Live Real, Now

The no-pants guide to spending, saving, and thriving in the real world.

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Regret

Life

There comes a time when it’s too late to tell people how you feel.

There will come a day when the person you mean to talk to won’t be there.  Don’t wait for that day.

“There’s always tomorrow” isn’t always true.

Overworked and Underappreciated

Business

I once worked for a company that was so confused that, not only did I not meet my last immediate supervisor for 6 months, but he didn’t know what I did or who I supported.  He was my supervisor on paper for payroll and organizational purposes only.

Angry Birds
Angry Birds (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Does your boss know what you do?

More recently, I was called into my current boss’s office to get scolded for low productivity since  I don’t produce as much as the other programmers.

That’s not my favorite thing to do in the afternoon.  I’d rather spend the afternoon playing Angry Birds improving our software.

In response, I spent the week logging my time.  Before I left on Friday, I sent my boss an email that started out with:

When we spoke on Monday, you compared my productivity unfavorably to the other developers.   I don’t think that’s a fair comparison as I do more categories of tasks than the others.   I don’t think you realize how many additional responsibilities I’ve taken on over the years.

I continued from there with a summary of each day’s work last week.   The short version is that, while being productive, I spend less than half of my time on my primary job function because I’ve slowly taken on a managerial role.

I’m on vacation this week, so it will be a few days before I find out if my email will make a difference.

Now, this scolding was my fault.   I know I spend my day doing much more than just writing code.   I’ve told my boss that before, but I’ve never made sure he understands the scale of the extra work, and I’ve never proven it with a detailed log.

This was poor personal marketing.

In the future, I have to make sure that I keep him in the loop with a summary of the extra work I do, like the training, product demos, sales calls, and estimates I’m involved in.

We’ll see how well that works.

How would you handle a situation like this?  Daily emails?  Whining?  Kicking a garbage can across the room?

 

 

 

 

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-29

Misc

Make a Budget

Finance

DSC02103
Image by r.lovewell via Flickr

In the past, I’ve gone through a detailed series of budget lessons demonstrating how to make a budget and showing my personal budget spreadsheet template.  If you weren’t here to see them develop, you probably haven’t seen them at all.    I’ve never built an actual index for those posts.

This is the master index of my budget planning resources.  As I develop more, this will grow.

Budget Lesson #1 – In this lesson, I go over how we handle discretionary income and I explain our modified envelope system.   The discretionary budget contains things like our grocery bill, or the clothes we buy.  We have near-total discretion over what is purchased, hence the name.

Budget Lesson #2 – Lesson #2 contains the details of our monthly bills.  These are the ones that are consistent, predictable, and actually due each month.  Most people take these for granted as the bills they have to pay, but it’s not true.   You can get almost all of your regular bills reduced just by asking.   You would also be surprised what you can do without, when properly motivated.

Budget Lesson #3 – This is where I explain how we deal with the non-monthly bills.  That is, the bills that have to be paid, but are not due on a monthly basis.  I also share the personal budget spreadsheet template I developed.   I am working on a few sample templates to match various imaginary scenarios.  If you’d like to be an anonymous case study, and get free help setting up a budget, let me know, please.

Budget Lesson #4 – In this lesson, I describe our “set-aside” funds for things that will need to be paid eventually, but not on a set schedule.  Sometimes, they are never actually due.   We set aside money for the parties we throw, for car repairs and for a number of other things.  A few of these items are outright optional, but they are part of what makes life fun.  You can’t make a budget without including some of the extras.

Budget Lesson #5 – This is the companion piece to lesson 2.   Learn how I’ve reduced–or attempted to reduce–each of these bills.   For the better part of two years, I called Dish Network every few months to ask for a discount.  For almost 2 years, it was granted.  Then one, day, they told me they were putting a note on our account to keep us from getting any more discounts, so I canceled.   100% discounts help us save more.

Budget Lesson #6 – This is the reduction companion to lesson 3.  These bills are harder to reduce.  Have you ever successfully gotten your property taxes lowered?

Budget Lesson #7 – This is the reduction companion to lesson 4.  Notice a pattern, yet?

Budget Lesson #8 – Here, completely out of order, is the reduction companion to lesson 1.   Watch as I magically reduce–or rationalize–our discretionary budget.

So, dear readers, what part of budgeting should I address next?

Link Roundup

Misc

In an effort to make sure that both of my readers can’t possibly miss the things I think are important, I’m going to start doing a weekly roundup of the best of the internet.   Judged solely, and arbitrarily, by me.

On topic:

These, naturally, are the posts that fit the theme of this site.

How To Check Your Federal IRS Tax Refund Status. When I checked a couple of days ago, they were about 2 weeks out.

TurboTax has screwed up the property tax refund form for Minnesota.  Thankfully, I haven’t filed this, yet, but I did verify the problem.

Where do you want to be in 5 years? Start taking those steps, now, or you will never get there.   Find something, no matter how small, and do it.

Deficit Neutrality doesn’t count, if a massive initial purchase is offset by future intentions to cut spending.

Off topic:

This is just some of the random crap I think is worth sharing.

If you’re going to argue on the internet, make sure you have your sources right. Primary sources are better than secondary.

Bring back dueling to ensure good manners.

Here’s a guide to saving water-damaged books.

I am a shameless geek and reformed DnD player, so this room was exciting to see.