drive-by update
1) I had the death flu for over a week. I do not recommend it!
2) Various shenanigans in Big Moves meant that one of the lead roles in our fall show was still un-cast. So I auditioned, and I got the part. So now in addition to seeing sexy ladies shake it, there is the promise of me in various states of undress singing songs and acting and stuff. I may wear a tiny, rhinestone-covered top hat. It's all very exciting. (Our fall show is a futuristic fattie take on Cabaret, called Hot Buffet. I'm the Emcee. \m/)
3) After a couple years of becoming very good friends, and all of this year so far dating, El and I are moving in together. This means I get to rearrange furniture and re-plan where to hang artwork, and all kinds of other things I deeply enjoy. Oh, and y'know, also I get to live with El. Which is less "!!!EXCITING!!!" than I'd always expected moving in with someone to be, because he's, uh, kind of practically been living with me since I moved up to Boston in May. It's just gone from being like, bonus fun getting to see him, to now where I'm so used to having him around, that it just fucking sucks when he's not there. So I guess it feels similar to announcing to the internet that I have hair. I don't know. [hand wavies] Whatever, we're excited about having two couches, and finding a cabinet to display all of our action figures, and we're going to save up and get a Wii and maybe Rock Band.
4) So, it may surprise you, but when someone moves in with you? They bring their stuff. And while El is perfectly content keeping a lot of his random things (old sci-fi books, etc) in boxes at his parents' house for now, some things (uh, clothes?) kind of need to be moved in. So I've been cleaning out and reorganizing a lot of my stuff (fun!), and I've realized that I need some sort of box/cabinet/bench/something to hold either winter clothes, extra blankets, or sex toys. Seriously, any of those things, if I can solve the storage on one of them, it will create a domino effect and end up freeing up half my closet. Don't question me. Which means:
SUGGESTIONS. FROM YOU. TO ME. About how you store any of those things above (spare clothes, linens, sex toys). I think I'm going to try and dash up to the little antique junk shop near me after work to see if they have anything, but in the meantime.
5) Also, when you live with someone, you may want to consider having them pay for part of the shared expenses! Who knew? So, before implementing this plan, I'd like to share the plan with you, which I cooked up with the help of some finance blogs and also an episode of Oprah I watched back when I was in high school. Feel free to offer advice, seriously. El and I have had dumb fights about a lot of dumb things, but we've never fought about money. I realize this is like, #1 on the list of Things Couples Fight About, but I really enjoy NOT fighting about money, and I'd like to keep it up.
What I did was figure out how much El and I each net in a month. (This is after 401k, taxes, T-passes (which come out pre-tax, because The Firm is nice like that), insurance, etc.) Then I added those numbers together. Then I totaled up all shared expenses -- which in my mind is the rent (which includes all utilities, because I have the best apartment in the universe), cable/internet, the cell phone plan (extrapolated to include him as well), Netflix, and a food budget. (With the understanding that we each have some weird food buying habits that the other person won't be eating, and thus will come out of our own moneyz.) I divided the total monthly expenses by our combined net monthly income, and that gave me a percentage. This is the percent of each of our paychecks that needs to go toward the household.
Having each person pay a percent seems more fair to me than evenly splitting the bills because we don't have the same income. We'll probably never make the same amount of money - I don't think I know anyone who has the exact same salary as their partner. So what happens (so I hear) is that one person always has discretionary income, and one person never does, or each person can't afford to go halfsies on vacation expenses, or paying for nice dinners, or or or.
This way, we can just set up a joint account, and have all the bills electronically paid out of that, and use that account to go grocery shopping, etc. Also, if we go up a few percentage points of what we're taking out of our pay (which is what we've agreed to do), we can use that joint account as savings for vacations, the aforementioned Wii, etc. So it's not going to be a question of if I can afford to go to New York ComicCon next year, or if he can, or whatever. Either we'll have the money saved or we won't (spoiler alert: we totally will, NYCC '09 WHAT UP), and then I'm not mad because he bought some more import Japanese action figures instead of saving, and he's not mad because I bought yet more trades of Spider-man Loves Mary Jane instead of saving, etc. (Yes, these are the lives we lead. Stop rolling your eyes, it's totally fucking awesome. We conquer all things.)
But, we'll also still have our own money in our own accounts. So he doesn't have to worry about my credit card debt (which is shrinking! kind of! v. v. v. slowly!), and I don't have to worry about his medical bills, and we can go buy shit we want for ourselves and each other without it being mutually purchased by the household account. So. That is my plan. [bow]
6) Partly due to illness and partly due to feeling overly-scheduled for all of July, I've been super lazy about going to the gym. This is always so doubly-bad, because I feel like I'm wasting money, but then I also lose the mental health regulation at the same time. Oh, gym guilt! But I'm healthier now (fucking death flu!), and I'm letting myself off the hook for this week so I can get the house in order (I hate navigating mess at home) and get El's couch and clothes and art and stuff all situated. And that way I can start my routine back up again without feeling like I'm not getting anything accomplished at home. Victoryyyyy.
2) Various shenanigans in Big Moves meant that one of the lead roles in our fall show was still un-cast. So I auditioned, and I got the part. So now in addition to seeing sexy ladies shake it, there is the promise of me in various states of undress singing songs and acting and stuff. I may wear a tiny, rhinestone-covered top hat. It's all very exciting. (Our fall show is a futuristic fattie take on Cabaret, called Hot Buffet. I'm the Emcee. \m/)
3) After a couple years of becoming very good friends, and all of this year so far dating, El and I are moving in together. This means I get to rearrange furniture and re-plan where to hang artwork, and all kinds of other things I deeply enjoy. Oh, and y'know, also I get to live with El. Which is less "!!!EXCITING!!!" than I'd always expected moving in with someone to be, because he's, uh, kind of practically been living with me since I moved up to Boston in May. It's just gone from being like, bonus fun getting to see him, to now where I'm so used to having him around, that it just fucking sucks when he's not there. So I guess it feels similar to announcing to the internet that I have hair. I don't know. [hand wavies] Whatever, we're excited about having two couches, and finding a cabinet to display all of our action figures, and we're going to save up and get a Wii and maybe Rock Band.
4) So, it may surprise you, but when someone moves in with you? They bring their stuff. And while El is perfectly content keeping a lot of his random things (old sci-fi books, etc) in boxes at his parents' house for now, some things (uh, clothes?) kind of need to be moved in. So I've been cleaning out and reorganizing a lot of my stuff (fun!), and I've realized that I need some sort of box/cabinet/bench/something to hold either winter clothes, extra blankets, or sex toys. Seriously, any of those things, if I can solve the storage on one of them, it will create a domino effect and end up freeing up half my closet. Don't question me. Which means:
SUGGESTIONS. FROM YOU. TO ME. About how you store any of those things above (spare clothes, linens, sex toys). I think I'm going to try and dash up to the little antique junk shop near me after work to see if they have anything, but in the meantime.
5) Also, when you live with someone, you may want to consider having them pay for part of the shared expenses! Who knew? So, before implementing this plan, I'd like to share the plan with you, which I cooked up with the help of some finance blogs and also an episode of Oprah I watched back when I was in high school. Feel free to offer advice, seriously. El and I have had dumb fights about a lot of dumb things, but we've never fought about money. I realize this is like, #1 on the list of Things Couples Fight About, but I really enjoy NOT fighting about money, and I'd like to keep it up.
What I did was figure out how much El and I each net in a month. (This is after 401k, taxes, T-passes (which come out pre-tax, because The Firm is nice like that), insurance, etc.) Then I added those numbers together. Then I totaled up all shared expenses -- which in my mind is the rent (which includes all utilities, because I have the best apartment in the universe), cable/internet, the cell phone plan (extrapolated to include him as well), Netflix, and a food budget. (With the understanding that we each have some weird food buying habits that the other person won't be eating, and thus will come out of our own moneyz.) I divided the total monthly expenses by our combined net monthly income, and that gave me a percentage. This is the percent of each of our paychecks that needs to go toward the household.
Having each person pay a percent seems more fair to me than evenly splitting the bills because we don't have the same income. We'll probably never make the same amount of money - I don't think I know anyone who has the exact same salary as their partner. So what happens (so I hear) is that one person always has discretionary income, and one person never does, or each person can't afford to go halfsies on vacation expenses, or paying for nice dinners, or or or.
This way, we can just set up a joint account, and have all the bills electronically paid out of that, and use that account to go grocery shopping, etc. Also, if we go up a few percentage points of what we're taking out of our pay (which is what we've agreed to do), we can use that joint account as savings for vacations, the aforementioned Wii, etc. So it's not going to be a question of if I can afford to go to New York ComicCon next year, or if he can, or whatever. Either we'll have the money saved or we won't (spoiler alert: we totally will, NYCC '09 WHAT UP), and then I'm not mad because he bought some more import Japanese action figures instead of saving, and he's not mad because I bought yet more trades of Spider-man Loves Mary Jane instead of saving, etc. (Yes, these are the lives we lead. Stop rolling your eyes, it's totally fucking awesome. We conquer all things.)
But, we'll also still have our own money in our own accounts. So he doesn't have to worry about my credit card debt (which is shrinking! kind of! v. v. v. slowly!), and I don't have to worry about his medical bills, and we can go buy shit we want for ourselves and each other without it being mutually purchased by the household account. So. That is my plan. [bow]
6) Partly due to illness and partly due to feeling overly-scheduled for all of July, I've been super lazy about going to the gym. This is always so doubly-bad, because I feel like I'm wasting money, but then I also lose the mental health regulation at the same time. Oh, gym guilt! But I'm healthier now (fucking death flu!), and I'm letting myself off the hook for this week so I can get the house in order (I hate navigating mess at home) and get El's couch and clothes and art and stuff all situated. And that way I can start my routine back up again without feeling like I'm not getting anything accomplished at home. Victoryyyyy.