buy and I can make decisions on what meals to cook based on my budget. 
• Speaking about staying within budget. Instead of thinking about a monthly budget, I'm going to think weekly. Instead of knowing not to go over $130 a month, I'm going to budget about $30 a week. That number and time frame seems more manageable. 
• Finally, I'm going to make sure I always allocate enough money for milk, bread, and vegetables - to eat HEALTHY! 

I'll let you know how it goes!