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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Credit Peril

Finance

When my mother-in-law died, we went through all of her accounts and paid off anything she owed.

The Discover card she’d carried since the 80s–a card that had my wife listed as an authorized user–had a balance of about $700.  We paid that off with the money in her savings account.  They cashed out the accumulated points as gift cards and closed the account.

A few months ago, we decided it was time to buy an SUV, to fit our family’s needs.   We financed it, to give us a chance to take advantage of a killer deal while waiting for the state to process the title transfer on an inherited car we have since sold.

Getting good terms was never a worry.  Both of us had scores bordering on 800.   Since our plan was to pay off the entire loan within a few months, we asked for whatever term came with the lowest interest rate.

Then the credit department came back and said that my wife’s credit was poor.  I chalked it up to a temporary blip caused by closing the oldest account on her credit report and financed without her.  No big deal.

Since we decided to rent our my mother-in-law’s house, we’ve discussed picking up more rental properties.   That’s a post for another time, but last week, we went to get pre-approved for a mortgage.    During the process, the mortgage officer asked me if my wife had any outstanding debt that could be ignored if we financed without her.

Weird.

A few days ago, we got the credit check letter from the bank.   Her credit score?  668.

What the heck?

I immediately pulled her free annual credit report from annualcreditreport.com, which is something I usually do 2-3 times per year, but had neglected for 2012.

There are currently two negatives on her report.

One is a 30 day late payment on a store card in 2007.   That’s not a 120 point hit.

The other is an $8 charge-off to Discover.  As an authorized user.  On an account that was paid.

Crap.

We called Discover to get them to correct the reporting and got told they don’t have it listed as a charge-off.   They did agree to send a letter to us saying that, but said they couldn’t fix anything with the credit bureaus.

Once we get that letter, it’s dispute time.

 

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-29

Misc

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.