Budget & Career | Offbeat Home

This is Offbeat Home's archive of Budget & Career posts.

Your budget and career can totally overlap into your home life — and what's more, we've just GOT to have a place to talk about this stuff. Offbeat workers unite!

Most Recent Posts About Budget & Career

Notgeld (emergency currency) was issued by German cities, boroughs, even private companies while there was a shortage of official coins and bills. And it's so pretty. Shared by Iliazd. Used under Creative Commons license.

I recently enjoyed Twenties Hacker's letter to twenty-something about emergency funds:

Dear 20-somethings,

Life is unexpected. Things happen every day that we don't expect to happen. A car accident on our route to work making us late for the day. A family member passing away. A car breaking down and needing a fix-up. Situations like this can be very stressful, especially when money is involved. We all know stress isn't good for us, yet we continually feel this way. One of the biggest causes of stress in life is money. But why should it be?

An emergency fund is simply a pool of money saved away usually in a savings account that can be easily accessed in case of an unexpected situation that requires it. The main reason that everyone should have one is in case of job loss, and with this recession still going on, you never know if your job is actually guaranteed.

However, an emergency fund can be used for many other things as well. It would be kind of silly to leave money in a savings account specifically for job loss, and then it never happens. I am personally slowly building mine up, and I've already had to dig into it once to replace my entire windshield after a massive crack went down the middle of it.

Once a month or so, we get a little scope-creepy and take a look at budget and career issues. Today, I'mma put on my old corporate job hat and give you the three questions that YOU should ask your interviewer, to totally impress them and make them start visualizing all the ways they are desperate to have you working this job.

I run a business from my home, and I often have to meet with clients and collaborators. I've been meeting in coffee shops, but I want to make a change: some meetings require lots of materials or even room to spread out drawings and papers, and I hate lugging this stuff around and then splaying out my work in a cafe. However, I want to make sure I'm projecting a professional persona even when I greet a client at my front door and lead them through the living room to my office. My house is fine — it's neat, though doesn't have a ton of furniture. It just feels strange to invite people to see where I live AND work.

Am I silly to worry about this? Is there anything you can suggest to allay my twinge of weirdness about mixing business and personal worlds?

GOOD DAYS:
Shower
Wear a bra
Leave the house
No internet drama to deal with
Speak face-to-face with someone other than immediately family

My beloved and I are not the neatest people on earth. We try, and we spend quite a bit of time each week cleaning up our humble little home, but ultimately the place is usually a little messy.

That being said, he has a habit of leaving his shoes smack in the middle of the front door, and I trip over them every day when I get home from work. This shit drives me INSANE.

One day I snapped. I told him every time he leaves his shoes in front of the door he owes me a dollar. The habit persisted, and every dollar he gives me goes straight into our wedding bank.

Since I had three business and personal accounts at two different crappy banks who definitely cheated their way to prosperity, last month I closed my accounts on Bank Transfer Day.

Wanted: ideas for cheap and easy cubicle decor. Already considered: potted plants, pretty pictures, subversive cross-stitchnarf.

Do not want: Anything that smells or makes noise or blinks.

Here's the thing that no one seems to understand about freelancing: it's not about finding job listings — it's about marketing your skills and whoring yourself non-stop so that work comes to you. Trawling job boards or Craigslist is not marketing yourself, and it's not networking.