Favorite Time of the Month

I look forward to the beginning of the month. It's a very special time for me. My mortgage payment goes out at the beginning of the month. This prompts me to... wait for it... update my spreadsheet!

My budget spreadsheet is the first I created with multiple worksheets. It has nine (one of which goes unused, and the other just has information used in calculations on other sheets)! I've always been a long-term thinking/planner. While I like the idea of tracking things monthly, like Jonathon does over at MyMoneyBlog, I think I'm content with updating things monthly but tracking things on a yearly basis. You can look at my spreadsheet as a long term planning item, and Mint.com as my monthly tracking place. Alternatively, you can look at Mint.com as my monthly history, and my spreadsheet as my yearly outlook. It's really not much of a budget, I guess.

Recently, I haven't been using much of the spreadsheet besides the Retirement Planning tab. (I may have to look at what this says about my current job satisfaction at a later time.) This tab isn't so much of a plan of how to get to retirement - my 401(k), Roth IRA, other savings, and house are my retirement plan already being taken care of. The Retirement Planning tab lets me know when I can retire and live forever off of my accrued savings. I compute the live forever part of that by determining if the growth of my investments will outpace inflation.

By my current assumptions of 3% inflation, 7% retirement portfolio return, and $70,000 (in 2006 dollars) yearly withdrawals, I can retire permanently at age 56. Now, $70,000 seems like a ridiculously large amount of money to spend in a year, to me. However, I would like to have a wife, and I don't want to underestimate those associated expenses... Seriously, though, that should allow for most travel plans I can think of, charitable giving, and regular living expenses, with hopefully enough left over to handle unexpected expenses, or temporary-ish ones like college costs for children.

Even though I don't use most of the parts that I programmed into it, updating the spreadsheet is still a very fun activity. Very few things are better than a large table of numbers.

---

This was supposed to be posted nearer to the beginning of the month, but my main computer was having issues. Chkdsk seems to have sorted them out, though. It took a few hours, but it completed. I was fooled a few times by long periods of no screen updates and the keyboard not working. That is, I restarted the process more times than necessary, I think. For future reference, the Num Lock and Caps Lock keys don't work when chkdsk is running, and it's apparently normal for some operations to take an hour without updating the screen.

Old School Assignment

I have discussed a story from my childhood and how it reflects my personality. I think this old assignment from college also reflects my personality, so I thought I would share that, too.

I found an old Technical Writing assignment after I fixed my file server. The assignment was to write a technical manual on an item in the kitchen. Almost everyone chose a toaster, a blender, an oven, or some other type of appliance. Everyone except me, that is. I created a manual for a bowl.

Click for full size (readable) image!

HipStuff was one of the companies my roommate and I planned. It started with his idea of HipSoft, which had the slogan "Software that doesn't suck." We had Hip subsidiaries planned for a lot of sectors, and the category was always one syllable. HipCo was the parent company, and HipStuff was kind of a catch-all. We also had HipFilm, I think, which would make movies that didn't suck. I found out this year that G4 shows movies as: "Movies that don't suck." I don't think they stole the idea from us, despite the similarity.

I remember adding the feature of the No-Tip base after I started the diagram. I started with a circle, naturally enough, but then realized the bowls would tip over. I was so astonished that I could miss something so fundamental that I decided to make it an official feature. I also particularly like the feature about the "Uniformly Symmetrical Shape," and the cleaning tip that mentions "extensive drying times" instead of a bowl full of (soapy) water. Mostly, I just like the idea of a bowl requiring a manual. My teacher was not thrilled, but had no choice but to give me an 'A'.

That was probably a common feeling... "Mark just spat in the face of the spirit of this assignment, but he did it correctly. Drat!"

Music and Parties

I went to a great party tonight. It was a graduation party for an old friend from high school (and a bit in college). The thing that made it a hit, though, was the live music. People brought guitars, a banjo, bass guitar, upright bass, harmonicas, shakers, and voices. People would start playing a song and whoever knew the lyrics would sing aloud.

I only wish I were musical in some way. I don't play any instruments and I have no rhythm for even shakers. I can sing (poorly and never in public), but I know no lyrics. It makes me want to keep a guitar in the house, though, so other people can play when they come over. It'd be kind of like how I keep alcohol strictly for the enjoyment of others.

It also got me thinking about how seldom this happens anymore. I can't personally attest to the good ol' days, but the old movies often show impromptu musical fun at neighborhood gatherings. Really, neighborhood gatherings have also stopped, for the most part - maybe an occasional block party if you happen to live on a social block. I'm going to ask my brother if he has a spare guitar he'd like to leave at my place. Perhaps we can revive this tradition.