I continue to be absolutely blown away every time I hear something new about how badly we treat the air traffic controllers in this country. I travel every month all over the world for work, and I know that each time I'm hurdling toward the ground at 400 mph, that I'm safe in the hands of one of our talented air traffic controllers.
Then I hear again today that the FAA has released new staffing target numbers. The new target numbers will have a mixed impact upon airports throughout the country and the effects will be felt on a case by case basis.
How does this affect you?
Air traffic controllers are the brain that controls the clumsy arms and legs of the thousands of domestic and international flights. The FAA's new plan is like huffing paint fumes for that brain. Instead of taking care of the brain by giving it vitamins and plenty of rest, instead the FAA is starving it of oxygen (cutting overtime pay). What this means for you is longer delays, more canceled flights and generally more aggravation every time you travel. For me, it means that when I'm accelerating down the runway in the bowels of a 747, I know that I'm being watched by air traffic controllers that are ready for retirement, underpaid, overworked and bitter about their job.
Since the FAA enforces what basically amount to jailhouse rules in the tower, less and less young people are signing up to become air traffic controllers. According to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, despite the FAA's imaginary numbers, 2007 marks the 3rd annual decline in net increases to air traffic controller employment numbers.
The bottom line is that we are losing our air traffic controllers to time and the FAA is doing nothing but burying its head in the sand.
It makes my blood boil that in this Country we take these kind of things for granted until they come back and bite us.
The FAA needs to draft a new budget that rewards these dedicated men and women for their work. In this new budget needs to be a target marketing campaign towards young people who are not yet interested in becoming air traffic controllers. If we don't have anything less than 95% online departures, do we really need all the "passengers bill of rights"? I don't think so. I'm happy to just get off the ground, get to sleep, and then arrive. Especially the arrive part of that equation.
Friday, March 9, 2007
$10 Hockey Game
Since Mrs. Newlywed and I have put a cap on our cash spending in a month, we're both a lot more conscious about how much cash we have at any given time. Last night we were lucky enough to score some NHL tickets. We went and we ended up spending only $10 combined! This was previously unheard of if we went to a sports game together, because we'd usually split some food and drink plenty of beer. This time though, we had only 1 $7 beer and 1 $3 soda and still had a great time.
Of course, our home team lost, but that's because they're just terrible.
Regards,
M
Of course, our home team lost, but that's because they're just terrible.
Regards,
M
Thursday, March 8, 2007
Monthly Expenses
We've finally pinned down our monthly expenses into a workable spreadsheet. The wonderful people over at Foxway.com let us download an awesome budget tracking utility spreadsheet. We went through our checkbook and wrote all the transactions in the budget tracking sheet.
My biggest reason for doing this was to check how much cash we were spending each month and budget that cash into a real number. Before we did this, we were basically hemorrhaging cash out of the ATM machine, without keeping track of what we are spending it on. The next step is to isolate what exactly we spend that cash on. We've isolated gas and groceries already and budgeted enough money for those. Other expenses like dinners, movies and general entertainment need to be isolated.
We also discovered that now that we have an expenses budget tracking system, we can load the check writing account with an extra $500 to create a good "new 0" for our account. Between paychecks, our check writing account would plummet in the middle and end of the month to near 0 balance. Now we have put a $500 buffer in and will use $500 as the "new 0". Before that was unthinkable, because we didn't know how much we were spending per month. Now since we have our monthly budget tracked and locked down, we'll be able to keep that buffer there and not go under the new 0.
I am VERY happy to have put a cap on the amount of cash that was hemorrhaging out of our account.
Regards,
M
My biggest reason for doing this was to check how much cash we were spending each month and budget that cash into a real number. Before we did this, we were basically hemorrhaging cash out of the ATM machine, without keeping track of what we are spending it on. The next step is to isolate what exactly we spend that cash on. We've isolated gas and groceries already and budgeted enough money for those. Other expenses like dinners, movies and general entertainment need to be isolated.
We also discovered that now that we have an expenses budget tracking system, we can load the check writing account with an extra $500 to create a good "new 0" for our account. Between paychecks, our check writing account would plummet in the middle and end of the month to near 0 balance. Now we have put a $500 buffer in and will use $500 as the "new 0". Before that was unthinkable, because we didn't know how much we were spending per month. Now since we have our monthly budget tracked and locked down, we'll be able to keep that buffer there and not go under the new 0.
I am VERY happy to have put a cap on the amount of cash that was hemorrhaging out of our account.
Regards,
M
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
"Blinks"
I thought I was really clever by calling the blog links "blinks". I'm sure I'm not the first person to do this, but I felt like I was, so there you go.
Those are the Personal Finance blogs I read everyday. They are my inspiration to make this blog and I only hope to eventually equal the quality and frequencies of their postings.
Blinks, I think that's a good one.
Regards,
M
Those are the Personal Finance blogs I read everyday. They are my inspiration to make this blog and I only hope to eventually equal the quality and frequencies of their postings.
Blinks, I think that's a good one.
Regards,
M
Welcome to Newlywed Finance
Welcome!
This is the first installment of what will hopefully be many blog posts regarding my journey through the treacherous yet fulfilling subject of my personal finance and personal finance in general. There is a Mrs. Newlywed, and she will be involved as well from time to time with guest posts.
Here's a bit of backstory:
Mrs. Newlywed and I were married on September 15, 2006. We were engaged for about a year and a half before we tied the knot and had dated for about 5 years before that. Her family is excellent with money. Mine, not so good. So it was a meeting of two different money cultures and it has been somewhat of an uphill battle with our personal finances since we've met. We are both relatively calm people, so we've never screamed at each other over the issue of money, but we have had to have frank discussions, create budgets, create new budgets when we didn't stick to the old ones, and so on.
The absolute best decision we ever made was to stop using credit cards entirely and pay only cash. I'll post a blog about just this topic in the near future.
We now have a detailed budget, an emergency fund, 401k and a Roth IRA, vacation savings and are on our way to buying a home next year.
The purpose of this blog is to track our progress while detailing our journey so far. I'm excited about it and I hope a few other Personal Finance bloggers are too.
Regards,
M
This is the first installment of what will hopefully be many blog posts regarding my journey through the treacherous yet fulfilling subject of my personal finance and personal finance in general. There is a Mrs. Newlywed, and she will be involved as well from time to time with guest posts.
Here's a bit of backstory:
Mrs. Newlywed and I were married on September 15, 2006. We were engaged for about a year and a half before we tied the knot and had dated for about 5 years before that. Her family is excellent with money. Mine, not so good. So it was a meeting of two different money cultures and it has been somewhat of an uphill battle with our personal finances since we've met. We are both relatively calm people, so we've never screamed at each other over the issue of money, but we have had to have frank discussions, create budgets, create new budgets when we didn't stick to the old ones, and so on.
The absolute best decision we ever made was to stop using credit cards entirely and pay only cash. I'll post a blog about just this topic in the near future.
We now have a detailed budget, an emergency fund, 401k and a Roth IRA, vacation savings and are on our way to buying a home next year.
The purpose of this blog is to track our progress while detailing our journey so far. I'm excited about it and I hope a few other Personal Finance bloggers are too.
Regards,
M
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