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The Carnival of Money Stories comes our way tomorrow morning! I have some amazing stories to share with you from bloggers all over the world. Be sure to visit and check them out.

Also, don’t forget to go to Free Money Finance tomorrow for the March Madness kick-off! Funny is included in the competition this year, with Truth, the Highest Thing That Man May Keep. If FaM wins, I’ve asked that the prize be donated to All Saints Episcopal Church, which just now is taking up a collection for relief work in Haiti. This is on top of its wide charitable outreach to the homeless, the elderly, and the orphaned. Vote early and vote often, as March Madness proceeds through its merry rounds!

So yesterday I flew into a rant over the latest screw-ups from the Great Desert University. Here’s an update:

LS at Fidelity left word on my voicemail while I was out running around. She wanted me to call her back to communicate some unspecified information. Of course, by 2:00 our time her East-Coast office was closed. Reached B— H—, who couldn’t figure out from the notes she left what she intended to ask. Again (again, again, again!!!!!) I rehearsed my story. He discovered that the EFT arrangement to deliver the small monthly drawdown required to qualify me for the $19,000 sick-leave payout the state owes me had never been made, because Fidelity had never received the routing information.

This was part of the eight-page form I was required to run past GDU’s HR people. The first thing the idiot who took the form off my hands did, even before she walked away from me, is rip the canceled check I’d stapled to the first page off. I said, “Please don’t remove that from the form. Fidelity asked for it and needs it so they can set up an electronic forms transfer.” Said she, “I have to Xerox it.”

You can’t just fold back the check on the first page, copy it, set it aside, and then run the other 7 pages through the photocopier’s feeder? Obviously, the stupid woman failed to reattach the canceled check.

BH asked it if was OK to process a paper check. Then in the next breath he said he had no idea whether Fidelity would send said check this month.

Next, CS at ASU’s astonishing HR department called and said the reason COBRA thinks I’m still employed by the State of Arizona is that there were “system delays in the payroll process.” She claimed to have “scheduled time” on Thursday to confer with the Department of Administration folks and said she would get back to me then.

The upshots:

1. I will not get the $500 drawdown I had worked into this month’s budget, so I will be $500 short between now and the middle of February, when the first Social Security check is supposed to arrive.

2. And I now have no health insurance coverage!

I’m going to give these morons until Thursday to sort this mess out, and then I’m going to file a formal complaint. This has gone on too long.

w00t! FMF e-mailed to say that Funny about Money’s rumination on “Truth, the Highest Thing that Man May Keep” has been selected for this year’s March Madness competition at Free Money Finance. Some excellent posts, many by eminent PF bloggers, are included, and so I feel very flattered to have made the cut.

FMF posted the competitors and their categories today. The contest starts January 18, so be sure and go there and vote for Funny!!!!

Vote early and vote often. 😉 Remember, March Madness goes through several rounds, so don’t slack off just because you’ve already voted in one round.

Winners have a donation of $100 to $500 made in their name to a charity of their choice. I’ve selected my church and, especially, the choir.

When the new pastor learned that I’d been laid off my job, he called on the phone, if you can imagine, to offer his sympathies and to say the church would do what it could to help me out. Then he talked me into making a pledge of one dollar. Would I ever love to do him five hundred better!

You can make that possible. As soon as the games start, join in the fun and support Funny every step of the way.

🙂

It’s a spectacularly beautiful New Year’s Day here. The sun is shining bright, birds are singing, the rose bush outside the office window is in bloom. Very shortly now, Cassie the Corgi and I will head out for a nice long idle stroll.

I’ve been so happy (and at times so  harassed) at getting free of the Great Desert University, I haven’t put much thought into the future. I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions—a resolution being something to be made and soon forgotten. General goals are good, but they need to be realistic and doable. Over at Bargaineering, Jim suggests using the SMART guidelines to set 2010 goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely).

That’s highly practical where financial goals are concerned. For my taste, it’s a bit too quantitative: the things I’d like to accomplish this year have to do more to do with quality of life than with numbers. After all, we build our financial lives—working and saving and paying off debt—so we can improve the quality of our lives. IMHO, that’s what money is all about.

So, though I have a few SMARTable yearnings, I also have a few that are softer and less measurable.

First, the SMART goals:

♦ Support retirement with Social Security and part-time teaching, so as to delay drawing down 4 percent from savings for at least a year, possibly longer.

♦ Generate enough blogging and freelance income through the S-corporation to pay for computers hardware and software, high-speed internet, blog consultancy, membership in professional organizations, and other business-related blandishments. I expect Funny about Money and the Copyeditor’s Desk to generate about $4,800 without my having to work very hard at it and hope to make eight to ten grand in 2010. Even at the low end, which will come about simply from proofreading detective novels (!) and daily blogging, it will cover basic computer and office costs.

♦ Simplify my financial life. Get rid of the various “piggybank” accounts and run all my personal bookkeeping through three credit union accounts: checking, saving, and one self-escrow money  market account holding cash to cover property tax, homeowner’s insurance, and car insurance.

♦ Figure out a way to pay down principal on the investment house, or at least refinance to get rid of the 30/15 terms.

Now for the more interesting goal, one that can’t be quantified by any SMART guidelines:

♦ Get a life. Shake off the inertia that has come with sixteen years of treadmill-trudging and build a new and more interesting life. Possible strategies:

• Volunteer at places where I wouldn’t resent spending time. The botanical garden and the Phoenix Art  Museum come to mind.

• Take courses in voice and music theory at the community college, so I can join more advanced choirs.

• Learn silversmithing. Learn how to make some of the jewelry designs that float at the edges of my consciousness, and then find out how to market them through galleries and shops.

• Take up painting again. See if I’m still as good as I was when I was 22. Pursue courses in art and design at the community college.

• Get back into hiking and bicycling.

• Create at least one and probably two books based on FaM.

• Write one of those detective novels!

That’s it. Nothing very ambitious. But it represents a whole new world for me. What’s your plan?

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beautious mankind is!
O brave new world,
That has such people in’t!

Miranda
The Tempest, Act IV, Scene I
William Shakespeare

Funny has gotten a bit lazy about submitting posts to carnivals. It’s been a busy Christmas season…that’s my only excuse.

I did send the budding crockpot scalloped potato recipe to the Make It from Scratch Carnival, which was hosted last week by Liss at Frills in the Hills. I see she included Rina’s delicious-sounding crockpot potato chowder, which (to tell the truth) was the original inspiration for my crockpot potato idea. For the Real Scalloped Potato Thing, check out Daily Diner’s beautiful version here. Not surprisingly, the Christmas Edition has many crafty schemes for seasonal ornaments, and even a very pretty Advent calendar. Several gift ideas are offered, too: I like this one from Mixed Media Artist.