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By Rebecca, August 10, 2010 1:18 pm

Everyone making financial decisions looks like this

My brother and I had a long chat earlier this week about finances, freelancing, and money management. He opened his own climbing and guiding business a few years ago, Kling Mountain Guides, so had a very up-to-date take on running your own business. (If you’re in Colorado and looking to go climbing, or looking to book a trip guide for an international climb, definitely look him up!)

I do think there are some significant differences between what he did/is facing and what I’m getting myself into. First and foremost, I have minimal up-front costs. I don’t need a storefront, I don’t need stock, and I don’t need licenses or permits. I do need publicity material – my website, business cards, promotional flyers to send to schools and conferences – but that’s in the order of hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars, rather than the tens of thousands I know my brother has had to put into his business.

At the same time, I’m facing some tough financial decisions.

Continue reading 'Tough financial decisions'»

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By Rebecca, March 10, 2010 12:46 am

My taxes were a bit more complicated this year than last, what with my solo show, so I let my dad talk me into passing them off to a friend of his. I just heard from him, and he said that I should be getting about $300 from the feds (woo!) and owe the State of Illinois $3. Really, Illinois? $3?

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By Rebecca, March 20, 2009 9:31 am

A friend of mine recently posted about giving to charaties and I wanted to weigh in with my agreement. In the same way that calling/writing your elected officials is important (as, aside from ellections every few years, that’s the only way they’ll know what you think!) donating to organizations you value is also really important.

I donate to three organizations right now, in automatic giving plans of $10/month for each:

• Chicago Public Radio – I’ve become an NPR junkie, listening to little else in my car, and really value the work that they’re doing. This ranges from ‘entertainment’ like This American Life and Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me (both of which can also be educational) to their excellent news coverage. As a bonus, at the $10/month level, I got a member card that gives deals at certain restaurants and arts orgs, which is great. I haven’t used it a ton, but it’s been nice to have when I’ve been able to use it.
• ACLU – The American Civil Liberties Union is out their fighting for our rights! As someone who is very conscious of government encroachment of civil liberties, having an organization fighting for rights of free speech, privacy, and so on is really valuable. (Even if our current president isn’t quite as ridiculously horrible as our last one…) That said, I don’t really agree with their position on the Second Amendment, as “the people” is used everywhere else in the Constitution to mean just that…It seems somewhat of a cop-out to say having the word “militia” suddenly changes the use of a phrase which is pretty well established elsewhere in the same document.
• EFF – The Electronic Frontier Foundation is similar to the ACLU, in that it’s an advocacy group fighting for people’s rights. The difference is their focus is specifically on copyright and technology rights. If you’ve ever downloaded music or movies in violation of the wishes of their copyright holders, or think that ‘life of the author plus 70 years’ is an absurd copyright length, you should check out the EFF.

I also have some organizations I’m trying to donate to on a less-regular basis, and some I’d like to look at donating to in the future.

Continue reading 'Philanthropy'»

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By Rebecca, February 26, 2009 9:12 pm

I went in yesterday for another round of laser hair removal. This is the 3rd round of the 6 I paid (well, went into debt for) for back in August. I did my chest, stomach, and arms, so I still have to go back for my legs next Wednesday. I guess it’s more like part 5 of 12… I’m also going to do a facial touch up next Wednesday, because some pesky hairs can’t take a hint.

I’m all prickly and red now, though, which is obnoxious. It usually fades away in a day or two. I should rub hydrocortisone on the parts that are really itchy.

In more exciting news, I’ve almost saved enough to pay off the hair removal. When I signed on the dotted line in August, I was committing to pay $4,390 by the end of August, 2009, or start facing interest charges. I’ve been saving money in an interest-bearing ING account, and plan to pay them off in mid-August to get as much interest money as possible. Although interest rates have been dropping, a little ‘free’ money is better than none! (If you want an ING referral, let me know! If you join with something like $200 in a savings account, I get $10 and you get $25!)

So yeah. I have something like $4200 in the bank right now, and I figured if I get around $4300, most of the remaining will be made as interest. With my next paycheck, next week, I should have that off my back!

Which is good, because this weekend I am going shopping! I sent out an email to some girl friends asking for help to find me a wardrobe. I have, like, four pairs of pants and five tops that I’m just cycling through, and it’s getting ridiculous… So, as much as it pains whatever testosterone that’s left in my system to do it, I’m going on a shopping spree! Round 1 is tomorrow, with NP (and possibly a friend from work), and I might be doing more on Saturday and/or Sunday.

Ridiculous.

-R

Comments (1)

By Rebecca, December 15, 2008 10:55 pm

Lets look at dollars and cents…

• $45/month for hormones (assuming I stay on a similarly good insurance plan)
  • May go up to $60/month if/when I go on progesterone
  • TOTAL COST: Somewhere around $650 so far…going off for a while this summer makes calculating the exact amount a little difficult…probably somewhere around $30,000 over the rest of my life (making a lot of assumptions, including that the cost of drugs will never go up or down)
• $1,000+ for facial hair removal, so far.
  • I need to go back and do some more touch-ups, each one running an additional $100 per session
• $4,390 for body hair removal, including chest and torso, arms, and legs
  • Like facial hair, I’ll probably need to do additional touch-ups at some point, each running hundreds of dollars
  • This also doesn’t include my back, neck, or shoulders, all areas I may want to do someday
• Around $45/month for therapy
  • I’m counting this as an indispensable part of the transition, and once I use up my insurance-alloted number of sessions it’ll go up from $15 out-of-pocket per session to the full $90 (unless I can talk my therapist down from there…)
  • TOTAL COST: Somewhere around $750 so far
• At least $6,700 spent so far
  • More than my rent for a year
  • More than my car is worth
  • More than I spent going to Paris twice last year to visit G

Continue reading 'The cost of transitioning'»

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By Rebecca, August 27, 2008 4:42 pm

I’ve done some major blogroll updates (importing all the blogs I read through Google Reader) and thought I’d highlight a few:

• Queer Blogs
  • Rebecca’s Thoughts
  • Just Another Opinionated Trannie
  • Transsexual Ferox
• Queer News and Politics
  • Feministe – great feminist blog
  • Feministing - another great feminist blog
  • Bitch Ph.D. – yet another great feminist blog
• Other Blogs
  • Get Rich Slowly – a great personal finance blog about (you guessed it) getting rich slowly. The source of my information relating to starting an IRA and opening goal-oriented savings accounts (which is why I now have $500 saved specifically toward transitioning to spend guilt-free, instead of a single big pot of savings that I’d stress about dipping into)
  • Give Me My Five Bucks Back – another personal finance blog

Woo! I’ll try and go through and plug some more later.

-R

Comments (3)

By Rebecca, August 27, 2008 4:10 pm

First, a slight expansion on G being back:

It’s great.

It didn’t magically remove all of my concerns about being in a not-long-distance relationship, or of having to relearn what it means to be in the same place. But I’m feeling much less stressed about it than I have in months, and much more confident that things are going to be OK. (Not that I was every ‘really’ worried, but I sure as hell was stressed.)

She has a friend in town from camp, which I think is good – first, it gives her lots to do, and second, it normalizes being back a bit by not having to go straight from speaking 99% French and being surrounded by people she’s worked with all summer to being around people speaking 100% English and not understanding the culture shock of coming from backwoods MN to the Big City. I’m also just getting a big kick out of seeing the two of them interact and joke in French. (Even if a good 99% of it goes over my head…)

As for hair removal, I signed a sheet of paper yesterday committing me to paying $4,400 for six sessions covering my arms, chest/tummy, and legs over the next year.

Oh my, that’s a lot of money.

Continue reading 'G’s Return, Hair Removal'»