{"id":382,"date":"2010-11-20T11:23:57","date_gmt":"2010-11-20T18:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts-wp\/?p=382"},"modified":"2010-11-20T11:23:57","modified_gmt":"2010-11-20T18:23:57","slug":"escape-from-la","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/2010\/11\/escape-from-la\/","title":{"rendered":"Escape from LA!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been in <span>LA<\/span> for over three years now.&nbsp; It kind of blows my mind that I&#8217;ve been here this long.&nbsp; I don&#8217;t hate <span>LA<\/span>, I&#8217;ve actually come to enjoy parts of <span>LA<\/span> quite a lot.&nbsp; One of the things I don&#8217;t like though is the cost of living here.&nbsp; One of the big reasons I&#8217;m still here, is that I haven&#8217;t been able to afford to move.&nbsp; I haven&#8217;t been able to save as much as I&#8217;d like to have since I&#8217;ve been here.&nbsp; Part of that is my own fault, spending money on things I don&#8217;t necessarily need and not prioritizing savings as well as I should.&nbsp; But part of it, is that I just haven&#8217;t had a lot left over after paying rent and bills either.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, this has contributed to a feeling of being trapped here in <span>LA<\/span>.&nbsp; I don&#8217;t like that feeling.&nbsp; So I&#8217;m making it a goal to do something about it.&nbsp; The first step was to reexamine my budget and make some changes to prioritize savings more than I&#8217;ve done in the past.&nbsp; The second thing I did was open an account on <a href=\"http:\/\/j.mp\/rhino-SP\" target=\"_blank\">SmartyPig<\/a>.&nbsp; SmartyPig is essentially an online bank that offers savings accounts.&nbsp; While I already have a savings account with my local credit union and with <a href=\"http:\/\/home.ingdirect.com\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">ING Direct<\/a>, and could have easily just used that to build up a &#8220;moving fund,&#8221; SmartyPig has a little different focus.&nbsp; It is a goal focused savings account.&nbsp; You set up specific goals and the time line you want to complete them in.&nbsp; What sets it apart <span>from<\/span> just your standard account is that it interacts in your social networks.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve connected my goal to my Facebook account, so everytime I add money to my account, it&#8217;ll post something on my facebook wall.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve also created a widget that I included on my blogs sidebar.&nbsp; The widget shows the percentage of progress I&#8217;ve made towards my goal.&nbsp; The other thing that is nice, is its easy for friends or family to contribute to that goal if they so choose.<\/p>\n<p>The goal I created is this:<br \/><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"BORDER-BOTTOM: 0px; BORDER-LEFT: 0px; OVERFLOW: visible !important; BORDER-TOP: 0px; BORDER-RIGHT: 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/www.smartypig.com\/\/WidgetDisplay.aspx?goalId=f9d2d2dd-b98a-4df9-a511-520f2b3be430&amp;userId=eb463f87-1220-4d0c-838d-6496f9addd30\" height=\"63\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"239\"><\/iframe><br \/>My goal is to save up $2500 by June 30, 2011.&nbsp; This is based on what I estimate it would cost me to move back to Portland.&nbsp; My lease is up at the end of July, so I&#8217;d like to have this fund in place by the time I&#8217;d need to put in 30 days notice.&nbsp; I&#8217;d still need to get a job lined up, but just having this money set aside for this purpose will take a lot of pressure off of me.&nbsp; I won&#8217;t feel as trapped here in LA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been in LA for over three years now.&nbsp; It kind of blows my mind that I&#8217;ve been here this long.&nbsp; I don&#8217;t hate LA, I&#8217;ve actually come to enjoy parts of LA quite a lot.&nbsp; One of the things I don&#8217;t like though is the cost of living here.&nbsp; One of the big reasons &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/2010\/11\/escape-from-la\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[75,532,81],"class_list":["post-382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-or-something-like-it","tag-finances","tag-life-or-something-like-it","tag-los-angeles","item-wrap"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/upload\/\/app_1_220086724709892_1567717122.gif","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rhinoblues.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}