rax | Weekly Week Post

It was supposed to be 36 today. Instead it is snowing again. I know I don't get to whine to the people in Boston, whose life literally is snow, but for ~everyone else: *whiiiiiiiiiine* There's this horrible layer of ice below everything and I don't know how I'm going to shovel and rrrf. And so much for my plan of going to Trader Joe's (a 90-minute drive away on a good day) this morning. I will have to make do with the food I have here for another day or two I guess. Maybe I will put on eight layers and trudge to the co-op later, except I am kind of worried I will slip and fall into traffic.
Had two dreams last night, one a horrible nightmare about something bad happening to my cat (turns out real-world-cat was out of food, and if this is what happens, I am feeding him before bed every night from now on), and the other a dream that I did an in-class exercise with my students on Tuesday that I woke up to and concluded actually that's a really good idea and penciled it into my lecture notes. Um, thanks, subconscious, I guess?
Speaking of cats, Selene has accepted Leo's smell at this point --- I can smell like him and still pet her, although other people are not yet afforded the same privilege because she is Selene --- but has not accepted Leo. This is OK. They each have two floors of house to themselves and spend plenty of time looking at each other without having to definitely interact. This is really good, no one is doing anything destructive, and hopefully in another month or two they will share space without it being a huge thing. (Although when Leo tries to come within five feet of Selene, she hisses and he runs to the basement. But this is like a zillion times better than Oolong's response, which was to run right up to Selene. I think it will be fine.)
Apparently I can still have outside interests while fulltime in both grad school and the tech industry; I wrote, revised, and submitted a story to an anthology in the last month. I don't know where I found the time either. (Well, I have some idea; I spent a lot of time in airports this month. Wasn't much else to do once I got tired of homework really.) Also, as a random writing-practice thing, the story I wrote was one continuous scene of around 6000 words. Those of you who have had the [mis]fortune of reading my writing in the past know that my fiction used to be broken up into discontinuous scenelets of 500-1000 words a piece, which was also cool but was not optimal in that I was doing it all the time as opposed to when the story called for it. Over the last couple of years (as pushed, gently, by a particular professor in my MA program) I've been working to write longer scenes and see what sort of different things I can do in that situation; at this point it's rather easy and two of the last three stories I've written (as well as the more recent novel chapters, not that anyone has seen those at all) have been a single sustained block of prose. The next thing on my list is decidedly not, but on purpose; it feels very nice to have developed this new skill and be putting it into practice. Hopefully the editor I submitted to will think so too. *fingers crossed*
People who know this sort of thing: If I suck at investing money anyway and my money is just in basic savings, should I just pay down my undergrad student loans even though they are in deferment? I think I'm still accruing interest, though I cannot tell from their website, because it is a maze; I have sent them email in the hope that they can just say "yes" or "no." If I'm not, obviously it would be best to just leave it and let inflation do its thing, but if I am, and it's a larger rate than I am getting on savings, maybe I should just put my $8000 homebuying credit into my loans rather than into savings when I get it in April?
Also scwizard claimed I wasn't going to get my tax paperwork in order this weekend, and just to be contrary I think I have it all in one place already? :) Though I may be missing things I don't know I need, I at least have enough to take to the accountant and be like "uh hi help which things should I bring you, you clearly don't want the entirety of my filing cabinet." So that's another thing off my tasklist. Hooray.

If your student loan is anything like mine, it is not accruing interest while you are in grad school. But that's an if.

Re. student loans: If you check out the National Student Loan Data System, you can see which loans are accruing interest and which aren't.

- Keep hounding them until you find out the interest rate and how it's calculated.

- If it's a subsidized loan, see if you're eligible for deferment (= no interest accumulates) because you're a student.

- If you have enough money in savings to cover your mortgage & bills for a few months of unemployment, plus a couple thou for parts of the house falling off, and your retirement savings are topped off, I personally would then pay down the student loans. My loans are at 3% and my savings with SmartyPig is at 1.35%, so it's a no-brainer, but even if it were a closer match I want them gone since that gives me more flexibility in the future.

- All of my current financial goals are in the ~5-year range, so none of my savings is in investments either. (Except retirement stuff, of course.)

- lb

Oh wait, you even say they're in deferment- duh! The thing about flexibility in the future still applies, though. - lb

What was the in class exercise?

Hurray paperwork got done.

my money is just in basic savings
I know several ways to do better than this, but none that don't involve some degree of stress.

However if you ever have the desire to turn stress and money into more money, let me know.

let me know
So I can provide you with some basic info, because otherwise you could end up learning about finance from your broker or something which would be a disaster.

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