Everyday Goddess

Ten things that I want but I'm not gonna buy... right now.

Covet.

I covet shiny things.

But I am trying, trying to make good choices, and I also have a slowly developing aversion to spending. Who knew that could ever happen? I'll tell you what, you start making some progress with your financial situation, it becomes addictive. And when I buy things, that money doesn't go towards my debt.

I really like saying goodbye to my debt. And it's a very slow goodbye.

So.

There's this other thing, where you list things you really want to spend your money on, and then you have that in your head before you waste money on a bunch of little things you don't want as much. Then, sometimes you can buy something you really want because you didn't spend your money on crap - like I just upgraded my OS to Leopard and finally bought some new work pants that actually fit me, and I had the money for those things, which is pretty cool.

So this list is about that, too, although at the moment it's more about not buying. At least this way, I can see all my shiny desires in one place. Sigh.

Here goes, in no particular order:

1. iPod Touch
2. iPod Shuffle (Yes, I want both.)
3. Apple Time Capsule (backup and wireless router)
4. JBL Spyro Powered Satellite Speakers
5. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary and Logitech Dual Action Gamepad
6. Wii and Wii Fit
7. MacBook Air
8. Philips Norelco Satinelle Ice Epilator
9. Kindle
10. Chumby
11. Lexus IS 300. Four door with back fin.

OK, I'm not actually resisting buying (Ha! As if.) that last one so much as I'm determined to drive my '94 Toyota Corolla until the day I can buy my Lexus. I'm coming, baby! You will be mine.

Covet.

iMac, Come Home!

OK, the iMac has been in the shop since Monday evening, and I have had enough! Last night I blogged on the laptop, and it was fun, fun, fun with the whole, type a sentence and then wait for your words to appear game. Click on anything and watch the spinning lollypop of this-is-going-to-take-twice-as-long.

It's not doing that this morning, interestingly enough. I guess I had a lot of tabs open last night. Heaven forbid anything need to load images or animation.

I've been thinking that I need to get a new laptop before BlogHer so that I can blog pics and video during the conference. I'm staying in the conference hotel for the first time ever and also a nice hotel for the first time ever. The first two BlogHers I stayed at the Motel Six and last year I stayed at the hostel, so blogging options were light, particularly since it took forever to even post one pic.

So a new laptop is on the agenda for this year, but I was really hoping to wait to buy it until right before the conference. I sent my tax return to a credit card and was hoping to pay down a chunk more debt before spending some again.

I know my situation's getting better, but like blogging on this 2001 iBook, the speed of progress is killing me.

I cannot believe how long I did my BlogHer work on this laptop.

I cannot believe I dropped off my computer without asking how long it would take.

I'll have to call today.

I really don't want to buy that new laptop this month. For one thing, I want to find out what's going on with my neck. When I carry the five pound laptop, I always feel it in my neck and sometimes it even tweaks it out. I can't walk the mile to the subway and back with the laptop because I will end up with a tweaked neck. So if the doctor says I really need to be more careful about what I'm carrying, I'm thinking maybe a MacBook Air would be a wise choice. On the other hand, it's a lot more money to buy one, and the iBook is more powerful.

On the positive side, now that I've had to blog on the laptop I know I do need a new laptop before BlogHer so that I don't go insane. But, I'm flat out not ready to make the purchase.

If the iMac's not back by Monday, I'm going to just have to stay at work late to do my blogging work. This iBook is a trooper, but it just isn't up to the task.

Man, I hope the iMac is back before the weekend. I'm going to call The Apple Store this morning.

Antiquated: Home Office Deduction Rules

When I did my first business taxes, for 2003, I did all the work to figure out the home office deduction. I even got out a tape measure and calculated my personal space (I share my apartment with a roommate), and how much of it my office area occupies (10%). I pulled paperwork and figured numbers and in the end, realized that it was all for naught, because if your business doesn't make a profit, you don't really get the deduction anyway.

But I still do have a home office.

And I learned that if you make a profit in a year, you can then claim some of the home office expenses from the year before. I figured that some day, the year of significant professional writing and/or directing income will come, so I kept going through the process of pulling together all that info.

This year, I made a fair amount of business income. Not even enough to pay my rent for twelve months, but maybe enough that my business operated in the black instead of the red. (I haven't finished figuring my expenses; still digging up and sorting receipts.) So since it's been a few years, I sat down to look again at the rules for the home office deduction.

And the word "exclusive" came and smacked me in my face.

In order to claim a business deduction, you must use part of your home: Exclusively and regularly as your principal place of business, as a place to meet or deal with patients, clients or customers in the normal course of your business, or in connection with your trade or business where there is a separate structure not attached to the home...

“Exclusive use” means a specific area of the home is used only for trade or business.

Emphasis mine.

Well. Didn't quite read that back in 2004, I guess.

Because so much of my life is consumed by the constant pursuit and work of writing and directing, I probably use my home office for business about 90 to 95 percent of the time. But that is not exclusive. It's not like I respond to emails from my parents from somewhere else. (Hm, maybe if I had an iPhone, then I could claim the home office?)

I find myself trying to imagine how one has two home offices in their life in the eyes of the IRS - Am I supposed to buy a second desk, a second computer, and maintain a separate email for personal use so that I can claim a home office?

I imagine a house and a family where there's mom & dad's home office and then there's the family computer. That would do it, I suppose, but I don't have a house and I don't have a family. I have an apartment and a roommate and a life that is honestly about 75 to 80 percent work during my waking hours. Last Wednesday, for example, I worked at my day job, then drove straight to the Film Independent Director's Series panel, and then drove home and wrote and posted my BlogHer column.

I certainly can't afford, either in money or space, a second desk and a second computer for personal use.

Not only that, but that doesn't even make sense today. The way we work has changed dramatically, even as the tax code has apparently stayed mired in the previous century. As John Carvel says in The Guardian, Wave goodbye to the nine to five, and say hello to virtual enterprise:

Dreams of a future when technological advances would liberate us from the daily drudge and allow more time for leisure appear to be fading, with futurologists predicting less talk about "work-life balance" and more about "work-life integration".

Work-life integration - Now, that makes sense to me. As BlogHer contributing editor Elana Centor points out in her post, Say Goodbye To Work Life Balance. Say Hello To Work Life Integration:

Since the article doesn't actually define work life integration, Its up to readers to infer its meaning. I'm inferring that work life integration is of particular concern to virtual workers because their family life and work life coexist in the same footprint...

The life they are describing is the life many of us who are independent consultants already lead. The very nature of being a consultant with a home based business demands work/life integration.

Amen to using the same footprint!

And so much for my 2007 home office deduction.

My goal when doing my business taxes is to do them correctly, ethically, and honestly to the best of my ability. I can't honestly say that my home office is used exclusively for business, and like it or not, that word is there in plain English. The fact that it would be ridiculous to have a home office and a personal office in 2008 is besides the point. Someday, maybe I'll be rich enough to have the legal set-up. Or someday, maybe the IRS will catch up to the new millennium and the ways that many of us are living and working in it.

I do find myself infuriated by the absurdity, but there's nothing I can do about it. Except sit in my home office, blogging about it.

I'm in USA Today today.

I was interviewed for a USA Today article on alternative lending sites. Complete with picture.

Gosh, they talk to you a lot and then just use a bitty bit. Kinda scary to be in an article like that, but I'm such a believer in alternative funding and increased competition in the financing market, it's worth it to get the word out.

Check out my Ten Money Questions interview on BlogHer

BlogHer Contributing Editor Nina Smith hit me with a Ten Money Questions interview this week, and it's up over at BlogHer. We hit on being an aspiring director, the writers' strike, money and relationships, credit card debt, and my new Zopa loan.

Learn about investing in a Zopa CD here.  Basically, if you're in the market for a CD, you can get one through Zopa at a good rate AND allocate some of your interest to help a Zopa member with their loan payment. My user name is lizriz and here's my profile.

I think that at first it might seem an odd way of giving, but I think that's because it's new to think about making money while giving money. Obviously, you don't have to pick me - you can browse the profiles and see who inspires you. You can also give to more than one person. So if you're in the market for a CD, check it out. The top APY is currently at 5.10%.

And don't miss my Ten Money Questions interview over at BlogHer - I even had a spending revelation in the middle of the interview!

Dear Credit Card Companies...

Please take your "convenience checks" and shove them up your ass.

Going through my papers yesterday, I must have hand ripped over 200 convenience checks yesterday.  It used to be that companies would send them every once in a while; now I get them with every single statement.  AND mailed to me separately.

I half expect a letter to be enclosed that reads, "Hey! We noticed you stepped back from the edge of bankruptcy, but wasn't it actually really nice there? Let us help you get back into life-suffocating debt..."

So just a friendly reminder, that unless it's a special "balance transfer offer" (and make sure you read that fine print), "convenience checks" are a cash advance and usually lend at a higher interest rate AND that's the balance you pay off LAST on your cards.  When you send payment, most companies apply your payment to the balance at the lowest rate.

So shred, shred, shred.

The hand cramp is worth it.

Changed my mind about the AD Trainee Program again...

My back and forth on it is at least slowing down. Used to be hour by hour, now it's moved to larger hunks of time. I was pretty certain I was going to apply when I posted on Halloween.

But the writers strike has proven to be a bit of a wake-up call.

See, there are actually many reasons I'm currently an executive assistant, and finances and transferable skills are pretty big ones. When I arrived in Los Angeles five years ago, I had a ton of debt and enough money for one month of living expenses. I'd paid 3 months rent in advance, so the roof was stable for that long at least. I'd so squeaked out of film school and across the U.S. to land in L.A. that I'd had to borrow money from my parents for my last semester and part of my move. Money I still haven't paid back because until recently I've been living really tight and trying to get a toehold into my debt to even begin to turn it around.

And the thing about entry level production jobs, post production jobs, and development jobs is that to get in you have to be able to take low or no pay. And particularly for set jobs you have to be able to gig. Which means being able to float when you're not employed, and having at least three months pay saved in the bank. At least.

You've got to be prepared for things like strikes.

The thing about being an executive assistant in post production is that it pays professional pay scale and my skills are completely transferable. When I was laid off in December, I was looking across industries in Los Angeles. While I was really, really glad to find another position in the entertainment industry, I can work anywhere someone needs an EA. That's a level of job security that someone in my financial position really needs.

Further, I need to continue to improve my financial position, not trash it again. It was one thing to kill my finances and bury myself for film school and a cross-country move; it's another thing to do it again.

This was the first time I thought I could almost afford to participate in the DGA AD Trainee Program. But the key word is almost.

The reality is, I'd be taking that hard-earned financial toehold, and I'd be throwing it to the wind again. And I wouldn't have any savings to rely on, since I certainly don't have any now. Whereas now, I am saving a little bit, and I'm on track to be out of credit card debt by the time I'm 40.  (School debt pays off when I'm 55, so I just pay that bill every month and try not to think about it.)

I need to make that financial goal. I need the flexibility that some financial stability and savings can give me. And then maybe I can take another calculated financial risk.

But not now. Right now I need to continue working hard, making the best money I can, and taking steady steps back away from the pit of bankruptcy I landed in L.A. looking right down into. I don't ever want to be there again.

The other thing the writers strike has done in the past week is inspire me. I started screenwriting again this year, and I've found I'm better at it than I was before, and I'm enjoying it again. This past week, we've heard nary a peep from the DGA, and maybe that's smart strategy for them, but the constantly closed door is just a serious motivation killer.

I am a director; that's my best skill set and what I am most passionate about. But right now, it's writers that are inspiring me and writing that I feel most drawn to.

Not in the least because it's something I can do, craft I can practice.

I am a good AD, and I enjoy it. But I can't afford to get there, when I'm honest with myself. I need to stay on the current path and work it and draw motivations from my frustrations as best I can.

I need to write.

A brief financial update.

I have a savings account.  And today, 4 days before payday, I just transferred all but a few bucks of it into my checking account.  Again.

Now mind you, that amount is under $50.

I'm here to remind myself of two things.  1. It's my money to transfer and 2. It's better than using my credit card.

This here represents financial progress.

Sigh.

Working 9 to 5... Really?

Who the bloody hell ever got to work 9 to 5?  Better yet, how were people ever working 9 to 5, and then somehow they let that extra hour slip in there???  Was no one watching the back door?

Most of my full-time dayjob life, I've worked 8 to 5.  (For a few blessed years, I worked 8:30 to 5, so a 7 1/2 hour day when you pull out the hour lunch.)

And, of course, I'm one to bleat about hours, since for me, the gift of 8 to 5 is the ability to work a second job.  I never really thought about it until I moved to L.A. and got a job in entertainment and learned that in entertainment, in L.A., the hours are 9 to 6 (assuming you're not working an agency or a development job and working 8am to bedtime).

You can't take a holiday job at Pottery Barn if you don't get off until 6.  Plus, the number of places you could even drive to quickly after getting off from the dayjob is severely limited in L.A.

I've worked two jobs numerous times in my life - 70 hours a week for multiple summers in high school - so to get out here and not have that option was a bit of a shock.

Gotta love year 1 in L.A. - it's just surprise, surprise, surprise.

Of course, I made the business of writing/directing my second job.  It's been paying crap, though.  Gotta do that work, but when my debt's the number 1 thing holding me back (hard to work the options when you absolutely have to make a professional-level salary), my ability to earn extra dough did not make me happy.  I thought I'd double job it for the first few years out here to make a nice, healthy chip in the debt from graduate school and that terrifying year I made "$0" that's forever on my social security statement now.  (Followed by a year of $3ishK, thanks to an assistantship I didn't push for my first year of grad school because I thought it was for people who "really needed" the money.  Turns out that was me.)

This month, I realized that blogging has become my second job.  (Which makes my other writing/directing my third - woohoo!)  When I started blogging, I pulled it into the "writing" of writing/directing.  And certainly, I'm still filing it that way on my schedule C, but I've re-increased my commitment to BlogHer to 8 posts a month.  Plus the word count/link requirement just went up along with the pay rate, and viola!  Full-on second job status.

For writing.  Now *that's* a blessing!

Slowly, oh so very slowly and slightly, I do feel like my 20+ years of working my ass off is starting to pay off.  Certainly, I've found myself better able to help others in the business recently, so I'm really hoping that soon my situation will take a big step in the professional director direction.  Or maybe I'll have a break-through in my screenwriting.  You know, now that I'm doing it again.

Meantime, blogging has been such an unexpected blessing from the very beginning.  Proving to me, at least, that my lifetime practice of looking around at my available options at any given time, picking some, and working hard at them, is actually getting me somewhere besides just an entire country away from home with not enough vacation time or money to go back for a visit.  (Clearly, I choose to use my time/money for work, so the responsibility for that choice does lie with me.)

Ah, well, who needs vacation when there's work to be done!?  BlogHer '07, here I come with the two precious vacation days I've finally earned in the new dayjob.

9 to 5 was for wimps.

Weight, Words, and Money

One thing I'm doing pretty consistently during script frenzy is writing at lunch.  This is a triple whammy because I'm bringing these little South Diet deli lunches to eat, I'm writing, and I'm saving lunch money.

Which has me thinking about weight, words, and money.

Not long after I declared I'd slipped under 150 on this blog, never to return again, my weight rolled back to 150 exactly.  And stayed there.  For like a month and half.  Maybe two.

I was terrified it would begin to creep up again, but I also felt like I needed a break from being so stringent about what I was eating, and I haven't had much time for exercise.  So I tried to be careful not to overeat, and I've allowed myself the *occasional* treat, all while staying basically within the South Beach guidelines with what I'm regularly eating.  And the 150 stuck.

I concentrated on staying there and being happy about the 14 pounds I lost.  I concentrated on being happy my clothes fit again and that I felt so much better physically.

Still, I would very much like to lose enough weight to be dancing towards 130.  With my lunch plan for script frenzy, I thought, here's an opportunity to cut back on what I'm eating just a little bit, and maybe it will shake me past this plateau and back on the weight loss path.

This week, I dipped into 147 and am now holding strong at 148.8.  Isn't it funny how sometimes weight numbers don't even seem real?  You think: Really?  Yesterday I was 150, today I'm 148.8, but does it really mean anything?  Of course, in the cumulative it certainly does.  I'm really feeling like my weight is moving down again, and I also feel ready to bring in a little exercise in the next few weeks.

Which feels great.

As for words and script frenzy, yesterday I finished Act 1 and passed the 5,000 word mark.  This is not as far along as I "should" be, but considering it's the first time I've written an Act 1 in years, I'm trying to concentrate on the positive.  I'm writing again.

I sat in a Starbucks with a friend and writing ensued.  Progress was made.  I'm writing again.

And for all my whining about it, I'm better at it now.  All the things I've been learning and studying and thinking about are coming out on the page.

And for all my whining about it, I'm enjoying it.  Wow, did I just say that?  I am; I'm enjoying it.

I've not yet really embraced the "frenzy" in "script frenzy."  I thought I would write a little willy nilly, but I find that I'm not wanting to.  I'm doing a fair amount of crafting.  Act 1 and all.  Perhaps I'll get a little crazy in Act 2.  There's all that room there.

There's a big part of me that wants to "win" at script frenzy and hit that 20,000 word mark by June 30th, but at the same time, I can't deny that merely participating will likely result in a finished screenplay - even if I finish it in July and it's not 20,000 words.

For now, I'm working on the commitment to keep plugging away.  And I'm trying to stay focused on the positive.  And not the fear of getting lost in the big, giant forest of Act 2, where I boldly enter today.

Tonight is the WIF Crystal + Lucy awards.  I go every year, and I was fortunate in previous years that my former employer paid for my ticket.  This, however, is the first year that I was able to buy my own ticket.  I called and paid for it the day I got my invitation in the mail.  Which I'm hoping, hoping, hoping means a better seat.

One thing it definitely means is that my finances have changed.  Not hugely, and not all of the sudden.  I've been working so hard to dig out of the hole, that it kinda snuck up on me.  I mean, surely I was there when I got the Prosper loan, which then allowed me enough breathing room to get lower interest transfer offers for my credit debt.  Certainly, I was there when I got my new job.

But you know when it hits me that things are finally getting better?  When my paycheck comes and there's still a little money in my checking account.  When that little tiny bit in my savings account stays in my savings account.  When I can go to the doctor's office and not sweat about getting a spot on the street because I can't afford to park in the garage.  When I don't have to skip a free film screening because the only place to park at the theater is in a garage I can't afford.  Every single time I'm hungry, and I have money for food.

You know, I write that and it sounds like things were really bad.  You know what?  They were.  It was really hard for a long time and I tried not to think about it then, I just did the best I could day after day after day and it totally sucked.

And now it's better.

And tonight, I'm going to the Crystal + Lucy awards, and I paid for my ticket. 

And eight years after I emptied my 401K to go to grad school, I just started a new one.

And I have so, SO much farther to go.  Sometimes it's still suffocating and frustrating and terrifying and everything it ever was.

But tonight, I weigh 148.8 lbs., I've written 5,000+ words on my new screenplay, and I'm going to the Crystal + Lucy awards all by myself.  Tonight, I'm going to let all of that feel like something that matters in the grand scheme of things.  I'm going to stop on this step in the ladder and enjoy the party.

I earned it.