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A bunch of us in my blogging group, the Yakezie, thought the results to the Jung Typology Test were really interesting because they worked out to be SO true! We also thought it would be fun to share.
After taking a few minutes to quickly answer the 72 questions of the Jung Typology Test, it spit out that I was a personality type ESFJ – Extraverted, Sensing, Feeling Judging. This is also known as the Provider. For a full description, please check out this article.
Jung Typology Test – Key Points for a Personality ESFJ – the Provider
We take it upon ourselves to insure the health and welfare of those in our care, but we are also the most sociable of all the Guardians (personality types).
We are highly cooperative.
We have a high attention to detail.
We are excellent hosts and remember names easily. (I don’t but oh well…)
We love to entertain.
We are friendly, outgoing, and neighborly. We often chat up strangers. (Yep, that’s me…)
Friendships are really important to us.
Family traditions are big too.
We are extremely sensitive.
We don’t take personal criticism well.
We are happiest when we are getting ample appreciation for all of the effort we put into the above relationships.
The Jung Typology Test is Right
Other than the remembering names thing, they pegged me spot on. I even remember faces and back stories, but names are a pain.
I will go out of my way for others. Just take a look at how I view volunteering. Heck, I even had my smart phone stolen while I was donating blood.
I extremely enjoy hanging out and socializing. My favorite monthly activity is the potluck we host or attend with our board gaming friends. I also will gladly help a friend with errands or chores just so we have time to talk.
I also don’t take personal criticism well. I love to be loved and assume everyone else wants that too. When I am criticized, I immediately try to determine whether I should change whatever was mentioned. If I disagree with the criticism, I am known to hold a little grudge for a while. This is not a personality trait that I am proud of…
In short, yep, I am apparently a Provider.
I love quizzes and tests like this. I am a sucker for tests I can’t fail. The fact that this one was spot on just makes it even better!
Let’s have a little fun! Click on the link to the Jung Typology Test and then check your results by Googling your 4 letters. Did they peg you correctly too?
My husband graduated with his Masters in Library Sciences last August and started working as an elementary school librarian immediately after that for the 2010-2011 school year. Since he had to switch school districts to find a librarian position, he went from being a teacher with a continual contract to being a teacher with a probationary 1 year contract again.
But he has been amazing. He was so good for his school in this past year that he received “Exceeded Expectations” in every single category of the annual review. That is the absolute best evaluation a teacher can receive!
Despite that, his school district has decided that since they had to “displace” (lay off) librarians in other schools due to budget cuts, those displaced librarians that had continual contract status are being given the positions currently filled by probationary librarians like my husband.
In short, they are playing musical chairs with people’s lives.
My husband’s principal actively argued to keep him and I wrote the following letter (names have been changed but that’s it):
Dear Dr. Superintendent,
I am writing you today to get a fair ending to a very happy story.
My husband, who doesn’t know I am writing this letter, started as the ABC School Librarian at the beginning of this school year. The library was a mess. The previous librarian must have seen the writing on the wall since she stopped shelving the books. She just tossed them into random sections.
Please imagine a small room filled with more than 6000 books that are in no order whatsoever. That is what my husband spent a month cleaning up. His parents and I even volunteered for 2-3 days towards the end of the summer just to ensure the library would be ready by the beginning of the year.
Then imagine finding out that the previous librarian had stopped doing book fairs. Parents didn’t even expect one. Some of the students had never experienced the fun of circling their favorite books in one of those crisp Scholastic flyers. My husband pulled off not one, but two AMAZING Scholastic book fairs during open houses and family reading week. He earned ABC Elementary more than $3000 in books and materials. I also volunteered more than 10 hours of my own time to both of those events.
Throughout reorganizing the entire library and planning book fairs, my husband also supported the other departments with their projects such as the science night he just recently stayed late for. If you speak to any of the teachers at ABC, they can vouch for his supportiveness.
Finally, imagine being told that the new building will need more than 10,000 new books despite the fact that it doesn’t have enough shelf space. My husband has stayed up until midnight every night for the past two weeks trying to find the perfect 10,000 books for his kids. He and his grandfather have even talked about building more shelves for the new space.
That man, Mr. BFS, is now being forced out of this library that he rescued. I empathize with the librarians who lost their positions, but my husband and his family, including me, rescued the ABC Elementary School Library. There would be no open position at ABC if my husband hadn’t put in hundreds of his own, unpaid hours into it to ensure the children had the resources they will need to expand their minds.
I would love to be more humble, but I just cannot afford to let anybody overlook his contributions right now.
Yesterday evening, he was still at our home computer at 11:00pm picking out the remaining 500 books for next year. When I callously said, “You should just pick 500 random books and be done with it. Why does it matter anymore?”, this very amazing man replied,
“That would only hurt the kids. This isn’t their fault – it has nothing to do with them. These are their books for the years to come.”
That is an employee you want to keep. That is an employee that I believe that you are very lucky to have. That is the man that brings tears to my eyes because he is such an amazing person and I am so lucky to have found him.
Please allow me to continue to be a volunteer for your school district. Please allow my husband to continue in the position that he loves and to work with all of the people he has supported for the past school year. Please let this heroic story have the happy ending it deserves.
Sincerely,
Crystal
I emailed that to the superintendent, another district administrator, and my husband’s principal. I only heard back from his principal. She told me that it was an amazing letter, but that the district was holding firm. At this point, my husband will need a miracle to keep his current position as the school’s librarian. His contract ends at the end of this semester. His school has even been told who will be taking his place already.
The only bright side to any of this is that his principal likes him so much that even if he can’t find a new librarian job by the end of the summer, she has guaranteed him a teaching spot in her school. He’d be back to teaching science.
But I know he doesn’t want to teach again. He worked incredibly hard to fit a 2 year graduate program into 15 months just so he could become a librarian as soon as humanly possible. So he is applying for jobs like mad and is in the market once again.
This whole situation is severely testing my generally positive outlook on life. Between my stolen cell phone and this, last week completely sucked eggs. I know I should feel consoled by the fact that he is at least guaranteed to have a job, but I still cannot stop thinking about how unfair this whole situation truly is.
So yes, I am thankful that we have each other. I am thankful he will be employed. BUT, I am NOT thankful that my husband worked his butt off for a school district that used him and tossed him away like yesterday’s newspaper.
How has the economy affected you and yours? Want to vent? It’ll help me feel less like a whiny baby…
Now that gas prices in Houston, TX are over $3.50 a gallon, I’ve come to the realization that the “cheap” gas stations are actually a worse deal for me.
Kroger Gas Stations
I usually spend at least $100-$200 a month at Kroger for groceries. Since they give you a tank of gas at 10 cents off per gallon anytime you hit $100 in grocery costs using your Kroger card, I usually get one or two car fill-ups at their gas stations at 10 cents off per gallon. Now that gas is so expensive, I’m skipping the Kroger station.
PenFed Visa Gas Rewards
Remember when I mentioned that my husband and I switched over to using the PenFed Visa? It gives us 5% cash back at normal gas stations, 2% cash back at grocery stores, and 1% cash back on everything else.
Well, when gas was around $2.50, 5% cash back meant that I was getting back about 12 cents a gallon I still used the Kroger’s gas station when I had earned the 10 cents off rewards and then received the additional 1% cash back by using my PenFed Visa.
Gas at Shell with Kroger Rewards and PenFed
Now it just makes more sense to skip the Kroger gas station altogether. When I do earn my 10 cents off rewards, I go to a Shell gas station instead. Then I get the 10 cents off per gallon AND the 5% cash back from PenFed. That usually means I’m saving 27 cents per gallon or more – that’s about $3 a tank on my little Chevy Aveo.
If I don’t have Kroger gas rewards, I go to the cheapest stand-alone gas station I can find, which is usually the Exxon near my Kroger. Then I just get the 5% cash back, which is about 17 cents per gallon or more anyway now.
Now I Buy Gas Elsewhere
In short, more expensive gas has actually made the slightly cheaper discount gas station a worse deal for my husband and me. We more than make up for the extra 2-3 cents per gallon using our PenFed Visa’s 5% cash back. And I really rack up the savings now that Kroger and Shell have teamed up.
I know I shouldn’t be too happy with this newfound “savings” since it means I am ultimately spending way more than I’d like to on gas, but I’ll take whatever positive news I can get out of all of this.
Have you made any strange changes due to the new price increases on gas and other goods?
Since I do plan on blogging full time by 2012 and even came up with my target number, this is the year for a HUGE push. These are the new goals to keep us on the right track!
Here are my Goals for July 4th, 2011:
Here is what we are shooting for by July 4th, 2011:
Alexa – Maintain a Ranking at or around 37,500
Visits – 60,000 total visits (I started BFS on February 20th, 2010) Feedburner Subscribers – 500 Twitter Followers – 500 MozRank – 5.5
Today’s Update
Alexa – 32,428 (WOOT!)
Visits – 52,329 (7,671 to go!) Feedburner Subscribers – 447 (53 to go) Twitter Followers – 470 (30 to go) MozRank – 5.05 (0.45 to go)
As always, thank you so much for being my supporters! I could not do any of this without you and I really never forget that!!!
The Saved Quarter Challenge Update
I joined The Saved Quarter Challenge this year and am aiming to save at least $21,000 by the end of 2011! That would be a tiny bit more than 25% of our GROSS pay from our two full time jobs.
Here’s how I’ve done this week for the Saved Quarter Challenge ($21,000 Goal):
I have better updates after the 13th of every month since that is when our billing periods end, but here is where we funnelled away money this past week:
My Samsung Epic smart phone was stolen so that will cost me this coming week, nothing spent yet though.
My husband’s school librarian contract will not be renewed due to budget displacements but his principal has given him a backup teaching option. This situation has and will have no effect to our income in the coming months, but definitely has sucked some happy out of our house. I’ll have a post about it soon (it’s hard to write about it right now).
I banked money from Paypal to my Blogging Income Account – $800
Total This Week: $800
We can save what we do because we live off of a little more than my husband’s salary as a school librarian ($38,000 take home pay), which means we save most of what I make ($26,000 take home pay) and all of our hobby job incomes (reffing for Mr. BFS and blogging for me). Reffing usually brings in $2000-$3000 a year and blogging is bringing in $10,000 or more a year (we’ve already hit more than $6000 for January-March 2011).
Total to date: $10,050 guaranteed, $10,950 to go.
Additonal Info
I will continue posting monthly and yearly blog statistics and income updates from here on out, so stay tuned at the beginning of every month!
In case you didn’t know, Alexa traffic rankings are determined by the numbers of hits a site gets by people with the Alexa toolbar. If you want to be part of this ranking community, you can download the Alexa toolbar here.
If you don’t already, you can follow me via RSS or Twitter by following those links.
To learn more about the Yakezie, the blogging group that has helped me in SO many ways, check out my Yakezie page! Feel free to email me if you are a Yakezie member or challenger and don’t see yourself on the list!
If you are interested in seeing how I went from an 8 million plus Alexa rank to about 50,000 in less than 8 months, you can see My Blogging Schedule, which breaks down everything I do related to blogging. If you want to see how I brought in $6000 in less than 10 months, you can check out How I Make Money Blogging.
If you would like to guest post on BFS, please contact me with your idea or post and I’d love to have you over for the day! If you are a business, please contact me here for more details. Thanks!
If you are hosting a carnival that includes Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, please email me so I can include it in my roundup. Also, please email me if you’d like to host Totally Money. Thanks!
Top 5 Referring Sites to BFS within the Last Week:
(I list the top 25 on the first Saturday of every month)
Feel free to contact me if you have any suggestions. I’d love to add a few more blogs to my regular reading list or at least give a shout-out for great posts or contests.
As always, thanks to all the bloggers that teach me something new every day. Thanks to all my commenters for making this blog the community I want it to be. Thanks to all my “lurkers” too. I hope everybody is enjoying this as much as me!
And please use About Life Insurance as a resource for everything life insurance!!!
Let me know if you do help out and I will be sure to return the favor!
This is a guest post from Penny Saver of The Saved Quarter. Penny is a frugal mom, making the most of meager means, saving her quarters to save a quarter of her income. This post is part of the Yakezie blog swap. Feel free to check out my post at The Saved Quarter today too!
For too many years, money ran through my fingers like water. Giving little thought to the long-term, I made unwise financial choices. When the economic downturn hit our family in 2009, it was a stern wake up call. I desperately want to stop the cycle of overspending, overdrafts, and arguing about money that was the norm in my childhood home and was too quickly becoming the norm in my own home.
Like most parents, my husband and I want our children to have a happy childhood and grow up to be financially responsible adults, but we were not positive role models of the right way to manage money. After a loud argument over another overdrawn bank statement, it became glaringly apparent that our choices had to change if we want them to grow up happy and with good money habits.
Making Choices, Making Changes
I made the decision to save a quarter of our income so we could have an emergency fund. It sounded crazy when I proposed the idea to my husband, but he was on board.
I moved to a cash envelope budget, and when the cash was gone, the spending was done. It wasn’t easy to change my spending habits, but I cut every conceivable extra and scouted out free ways to meet our needs. We swallowed our pride and went on food stamps. (We dropped them this February.) We planned a $100 holiday, spending just $100 on Christmas gifts for everyone on our list.
My main motivators and biggest (and cutest!) cheerleaders, my two kids, excitedly helped me find spare change on the ground and take in recycling. They accompanied me babysitting and helped to count coins to add to the tally. We kept a thermometer chart on the wall and my five-year-old son was excited to help me color it when we added to our savings.
Maintaining Motivation
We’ve had unexpected expenses and have sacrificed to save, but having everyone working together has helped me to maintain motivation. It definitely hasn’t been easy, but I met my goal in December and we celebrated as a family! Ideas from the many personal finance books I’ve read have rubbed off on me, and I’ve rubbed off on my son. If you ask him, “what’s money for?”he’ll tell you that money is to manage first, save second, and spend third. It took me more than 30 years to understand that!
My kids have been the reason for me to finally take responsibility for my finances, and I finally feel like I’m doing right by them as the positive role model they deserve. I hope that my effort now motivates them to be financially responsible for their entire lives.
Other Yakezie Blog Swap Posts
(I stole the list from Kevin at Thousandaire who was our fearless leader for this swap!)
The following is a guest post about credit cards of the future from Dave at Money In The 20s, where he writes about investing, personal finance, and life after college to help 20 somethings plan now so they don’t pay later.
I am a proponent of using a credit card, paying it off in full every month, and maximizing reward points. I don’t know about everybody else, but if the bank wants to give me an interest free loan for 30-days, I am going to take it!
Recently, I found out about a new way to redeem credit card rewards and was intrigued to learn more. A few months back, Citi released a pilot of the 2G credit card. This new card was created by a company named Dynamics, Inc. and allows you to pay with either your regular credit card or your Citi rewards cash balance. You simply select the button for regular credit card or cash rewards and swipe! The card has a programmable magnetic stripe that makes this possible. This is great news for anyone with a Citi rewards card as it will make redeeming your rewards easier than ever.
After looking into this Citi 2G credit card, I found that this is just the tip of the iceberg for the credit/debit cards we will see in the near future. I know that mobile payment systems are all the rage, but those could still be a few years off. In the short term, I think you will see more credit cards based on programmable magnetic stripes. This will increase convenience and security for consumers. For example, Dynamics Inc. makes a multiaccount credit/debit card and hidden account card.
The Future of Credit Cards – Hidden Account Card:
This card is designed to increase security and reduce credit card fraud. As you can see in the image above, there are 6 digits in a paper-thin flexible display. Those digits will not be displayed until the security code is entered using the 5 buttons on the card (A,B,C,D, and E).
Additionally, the magnetic stripe is only populated with the correct magnetic data after the security code is entered. After a few minutes, the 6 digits on the display will disappear and the magnetic stripe will be wiped clean. Thus, if your credit card is lost or stolen, it will be useless without the security code. Personally, this card is something I would use after a past experience with credit card fraud. A few years back, I lost one of my credit cards and someone spent $1,500 on it before I knew I lost it. If this card would have been available then, it could have saved me a big headache.
I was only able to come up with one drawback to this card. As far as I am aware, the 6 hidden digits never change. Consequently, this card won’t protect you against online scams. However, somebody already thought of that and came up with a solution. You can combine the hidden card with a Dynamic Credit Card (also created by Dynamics Inc) to combat online theft too. The Dynamic card can come with a display that will show a new unique dynamic 3 or 4 digit security code that will need to be input for every on-line purchase.
The Future of Credit Cards – MultiAccount Card:
The MultiAccount card is more about convenience than anything else. If you look at the image, you will see that you can have two of your accounts on just one card. You simply select the account you want to use when you make the purchase. That said, this card might not be that beneficial for everyone. However, there are some people that have upward to 10 credit cards and this card could be beneficial for them.
Here is a youtube video showing a demo of the cards.
The best part about these new types of credit/debit cards is that they work with the current magnetic stripe readers. There is no need to wait for some type of new technology to start using these cards. I would really like to get my hands on one of the hidden/dynamic cards to protect myself against fraud.
Crystal’s Comments: I really enjoyed learning about these credit cards to come! Since I also am a big fan of paying for everything with our cards (PenFed Visa and Discover More) to get the rewards and then paying them off monthly, keeping everything secure is very important to me.
What about you? Are you interested in any of these new types of cards or are you just waiting for mobile payment solutions?
I am not a professional or a financial advisor. BFS posts are informational opinions only. Please make your own financial decisions based on personal research or see a financial advisor.
Also, there are paid links on this site. There is no obligation on your part to purchase any products advertised on this website.
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I hope everybody is enjoying this as much as me!
