Tag: money

Stuff

All this talk of the new Pentax half frame camera has me wanting stuff. What kind of stuff? I don’t know, stuff.

I’d like a bunch of new lenses for my mirrorless camera. I’d like a bunch of new lenses for my two film cameras. I’d like to get my hands on a decent medium format camera. Rather than stepping down the resolution with a half frame camera, let’s up the resolution with a great big honkin’ 120 film. Maybe a Pentax 67 or something. I think an old (ancient) folding camera would be cool. Maybe a Zeiss Ikonta. The downside being that these cameras were initially manufactured in Germany prior to World War II which means there may have been slave labor involved. I would have to make sure the manufacture date of any camera I bought would be post-war. Just for my own piece of mind.

I want a new guitar. A Les Paul Junior. A Les Paul Special. A Les Paul Deluxe. A Firebird. An ES-135. An ES-125. An ES-355. I want a new amp. A Marshall 1962. A Marshall Plexi. A Mesa Boogie California Tweed. A tweed 4×10 Fender Bassman. A tweed Fender Deluxe.

I want a new MacBook Pro. I want a new iPhone, but not a 15. I’m willing to wait for the 16.

Forgive the conspicuous consumerism. I am just in a retail therapy kinda mood for some reason. Not honestly though. I’m saving my pennies for not one but two future trips to Disney World. Well… that and getting film developed. There won’t be any money left over after those two things.

Still…

I want. I want. I want.

Fantasizing About the Lottery

Bloganuary writing prompt
What would you do if you won the lottery?
View all responses

We have all played this game, right? I mean all of us who live somewhere that holds money in high esteem, of course. 

You hit a big lottery, what do you do with the winnings? Before my wife found her calling as a software engineering genius she was an accountant. My father was an accountant too. My brother is a CPA. Why are these things important? Because all of us would work together to come up with a plan for dealing with the money that would not involve blowing it all in the first few years the way a lot of big lottery winners do. 

Here are a few things we would do……

  • Pay off any outstanding loans including student loans, cars, and the mortgage
  • Upgrades to the house and the cars and the general living situation
  • Figure out a way to use the money to generate an income, either through an endowment or a trust or something that will let us live as well as we can off of just interest. 
  • Make sure my step kids are set financially including a home and some sort of endowment or trust fund so that they are in a position where they won’t have to worry about money ever again
  • Make contributions to our extended family. Our parents and my brother and sister would get a chunk of the winnings to do with as they pleased, but the reasoning on our end would be for mortgages and college funds and healthcare and such. It’s doubtful we could set any of them up for life, but we can help as much as we can
  • Make similar contributions to a few close friends. Again, mortgage and college funds being the hope, but it will be their money to do with as they please. The trick would be figuring out how many friends we can help. It probably won’t be many, but we will do what we can
  • Research the hell out of charitable foundations and establish relationships with organizations working toward some of the things that are important to us. Diabetes research, cancer research, dementia research. Things like that. Find organizations that are doing good work and not screwing over their donors or their targets and donate as much as we can to them
  • Buy a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard

That’s the gist of it. I’m sure if we did hit a honkin’ big lottery we would make significant changes to the plan based on the amounts in question and the general situation as it stands in the moment, but this feels like a good plan to start with at least.

We Did Not Win

You can tell by the fact that I signed in to work this morning that we did not win a billion gajillion dollars in the Powerball lottery last night. We didn’t even win a free ticket. Oh well.

On the upside though, I think I got a little raise today. Just a little one. There isn’t a lot to go around for raises right now so anything is welcome. The usual process is that someone tells me a raise is coming and then I get a document spelling it out. Today I got the document without anyone telling me it was coming. It works for me though. It’s not much but it’s enough to keep me in sea salt and vinegar peanuts for a couple of months at least.

The 1.5 billion gajillion dollar lottery would have been preferred, but I’ll take what I can get, with a smile.

Powerball

We’re not lottery playing people in this house. Jen and I will splurge for a ticket or two when a jackpot gets insanely huge.

Powerball is insanely huge.

We bought a couple of tickets.

We had to drive to a store tonight (a drive through, social distance like a boss) and on the ride over we planned out what we will do with our winnings. Our boat load of winnings.

I plan on calling Kirk Hammett and asking him how much he wants for Peter Green’s Les Paul.

Powerball Fantasy

At lunch today I went to the store and bought a few Powerball tickets. The drawing is at 11:00pm Eastern time tonight and the jackpot is currently 1.2 billion dollars.

I could handle that.

The one time payout would drop the winning to about 600 million, and taxes would drop it to around 300 million or so. Petty cash, right? Jen and I have been sitting in the living room fantasizing about what we’d do if we win. New house and paying mortgages for everyone in the family. College funds for all the school age kids in the family. Huge new house for us. Houses for the kids. Destination properties in our favorite places to travel to. San Diego (probably La Jolla) and Manhattan.

You know, the usual instantly rich people plans.

I’m sorry to all of the people who bought tickets who will not be winning because Jen and I will be winning. Better luck next time, everyone.

Dough

I gots me a raise today. Just a little one. Every little bit helps. It will let me shoot and develop an extra roll of film when we go to Disney World in January (he said, sarcastically)*.

We got the first level of buy in on a coding project at work today too. It’s been a pretty good day so far.

My exercise and move (calorie) goals are both complete. I’m just two stand hours (stand for one minute of an hour, 12 times a day) away from a perfect week on the old activity app.

We had talked about going leaf peeping tomorrow. That’s off the table. I don’t know if it’s on the table for Sunday, but I don’t think so. Next week is the busy week, but this week is probably too early in the season anyway. I’d still like to go, but only if Jen goes with me. It would suck without her.

I did not try to run one of my USB audio interfaces into my iPad at lunch today. I think I am too scared to try. Sad face.

I am a jerk. I manipulated the internet today and I am sorry. I was looking at the stats on the new film-only blog and I was very close to seeing September get more total page views than the two previous months. I opened the page in July so there are only three months worth of data, but I really wanted to see September with the highest hit count. That’s why I put up a second picture today. I apologize to all involved for sort of gaming the system as it were. I’m a stats nerd. Sometimes I can’t help it.

On a related stats note, last October I went through the most amazing page view stats run on this page that I have ever seen. It lasted four months before slowly coming back down to Earth. This month’s stats are okay, but nothing compared to what I was seeing at the end of last year and the start of this year. I don’t get big numbers here even at my best, I ain’t no SEO pro or nuttin’, but it was fun to pretend for a while. I do appreciate all of the folks who come and visit still, even the bots and the spammers. Like I said: Stats nerd.

Hmmm… working on a project for work where the data does not match the spec. I need to dig in and do a little research on this one. Weird.

What else… nothing. I think I’ll click post now. I’m sure I’ll be back later. There are songs to mix and share tonight, even though they are AWFUL.

*Want to know what I did when I got my first raise from this company back in 2005? I bought a camera. Yup. Some things never change, babie.

Sigh of Relief: Imminent

I am not ready to breathe a sigh of relief yet… but hopefully it’s just a matter of time.

I went on leave for most of the month of May and a couple of days in June. My company set me up with a claim for the Paid Family Medical Leave act and hooked me up with the insurance company they work with. It was this insurance company that is supposed to pay out my claim which, when combined with some sick time that I used to cover a small piece of the time off, will cover my salary for the month out.

I’ve had some trouble with the process. Partly just due to time zones but also due to some miscommunication and some difficulty getting documentation moved from point A to point B. There was a moment not long ago where I was thinking I was going to have to jump onto a plane, fly to the west coast, and staple a form into someone’s head.*

This morning I got an email from the insurance company telling me that I had a new document to review. What could it mean? I clicked the link in the email and their site was down. Most of the work I’ve done in this process was actually done through an iOS app so I tried to log into that and it was down too. Shit.

I carried on with my day and around 10:30 I tried the app again. It worked. My claim has been approved! Huzzah! Now what? I don’t know. I started drafting up an email to my rep but got pulled away for some work things.

A few minutes ago, as I was going to lunch, I checked the website to see if that was working. It was. There was one thing that didn’t show on the app. They cut a check. Yesterday. I checked the mail, symbolically, but it hasn’t crossed the continent in the last 18 hours.

This process has been more difficult than I ever would have imagined it would be. The latest update to my account shows that the end is in sight, but I am not going to breathe that sigh of relief until the check arrives and clears. Please please please let that be soon. Going a full month without a pay check is so stressful. You wouldn’t believe how stressful it is. I really want this off of my back. Please.

*Figuratively speaking, of course.

Birthday Delay?

My 50th birthday is in less than one month. I was planning on buying myself a present. I was going to take my Les Paul to an actual luthier and have the neck worked on. At the minimum I would have the frets dressed and the one inlay that’s starting to pull off fixed. More likely I would have the inlay fixed and the frets (gasp) replaced. I was also thinking about new pickups and having all of the wiring replaced. I was also also thinking about doing all of the same work to my ES-335.

Now… Maybe I should retire the Les Paul (the ES-335 is already retired) and, when the band starts rehearsing again, just play my SG. It’s still practically new. It won’t need any work for a while (knock on wood) so just play the SG all the time. I’d still need a backup for gigs so if we ever have another gig (in the post-Covid world that question is still unanswered) I could trade my strat for a cheap, used Les Paul Junior or something. Juniors from the mid-20-teens seem to be reselling for cheap. I could maybe do a straight up trade.

The reason is college. Mostly, at least. We’re about to have two college students and I don’t want to spend what little money is left after tuition on something that isn’t 100% necessary. New frets on a 43 year old guitar are a luxury that can wait until after the kids graduate. College is expensive. Two colleges… that’s really expensive. There’s just nothing left over. That’s not a complaint, of course, college is worth every penny. It just means that come 2025 or 2026, my Les Paul is going to have some major league work done. I’m talking Hollywood actor after the first time he loses a gig to a 22 year old up and comer level work done.

Guilt

I follow a lot of musicians on various social media platforms.  I follow a lot of performers.  I follow a lot of politicians too.  They all have something in common right now.

They all want my money.

Politicians are looking for money because it’s an election year.  Performers are looking for money because COVID-19 has put them out of work.  None of them are asking for handouts, but they are all asking.  Please buy some merch.  Please by my music on bandcamp.  Please buy a ticket to my stageit show.  Please pledge on patreon.

I have the same answer to all of these requests.  I would if I could, but I can’t.  We’re still working but the economy is collapsing.  I can’t afford to give money to any cause right now.  We could all be out of work tomorrow.  How can I give you money today when my family might need food tomorrow.  Come on, I can’t help you guys.  I want to, I swear I do and I absolutely would if the situation were different.  It’s not though, so don’t be surprised when I get tired of feeling the guilt and start lashing out.

The world is shit right now for all of us.  I can’t help you without putting my family at risk.  Just lay off, please.