Today is a better day...made better with bacon

Okay, I just slayed one of the big, bad, scary wolves keeping me up at night.

So if you're just tuning in. My sainted aunt passed away. She was a participant in a Wespath plan that had a death benefit (like a life insurance policy).  Due to some not-everyone-is-good-at-their-job, a beneficiary form she had filled out in early 2000s was overlooked. As a result, the death benefit was paid out to my aunt's Estate. That can't be cashed without opening an estate account and first paying creditors - errr, no. A third party made me aware of the overlooked form.

I contacted Wespath way back in February shortly after my sainted aunt passed away. They upset me and would not budge. They paid out the check to the Estate. I politely returned it. A couple months passed. I followed up with them (and contacted a lawyer through one of those legal plans you can get through work), and now they finally agreed to honor the beneficiary form.

The third party that clued me in to the form gave me some percentages that I am now learning included contingent beneficiaries. I didn't know that until now.  So basically, I thought the money was being split about 5 ways and I wanted to make sure the other people were getting their fair share since they lived overseas. It turns out it's only being split two ways (so says untrustworthy Wespath).  Well, I'm still waiting to see the form myself, but if this is the case, then this matter is officially resolved.

I had really wanted to make sure my overseas relatives got something, but since they were never the primary beneficiaries, I have less to fight for. For all intents and purposes of my involvement, this should not keep me up another night. (Fast forward to 7p, and I tried again and failed to get them to release the 2006 form; I don't know why I've decided to die on this hill when I was just happy about this a few hours ago.)

Well there is still a missing check from Apr 2020, but I'm hoping that is just lost in the mail somewhere.

Other than that, one of my fake job application got a hit this morning. It felt so good! I am officially addicted to job applying in so far that it lights up all my reward centers when I get a positive response. It was a hit from the Big Pharma company that's been stringing me along. I know in a couple weeks the fake app is going to cause some more emotional distress, but the game of it all got me excited when I saw the email this morning. I don't know what my course of action is but my feelings have definitely moved from doom-and-gloom to excitement.

But yeah, last night was rough; I was up till 3a lamenting my otherwise perfectly good life.

Bacon
In other news, I have eaten 2 pounds of bacon over the course of 4 days. That can't be good. Of note, the cheaper bacon was actually tastier.

Hot rolls with hot bacon is like endorphin for the veins.

Money
I placed my first order with a securities broker last night. I've been checking periodically throughout the day to see if anything different happens. I have no idea what happens next. My primary goal is to buy into the mutual fund and set up a recurring investment.

Trying to churn the Varo bank bonus. It's $75 for direct depositing $200. Since I don't have room on my direct deposit until June, I'm looking for alternatives. No data points for me yet.

Also, what is everyone doing with their stimulus checks?? All my personal money movement; setting up house; and these random infusions of free money has gotten me all turned around. I don't feel that motivated to just invest it all right away. I don't know. I'm sure I had a formula at some point when I started my personal finance journey on what to do with influxes of money, but I can't recall at this particular moment.

Paid time off (PTO)
So one of the things getting my panties in a bunch yesterday was trying to figure out whether to take my scheduled paid time off on Thursday and Friday. If it were my old job where we had limited vacation days, I think the decision would likely be to just keep my vacation days.  Since that's been the case at every other job, I'm still stuck in that mentality to conserve vacation days for something really huge. But since at Call Center 2, we have "discretionary" vacation days, it feels like why not? I don't lose anything. The main reason I was thinking about "saving" these 2 vacation days is because on a day like Monday, I had no calls, so it seemed pointless to waste them.  But fast -forward to 7p today (I started this post in the a.m.) after I've already had 5 calls, I'm leaning towards taking the days off.

1 month as a homeowner
Why did I schedule these days off anyway? Well, Thursday, is April 23, so that'll be 1 month since closing!! I just saw the note on my calendar. Hadn't even realized. I'm guessing I thought I would need time to soak it all in and finish any last minute errands, catch my breath, slow down, enjoy...all that. I didn't anticipate the actual calm and ease settling into my new place turned out to be thanks to coronavirus. I've spent most of the last month sheltered-in-place, and it turns out when you don't have to get dressed for work, there's not much to unpack.  Since the bulk of my belongings were clothes, I made the decision to just keep them tucked away in plastic containers.

I mostly just reorganized things I had in boxes - a few boxes of important papers, my college textbooks, papers and diplomas, memorabilia and pictures and notes and things I've written. When I've had them out before, I mostly just unhappily dusted them. So I decided to just leave them stored.

But there you have it. I made it one month as a lifetime-leaser! If I can find something yummy, I might get some champagne when I go deposit this refund from my homeowner's insurance (apparently I paid twice).  #Escrow.