• $434 = Federal and State taxes saved per pay period   **at first I thought my net pay should be higher, but then I remembered that Social Security and Medicare taxes are not affected by deductions in taxable income
• $4783 = taxes saved for 2009 if I max out 401K (~$434 per pay period x 11 pay periods)
• $1,000 = make-up tax payment that I will NOT have to pay come April 2010
• $1,700 = what I have left to spend per month
• $1,200 = absolute fixed costs (rent, insurance, student loan)
• $500 = what I have to spend on everything else (food, gas, car repairs, misc., etc.)
• $0 = anticipated leftover at the end of the month

Writing about Future Me has gotten me thinking… what would she want me to know? This is where the perspective and advice of those who have come before me is invaluable.

I don’t have a crystal ball, but I figured I have the next best thing: I can reach out to all of my readers who have survived their twenties and ask you: what are your answers to the title of this post?

Imagine that you can travel back in time and have a 2-hour conversation with your 25 (or 26, or 27, or 28)-year-old self – what do you want him/her to know about love, relationships, money, career, children, health, education, etc?

What mistakes do you want to caution him/her against? What adventures do you encourage him/her to undertake? Who was the one that got away? What kind of life is a well-examined life? Is the well-examined life the happiest?

Please leave a comment or send me an email with your thoughts. You can be as public or as anonymous as you’d like. It would be helpful if you can give your age or an age range (30-35, etc.) and a brief biographical sketch.

I hope to organize the answers into a follow-up post (or maybe even a free PDF to be downloaded – all contributions will be properly attributed).

Thank you to everyone who contributes! I know the twentysomethings who read this blog (and me!!) will appreciate this.

Edit: Thanks to everyone who’ve commented. Please keep the comments coming! All life advice will be appreciate, doesn’t have to be limited to personal finance.

The one in which I care about Future Me’s money

Tomorrow’s paycheck is the first of my $1,500 contribution to 401(K). If all goes according to plan, as of December 15, 2009 I should have $16,500 in contributions.

If I can do this I’ll be very proud of myself … on so many levels, beyond just the financial commitment.

To date, I’ve contributed ~$28,000 to retirement funds, beginning in 2006 when I first started working (and nope, I’m not looking at the current value). 

Maxing out the 401(K) would be absolutely fabulous (I do not usually use the word fabulous – but an additional $16,500 in retirement accounts would, indeed, be fabulous).

It would also ease the pressure on retirement contributions for 2010 (the year, I hope, I begin grad school). I also hope to squeeze in some travel before school starts – planning a mother-daughter trip to China, and would really like to go to the Galapagos (from my “big-ticket dreams travel” list).

The one in which I care about Future Me’s memories

The problem is, I don’t know if I can find a travel companion to Galapagos. But I really want to go. So maybe I can get paired up with another single lady for a double room and avoid paying the singles supplement fee.

Maybe I should just go for it – say that if I can max out the 401(K) for 2009, and save $10,000 for retirement for 2010, then I’m just going to take off and head to the Galapagos islands for a week?

That’d be motivation…

I’m being pretty good to Future Me, eh? I hope she appreciates it when she’s an 80-year-old rocking out in her rocking chair, listening to oldies such as Brad Paisley and Maroon 5, and NOT eating cat food.

Question: How do I feel about the most expensive meal I’ve ever paid for by myself?

• The setting: Michelin-starred restaurant upon a hill.
• The food: delicious and well-presented.
• The company: my girlfriends and I, decked out in cocktail dresses and heels.

But what really stayed with me was the impeccable service – friendly, informative, unfailingly polite and never pretentious. The décor was gorgeous too – it’s as if I wandered into a dining room decorated by a very wealthy individual with very good taste (or an interior designer).

The entire dinner took almost 3 hours, including a pre-appetizer and pre-dessert compliments of the chef. All in all, a wonderful experience.

I ordered a prix fixe menu and the total tab came out to $80 including tax and tip. It was the most I’ve ever spent on a meal, for myself. That’s a special occasion type of dinner.

Funny to think that when I was in middle school, a $3 box of popcorn chicken from KFC was considered a special treat – by my 8th-grade culinary standard, I’ve definitely made it.

What’s the most expensive meal you’ve ever spent on yourself (excluding meals dined on the company, date, or parental tab)? Was it worth it?

In no particular order…

Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf: Strawberry cream tea latte – iced or hot, depending on the weather and my mood ($4)

Starbucks: Iced chai latte ($3)

In-N-Out: Hamburger with extra grilled onions ($2)

McDonalds: Sausage egg McMuffin ($2.50)

Pinkberry: Pomegranate yogurt with mochi, mangos, and blueberries ($6)

Coldstone: Sweet cream ice cream with brownie, bananas, and fudge ($5)

Rubio’s: Fish taco ($2) – but I can never just have one.

Chipotle: Fajita bowl with barbarcoa with extra corn salsa ($7)

What are your favorite treats? And what do you pay?

Even in (or because of?) this recession, I find that among twentysomethings I know, most are less willing to trade adventure / soul-searching for security.

• Example 1: 25-year-old who quits job with decent pay to travel the world in search of the Next Big Wave.
• Example 2: 23-year-old who uses layoff from the Big 4 to figure out how to break into acting / entertainment business.
• Example 3: 27-yeard old quits consulting gig to start a start-up. Went from $100K+ paycheck to ramen noodles – but, he’s living his dream.
• Example 4: Several quarterlifers living the funemployment life.

In all of these cases, these are high-achieving people in college who went after the big jobs during recruiting. In most cases, having worked for a year or two or three, they have saved up enough to fund their traveling costs or start-up expenses. Self-discovery is a lifelong process, but these twentysomethings are getting a jump start on their roaring twenties.

Money can shackle you or liberate you. It’s gratifying to see them out there, pursuing their dreams and trying to figure out what makes them happy and what gives their lives meaning.

Life’s too short not to.

A couple days ago, Ramit blogged about 10-year saving strategy to “leave your friends in the dust” after you’ve already handled the basics of saving and investing. In his post, Ramit talked about saving for the things that’re likely to happen 10 years down the road – weddings, babies, vacations, etc.

Here is what will happen to you as you get older:

1. Yes, you WILL have a nice and very expensive wedding (even if you’re a hypocrite and think you’ll have a “small, beautiful” wedding)
2. Yes, you WILL have kids and want to buy them nice stuff
3. Yes, you will need things like family health insurance and life insurance and homeowners’ insurance and family vacations and other things that you can’t predict right now because you’re not in that life situation
4. Yes, these expenses WILL come up. People like to believe they’re the exception. BUT YOU’RE NOT. YOU WILL HAVE KIDS. YOUR KIDS WILL BE WHINY AND REQUIRE LOTS OF DIAPERS. THEY WILL POOP ALL OVER THE PLACE AND REQUIRE 10X MORE PAPER TOWELS AND CLOTHES AND CRIBS. PLEASE BELIEVE THIS.

Sounds great, right? What personal finance blogger doesn’t like to plan ahead?

BUT - I don’t think Ramit’s 10-year Saving Strategy is for me. Not because the idea doesn’t sound great in theory, or because it wouldn’t work well for some people - it’s just not my cup of tea.

I might be a planner, but I have to draw the line somewhere. I refuse to save for a wedding when I’m not engaged. And what happens if I don’t get married? I can take that money and do something else, sure, but why not just name it a Future Fund as Little Miss Moneybags have done?

As for babies, well, I’m not sure I’ll have a child, but assuming I do, how do I know what to save for? Hey, my baby might be a genius who gets a full-ride to college (a PF-er can dream, can’t she? )

Another issue is Ramit’s litany of things we need to save for (for our Future Self) can be overwhelming. On his little napkin sketch, Ramit’s 10-year strategy calls for $6,000 in savings per month to pay for my $30,000 wedding, $33,060 down payment, and various other items 10 years down the road. That’s just, er, a bit outside my budget right now.

I’m going to enjoy being young and carefree for a while longer. That means I’m saving for retirement, and when I’m thinking seriously about buying a home I’ll start saving for a down payment. But there’s no way that I’m going to start saving for my unborn child’s DIAPERS or family vacations after my child is successfully toilet-trained (after, I presume, using a mountain of diapers that I failed to save for).

I understand Ramit’s point – that there will be things that come up in my 30s and 40s that I might not have thought about in my 20s. I’m not discounting the importance of saving for the fuzzy future – after all, what’s fuzzier than retirement 40 years in the horizon? So I suppose I’m doing something similar to what Ramit suggests, just in a different manner.

I’m saving as much as I can for retirement and mid-term cash needs now (i.e. MY vacation and graduate school costs), so that I have the flexiblity to save for other priorities as they come up later.

In the end, though I agree with many of the concepts Ramit touched upon, his method isn’t motivating for me. Fortunately, there are many paths to get to the same end goal (financial preparedness), so to each his or her own.  

What do you think? Do you follow Ramit’s 10-year Saving Strategy?

Has anyone realized the similarities between Tuck Everlasting and Twilight?

In both stories, a normal girl was falling in love with a boy who is immortal. In both stories, the girl had a chance to achieve immortality and live forever with her boy. In one case, the girl chose to live and die, away from the boy. In another, the girl chose to die and, er, become undead, forever with the boy. Even if you haven’t read the books, I’ve guessing you figured out which book is which.

I first read Tuck Everlasting as an elementary student. As a child, I was slightly disappointed that in the end Winnie didn’t drink from the fountain of youth and run away with Tuck. I suppose  Twilight is the darker, more twisted, and yet more fairy-tale-like take on immortality and young love.

In personal finance news, the newest Carnival of Finance is up! This is the first time I contributed in a looong time, but the Carnival is always good for checking out interesting posts from blogs that I might not be familiar with.

When I was preparing for my test, I’d frequently go to Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Starbucks, or Borders to study.

Often I would be too distracted to study at home. The libraries around my apartment would close at in the early evenings… that’s way too early considering I usually got my studying in between 9PM and 11PM.

At $3-$6 a sitting (I’d usually get a drink, sometimes I’d splurge for a sandwich), these study sessions aren’t cheap. I went out to study at least once or twice a week. Assuming an average expenditure of $10-$20 a week, I was spending $50-$80 a month on coffee drinks alone!

I don’t know how I got into studying at coffee shops - it’s a habit that started in high school when I first started cramming for statistics at a Starbucks.

Mentally tallying up all the coffee money I’ve spent in the name of studying…. wow, must’ve been in the hundreds.

Written correspondence is one of the little joys of the fast-paced, technologically-dependent world we live in. That’s why I love stationery, and have dedicated several posts to the wonders of Crane and Papyrus.

New York Times just published The lettered set, an article about people who spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on custom stationery from famous stationers such as Printery, Crane & Co., or Grosvenor Stationery Company. I loved reading the descriptions of the papers… a girl can dream, right?

But it’s a mistake to think that a stationery wardrobe is only for the rich or the famous. I’ll likely never spend $500 on 100 notecards with matching, tissue-lined envelopes from Dempsey & Carroll, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy and use stationery.

You don’t need to spend a ton of money on engraved stationery (although you can. And it’d look fabulous). In fact, I don’t even have special paper for letter-writing – I use them too infrequently to justify the cost. Instead, I keep in a shoe box a small but steadying growing collection filled with notes and cards.

Just as a classic wardrobe has its staples (little black dress, fitted jacket, kitten heels, etc.), a stationery wardrobe also have key pieces (which, in my humble and very non-expert opinion, are):

1. Thank-you cards. The thank-you card is the cornerstone of a stationery wardrobe – it’s the piece that you’ll likely use the most often. I send thank-you notes after job interviews , dinner at friends, etc. Right now, I have 3 different sets of thank-you notes: two from Crane (I tend to reserve these for business purposes), and a set of studier and “cuter” cards that I send to friends.

I am partial to Crane – the quality of its stationery is just so lovely. The cards aren’t cheap, but the website often have sales of 50% off or more. You can also check out discount stores such as Marshalls, where I’ve seen Crane thank-you cards for $5 a set (usually $15). 

2.  Blank cards / notes. These will be the workhorses of your collection. I have sets in several design – a “Sex and the City” style in pink and black, a “zen” design in muted green, and a quirky Hallmark card with a little imprint of a lamp and a tagline “Watt’s up” (get it? Lamp -> lightbulb -> watts -> what’s up?). I also saw that at Marshalls, and LOVED it. Who knew that Hallmark is so clever?

I use these cards for every and anything. Congratulations, condolences, catch-up notes. 

3. Birthday cards. A birthday greeting on Facebook is nice, but birthday cards are even better! I have a set of birthday cards, and a couple of special ones I bought from Papyrus.

When I see sets I like and that I know are a good price, I stock up. One tip – when buying stationery, check out the design/quality of the envelopes. Many times discount stores have cute, super affordable cards for $2-$5 for a set of 10 or 15 cards. Sometimes, the envelopes are plain, white, and thin. I usually pass on these as I prefer colored and/or lined envelopes.

With the above 3 types of stationery, you will be prepared for 99.9% of normal stationery needs. Happy writing!

P.S. Here’s an easy way to remember the difference between stationery (paper goods) and stationary (standing still): stationery = paper.