— पांच हजार नौ सौ बासठ —
Today is the third paycheck of a three-paycheck month, but it is the first to fully reflect my salary increase. For multiple reasons, the three paychecks this month were all notably different amounts: the check on the 2nd reflected only days worked in 2025, so it reflected the old salary. The check on the 16th reflected the new salary for 7 of the pay period's 10 days, because the new salary was only in effect as of January 1. So, my second check this month was 9.6% higher than the first (I'm talking only take-home pay here; keep in mind things like deferrals for the FSA account or my whopping 29% being allocated to 401(k)); today's check was 6.3% higher than the second but 16.5% higher than the first.
(Which is fascinating: my net pay salary increase was 12.3%. But, there would be a host of factors in this discrepancy, not least of which is the roughly $12 that gets taken out of the first paycheck of the month for my annual Orca Card transit pass, and not out of the others. If I add $12 to the first paycheck's total, then the difference between third and first paycheck this month is . . . 15.6%. Hmm. And we increased the FSA deferral this year. Maybe there were changes in tax law? I bet Shobhit would know.)
In any case, I have about $234 more to play with from any paycheck that is not the first paycheck of the month—the Orca Card cost is going up, so I'm guessing foing forward it'll be about $13 less than that from the first paycheck every month. I've already edited a preliminary budget for 2026, and pretty much all of this extra money is being allocated to travel expenses: What previously was $39 per paycheck for the trip to Albuquerque has been raised significantly, to $100; and I've added a separate line item for random travel expenses, at $150 (this could get tinkered with, but it will cover other stuff I have not specifically budgeted for over the year—anniversary trips, the biannual Family Vacation, things like that). I also did some historic spending calculations on Shanti and Guru, and settled on $42 per month for setting aside future pet expenses. I came to a rough estimate of $8,900 total over a likely maximum of a 20-year lifespan, and then just rounded up to $10,000. That divided by 20 is $500 a year, which is then $41.66 per month, which I rounded to $42.
And this basically leaves what I had been previously sending as regular payments to my savings account unchanged. I'm totally good with that, especially as this budgeting all but guarantees that I will never, ever have to draw from savings for travel costs. I've already got nearly $11,500 in savings which is plenty.
So really, functionally, when it comes to day to day living, this raise isn't changing much of anything at all. The key thing it changes is flexibility with travel planning, which I'll hardly have to worry about affording anymore. That alone makes me very happy, though. Now, assumin we do postpone the Australia trip another year, I will need to do some further adjustments to account for that, swapped out for World Pride Cape Town in February 2028, with Australia pushed from December 2027 to December 2028. But first we need to come up with an estimate of how much I should save for the Cape Town trip specifically.
Also assuming the postponement of the trip to Australia, though, this will leave no major trip planned within the calendar year 2027. That cannot stand! I'm thinkin we need to start brainstorming really cool ideas for our anniversary next year. London? Paris? Mexico City? Somewhere we have yet to consider, even if it's closer? A return to Chicago, perhaps? Honestly right now I am very open to ideas. The possibilities are endless. I just don't want it to be a local or regional getaway, which we typically only do for or anniversary when there's already some other huge trip planned the same year.
What I am most proud of with all this is that I am still living
way below my means. It just doesn't feel like it, mostly because I am sending nearly a third of my income to a retirement account—something I resisted for a long time but am now happy I am doing. I do feel strongly that it is more than enough though, and I have no need to increase it.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ बासठ —
— पांच हजार नौ सौ बासठ —
In other news, Laney and I met at AMC Pacific Place yesterday to see the new Sam Raimi film,
Send Help, and we both
really enjoyed it. I had already been struck by its shockingly high MetaCritic score of 76, so I went in fully expecting to enjoy it—and then it
still significantly exceeded my expectations. It was so much fun.
Laney and I both had a blast. I rode the bus with her back up the hill, which meant she got off at the Broadway stop and I got off on 15th. The movie showtime was at 4:30, there's always about half an hour of trailers, I got home maybe a quarter after 7:00, then spent the requisite hour or so writing the review.
I thought maybe Shobhit and I would watch
Fallout last night, but he was engaged in one of his Actor Awards screeners (in this case,
Hamnet). I totally spaced that I had this week's
The Pitt to watch, so I still need to watch that. I spent the next short while editing my iTunes track for the song "Temporary One" from the 1997 Fleetwood Mac live album
The Dance, because it's on several of my Fleetwood Mac playlists and I'm sick of hearing Lindsey buckingham talk for a full minute about the next track on the album when it's never the next track in a playlist. So now, it ends at the 3:06 mark. Much better. Shut up, Lindsey!
By the time Shobhit's movie was done, I didn't feel like staying up until 10:30 watching TV, so I just got ready for bed.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ बासठ —
Lastly I will just mention that over my lunch break just now, I finished the Alan Light book
Don't Stop: Why We (Still) Love Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, and it was delightful. Not perfect, or the best book I have ever read, but still delightful—and easily better than either of the autobiographies Mick Fleetwood wrote, or certainly the over-broad biography I read last year. I know I just mentioned these comparisons just a few days ago—like, in Tuesday's post—but it bears repeating. I mentioned it on Tuesday because of the playlist it inspired me to create; I mention it now because I just finished it. It's the best book about Fleetwood Mac I have read, and I am certain it's because of its narrower focus on just one album. The fact that it's also the best album ever released by anyone in the history of albums (and I do include Madonna in that) doesn't hurt.
I had ten minutes left of my lunch break when I finished it, so I walked it the three blocks over to the Central Library to return it, so I could also pick up my next book:
Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle, a novel set during Oscar season which makes now the perfect time to read it. I'm pretty excited to read it.
— पांच हजार नौ सौ बासठ —
[posted 12:43pm]
