I had no idea how much it cost to get those suckers taken out! After spending $5,000 on braces, my dad wasn’t taking chances letting 4 rouge teeth ravage my straightened mouth. Two of them had already broken through and started to hurt. Since I leave in 17 days, I wanted them taken care of ASAP. Teeth removal or surgery should not be part of my study abroad experience.

 The total bill – $1,560! Each tooth cost $295 plus $335 for general anesthesia and $45 for some other drug they gave me. My insurance paid for 80% of each tooth and almost all of the drugs. On the bill they gave us, each tooth is listed as “Partially Bony”. I always thought my teeth were fully bony but I guess not!

Lessons Learned:

• Dental insurance is good to have. Thanks Mom & Dad!
• Having parents able to easily pay what insurance doesn’t is nice too.
• Vicodin. I’m fond of that drug. Keep it comin’!

An expense like this can be hard to plan for. Not that I personally needed to, but I know someday I’ll have to pay for stuff like this without relying on Mommy & Daddy. This wasn’t an emergency that came up at 4pm on some random Tuesday but it also wasn’t unknown. I’m sure they knew that at some point, they’d need to have to money available to pay for the slicing and dicing.

I’ve gone on and on about how much I like having separate savings accounts for different things. I’ve thought of a new one. It’s called the “I Knew This Was Coming, But It’s Still Sort of Sudden” savings account. For all that stuff that you know is coming, but you’re not sure exactly when or what the $ will be. Like getting wisdom teeth removed.

Everybody’s number will be different, but even $50 a paycheck will help soften the blows from stuff like this. If you’re an Adult with kids and a white picket fence™, you’ll probably want to be saving a lot more. Kids are expensive – just ask my parents.

p.s. - You could just include this saving in with your emergency fund or general savings, but where’s the fun in that? Plus, I know some people have a problem “taking” money from their e-fund if it’s not a real emergency.

p.p.s. – If I have any international readers who live in countries that have universal healthcare, I’d like to hear how this would be handled in your country. Is it free like emergency care or is dental stuff treated different?

I’m 53 days away from jumping on a plane and heading out on my own for a few months. Not that I’m counting or anything. My 4 months in Italy will be the first time I’ve ever not lived at the house of Mom & Dad. Kind of crazy when I think about it like that. Everyone keeps asking me if I’m nervous and I keep saying no, which is 99% true. Saying yes would probably make me more nervous and I’m trying to avoid that.

Being out on my own got me thinking though about how long I’ll call this place home. Studying abroad is temporary. I already know the exact time and date I’m coming home. My bedroom will be waiting for me exactly like I left it. But what about after that? I’ll still have at least 2 years of school left. If I stay for my masters, which I will unless I get an awesome job, that makes it 3. There are definite pros and cons that come with living at home:

Things That Rock About Living At Home

Cash. Flow. No rent, no utilities, no groceries.

Nice thangs. Better than what I could afford on my own.

Room. House = bigger than any apartment in my area. Huge yard and no neighbors.

Things That Make Me Want To Sign A Lease

The feeling that I’ll be here forever. For-ev-ver. For-ev-ver.

Gotta be super quiet when I come home at 3AM so I don’t wake anyone up.

The “I don’t really approve of what you’re doing, but I’m not going to stop you” look I get sometimes all the time. See: Coming home at 3AM

Right now though I’m 100% against living on my own if it means taking on extra student loan debt. I’m on track to easily owe $30,000 at graduation and possibly as much as $50,000 while living at home the entire time. I obviously made an exception for leaving the country, but studying abroad is about more than just living by yourself. Even if I could afford to rent my own place in another year or 2, I’m not sure I would. Not having rent to pay would add up to around $7,000 a year. Graduating with $14,000 or more saved up would be cooler than the time I found $60 bucks in my Bible.

When did/will you move out of your parents house? Is it lame if I want to stick around for a few years to save money like it’s my job?

Do you ever feel like punching people who have no motivation or drive in the face? Monday was my final exam for my accounting class. The exam started at 10:45am and you had 2 hours to take the 30 question test. I’m busy getting my credits and debits figured out when I hear a super loud noise: the door opening. Who walks in? The same guy who was late every single day to class. He goes up to the proctor, gets the exam, and acts like he’s not late. It was 11:30.

Who shows up for an exam 45 minutes late?!? I was pissed. The exam wasn’t a walk in the park and I had to focus to make sure I understood the questions. Him interrupting everybody was beyond rude. I get back to work, but only for around 10 minutes. Because then another idiot walks in. Who are these people? I don’t want to be Melvin, but come on. If you want to skip classes all the time and be as lazy as f*ck, that’s fine, but don’t interrupt other people who actually give a damn.

College is expensive. I don’t pay $8,000 a year to skip dozens of classes and then (probably) fail my exams. I pay that money to actually learn something. Of all the ways to waste money, I thinking going to college but not doing any of the work is one of the dumbest.

Anybody else not understand these people?

Last week I was debating whether or not I should include all the crazy blog money I’ve been raking in when I do a net worth update. I decided that I should because income is income, but it got me thinking about something else: how much do other people know about your finances? Since I’m college age and assume most people reading this are my age, the main people I’m talking about are your parents.

Besides you peeps, no one I know in real life has any clue that $2,496 is sitting in a business checking account with my name on it. It’s possible my dad knows something is up because junk mail has started coming to the house with my semi-officical business name on it. Damn post office can’t let me keep a secret! Overall though, my online business dealings are private. Unless you posess the skillz necessary to Google my name.

My parents don’t much else about my finances either. My dad is still listed on one of my checking accounts, but he never checks the balance or anything. My parents know I have a Roth IRA and some other accounts, but have no idea what’s in them.

All this got me thinking about how much should parents know about their kids’ money? I don’t try to be secretive or anything, but they’ve never asked and I’ve never volunteered the information. But do parents have a right to know the details of what their child spends/saves/invests/etc? I’d tell mine anything they’d ever want to know, but I know not everybody has the same relationship with their rents. What does your situation look like?

Yep, you know it’s true! I still depend on Mommy and Daddy for (almost) everything. I have no problems eating the food they provide and you know I’ll be staying with their sweet health insurance until I’m 26 (thanks Barack!) or get a job. But…one thing I’ve almost always done is pay for my own cell phone.

I got my first phone way back in 6th grade. Don’t go rollin’ your eyes. It was a cheap Virgin Mobile prepaid phone that I paid for 100% myself. I only bought it cause I’m a huge gadget nerd and a cell phone with a black & white screen was super cool in 2004. Right?

Anyway, that lasted for a couple of years. But then I switched over to a family plan. I paid $10 at first and then $20 when texting became the coolest thing since sliced bread. THEN…I got an iPhone and my share of the bill increased by $30. I continued to send a few bills my dad’s way until…

I stopped. Or he stopped asking. One of the two. I was browsing through my Mint spending trends and noticed that I haven’t sent a payment to my dad since October. (!). For almost 6 months now, I’ve been cell phone payment free. While my wallet is happier, part of me feels like I need to step up and volunteer the money. I am an adult, supposedly. Decisions decisions…

Is it completely ridiculous to let my dad foot the bill? Is there a set age where you should be “on your own” for stuff like this?

P.S. – The real person getting ripped off in this situation is my sister. She hasn’t been paying Pops either, but my bill is $30 more than hers. So I’m getting a sweeter deal, no doubt.

While I think I do a an overall bang up job of managing my money and whatnot, it’s nice to know that other people think so too. More specifically, I’m talking about credit scores. Credit scores are like opinions – most people have ‘em and some of ‘em really blow. Love it or hate it, credit scores are used to sum up our financial lives into one compact little number.

I’ve been keeping tabs on my credit score since the fall just for kicks. (To do list: get a hobby). I’ve been using the website www.creditkarma.com. It’s free and legit. They pull my TransUnion (1 of the 3 credit bureaus) credit score and let me know how it stacks up against everybody else. As of today, my score is a respectable 704. The worst score is 300 and the max is 850.

While my score is relatively awesome now, that wasn’t the case last year. Just back in October, it was a mediocre 637. Here you can see how fast it rose. That’s a 67 point increase for the math challenged.

SEXY!

As awesome as Credit Karma is, the TransRisk score they provide is not necessarily the same as my FICO score. FICO stands for the Fair Isaac Corporation. They are the king of credit scoring and what they say matters most. I decided I should find out my official score, in case Credit Karma was lying to me or something. It was even better than I thought:

awwww yeaaahhhh

731! Now that’s what I’m talking about. At this point, my score has no where else to go but up. My credit card accounts and student loan will continue to “age” which should tack on more and more points as time goes on. Plus I’ll be able to get credit line increases, which will also make my score climb.

Have you checked your credit score? What is it?

Growing up, I knew I was going to college. Not in an arrogant way or anything, just that college was the next step after high school. The assumption was just “there”. I never had any academic issues until high school, and the ones I did were minor and easily fixable. My undergraduate education was never in doubt.

Thy “why” though was never answered. I can’t even remember anyone asking. At my graduation party, every relative and family friend asked “Where are you going to school? What do you want to study?”. But no one ever asked “Why are you going to school?” If they had, I wouldn’t have had an answer, much less a good one.

I bring this up thanks to a recent microeconomics class. We were discussing the rise of consumerism (a.k.a buying $hit you don’t need) when the professor asked us to name two examples of social institutions that were changed by the rise of consumerism. I wasn’t really sure, but one girl answered “education”. My professor asked her to explain further and she said “Well, people used to go to college because they liked learning. Now people go to college so they can get jobs that pay more and then buy more/better things.”

I think there’s at least some truth to that statement. If you ask any college student why they’re in school, they’ll say “to get a good job”. A bachelor’s degree isn’t the goal, a high paying career is. Education is simply the means to get there.

There are a million ways to look at this though. I’m not entirely buying the idea that people were purely motivated by knowledge and learning in past decades. Individuals have always wanted money and the affluence that it provides. The difference now is that even entry level jobs require a degree, so good luck earning a livable wage without an education. You can also argue that the reasons for getting an education are irrelevant. Learning is learning, regardless of whether you pursue that knowledge just for the sake of knowing versus earning a bigger paycheck. I don’t know what the answer is, but I think it’s an interesting discussion to have.

Do you think most students are in school for the right reasons? Should all high school graduates today go to college even if they don’t want to? If they don’t go to school, what should they do?

I’ve hinted before that I don’t pay for….well….much of anything. Throughout high school and part of last summer, I never paid a cent for gas. I was an authorized user on my dad’s credit card and just filled up whenever I needed to. I’ve never paid for my own car insurance. I didn’t pay for my cell phone the first year I had it.

Parts of my very nice situation have evolved over time. I now pay for my own gas and my cell phone, so those parts of the parental teet no longer remain. . However, I continue to pay nothing for car insurance. It’ll probably remain that way until I graduate college. I’m also not charged rent or anything since I live at home. To be honest, I can’t imagine either one of my parents (I live at my dads) charging me rent while in school.

Some might say these advantages are ridiculous and I’m spoiled. I disagree, and not just because I’m riding a gravy train. Parental support is relative. I have friends whose parents didn’t pay for their gas or insurance during high school. Those same parents are paying for college. Is that ridiculous? Some parents are able to pay for everything while others aren’t able to pay for much of anything. Mine rest in the middle of those extremes.

If parents are able and willing to provide support to their semi-adult children, I say why not? I don’t think that support should be used as a crutch and prevent independence, but there’s no problem in accepting generosity to help you out. I’d love to be in a position to pay all my bills myself be independent. I’d  even send a little cash flow towards the ‘rents to help “pay back” all that they’ve done over the years, even though it’s not necessary. But that day isn’t here…yet!

Really. Dumb.

That’s the only way I can describe the decision a good friend of mine, “Maggie”, has made.

The Back Story

Back in the fall, the two of us applied for jobs at the same store. We both got hired and we worked together for a few weeks. Around Black Friday (the craziest day in existence for retail), she quits! My first reaction was “WTF, why would ANYONE quit their job in this economy??? Even a college student. She told me that she found another job at her church that paid more and gave her weekends off. Once she said that, I agreed that it was a no brainer. Better pay PLUS no weekends? SIGN ME UP.

Yesterday

I meet up with a group of friends for a late dinner. Maggie’s there and we start talking about school and what we’ve doing while we’re on break. Then I ask how she likes her new job. Her answer? “Oh, I decided not to do it. I just want more free time.”

Um…who doesn’t?

I decide to dig a little deeper and ask how she’s paying for gas (we’re both commuter students) and other day to day expenses. “With the money I got from INSERT-UNIVERSITY-NAME-HERE.” She was referring to the student loan refund that she received. I pointed out that that student loan refund money still has to repaid. She said she knew that, but wasn’t worried.

She might not be, but I am!

Damn. Is everyone this carefree? I wish I could be that relaxed. I def don’t stay up at night calculating how much interest I have to pay to the 5th decimal or anything. But I still keep an eye on how much I’ve borrowed and most of my student loan refund is sitting nice and cozy in my ING Savings account. I also have a general idea of what my minimum payment will be when I graduate.

There’s also something about paying a day to day expense – gasoline – with loan money doesn’t sit right with me. I know that a lot of kids living on campus have borrowed 10 grand just for their dorm and won’t pay a dime of that until graduation, but gas just seems like a dumb thing to pay with credit. The dollar amount is waaayy lower…but idk, I don’t like it.

She did have a point that it’s really not that much more to pay back. She’ll probably spend $300-$500 in gas this quarter. Paying that amount back isn’t a disaster, even with interest, but the line of thinking is dangerous. “I’ll be making more money in the future, so I’ll just borrow whatever I need now” can justify anything.

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

Any different opinions out there? What did you do with your refund check?

Besides buying alcohol, it turns out that I also can’t contribute to the 401K plan offered by my company. I thought 18 was old enough to legally enter into financial agreements, but I guess the government or my company had other ideas.

Talk about a bummer. My company actually allows part-time employees to participate, but not me. They provide a dollar for dollar match. If I contribute $100, they put in an additional $100. This is about as close to free money as you can get. But I can’t participate. Because I’m not 21.

I need to do some more research to see whether this age requirement is a company policy or some odd law. I’m leaning towards company policy. The plan is handled by T. Rowe Price and I’m positive they would let me open up a brokerage account with no problem. E*Trade did and the only requirements were to be 18, and you know, have money to invest.

Frustrating is about the only way to describe the situation. Everyone always says that a 401K plan with a match is a no brainer – set aside as least some money to contribute. I actually want to as a freshman in college and I’m told I can’t!