Humpday LinkFest

The Financial Blogger gives three reasons to do asset reallocation at this time of year--good ones all around. My address problem has finally been fixed, so I'm going to take care of mine this weekend.

Publishing blogger moment: I LOVE this guy's idea of an e-book reader with a slot for an iPhone. Brilliant! I would totally buy one.

Scary--Dell asks a customer for all sorts of really personal information that they don't need trying to "verify an order". I don't know if it would have occured to me to hesitate and not give such highly personal information. I agree--I don't see any earthly reason why they need the information, especially considering he never GAVE it to them in the first place--so what are they verifying against?

I've been on a bit of a rampage to get off mailing lists and reduce the amount of personal information that companies have about me but it's not working very well. I'm getting a LOT of political advertising addressed to me this election season, but Peanut isn't. I can't figure out how that happened.

Jeez. Well, this knife just sent Peanut and me on an Amazon spending spree, and $60 later we're getting it, a salad spinner, and razor blades shipped to us. Way to be frugal.

I liked this post at WiseBread: 25 Frugal Things I do, 4 Spendthrift Confessions. My own post coming soon!

I have really been wanting to do something in our apartment. The walls are still pretty much bare--I've moved so many times (25 or so in the last ten years) that I don't do much permanent decorating. But since this is a place we're likely to stay in for some time, I've been itching to make it feel homey. Peanut had a great idea for a piece of art we can create ourselves, and I'm also on the lookout for full length mirrors (unbroken so I can see myself before I go to work, broken for another piece of art). Those things should be fun, but Peanut also said today that we can buy art. He's in charge of finding affordable original artists like Kevin Dart and Randall Munroe of XKCD and I'll order frames and we're going to have an apartment full of interesting great art.

I'm also going to paint an accent wall and I have to fix my closet, because our downstairs neighbor smokes and I can smell it through there. It's strong enough to wake me up, but I got some suggestions for blocking any cracks up, so I hope to do that this weekend.

Stacking Pennies talks about the relationship costs of living together. Across the board, my living expenses and Peanut's went down. Of course, I'm now in full on nesting mode and wanting to spend money to decorate and paint and get art and what not, but net-net, I'm still spending less and saving more than I was when I lived alone. Our food spending went down because we're not keeping two places stocked (and we're not throwing stuff out because we don't go to one place for a while). We buy more things at Costco and manage to use them up. The utility bills here are just a little more than they were at my old apartment and WAY less than they were at Peanut's old place. The joint account works perfectly smoothly and we're managing to build up a balance in there as well just by being cheap.

I'm really lucky though--unlike some of SP's commentors, my boyfriend is cheap like me!


Speaking of which, in regards to my How Much Would I Spend post, Peanut says I am crazy for being willing to spend $2,500 on a computer. Like, CRAZY crazy. He wouldn't spend that much on a computer, and he needs a fancy-pants one for freelancing gigs. So, I take it back. The most I would spend on a computer is whatever Peanut tells me to spend. And he is in charge of buying all the parts and putting it together and maintaining it all.

No kidding, when I have problems connecting to the wireless on my five-year-old, $2,500 laptop, I tell him to fix it. And he looks at me cross-eyed, but I say, "Hey, the error message says "Please contact your network administrator." Please administrate!"