Stuck In A Cube & Fighting To Get Out

So my leave of absence lately has been due to a promotion I received at work. For the last two weeks I’ve been in training. I moved from a tax group to an accounting group.

The Pros So Far:
-Bump up in pay.
-More responsibility which in turn means more work.
-I’ve been told that if I can get this job down, then I can do any job in this company
-Unlimited overtime!!
-An actual path/track I can follow to keep moving up in the department.
-It’s a 2nd shift job. (I can go to bed late and sleep in late!!)

The Cons So Far:
-I lost my cubicle and am now in a “partition” which means very much less privacy which sucks.
-No chance to blog or surf anymore.
-I’ve been told the learning curve for the position is at a minimum 2-3 months.
-It’s a 2nd shift job. (I don’t get out until after midnight)

So far I like the people I work with. They’re very laid back and down to earth people which I like because I hate working with fake people. The job itself is pretty damn time consuming hence the unlimited overtime. A lot of it is still a bunch of jibba jabba but I’m confident once I get more hands on experience I’ll be able to knock it out of the park. The bump up in pay is definitely appealing to me. More money going into the 401k and more spending/saving money in general. Is it what I think I should be getting paid for my education and experience? HELL NO!! But for the time being it’ll have to do. Next May marks my 2 year anniversary with the company. As a 2 year out of college graduate all I want to do is put in that time to get that experience regardless of the pay at this point. I’m confident the big wigs at this place will recognize and realize what I have to contribute to the company and in due time I’ll have the position and pay I think I deserve. Until then I just have to keep on doing the damn thing and stay on the grind.

~ I played the Bagpipes in high school and wore a kilt!

~ I also played the Bass Drum for the Pipe & Drum Corps in high school

~ I have Chinese and Filipino heritage, though my Chinese family members were all born in the Philippines and have never been to China

~ Much like the Asian stereotype I also grew up learning to play the piano, gave up on it in middle school, and I now wish I could remember how to play

~ Being the stubborn teen, instead of the piano I wanted to get an electric guitar and be a rockstar. I got the guitar and can play but never made it to rockstar status……..yet

~ I grew up on a farm with cows, ducks, chickens, Chinese chickens, geese, goats and pigs

~ I’ve only left the country once and that was to visit friends and family in Canada

~ I can count the number of times I’ve been on a plane on one hand

~ During college I worked as a telemarketer, a movie theatre attendant, cashier at a bookstore and as a bouncer at a club.

~ I firmly believe in “workHARD playHARDER”

~ I firmly believe that good music is good music regardless of genre. I used to hate country music but I got used to it.

~ In 1st grade the kid sitting next to me stabbed me in the arm with a pencil

~ I have a big head and when I was a kid I got my head stuck in a wooden fence. (Everyone else’s head fit!!)

~ Never broken a bone, only a hairline fracture in my knee but my dad being a doctor treated it like I shattered it

~ I’ve been wearing construction boots since the 10th grade. They really go with any color pants!!

~ Have both ears pierced with 8 guage hoops

~ After I gave a homeless man money for food, he looked straight into my eyes like he was looking into my soul and said “I can see you’re a blessed and great man” (that comment just always stuck with me)

~ I’ve lived in the same city since the 4th grade



that's all the random trivia i can think of, much props to the original poster, i think Jeffrey?

IT'S ALMOST FRIED DAY!!

So today is me and my girlfriends 5th year anniversary. It sounds like a long time, but at the same time it seems like we've been together longer lol. Tonight we're going to a nice ritzy restaurant called Bern's Steakhouse. It just so happens that last Christmas i received a $50 Gift Certificate to Bern's that i never used. So i plan on using the GC tonight and taking the $50 I would have spent anyway to officially start my $20 Challenge.

So today I shall go deposit $20 and $50 into an account and see how far my $20 Challenge can take me.

A few weeks i came up with a personal slogan to keep me motivated.

FOCUS , INSPIRE , MOTIVATE

Focus on your goals, stay inspired and stay motivated

Once you've reached your goals, turn it around and help someone else.

Help someone else Focus on their goals, help someone else stay inspired and stay motivated.

I just copy/pasted this review from my other blog...

It's Official

It's officially the spending season...let the holidays begin...I love the holidays because it's just always a nicer time of the year for some reason. What sucks is how broke you get by the time the holidays are over. And let's not forget the birthdays that fall in the middle of the holidays.

Every new year we are supposed to make resolutions for the coming year. Resolutions that ideally we will follow and that should ultimately make life better or easier. Resolutions such as quitting smoking, quitting drinking, losing weight, exercising more, lower my spending and so forth. Every year I think i've either given up or simply forgotten about my resolution by mid February. I think the average person does the same by about mid April/May. Why is it so hard to follow through with a resolution til the end of the year? Who knows...but i'm already thinking of my resolution.

For the year 2007 I hope to SAVE. That's it! I just want to save and hopefully have a decent lump sum by the time 2008 comes around. So far i've tried to save, but have ended up takin money out of savings here and there for various reasons. This time i want to put money away and not touch it. Every day i try to visit some Personal Finance web sites and read some articles. Sites like Personal Finance Advice and Money Under 30. These sites offer articles mostly on how to save, or how to control your spending as well as random other topics. There are so many others out there it's ridiculous. And deep down in the back of my mind I kinda hope my blog will turn into one of those Personal Finance sites. All in due time...

Point being, (this is the meat of this post) in order to go through with my resolution, i need a means to save. If you havent seen or read lately, the High Yielding Online Savings market is pretty much booming. By booming I mean you will get higher interest rates by putting your money into one of these Online Savings account than if you went to a local bank and opened a savings account there. I have 3 accounts setup so far with 3 different companies. I'll give a brief review of the three.

1) ING Direct
- They were the first company that i heard of that did the high yielding savings account. They're currently offering %4.40 Annual Percentage Yield. It's not the highest, but they usually up the % every few months to stay competitive with the rest. What i like about them is the User Interface of their website. I think it's the best layout and design of the others. Easy to use , easy to navigate. There is no minimum deposit required, so you can open an account with $1. The other thing i like about them is if you want to withdraw money from your savings account, it will take 2-3 days to transfer from the savings to your local checking account. This makes it harder to dip into your savings. If you want to open an account with at least $250.00 , use my referral link and we'll both get a cash bonus.

2) Citi Bank Online- I found out about CitiBank when i applied for a credit card with them. They offer a higher interest rate of %5.00 APY. The only thing with them is when you open a savings account with them they automatically open a checking account also and deposit $1 into it. You are not obligated to use the checking account. Their savings account is much like ING where there is no minimum balance. However they make it easier for you to dip into you savings because they give you a debit card. What i like about them is you can use the debit card to withdraw money at any 7/11 convenience store that has a Citi ATM. Depending on the way you look at it, it could be good and bad because it gives you easier access to your savings and gives you the option to dip into your savings. I know i'm guilty of dipping because they make it easy to.

3) Emigrant Direct
- I don't really like EmigrantDirect but i still have an account with them with $5 in it. I signed up with them because they had the highest interest rate. I don't like them because they're site is usually slow for me. The user interface i dont think is that great and just overall i didnt have a very good experience with them. Although they do offer one of the highest yielding savings accounts. They also have no minimum balance.

Bottom line is I'm trying my damndest to put away 10% of each paycheck into a savings account. I hope that my new year resolution will be followed through but only time will tell. But I hope if anything i can get others to do the same because at this point, it's like....Why Not?

Dammit, i had a long post typed out and when i go to add a category i lose the whole post!!

Anyway in a nutshell...every Thanksgiving the company i work for will give out Butterball Turkeys to the employees.

This year we get an email of two sentences saying how due to cost constraints they can't give out turkeys this year....

Now maybe i'm just a grunt at the bottom of the corporate ladder, but if and when i get to a position of authority, i would fight to keep something like Thanksgiving turkeys in the budget. But hey maybe i've just been a grunt for too long that i recognize that cost constraints shouldn't be taken out on the employees. A happy employeee is a damn good employee.

It's a good thing last year my family went ahead and bought a turkey, so the one from work i still have in my freezer.

So i've broken down and registered. I hope to document my financial struggles as a tenant of a cubicle in corporate America.

For a first post i'd like to document that i will try my damndest to stop eating out for lunch everyday & hopefully either bring lunch from home or get food from the Machine Cuisine a.k.a. The Wheel Of Death a.k.a. the sandwich/burger machine at work. The most expensive thing in there is $1 so if i stick to it, i'll be saving a helluvalot!

Here's to a journey begun....