The Cost Of A Name Change

One item Shiner and I have not factored into our wedding budget is the cost of a name change. In every state I've ever heard of, it is free for a woman to legally change her last name when marrying her husband; it's free for her to add his name; it's free for either of them to hyphenate their names. At any rate, it's free for everyone to keep their own names. What trips up a lot of states, though, is a man who wants to take his wife's surname after marriage. Because, uh, only girls do that, right?

In many states, a man who wants to take his wife's surname would have to go through the regular name changing process. And it is a process. It varies by state, but it generally takes at least a couple hundred bucks, a court appearance or two, and oh yes, the paperwork. That is just sexist.

But California has now joined six other states (Hawaii, Iowa, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, and North Dakota--now there's a red-blue coalition) in requiring equal treatment of men and women in this respect. Congratulations and thank you to Michael and Diana Bijon for that. Michael (née Buday) successfully sued the state when he was told he needed to have a lengthy and costly name change proceeding before he could take his wife's name. Had his wife become Ms. Buday, the cost would have been $0.

Name changes are still a pain. I work with a woman who got married several weeks ago and took her husband's name. She's still dealing with the DMV, Social Security, and whoever it is at the county who tracks car titles. And she hasn't even started with the credit cards, the bank accounts, the passport, the job paperwork... Yikes. But we are one small step closer to a country in which everyone has an inexpensive path to lots of post-nuptial bureaucratic hassle.

Kate Harding at Shakes has more on why this important, aside from the straight up cheapness factor.

Resume Rules For Job Hunting Fools

I've now had three very different jobs where part of my responsibilities have involved reviewing resumes and giving input in hiring decisions. Since we're coming up on graduation season, I wanted to share my (by now very strong) opinions about resume structure and content in the inconceivable event that a prospective employer has not already snatched you up and offered to pay you gazillions of dollars and excellent health insurance for being the fabulously talented individual your doting grandmother believes you to be. I'll start out with a caveat that this is all pretty subjective, but please consider it food for thought because if your resume ever happens across my desk, this is what I want to see.

1) Keep it to one page. Academic CVs are obviously a different beast. But for traditional resumes, for the love of gobstoppers, please keep it to one side of one sheet of 8 1/2" x 11" paper. Edit judiciously. Play with margins, spacing, font, and font size if you must. When I see a resume that goes for two pages I assume most of it is fluff. I expect to see French club--excuse me, le cercle français. I impute arrogance and verbosity. None of these are good things.

2) Be specific. Compare: "Led volunteer group." With: "Trained and supervised group of 15 junior high girls in entrepreneurial after-school program." Or compare: "Interests include the arts." With: "Interests include screwball comedies of the 1930s and 40s." In each of these cases, the first phrasing makes the job seeker sound like a boring robot, or someone who created their resume with a set of web-generated checkboxes. And I, as the potential interviewer, have to work far too hard to come up with a question about these entries that doesn't make me sound like Ralph Wiggum. Do you... like... stuff? Don't do that to me. I won't like you very much. On the other hand, people who are specific on their resumes are memorable. They make it really easy for me to ask questions and learn more about them, and easy is good because I honestly have not spent the past hour googling you, studying your resume and otherwise preparing for your interview. I scanned it when I got it, and maybe again five minutes before you walked in the door if we both are lucky. I want your resume to read like it was written by an actual person, not a robot zombie cubicle dweller. There's no shame in being a cubicle dweller, but no prospective employer wants to feel like their shop is a bunch of veal-fattening pens.

3) Leave out the "duh" entries. I cannot think of an office-based job where knowledge of Word is not a minimum skill set. I will assume you are proficient in Word. If you are not proficient in Word (or Excel, or HTML, or Project, or whatever the minimum knowledge base for your field is), get some training. From a friend, an adult ed course, a job training program, DIY by fooling around with a book and a computer, whatever. Pedigree doesn't matter here. Your local public library should be able to hook you up with these resources. Learn it, know it, love it: those programs will let you do your job well. And then don't put it on your resume. Putting "duh" entries on your resume makes me think you are either filling space because you don't have much else to say in the way of relevant experience, or that you think Word is some special skill that gives you a leg up on other applicants, which means you may seriously misunderstand the nature of the job. For lawyers and law students, yes, "Westlaw-certified" is a "duh" entry. What the hell does that even mean? It sounds like a USDA grade for clueless people.

4) Fonts with stupid-sounding names do not belong anywhere on your resume. If its name includes any of the following words, I prohibit you from using this font: comic, Gothic, -bats, -dings, or the name of any symphonic composer. Nothing that purports to look like script. Unless you have to use Arial Light for spacing reasons even after you have ruthlessly edited, use a serif font, and make it big enough that a reviewer with poor eyesight can read it easily. Seriously, be kind with your font choices. I hate being reminded that my eyesight sucks, it makes me feel old and curmudgeonly. You do not want these feelings associated with your resume. You cannot go wrong with Times New Roman, especially if you are applying for a job with yuppies.

5) Edit. EDIT!!! For the love of all that is holy and not, make sure you don't look like an idiot. Or worse, like a pompous idiot. I am too good (or guilt-ridden) a person to do this but someone out there will submit your most egregious mistakes to some web-based list, and then even I am not too good or guilt-ridden to snicker at your grammatical misfortune.

6) Leave the "controversial" entries in. This is a non-caveat to rule number 2. First, a personal anecdote: I did some work with a "controversial" (read: media-savvy, politically progressive) organization when I was in school, and when interviewers saw this on my resume they either loved it or hated it. It was a great self-selection tool for me, because I knew I wouldn't end up anywhere I couldn't be myself. Now that I'm on the other side of things, it actually provides me some useful information about the candidate, and no, not as a litmus test for whether they agree with me. I do love seeing resumes with a liberal, pro-choice, pro-human rights, green, etc. bent because I want to interview that person and hear about the work they've done. But I also know that the choice to include that information was probably a considered one, and one that I respect a lot. For that same reason I also appreciate the resumes that include things that show a conservative bent, because I remember how my law school career counselor tried to dissuade me from tipping my political hand, and I like people who have the sisu to not take their career counselor's advice in this respect. And while I wouldn't necessarily want to take a Federalist out for a pint, I know I work with people who would, so it all evens out in the end. Everyone has someone they want to buy a round for.

Obviously this rule does not hold if you are applying with a nonprofit or policy group whose work is antithetical to your beliefs. Unless you've recently had a seriously convincing come to Jesus experience you are an idiot to apply for such a job, much less worry about your resume for it. But if you're looking for regular old office work in a non-policy, non-lobbying office, please go out on a limb and show some opinion. Yes, it will lose you some jobs with assholes. But so will having gone to a state school, or being in the top quarter of your class rather than the top 10%, or being on a second career, or not being on a second career. Assholes are picky like that. And trust me, if it can be at all avoided you do not want to work for an asshole. So screen 'em out.

Does This Mean I Can Get My Wii In Pink?

I've read a couple of posts lately about playing Wii for fitness. For example, Trent at the Simple Dollar uses Dance Dance Revolution as a frugal alternative to a gym membership. Hey, if it's fun, I'm all for it. I am no fun hater. He's actually got me curious about giving it a go myself, since at this point my gym membership is mostly just for show, and I miss feeling like I'm strong and quick enough to kick ass at the drop of a hat. A desk job will do that to you.

But that doesn't mean Nintendo's announcement that it will market Wii Fit as a weight loss tool for women doesn't tick me off. I could orate at length about using fatphobia to sell women stuff they don't need or the cultural obsession with women's (and welcome to the club, increasingly men's) shapes. But today I'd like to focus on the insulting stupidity of it all.

Really, Nintendo? This is your grand push to bring the XX's into the electronic gaming fold? Not female protagonists? Not deflating some of those gravity-defying spherical boobs? Not continuing to engage the already sizeable number of female gamers out there? No Tetris/Yoshi/Dr. Mario/Collapse/Q-bert updates (am I alone in my love for the geometric game?) Just Hey, you! Fat lady! Play our really expensive game! Get less fat! You're too dumb to even notice that you're exercising!

Not to mention the bloggers I've seen who are already exericising to their Wii's are dudes. No, if it involves losing weight, it must be marketed to women. I tell you, if the Wii Fit add-on is pink and sparkly, I will vomit.

Hey there, Feministing Readers

Imagine my surprise today when, in my routine morning bloghopping, I saw a shoutout... to myself. Jen at Feministing gave me some love this morning. I'll send it right back her way because there is no better way to start a Monday morning than to know one of my favorite bloggers has read my stuff.

If you're visiting via Feministing, I hope you'll poke around, visit a while, and let me know if there's anything you especially want to see Feminist Finance tackle. Here are some places to start.

And if you're not visiting via Feministing, those fine folks are well worth a visit or many.

Marrying Debt

This post has been a long time coming. Yesterday morning Shiner e-mailed me to tell me that he'd just sent his stimulus check to his American Express, and that the balance on that card was now below $7,500. To understand how huge this is, I need to give you a little background.

Back before we decided to get married, I knew Shiner had credit card debt. He knew that I had none. From what he said about it, I guessed he had about $10,000 in debt--not a small amount, but not paralyzing. I knew he was sending payments beyond his minimums to try to pay it down. He knew it was important to me that he was doing that. And I trusted that he had it pretty well in hand.

So we decided to get married. And it was great. We didn't tell our parents or our friends right away, we just kept it to ourselves for a little bit, and savored the fact that we had this exciting, fantastic secret. And then we decided to pay for the wedding ourselves, so we start talking about possible dates and budgets and how much we could save each month and how all those pieces fit together. How about Fall 2008? Yes, Fall of 2008 would be lovely. I've always had a thing for fall, anyway.

And I told him I really wanted his credit card debt gone by the time we got married, that I thought he can do it, and we should account for that in setting realistic saving targets. OK, he said.

Except when he added up his credit card debt, it was nearly $42,000.

I needed it to sink in, too. $42,000.

He'd never done the math before. That was more than his annual gross salary. I was aghast. I felt blindsided. I felt pissed off. I told him we couldn't set a date. I couldn't set a date. I grew up in a fantastically debt-averse household. I am a debt Puritan. I couldn't live the way he'd been living for the past few years. Whether he realized it or not, he'd gone off the deep end and I wasn't going to legally hitch my wagon to his until he'd come back from the precipice, and until I trusted that he would not inch back up on it again after we got married. It felt like financial infidelity, even though his accounts were all still his and my accounts were all still mine. It wasn't as though he'd been deliberately deceiving me, that was just a side effect of having been deceiving himself. I still loved him, still wanted to marry him, but all of a sudden I didn't feel like I could trust him not to drag me into a hole with him. And that lack of trust is a pretty good sign that we shouldn't get married quite yet.

So then all of a sudden we weren't getting married. Not in the foreseeable future, anyway. Certainly not by Fall 2008. Maybe not for a couple of years. Who knows? If he wasn't able or--more scary, willing--to rejigger his financial life, maybe never. It was so awful. I remember very little of the specifics because I basically zoned out of my life. I took at least two mental health days, days when I just couldn't drag myself to work. I think Shiner felt even worse, though. He was like the walking dead. Remember, we still hadn't told our families or our friends, so neither of us had anyone we felt comfortable talking to about the situation. I alternated between wanting to comfort him and resenting that he'd been such a bonehead about it in the first place. The guy went to school for accounting! How could he not get that he was spending way more money than he had? Did he not care?

Not setting a date was tough on me, but it was killing Shiner. God love him, while I was being a logical, self-preserving hardass, he just wanted to get maaaarriiiied. A couple of days after the big reveal, he came up with a plan, hoping to get me confident enough in him and his financial committment to set a date. His plan basically involved spending nothing, cashing in all of his investments, getting a second job, opening a couple of zero-percent balance transfer cards, and working like a damn dog to pay off his two high-interest, high-balance cards by the end of 2008 so we could get married in January 2009. It was going to be tight, but it was theoretically possible.

We made some tweaks (I wasn't about to let him cash out the tiny amount he had in his retirement account for my benefit--not when the whole point was for us to be old and doddering together), and he went into action. I stayed anxious, but was slightly optimistic. I could tell his heart was in the right place, but I was worried about his follow through. I decided I was OK with setting a date and making some plans, but I was also only putting down deposits I was willing to forfeit if Shiner didn't follow through and I had to call the whole thing off. I knew he wouldn't be able to pay everything off by the time we got married. That was, and is, simply too steep a hil for such a short period of time. But if he could pay off the two high-interest cards, he'd owe a third of what he started out with and would have worked his ass off in the process. I don't need perfection. Working his ass off was good enough to prove to me that he knew it was serious. We could tackled the rest together.

Shiner has been too embarassed for me to blog about this before, and I have respected that. But I think he's surprised himself with the numbers, and is so proud of himself he's told me I can blog about his debt now. I think he wants me to blog about it.

So what's the status update? Shiner has:

paid off the Chase (at 29.78%!!!!) with his second balance transfer, back in early December.

knocked down the Am Ex balance to $7,453 (at 15.98%)

a $5,248 balance on his Citi card, on a 0% offer that expires in October '09

a $7,064 balance on his Discover card, on a 0% offer. He can keep that 0% rate indefinitely so long as he makes two purchases a month at the normal interest rate, so he's been buying two packs of gum per month to minimize the interest charges

...for a total credit card debt of $19,765.

Compared with his original balance of $41,935, that is phenomenal progress--a 53% reduction in less than six months! In a follow-up post I'll describe how he's done it and how the realization that I am "marrying debt" has affected my approach to money, debt, and us.