No More Harvard Debt

As each week unfolds, I keep track of observations and experiences about my NMHD challenge so that I can blog about them on the weekend when I have time. A fairly major component of each blog post has typically been pretty formulaic: “Oh, my frugal life is so hard! I had to sell this or that/look at all of these expenses I’ve deferred/I couldn’t afford to go to this or that event. Boo hoo!”

When I finally found some time to write a post this weekend, I looked at the items on my list:

• I’m in a chat group on a smartphone app called Whatsapp that’s comprised of me and my four closest friends here in Austin. For the past two weeks, somebody from the group has thrown out a lunch invitation almost every single day, and at least one of the other guys has accepted it. Some of those days I actually had a smidgen of free-time and could have really used the break to relax and catch up with the fellas, but instead, I ate lunch in front of my computer to save money.
• A girl I met a few months ago was in town from San Antonio and wanted to meet up, and I literally considered not meeting up with her because all I could think about was, “How much is this going to cost me?”

When I sat down to blog this evening, I planned on elaborating on my thoughts and feelings on both of these topics. I started with the lunch situation and tried writing about how it was so frustrating to have to turn down the invitations, but for whatever reason, I just couldn’t get fired up about it. So then I moved onto the dating situation, and once again, no motivation–this is old news; this is nothing new. Am I going to rehash the fact that I’m having trouble with dating on the cheap? Yawn.

I don’t know why, but the other day, I was thinking about what things were like during my pre-NMHD life. I mean, there’s a very, very clear delineation between my life before NMHD and my life during NMHD–sort of like BC vs. AD on an obviously much smaller scale. I started thinking about the attitude I used to approach my life with before NMHD. I wasn’t always positive, but I at least paid considerable attention to trying to have a positive attitude. When I started NMHD? I threw that positive attitude out the window. I knew it was going to be a grind, so I subconsciously decided that there was nothing to be positive about. I adopted that same attitude when I wrote blog posts–my intention was to give readers a gritty, true-to-life account of a guy going all-out to pay down his debt in a ridiculous timeframe. It would be a no-holds-barred, a no-punches-pulled account, and that included throwing away my positive attitude. “This is going to be tough, and I’m not going to sugarcoat it.”

And what a stupid thing to do. At a time when I needed a positive attitude the most, I instead became a very negative, very cynical guy. “Woe is me” became my new mantra.

Now, there was a time in my life (high school through grad school) when I had a negative opinion on having a positive attitude. I had always heard that having a positive attitude is critical–my own mother is a huge advocate and lives accordingly–but I thought that people with positive attitudes weren’t realists. I thought they were just fakes avoiding the hard truths of this world, brainwashing themselves into believing in illusions. I thought they were all in for a harsh surprise when life would eventually blindside them all. I remained steadfast in my cynical attitude.

Some time shortly after grad school, something changed. I decided that I was being silly. I decided to relax and be more positive, more optimistic. It  sounds odd, but I really can’t identify the impetus for this attitude shift.

Having a positive attitude became a focus of my life, and for awhile, I had to force it, I had to pretend. Tricking myself into thinking everything would work out whenever I ran into a problem, putting blind trust in myself to figure things out, not second-guessing myself and expecting the worst at every turn–it wasn’t easy to do at first. But once I figured it out, and it became automatic, life brightened up considerably. Taking pressure off of myself went hand-in-hand with this new mentality. I had been putting a lot of pressure on myself to be professionally and socially successful, but I chilled out, and I decided to trust in myself and believe that things would work themselves out. To a certain extent, I actually became happy-go-lucky–something I never, ever saw myself becoming. But let me tell you something: going through life happy-go-lucky is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than going through it as a Debbie Downer.

And then, when I kicked off No More Harvard Debt, that still relatively new, still somewhat fragile attitude withered in the face of paying down $90k in ten months. My positive outlook shriveled up and blew away on the winds of my heavy sigh. For the past five months, I’ve approached my life more Debbie Downer, less Pollyanna. (BTW, what are the male equivalents of these characters??)

Well, starting today, it’s back. While paying down what is shaping up to be $66k by the end of this sixth month hasn’t been easy, the truth is that it hasn’t been a tremendous hardship, either.

That being said, I don’t have line-of-sight to knocking out the remaining $24k in four months. My savings are gone, many of my major assets are gone, and I’m looking at only $4-$5k in debt paydown per month. Barring a huge bonus, I could very well fail in this endeavor.

But I’m going to revive my positive attitude in my everyday life, anyway. I’ve reached a point where I’m going to stop being angry with myself for issuing this challenge to myself in the first place, and then making such a public spectacle out of it all. I’m going to live with a firm belief in myself and with hope that I can get through this and that everything will work itself out. I’m going to do my best. I’m going to accept my situation and be at peace with it. No, things are not  great right now. No, this isn’t how I want to spend my money–I don’t like putting every last penny towards my student loans. No, I don’t like selling this or that/holding off on buying this or that/not going to this or that.

No, things are not great, but they’re not terrible, either. And they could be a hell of a lot worse.

I might have to fake the attitude at first, but it’s better than going through life gloomy all the time.

I’m done with living with a negative attitude, and this inevitably needs to be represented in my blogging. I’m done with complaining. It doesn’t do anybody any good. And while it might make for some humorous reading, I’m just not going to deliver that anymore. If something is so bad that it’s hilarious, then yes, I’ll post about it, but only so that we can all have a good laugh at it. Otherwise, I just don’t want to dwell on it.

So what becomes of this blog? I posted in mid-Janunary about how this blog was making me miserable because it forced me to dwell on my hardships and sacrifices. I half-jokingly threatened to shut the blog down, and there’s definitely still a part of me that wants to do just that and complete the remaining 4.25 months of debt paydown in blissful obscurity. However, I do think the blog still serves a purpose as people continue to cite it as an inspiration, so it will live on. The difference between that post in January and this post is that I really will keep things more positive, which wasn’t my position in January:

“I would like to say that I’m going to try to keep things more positive, more on an even keel, but I don’t want this blog to be some idiotic, artificial, fluffy, evangelistic piece of crap. I want it to be real. So I’ll probably keep whining from time to time.”

High-level, I think the content and the tone of the blog need to change. Focusing on and writing about the sacrifices and hardships simply isn’t good for my mental health. And anyway, at the end of the day, they’re not that big of a deal.

(Well, let me rephrase that. For a certain audience, these sacrifices probably seem like a pretty big deal. But for other groups of people (e.g., starving children in Somalia), the fact that I sold off my second car, motorcycle, and roadbike probably wouldn’t garner a whole lot of sympathy.)

I will likely continue to track “sacrifices and hardships,” especially the ones that have financial implications and pose a risk to my timeline, but on a line-item basis only; I simply cannot elaborate on them anymore.

I have 4.25 months left to pay off my student loan debt. May they be glorious, glorious months.

Talk soon, friends.

When Sarah told me a week or so ago that this is her last month of living in the house, I marked Feb 20th on my calendar as the day to post up a Craigslist ad and start screening out the weirdos in the hopes of finding a clean and neat and normal roommate. A few days ago, I told (er, texted) Patrick to let me know if he knew anybody looking for a room. I didn’t think anything would come of it, but yesterday he told me that he knew somebody from his college who was moving to Austin in March to intern at the same place as he. I got the name and number and gave the guy, Sam, a call.

An automated voice picked up and told me to wait for a “videophone connection” or something to that effect. It dawned on me that Patrick’s friend was also deaf. And that’s totally cool–having Patrick here has been great. He’s clean, neat, and normal–exactly what I want in a roommate!

I worked through an interpreter to sign Sam up for March 10th through the end of June. He’ll be sending me a check for $910 (pro-rated for March + last month’s rent + security deposit) near the end of this month, and he’s already digitally signed the contract.

I feel good about this not only financially, but on another level, too: it indicates that Patrick is happy enough here to recommend it to his friend. So while things didn’t work out with Sarah, it’s not indicative that there’s something wrong with the house or the way I run things around here.

Jackasses!
Oh, Bank of America, you jackasses did it again. You sent me a card that expires on 5/12, the same exact date that the old one expired on. Seriously? So I spent over 30 minutes on Tuesday changing my five automatic payment accounts over to the new card, only to have to do it all over again in a few months? Jackasses! Why couldn’t you send me one that expires a little later?

Back on Facebook
Yep, I’m back. I reactivated my account, deleted all of my albums, all of the hundreds of posts on my wall (except a few choice ones from back in the day), left all of my groups, went offline on the chat application, turned off all of my other applications, and published the following status update:

Six weeks later, and I’m back! I didn’t miss FB at all, but I do want to be part of the global directory. Cell and email are listed–don’t hesitate to use them or message me on here.

That’s all factual. I didn’t miss it, and I do want to be reachable–I hate it when somebody sends me an email about something one of my former classmates is doing (e.g., attending Davos, appearing in a news article, etc.) and I can’t find their email address to send them a congratulatory note.

I rejoined on Monday, and since then, I’ve spent about fifteen minutes on the site. That’s far, far better than the hour or so I was spending on it every day up until my exit six weeks ago.

Moderation–that’s really what it all boils down to. Will I be able to demonstrate it? Sometimes quitting something cold turkey is easier than trying to do something in moderation. Going cold turkey on Facebook for awhile was good for me, and probably easier than scaling back would have been. I needed to turn it off and just be without it for a bit. Now I’ve seen what my life is like without it and I prefer it that way, but I also want to make myself accessible, so I’m rejoining in hopes that I can moderate my usage. So far, so good. But it’s a slippery slope. Look at one article on a news feed, then another, and sooner or later, I’ve spent ten minutes on the site looking at other people’s lives and not living mine. Blech.

Speaking of Facebook
The other day, Stan did me another solid and sent me an article on PEhub.com abou an interview with Richard Watts, an HBS  grad running a wealth management practice in Santa Ana, California. Watts is intimately involved with his clients’ personal lives as he helps them manage their immense fortunes of $100M+. As the Facebook IPO ushers in a new group of multi-millionaires who are used to living middle-class to upper-middle-class lifestyles, Watts has a few key pieces of advice to offer up that I’ve paraphrased below.

• The wants of clients with newfound millions turn into needs as the comparison peer group changes. The 100-foot boat that brought so much initial happiness is no longer big enough compared to the Joneses’ 200-foot boat.
• Entering a new class of wealth opens up all kinds of opportunities to spend money on extravagant activities. It’s easy for clients to go overboard and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a hobby to the point that they lose touch with the reasons they were so fond of that hobby in the first place.
• Parents shouldn’t give their children elaborate gifts. They take away the lessons the child would have learned if he had been forced to buy his own car, as well as the ensuing satisfaction of achieving the goal on his/her own. “There is really no child that gains from having things gifted to him or her.”

The key take-away from the article is simple yet arresting: “Live like you don’t have the money. It will ruin your family if you don’t.”

New Hobby
I believe I’ve found a new favorite hobby: Reading the personals in the back of Harvard Magazine. I was flipping through the latest issue the other day and stumbled upon a veritable treasure trove. From the Jan-Feb issue of 2012, I bring you the ladies of Harvard:

SLENDER, SEXY PROFESSOR AND POET, outgoing and warm. Seriously pretty; engaged in literature, politics, and outdoor life. Irreverent academic; major fan of high-end art–with a weakness for TV Shows about perilous sea voyages and high adventure in the Arctic. Tortola for sailing, hiking in Vermont, biking by the  Charles. Unsystematic passion for wildlife: any old bird will do. Paris walks, Patmos, NYC, hidden (and flagrant) New England. Favorites include: DeKooning’s Wild Women, Tolstoy on tape, Cullen Murphy’s Are We Rome?; Rialto, West Side Lounge, sushi outdoors at Mac’s Shack in Wellfleet. Looking for a future of kisses and conversation with some like-minded guy, 55-70. Boston area; ?@gmail.com.

Passionate photographer, former Silicon Valley CEO, current director public boards. Slim, athletic, really attractive, fit. Casual elegance, lively smile, generous heart, irreverent wit. Excellent traveler, true friend, creative, innovative, charitable, open. Adventurous, fun and funny, never full of herself. Easy-going, curious, model–finds writing this somewhat over the top. Movie-goer, animal-lover, news-junkie, lousy dancer, hiker (New Zealand, Basque Country, Marin County–probably would do Machu Picchu–too precipitous). Favorites: books on iPad, Stanford continuing ed and basketball games, cashmere sweaters, great restaurants with friends, walking my Border Collie, African safaris, rafting/camping Alaska, photographing wild animals everywhere, revisiting Europe. Seeks active, articulate man 56 to fit 70, prefers Northern CA man but open–intelligence, street smarts, financially stable. ?@gmail.com, 650-***-****.

Too good to resist: striking natural beauty–sexy, sophisticated and completely real at the same time. Slender, lean, really cute. Adventurous, curious, artist, low-key humanitarian, trailblazer. Fun, athletic. Not a false note. Light of heart, open with unassuming playful smile. Nature outdoors-lover. Appreciator of beauty, creativity, spontaneity; delights in exploration, discovery, Maine Coast, Cinque Terre, Whistler. Passionately loves skiing, hiking, sailing, New England, photography, architecture. Great cook, great conversationalist but not both at once unless you’re up for mojitos in your coq au vin. Crazy about making a difference, giving back…youth at risk, local agriculture, teaching art. Seeking adventurous, verbal, secure man, 45-60, values generosity, authenticity. 617-***-****. ?@yahoo.com

Smart and beautiful, intellectually curious and athletic. Consultant/educator–tall and slim with natural radiance, warm demeanor, genuineness of character. Adventurous yet calm, listens well. Expressive, affectionate, divorced, 5’8″. Laughs easily, thinks deeply, politically liberal. Interested in social change, literature, politics, nature, beauty. Midwestern roots, international outlook, lived in Spain. Actively enjoys skiing, hiking Rockies or Whites, Mozart sonatas (but can’t play despite years of lessons), Sunday Times, snuggling at home. Comfortable having tapas in Barcelona or roughing it in the backcountry. Seeks healthy/active man, 60s-mid-70s–warmth and intellect bent. Boston area. ?@aol.com. 781-***-****.

Class, class, class. I would literally date any one of these women if I were older, but I seriously doubt that I could afford them. Maybe what we actually have here is a potential sugar mama opportunity??

If I ever go on Match.com or eHarmony any time soon, I’m recruiting them to write my entire bio–they have some serious talent in the personals writing department.

This one’s a bit bizarre/funny:

Professional, loving Jewish-Italian family, Brookline, MA, with mature, beautiful and accomplished daughter age 21 seeks applicants for position of son-in-law. Must be at least 21, family and career oriented with great expectations. No political tests though occupants of Zuccotti Park need not apply. Applicants and/or parents send resume to ?@hotmail.com.

And the fellas…

Male executive, Yale degree, thoughtful, accomplished, fit, very youthful late 60′s seeks nice, sensitive, warm widow (or other single) comfortable with ideas who finds humor in whimsy and banter. NY metro area; often in Boston. Likes travel; advance apologies if schedule prevents timely response. ?@gmail.com

Ivy League alumnus, mid-30s seeking an interesting/intelligent woman to have a baby with. ?@gmail.com.

It’s funny to see how different in language, tone, and length the male personals are from the female ones.

Groceries Receipt

I was complaining about my groceries spend the other day, and Nate said I should post a receipt for analysis. So here you go.  I still had some milk, potatoes, and vegetables in my fridge left over from last week, so this isn’t even a typical week’s receipt, and yet multiplied by four weeks in a month it comes to $340, well over my goal of $280/month.

Looking at this more closely, I should stop complaining and just take my budget up. I don’t want to switch to a Ramen Noodles diet, private brand cereal really doesn’t taste as good, store brand shave gel really doesn’t work as well, and I like Axe and breath mints too much to not buy them.

BTW, give Axe Music a sniff next time you’re in your local grocery store. Holy moly. Some dude sprayed it in the locker room a few months ago and I had to ask him what kind it was. Sort of awkward, but well worth it.

Boom! Sixteen dollars! I’m RICH!

My Dad always stuffs everybody’s Christmas stockings full of scratch-offs, but this time, since I wasn’t in town during the holidays, I had to wait (extremely anxiously since I could feel a big win was headed my way) for my parents to actually send them to me. The 20 tix finally arrived a couple of days ago. As you can see, two were massive winners.

This will put a huge dent in my debt. I’m psyched.

Bank of America Sucks
I was getting gas last night and my credit card was declined, so I had to use my debit card instead. I thought it was a fluke, but when I went to pay for groceries this evening, the credit card was once again declined.

So I called the number on the back of it when I got home. After 12 minutes of waiting on hold, an account manager picked up and, after getting my information, told me that my card had been reported “compromised” on Jan 10th, put put on hold, and a new card had automatically been sent out to me and shipping would take five to ten days.

Umm…what?

I’ve been using the card regularly since the 10th–it was only yesterday, three and a half weeks after it was allegedly “put on hold” that it was declined. And the replacement card that was supposed to arrive in five to ten days after the 10th? That definitely never happened.

WTF, BofA?

I got a little snippy with the account manager and pointed out all the problems with the situation. Why could I still use the card well after it was supposedly put on hold? Why had I never received a new card in the mail? Why had nobody called me to tell me the card had been compromised? Hell, even an automated courtesy email would have been a nice…courtesy…and wouldn’t have cost them a  cent!

She basically ignored all of my questions and told me she would have a new card out to me within five to ten days.  Umm…Fail. This is my only credit card, and while I have a few thousand in my UBS account, I don’t have a debit card for it. The only debit card I have is for my BofA account that has about $300 in it, and I don’t have a transfer mechanism set up between UBS and BofA.

She replied that she would get a card out to me by Tuesday and waive the $15 expedite fee.

Gee, thanks a lot. Way to go the extra mile for me.

I don’t know whether to be more confused by or angry with the situation. It’s so bizarre!!

First Roommate Is Peacing Out
Sarah’s six months are up at the end of the month, and she has elected to leave instead of extending her contract like I offered. I won’t comment on the circumstances that led to this decision, other than to say that it’s probably for the best (hint, hint). Unfortunately, it does mean that I won’t be getting her $450 rent payment this month since she paid first and last months’ rent in September, so that will leave a huge, painful gap in my February finances.

I am giving two landscaping quotes this weekend with Michael, so hopefully those turn into some lucrative jobs this month.

The Amish Life
Tell me you guys have seen this.

Two words: Holy. Crap.

For those of you not interested in clicking the link, it’s a video created by a guy who went 90 entire days without Facebook, email, Twitter, LinkedIn, and texting.

Incredible. The video is completely moving.

Here’s the article where I heard about it. Awesome stuff.

As the loyal readers already know, I left Facebook on December 23rd after I read a Harvard Business Review article about Facebook being a “den of comparison,” a huge waste  of time, and a huge cause of superficial relationships. I did miss it for the first week or so, but I’m well over it now.

The gentleman behind the story, Jake Reilly, took things to a whole new level when, in addition to giving up Facebook, he also gave up things like texting and email. I admire the hell out of him for it. That’s awesome! It terrifies me to think of what would happen to my social life if I were to go down that road. It sounds like he was at first miserable when he disconnected,  but he eventually hit an inflection point and ultimately thrived and didn’t even want the stunt to end when the 90 days were up.

It makes me wonder if I’m going to start thriving in my current situation, and if I won’t want it to be over, either, when  I make my last loan payment. I guess it doesn’t technically have to be over–I can keep being frugal, but there will be less of a clear goal for me, so I might not be as motivated.

And I wouldn’t say I’m currently miserable, but I don’t know if I’m as positive about my current stunt as Jake was about his while he was doing it.

Is it a coincidence that this article surfaced during the same week that Facebook’s filed its $5B IPO?

By the way, if that figure outrages anyone, first take a chill pill. Then realize that we have nobody but ourselves to blame.

Get Paid to Save
A very considerate and well-read friend of mine from HBS, Stan, reads my blog regularly and sends me related articles from time to time. This week, he sent me  two very relevant articles. The first one was about a company that will actually pay you points not for spending money, like credit cards do, but for saving and paying off debt.

Awesome.

I personally won’t be doing this because I’m not a fan of sites like this and others where my account information is on a site other than the site of the bank it belongs to.

But I do like love the concept.

How Much Entertainment Can One Hundred Bucks Buy in Austin?
A lot, according to this article.

Stan sent me this article written by Seth Kugel who describes his weekend in Austin where he experienced a good chunk of Austin for only $100. He doesn’t eat or drink quite as much as I  typically do, but I do appreciate what he’s done here. That said, I’m trying to spend $50 on entertainment over four to five weekends, not twice that amount in one weekend, so this will probably be more applicable to my post-NMHD life when I’ll be a little less frugal.

Yesterday, I wrote about how the NMHD challenge will would most likely be completed in time if I get a decent bonus and don’t experience any disasters.

Well, shortly after writing that post, I got into my car, put the top up, and noticed a 2-3″ crack in the rear window.

Disaster experienced. I guess I didn’t knock on wood while I was writing that post.

The car is 13 years old and the top is original, so after spending so many summers under the powerful Texas sun, the material of the vinyl top and the plastic window have weathered considerably, leading to the window’s current brittle and crack-susceptible condition.

By now, the old me would have scheduled an appointment at the Honda dealership for a brand new top installation, costing about $1,500 to $1,700. The current me? I got out some duct tape and put it over the crack.

I stepped away to admire my handiwork. My car looked completely trashy.

It’s bad enough that it already has this patch on the right side, but the duct tape? That was a new low.

I immediately went into panic-mode. What if people see me with my car in the parking lot at work? And what will friends and dates think? I care less about what people in general think of me–like if I’m driving down the highway and somebody sees duct tape on my car–but people who know me? Not cool.

I can’t have co-workers, friends, and dates thinking I’m poor and can’t afford to fix the top of my car.

So I Googled the costs and called my friend who had replaced the top on his S2000 a couple of years ago. All the data was saying $1,500 to $1,700 to replace the top.

I went back and forth in my mind–should I order a new top or not? I weighed the pros and cons, and I was leaning towards not doing it and thinking about temporary solutions. And then it struck me–why not just find black duct tape and stretch it across the entire window? So I did.

After I was done, I stepped back to admire my handiwork and breathed a deep sigh of relief. Ahhhhh, much better! Not perfect, but better. And $5.83 hurts a lot less than $1,500.

After I was done working on the convertible top, I pulled all the huge, angry weeds speckling my grassy lawn. When I was done, I had a fairly sizeable pile of weeds, and I wondered why there were so many weeds this January as compared to last January. Then I realized that it was because I hadn’t been able to afford the $20 or $30 to fertilize the lawn like I did last year. So there I was, pulling weeds, once again trying to maintain the appearance that everything was under control and that the coffers were full.

It’s funny how much I care about appearances. I don’t really have frequent conversations with my neighbors across the street–a middle-aged couple with two kids who tend to keep to themselves–but I’ve wondered what they think of the metamorphosis of my now nearly empty garage and the addition of roommates. Do they think the single guy who bought the house across the street when he was 27 got in over his head financially, lost his job and/or can’t afford to keep up with the  mortgage payments, so he’s selling off his stuff and getting roommates to help with the bills? Do they think I’ve hit rock-bottom? Do they feel sorry for me? In short, are they judging me?

I saw the father out in his driveway over the holidays, so I took the opportunity to walk over and apologize for my roommate’s car that she had left directly in front of their house for three weeks while she was away on vacation. Then I let it casually drop (as casually I could, anyway) the reason for the roommates and vehicle sales. 

It’s weird, but it felt good to get it off my chest, to explain the situation, to no longer worry about feeling judged.

Deferred Expenses and Prioritization
On 9-21, I listed out some expenses that I was deferring in the name of early student loan paydown:

• Dress shoes for work
• Rear tires for car
• 8GB SD card for camera
• Motorcycle repair
• Decorative soap dispensers
• Speaker system for my computer

On that list, I purchased one item, the rear tires, and that was because of safety. I started wearing different shoes that I already owned to work, I use my phone as my camera, I sold the motorcycle, and I didn’t buy the dispensers or the speaker system.

The list has received some additions over the past four months:

• Eye exam & contact lenses — I’m stretching out the remainder of my contacts past their recommended two-week lives so that I don’t have to pay for an eye exam and new lenses until after NMHD
• Mole exam — I have some sketchy-looking moles, and even though I’ve had moles removed a few years ago that raised my then-dermatologist’s suspicions, I’ve decided to wait until after the debt is paid off to pay the specialist co-pay and get an exam
• Landscaping/fertilizer for my yard
• Convertible top
• New lenses for my sunglasses– UV coating is chipping off the current lenses
• Bathroom faucet handles — The faucet handle of one of the sinks in my bathroom cracked and now it just spins around the bolt instead of actually changing the temperature of the water. I don’t need two sinks and one of the handles works just fine, so I’m holding off on replacing the pair.
• Blinds for living room — I have three outdoor blinds for my living room windows, and the one in the middle is broken and sagging in the middle. It doesn’t look too trashy yet, so I’m deferring the expense.
• Doorknob for garage door – Something is sticking internally and the knob is tricky to operate. WD40 doesn’t help. I can still open the door, so for now, I’m deferring this expense

It’s funny: I’ll go way over my $50 entertainment budget and spend close to $200 to $400 when I’m out with friends, but I won’t drop a couple hundred for an eye exam and contact lenses, instead choosing to risk my vision . Likewise, I won’t spend $30 or $50 or whatever the co-pay is to make sure I don’t have skin cancer, and I won’t spend $30 to take care of the weeds that are trying to take over my yard. I’m wearing sunglasses without UV protection because I refuse to spend $100 to get new lenses, and I refuse to pay $20 for knock-offs. I get annoyed by the garage door countless times a day, but I won’t spend $20 to replace it.

And yet, I’ll go out to the bars  and blow $400 in a single month–even though I have a flask in my back pocket!

Am I a complete idiot? A surefire moron? I think I might be.

I mean, what does that say about me? Am I unable to make intelligent decisions about my priorities? Are my values messed up? Am I being overly risky with my health?

Some of the expenses I’m deferring are for minor annoyances and inconveniences, but other expenses are for some fairly meaningful things.

There are obvious links between the $400 entertainment spend and what I find entertaining as well as whom I choose for my friends. My three good friends in Austin are very similar to me in certain respects (and I didn’t consciously realize it until sitting down to write this post). We all work at the same place, we’re all within a pay grade of each other at work, we’re all single, and we all live alone in our own houses (well, I used to, anyway), and we all like to go out. When we go out, we spend money.

Now, what if my group of friends were different? What if my friends were broke and couldn’t afford to go to bars? Or what if they weren’t broke, but their version of fun didn’t include the bar scene, and was less expensive, like cook-outs, poker, game nights, or maybe MMORPG, for example?

Would I be downtown spending my hard-earned dough on food and drinks? Quite unlikely.

But here’s the thing: my version of fun is what it is. And my friends are who they are. I’m sorry I’m not sorry. I won’t apologize for either.

In order to fund this unapologetic attitude, I have make sacrifices elsewhere in my life. Time will tell if I have to pay a price eventually for not paying a price now.

(That being said, Luke’s bachelor party is in Vegas this month and I turned down the invitation, so there’s about $2k that I’ll be saving.)

Speaking of Entertainment Expenses
On 9-2, I listed my entertainment expenses for fiscal August that occurred pre-NMHD. They came in at $1440.

Sarah asked for an update on the entertainment expenses. In December, I spent $242 on entertainment. $125 was spent with a credit card and the charges are listed below; the balance was spent using cash, which I don’t track.

Granted, this is December and I didn’t show my $380 entertainment spend for January, but I still think I’ve come a long way. Pre-NMHD, I was spending $1,400 to $1,500/month in entertainment. I’ve averaged $284 from September through January. That’s an 80% decrease.

I’d be lying if I said I don’t miss certain aspects of that old life, but this one’s not nearly as bad as I imagined it would be.

My HBS Classmates and Student Loans
Sarah asked me what my HBS friends think of NMHD and what they’re doing about their loans, so I’ll try to cover that here.

As a general rule, I don’t talk money with my friends. I don’t like talking salaries, how much they made on the market today, what they paid for their car, etc. It makes me uncomfortable, I don’t really care that much, and a lot of people regard that kind of information as private, anyway. So face-to-face conversations with my grad school friends about loans are very limited.

We all graduated almost three years ago, so I have to assume that my friends who are making  $250k+ in consulting and banking paid their loans off long ago. Those guys and gals are all happily off the hook.

I ran into an old friend from HBS the other day, and I told him about the challenge. He  was shocked and exclaimed something to the effect of, “But you’re how old? 28? You gotta live it up! You gotta take advantage of these years.” I tried to explain that I’m still having a blast–definitely not traveling very much, but still having a blast. I don’t think he bought it.

One of my former classmates and current colleagues at work is taking steps to pay down his and his wife’s debt–she also graduated from Harvard. They have four kids and one on the way. The family values education (clearly), so while he admits that I’ve inspired him to pay his debt down early, they’re not able to dig as deep as a typical family might: they’re still sending their kids to a very high-end private school in South Austin, and they’re still springing for supplemental enrichment activities like piano lessons. Beyond that, I don’t think they spend a lot of money: decent-sized house but not huge; good neighborhood but not high-end; mid-tier used cars, etc.

It’s each to their own, really. If I had to guess, I’d say 40% of my old classmates have paid them off already, 40% are making regular payments and not really sweating it, and 20% are making an effort to get out of them early. But that’s just my guess–I have absolutely no clue.

Roommates: T minus 5
I don’t talk about my roommates in this blog very often because I’m not one for gossip and libel. The first one looks and feels bad and the second one can lead to a lawsuit, which would oppose the goals of this blog.

That said, I’m looking forward to living alone again. When the smells coming out of the kitchen are the smells of my food, when doors are not being slammed (for no apparent reason) so hard that walls shake, when I clean the kitchen top to bottom and it stays like that longer than an hour, when I’m running and emptying the dishwasher when it’s full of my stuff, not somebody else’s, when I don’t have to tell somebody to take their rotting food out of the fridge because it stinks, and when I don’t roll through the front door to find the lock like this:

It was 3 AM this morning when I saw it like this, so I sent an email out to the roommates. One of them said they didn’t know what happened and the other one never replied. When I got back from a run later today, it was fixed:

Odd. How the heck does that even happen, anyway?

On the whole, the roommates are good roommates–things could be a lot, lot worse. I just think that my tolerance for living with strangers is low–as it probably is for most people.

Only five more months to go.

Landscaping Business Update
Michael and I spent an hour and a half a few Saturdays ago driving out and meeting with a potential client about his yard. Michael said he’d have the quote done by the end of the weekend. He bought the software and has become an expert at it, so he’s become the de facto quote guy. I hadn’t heard from him by Sunday night, so I checked in. He told me he had spent five hours on it and still had another five to go. I was blown away. 10 hours to give a quote? Was he serious? Ludicrous! I admired him for his dedication and work ethic, but that was way above and beyond!

Michael was convinced that if we provided a high-end quote complete with graphic renderings of the new yard, we  could close the deal. I strongly disagreed, and I told him it would likely not come down to pretty pictures, but the cost, and that he was running the risk of wasting a lot of time. He was already too far along to change course, so he sunk another five hours into the quote, we reviewed the costs together, and then sent it over.

I followed up with the customer after a couple of days to confirm receipt of the quote, and he replied back that he had gotten it, but was still collecting quotes from other companies and would have a decision within a couple of days.

It’s been three weeks and we haven’t heard anything. We lost the bid, and Michael lost ten hours of his life.

It’s frustrating for me, and I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be for Michael. I don’t think he’ll be making that mistake ever again.

All that being said, it is an extremely slow time of the year for our (seasonal) landscaping business. We’ve had two jobs so far, we’ve lost two bids, and we have three interested clients who are slowly moving towards the quote phase. Hopefully things pick up soon. If  I keep spending $500 over my budget every month without incremental revenue to offset it, my timeline will be impacted.

I’ve considered picking up a second job for the weekends, but I don’t really want to give those up to work for somebody else, and I can’t think of anything entrepreneurial to do off the top of my head. I’m willing to work on the weekends to build my own business, but I’m not willing to work for somebody else for $10-$20/hour. Furthermore, my job is fairly stressful and my weekdays are packed with work and the gym, so I really value my weekends for relaxing and getting things done that I didn’t get to during the week.

It’s sort of like how I consistenly blow my grocery and entertainment budgets–I know there are expense and revenue changes that I have to make, but I’m not really willing to make them because I feel like I’ve already changed so much about my life as it is.

I think that if the five-month outlook didn’t look so healthy–if it didn’t predict me paying off my loans by the end of May (month 9)–then I would feel behooved to make some structural changes in my life. But since things are looking fairly rosy, I’m just not motivated to dig deep and go the extra mile.

I just paid the Fed $5,083 from my January income. I’m at the halfway point of my timeline, but 68% of my debt is already paid down.

Here’s how January played out:

• Starting Cash:$2,500
• Starting Student Debt:$33,601
• Income:$7,953
• Expenses:$2,870
• Debt Paid Down:$5,083
• Accumulated Interest: $206
• Ending Debt:$28,723
• Ending Cash:$2,500
• Total Assets:$55,684
• Total Liabilities:$28,723
• Net Worth: $26,961

Predicted student debt at end of June: ($5,487)

 In other words, I’ll have a surplus of $5.5k at the end of June at my current rate of paydown. In fact, according to the projections, I’ll be exiting May with my debt completely paid down and a surplus of $1,319. Anything can happen in five months, of course–from a smaller-than-expected bonus to an unexpected disaster–so I’m not going to bank on any of these projections for now.

High-Level Analysis
I spent $525 over my budget, but thanks to unbudgeted Craigslist sales of $345 and a new renter who paid first and last month’s rent in January, I brought in $903 of income over my budget.

While 50% timeline and 68% debt paydown seem like reassuring numbers, I can’t expect any more huge pay-off months like September where I wiped out my life savings and November where I sold my second car and motorcycle. I’m looking at a series of $4-$5k monthly paydowns, or $22,500 till the end of June. The one exception to this is my bonus, which is a huge, huge bogey. To hit my goal, it needs to be at least $6k or so after tax, and all of this hinges on not experiencing any disasters or anything else that will set me back financially.

Assessment of Expenses and Revenue
I want to take a moment to assess my spending habits on a line-item basis. Progress-to-date is detailed in the spreadsheet below. Click once to open and once to zoom.

Analysis: Expenses

• Insurance – $0 — After months and months of $171 insurance payments, I’ve sold off my second car and took collision off the S2000, and I’ve paid enough towards the once-high premium in previous months that I slid by without owing a single dollar in the final month of the six-month policy. Yay!
• Internet — $9 — My internet wasn’t working for a few weeks, but I was so busy at work that I had zero time to come home and be on-site for the AT&T repair guys to come and fix it. I borrowed internet from the neighbors as a stop-gap until it got fixed. I then asked AT&T to pro-rate my charges for the month, which they did.
• Cell phone – $114 — I budgeted for $85 since my typical bill has always been $85 for unlimited data and text and 450 minutes, and I used to go under 450 minutes every month. But now that I’ve been promoted to a new role, I find myself on my cell phone a lot more and actually exceeding my minutes at 40 cents a pop, so that explains the $114 bill. The company can give me a phone, but it’ll be a dumbphone and the extra complexity it’ll bring to my life isn’t worth it. This is the third month in a row where I’ve gone well over $85, so I really need to get better at monitoring my minutes.
• Mortgage — $1441 — Fixed and within budget
• Haircut – $17 — God bless twelve-dollar Tuesdays @ TGF. $12 + $5 tip = $17. I have a regular haircutter now, and I feel like I get extra attention from her thanks to the 40% tip. Totally worth it. Big spender!!!
• Energy — $32 — Same story as last month: I budgeted for $100, so this is a huge win no matter how you look at it. The past few months starting in September the bill has been $124, $97, and $89. The AC hasn’t been on in weeks, and it’s finally being reflected in the bill. It would have probably been closer to $25 or $30 without the roommates, but $32 is still super low.
• Water — $0 — My fiscal month ended the day before I got the bill for $62. I’ll pay this in February along with the February bill. So a gain this month, but a definite loss next month. That being said, $62 is good considering I’ve been budgeting for $100.
• Gas — $42 — A loss relative to my $22 budget. This has gone up due to the cooler winter months and is being offset by a lower electricity bill since I haven’t been running my AC…or my furnace, for that matter.
• Entertainment — $380 — A loss relative to my budget of $50. I’m going to dedicate a post to this soon. It sucks and I’m not proud of myself, but it is what it is. I’ll get into later. For now, I’m chalking it up to the fact that I had a week off from work and I celebrated New Years’ Eve.
• Groceries — $377 — A loss relative to my $280 budget. I don’t know how to hit the $280 budget. It’s not like I’m buying stuff I don’t need. I’d love some input from readers on this–is $377 a lot for a single guy in terms of groceries? This includes non-food items like new heads for my Sonicare, which cost $20 for a pack of three, as well as contact lens solution ($13?), etc.
• Lunch at work — $0 — A win relative to my budget of $0. It seems like every other day my friends are getting together for lunch during work. I don’t have the money, but more importantly, I don’t even have the time–work has been nuts lately; meetings and email consume my lunches.
• Fuel — $94 — A win relative to my budget of $160. But I’ll be honest, I bought about $40 of fuel at the tail-end of fiscal January that didn’t hit my credit card until the first day of fiscal Feburary. I still would have been under, though.
• Drycleaning – $69 — A loss relative to my budget of $20. I had some important meetings during this month and I needed to dryclean a suit and some blazers.
• House — $95 — A loss relative to my budget of $0. This is the plumbing help I talked about here.
• Car – $8 — A loss relative t0 my budget of $0. I had to patch the convertible top, which is better than dropping $2k for a new one.
• Gifts — $42 — Apparently there was an issue with shipping my mom’s Christmas gift to her, so I didn’t get charged in December and I had to redo the transaction in January.  
• Unbudgeted — $150 – I had to refund John, the former roommate, his security deposit.

My expenses for the past five months averaged $3,176 while my expenses during the 15 months prior to NMHD averaged $6,909.

Analysis: Revenue

• Salary – $6,248 for two paychecks – A win relative to my budget of $6,200. I was enjoying the paychecks I got in December that didn’t have social security tax withheld since I had already hit the income limit. Those days are gone for now.
• Roommates – $1,360 – A win relative t0 my  budget of $850. I got a new roommate in January and he paid first and last month’s rent plus a security deposit.
• Craiglist – $345 — A win relative to my budget of $0, but this was just offsetting some expenses that weren’t in my budget (e.g., entertainment, plumbing, etc.). I talked about the reason for doing the sales here and the outcome here.

February Outlook
Cost Challenge: I’ve decided I won’t be adjusting my budget for the rest of this journey. I’ve been missing my cell phone, entertainment, grocery, and drycleaning budgets like clockwork. Some of that is due to a piece of them being unrealistic to begin with. I thought I would be hardcore about eating ramen noodles, never going out with friends, and ironing my own clothes, and that’s how I’d hit the entertainment and grocery and drycleaning budgets. Well, I haven’t been able to bring myself to do any of that yet, but I don’t think I’ll try, either. If I fail in this mission, I can point to this paragraph as the reason why. My health and friendships are more important than a financial stunt, and I forgot I once ruined about five shirts when I washed them myself and the colors all bled. (That being said, I really don’t think that those will be the reasons I fail, if I do.)

Revenue Challenge: My rooommate Sarah signed a six-month contract, her sixth month is February, and she has already paid her last month’s rent, so I might not get any rental income from her this month. I’ve invited her to stay on through June, when I expect to have the debt paid down, and she’s considering it. Michael and I don’t have any landscaping jobs lined up.

Final Thoughts
Halfway done time-wise, 68% done debt-wise. I have to admit it: for all of my talk about Zen Buddhism and focusing on the present and living in the moment, I’m getting extremely anxious as I cross the halfway point of this journey. I can’t stop thinking about the end, when I can publish my last post and start thinking about  building my wealth instead of reducing my debt. I also think about the bonus bogey daily. What will it be? What will it be? What will it be? I’ll find out some time in March, but that seems like forever.

Here’s the full ten-month outlook (click once to open, once to zoom):

Near the beginning of fiscal January, I blogged about how I was already off-track for my January debt paydown due to poor spending discipline and that I would need to sell some stuff to get back on track. I wasn’t looking forward to it, however–not because I didn’t want to get rid of stuff, but because it meant having to deal with Craigslist scammers, flakes, and the general associated inconvenience.  

On January 2nd, I created 24 individual listings on Craigslist–everything from fishing poles and ski goggles to cycling and motorcycling accessories. 29 text conversations, nine  house calls, six phone conversations, five flakes, four email threads, and two scams later, I’ve sold 13 items and made $345.

Although I went in with a bad attitude, I kept a cardinal rule that I believe kept me sane: I guaranteed crappy customer service. In other words, I didn’t accommodate people’s schedules–we would do the transaction according to my clock–and I refused to deliver items or meet anybody anywhere except at my house. When somebody asked me when I was available, I told them after 8:30 PM–after work and after the gym, or the following day if I was busy that night. My position was that if I was going to list things on CL at such low prices, then I shouldn’t need to make any further sacrifices. I guess what I’m trying to say is that my business model was low-cost, low-service. A 99-cent store with only one employee who’s running the counter comes to mind; I certainly didn’t set up a boutique.

My life is definitely a little less cluttered  and I came close to completely bridging my spending gap, which will probably end up being around $450.

I know that in the grand scheme of things–when I still have $32k to pay down–a miss of $450 in one month out of ten is almost inconsequential. However, bridging this gap is a matter of principle. At the beginning of this challenge, I set what I thought was a stretch of a budget but still fairly reasonable. The biggest stretch was a $50 monthly entertainment budget spend. When I blew that away during the first week of fiscal January, I decided to “punish” myself to keep myself within budget. So I sold a bunch of stuff. 

It was a valiant effort, but I really think that $50/month for entertainment is…actually completely impractical. I will probably adjust going forward for the next five months.

The items I sold are listed below. I’ve taken down the other stuff for the time being and will probably re-list in a month or so.

In my last post, I identified the source of the funk I’ve been feeling, but I didn’t really have a solution for it. Well, I’ve found one…

Stop blogging!

Seriously, I’m not joking. I’ve been writing and publishing most posts on Sunday night, and every Monday morning at work has hit me like a slap in the face. I’m going to chalk it up to the fact that 99.9% of my posts have typically been about me and the challenges I experience in trying to live a lower-cost life. So I live it once, then I re-live it again when I write about it. Then I go in to work on Monday and feel trapped in a cubicle maze. I typically get out of the heavy funk by mid-afternoon on Monday, then the rest of the week is usually pretty easy and funk-free. Then I blog about my debt pay-off misery on Sunday night and the cycle repeats.

I have a good friend from HBS and work who knows all about my blog. He was a film major in undergrad, and he was even filming me for a couple of weeks in an attempt to make a documentary out of this stunt until he realized he’d have to hire somebody full-time just to keep up with me, given the pace at which I was trying different things to eat away at my debt. The other day, we were talking about a lawsuit that he’s involved in regarding his former business venture–a couple of intimidating mobster-like characters from NYC that bought him out (one’s an ex-con) owe him beaucoup royalties and they refuse to pay up–and I encouraged him to write a blog about his experience. He turned down my suggestion, though, explaining that not thinking about the lawsuit has allowed him to stay sane and remain emotionally detached from it.

Then he told me a story about a woman who gave birth to and raised ten kids. His wife once asked the woman why she didn’t keep a journal about raising all of the kids since it would make for such fantastic reading years down the road. The woman replied back that she would have gone crazy if every night she had to capture the craziness of each day by writing about it.

I haven’t blogged in six days, including last night. I woke up this Monday morning and whereas for the past few months I’ve spent the first couple of hours at work in a funk, today I walked into my cube at 8:10 AM and just crushed it. I got completely caught up on email, knocked out several deliverables, started a couple more, and attended a few meetings–all before noon. I successfully evaded the funk.

And that’s the thing about me. If I’m ever doing something I don’t like, but I know that it’s my medicine and that I have to take it for long-term health, I don’t whine about it/dwell on it/think about it. I just do it. I compartmentalize it. I block out the negative thoughts and feelings and power through it. But when I’m having to reflect on it, dissect it, analyze it, and write about it, I tend to get more than a little wrapped up in it.

I think this whole mission would actually be a lot easier if I weren’t spending so much time thinking/writing about it.

I used to keep a private journal (i.e., a diary…whatever, I’m cool with it) on and off since seventh grade, and I always found that I was happier when I wasn’t writing in it. My journal literally made me miserable! I haven’t journaled since 2009. I still see and gain value in writing and reflecting on a major problem when I can’t quite put my finger on a root cause or a solution by working it out in my head, but I think that for the most part, consistent, reflective journaling can drive a person insane. The quotation underneath my photo in my high school senior yearbook is from Socrates and it reads, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I still agree with that, but I might add that the over-examined life can be detrimental to one’s mental health.  

All that being said, I recognize the value of this blog to others; several folks have commented on how inspirational it is. So I’ll keep blogging away about my experiences. I would like to say that I’m going to try to keep things more positive, more on an even keel, but I don’t want this blog to be some idiotic, artificial, fluffy, evangelistic piece of crap. I want it to be real. So I’ll probably keep whining from time to time.

Speaking of the Blog
I started this blog on August 29th. Four and a half months later, as of 9:57 on 1/16, I have published 73 posts comprised of 95,000 words. Other noteworthy data:

• 69,275 page views
• 525 reader comments
• 102 email subscribers
• 57 comment followers
• Top six commentors are: Sarah L (26), Sarah (17), Mike (16), Barbara (16), and Nancy and Zeona (15 each); Thanks a lot, guys!!!
• All-time biggest referrer: Iwillteachyoutoberich.com (2,341 referrals | Thanks, Ramit!)
• My busiest day was the first full day of this blog’s existence on August 30, 2011, when the blog went viral and got 2,788 views. It was all downhill from there: catchy title, interesting concept, but horrible writing, I guess

A Special Thanks
I wouldn’t be writing this blog if it weren’t for my readers and the comments. I love the fact that I have my own cheerleading squad, my own ringside coach in my corner. It’s a great feeling. Without you guys, I would have stopped writing about my debt challenge 72 posts ago.

I wouldn’t say that I’m on a mission to raise page views–I’m actually quite content with the way things are going right now.  The current crew of commentors is outstanding and it offers a great deal of insight that I find useful and constructive. I’m happy with that, too, since I can’t afford to pay for visitors, I’m not a big fan of hosting guest bloggers (it would have to be an excellent fit), and I don’t have a lot of time/patience/interest in doing the other stuff this guy recommends to increase blog traffic.

That being said, the very competitive side of me is still curious how 70k organic page views in 4.5 months stacks up in in the world of blogging–whether that’s high or low. I think that given the context, it’s a fairly high figure. I mean, I’m writing about me. This is quite possibly the most self-centered blog in the blogosphere. Every single post is about me, my life, and my money!  I’m not that interesting of a guy, and I’m not exactly providing readers with very helpful information; I don’t go to financial seminars and write about them, I don’t research and conduct studies, and I don’t interview people. I literally just find an hour or so each week, sit down in front of the computer, and write about whatever I’ve been noodling on in my head for the past few days. The fact that it’s not just my parents and grandma reading this blog is cool; the fact that the blog gets roughly 300-400 page views a day from complete strangers is completely astounding.

So, a big thanks to my readers. For you, I will write 5.5 months’ worth of more posts, or however many I can fit in whatever time on earth I have left living with student loans. Thanks for stopping by!

Do you remember that mysterious “funk” I’ve been feeling? I first referred to it on 11/4, then I thought I had figured out its source on 11/11. I originally labelled it as a “general malaise,” and I didn’t know why I was feeling it. On 11/11, I thought I had could blame it on the fact that my money was no longer going towards cool stuff like it once did, but was instead going towards my student debt, and I found the whole experience very demotivating and funk-inducing.

Well, I think the my subconsciousness has finally given me a peek into its deep inner workings. Now, I’ll be the very first person to admit that I’m not the world’s most self-aware person, and this blog has been one huge attempt at trying to understand myself better–what drives me, why I do what I do, etc.  But I think I’ve had a critical insight into what was causing this funk and why I’m trying to pay off my student loans in such an accelerated manner.

On 9/5, about a week into NMHD, I listed all of the reasons why I thought I was doing this crazy financial stunt. The truth is, I didn’t really know why I was doing it, so I wrote down all of the reasons I thought sounded right. And some of them are actually quite valid and applicable. The first two reasons I listed–to have the option of starting my own business and to get off the treadmill–even alluded to the real, underlying reason in a round-about way.

But today, for whatever reason, it finally dawned on me exactly why I’m trying to pay off my loans so quickly.

I’m not going to go into specifics because the purpose of this blog is to neither have NMHD Pity Parties nor is it to libel the place that gives me a great paycheck every two weeks. I will simply say that I was passed over twice for a promotion in my then-current role. (The first time I missed the promo was in March, the second time was at the begining of August–the same month I started this blog.) Being denied the promo didn’t make sense to me–I was in a pay grade below all of my peers, but my boss ranked me second on the six-member team, and for reasons that I won’t air in public, I still couldn’t land a promotion.

Because it didn’t make sense to me, I escalated to HR, but they were impervious to my pleas and arguments. At that point, I wanted to walk away from the company because I felt like I was being treated so unfairly; I wanted to send a message that I would not stand for such mistreatment. The only problem? I couldn’t walk away. My salary paid for my high standard of living and allowed me to pay the regular rate of my student loans. I needed that salary. And that salary was so high for the Austin area that I was convinced no other local company could match it; Fortune 50 companies like the one that I work at pay MBA-level salaries all day long to people with four years of work experience and no technical skills (i.e., me) because they can afford to invest in them and groom them over time. Very unfortunately, there aren’t that many Fortune 50 companies in Austin.

And moving to a new city for a new job wasn’t an option because 1) I have great friends here, 2) I love Austin, and 3) I had just bought a house using the $8k First Home Buyer tax credit and couldn’t afford to both sell the house at a loss (blasted realtor fees!) and pay back the credit to the government.

So I was stuck. Looking back, it dawned on me, albeit subconsciously, that I had become a prisoner of my standard of living and student loans and I was being forced to work at a company that didn’t value me the way I thought it should.

Despite my ruffled feathers, I still came to work every day and applied the same exact effort (very high), delivered the same exact results (very solid), and had the same interactions with all of my business partners (very positive).

However, I was no longer “feeling it.”

I looked within the company for a new job that would also serve as a promotion and I found one within two weeks. I even got a 6% raise out of it. However, the damage had already been done–I had experienced the cold, impersonal treatment of The Corporation, and my lack of a walk-away option terrified me into taking action to find one. (I did have a small Screw-You Fund, but given the size of my loans and standard of living, it wouldn’t have lasted very long.)

So I decided, subconsciously, to pay down my debt so it would be easier to walk away if I were to ever encounter another  bad situation at work. I convinced myself in that post on 9/5 that I was doing the pay-down for a bunch of very different reasons, and the first two hinted at the true reason, but until today, I never made a direction connection between the events that happened at work, the way they made me feel, and my mission to pay down my student loans.

Is it odd that it took me this long to make the connection? Am I that out-of-touch with myself? I don’t know. Writing it down like this makes the connection seem so obvious, but at the time of starting this NMHD mission, my thoughts were actually pretty simple: “Wouldn’t it be nice if I could get out from under this crushing debt? If I could do something else with $1,057 every month?”

The funk I talked about earlier first settled in when I got passed over for the promotion the second time. It got really bad, though, when I realized, after paying down $50k in three months, that I could have spent that money on something fun instead. I attributed my funk to the fact that I wasn’t spending the money on fun stuff, but on a piece of paper.

I think that’s probably an accurate attribution, but now I would also draw a parallel to my original feeling of being trapped in my job. Before NMHD, I was trapped in my job to maintain my high standard of living and to pay off my loans at a standard rate. Now, with NMHD, I am trapped in my job to maintain a much lower standard of living and to pay off my loans at an accelerated rate. Because failure is not an option for my NMHD mission, I feel even “more forced” to work than I did before, and this is a much more cramped trap than the original one.

Like almost all human beings, I don’t like being forced to do things. I want to feel like I have options and am in complete control of my life.

Before I got passed over for my promotion for the second time, I truly enjoyed my job and I truly liked the company where I worked. I like my job now, and I still like the company. I still work my tail off every day. However, I know I’m still in a trap, so there is definitely still a funk, and I’m still not quite feeling it.

I believe that I will be out of the funk and once again feeling it when I have my loans paid off and I have about $10 or $20k in my Screw-You fund. At that point, I won’t be trapped. I’ll have a walk-away option supported by savings that I can live on for four to eight months if I am ever mistreated again. And because I’ll have gotten used to a lower standard of living, I won’t require a job that pays a super high salary.

Hear This: I don’t want to be considered a disgruntled employee because I’m not. I like what I do and I like where I work. They pay me well and I did eventually get promoted. I don’t want the soundbite for NoMoreHarvardDebt to be “disgruntled employee pays off $90k student loan in ten months so he can quit job.” I just want some extra security so that I can stick up for myself if I have to.

Some of my friends who work at the same company should have gotten promoted years ago, but they didn’t. I can’t help but wonder if they themselves are also imprisoned by their own standard of living and student loans, and that’s why they’ve never given the company an ultimatum and demanded a promotion.

I am now $960 richer than I was this morning.

I fielded multiple calls and texts from people this morning on the items I listed online, and I set up times with two individuals to come by later in the evening around 8 PM to buy a coldweather helmet liner ($15) and motorcycle gloves ($35).

The biggest news, however, is that I’ve found a roommate for now through the end of June, which is when I fully expect my loans to be paid off.

I first listed the room over a week ago, and I’ve gotten several calls and scam emails about the room, but nothing had panned out yet. I got a call from a guy who ended up visiting the house. The vibe he was giving off was so creepy, it was almost creepy enough for me to pull the room completely off the market. One girl came by to check it out, but since it’s not close to a bus station and she’s in between transportation, she passed. Waste of time, waste of time.

While I was working out at the gym this evening, I got a voicemail about the room. I called the gentleman back, and he said he wanted to check out the house and was looking at a February 1st move-in date. He said he’d be spending only a few evenings a week at the house because he works in Austin but doesn’t live here. I didn’t want to lose out on an entire month’s rent, but there was definitely a certain appeal to having an absentee roommate, so we set up a time for him to check out the house the next evening.

I left the gym and started fixing my dinner, hoping I could get it prepared and eaten before the buyers for the stuff I posted online came calling. I got a phone call at 7:40 from a girl asking about the room. She said something at the beginning of the call in a very rushed and incoherent way that I couldn’t understand. When I asked her what she said, she didn’t tell me, but she slowed her speech down dramatically and if the room were still available and if she could come see it in ten minutes. I told her sure. At the end of our brief conversation, she  told me that she just wanted to make sure I knew that the person interested was deaf and that she was only translating. I was definitely surprised, but I told her it was okay, all good.

I got a knock on the door 15 minutes later, and I opened it up. A tall, clean-shaven guy, probably 6’3″, was standing silently on the porch. I said hello and we shook hands, but he didn’t say anything. This was not a buyer coming for my various crap that I had posted online, it was the potential renter.

I asked him if he read lips, and he shrugged his shoulders and made the universal “a little” sign. He then took out his smartphone and opened up a text message screen and typed his name, Patrick, and that we could use his phone for communicating. He already knew my name from the web post.

I was literally at a loss for words as I started showing Patrick the breakfast nook and dining room and living room, bathroom and his bedroom. I just sort of pointed at stuff and opened doors. He asked a question on his phone, and he handed it to me so I could text the answer back, but I held up my finger to give him the universal “one second” sign, and got my laptop out of my room. I set it up on the counter in my kitchen, and we started messaging back and forth at a pretty rapid clip. It was like I was IM’ing with a friend, but with that friend in the room. At one point, I even used an emoticon. I felt like an idiot directly after typing it. 

 Maybe it’s just because he’s deaf, but in his mannerisms, he had a very patient, gentle–I guess you could even say innocent–way about him.

He’s in Ausitn for an internship at a tech company, but not the same one I work at.

We started talking terms and conditions, and Patrick didn’t understand what the term pro-rated meant. Oh, man. That can be hard enough to explain verbally, let alone through text. But through the use of a spreadsheet, we muscled through it and he figured it out. We walked through the contract together, signed it, and he handed over $910 in cash – $360 for this month, $400 for June, and $150 for the security deposit. He was ready to move in immediately, so I helped him bring in his stuff.

The actual transcript from our exchange is below in italics.

(While Patrick and I were locking in the contract, I got two phone calls and two house calls from the buyers for my stuff. I didn’t take the time to type out the explanation of what was going on, and he saw me come into the house from the garage with money in my hand, so for all he knows, I’m running a drug business out of my garage.)

do you have other roommate?

 yes, one girl, 28 yeras old, works at . from mississippi. she lives in the room next to yours

how long term

now through the end of May

my internship at <censored> end june 29.

that would be fine.

when is good time to move in.

immediately  

 i have cash w me.

i’d prefer first and last month + 150 deposit = 800 (400 for june, + ~$380 pro-rated for january) + 150 = $950. you’d get the 150 back on june 29th  since you’re not staying here for all of january, i’d pro-rate it based on the day you actually move in. when would you move in?

soon..can you show me your post on craigslis… i dont get it… pro-rate meana?

 $400 for all of january, 31 days in january, so about $13/day. if you don’t stay here for the for the first few days, i subtract $13 for each day in january you don’t stay here. so if you move in on the 4th, i would take away three days – the first, second, and third, or 3×13 = $39, so you would owe $400 less $39 or $361 + $400 for June + $150 refundable security deposit.

 so this month, i pay you $800 right?

 June will be pro-rated, too since you won’t be staying here for all of June.

  i wanna to make sure… lets forget june… just tell me how much i pay this month and after this month?

 if you move in on 1/4, $361 for January, then $400 for each month thereafter. However, per the terms, I’d like to also collect the final month from you, too. does that make sense? end may.. that month, ill look other place. it’s absolutely no problem if you want to stay in june. if u want, you can pay me $361 for January + $400 for May, then you can make the call in May if you want to stay in June for $387 or whatever that number was

now i get it… lets end june

when are you moving in? tonight?

tonight yes

let me  go print this out so we can sign it.

this first one is your copy for your records

do you have your stuff with you? do you need any help?

After we were done putting his stuff in his room, he made this weird gesture, moving his hand down from his mouth to in front of his stomach in a wide arc. I had no idea what he meant, and I made that obvious, so he took out his phone and typed “Thank you.” I asked him how to say “You’re welcome,” and he showed me. I copied it, smiling and feeling extremely self-conscious. Although it looked like a seemingly easy gesture, I knew I was somehow doing it incorrectly. He just smiled back.

I’ve already found two good sources of American Sign Language lessons on Youtube.

I felt such a sense of accomplish when I successfully signed a contract with a deaf person and then helped him move in. Looking back, though, I’m realizing that Patrick works through much, much more complex things with non-deaf people on a daily basis. Signing this contract was probably child’s play for him. Whenever I think “woe is me” because I’m paying down $90k of student loans in ten months, I need to think of Patrick whose life is a lot harder than mine is right now.

In fact, taking that a step further, I think I need to start interacting with people living in poverty on a regular basis just to level-set things. Helping out at a soup kitchen might be a good idea. When I was on the rowing team at Michigan, I went to Mott Children’s Hospital once a week with a few guys from the rowing team and various other teams at Michigan to visit the sick kids. We signed baseball caps, took Polaroids with them, and gave each of them a stuffed animal. We tried to make them smile, and we were usually successful.

On the way to the hospital, my thoughts were completely self-centered: “Big exam tomorrow, big race this weekend, life is so hard, so much pressure, etc. etc.” Then, when I saw those kids lying in their beds, many of them fighting a losing battle with cancer or some other illness, all thoughts of myself disappeared, and all I could do was think about these  kids.

Later on this evening, when I finally had a chance to digest all that had taken place, I started wondering about this guy’s story. While I hadn’t done so much as a reference check or criminal background check on him, my gut told me that he seemed cool, so I wasn’t wondering about him in an is-he-going-to-chop-me-up-with-an-axe-while-I-sleep-in-my-bed-tonight-type of way. I wanted to know what kind of person–who’s deaf–calls up a complete stranger at 7:30 at night, has a translator ask them if the room is still available, comes and checks it out, asks one or two questions, then immediately plunks down $910 and moves all of his stuff in?

I remember during the summer between my two years at Harvard when I did a 3-month internship at a company located right outside NYC. I stayed in a room at a woman’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. The company where I interned knew her and had recommended her, and I visited her at the apartment weeks before I moved in. It’s hard enough being a strange guy in a strange land, but at least I had my housing situation figured out well in advance. Patrick? Not so much.

What’s the story behind his guy who couldn’t find a place to live until the last minute? I’m hoping he’s just big on procrastinating, but a part of me thinks that all the people he approached before me chose not to take him on as a roommate because he’s deaf. They probably didn’t want to deal with what they anticipated would be a hassle. Is this why the translator mumbled the preface that she was translating for a deaf person?

Personally, I think the situation kicks butt. I can blast my tunes as loud as I want, and I don’t have to worry about making small talk with him in the mornings–I’m not a morning person, and small talk in general is defnitely not my forte.  

If I’m wrong, and he really is an axe murder, then this might be my last post. Goodnight, all. Sweet dreams.

I’m only one week into fiscal January and I’m already anticipating a shortfall in my budget. My student debt is at $33,600 right now, and I budgeted a pay-off of $4,705 in January. However, John moved out of my house and into his new house a couple of days ago and I haven’t found a new roommate yet, so that’s costing me $13/day ($400 over 31 days). This time of the year is possibly the worst time of the year to find a roommate because of the holidays, but I’m hoping to find somebody by the middle of Janary. I’ve also already spent $235 on entertainment, or $185 over my $50 budget for the month. While doing chores did help me abstain from spending money on entertainment during my  week-long  company-mandated holiday (staycation), it clearly wasn’t completely effective. Some of this overspend can be attributed to the New Year’s Eve festivities which came in at $45 for a ticket to a hotel ballroom party and $20 for a bottle that the host, my good friend, let my friends and me sneak in.

I’ve talked about my lack of spending discipline in prior progress reports, and while the roommate issue is clearly not an issue of spending discipline, the entertainment overspend definitely is. Right now it’s a matter of either A) fixing the entertainment budget to more accurately reflect my lack of spending discipline, or B) getting disciplined.

Since I don’t have a solution yet, I’m just going to sell more crap to make up for the overspend.

While I’ve already sold off the second car, motorcycle, and roadbike, I’ve decided to dig deeper. A funny thing has happened–I find myself not missing the motorcycle nearly as much as I thought I would. In fact, I don’t really miss it at all. The same goes for the roadbike. Now, I might feel differently about things after I finish NMHD and accrue some savings and am not maniacally focused on saving money. Once I have some money burning a hole in my pocket, will motorcycling regain its appeal? The same goes for cycling–am I going to go out and buy a bicycle after NMHD is done?

(Of course, these questions are part of a much broader question–once I complete NMHD and accrue some savings, will frugality lose its appeal? Or will that be my new way of life?)

When I sold the CBR, I was convinced I would get an R1 as soon as I had enough money for one. I also assumed I would go back to cycling, so I held onto my my motorcycle and bicycle-related accessories. However, given the pending budget shortfall and the fact that I just don’t miss the motorbike and bike as much as I thought I would, I’ve decided to sell the accessories.

It doesn’t help that we’re in the off-season for these sports, but I’m going to see what I can get.

Motorcycle Accessories

• Helmet
• Jacket
• Gloves
• Cold weather helmet liner
• Torque wrench
• Rear stand

Bicycle Accessories

• Water bottles and cages
• Bike bag
• Headlight and tailllight
• Jersey
• Multi-tool
• Lock
• Helmet
• Floor pump
• Hand pump
• Cold weather gloves

While I was in the getting-rid-of-stuff mode, I hunted around my house for other crap to hawk. I found the following:

• Burberry frames — I wear contacts, but I bought these suckers for job recruiting at HBS because one of the “interview experts” at HBS said that we should wear glasses because they would make us look smarter. Being an idiot, I went out and dropped several hundred dollars on some Burberry frames. I haven’t worn them since the interviews three years ago. I have no idea if  there’s even a market for these things, but I’m going to find out.
• Oakley snow goggles – I last used these when I was on the ski team in high school…12 years ago. They look practically brand new.
• Fishing poles and tackle box — Over a year ago, I went out and spent $100+ on poles and a tackle box and lures so my then-girlfriend and I could fish at the pond that is a three-minute walk from my house. We went once, didn’t catch anything, and while it was peaceful and relaxing, we never went back. They’ve been sitting in my garage untouched for over a year. Who wants ‘em?
• iPod Shuffle – I’ve found that I actually run better without aural distractions. And, in case I ever find myself wanting to run to music, I have an extra Shuffle. Really, there was no point in having two iPod Shuffles. I’m still not sure why I had two.
• Fan — I bought this to cool me down whenever I used my rowing machine that I bought for my apartment in 2009. I sold the machine a year after I bought it due to neglect, but I never parted ways with the fan.  Time to go.

A guy already came by to get the floor pump, and while he was here, I sold him the jersey and water bottle cages. I made $55. Another guy is on his way over to pick up the gloves.

Dig Even Deeper?
If/once I get rid of all of this stuff, any extra income will have to come from work–I don’t think I can dig any deeper, unless I start selling furniture, my TV, or my surround sound system, which I’m not interested in doing.  

Speaking of extra work, an RFQ landed in the inbox of Michael’s and my landscaping company today, and we’ve scheduled a visit with the customer for next Saturday. We’ve also given a quote of about $1,550 to the guy whose sideyard we did a few weekends ago after he asked us to do additional work for him, and we’re waiting to hear back from him.

If I continue to go over my budget every month and the landscaping business doesn’t pick up (this is definitely the off-season), I might have to go back to looking for an extra job. Or get disciplined.