Monthly Archives: January 2017

Help! Something is Broken and I Can’t Fix It In My 30’s

January 27, 2017 By in Grab Bag Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Sometimes there’s an easy answer to what’s broken in your life.

The other day I realized my blender was leaking. Gooey green smoothie liquid ran down my wooden countertop and spilled onto the floor. When I lifted my blender jar, I realized that the smoothie was coming directly out of the bottom of the blender and then getting everywhere. I didn’t know what to do, and I had no one around to ask for recommendations. So I googled.

There were a lot of answers to my blender question, but they all required me unscrewing the bottom piece of the blender jar. Alas, for the life of me I couldn’t remove that bottom piece. The sticky sugars from the fruit in the smoothies had gotten it completely stuck. I tried using every ounce of my arm strength, and even used my handy rubber jar opener, but nothing worked.

For this new issue, there were even more Google answers. “Go to the hardware store and grab a wrench,” someone said. “Unscrew your blender jar with the wrench and then put the wrench back on the shelf.”

“It’s even easier than that,” someone else chimed in to the above responder’s comment, “wedge your blender in a doorjam, and hold it tight with the door as you unscrew. But don’t put too much pressure or you’ll crack it.”

That sounded complex.

“Just put your blender jar back in it’s base and turn the jar counterclockwise,” someone else responded, “and voila.”

Voila indeed. I decided to follow that last direction it took me all of 2 seconds and zero effort to unscrew my blender and fix the problem. So easy! My god, what if I had gone all the way to frigging Home Depot to borrow a wrench???!

And the whole blender debacle reminded me of other ceaseless issues that I suddenly solved in seconds. For years it took me almost 20 minutes at a time to pull the damn cap off of my travel contact lens fluid container in order to refill it. I macguyvered my tweezers and my nail file into a tool to jimmy that awful cap off, and even then I usually broke a few nails doing so. For years I hated this task, sometimes just spending lots of money buying new containers of travel contact lens fluid in order to avoid the hassle of refilling my old one.

But then one day I randomly googled “how to remove your contact lens solution cap” and this Youtube video came up entitled: “How to Refill Travel Sized Contact Lens Solution.” It solved all my travel solution problems. You just yank the cap off when it’s open in one fell swoop. Once I figured out that trick, it took me about 5 painless seconds to complete a task that used to take me a full twenty minutes of pain every time.

It’s funny how many broken or painfully annoying things may have easier solutions than we think. By our thirties, a lot of habits have been formed, both good and bad, and sometimes we need to find easier habits than we currently know. An easy, life-changing answer to an everyday annoyance might just be a google away.

On a related note for 30-somethings, what in the world would we do without the internet??

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A Somewhat Rambling Post On Turning 35

January 23, 2017 By in Personal Growth Tags: , , 2 Comments

In March, I’ll turn 35 years old. Kinda crazy to think about. I still feel like I just entered my thirties, the decade so many people told me would be the best of my life. So far, that’s been true for me. All those cliches about getting older were validated – you’re more confident in your own skin and you give less sh**s about what other people think. I’m still working on the comparison game however; it’s hard for me not to look at folks my age who have high-powered careers and families, and wonder why I’m eating frozen burritos in my apartment with no kitchen.

But the thing is, while I can compare myself to other people my age, I also realize I made the choice to be a writer – to follow this path where nothing is predictable and quality work doesn’t always correlate with dollar bills. I knew full well that making solid money from this wasn’t the primary goal. And the truth is, knowing I have this deep passion for storytelling and that I’m trying to pursue it as a career is way more valuable to me than a six-figure paycheck. (Though I eventually want that, too!). I like to think that the longer and harder the journey, the sweeter the success will feel when I get there.

I feel excited about turning 35. It feels substantial. I feel substantial.

So, I find it somewhat hilarious that in an interview with Howard Stern, Donald Trump talked about women’s ages and said: “What is it at 35, Howard?” Trump wondered aloud. “It’s called checkout time.”

I can’t formulate a better reply to this than writer Michelle Ruiz’s in her Vogue article, On Turning 35, the Age at Which Donald Trump Dumps His Girlfriends.

Here’s how she reacted:

But, upon further consideration, I think Trump is exactly right. Women at 35 are “too experienced.” Too experienced to see themselves as a man’s possession to be “checked out” on. Too experienced to constantly second-guess themselves and whether or not they deserve their compliments, their jobs, or their promotions. Too experienced, for sure, to sell their souls to Oompa Loompa–color sugar daddies with penchants for pussy grabbing. Today, at 35, I’m largely out of fucks to give, and, to borrow a phrase from Trump, as “nasty” as I want to be. I’m more willing to speak my mind than ever, and I care significantly less than I did 10 years ago about what other people think. And, as a bonus, I like my body and my bank account balance better now, too.

A little life experience will do that for you. Many 35-year-old women, myself included, have been around the block, or even the whole neighborhood. We’ve been dumped, disregarded, laid off, and underestimated; made mistakes, taken chances; failed miserably; in some cases, even hit rock bottom. We’ve lost friends and parents and found a little more of our ourselves. (Lose a friend in his 20s, or see a college classmate lose her toddler son to cancer, and suddenly, complaining about a 35th birthday loses its fun). We’ve gone from assistants to bosses, gotten married, birthed babies, or done none of the above, and discovered our own resilience all the same. If this makes women of 35 undesirable to Trump, or anyone else, then, as fellow 35-year-old Beyoncé would say: Boy, bye.

That’s one of the great things about being in your 30s – you don’t have time for people who find you undesirable or unworthy. You know to never settle for people who don’t fully support you. As our first President so wisely said:

“Associate yourself with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; for ‘tis better to be alone than in bad company.”

-George Washington

Can I Put All My Debt on a Zero Interest Credit Card?

January 13, 2017 By in Money Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

The other day a friend of mine was inquiring about paying off credit card debt using a zero interest credit card.

She had moved all of her debt from a high interest credit card to a zero interest credit card and had completely paid off that debt very quickly, which was awesome.  She had two other high interest cards and asked me if she should move the debt from those over to the same zero interest card or if she should open a new zero interest credit card. I had to pause a bit before I considered the answer.

First things first.

A zero interest credit card is a credit card that has zero interest for a certain amount of time, after which the interest rate spikes up, usually higher than a ‘regular’ credit card. If you’re really diligent about paying off a zero interest credit card quickly, you can pay it off before the high interest rate kicks in.

I wrote about these types of cards before in my post: Is a 0% Interest Credit Card Just a Blatant Lie In a Pretty Package?

Zero interest credit cards have their pros and cons, and both are pretty simple. In a nutshell:

Pro: You can pay off debt quicker when you have no interest gathering on the debt while it’s on a zero percent interest credit card.

Con: If you don’t pay off your debt fast enough on aforementioned card, you’ll have a hell of a LOT of interest gathering on that debt. 

So, let’s back to my friend’s question about whether or not she should move multiple balances to the same zero interest card. Here are the facts:

  1. My friend had 3 high interest cards she needed to pay off
  2. She had one zero interest credit card
  3. She had already moved two high interest cards onto the zero interest card and had paid off one card’s debt already. 
  4. In May, the zero interest would turn to VERY HIGH interest, probably around 20+ percent, which is awful. 
  5. She still hadn’t moved the third debt and was wondering if she should move it to the zero percent card or open up a new zero percent card for that last debt.

Here’s my answer, with additional questions, in 3 parts:

  1. Can you beat the balance transfer fee? Some zero percent interest cards have a 3 percent balance transfer fee. If your zero interest card has this fee, you have to calculate whether that 3% is less or more than the interest you will end up paying on the original card before your debt is paid off. For example, if you have $1000 in debt on a card and move it to a zero percent interest card with a 3% balance transfer fee, you’d have to pay $30 to transfer the debt. If you would end up paying less than $30 in interest on the original card before you paid off the $1000, it wouldn’t be worth it. If you had a zero percent interest card with no transfer fee (they do exist), you’re fine and wouldn’t have to make this calculation. If
  2. Can you pay off the second AND third debt by the time the zero percent interest expires? In this case, if she could pay off all debts before May, her interest rate would stay at zero percent and she would get all the pros out of the card with none of the cons.
  3. Can you put all the debt from various, different cards, on one zero percent card?  This was a question I had to ask myself, and then had to google. I wasn’t sure how things worked with putting multiple debts on one zero percent card. Turns out it’s fine. It’s equally fine to put the debts on different zero percent credit cards (you can open multiple at the same time, depending on your credit score and approval, of course.)

One last MAJOR note: Don’t close the original card after the transfer, unless it has an annual fee that you don’t want to pay. Closing older credit cards hurts your credit score. 

So my friend was able to get all her debt from 3 cards on one zero percent credit card, and is on track to pay everything of by May before the interest goes up. This will save her tons of money in interest in the long run.

Hope this helps you guys understand zero percent credit cards a little better, and wasn’t too complicated. If used wisely, AND QUICKLY, zero percent interest cards can be a great tool to help get you out of debt.

 

 

To Have Resolutions or Not?

January 10, 2017 By in Health and Wellness Tags: , , 4 Comments

Happy New Year, everyone! Are you still feeling that spark of fresh excitement at the prospect of new possibilities? I am. While I had a rough January 1st, the days since have been really good. I feel refreshed and stronger.

During the final weeks of 2016, I was having a ridiculous amount of anxiety which culminated in my first full-blown panic attack. I thought I’d had panic attacks before, but this was unlike anything I’d experienced before. I got weak, my eyesight started blurring, and my heart raced. I thought I was going to pass out. I ended up going to urgent care that day because I didn’t want to pass out alone in my studio apartment. It was terrifying and scary, and I realized I never wanted to go back to that place again.

Over the holidays, I realized that I needed to make changes in my life. Specifically, I needed to carve out more alone time and spend more time writing my scripts (the process of which I’ve now termed “taking my medicine”). Since 2017 started, I’ve spent time writing every day, even if it’s only for 15 minutes. But that consistency is powerful. I will keep it up.

So, while I didn’t really make official ‘resolutions’ this year, I did realize that something had to change from the path I had been on. I had to lower my anxiety by focusing on my work – my writing. The anxiety was telling me that I was wasting away when I wasn’t writing.

In lieu of resolutions, I really like the idea of simply having a word or mantra for the year. For me, in 2017, my word is “warrior.” Warrior for myself and for my needs. Because the most important relationship that any of us will ever have is with ourselves.

To a beautiful New Year.