Brooklyn Girl's Personal Finance Blog

So I want this fragrance from Hermes called Osmanthe Yunnan (from their Hermenessence line that is only sold in Hermes boutiques). I have been looking for a good osmanthus fragrance forever, ever since I smelled those intoxicating orange bushes in the fall in Japan.

Naturally, I don't want to pay $235 for it.
I also don't want to buy on ebay since I want guaranteed authenic and fresh and they ONLY sell this line in Hermes boutiques. (ahh, the foreign world of $10K+ handbags and $6k wallets).

But they have travel set available of 4 fragrances that you can pick for $145 (with tax it will be $160).
Since I live in NYC I can go there and pick the fragrances and have a first-hand top line, correctly stored, 100% authentic product.

And... sell the other 3 fragrances? Probably to friends, or on ebay or craigslist. Maybe there will be others who would want to do the same thing of buying a fragrance that would otherwise be too expensive and not available in a smaller quanitity.

My main concern is that I fall in love with the other fragrances from this line and will want to keep them too. I've heard great things about Vetiver Tonka.

Hey, it may look like a counter-money saving post, but it is not. It is not about going without little pleasures. Sometimes is about getting those pleasures for much less money, right?

So is this a good idea?

But I love thinking about it. I need to think about it, plan it, anticipate it.

I spent every single vacation day attaching it to maternity leave to stay home with my little one. So now I have to earn them from 0.
Last time we were on vacation was when we conceived (9 day ski vacation). So more than a year and a half ago. I had a high-risk pregnancy so I could not go anywhere while pregnant.

We are hoping to go for a week during the next ski season, and for vacation in Asia a YEAR from now (if I can convince my employer to let me go to China for training - that's a big "if".)

That dream of a vacation would be next July, but I am planning and anticipating it already.

I am budgeting for it now too. When you put money away in a specially designated account, it feels a little more real, if feels like it will happen.

I've been reviewing my accounts and facing a dilemma right now. Should I get out of this fund?

TRowePrice Emerging Europe & Mediterranean TREMX

My average cost basis $9,559
Income and fluctuations $2,460
25% growth over 3.4 years, so about 7.5% per year
I was dollar cost averaging, so it is not exactly accurate, but I am taking a lower figure.

NOTE: The fund did slightly better than Lipper Emerging Markets Funds Average for the last 2 years

CONS: Morning star rating is only ONE star (not that I put a tonn of faith into those ratings, but if it is that bad that they only give one star…)

The fund is marked as HIGHEST POSSIBLE risk on the TRowePrices risk chart.

Though this fund has been around for 11 years.

Average Annual Total Returns:
Month End Quarter End
07/31/2011 06/30/2011
1 Year 20.90% 35.19%
3 Years -5.30% -8.71%
5 Years 2.64% 3.90%
10 Years 17.62% 16.74%
Since Inception 11.08% 11.14%

I had it for 3.4 years and have average total return of 7.5% per year (due to timing mostly, I was adding money to it when it was tanking during crisis and Greece issues times)

The fund is in my ROTH account and I held all shares over 90 days, so no fee or tax implications.

If I were to get out of it, what fund would I move the money to?

What would you do?

skipped breakfast (bad, bad girl)

$7.95 - Lunch - Korean spicy tofu soup (not worth it, will know for the future. I love Korean food, but that wasn't it.)

$2 -- impulse "hi-chew" purchase at the counter (bad, bad girl)

Dinner. Sichuanese restaurant dinner with MIL. Normally she pays, but we should occasionally. So we paid yesterday.

$60 for a spicy hot-pot fish, ox tripe appetiser and some Cantonese dish she ordered. and 2 beers. Not so bad. But we had to venture out all the way to Brooklyn and got home way past baby's bed time.

Oh, and we got red envelopes for DH's birthday. We still get them even though we are married and have a baby. And for some reason I always get an equal envelope if DH gets one. So even though it was his birthday that passed, I also got $200. So we got $400 in gift money.

I am saving my $200 for guilt free shopping when I have my next vacation some place fun, like Singapore or Shanghai.

So total $70 spent on food
$400 received in gift money

I also received a $40 bottle of wine as a gift from a coworker.
So a good day overall.

I was not planning to spend any money on wine this month (outside my groupon to one wine store).

But a co-worker just got another position and he bought me a gift of my favorite bottle of Italian white. Only one store in NYC carries it, so I rarely get it. Plus, it is $38 plus tax, so $41-$42 per 0.75 liter bottle after tax.

So here is where the temptation comes in -- he talked to the owner and it turns out that the small winemaker who produced it has died and they were unable to get in touch with the widow. So this may be the last 3 bottles in NYc. My first instinct is to go there and buy them.

It is unplanned, but since I may never be able to get it again...

For the next 2 months.

It is a complete role reversal after 9 months of me staying at home.
I am having an easier time being back to work. I even like my commute -- 1 hr door to door, split between train and walking.
I'm working only 6 hour days right now (but getting paid as if I am working full time). This arrangement is my employer's way of accommodating nursing mothers of infants under 1.

DH is griping and he is tired all the time now. (and he is not one of those lazy dads at all, he helped me enormously when I stayed home).
But taking care of the little one full time is not easy. And they do have a great bond and he is as crazy careful with the baby as I am.
And I do understand him being tried and cranky -- I've been there.

Little one is amazing -- sweet, patient, happy (most days), curious.... He is so good natured I don't know how I got so lucky. But he is also very attached to us (he always got so much attention) and so unless he is sleeping, it is impossible to even have some food.

I look forward to getting home and taking him. Little guy gets so happy and excited when I return. Screaming "aaa, aah" waving his hands trying to jump up...so cute.

My problem is a lot of expensive food waste because menu planning is a challenge.

We have a baby and our ONLY chance to go out is when my or DH's mom decide to come over and watch him. They can never say when it will be. Whenever they don't feel tired, or MIL does not have clients and have an opening... Always at the last moment. And we have to take that chance for our mental sanity.

And since we buy fresh unprocessed foods, it can't "keep". Raw meat, poultry fresh veggies/herbs. Most is organic/ripe and from small specialized companies (mainstream brands don't really produce in a way that is really healthy). So everything expires fast and if I don't eat it on the day it was planned for, it will go bad

But if we were to hire a babysitter for 2-3 hours it would add $50-60 to the cost of our meal out. Which would also be not so good. Plus, we did not yet find anyone we trust with our little one. So a lot of stuff gets waisted and every time I throw it out I feel quite bad. I am also super paranoid about food and won't eat any even potentially "borderline" things.

I am almost up to $300 in rewards on my Discover (and I already cashed in like $200 in gift cards this year) and close to $300 on my visa. I wonder what this "special" money that don't come from regular income should be earmarked for.

What do you guys do with your rewards money?

I want to be extremely detailed. Here is my detailed list.
Of course, I may have cheated somewhat - we bought a bunch of stuff end of this month (new baby car seat, gates, baby-proofing things, clothing for my return to work... ect.) And this will be our last month before huge childcare expences hit.) But still, I will try my best in August and TRACK EVERYTHING!

I went back to work last week. So hopefully I will now stop spending like a drunken sailor.
So here it is (let me know if you have any suggestions).

HOUSING
mortgage
maintenance (inc. utilities)
assessment (if any)

TRANSPORTATION
gas
tolls
Metronorth
public transport
parking
car maintenance
car payment
car insurance

FOOD
groceries
food at work
eating out

MEDICAL


HOUSEHOLD
clothing
grooming
supplies (drugstore stuff)
Goods (Décor, utensils, etc)
gifts
charity
tips

BABY
Childcare
Clothing
Food
supplies
other

ENTERTAINMENT (data plans and fun subscriptions go here)
me personal
DH personal
common(cable, internet, netflix, activities, etc.)
vacation and getaways

DEBT REPAYMENT
SallieMae


SAVINGS
pension me
TSP DH
EF
ROTH me
ROTH DH
Baby college fund

9 categories in all. So it will be easy to make a pie chart at the end of the month.

So I am home with my baby for two and a half months now. Besides taking care of him, I am not getting much done!

I need to start keeping up. I want to organize the apartment, try new dishes, resume my language studies, keep spending diary, treat myself to few things in the city (massage, new bakery, pedicure -- that type of thing).

I want to loose baby weight too. So I will post on my progress on all of these issues or ramble about the lack of it here. Hopefully it will keep me more accountable .

I know there are few women with small babies here, and I wonder how is everyone else doing. I like the sense of community and getting a peak into the life of someone who is far away and is dealing with similar issues.

objective for today:
take care of the baby until DH gets home
make time to give him infant massage
respond to 4 emails
return calls to 2 friends
do baby laundry (landromat is downstairs)
make something healthy
start blog
make dinner (after husband gets home)
organize my groupon and gilt city certificates

It was a difficult labor -- over 20 hours, very painful before the epidural and after it wore off, being at 10cm for hours, pushing, than ending up with a c-section after I was told he is in a wrong position, my pelvic bone is blocking his head, and there may be a cord wrapped around his neck because his heart rate is dipping for longer intervals.

Than very stressful few days, and now, we are settling into our routine.

I am up with him now - he is being fussy. He wakes up every few minutes, wants to feed for a minute or two, than falls asleep for another 5-10 minutes (or less, or more, it is totally unpredictable). I will wake up my husband to take over in few hours. I still will need to wake up every 3 hrs though -- I need to pump.

I am tired, sleepy, and in love. I look at his eyes and melt.

Yes, I know, I have not been posting.

Mostly due to being preoccupied with the baby and setting up our new place. So many things to do - and I am not nearly done yet! The baby room is not set up at all - we just have a bassinett in the bedroom for now.

Also, even though I have promissed myself that I won't be "one of those" women that buy the best and get totally obsessed with their coming baby... And I kind of became one for a while. So I did not even want to post my expeses for the last few months. New apartment and expecting first baby at the same time have more of an effect on me that I thought.

Now it is going to be a race to finish, before the baby gets here. Oh, I'm so nervous about that too!

It has been a very difficult time and I have not been posting.

We lost one of our babies last week. He was getting worse and worse for over a month, but we had trouble accepting it and kept holding on to hope, as the little one was holding on to life. Loosing him at 23 weeks has been extremely difficult, he was already our baby.

Our second son is surviving (He is the one that had the hygroma, which turned out to be the least grave of all the issues that followed. We really hope that he will be ok, and there is no underlying issue.) I am trying to be positive for him, to get back to normal, to not cry too much, to look for positive little things in every day and get back into our routine.

So I try to think about our future based on the assumption that the baby will be OK, that everything from now on will be ok... though it is challenging sometimes. Nothing has been normal about this pregnancy and it is not unreasonable to fear. There are still medical concerns.

How do I get back to thinking and behaving like a normal pregnant woman should and not transmitting stress and anxiety to my little baby?

I want to do it. I succeed for big parts of the day. But I do know that remaining hopeful does not work - it did not work for our first son. Reality beats hope most of the time.

My ultrasound on Monday showed that we are having spontaneous identical twins (no twins in our family history).

That would be enough to shock me, but this is now so secondary. There is a problem. Septated cystic hygroma in one of the babies. And they share the cord, which makes it more complicated.

In light of the results are going for CVS tomorrow - to test for Down Syndrome and few other most common chromosome defects.

I was so unprepared for this. at 3 month, with easy pregnancy, I expected to hear that everything is fine. We are both healthy, fairly young, with no family history, not overweight... I ate right, took supplements, maintained healthy lifestyle.

I don't believe in odds anymore. What were the odds of spontanous twins? what are the odds of having this problem with our health and family history... WTF is this???!!!

I'm having my first ever ultrasound on Monday. I'll be 11 weeks.

It is a stressfull time - we just moved without much help, we are living out of boxes, and I had a cold for the last 2 weeks (it worries me, even though I did not have high fever) - it is the first trimester, after all.

I am excited and scared. It is a HUGE deal to us. We are not the "it happens" people.
This baby was discussed, planned, and it took almost a year after I went of birth control to get pregnant.

I really don't know what I am doing here, all I want is for a baby to be healthy and happy.

We closed and moved.
Now we are living out of boxes, sleeping on an old futon and have no furniture (not even kitchen table). The bedroom set we ordered (our first furniture will come in Mid may).

No blinds, apartment is not painted, no work has been done on it. It is really tough.

We thought we'd have a month to work on the apartment, but because sellers could not close on time, we had to move in right away. (our old landlord has rented our apartment and we had to let new tenants move in). So now it is constant shopping to set up the place and boxes, boxes, boxes (that attract dust like crazy btw. Our living room is covered in primer only... Hard to describe that lifestyle to someone who has not done it. That is why I have not been posting lately - too much on my plate.

We are finally closing this week! On Wed!
So now I need to furnish the place to live in. Furniture I have now is a hand-me down mismached and old, and is not worth the cost to transport.

But I have a limited budget. And need to make something nice that I will like for years. But I don't have so much money to work with.

So here are my ideas, I would love some feedback:

This is the plan of the bedroom:


This is the photo of the bedroom from the listing:


I plan to do 1 wall in wallpaper (the one against which the headboard is leaning).
This wallpaper. White parts is shiny and blue is matt. I have the sample in hand, it is quite nice.



And to paint the other 3 walls with the BLUE/teal color matched exactly to the flower on this wall paper. Leave white trim and moldings.

Have white curtains. I wish I could find nice white flexible curtains that don't let much light through. I did not see any so far.

And furnish the room with this white furniture:



with 2 identical lamps on white nightstans. Something like that:




I am not a designer, so I don't know if walls of that blue/green color will work well in this context.
Will I get tired of it quickly?
Any comments/suggestions? What would you do with this space?

If everything works out. This process has been nerve wrecking. Way too much stress. And it is still not over (can't lock the rate - won't close before the lock expires, there are many issues)

That's why I have not been posting for so long -- too stressed.

Anyway, here are the pics:

Living room




The view


Bedroom


The kitchen




Smaller second bedroom(den?)


The balcony

Saturday

breakfast -30
riteaid -32.02
tolls -25 (estimate)
slot machines loss -50
exchanged for chips at the blackjack table -90
winn end of night 361.5
supper -28
hotel free (Marriott reward)

Sunday
starbucks -13.32
sandwich -9
exchanged for chips -100
Chips left with 250
tips to dealers and cocktail waitresses were paid with chips before counting winnings
other tips -9
nice dinner -55.47
parking -5
gas -32


So to summarize our weekend in Atlantic City:

Pure winnings $371.5
spending -$238.81

Profit: $132.69

And it was fun! Entertaining, a lot of emotion, food, drinks, pool, hotel.

It is nice to have a break, but I did not think we'd be lucky enough for it to be profitable. I planned to loose $100 each. (I just realized that it would have cost $438 if that happened. yikes!)

This is on a different apartment. I hope this one works out!

I emailed the owners asking how to do this. No reply yet (I don't know how often he checks his email, this seems to be an account set up just for the purpose of selling his co-op).
I am pacing a little.

I hope get the right price. Negotiations can be a bit sensitive without an agent in the middle. I don't know what other issues are different when buying from an owner.

I am trying not to get my hopes up too much. I like this place. They are asking 450K (down from 495K 9 month ago). It is less than what they bought it for (they bought in 2007)

I'm sure many of you are doing it already, but I just started making my own yogurt.

Yes, I invested $37 into a yogurt machine (all it does is keeps a constant warm temperature, but I strongly prefer glass jars over the plastic ones, so I bought a more expensive one).

This is the second batch I'm making.
I used 1/4 gallon of organic milk to make 6 cups, so it comes out to $2.5 or 42 cents for each jar of ORGANIC, PROBIOTIC, FRESH, NO STABILIZERS or PRESERVATIVES, NO HFCS or sugar yogurt. (if I choose to, I'll add something sweet, but I will know exactly how much)

It is quite simple. All I needed was to heat milk and mix in some probiotic yogurt (I kept some from the last batch I made, so I no longer need to buy a jar to use as a starter).

Tomorrow our breakfast will be a jar of yogurt with crushed roasted almonds and a thin layer of honey on top, freshly made steel cut oatmeal, good coffee and a orange juice.

Today I did not go out for breakfast either - I made an omelet with melted in fresh mozzarella, and some sliced tomatoes covered in pressed garlic w salt/pepper and fresh basil leaves. I love weekends. Having time to eat breakfast at leisure with DH is nice.

We offered 290K.

Realtor believed it was a good offer.
It was declined a day and a half later.

Today (realtor was trying to convince the seller for 2 days) she came back saying she is willing to sell it for 315K.

She is being very emotional about it.
She originally listed it at 359K (which had no basis in reality).

We are not taking it. We can afford it, but I don't believe this is the right price. I looked up records of sales in that building and they are are nowhere near that figure. They were not that high even in 2006.

I don't know if I am doing the right thing - I really like the apartment.
But I don't want to overpay by a lot.

Now we have to wait.

We bid on............ #1!

Thank you for all your feedback. I was leaning towards #1 as well, because #2, as wonderful and lovely as it is, was really a financial stretch.

I know the common "stretch at first, you'll be glad later when you grow into it" advice... however, what would we do if the maintenance was raised?

So now I have to wait to hear from the seller...
Excited, scared...

All these questions:
Did I offer the right price?
Should I have started from a lower amount?
Is there something even better out there?

Did you guys have these fears when you bought your homes? How strong were they?

Sorry about being absent so much - we've were spending all of our free time apartment hunting.

We narrowed it down to 2 choices, in a nice area of Bronx.

Here are their pros and cons.
Apartment 1 (the one I previously described)
Pros: cheap 320K, $700 monthly maintenance
walking distance to MetroNorth
(excellent commute for me)
good light
good size

Cons: 2 windows are facing busy parkway
no window in the bathroom
building has no amenities
parking on waitlist
no outdoor space
large building









Apartment 2 (new one we just saw last week). We saw it twice now, it is so loveley:

Pros:
1,100 sf private terrace with nice view with trees and shade around. Just gorgeous.
Very quiet and green, large windows everywhere facing only greenery and pedestrian path that leads to just a few apartments.
Great area
Separate entrance, feels like a townhouse in a village setting
Quality high-end renovation (not for purposes of selling, they obviously renovated for themselves.
Attic













Cons:
Expensive (financially, it is possible, but much tighter - it is at the upper spectrum of what we can afford)
480K, almost $1,300 monthly maintenance
will have to take a shuttle to MetroNorth, adding 25 minutes each way to the commute.

There are only 2 cons, but they are big ones

Both have issues.

One is lovely, good light, good condition, walkable to MetroNorth, facing park, good condition and layout. The problem? 2nd beroom and kitchen face a very busy highway that goes out of NYC (traffic never stops there) And you can hear it a little, even with a window closed. But the place is beautiful and we can definitely afford it.

Second one is quiet, 18th floor, and has a huge terrace with a gorgeous view of Hudson river and tree tops. Just breathtaking. However, it is a 1br dump. The "dump" part can be fixed. The seller will come down in price to cover the renovation. But it is not a type of 1 br that can be converted to 2. And if we have a baby (eventually) what will we do? I can't let a todler sleep in a living room with an access to the stove and a terrace 18 floors high....

But it would be a very cool place to entertain, to have breakfast on weekends, to sit with a laptop... Like a private retreat in the sky.

I am confused and don't know what to do!

It is a useful one, no doubt. It helps you connect faster with other people, it makes travel more freeing, authentic and enjoyable, and very often – cheaper.

It makes you more open-minded and more familiar with other cultures. It can help your career (I believe speaking 4 major languages, even if 2 of them are on a basic level, gave me an edge over other candidates).

I believe that the costs associated with learning a foreign language are more than recouped by the benefits.

First time I went to China I did not know a word of Mandarin.
I after 3 weeks, I decided I would like to stay there for a while (first 2 weeks I hated it ). So I came back to the States, talked to the Head of Humanities Department, and convinced him to let me go to China for a semester and accept all credits I will earn from the University in China. It was incredible that I was allowed to do it!

So instead of paying 14K for a semester in my school, I paid a little over 1K for tuition in China, and around maybe 6K to live there like a queen, eating out every day, hanging out in cafes/tea houses/bars and having a tonn of fun.

That included traveling after the semester was over – hitchhiking through Tibet (We managed to convince a local official in a small Tibetan town to give me and DH permits) and we went by ourselves all the way from Lhasa to Nepal, than flew to Russia(I also speak Russian), met up with some friends, took a train to Belarus…. All together it was an 8 months trip for HALF the cost of 1 regular semester at my university.

I have been to China 5 times now, and my employer is paying for my language classes.
It is a very difficult language, not intuitive at all, unlike some languages - Spanish, for example(with just high school Italian you can understand about half of it, without even studying).
DH takes few months of classes though, each time we go on vacation to a Spanish-speaking country. He also knows enough Cantonese for us to travel in Southern China more comfortably. So we are able to speak while travelling across a good part of the globe. That experience also gave us confidence to travel ndependently in counties where we don’t speak the language. We have met a ton of interesting people and saw so many beautiful places…

So far we have been in half the provinces in China plus HK and Tibet
Nepal
Vietnam
Korea
Taiwan
Thailand
Cambodia
Japan
Argentina
Ecuador
Russia
Belarus
Ukraine
Poland
Netherlands
France
Germany
Austria

And going on your own is a COMPLETELY different experience than getting some tour. You really get to FEEL the place only when going independently and staying for a while. Those who have done it understand what I am talking about. Those who say they do not enjoy travel... it is because they have not travelled this way.

So learning languages takes effort. It is a long process. You have to be persistent. But it is something that you will have with you wherever you go. It can come useful in unexpected moments, it brings many surprises, and it is very rewarding.

I just bought 2 nice silk ties for DH, now I am thinking how to pair them.

The first one, I think I have an idea.
I think it would go well with a very very light pink shirt and dark navy(almost black) suit. White shirt also good.



The second one, however, is a challenge:

The obvious answer would be brown pants, but I really don't think that would work.
I am thinking maybe gray pants with white shirt. Though I am not sure.

Or maybe... very light blue shirt. Green and blue do not usually go together, but with blue flowers on it, it may be an unusual combination that may work. What do you think?

And no, I can't ask DH - he always thinks I know better when it comes to these things.

That I came so close to having - it was the best apartment in our price range that I have seen to date:









It was large, it had a tonn of closet space, the views were nice, everything was thought out, it was mint, it was close to the subway, it was in a great area....

And I'll never live there.

For far more money. Pretty much at the limit of what we can afford: 500K with $1,200 monthly maintenance.
It is a real 1 bedroom though, not Junior.

Can it all work out? I have spend so much time, energy and nerves looking for a place.

I fear that our offer won't be accepted (even though it is above the asking price).

Plus, we will need help with the down payment, which is tricky and not guaranteed.

There are so many hurdles.

We are responsible people with no consumer debt, stable professional jobs and great credit.
Yet it is so difficult!

rent $994
electric $77
gas $12.94
medical $78
health $49

groceries $417
Lunch me $67.77
Lunch DH $90.68
eating out $172.2

pets $23.87
clothing $213
accessories $64
stuff for house $415

gifts for myself $300 (down lounging jacket and slippers, pillow case)
(from Bday money, so not counting towards the total)

car repair $46
gasoline $165.05
ezpass $275
parking meter $26

grooming $65.54
laundry $10
dry clean $39

Eve online $73.84
itunes $6.48
gifts $313
Donation $70

Life insurance $834.06
DMV $78.5
ski vacation deposit $138
ROTH $410


$5225

I did well in some areas, not so good in others.

Eating out - we did beautifully. Went out only few times.

OK on groceries and eating out. We could do better.

We did not go on a weekend out of town.
DH travelled for work a good amount, so auto expenses are low.

We took care of some necessary misc. expenses.
Home category was too high.

Clothing spending is less than usual, but still over the budget I would have if we bought our own place.