perfect costs as perfect does

the search is on for our new apartment! t and i have already looked at two this morning. all this thinking about relocating really has me thinking more generally about where we live. essentially, it's the perfect neighborhood, as far as city living goes. it's right in the heart of the city, without being noisy. it's as safe as city living can be. the neighbors are a diverse set of characters: young families, old italians, immigrant workers, all ages and races. within two blocks of my apartment are two grocery stores (including whole foods!), a pet store, two coffee shops, several restaurants/bars, a wine & liquor store, mail supply store, playhouse, bike shop and park. my landlords are on the corner, as is a bus stop. and beyond the immediate vicinity, it takes between 5 and 10 minutes to walk to city hall, to the big shops, the tourist destinations, the subway and train stations. t's walk to work is about 15 minutes. i looked up the walkability score of my address yesterday on walkscore.com. out of 100 points, it scored a 98.

so those are all awesome things about our neighborhood. as you can imagine, it comes with a price that could be easily avoided by moving to a further out neighborhood. there are lots of cool, up-and-coming neighborhoods full of young, creative people doing interesting things, with housing that is significantly cheaper than the housing in our neighborhood. it happened that we really lucked out and it was pure chance that we found our current firetrap through word of mouth before we had even moved to the Big City. we rent from some old-school neighborhood types that don't know about Craigslist and are charging us less than market value. sometimes when i walk through our neighborhood and look at the amazing houses and beautiful street art and famous eateries, i wonder how we ended up here. that's when i start to think we're crazy for trying to get a better deal here in the neighborhood.

we absolutely have to find a larger space, soon. this tiny apartment has been perfect for the three years i've been in law school. if i were honest, i'd say i could continue to live here a little longer and save money, just to keep the location. but we need access to the outside, beyond an open window on the third floor. t routinely talks about wanting a better apartment. and our friends (who have two incomes) live in an awesome place just a block away. so we're searching, and we're putting up more money for it. but a part of me wonders if it's realistic to expect to find the perfect "next step" apartment in our current neighborhood. i also wonder what it says about us that this is where in the city we've chosen to live. we have friends who pay half what we're willing to pay, for much bigger space, in different areas. when people hear where we live, they peg us as yuppies. when i ask around at shops for potential leads in the neighborhood, i get comments about how hard places are to come by here and how expensive they are.

if we can pull this off, it'll be amazing. i just don't want to go broke doing it. oh, exciting times. i can't wait to see where we end up.

One of these days...

I'm going to return to updating the blog with some sort of normalcy. But for now, nothing feels very normal, and yet everything feels almost TOO normal. I'm in that weird period of limbo that is referred to as senioritis by high schoolers across America, but in law school is merely summarized by the last part of that overused yet strikingly accurate saying:

First year, they scare you to death.
Second year, they work you to death.
Third year, they bore you to death.

I would so rather be working than thinking about how I'm going to pull together a 30-page paper on truth commissions. I flat out refuse to think about what on earth got into me when I thought it would be a good idea to sign up for Transitional Justice in my last semester and fulfill my writing requirement by doing a paper on something NOT RELATED TO US DOMESTIC LAW when it's taken me 3 years to have even a whiff of understanding of that legal framework. Why did I think I could pull off a research paper on an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT KIND OF "LAW"?

Oh well.

At least I'm getting some amusement out of the fact that the two legal briefs I have to churn out for my clinical (aka actual cases, with real life consequences) seem like a piece of cake, a mere inconvenience. Feels like just a couple of months ago that I was terrified and avoiding my first-year memo. Bwahahaha.

It gets better, 1Ls.

Outside of law school and the slow death of my formal legal education (and our savings, which is now devoted exclusively to surviving the Bar), life appears to be at a standstill. I am knocking off things from my 30 Before 30 list (just about done with Revelation, the end is near!) and fantasizing with T about our next apartment and life with two incomes instead of one. (We're conveniently ignoring the part about how it comes with a giant mass of student loan debt.) I'm trying SO HARD to imagine what my future will look like, all the while knowing that I cannot possibly imagine it. All I know for sure-ish is that it will involve us staying in the Big City, for now, which means for the next year at least, and as far as I'm concerned that's all the future I need to think about right now. I can hardly handle that much.

Can you tell I'm overwhelmed? I'm overwhelmed. On the upside (not that any of the above is necessarily a downside) I am looking forward to a kick-a$$ graduation party!

Too many hands to count.

I did my run yesterday! I'm soooo proud of myself. It was actually a walk/run switching off every 100 meters (or about 1 city block).

On the other hand, I did not get my lazy behind out the door and over to the social security office so I could get a replacement card, so I could get a new drivers license, so I can drive down to Virginia tomorrow without having to worry about the legality of my being behind the wheel of a car. Looks like my trip home will involve $10 and a wait in the "replacement card" line at the DMV.

On the other hand, I did make arrangements for T's birthday evening, which (if all goes according to plan) will involve delicious food, a bottle of wine, good friends and an evening at the cinema (or "big tape" as T calls it).

On the other hand, I'm broke, so I couldn't buy T the present I wanted to get him. I would write more about that, but on the (very) off-chance he reads here before the end of the night, I wouldn't want to spoil anything ;)

On the other hand, I will be starting work soon and getting the paycheck I so desperately need.

On the other hand, it's work study funds. So, in other words, not much.

On the other hand, I have been kicking butt at this cash-flow report which tracks all of our income and expenses. I love love love to do it. Maybe because it gives me a badly needed sense of control over an area of my life (ahem, $$) that appears to be bleeding out while I stand helplessly watching.

On the other hand, yeah. Money.

On the other hand... love. Love is playing cards for hours around the kitchen/dining room/living room table, listening to weird Swedish country-western music and laughing at one another. Watching a documentary on art in advertising on the Wii. Sharing a fake ham and avocado sandwich. Making the bed. Messing up the bed. Waking up early to make breakfast. All those little things that make me forget about money. It makes up for the other hand.

Ahem. On the other hand, speaking of love, I need to go clean the kitchen before T gets home.

Change of plans

Well, we are not going to Guatemala. Our decisionmaking process on this point has been less than stellar, but we finally got to a place where we decided it was best not to go. This decision, while disappointing, was made much easier by the fact that the folks at Continental Airlines were so helpful in showing me how to get a full refund on the tickets. Getting the money back, which we should be able to do, makes the whole cancellation thing a lot more pallatable.

Now, what to do with the rest of my spring break??

In other news, I accepted an offer to work with an awesome local non-profit that does exclusively immigration law. Yay!

Hooray! Right?

I got an internship offer! Yay!

So I suddenly went from zero prospects on the horizon to three job interviews in three business days. I had the first one today, a phone interview that ended with an invitation to be a part of the organization's summer internship program. I have another interview on Monday, and then a third (phone) interview on Tuesday. Then it's off to Guatemala!

I keep wondering though, as I hear more and more about the terrible state of the economy and its dismal effect on job prospects, whether I am deluding myself. It's easy to get a summer job when you are looking at non-profit orgs that have no intention of paying you a dime for your time. It's easy to not get paid a salary when you have some work study funds to live off of.

But what happens next? After this second summer as a law student, I'll be moving up to the big leagues. I won't have work study to live off of, and the organizations I'm trying to work for still won't be willing to pay me a dime. So what do I do then? Should I be trying to get paying internships now, so I have a better chance of getting a job after I'm out? But wouldn't that just be succumbing to the trap of "I came to law school to change the world, but now I just want to get paid"? (I'm not saying that in order to pass judgment on anyone, least of all a law student looking for a paying job! This is just what everyone said would happen to me and happens to many public interest-minded law students.)

I guess I'll have to go the fellowship route, and hope I'll snag some pay for a project. That might not be such a ridiculous plan, except for my track record of chasing after the low-lying fruit. I'm pretty sure there's no low-lying fruit when it comes to highly-coveted post-grad fellowships. If anyone else has gone the all-public interest route and has insights on this, I would love to pick your brain for you to tell me everything is going to be alright. :)

Cash Flo Rida

I am high on the thrill of having created a cash-flow report for T's & my finances. Somebody please pour me a drink.

Look, it's snowing outside and I am still wearing my Grinch pajama pants. I have been coughing pretty much non-stop (though I *do* feel a trillion times better than I did earlier). There's not much else to do, except study Corporations or work on cover letters.

But the fact is that I am thrilled to be able to create a spreadsheet to track our finances, not just because I'm stir-crazy and delirious, but because I have been waging a one-woman lobbying campaign to have this capability for at least the last month. That's right. We've been engaged in a dirty war over money. Money, the dreaded m-word that is supposedly at the root of many marital dissolutions, has been causing me woes.

Here's the thing: T makes it all. I spend a bunch of it. But I don't make any. None. (Unless you count the $99 I earned doing mechanical turks in 2009.) And even though we are married now, we haven't done much to change our financial arrangement. Which is fine, because we've always had a pretty easy-going policy of what's mine is yours, etc. We don't keep track of who pays for what, or any of that stuff, because we realized long ago that it didn't really matter. We have a joint account for some of our expenses, but that stems mostly from the early days of our co-habitation, when we each had something to contribute. Back then, all our bills were paid out of said account, including groceries and date nights. And the rest of the money was each of ours to do what we wished with it.

Back in the day, I worked full-time and made a banked a good chunk of change. I put a lot of it in savings, which has allowed me to not panic for the first half of law school, as financial aid has been perpetually late in coughing up loan money and supposed grants for public interest students never materialized. It was a nice cushion while it lasted. Alas, the cushion has dwindled down to the dregs of my student loan money. In the meantime, T pays our bills, groceries, etc. I contribute my half to rent, pay my transportation costs, provide my own lunch money and generally spend out of my loan balance. But for the big, household stuff, it's all T.

I am so grateful for that. That cannot be overstated, and perhaps I should spend more time thinking of how awesome it is that I have a guy who is willing to bust his behind to make it rain up in this firetrap. Not only does he make sure the bills get paid (on time! something I never managed to do) but he also banked us a good refund for our taxes this year. T works full-time and he actually likes his job, when it's not totally stressing him out, so we're a lot luckier than many young folks these days. And even still, it often feels like we're hurting for cash. There's always the nagging voice in the back of our heads, saying we're not bringing in enough, or we aren't doing it right.

I never have a good sense of exactly how lucky, or how responsible, we are because I don't really pay attention. Most of the blame is on me for not asking. I don't worry about the bills because T pays them. I don't worry about savings (too much) because we long ago negotiated how much we were going to put into it each month. I don't worry about credit cards because we both stopped using them and we're paying off our respective debts. But I do worry if we're doing enough and we're doing it right. Call it my control-freakishness. Or call it me playing the part of a responsible young woman who wants to be prepared in the event of an emergency. I can see that they're two sides of the same coin.

So for a while now, I've been lobbying T to give me access to his accounts, so that I can track our spending. He has been reluctant to do so, for reasons I completely understand. I have a tendency to micromanage. I have a tendency to second-guess his decisions and insist that my way is the Right Way. We don't see eye to eye on all things related to financial-planning (who does?). But at the same time, both he & I recognize that I am good at some things.... like sorting things into boxes and making pretty little spreadsheets and crunching data. I like that stuff! And with the right data, I can create the right reports, which can help us to both see where exactly our money is going and what we can do about it.

After much haggling and "discussion", T and I came to a compromise. Instead of fully implementing a budget that we sketched out a while back, which would involve shifting a whole bunch of cash into our joint account and basically upheaving our current system, I am going to be able to track expenses through online access to all our accounts. Then I can match up what we ARE spending with what we MIGHT HAVE BUDGETED to spend. And with my cash-flow report (which I stole from my old job when I was stuck doing the CFR every day after they fired the Director of Finances), we can actually see how much money we really have... today, next week, next month!

Exciting!!!!

Hopefully, T will feel the same way. And hopefully, I can keep it up. Because if I do, I foresee an awesome wave of fiscal responsibility culminating in the greatest surf.....wait, that metaphor is going nowhere. Anyway, I feel smart and empowered and fiscally responsible today. Now where are my ladies Suze Orman and Michelle Singletary to pat me on the back?

growing up and down

just spent half an hour in bed bonding with my new husband. we had some loose leaf paper, a #2 pencil and a slew of bank accounts in list format. hawt, right? yeeeep. at 11:45 on a sunday night we decided to tackle the ol' albatross together. we now know who has what credit card balance, which of us has what investments where, and exactly how tall is the mountain of debt upon which my budding legal career is teetering.

other weekend fun included...
- watching a very drunk bachelorette lean on an unlocked door at a karaoke bar and collapse out onto the street, never to be seen again (her girlfriends re-surfaced later to dedicate a not-so-rousing rendition of "Another One Bites the Dust" to the passed out bride-to-be);
- wandering over to a law school party at nearly one in the morning, to find the whole place was wrecked, getting laughed out of a bar for not having my ID and then winding up at Best Woman's house to smoke and drink and watch the Golden Girls;
- falling asleep on the couch at 8 p.m. with 6 highlighters and a trust & estates casebook at my side, and bits of macaroni and cheese on my shirt.

sometimes i think i'm growing up. sometimes i think i'm growing down. i'm not sure there's a difference.

Reflections on this new phase

Well, I'm at the tail end of my spring break. Spring break in law school is not much like spring break in undergrad, that's for sure. It was fairly uneventful outside of the weekend trip that I took with T, his brother (BroLo) and brother's girlfriend (Girlf) to T's parents house. That was just a nice getaway, which involved a LOT of wedding planning and culminated in my being dropped off at my own parents' house on Sunday night in order to do even more wedding planning with my mom. I fear I am turning into that person who talks weddings all the time. (Did I mention that in my last post? Probably.) But, as I keep reminding myself, it has to be done. After all, I am the one who lobbied for an August '09 wedding, insisting that we'd have plenty of time.

Went shopping with my mom and aunt, and found a dress that I felt pretty confident I could turn into exactly the kind of dress I want for the ceremony. It's shorter... tea-length... and is actually a bridesmaid's dress that comes in white. I've never been one for gown-y wedding dresses, and couldn't ever tell them apart. But I did have a minor crisis of confidence when I tried on a David's Bridal gown that looked beautiful on me, and my aunt and mom were all like "ooh... you are stunning!" and I felt tempted to go the traditional route just for the positive reinforcement. But I'm trying to stick with my original idea, which isn't really all that out-there, and just make the choice and move on.

I also went and met with the caterer for the place we are renting, which is really an art gallery in a loft, but it's owned by a catering company. I was immediately impressed by the guy's list of various types of wedding dinners they've done (sushi stations, Salvadorean pupusas, empanadas, as well as more traditional fair). He also immediately had a bunch of ideas for fish that we could use, aside from or in addition to our salmoln idea. But then, when I told him we were having a fish/vegetarian wedding, with no meat or chicken, he got kind of cagey and tried to tell me that we needed to consider our guests and have at least one meat option for them. After reading online, I realize that this is a pretty common reaction from caterers, but at the time, I was pretty frustrated and annoyed, especially as I could see my mom nodding vigorously out of the corner of my eye. I talked about it with T when I got back up to the Big City and we decided we are going to stick to the vegetarian menu (it wasn't much of a decision, but I needed to hear his support in the face of opposition). So now, we are having to come up with cool vegetarian ideas for an hor d'oerves or buffet menu, so I can get them to my caterer for a proposal ASAP. Ideas welcome!

I'm getting pretty excited about this wedding, and most of all it's been a great way to ground myself in my life outside of law school for the last week. It's been nice to remember that we have this huge support network of friends and family who are excited to celebrate with us, and who are just generally around to talk to, and that not everything revolves around mid-semester hypos and brief drafts and study groups and black letter law. I'm so sick of school right now that I really just want to go through the motions and step back as much as I can without falling. I'm feeling frustrated with the fact that it feels like my life is on hold in some ways while we are up here in the Big City. For one, it sucks that we have only one income, thus we can't afford much in the way of a nice apartment and we are often spending beyond our means thanks to the higher cost of living. For two, I miss feeling like I have time to call friends or go on road trips or just take a leisurely stroll around the block with T after dinner (okay, that last one may have more to do with the cold weather). My leisure time is really just time I am spending procrastinating. I'm tired of feeling like all my down-time is just procrastination. For three, I don't like the split between my student life and my home life, or T's work life and his home life. That's a hard one to explain. I just remember T's dad saying before school started that we were going to be pulled in different directions for a while during this phase in our lives, and I understood him intellectually. Now I understand him in my gut. It's not that we aren't close, it's just that our individual lives are so different and uncoordinated right now, and that kind of sucks too. In short, law school makes me feel like I've lost a lot of control over my life. And I'm nothing if not a person who needs to feel in control of my surroundings. If that wasn't clear to me before (which it kind of was), it's certainly clear to me now.

woo hoo!!

I gots a job-ah! I gots a job-ah!

*end song*

I had an interview with a local legal aid office that has a farmworker program yesterday. It seemed to go well. The interview ended earlier than I expected, which is usually either a very good sign or a very bad sign. In this case, I took away vibes that it had gone well. Went home, did very little reading and a lot of clipping from a stack of wedding magazines a classmate gave me, then decided to check my e-mail around ten at night, where I found... the offer!

So, I haven't even written them back yet, but I am going to. This is exactly the type of job that I came to school to do. It's a little weird in that they receive federal funding so are limited to the clientele they can serve (aka no undocumented people), but they are sensitive to that and partner with other organizations so as to not have to flat out turn people away. And I'll get to do safety and health stuff and work on bringing workplace rights to a vulnerable population of workers. I might even get to take a trip across this vast state to visit farms in parts of the country I've never visited before. With this news, how am I supposed to concentrate on the second half of my semester?

Oh, well. There are worse problems.

Life continues to move along. The hour that T and I spend together in the evenings before I get to work is usually consumed by board games, my favorite way to pass time. Last night we played Trivial Pursuit and I lost in a sudden-death pie-off at the end. We ate leftover beans for dinner, in a true homage to this recession and our meager "putting in our dues" income. Somehow, I managed to get T to say, indignantly, "Hey, I'm the one who gets to make Who Moved My Cheese? jokes." I don't even remember what that was supposed to mean.

Obviously, I am far too wired for 9:15, and it's going to be one of those days where I can hardly concentrate on getting work done. Oh well.

I can see the perfect sky is torn

I heard that song "Torn" by Natalie Imbrugiliaigualia (sp?) on the radio this morning while driving to work. It inspired some sort of epiphany in me, and led to the following internal monologue:

"Wow. I should write about that in my blog when I get to work. Except. No. I swore off the computer today. Today I will actually get work done, but that means NO TOUCHING INTERNET EXPLORER... OR MINESWEEPER. Oh well. I guess I can enjoy this little gem of insight all on my own."

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway: What the hell kind of epiphany was it? Wish I could remember.

*

So I totally knocked out my advanced Minesweeper top score, which is now down to 182 seconds. I like to imagine myself in some kind of tournament like the one that takes place in that Fred Savage movie about the Super Mario Brothers 3 tournament, all intense stare and rapid-fire clicking, opponents being knocked out and collapsing to their knees all around me.

*

Law school is coming. But first: my birthday! A weekend at T's family's house! Seeing my sister! Visiting NC! Packing and moving! Borrowing $15,000! Spending a week at the beach! Some other stuff, probably!

We are trying to take it all in stride.

How to pay for law school... advice, etc.

I'm including some law school advice that I have gleaned from various internet resources, noteably FrugalLawStudent.com. This post is mainly for my own reference / benefit, but feel free to use it as you see fit!

From the Frugal Law Student blog:
- What to do with those loan refunds - aka, How to handle a big check without spending it all in three weeks.
- Everything I need to know about personal finance I learned from Carlton Banks - aka, Why the Fresh Prince of Bel Air is still relevant, 16 years since you stopped regularly watching the re-runs.
- Students turning to private loans to fund education - aka, Slow down! You better read the fine print before agreeing to take any money from those schools...

More:
- 10 Things I Now Know at 40 That I Wish I Knew at 20 (Dough Roller)
- 15 More Free Things to do During a Money-Free Weekend (The Simple Dollar)
- In Debt From Day One: A tale of caution! (Christian Science Monitor)