Questionable Ethics and the Anger that Follows

One of my ex-co-worker/friends called me yesterday and had news he wanted to make sure I heard from him and not through the grapevine.

Apparently the layoffs were all a lie.  They're hiring other teachers.  They hired another math teacher, but with a math/science endorsement.  Perhaps they wanted a different staff with overlapping endorsements.  Perhaps they wanted a younger, less experienced staff so they didn't have to pay them as much as the people they laid off with Master's Degrees.  

They found out that Matt, the friend that called me, had been applying to other jobs, so they posted his position on CL and are making him reapply...  Does this sound crazy to anyone else?  They're making Matt REAPPLY to his OWN job because he was applying to other positions.  Is that legal?!  

They did the same thing to another ex-co-worker/friend two years ago after half the staff quit on them.  They called her and asked if she was looking at other jobs.  She made the mistake of being honest with them and admitted she had been, just keeping her options open.  They posted her job and made her reapply.  

I'm still not sad to be out of there.  You can see how completely preposterous and unethical the business practices are at that place.  But man I'm angry as hell.  I'm so angry that it's an anger that's buried and I've lost the words the describe how angry I am.  It's an anger that kept me up all night.  The people that run that school are sneaky, deceptive, unethical, and manipulative.  And I'm angry that I couldn't leave on my own terms and tell them where to shove it.  

Life in Limbo

(Prologue... Yes, I know it has been a long time since I posted.  Yes, I know that my adoring fans have been waiting with bated breaths for me to resume cataloging my every thought.  I got a bit overwhelmed with life in general since February and couldn't really bring myself to make time to write about it all... You'll see why in the coming post...)

Before I start actually blogging about specific topics, I think I need to just give myself a chance to close my eyes and just type away.  That's usually when I can write about the things that have been weighing on my mind.  Just a stream-of-consciousness type of writing that tends to get everything that's been bottled up, out in the open, and frees up my subconscious a bit.

I used to write a LOT when I was in my formative years.  I had a super nice sprial notebook - two actually - that I used for my journal. With thick paper and the stiff cardboard cover.  I'd write almost every single day from 8th grade onward.  It was usually just jibberish that I could never bring myself to read later on because it was either too embarassing to be face to face with my raw emotions, or it wasn't a reflection of how a truly felt.  But writing always made me feel better, like working out, or deep-cleaning my house.  It released a blockage that allowed me to be freer.  Happier?

So I guess that's why I blog.  Not because I have anything particularly interesting that I want the world to know about.  But to free up my mind.  I know I could do this in private - some posts do end up going in the private bin - but I also like knowing that there are people out there that are interested enough in my life and my thoughts to check in and read my out-there inner monologues.  Hi mom!  Hi Reezy!  :-)

Anyway... Life in limbo.  I guess since February, things at work started getting pretty awful.  Things had been going pretty well before then, but suddenly administration got really angsty and uptight and started the whole passive-aggressive administrating routine that almost drove me to quit my first year there.  It turns out, budgets got cut in every school district that we did business with, so our budget got cut, so 4 out of 7 teachers got laid off - myself included.  Which I hold is a good thing for me.  I didn't want to work there, but I was having a hard time finding a way out.  Now I'm out, with stellar references, and unemployment to hold us through until I find another job!  I was hoping to make it another year there, so Bryann and I could finish paying off our loans, but that was just not to be.  Hopefully it will turn out to be a "blessing in disguise" sort of a situation.

Thank goodness we started paying off our student loans when we did!  Since we got really serious about becoming debt-free, we've paid off nearly $30,000 since November 2011!  If we hadn't, our minimum payments would have been nearly unmanageable at this point with me out of work and surviving on Bryann's salary and unemployment.  But as it stands, we only have $150 loan payment, and one loan left!  Here's the board update:

We had hoped to be completely debt-free by May of 2013, but I think that pay-off date has been pushed back by quite a bit.  Bryann has been strongly considering going back to school to get his MBA, so if we cash flow that, it'll be another year after he graduates in 2015 until we can payoff that last student loan.  There are a lot of things still up in the air, but I'm happy with where we are, and I'm proud of us and all of the sacrifices we've had to make in the last year in order to make this happen.

In the meanwhile, I'm job-hunting.  Paul is being super-amazing and is basically being my job-hunting coach. He's meeting with me weekly to help keep me accountable to someone and to offer whatever insights and advice he can.  The theory we're working on is that the more applications I have out there, and the more people I get connected to and talking about their companies, the higher my chances of landing a good position and not working at a gas station.  My goal is to apply to 30 jobs this week, and I'm at 18 currently.  (I'm procrastinating and writing this blog post because I got real tired of copy-pasting my work history over and over again on applications.)  I don't have a particular job narrowed down.  I'm looking at Training, HR, Admin, Accounting assisting, Analyst assisting, and Education consulting.

How am I doing?  That's a great question.  It's been difficult to get out of bed and get moving.  I'm half-way through the 4th season of "Dawson's Creek".  My house is a disaster and looks like college boys have been living in it for months.  Currently it's 3:51 and I'm still in my pajamas and I haven't showered.  But I'm making progress, I guess.  I think being laid off, or being without work has the same stages as grief.  Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.  Maybe I'll throw in another one - Drive.  I'm currently still in the Anger phase, mixed a little with Bargaining ("If only I could just go back in time and do it again, I'd pick the 'right' major, and start my career on the 'right' track") and Depression (see current state at 3:51 pm.)

But I know I'll get through it.  Left-foot, right-foot.  It just super-sucks in the meantime.  As much as I promote myself as an adventurer and free-spirit, I hate the unknown.  I like to have things planned out, and have life be predictable.  I like to know what the next step is.  And right now, I don't.  I just have to put myself out there, be vulnerable, prepare myself for a lot of rejection, and have faith that there are no mistakes.  That everything happens for a reason.  That my life will be the better for the challenges that I've survived, and the trials that I've faced.

Until then, here's a cute picture of my dog (taken while still in bed, watching "Dawson's Creek" this morning...)

Debt Snowball Update

For those interested in our progress on becoming debt-free, I have an exciting update!  The refinance on our house went through, and we now have a 15-year, 3.25% interest loan.  We cut 13 years off our mortgage (should we stay in this house forever) and cut what feels like a bazillion dollars in interest payments and PMI.

Refinancing our home also helped us out a lot with our student loan payoff goals.  Because of the timing of the refinance, we don't have a mortgage payment this month or next month.  We also got a few hundred dollars back, which I realize just gets tacked on to the loan, but it sure did help boost our debt snowball this month...

With the extra money from the mortgage, plus our tax returns, we were able to do some huge things this month.  Instead of paying the next biggest loan - the $2,800 Gate student loan - we paid off a $5,200 private loan from Willamette, which also had the highest interest rate on it!  Woooooo!!  We paid it on Valentine's Day just before going to sleep.  We pressed the "Send Payment" button together, and it was the best Valentine's Day present we could have given to each other.

It also looks like summer school is happening, so I'll be able to count on a paycheck in July.  Which means... the money we've been putting aside to get us through the summer is going toward another loan this month....  which means....  we're also going to be able to pay the $2,800 Gate loan that we'd planned on for this month after all!!!  It will feel sooooooo good to erase those debts from the whiteboard and write PAID instead!!

That will leave us with one last Gate loan at $4,900, my student loans at about $10,500, and Bryann's whopper of a consolidated loan at about $23,000.

Whooo those are some big numbers.........  We still have a loooong road ahead of us, but we've made such amazing progress even in these last 4 months.  Our goal is to be done by Bryann's 29th birthday, and with our progress so far, I'm pretty sure we can do it!

So keep encouraging us not to spend money and to have zero fun.  :-P  Just kidding.  We still have fun, and we still splurge every once in awhile.  Case in point, Bryann just bought a board game, and I just bought a water proof rain jacket for Alaska.  Oh yeah, and we're going on a cruise to Alaska with our friends in June.  :-D

Valentine's Firsts

There's something special about firsts.  If I know a first is coming up, I try to do something memorable for it. It's become harder and harder to do traditionally memorable things with such a strict budget but we're getting pretty creative.  We're going to keep the budget strapped down for another year and half, and we have a lot more "firsts" in our first year of marriage!

This past weekend was Bryann and my first Valentine's weekend as a married couple.  Since Valentine's Day is on a Tuesday, and I have choir practice tonight, we decided to celebrate early.  And in the spirit of keeping our spending down, we headed out to Pacific Blue and spent the weekend frolicking on the beach.  We drove up to Cannon Beach on Saturday and found a neat spot at the edge of town where the river runs into the ocean, and played fetch with Sam there for awhile.  I'm sure the river was freezing, but he was so happy jumping in and swimming around for his bright orange ball.

We had lunch at our favorite Cannon Beach Brewery - Bill's Tavern - which serves a splendid Blackberry wheat, and where we teased each other about the beginnings of grey hairs and wrinkles, and talked about what Valentine's day might be like in 5 years or 10 years.  Then we went to the outlets in Seaside to get Bryann some more work shirts and did some more beach frolicking.  :-P  The weather cooperated beautifully.  It wasn't summer weather, but the sun came out a few times and it didn't rain on us at all.

Lots of Bingo cards to keep track of!  

Then Saturday night we decided to be adventurous and check out Bingo night at the Lion's Club.  What better way to celebrate being married than to act like old married people!  We spent a whopping $20, played over 3 hours of Bingo, and were lucky enough to win a round for a $4 total profit.  We even made friends with another old married couple who loaned us their Bingo Dabbers and taught us how to play.  (I know you think you know how to play Bingo, but this was a more intense Bingo than I'd ever dreamed!)

We plan on going back to play Bingo whenever we're in town.  It was soooooooo much fun!  Even if we hadn't won, it was a nice way to spend the evening - doing something new with my hubby and laughing all along the way in our usual fashion.

On Sunday, we left a bit early (after a walk and one more round of fetch on the beach with Sammy) and stopped at a few wineries on the way back up to Portland.  I'll write more about those on the Wine & Dine Portland blog in a few days, but we enjoyed the February countryside at Tualatin Estate and a wine and chocolate pairings at Appolini Vineyards.

The vineyards are still gorgeous even in February

Enjoying my first wine and chocolate pairing

I'm not sure what the next 5 or 10 or 20 or even 50 years hold for us, but I love adventuring out with Bryann.  Frequenting our favorite joints, and throwing in a new activity here and there.  Life is always interesting with Bryann, and I'm so grateful to have him in my life and to be able to say I'm still madly in love with him even after almost 8 years together.

My NEW Favorite Things

So I'm a super huge tea fanatic.  I love tea, as well as all tea-related paraphernalia.  I have a small collection of tea sets, and once in awhile, the girls get together for a good old fashion tea party.  And I'm pretty well prepared to host these parties.  I have tea cups and saucers enough for like 12 people.  I have several tea pots, and milk and sugar sets.  But I had to put my regular sized spoons out with each cup, and regular sized spoons are way too big and kind of overwhelm a tea saucer.  

No longer!!  I found these awesome teeny "appetizer spoons" and they fit PERFECTLY with my tea cup & saucer sets!  I'm hosting a Brittish-themed book club on Friday and I'm pretty excited to put these to use!  

A Case of the Thursdays

TGTF....

Thank Goodness Tomorrow's Friday!

This is usually my motto for Thursdays, but today more so than most.  I've had an epically long week and I'm ready for it to be over.  I'm ready for the end of this uninspiring week.  I need the relaxing weekend I have planned.  I need some extra sleep.  I need some couch time with my husband and my dog/cat.  I need these last few days of January to be over.

We're on the tail end of the month, and the tail end of our budget.  We've done really well sticking to our budget goals this month.  We reduced our spending by about $200 to pay off a student loan, and we were still able to do some of the fun things we wanted.  We went to see West Side Story for my birthday, we saw some college buddies play at the Doug Fir for their CD release party, Bryann spent a weekend at the beach house with his buddies playing board games, while I went to a fun Wine & Dine party with a cool BYO favorites theme, and we went to a fantastic cook-off put on by some of our friends.  Now we have to make the last $30 stretch for the last 5 days... (I have a feeling my gas tank is going to eat it all, though)

I'm ready for January to be over.  I'm ready for the sun to start coming up before I get to work.  I'm ready to sit down with February's budget and plan it all out.  I'm ready to pay off the next loan.  I'm ready to celebrate the first Valentine's day with my husband.  I'm ready to sing in my first concert since college.

For now I'll have to settle for the week being almost over.  And I'm currently in my pajamas sipping on a tasty Apricot Ale, helping Bryann make dinner and enjoying a relaxing TGTF.

Refinancing is... Fun?

We're moving forward with refinancing our house to a 15 year mortgage.  Bryann has a buddy on his softball team who is a loan officer at Umpqua, so Bryann has been keeping close tabs on mortgage rates.  When they dropped to a record low 3.25% on a 15-year mortgage, Bryann and Dave filled out some paperwork and locked in the rate.  We're not sure how it's all going to play out over the next couple of weeks, but we're taking the next steps.

I've run the numbers for a couple scenarios, just to make sure we really want to do this.  A 15-year mortgage means a higher monthly payment, and since we're working on paying off our student loans, we could definitely use the extra money every month.  But we'll only be behind a month or so in our loan pay-off plan if we go this route.  And several factors just keep pulling me back to the 15-year loan.  Most of it though is that the money we're putting towards our mortgage will go farther for us.

First of all, we won't be paying pesky mortgage insurance anymore.  That's money I don't have to think about throwing down the drain.  Secondly, the percentage of our mortgage payment going towards interest (right now) will be lowered from 75% to 38%.  That's more money I don't have to think about throwing down the drain.  And over the life of the loan, we'll save almost $70,000!  Wooooooooooo!!!

Even short term, even if we consider selling the house at the end of our required stay (3 years from the purchase date), we'll have over $4,000 more equity in the home.

So next up is an appraisal on Tuesday, then deciding if the loan-to-value is really worth it.  Then signing a crap-ton of paperwork... again...  We're excited about where we're going, and all the good things we're doing for our financial future.