Tag Archives: moving on

The Last Time

I have probably talked about it before in other posts just in passing, but this is something that has been on my mind more frequently.  It was most obvious when I replace the roof on my house, which came with a 30 year warranty.  The realization was, "I’m never going to do this again in my lifetime."  And that started snowballing into analysis of what else was going to be the last time I ever did something.  I just bought a high-quality couch and I don’t expect I’ll be spending that kind of money on a couch ever again.

A lot of it is purposely buying things that will outlive you.  There are some things that I’ve purchased that I didn’t expect to last as long as they have, like my office desk and its matching accessories.  They’re business-grade furniture pieces and they are holding up amazingly well after 15 years.

On another viewpoint of that, I was considering my house.  I have a 3 bedroom house.  There’s the master, the guest, and the third is my listening room with my stereo.  In that consideration, I came to the conclusion that I don’t need a guest room.  I’m never going to have a guest in my house.  I literally have no friends that would visit.  If they did, they’d stay at a hotel.  That room is literally wasted space.

The fact it took so long for me to come to that conclusion is surprising to me, and in a way, it’s not.  It’s kind of instilled in you that you need to have guest accommodations.  For why?  Just in case!  You never know.  But I really should know.  My life is not that complex.  I don’t have or want a lot of connections.  It’s just an old-fashioned tradition that doesn’t need to be in this modern world of convenience.

So I decided.  No more guest bedroom.  It’s going to be another room for me, not a room for some mystery nobody that’s never going to show up.  Like JG Wentworth paraphrased, it’s my space and I want it now!  Getting a high utilization out of this house is key to maximizing value.  Otherwise, why don’t I have a two bedroom house?  Because then I wouldn’t have a listening room.

In my daydreams, I thought it would be great to have a big house with a bunch of different rooms and each room could serve one purpose.  I never really looked at what I had and realized I had the space to create a room with a defined purpose – and that purpose not be "being empty".

So, it was a year or so ago when I hosted a guest who had COVID and had to isolate in the guest room.  And oddly enough, at the time, I didn’t realize that would be the last time I would have a guest staying in the house.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Lots of ground to cover here, so be forewarned, and a lot of it is in the no-fucks-to-be-given-anymore realm, so be doubly forewarned.

To begin, all of this now is uncharted territory for me.  Recently I broke 50 years of age and maybe a couple years ago, you could not have convinced me otherwise I would be alive right now.  That plan had been in the works for many years prior and it was actually coming to fruition, meaning I was beginning my plans to hold down the power button on my life.  For whatever reason, I told my doctor about it and after the assistance of some significant pharmaceuticals, I remain.

You might think this is the ideal opportunity to completely reinvent myself, since these days were never planned for, they have no expectations.  But that is silly talk.  This is no "second wind".  That was maybe 15 years ago and I squeezed all the life out of it I had, after all, I had a plan for the finish line.  This is "coasting to the finish line."  This is more a period of reflection and maintenance and existence.  And some of that has been done recently and because it has no repercussions to me in this new uncharted, unplanned life, I have the willingness to jot all of it down.

Whether coincidental to my milestone birthday or not, I received an unsolicited package on my doorstep from my estranged brother.  Within were documents and photos of me and my family from the past.  Very likely, it was everything from my parents house before it was sold off, all of it crammed and scattered in a plastic tub.  Incredibly, of the picture frames loosely placed in the tub, two wooden and one metal frame were broken, and yet, no glass was broken.  The whole package carried a sentiment of "This is now out of my house and is your problem now."  So it is.

Sometimes, actually probably most times, when a new problem is thrust on me, it is pushed to the top of the stack instead of the end of the queue.  This new problem was no different.  So I right away took all the photos and documents out and sorted them on the floor.  I arranged them by photo size and put them into a new box for processing.  The processing I rather wanted to do was throw it all away.  However, my archivist instincts forced me to to evaluate the potential loss of this information, useful to only a few people, really, and of that, only of curiosity.  Since that evaluation result was greater than zero, I had to concede that at least a modicum of effort must be made to preserve it.  So, I chose to scan everything before disposal.

The next two days were spent swapping photos and pages in a flatbed scanner, hours on end, to capture everything in 300dpi.  Thinking back to my early computing days, this would be unfathomable.  The storage required for 300dpi scans of hundreds of photos would be an astronomical cost.  Each picture over 1MB in size?  Back then, things were huge if they were 300kb in size.  So, time and technology were on my side for this effort.  And personal time is also available as I don’t have much going on.  I am able to do another hobby concurrently with this task, however this did take precedence over a future pending project (maybe to be announced).

So, hundreds of photos from my past, many I’ve never seen before, suddenly fall in my lap.  How does an experience like that make you feel?  Well, it sort of forces you to reconcile your past with your present, and for me that wasn’t all that pleasant.

I did not have an unpleasant childhood.  I was extremely privileged.  I was spoiled.  However, I was also very solitary.  I never really had more than one or two friends at a time.  In ignorance of my affluence and despite the lack of socialization, I was a very fun-loving, happy child.  My parents liked taking pictures of me and while I wasn’t exactly a ham in front of the camera, I was willing and I behaved in an a non-self-conscience way that is polar opposite of the person I later became.

I’ve already hit upon one small personal demon so far, and I promised lots of ground to cover, so here’s a personal story tangent.

I’ve not done any real research on this, but I can be confident that in Psych circles there must be a topic of "survivor’s guilt" of success.  I carry that guilt.  In the current age, I feel horrible for younger generations who will never know how good things used to be.  I feel guilty that I grew up in more prosperous times, despite being through two financial crises, I’m more than holding my own.  I happened to fall into technology just as it was blooming and it has sustained me all my life.  I’m just starting to get into the age of discrimination where if I were to lose my job, I might have a more difficult time replacing it.  But still, I don’t think my time will be harder than someone just getting started who needs a BS or Masters degree for an entry-level job.

Seeing my childhood pictures reinforced all my feeling of having an unfair advantage in life.  I’m sure a therapist would say that’s not something that can be changed and I can’t feel guilt for something I had no control over, but discarding that self-awareness isn’t the ticket either.  Look at all the selfish, unreflective, unaware individuals polluting social media and the news today.  The world could use a little more humility and self-reflection.  And that was the crushing emotion of scanning my early childhood photos.  And then we continue on to later photos…

You can sort of see the change in my demeanor as I grew older, ending in the "sullen teenager" photos.  Why this happened, I can’t be entirely sure.  There are plenty of things that could contribute to it: my social isolation starting to bear fruit, my parents getting along less and starting to live independent lives, or maybe it was my brother.  I don’t want to pin all my misery in life on my brother, although we haven’t spoken in years and I have no desire to reconcile.  But to see childhood pictures of the two of us happy, then ending with me scowling at him in a picture with my prom date as he takes the pictures (compared to me beaming in pictures at my GF’s house as her dad took pictures), well, I don’t get along with his personality.  I have enough problem in my life without needing that too.

Then we get to photos after I’ve left home and am living on my own.  This should be peak life right here, young and healthy with no responsibilities, right?  But it wasn’t as good as I wanted.  I recall reading a confession by a famous person who said she wished she had a lot more sex when she was young.  And you know, that really resonates with me.  I’ve recently had some general observations that apply to me specifically, and again, at this point in my life, there’s no real shits to give about the me 30 years ago.

To sum it all up, my problem when I was in my teens and 20’s was that I was a "romantic".  That bullshit should be trotted out in your 40’s.  When you are young, sex is the thing, not love.  Growing up in a tiny, conservative town sort of limits your opportunities, but looking back, I surely could have made more happen.  While I was trying to woo girls with sincere displays of affection, they were being snatched up by more aggressive guys.  I promised stability, they promised fun.  As a 20-something, I had it all fucking wrong.  I was a 40 year old in a 20’s body.  Such a shame.  But thank god there was no social media back then.  If there was, I would publicly and ruthlessly labelled as "cringe", as the modern terminology goes.  "Cringe" has a lot of meaning, but the one I feel applies best here is, "you’re doing it really wrong and you don’t realize it."  It’s embarrassing.

The cringe factor is something that really digs at me when I think of my past.  Consider me and my competition.  For my part, I do the love letters, the poems, the flowers, all the romantic stuff.  The other guy just strikes up a conversation, gets friendly, then either pushes hard or builds a rapport until he gets laid.  His work is simple and risk free, mine requires lots of effort.  Again, this is complete bullshit when you’re young.  And when the guy has had enough of sex from her, he dumps her – no big deal whatsoever.  You might think that’s shitty behavior, but you know what, it doesn’t matter.  He’ll be remembered as "an asshole, but we had fun and he made me feel good," whereas I would be remembered as "that weird guy.  ew."  No contest.

While that’s really in the realm of MGTOW sentiment, I want to stress that if you’re pulling that 20’s shit in you’re 40’s, you are an unredeemable asshole and you deserve to die alone.  There is a time to act like you’re young and a time to act like an adult.  Unfortunately, I never had my time of acting young.

So that sums up my reflections on life from 600+ photos dropped on my doorstep, as well as my reflections on life past 50 that I never intended to have.  Life is good and it can always be worse in hindsight.

Bringing It All In House

Last December, I made a decision to start becoming more self-reliant and not utilizing free online services as much.  To accomplish that, I moved my blog off of WordPress and onto my own hosted server.  This year, it looks like I’m going to go a step further and be completely on my own.  It’s a huge risk, but it comes with some benefits I just can’t afford any other way.

At one time, I had my email hosted through some web hosting provider.  It was ok, but I didn’t have a lot of the flexibility I wanted.  And at that time, I also had a simple web site hosted at the same provider.  I made the radical decision to change from a simple hosting plan to a virtual server.  The virtual server would let me install anything I wanted on it.  I installed a mail server.  I installed a web server.  And later, I installed WordPress and things have been going pretty smoothly. 

What were my risks back then?  Mostly hacking worries.  But, I’ve been pretty good.  I had one instance where the mail server got compromised due to my lack of cleanup of development accounts, but otherwise, no issues.

The consideration this year is to bring the entire server from the virtual to the physical and keep it not in a massive data center, but in my house.  By many accounts, this is a pretty bad idea.

To start, a data center has massive bandwidth and multiple, redundant internet connections.  The downtime is going to be minimal at best.  unnoticeable in reality.  Second, the server hardware is going to be highly redundant and isn’t going to go down either.  The server is virtual.  If the hardware fails, it just activates on new hardware.  And you don’t have to worry about it.  No hard drive failures (they’re part of a massive drive pool), no power supply failures, no UPS failures.  No worries about patches (they’re automatically applied).  Why would I give that up?

What am I sacrificing for this security and reliability?  Well, I’m locked into a specific server.  It has a fixed CPU, fixed RAM, and fixed hard drive size (and I just noticed today, fixed bandwidth).  Those are listed in increasing importance to me.  Right now, I have a project that I want to take public.  My current hosted server has 2GB of RAM and 60GB of drive space total.  That also includes the operating system.  The project I want to release has a data size of 1.5TB and is constantly growing.  I can’t even get a virtual server with that amount of space.  I would have to have a dedicated server, which would run over $500/mo.  And I would have to fully manage it – remotely.  Hard drive failure?  Call someone in CA to visit the data center and swap the drive.  It’s not reasonable.  So again, my plan is to bring the server into my house, where I can maintain it and upgrade it as needed and it can serve the world.

Today, I called Frontier and asked about their Business line of FIOS products.  After all, this is going to be a hosted server.  This is not a residential setup (although I could kind of get away with it using dynamic DNS, which is hokey AF).  I had some questions and I got some answers and the answers seem to indicate that I am going to be able to do this.

First question, do you have to be a business to get Business FIOS?  Yes.  Ok.  So I have to set up an LLC for myself.  I’ve been through this before.  I don’t exactly like it, but maybe it’s for the best.  Maybe I’ll start doing consulting again.

Last question, how much does it cost?  This is important, because Frontier’s website only shows the promotional prices.  $50/mo for 100mbps and $90/mo for 500mbps.  And the numbers for what they call month-to-month aren’t that bad.  I’m focusing on 500mbps and that’s going to run around $125/mo.

Is $125/mo a lot?  Considering some people pay that much so they can have all the cable channels with sports and movies, I don’t think so.  Is it a lot for me?  It would be, except…  I pay $75/mo for my 100mbps FIOS now.  I pay $480/yr for my virtual server.  Add all that up and do some math and that’s $115/mo I’m paying for my internet needs.  An extra $10/mo to get 500mbps and full control of a server where I can have TB’s of data online?  I think it’s a fair deal.

My hosting will expire 11/4, so I have a couple of months to get prepped for the change.  I need to buy another server and set it up.  I need to make some more improvements to my project.  I need to plan to change my DNS.  Migrate my mail, export and reimport my WordPress stuff.  It would be a busy week or so of work.

And once that’s done, I’ll be completely on my own.  And what’s the scariest part of that?  If my internet goes down, or I move, or I die (well, if I die, it’s my survivor’s problem), there’s no more email.  That is a critical service that I should think hard about.  But again, I can’t get the features I want without self-hosting it.  The old saying, hope for the best, plan for the worst means you have to always think about the worst.  That’s hard.

Farewell MegaBenno

My homebrew CD storage shelving has hit capacity, so it’s time to replace it.  It’s never been an attractive solution, although you might not notice it from the tiny pictures.  Last night, I did the unloading of all the contents in preparation for the construction and installation of unit #1 of 2 of the next solution.

IMG_20200128_181419 IMG_20200128_183155 IMG_20200128_184505 IMG_20200128_185407 IMG_20200128_190839

All the CDs got stacked up under my stereo table temporarily.

IMG_20200128_183216 IMG_20200128_184515IMG_20200128_185415 

The original capacity of the MegaBenno was over 2,000, but changes during construction meant I ended up with less shelves and I maxed out at about 1,700.  For the cost of the materials, it wasn’t a very cost-effective solution.  I could have purchased a massive unit that held 1,500 for a little more than half the cost.  But, the project was also an exercise in building and assembly, much as the next version is a continuation of that experience.

Leaving Flickr

Now that my blogs are on my own server, I’m going to have to content myself with much lower traffic.  That’s not really too much of a concern of mine.  But at the same time, there are some things that I do want to share, and I would hope they get some exposure.

I’m not a self-promoter.  I prefer to be discovered naturally, without any artificial boosts or bumps.  I guess it would help with credibility, like "oh, he’s only famous because he spammed Reddit every day for a year with links to dumb posts."  That’s like the opposite of what I want.  But really, I don’t want fame.  I just want to be helpful.

And on that topic, I have a few albums on Flickr that I consider helpful.  Some, based on views, might actually be helpful.  And I fear, when I move them here to this network, they won’t be discovered as easily or at all.  But, looking at it from another perspective, I am moving them here in case Flickr goes away completely, so there’s that threat as well.

Anyway, in the coming days, there’s going to be a new menu item for articles.  These are things that don’t really have the same meaning as blog posts, to be chronologically placed.  Maybe they’re like "sticky posts".  But these pages will have the content that was previously hosted on Flickr.  Specifically, some repair articles for keyboards I’ve owned.  The article format will be much better suited for the purpose than a photo album.

I’m going to have to figure out exactly how I will manage my CD Artwork collection as a series of pages.  I’ve looked for other places to host them and for one reason or another, it’s just never worked out.  And you know what they say, if you don’t like it, you’re free to do it yourself.  And I guess that’s the whole point of bringing my blog network in-house.

I’ve Been Ghosted. It Sucks.

It’s one of those things that’s always been done, you know.  It just has a slick name now, so people can say, “Aw man, I got ghosted.”  Or they can use a simple emoji to express what happened.  And with or without an emoji, I got it happening to me. 

I sent a text.  The next day I called and ended up in VM.  So I waited a more-than-reasonable time of a full week.  Then I tried calling again and this time left a message.  “Everything OK?  Haven’t seen you in a couple of weeks.  Let me know what’s up.  Talk to you then.”  No reply.  I could keep trying, holding on, waiting for a reply that may never come.  Or, just suck it up and move on.

My biggest worry is how much this change might cost.  Having your pool maintenance guy just up and disappear, leaving your pool growing algae really sucks.  I’m terrible at keeping my pool clean and since finding a company that would handle it for me – at a great price – has been a godsend.  Not only have I been able to enjoy my pool, it’s been very valuable in preserving the value of the pool.  I mean, my method of letting the pool turn into a swamp, then bombarding it with chemicals to bring it back over and over was doing nothing for the longevity of the mechanicals, filter, and surface.

My secondary, although more immediate, concern was getting the pool back to operational order.  Since the resurfacing and professional oversight, the pool has never had an algae outbreak.  Although I’ve restored my pool in the past from my own negligence, I have never been entirely sure it was right.  And the pool has never looked as good as when it was maintained by someone other than me.  But now, I had yellow algae on the walls and steps.  It’s not a bloom, but it’s very, very close to exploding.  I really shouldn’t have even waited that extra week.

My salt water chlorinator was telling me it wanted salt.  Craved salt.  Needed salt.  62 pounds of salt, please.  Is that a lot?  Fuck if I know, I’ve never had to do this before.  So I bought a 40lb bag of salt from the pool place and threw it all in.  I’ll have to see how it likes that and re-evaluate.  I brushed the walls and floor as I remembered doing in the past.  I threw in some algae shock.  …And that’s about the extent of my knowledge.  Well, tomorrow I can hose off the filter.  That’s about it.

Sometime this week I’m going to need to contact at least one pool company and get a new maintenance quote.  And that’s when it’s going to start sucking.  Starting over always sucks.

Social Media? Not Much Anymore.

Today, I’m walking away from another another Internet forum that I’d been involved with for over a decade.  It’s kind of sad for me, because I used to feel welcome there and would participate pretty regularly.  But, I guess I’m just not cut out for that kind of interaction anymore. 

A wise piece of advice that is frequently given is to not surround yourself with negativity and don’t waste any time being around people who put you down and don’t lift you up.  The problem with that advice is, it leaves you with very few options, especially now on the modern Internet.  It’s pretty well-recognized that being online exposes you to nothing but anger and conflict.  Even if you are not participating, simply being exposed to it is damaging enough.

My quitting of the forum is actually the third step away that I’ve made.  The first step was when I was particularly irked that some of the moderators – the people that are supposed to keep the peace and keep the place running smoothly – were actively engaging in attacks on other members.  In the particular forum I was in, it’s kind of like the wild west where rude behavior is more tolerated, but there was something sinister about having the leadership jumping into the fray instead of monitoring from the sidelines.  At that time, I trimmed back my profile of any personalizing marks and became more of an anonymous member.

The second step was when I quarantined myself from the political section because it was doing nothing but depressing me.  Seriously, nothing but bickering back and forth with trolls (some even moderators) that can’t be defeated.  And after a while of not viewing any of those posts, I began to realize, there isn’t really anything going on outside of those sections.  I began to wonder why I was coming back if there was nothing good to read.

The final step was when I asked for some assistance with, of all things, sunglasses.  There was a discussion about sunglasses, and since the population of the forum is higher-class, I thought someone could give me a recommendation for an upgrade to the glasses I had.  To my surprise, I was insulted.  The first reply could have been seen as a lighthearted joke, the second reply asked if I was a troll or just stupid (this was from a moderator), then it became agreed upon that the style of glasses I was asking about were for douchebags.

As Eric Cartman would say, “Screw you guys, I’m going home!”

I’m sure there’s a lot of people who might look at this situation and say, “What drama!” or “The butthurt is strong in this one.”  And you know what, it’s true.  There is a lot of butthurt.  We’re talking about being in a community for a decade, where you feel you can be yourself and be accepted and suddenly, you’re not.  And adding up the other issues I’ve been experiencing there, well, it’s just not welcoming anymore.  It’s not a place for me.

Actually, this isn’t the first or worst betrayal I’ve gotten from that place.  One time in a moment of weakness, I posted a picture of myself on the forum.  One particular member made a series of photoshops of my picture and posted them.  Unfortunately, I know that those pictures will live on forever.  Since that event, I had to watch everything I said and did so that someone wouldn’t randomly repost one of those pictures and start it up all over again.  As I understand, the member that did the photoshops has since died, and good riddance to him.

And now, good riddance to that whole place.

Like the dust, which settles all around me
I must find a new home

Afterglow – Genesis

 

Another Glorious Microsoft Sunset

I remember when Microsoft discontinued Live Spaces, which held my blog.  Obviously, I’ve been happily living in WP Land since them.  I remember when Microsoft discontinued MS Money.  I switched to Quicken and eventually switched back and lived with the limited functionality provided in the sunset edition.  I remember when Microsoft discontinued Zune.  I enjoyed my devices until the point that a Windows 10 update disabled the syncing capability in the Zune software, then they were thrown away.  I remember when Microsoft discontinued the MS Band.  I used it for another year after that and for whatever reason, I just started feeling jaded while wearing it.  It sat on the shelf for months and eventually got thrown out.

It was only a couple of months ago Microsoft decided to discontinue the software that drives the Band.  The hardware is useless without the software, so even if I did still have and want to slap the Band back on, I would have no way to use it.  Along with that discontinuation, they are shutting down HealthVault.  That is a major capitulation.

HealthVault was where the band stored all its data.  It created nice graphs and charts and had the capability to hold all your medical history and data.  It was the data repository for a lot of actual medical devices like scales and glucose meters and heart monitors.  And it’s all going away.  I took a look at my old data before it all disappears.  It looks like my two MS Bands recorded data between 7/17/2015 and 1/28/2018.  All my walks, all my sleeps, some random exercise sessions, and my daily step counts.

And this is something I want to say over and over and over.  FUCK THE CLOUD.  FUCK IT TO HELL.

The fact that you can’t own anything anymore is absolute bullshit.  Let’s look at my history.  Live Spaces was free and it was taken away.  I was able to preserve my data my moving it to WordPress, which is also free and could disappear at any time.  True, but, I can install WordPress on my own web server (and I do have an instance running on my web server!) and it will never go away again.  MS Money was not free and was discontinued.  I was able to keep using it afterwards.  This is how things should be.  MS Band was not free and was taken away.  Microsoft offered refunds to recent Band purchasers, but the point is, the maker should not determine when you will stop using something you paid for.  And all this cloud-powered bullshit, there needs to be an offline version available.  Is there anything that can function anymore without being online??

And this whole, giant, disgusting concept of “it’s free as long as we want to make it available” has got to stop.  It’s only a matter of time before people get burnt enough that they will refuse to use your products at all because it’s a given it will disappear at a random future date.  Make a product, sell the fucking thing, and let people use it.

Pack It Up

As far as house projects go this year, 2018 has been a significant year.  Probably my most productive yet.  In relative significance to the prior projects, the next project is the most disruptive.  While changing the HVAC unit and resurfacing the pool are huge, expensive projects, reflooring half the house is just massive.

Six spaces in four rooms are going to be converted from carpet to laminate.  The carpet has been in place probably as long as the house has been around, so… 25 years or so?  It’s time to update that.  The contractor came out and gave me a quote, which I just accepted and we set an estimated install date two weeks out.

From the sounds of the work plan, it sounds like they are going to do one room per day.  That includes moving the furniture in and out of the room.  The only thing I have to handle is getting things up off the floor and removing breakables and personal items.  The master closet is going to be all on me because the wardrobe cabinets were actually assembled in the room, you can’t move them in or out of the room assembled.  One other thing I committed to was packing up my CDs from the tower racks.  I don’t see any way of moving those towers with the CDs in place.  To accommodate that move, I bought some magazine boxes on the recommendation of a poster on a forum I frequent.  They were a great fit.

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A lot of people despise packing.  I am one of those people who actually doesn’t mind it.  Well, unless the deadline is too close and I’m scrambling, but otherwise, I like packing up.  The process is a physical affirmation that change is coming, and that change should bring excitement and hope for the future.  In the near term, this means I’m getting a new floor; in the mid term, it means I’m going to be in a totally new environment.

Packing up is like making a deposit on your future.  If you don’t follow through with your plan, you lose all the effort you put out packing up.  Right now, all my music gear is packed and stored.  Now my CDs are packed and stored.  The more I pack, the less I have keeping me in my place.  And of course, packing provides some time of reflection, to make sure you really need to hold on to that thing anymore.

All The Bits Of Moving

With the plan of moving, comes a lot of little individual preparations for moving.  The one I am currently working on is finance.  Not the financing of moving, but my collection of financial accounts.

I’ve always had a presence at a local brick and mortar financial institution, but I’ve also had long-running accounts at online-only banks as well.  This recent move has me convinced to go 100% online.  The reason for this is two-fold.  First, there are no national-level physical banks that I trust.  My current bank is a local credit union, and while I do love them, they aren’t going to be in my new location.  Second, there is little compelling need to tie yourself to a physical bank anymore.

To expand on those points, I wanted a physical bank in case I needed to go and talk to someone about my account.  In my years with the bank, that has never happened.  I also wanted to have the bank’s ATM network available to me.  In my specific case, I agreed to a $1500 min balance to access a much wider network of ATMs without fees.  But my newly chosen online bank will reimburse me up to $10 in ATM fees.  I don’t hit the ATM often, so that’s plenty.  And of course, they also have a wide network of no-fee ATM’s, too.

But here’s the real motivator.  Like I just said, I have at least $1500 tied up in my checking account, earning very little interest.  I have the bulk of my money in online savings accounts earning 2% interest.  But I was recently introduced to T-Mobile Money, which will pay 4% interest on a checking account up to $3000.  That’s double the rate of my savings account and who knows how much more than my current checking account.  So my plan is to keep around $3k in my new T-Mobile account and the rest in my online savings.  No more $1500 (actually more with the ebb and flow of the balance) missing out on interest.

I’ve been through the migration process before, but it’s been a number of years.  After setting up the new checking account, you need to link other accounts to it so you can do transfers.  That takes a couple of days.  You have to set up bill pay accounts on the new account and disable automatic payments on the old account.  There’s a rule I keep to on my bill pay setup.  I never authorize anyone to pull from my checking account.  I will always push payment from the checking account.  I will allow charging of my credit cards, since I have a means to dispute the charge, but no one is allowed to touch my cash.  Then finally, I have to modify my direct deposit to go to the new account.

After all these changes, then it becomes a watch and wait game.  I have to figure out which account needs money transferred to handle the upcoming bills until everything is transitioned.  It’s a little tense.  But by next month, I’ll be on my own, online, and free to go anywhere.