Lazy Man and Money

Raise Update (part 2)

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The time was right for a talk with the boss man today and I have to say that the initial reaction seemed quite positive. I didn’t particularly go after any specific numbers, but I should find out tomorrow how much the gap is going to close between what I could get on the open market and what I’m currently paid. I hope this will help my net worth tremendously which hasn’t been building as much as I’d like. In fact, I lost 1.2% of my net worth in the last month with the dip in the stock market recently.

In other news, I’ve transferred another $100 to my Prosper account. That gives a total of $400 in there, with $250 currently invested at an average rate of 18.21%.

Don’t forget to read my Prosper Review

Raise Update (part 1)

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I chickened out in asking for a raise on Friday. I did have a talk with the boss man and dropped a subtle hint. As importantly, I wanted to find out if there was any truth in a rumor about the company and a new venture it was taking. Turns out there was no truth to the rumor. At that point, I figured I had used up the enough of the “private talk” time for the day.

Interestingly, about ten minutes after that I got to talk with the CEO about another new venture the company was going into. It’s a different and unrelated to the one I was asking about. The message was that changes are coming soon. The best part is that there’s now a more concrete reason for me asking for a raise with the expanded responsibilities.

Now I just have to rehearse how it’s going to go. Look for part 2 or even a part 3 with the results.

Filed Under: Job

Back from a Long Expensive Weekend

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I’m sorry I left you without a post this weekend. I went to New York City. I enjoy it as long as it’s in chunks of 3 days or fewer. Any more than that and I start to get claustrophobic. The other thing about New York is that everything is so expensive. I can’t believe how quickly I blew through my money there. Then again, it was a mini-vacation and it’s not the type of spending that I would do if I lived there every day.

This is going to be an expensive month overall with the release of the Treo 700P. There’s actually another big expense coming up at the end of the month as well. It’s a good thing that chicken breast is on sale for $1.79 a pound at Stop and Shop. Combine that with some 10 cent Good Value Ramen-like noodles from Wal-Mart and I’m in for some cheap dinners for a while.

Work Dilemma or How Do I Ask for a Raise

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I’m a pretty competitive person by nature. I don’t really know why that is, but I am. As you can figure out by now, I’m fairly frugal and I’m looking to make enough money to retire early – really early for most people.

The last few days at work have been a bit of a wake-up call. When I joined my company we were like the New England Patriots – we never overpaid for talent. The interesting thing is that everyone seemed to drink the Kool-Aid and the company grew quite a bit. To continue the growth and/or just give an extra jump, my company decided to bring in new people, a lot of new people. In fact, it seemed like we didn’t have work for all these new people. It’s getting close to a year later and I look around and all these new people aren’t really contributing to the bottom line. Worse yet, it seems like everyone has gaudy titles and I suspect salaries to match.

So I did a little research into what my salary should be. It’s always a tricky subject, so the best I could do was a range. My main source was Salary.com. I augmented it with a couple of other sources, but when it came down it here’s what I found. If I were to err on the conservative side and give myself a title of someone with less experience, I would need a 20% raise tomorrow to make the median in my area. If I were to use the job title with the exact number of years of experience, I have in my profession, I’d need a 38% raise to hit the median salary.

I think the time has come for a raise. How much should I ask for? Leave your comments below. Perhaps if I learn to speak up for myself, I’ll get it done tomorrow. That’s not exactly a strong suit of mine, so I’m not so sure.

Filed Under: Job

When is frugal too frugal?

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Money and Values asks the question Are you naturally frugal or not? Penny, the author, seems to be frugal to the point where it costs her more money to “re-buy” a product after the first has failed. I have to say that I’ve probably been guilty of this more than a few times.

My biggest problem is that I can’t stop my mind from adding up wasted dollars. My fiancee and I just moved in together, so naturally we had two of everything, two dining room tables, two beds, two microwaves, etc. The overlap is incredible. So what do we do with two of everything? There’s the Ebay option for some of the smaller stuff. There’s Craigslist, but it seems like I have to relist everyday for any interest. And when there is interest, everyone is looking to give you less than 10 cents on the dollar. There’s also Freecycle to just give it away. It just kills me to not get good value for something that’s still good quality.