This post is to officially announce that I am moving back to the South, that is south of the Mason-Dixon.  That’s right.  I’m leaving the bright lights of New York City for the light of the neon moons of Nashville, Tennessee.

I was going to wait until next week, but most people in my office seem to already know about it, so I don’t really see any harm in just coming out with it.

A few of weeks ago, my boss told me that he thought I should move there to run our agency office there. I thought about it. I annoyed my friends talking about it. I wowed my mom by talking about it — and the fact that when she visits me she won’t have to walk up five flights of stairs and when she gets there she’ll have central air conditioning again.

Basically, every way that I looked at the offer it was a win. How could I refuse?

So, right after my birthday, September 3 — send cash so that I don’t have to move a lot of bulky presents — I’ll be moving to Nashville, Tennessee, where I can apply to carry a handgun and I don’t have to pay state income tax — except on interest and dividends.

Here’s a short list of the things I am most excited about:

• Central air conditioning.
• A pool.
• A dishwasher.
• A proper freezer.
• Hell, I’m looking forward to a proper kitchen where I can cook like a civilized human being!
• Having a car — even though I hate driving — so that I can pick up and go where and when I please.
• A cost of living that is 53% what it is here in NYC.
• Not walking behind gaggles of gape-mouthed, fat-ass, meandering, indecisive, inattentive, rude, and mind-numbingly stupid tourists on my way to work.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a number of things I’m not particularly excited about. Things that include:

• Driving.
• Being the gayest person anyone has ever seen.
• Door-to-door religionists.
• Anti-abortion people.
• The lack of Pinkberry.
• Doing my own laundry.

There’s a lot more to it on both sides, but ultimately it makes the most sense (Value-dense!) for me to make the change, take the challenge.

So, look out, Dirty South! I’m coming back and I’m bringing with me no shortage of haughty New York attitude combined with a fair bit of southern aristocratic bearing.

This evening, I was looking at my accounts and I decided to put myself on an austerity budget for a week.  Since this runs counter to my “value-dense spending” standard of operation, let me explain.

I have only a pinch over $1,000 in credit card debt left.  This is about three weeks worth of payments.  (I pay my credit cards weekly because of the dick move that one credit card company pulled in which the payment cycle was 22 days.)

I’ve managed to figure out a good sum of money for my personal weekly budget for food and adventure, but if I cut my spending in half for one week, I can pay off my credit card debt in just two weeks.  That means by next Tuesday I will be out of credit card debt!!!

With this advancement in schedule, I will be able to immediately release the austerity budget and contribute a portion of what was being paid to credit cards to a savings account from which I will draw to make future purchases like clothes, presents, trips, and the like.  To start, I will take half of what was going to credit cards and put it into that account.  Once I reach the minimum threshold for that account, I will direct a higher portion of my income toward paying off my student loans.

Speaking of student loans, using Mint.com’s new Goals feature, it looks like I won’t pay those off until April 2012.  But with the plan above, that will get cut almost in half.

But I am very, very pleased with the way things are going right now.  I’m zooming my way toward a much healthier financial situation!

I was tinkering around somewhere, probably on Mint.com, and I stumbled across a bit of information that made me want to throw up and/or scream — although not at the same time.

The piece of information was the interest rate on one of my credit cards.  The rate was 27.2%.

I make good money. I pay my bills on time.  My credit score is in the mid-to-upper 700s.  It’s insane.

The only reason I think the rate on that card is so high is due to the fact that a couple of years ago, that same credit card company did something very douchey to me: they implemented a 20ish day payment cycle.  This was douchey because when I carry a credit card balance, I set up automated payments that deliver a payment well above the minimum every single month.  This means that at a certain point, my monthly payments started being late.  But because it was automated, I didn’t notice.  (My fault there.)  So, even though I was paying more than triple the minimum payment on that account, my payments were late.  I found out when they sent me a letter saying they were going to send me to collections and that they’d already reported it to the credit bureaus.  Upon making that discovery, I immediately paid off the entire balance.

Flash forward to today where I’m carrying a balance and unwittingly paying nearly a third of the total in interest.

Yeah.

So, being how I am, I assumed responsibility for not noticing that sooner and called them up to ask that they lower the rate.

They refused saying that thanks to some new law, they only review accounts every 6 months and do not change anything between review cycles.  Oh, that was the wrong answer to give a customer like me. I tend to hold very long grudges against companies that employ such shoddy tactics in dealing with customers.

I immediately phoned up my preferred credit card company and they informed me that I was eligible for a low rate on balance transfers.  Bingo.  I requested the transfer.

And as soon as it goes through, I am closing out all of my accounts with that other bank. No wonder it’s been so difficult paying off the balance on that card!

Note: I’m not willing to name the banks in question in public as they are clients for my company and if I get fired, then I can’t give money to the banks that do treat me right.

Just wanted to let y’all know that I just paid off one of my three credit cards that had a balance on it. It was the small one, but doing so will allow me to double my payments against the largest one.

I also have a secret plan to make some pretty big payments that should nearly eradicate my credit card debt by June.  If all works out, accounting for OCON-related spending and a few other incidental things here and there, I should get all my credit cards paid off by October.  *fingers crossed*

THEN, as long as I maintain my value-dense focus on my spending, my financial situation should radically change for the better in the six months following that.  WOOHOO!

So, I mentioned that one of my goals in moving to a new apartment is to save a bit of money on rent, if possible.  The truth is that I could actually spend more in rent and still be OK.  Sure, it would mean making smaller payments on my credit cards and maybe not spending as much on other things, but I could manage it.

And I really thought, when I was writing to my broker peopleguy, that I might mention that I’m flexible on my price even though I SAY my upper limit is [inset a number that is more than 2X my mortgage on my house in Georgia].

I seriously considered it.  Because, really, if I would spend just $250 more a month, I could probably find a super-nice apartment in a great spot.  Sure, it’d probably be a studio, but it could have a doorman and an elevator and who knows what other amenities.

I considered it.  But then I thought better of it.

Why? Because spending all that money on rent gets me something that, in the full context of my life, isn’t worth that much money.  Sure, it’s worth twice what I was paying in Queens to live by myself in a good location, etc.  But it’s not worth that much to me to get those OTHER perks.  And more to the point, that extra $250 a month is worth more to me in the form of fun, food, clothes, travel, and other things which enrich my life.

Value-Dense Spending isn’t just about paying top dollar for something that’s worth a lot to you.  It’s about cutting back on spending on things that aren’t worth that much to you.

I decided that going to OCON is a top spending priority for me this year (and probably for many years to come) and it ain’t cheap.  Speaking of which, you should go register now because prices are going up after today.

You may be wondering the same thing Diana Hsieh asked me: How this would fit into my financial situation?  I recently complained about how I accrued a MASSIVE amount of credit card debt in a relatively short period of time and here I am about to drop a couple grand (and then some) on a trip that I’ve considered optional for nearly ten years.  Well, Diana drew a good analogy for me when she compared my spending habits to diet and exercise.  She wrote in comments:

Your standard method of dealing with money (until now) sounds a lot like Oprah’s method of dealing with her weight: lose quickly by unbearable deprivation, then when the goal is achieved, binge binge binge. That leaves you worse off — physically and spiritually — than never going on the diet.

Maybe your finances need a paleo diet? Do value-dense buying and avoid the junk? 

Ok, but no joke.  That’s EXACTLY what I need!  I even said so myself that I’ve been thinking about my spending and saving in a very wrong way.  ”Value-dense” is the focus I need!  When I go out to eat, I don’t need to disregard the price — as I tend to do — and buy what I want because I think eating out is some kind of special treat and I should forget all my worries and forget all my cares and go DOWWWWNTOWWWN.  Wait. I’m sorry. I got caught in a moment. Anyway, I was saying in NYC eating out is de rigeur and even if you’re a Suzie Homemaker like I tend to be, eating out is still something people do at least once a week.

OCON is a value-dense purchase for me.  And there are things I can do to save money in the venture.  First of all, while I did register for all of the general sessions, I only chose two of the optional sessions:

The History of Ancient Greece: Athens in the Fifth Century
John David Lewis

Athens in the fifth century BC was fueled by enormous intellectual and artistic energy, guided by the world’s first citizen government, and defended by a magnificent navy. She was the intellectual center of the Greek world, the “school of Hellas.” This course first considers the political events of this century, beginning with the establishment of the Athenian democracy ca. 508 BC, moving through the growth of the Athenian naval empire, pausing on its defeat in the Peloponnesian War and ending with the death of Socrates in 399 BC. After establishing this political timeline, the course places a special emphasis on cultural events, including the great tragedians and comedians, before turning to the philosophical conflict between the new learning and the traditional belief in the gods. (Recommended reading: Aristophanes’ Clouds)

Ancient Greek Conceptions of Love: Aphrodite to St. Paul
Robert Mayhew

Ayn Rand wrote that “one of the most evil consequences of mysticism . . . is the belief that love is a matter of ‘the heart,’ not the mind, that love is an emotion independent of reason, that love is blind and impervious to the power of philosophy.” This course will present a history of this conception of love in the ancient Greek world, and of the unsuccessful but influential attempts by philosophers—Platonic, Aristotelian and Hellenistic—to resist it.

The course focuses on the following six (sets of) texts: archaic Hymns to Aphrodite; Euripides’ Hippolytus; Plato’s Symposium; selections from Aristotelians; selections from Hellenistic philosophers; and St. Paul’s First Corinthians. It highlights both crucial differences between Greek and Christian worldviews, as well as those features of the former that made the latter possible.

I chose only three of the meals: the Welcome, the Activism, and the Closing.  I suspect I will find one of these meals to be pretty superfluous, but since this is my first OCON, I figure I will learn from experience while the Bailout Stagflation is still something people are ignoring about the shouting of Blind Tiresias.   (See how I’m getting into the groove for learning about all this ancient Greek?)

And I’m not staying at the conference resort.  I would have liked that, but the room rate is just crazy-talk when I can stay at the Fitz where room rates are sometimes as low as $25 a night.

I had hoped (with my utterly informed imagination) that I could spend less than $1,500 on this trip.  But with air fare, hotel, and conference fees, I’m already into the $2,000’s.  But I think I will probably be able to keep the whole thing under $2,500 including food and extracurricular spending.

In the meantime, my new budget is working out pretty well.  It’s generous enough to where I can enjoy life in NYC, but tight enough where I have to be selective in my enjoyment, which is exactly what I need to do: focus on spending money where it will bring me the most health, wealth, and happiness.

And OCON is one of those things!

I’m working on my taxes a little this evening and I just got to the part where I have to declare my previous year’s refunds as income.

Let me get this straight: in the previous year, the government taxed me in excess of what it should and the process of returning that interest-free loan to me is regarded as income on the current year?

I can’t claim surprise because I believe this has been the case for some time and also we’re talking about the IRS, which isn’t a paragon of rationality or anything.  It’s just such an obvious swindle that I’m simply outraged by it.

Ugh.  I’ve been avoiding looking at my credit card bills.  Every week, I send money to my credit card accounts in excess of the minimum payment, but every week I also seem to spend a little more than the amount I paid plus the interest on the remaining balance.  Of course, I wasn’t utterly ignorant of the total balance, but I chose not to look at it because I knew it was bad news and I really didn’t feel like trying to come up with a solution.  Yup, I was evading my credit cards.

Last January, February, and March were not pleasant times for me as I struggled to pay off my credit cards. I was successful at it, but I did it in a way that just was not sustainable.  Flash forward to this January, February, March in which I’ve managed to drive my credit card balance up to more than TWICE the total it was a year ago when I went on my push to pay them off.

When I think about the sum of money that I’ve paid toward credit cards in the last 12 months, I am absolutely gob-smacked.

Had I practiced a bit more restraint, nay, rationality with regard to my finances, the question of doing fun things like going on vacation, vacations like OCON, would not be a challenge at all.

I think the problem is that I really haven’t integrated “money” into my life properly.

I grew up with very little money. I don’t want to get into details about it because I think my mother would probably not appreciate that being out on the internets for the world to see.  Just suffice it to say that we didn’t have a lot of money in our household.  My mother was a financial wizard with what we had, though, and she made it work.

My father is an absolute nutcase about money.  In his mind, houses should not cost more than $50,000 and you should pay for them in cash all at once.  It’s like he got his ideas about the price of things from 1948, which is before he was even born, and just stopped checking in on things.  While I agree that prices would be lower if we’d maintained the gold standard, we didn’t do that and prices have risen with the amount of fiat money on the market.  This is just the context we live in.

Somehow, amid all of that crazy, I somehow got the idea that there are really only two approaches to one’s finances: spend like there is no tomorrow or scrimp and save like you hate life itself.  And the lesson I’m only just now waking up to is the fact that both of these approaches lead to misery and death.  And that is not fun at all.

So, although I have a zillion dollars in credit card debt again, I am going to attempt a much more reasoned approach to my money.  First, I’m putting myself on a tight monthly budget.  That will allow me to increase my credit card payments each week. (I pay my credit cards weekly because my credit card companies shifted the payment cycles around so that if I pay monthly, there are periods when my monthly payment is late.)

When something comes up that I want very badly, I will weigh it carefully and, if it still seems like a very good thing, then I’ll buy it.  For the time being, that means buying with my credit cards, but eventually, it will mean buying things with cash.

The idea here is that I need to develop a stronger sense of my financial self, my position, my budget.  And I need to work within the bounds of that context in order to achieve happiness in my life.  I wouldn’t behave as if I can block bullets and stop trains with my bare hands, would I?  So, why behave with my money as if I’m a cuter version of Donald Trump?

So, anyway, I’m doing that.  It’s boring and unfun to talk about, but them’s the breaks.  Onward and upward!

I’m fretting about money again.  I paid off my credits cards earlier this year and then promptly ran up a huge debt moving to a new apartment and going on a couple of shopping sprees.

So, now I’m trying to figure out ways to pay off my credit cards again… hopefully, by the end of the year.  That seems plausible if I did like I did in January, but the problem is that my expenses are a bit higher living in Manhattan by myself than they were living out in Queens.

If I did the whole, no spending money thing, for two or three months in a row it might work, but… that was pretty miserable.

So, I’m thinking about getting a second job.  If I got a little part time job where I worked either nights or weekends, I could probably handle the no-spending-money thing a lot more easily, but it would really take a bite out of my personal life — not that I HAVE much of a life when I do that sort of thing.

I don’t know if I have the energy for it.  I mean, why bother with that? With a LITTLE dedication, I can pay it all off in a year without much fretting.  But that dedication means giving up on some other things.

• I’d need to give second thoughts to enrolling in the OAC.
• I probably could not attend OCON in Vegas next year.
• I could not go to my friend’s wedding in March, which is in the Bahamas.

And I’m sure there would be a huge number of other things.

So, anyway, I’m still in the motivating stage of this effort.  I’ll figure something out.

The first thing I will do is look for easy ways to cut costs.  Then, I’ll look at ways to add to my income.