Doggey Prayer

For all the dog lovers out there. (click)

Water

Lately there has been more discussion about water. Specifically how much is there and what are the affects of climate change on water supplies. Scientists are telling us that with the global warming taking place there will be more droughts, and this could lead to taxing on already low water supplies and perhaps even conflicts. One of the reasons for the conflict in Darfur is because of water. (Click)

There is a great website where you can calculate your water usage much like carbon calculators, and find lots of other information about water. (Click) I had always know the carbon impact on the meat I eat, and for that reason I eat less red meat, but I didn't realize the water impact on eating dairy.

Speaking on water there is a guy that figured out how to burn salt water and use it as a fuel. Considering that the earth is 2/3 water this is pretty darn cool.

Budgets

Last week I posted about my finances and how I am trying to get them in order. (click) In the past week I have had a good conversation with a friend about it and taken some time to analyze my budget.

My friend reminded me about the latte factor in most budgets. (The ideal that the little things add up) I think that dining out may be that for me. Also he reassured me that saving for a house is a good use of money and can be justified.

Even after this conversation I was still a little unsettled about the disparity between trying to live with a simple lifestyle, and the amount of money that feel I seam to "need" in order to live. This weekend I have obsessed over every nickel and dime, categorizing and analyzing everything I can think of and came up with the following. (click)

I found out a few things:

• Tax's suck! I have always been of the mindset that if you make more money you should pay more tax's. But now that I'm 30 I have realized that as your income increases if you don't have children or a mortgage to claim as deductions, you kind of get screwed on your income tax. I end up paying a small fortune in tax's this year because I don't have these two deductions.
  
• I am saving a lot. There is the obvious savings each month for the down payment on a house but I also have deposits into my 401K that are automatically taken out of my paycheck. This adds up at the end of the year. Originally I wasn't taking this into account because I was only dealing with my take home pay not my gross pay.
  
• I actually am living simply. By organizing my budget in they way I did it was easy to see what my actually base living expenses were. (separated from my tax's, and aggressive savings) I also added a "Decadent Luxury" column for things like travel, pet expenses, and dining out. After all I didn't take a vow of poverty I'm just trying to live simply.
  

After looking at this I have some difficult decisions to make. In the end, I don't feel that I can't cap my income a level I would like too. That being said I'll do my best to keep the decedent luxury's to a minimum. (Currently they add up to a little over 9% of my gross income.)
I also was planning on building a cabin this summer. Although I have put a lot of thought into the design and construction of the cabin I really haven't thought about how to pay for it. On top of that It doesn't make financial sense (or justice sense) to be building a vacation cabin when I don't have my first home. I'll start budgeting a small amount each month towards the cabin and in a few years after I am settled in my first home I can resurrect the cabin idea.

New (to me) TV

There is a part of me that is sad to see my neighbors move out.
Before:
After:
And there is a part of me that is happy to have a bigger TV. :)

Money...It's Not Just A Pink Floyd Song

For the past three months I have become more diligent with my finances. I have been keeping a spreadsheet of all my expenses and tracking how I spend my money. Also on Friday I had my yearly review at work and the small pay raise that comes with it. With both of these things happening, I think I am ready to do something that I have been wanting to do for a long time. Figure out how I can manage and spend my money justly. Not a small task by any means and fought with many difficult questions.

To start with I can think of two options; A graduated tithe or capping my income. A graduated tithe as I understand it has a base income with a 10% tithe and anything above that is tithed at a higher rate. Capping your income is just as it implies, you figure out what you need to live on and give away everything above that. I am not sure which one is better but I am leaning towards capping my income just because there is less math involved.

In order to make this process "just" I feel as though I have to base it on some facts. In researching I came up with a few disturbing things. The 2006 US poverty level for a single person is $10,400.00 a year. (Click) The 2006 US annual household income is $48,201.00. (Click) Now I realize that I live in a major US city (Boston) and that these two numbers would be higher for my area, but I can not understand how anyone could live on these incomes per year. If I am to manage my money justly I feel as though I should somehow acknowledge people in these situations.

Here come the hard questions:
1) As I look at my three months of expenses, I find that my highest expenses are: Savings, Rent, Tithe, & Food in that order. (All other expenses are under 10% of my monthly income) Fortunately I do not have any student loans, one of the unspoken benefits of dropping out of college. I feel as though I am living simply: I don't have cable, I share a car, I have started to buy clothes at thrift shops and I rent a modest apartment well under the median price. Given that information, I also make 25% more than the average American household, but I still feels like there is not enough. Clearly given the information I have collected about my life over the past three months this is not the case. Why is this?

2) Part of managing my money Justly is how I give it away and how much. Presently I give my tithe to an urban minority church that I have a connection with. But where do I go beyond that? How do I choose other organizations to give to? Do I given domestically Do it give internationally? Do I give to both, and in what percentage? Do I give to secular organizations?

3) As you man have picked up in my listing of monthly expenses, savings is the largest category. In fact it makes up about 22% of my income. This is certainly not the norm in America and not the norm for most of my life, only about the past 6 months. The reason for this is that I want to buy my first home. Even at the present high rate it will take me a couple of year to get a down payment together. Remember I live in Boston. (I also want to put about 20% down.) I am wondering if it is just for me to put so much money into savings. Should I cut back and give more of that money away?

In conclusion, there are a lot of questions I have been struggling with in the past few days. Any thoughts would be helpful. Also if you have any figured this out for yourself, please let me know how you handle it. I am planning on talking this through with a friend this week to help get some perspective.

Goodbye Coco You Will Be Missed

Last night my dog Coco shuffled off this mortal coil. I adopted her two years ago at the age of 9. She was a Chesapeake Bay Retriever.
She liked scratches behind the ear, long walks in the park, dog treats, and anything I was eating. Yes I actually put a diaper on my dog. When I adopted her she was incontinent. It took a while to get her medication right to stop it, and I took every measure I could to keep myself from cleaning pee off the floor.
Goodbye Coco you will be missed.

Apartment Farm Update

Well it has been a couple of weeks sense I planted my seeds, and I wated to give you an update.

This is lettuce. It's been the easiest and the quickest to grow, although it has the prime real estate in front of the sunniest window.

The one on the left I believe to be carrots, and by the process of elimination the one on the right would be the broccoli. It's kind of pathetic that I don't know that the plant form of the vegetables I eat are.