I’m Leaving On a Jet Plane…
As I mentioned briefly yesterday, the boyfriend and I are headed out on vacation today. We’re flying out to New England to visit the boyfriend’s family. I’ve never been to that area before, so I’m pretty excited. I also haven’t been on an airplane since I was 9, so I’m a little nervous about that. I’m sure everything will be fine.
We’ll be gone for about a week and we’ll be busy busy, so I won’t have time to post or regular access to the internet. I’ve pre-scheduled some posts, so it won’t be dead around here, but approving comments and responding to emails will take longer. Thank you for your patience and I’ll see you all again in a week!
Unemployed Once Again
As I believe I’ve mentioned briefly before, last December I scored a seasonal job in a tax office. Last Thursday was Tax Day in the US, so I worked a lot in the weeks leading up to it (which explains the lack of regular posting for the past few months). With Tax Day comes the end of the tax season, which means the end of my job, so I am unemployed again.
I have to say that at this point, I feel pretty good about it. Most of that is because I was so overworked the past few weeks that I need a little break. Also, I knew when this job would end when I took it, so I was mentally prepared for this (not at all like last summer when I suddenly lost my job).
Even though I wasn’t preparing taxes and I don’t see a future for myself in that industry, I learned a lot about personal finances and helping people. I plan to take those experiences and move forward, looking for new opportunities and ways to improve this blog and my own thrifty ways.
Being unemployed again will present new challenges in stretching my budget and finding creative ways to earn money, all things I will share here.
Mostly, the point of this post, is just to share a little optimism. I know a lot of other people out there are unemployed and have been for a long time. Things are not better yet, but they’re starting to get better. This is not the be all and end all. And things could certainly be much worse. So, let’s keep our chins up and be on the look out for our next opportunity.
Also, I’ll be a lot more active on this site with all this extra free time. So look forward to more fun and thrifty content.
Not Dead
I’m sorry things have been a little dead around here lately, but I assure you, dear readers, that I am not dead. I believe I mentioned before that I started a new job. Well, I’m working in a tax office (not as a tax preparer, so please do not ask me any tax related questions), and this is one of the busy times, so I’ve jumped right in to working lots and lots. It will slow down a bit more in two or so weeks, and I’ll have more time off. This week though, I’ve barely had time to check my email.
So, I hope to be back to regularly scheduled posting shortly, and do some posting this weekend.
Happy New Year!
As the final hours are ticking down to 2010, I wanted to wish all of my readers at Happy New Year!
This past year has been a challenge for me financially (losing my job and what not), and I know I wouldn’t have been able to survive without my thrifty ways and the tips I’ve garnered from the other bloggers I read. I hope my posts have been as helpful to you, my dear readers.
I plan for a great year ahead, with more freebies, money savings tips, and ways to make extra money. Hopefully you’ll stick around, maybe even subscribe to the RSS feed so you don’t miss out on anything.
So Happy New Year everyone! I hope we will all be happy, prosperous, and thrifty throughout 2010!
(Also, sorry for the lack of posts since I returned to Chicago. The boyfriend caught a cold while I was gone and promptly passed it on to me when I returned. It’s not the worst, but it’s enough to kill my energy and motivation. I hope to be up to full speed soon.)
Free Movie Screening Bummer: The Theater Was Packed
A few week ago I posted about the free Up in the Air screening Entertainment Weekly was sponsoring. I was looking forward to seeing this movie. The boyfriend and I met up downtown, grabbed some dinner, and then headed over to the theater an hour before the screening, which is the time we usually show up for these things.
When we got there they had already started letting people into the theater (which is unheard of) and there were over a hundred (maybe even 200) people in line. We got in line anyway and were there for about 5 minutes before they announced that the theater was full.
We were actually pretty surprised about all of this. It’s been about three years since I was last turned away from a screening. Still, we hadn’t been there very long and there was no way we could have known that there would be such an immense turn out, so we didn’t feel too bad about it.
Since we didn’t have a back up plan, the boyfriend and I decided to check out 2012 instead, which we enjoyed a lot. (Though I hate paying full price for movie tickets.)
The whole point of this post is that when it comes to these free screenings, sometimes you never know what to expect. If you really want to see the movie, like really want to see it, sometimes you just have to sacrifice the time and get there two hours in advance just to guarantee that you’ll get in. Sometimes though, they’ll barely have the theater filled when it’s time to start the movie.
It’s one of those things that you just can’t predict because it depends on a lot of variable including the popularity of the movie, how may passes were given out, the theater, and other unknown variables. It’s good to have a back up plan so you don’t feel like you wasted your time. Also, go in it with a good sense of humor. It’s a bummer to miss out on a free movie, especially if you waited a long period of time not to get in. But really, all you’ve lost is the time. So make good use of your time in line: read, do homework, talk with friends, whatever. Then shrug it off if you don’t get in and go to plan B.
If you want, you can also read my extensive post of advanced movie screening tips
A Little More Personal
I’ve been thinking about this blog a lot lately. I’ve thought about what it is I wanted to achieve with this blog and whether or not I’m actually doing that. After that little brain exercise, I decided that I needed to add just a little bit more “me” to all of this.
It makes sense. This is not my first adventure into the blogging world. I actually starting blogging when I was about 14, which is almost ten years ago. That was back when blogging was new, and all of my friends and I started our own blogs filled with teenaged angst and some posts that only consisted of song lyrics or random quotes that described what it is we were feelings that day. We were pretty much the only readers of those blogs, but we didn’t care because we were expressing ourselves and enjoying our life.
I started this blog because I wanted to be different from all the other blogs out there on this subject, which are mostly mom blogs or financial advise blogs. I wanted to make the type of blog that I wanted to be reading, something for people my age that recognizes that you can still struggle even if you don’t have five kids and a spouse, or that a college degree doesn’t automatically mean you’re set for life. I want to read a blog where I know I’m not the only one who’s struggling to find a good job, can’t quite pay off those student loans, and wants to have fun and enjoy life even though I haven’t quite figured out how to make life work yet.
So here we go.
In case you haven’t gathered yet, my name is Tiffany. I live in Chicago with my boyfriend and a small zoo of two rabbits and a chinchilla. I graduated a year and a half ago with a BA in Fiction Writing. When I entered school, it was under the assumption that this was the best thing I could have ever done for myself and that having a college degree would basically guarantee good jobs and opportunities to do things that I enjoy. That was wrong, but I didn’t know. I took out loans and did everything I could to ensure I got that degree. By the time I realized what a huge mess I was in, I was in too deep to do anything but plow through and finish. Now I have six figure debt that I have been unable to start paying down.
A lot has changed since I started this blog. It was supposed to be a side project, a fun creative outlet to counteract the miserable job I was working just to survive. Things were looking up, I was about to get promoted, and it looked like for the first time since graduation I’d have enough money to live and pay back my loans, and I thought that maybe, just maybe everything would be okay. Then, due to no fault of my own, I lost my job. That changed everything: the entire focus of my blog and my life shifted. Suddenly everything became about how to survive with just $1000 in savings and some piddly income from online sources, and trying to find another job. All in all, those aren’t necessarily fun.
But I do try to have fun. I’m working on a novel (aren’t we all?). I love to read, spend time with my pets, watch movies, go to the theater, and explore the city. I like crafts, art, drawing, and learning to do new things. I just have to be smart about all of these things. That’s where the thriftiness comes in. The question always is, “How do I have fun and enjoy life spending the smallest amount as money possible?” That’s the reason I started this blog.
But I’d like to hear from my readers as well (I know you’re out there, even if you don’t make your presence known most of the time!). This isn’t just about me, it’s mostly about you. It’s about me sharing my life and my tips for you, so we all can get more out of the opportunities and resources we have. So what do you want to see? What do you want to learn? What don’t you want me waxing on about for posts on end? Tell me.
