theinbetweenismine

just a girl living the expat life

A snapshot of my day | 8/10/2021

filed under: about me, daily life, recap

I stole this idea from Stephany (who adapted it from another blog friend) because it was a fun way to write a recap “day in the life”-style, which I haven’t done in a while.

Time I woke up: 6:00 a.m. Tuesdays are my run days and I usually get out for a 4-5 mile run around 6:30 am.

First thing I did upon waking: I turned off my alarm and got dressed for my run. I usually put everything out the night before so I don’t have to make any “decisions” in the morning and can just go. This is key to a successful workout routine in my opinion. Don’t even give your brain the chance to talk you out of it on a technicality (like clothing).

Today’s weather: Hot AF. 100F.

An out-of-the-ordinary thing that happened today: My project-lead and I had really productive work meeting with some colleagues from the East Coast, who are doing the same type of remote sensing work (change detection from SfM (structure-from-motion) aerial photography and LiDAR (light-detection-and-ranging) laser scan data) that we do. (Let me know if you want me to elaborate on what I do all day in a separate post – ha!)

Sometimes people in the science community can be a bit stand-offish, but these guys were super-responsive and very excited to exchange experiences and insights on our workflows and it’s been just so exhilarating to talk about our project with them.

Last thing I read (not on the Internet): A postcard from my nephew (he’s 11). (It says “when do we see each other again?)

Last thing I read (on the Internet): A remote sensing article.

Last website I visited: Google Maps (for work). Have I mentioned that I LOVE looking at maps?

Last show I watched: Schitt’s Creek. We’re almost finished with the series and need to look for a new series to watch. Any recommendations? Must be light-hearted and funny.

Last thing I said: “Enjoy your walk” (when Jon left for his afternoon walk).

Last thing I ate: oat crunch with strawberries.

What I was doing an hour ago: I was working on a dataset in Excel.

What I will be doing an hour from now: I’ll be making dinner. It’s German potato salad and kielbasa sausage tonight.

Current whereabouts of other members of the household: Jon is on his daily walk.

One thing I crossed off my to-do list today: I was evaluating a dataset that we received last week and had to write a summary for my co-workers about my findings of completeness, inconsistencies, questionable entries, and such.

It’s a bit tedious to write this all down, but I’ve gotten into the habit of keeping very detailed notes (in a searchable word document), so that I can always go back to tasks that I’ve done in the past and understand what I was working on and what kind of problems I ran into. You wouldn’t believe how valuable this kind of thing is when someone comes at you with a question for a project that you worked on 3 years ago (yes, that happened).

What was the last thing you ate and what out-of-the-ordinary thing happened to you this week?

Daily Life | 2020 (a pandemic) Spending Report 

filed under: budgeting, daily life, finances

When I was looking for our 2019 spending report, I realized with surprise that I never posted it last year. I had done quarterly reports throughout the year of 2019 and then never shared the annual report. I also completely dropped the quarterly reports through 2020 (might have been a bit distracted by other things, oops! What could that have been?!). However, I’ve been doing the analyses behind the scenes and I thought it would be interesting to compare our 2020 (pandemic) spending to the previous spending report because I suspected that our spending shifted.

I also debated if I wanted to add our healthcare expenses to the chart. I never see that money because it’s deducted from my paycheck, but I feel like I should include it because healthcare premiums can differ widely and are technically part of my budget. (I have one of the cheaper plans my employer offers and I am pretty happy with our coverage (so far), but it’s still a big chunk of money every month). However, since we can’t really opt out of it and it’s money I never actually see in my account, I decided to not add it to the expense report.

The analyses of these datasets made one thing crystal-clear again: a budget is a very fluid thing and needs constant tweaking and adjusting. Not one annual budget will look like the other and spending can vary significantly from month to month. Therefore, it’s really imperative to know your spending, your fixed expenses, and your discretionary purchases, and to budget the money that you have according to short- and long-term priorities. I pulled these data out of YNAB*  — You Need A Budget, the software I’ve been using for 6+ years (the pie-chart was done in Excel). It’s been helping me to really stay on top of our finances. I’ve previously reviewed YNAB here.

As a reminder: These are percentages based on money spent, not based on my (take-home) income. Not included are savings, retirement contributions, healthcare premiums, taxes, and everything else that is pre-deducted from my paycheck. 

Home (45% was 39% in 2019) — The spending for our (rental) home includes rent, utilities, household items, and rental insurance. Spending in this category was actually down by $750 in 2020, which is a little confusing if you see that 45% of expenses went towards our home compared to 39% in 2019. It simply means that overall, we spent quite a bit less in 2020, and home expenses made up a larger chunk of our overall spending than the previous year. Overall spending: ⬇︎

Groceries (22% was 15% in 2019) and Dining Out (5% was 9% in 2019) — This shift in spending shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, as we were all forced to stay at home and cook our own meals (most of the time). We “saved” about $400 overall, but spending shifted significantly from takeout to grocery spending. And yeah, food is still a huge chunk of our budget. I know.  Overall spending: ⬇︎

Cable/Internet (4% was 4% in 2019) — This category stayed pretty much the same in 2020 and interestingly stayed the same percentage of our spending as well. Overall spending: ➡︎

Travel (3% was 8% in 2019) — This one “hurts” a little bit, because most of this spending was for travel, we didn’t even take (I had some flights booked that I have available as “vouchers” now, but the money was spent, and besides a weekend trip to Tahoe in January, no traveling actually happened in 2020.  Overall spending: ⬇︎

Shopping and Miscellaneous (3% was 4% in 2019) — We spent about $400 less on discretionary spending in 2020, which was not very high to begin with. I guess we’re just not frivolous shoppers. Overall spending: ⬇︎

Gifts (3% was 3% in 2019) — We spent about $500 less on gifts in 2020. This includes birthday, Christmas, and ‘just because’-gifts throughout the year. Overall spending: ⬇︎

Car Maintenance (3% was 6% in 2019) –  This is a bit of a shifty category. We usually pay our annual car insurance at the end of the year for the following year, but we switched insurances and they only billed us for a 6-month policy (so we’ll have to pay the other half in the middle of this year, which totally messes with my budget LOL). Regardless, I think it’s needless to say that we drove our car very little in 2020 and except for a battery replacement, and the usual maintenance expenses (registration, AAA), we didn’t spend much and spent about $2000 less than in 2020. Overall spending: ⬇︎

Fitness (2% was 1% in 2019) — This category includes my gym membership (which was frozen for most of 2020 and then canceled) and other exercise/running-related expenses. We spent about $540 more than the previous year, even though I dropped the gym membership and didn’t attend any in-person races. We did however invest in some home exercise equipment. Overall spending: ⬆︎

Healthcare (4% was 2% in 2019) —  Our medical spending, out-of-pocket and co-payments, was down $1200 in 2020 and I am attributing that to staying home as much as possible, wearing masks, washing our hands, and not having any unforeseen doctor visits (thankfully!!). Let’s keep it that way. Overall spending: ⬇︎

Cellphone (2% was 2% in 2019) – Expenses were about the same. Overall spending: ➡︎

Subscriptions (2% was 1% in 2019) – This includes YNAB, Netflix, Prime, and Identity Guard Fraud protection. Oh, and my bi-annual blog hosting service was due, so we spent about $170 more overall in 2020. Overall spending: ⬆︎ 

Personal Care (1% was 2% in 2019) – This category includes all toiletry items, makeup, J’s beard trims, and haircuts. We spent about $460 less. I mean, nowhere to go, barbershops closed, it makes sense. Overall spending: ⬇︎

Transportation (1% was 2% in 2019) – Well, we already spent very little gas money in 2019, because I was using the bus and bike more to get to work, but we moved our car even less in 2020. Our gas spending was down $460.  Overall spending: ⬇︎

Donations (1% was <1% in 2019) – We upped our donations in 2020 but it’s still just about 1% of our spending. We’ll be expanding this further this year. Overall spending: ⬆︎  

Clothing (<1% was 2% in 2019) – we’re not big spenders when it comes to clothing anyway, but 2020 was definitely a new low. With no place to go, I spent most of 2020 in workout gear and I think the only things I purchased were activewear. Overall spending: ⬇︎

So, overall our spending was significantly down last year, and funnily enough, almost three-quarters of the pie represent our reality of last year: staying at home + food. Ha. I am more than okay with the categories where spending went up (donations, fitness, and subscriptions), but what you don’t see in this chart is that we got (more) serious about retirement/investment planning. I had been paying into a 401K at work, of course, (make sure you get at least get your company’s match! Don’t miss out on free money!), but we also made sure to set up IRAs and other investments to plan for the future. It’s been something we had talked about for a while but never put into action. Last year seemed like a good time to take care of it.

Did you see the same trends in your spending in 2020? 

* This is not a sponsored post. I have not been compensated by YNAB for mentioning their product. I just share it for transparency’s sake. However, the post does contain an affiliate link. If you feel like you need a budget software in your life, download the fully functioning trial version and give it a shot! If you like it, you can use this link to activate the software and we’ll both get a month free!

Six months of working from home

filed under: Corona Life, daily life

It’s been six months to the day since we were told to go into full-time telework status. We were given two days to figure out the logistics, grab all our necessary stuff from the office, and make sure that we had a functioning workspace set up at home. Not a small feat for everybody, as I for one didn’t have a spare bedroom to convert into an office.

I was still excited about it. I always liked the idea of working from home, but only had a handful of opportunities to do so, e.g. when we had a short stint of mandatory telework two years ago when the wildfires in California were out of control and the air quality was so bad that we were asked to not leave the house for a week (sounds like it would have been a repeat this year if we hadn’t been already teleworking).

While my employer has a very generous flexible work policy (you might know that I’ve been working a 4-10 work schedule for most of my career) and I knew that teleworking was generally an option for every employee, I never felt like the option was available to me. Asking to work from home felt like asking for something that I wasn’t entitled to, for whatever stupid reason. 

Well, the stupid reason being that I was a contractor for 9 years and was repeatedly told that certain things just didn’t apply to me. Feeling like a second class employee is something I struggled with for a long time in my career (and sometimes still struggle with); even after 14 years working at the same office, I sometimes still don’t feel equal with my co-workers. But that’s a story for another time.

So, here we were in March, all of a sudden being forced to work from home while all other aspects of our normal lives mostly came to a screeching halt simultaneously. 

I was relieved and excited at the same time. Relieved because I felt that our management took the Covid-19 situation seriously and took proper precautions, and excited because part of me was looking forward to working from home. I realize that we were also exceptionally fortunate to be able to move into telework status almost seamlessly. Of course, there were some issues that needed to be worked out, as not all of our work can be easily done remotely (think: field/lab work) but overall, it was a fairly smooth transition.

I was able to take home two (big) monitors and a docking station from my office to create a semi-permanent, efficient workspace in the corner of our living room, and after riding it out on a rigid kitchen chair for a few weeks, I invested into an actual office chair, which has made all the difference. Granted, my space feels a little cramped, but at least I have a dedicated workspace and don’t work from my kitchen table. So there’s that.

Separating work from home life hasn’t really been a problem. I am not allowed to work overtime without supervisor approval and while I am dedicated to my work, there’s no benefit for me in working more hours than approved. I thrive on routine, so I mostly stick to my pre-pandemic work schedule, but I also enjoy having the flexibility to work late if I need to meet a deadline or to attend a meeting on my day off if need be, and shift my work hours around accordingly. 

We had just recently switched to a new mail and online meeting platform (Microsoft Teams) and transitioning to virtual meetings was easy-peasy (for the most part). Group calls, screen sharing, and shared file servers all made it possible. Could you imagine if the pandemic happened 10 or 15 years ago?

I must say though, I’ve never had so many (virtual) meetings and teleconferences IN MY LIFE (like, way more than in-person meetings at the office), or maybe it just feels so intense, because everything is virtual these days.

Still, I’m very grateful for the ability to work remotely (although I wish the circumstances weren’t because of a global pandemic) and for the opportunity to figure out if that is something I’d like to continue once this mandatory order is lifted. I know other people have already inquired about increased telework flexibility in the future.

So, to cut a long story short, I am loving the work from home life (minus all the surrounding circumstances). It has slowed down my days, it has allowed for a no-rush morning routine (including daily exercise!) and it has added extra flexibility into my life.
I feel this is probably also a good time to acknowledge that I am not only aware but lucky that I don’t have the added responsibility of dealing with homeschooling and childcare during these trying times. I don’t envy working parents one bit right now (kudos to all of you who have been on double-duty for months now. It can’t be easy!).

Being able to work from home makes me feel safer during the pandemic, and I very much appreciate that I am not forced to go to the office to mingle with other people unnecessarily. 

While I do miss interacting with my co-workers in person, I think I would be perfectly happy with a part time-telework schedule when things go back to normal (and hopefully would have enough ground to stand on to advocate for it). 

If you’re (still) working work from home, how do you feel about it?
Oh, and show me your workspace!

Daily Life | 2019 Spending Summary – Q4

filed under: budgeting, daily life, finances

Last year, I skipped the spending report for the 4th quarter of the previous year, because I didn’t get around to analyze it before January was over and then it made more sense to do the annual spending report for the whole year. 

This year I am trying to wrap up the quarterly spending, before I analyze our whole spending year 2019, although I am not seeing huge fluctuations from the previous quarters in our main categories. However, I am proud to say that we did bring down food spending (groceries and eating out) quite a bit (if you’ve been following my spending reports, you know that is always an area that I wish we would spend less, but then I always realize that food is a priority in our budget).

So, let’s take a look at our spending for Q4. I pulled these data out of YNAB*  (the pie-chart was done in Excel). Our overall spending was pretty much the same in Q4 as it was in Q3, although the spending by category shifted a bit.

Let me tell you, it was much more fun spending money on plane tickets overseas in Q3 than paying our annual car insurance bill in Q4, but oh well. That’s life, am I right?

As a reminder: these are percentages based on money spent, not based on my (take-home) income. Not included are savings, retirement contributions, healthcare premiums, taxes, and everything else that is pre-deducted from my paycheck. 

Home (38 was 36% in Q3) – The spending for our (rental) home now includes rent, utilities, household items, and rental insurance. Spending was up this quarter, because rental insurance came out (due in January). 

Groceries (14 was 16% in Q3) and Dining Out (6% was 11% in Q3) – We did bring down our grocery and dining out spending this quarter, which makes me really happy (because it’s still a big chunk of our spending and something I am constantly working on.)

Car Maintenance (13% was 1% in Q3) –  Annual Car Insurance payment is due in January, but came out at the end of December (so we paid it “twice” this year), but will bring down totals in 2020, I hope. 

Gifts (5% was <1% in Q3) – This quarter included Christmas, so I don’t think I need to explain the increase in gift spending, or do I?

Travel (5% was 15% in Q3) – Travel expenses were down, because we only took a weekend trip to SoCal in November. 

Health & Fitness (4% was 4% in Q3) – This category includes my gym membership, and our medical and dental co-payments and stays pretty much the same, if there are no unforeseen doctor visits.

Cable/Internet (3% was 4% in Q3) – Bill went down a little bit, because we didn’t order any movies on demand.

Clothing (3% was 1% in Q3) – we’re not big spenders when it comes to clothing, but we did buy a few new things this quarter (boots for me, sneakers for Jon, a couple of long-sleeve shirts and jeans.)

Shopping and Miscellaneous (2% was 4% in Q3) – We did cut our discretionary spending again in Q4 by about 40%, which is not very high to begin with but made a significant dip as we did have race fees in Q3 that we didn’t have in Q4.

Cellphone (2% was 2% in Q3) – Expenses were almost the same.

Transportation (2% was 2% in Q3) – Gas and parking fees. Even though I’ve been using the bus and bike more to get to work, our spending on gas hasn’t changed much (which could be due to fluctuating gas prices, and gas here is expensive in general).

Personal Care (2% was 3% in Q3) – This category includes all toiletry items, makeup, J’s beard trims, and haircuts. 

Subscriptions (1% was 1% Q3) – This includes Netflix, Prime,  and Identity Guard Fraud protection.

Donations <1% was <1% in Q3) – still an area I’d like to expand, but at least we’re giving something.

How was your spending in Q4? Did you have a chunk of Christmas expenses?

* This is not a sponsored post. I have not been compensated by YNAB for mentioning their product. I just share it for transparency’s sake. However, the post does contain an affiliate link. If you feel like you need a budget software in your life, download the fully functioning trial version and give it a shot! If you like it, you can use this link to activate the software and we’ll both get a month free!

How to stay sane at the grocery store

filed under: daily life

Photo by Anne Preble on Unsplash

Do you enjoy grocery shopping or do you squarely fall into the camp of grocery store haters? I know so many people that hate going to the store, but for me, it’s the opposite. I actually enjoy grocery shopping and I enjoy the prep process.

I still like to be fast and efficient when I do it though. I tend to visit 2-3 stores on my weekly shopping trips, but I can usually get it all done within one to 1.5 hours. I think that’s pretty good.

So, here’s a list of tips to make this mandatory weekly chore a bit more pleasant.

1. Meal plan.

I mentioned this on this blog before (and it still applies), we meal plan which makes the whole process of grocery shopping more stream-lined and efficient. Every Thursday night we write out a list of meals for the next week and add things to the shopping list accordingly.

2. Keep a running shopping list.

I have a list in Evernote (which I can access from my phone) and where I can easily add things when I notice that we’re about to run out of something. On Thursday, I add the rest of our meal planning ingredients to it, and voilà, there’s your complete shopping list.

3. Write your shopping list according to the shop layout.

I know people who write out their shopping lists by store department (e.g. meats, produce, dairy, frozen, etc.), which makes sense, but I actually go a step further and write my list out by aisles the way I’ll walk through the store. If you shop at the same stores, you’ll soon know the layout of the store. I walk the aisles in the same order every time and my grocery lists is written accordingly, which makes for a much quicker trip through the store.

4. Pick a good time to shop.

If you want to make grocery shopping quick and painless, pick a good time to go to the store. I usually try to go on Fridays shortly before or after lunch time. I know I have the luxury of doing my grocery shopping on my day off, but there are other times during the week that are not peak hours (e.g. Wednesday nights).

5. Help bagging.

That’s a pet peeve of mine, but I see so many people standing around with their arms crossed while the clerk rings up the items and bags them afterwards. SMH. I mean, unless there is a second person there to bag the groceries, be proactive and help bagging your own purchases. Not only will this speed up the time you spend at the store, you’ll also have the freedom to pack your stuff the way you like. I often like things grouped a certain way, heavy stuff in my canvas bags, smaller stuff in my basket. (Not to brag, but store clerks have commented on my badass bagging skills and wanted to know if I had worked as a grocery bagger before. Nope, just a skilled, common-sense human being over here. Haha.)

Do you have any more tips to make grocery shopping fast and efficient?