I’m currently in Langkawi, Malaysia, due to hop aboard the Candela December 9th after some delays. We’re sailing for Phuket, Thailand, and should arrive around Christmas day… and I have no idea where I’ll stay yet!
I feel like you’ve all been traveling with me on these adventures from Ireland to England to Ireland again and Malaysia.
Yet, if you were actually with me, you’d be influencing my travel and accommodations decisions. You’d probably be fucking things up and also bringing in wondrous new sights and stories I wouldn’t have experienced otherwise. So, let’s give you those capabilities!
I’m hoping to be in Phuket for a few days before a flight out to Taiwan, but that’s up to when we eventually arrive. I should have at least 1 night on land before the flight, though, and you get to pick where I stay! I don’t like handouts, but I’m not above becoming entertainment fodder. So I’ve decided you can vote with your gift of USD — 1 U.S. Muhrican Dollah = 1 Vote. The hotel/hostel/brothel/lean-to with the most votes/dollars at the end of the voting period will be where I book a room, and I’ll give a full-run down of what you put me through afterwards. Vote with as many voting dollars as you wish! Go nuts! Bonus for me: I get to find out if my friends are predominantly loving souls interested in my well-being or complete cocksuckers.
I fear the outcome.
There will be 3 set possibilities to start with, but feel free to nominate an option not on the list with your money dollars.
Cheapest hostel available with decent reviews. This is along the lines of what I would choose if we weren’t playing this game.
Option 2: THE RITZY, GLITZY, TOURISTY *5 STAR* $166
Metadee Resort and Villas, 66 Kata Road, T.Karon A.Muang Phuket, 83110 Kata Beach, Thailand
This one is on sale and only has 3 rooms left, so even if it wins, I may have to find a similar substitute, but this is about what I’d imagine for imaginable upper end. Great reviews, 5 star, should be grand!
But who needs dreams when you can have nightmares about —
Option 3: THE HORRIFYING ~$25 USD
This is the absolute worst thing I could find based on reveiws: Chang Club Hotel,179/7 Soi San Sabai, Patong, Kathu, Phuket 83150, Thailand
Check out this review snippet from its tripadvisor.com listing:
Or if these don’t tickle you, feel free to nominate your own. Just like with the others, if it gets the most votes, that’s where I’ll go!
Details and stipulations:
If your choice does not win the vote, I am considering your money dollars to be a generous Christmas gift. Thank you, you are intelligent and sexy and I love you. Plus, your ass looks great in those jeans.
There need to be enough votes for a winning option to cover the cost of the option. For example, if Ritzy, Glitzy, Touristy by some amazing miracle wins over the other options, but falls short of the cost — say I only get $10 worth of votes– then, shit, that’s not happening.. I’m unemployed, and see Detail #1. Remember, prices will probably go up as we get closer to the check-in date.
If at any time I seriously fear for my safety, I’m choosing somewhere else. I’m talking murder/beating/rape/incurable disease potential, not anything like, “oh but they didn’t iron my sheets”.
HOW TO VOTE:
Step 1: Send me a PayPal gift with a note about what option your money dollars are voting for. Each dollar of your gift will count as a separate vote for that option. Send it to this email address: erinmmcdermott@gmail.com
And please note the 2 M’s in the middle of my name! Maybe copy and paste that shit to be sure.
Step 2: Afterwards, show the world what you voted for so we have a nice, updated score sheet while I’m wandering the sea without access to internets. Form below.
Step 3: Round about December 15th, check in to see which place won! I’ll stop the vote by then (depending on when I’m able to find internet access) and book a room.
Currently writing this from Ireland, to reveal my plans for when I get kicked out tomorrow on December 6th…. only have the first 6 weeks or so sketched out with over 3 months to fill with adventure!
It’s been a wild ride just figuring out where I would go if I not only could but HAD to go anywhere in the world outside of where I am and home. Where would YOU go? Remember, you only have 7 days to decide and book the plane ticket which you must use. I’m very curious. Let me know in the comments below!
In September, I reached my tolerance limit for sexism at the office and peaced-out. For years, I tried to determine whether the disrespect was just the regular kind or because I had lady parts. Finally, enough evidence amassed to tell me, “no, when people regularly neglect to invite you to important meetings where your expertise is vital, don’t make eye contact when talking about technical subjects, don’t ask for your technical assistance when you are the assigned matter expert, and when high-ranking employees vocally make distinctions about candidates and audiences because of their gender, it’s your vagina that’s getting in the way”.
I still find it hard to understand, as I was treated with so much more respect earlier in my career, when I obviously had less experience and knowledge, and fewer stories of technical Goliaths slain.
I’ve had a lot of time to think here, though, alone and jobless in the woods of Ireland. Maybe there is an extra 13% of effort I could have put in beyond the 110% I expended each day refraining from stabbing myself in the eyes. Below is an instructional video with 5 things I now realize I could have done differently to earn more respect. Hopefully it can help female engineers currently struggling. Please share if you know any.
If none of that advice appeals to you, and you think bailing is your best option, make sure you’re paying as little as possible in interest on your student loans while you still have great credit! CLICK HERE to be referred for student loan refinancing with the best companies I’ve found.
When I refinanced my private and federal student loans this year, I saved over $1,000 per year! That’s all cash that would have been handed over for just interest payments – not money paying down what I owe. If you’re paying more than you need to in interest, you’re throwing your cash money dollars down the crapper. It pays to investigate whether you can get better rates!
What follows is a detailed review of 2 really great places to refinance: SOFI and Darien Rowayton Bank. I refinanced through both. You’ll also find a chart to easily get a rough estimate on how much money you could save next year. All info is current as of 11/8/15.
If you’d rather skip the following info and go right to starting the refinancing process, please go HERE to be referred by me to either company and possibly earn me a finder’s fee!
I first refinanced private loans with horrendous interest rates through SOFI. One of the loans charged over 9% interest annually before I switched over! At the time, my goal besides saving money was to pay off my loans faster. By the way, the shorter the repayment term (the faster you pay it off) the lower the rate you will generally be charged in interest.
I hemmed and hawed over picking a rate, and called up SOFI’s customer service about it. I was told I could refinance at any time, so if I chose to go to a longer repayment term later, no worries. (That ended up not being exactly true, by the way.) If you remove my decision-making time, the total refinancing paperwork and disbursement time was about a month. That’s really good!
The interest rate they ended up offering after all the paper pushing on their end was 4.055% variable APR for the 10-year term. After a 0.25% discount for setting up automatic payments, the rate became 3.805% variable APR. This was for a loan of over $11,000 to pay off multiple loans, with the average rate for the whole ball being something over 7% fixed APR. So, I looked at that and was able to roughly say, hey I’m probably saving at least 3% next year on a >$10,000 loan, so that means I’m saving at least 0.03x$10,000 = $300. That’s $300 more in my pocket versus the bank’s pocket over the next 12 months, while paying about the same monthly amount. Winning.
One of the reasons I stalled on deciding a repayment term, was I thought one’s salary would impact the rate offered more than credit score, and my salary needed to increase dramatically anyways. After I received my final offer package from SOFI, my hunch about how income would affect rates seemed to be confirmed. I found out I had SHOCKINGLY good credit: 833 FICO! It was especially surprising considering how hard the Great Recession had screwed me years ago. Yet, somehow, I wasn’t even offered the mid-range of rates for that repayment term – it was higher than the middle of the range. I talked with other SOFI customers at a mixer they through in Chicago, and some of them shared my hypothesis. I can’t say for sure how much income is weighed vs. credit score, but it’s something to keep in mind.
For an idea of how good an 833 FICO score is, here is the chart included in my offer package from SOFI in April 2015:
FICO Chart Reported in My SOFI Loan Approval Packet – April 2015
Several months later, I decided I wanted to change strategies. Instead of paying off my loans as fast as possible, I wanted to push out my payment term as far into eternity as possible, thereby lowering my monthly commitment. You know, in case I decided to quit my job and live off my savings in a foreign country or something. I still had about a $400 monthly ball chained to my leg, and that’s almost a month’s worth of rent in some places!
I tried to go back to SOFI and push my 10-year term out to a 20-year term, because the process had gone so smoothly. For whatever reason, when I tried to refinance the same loan again, they no longer offered me a 20-year term as an option. That’s when I turned to Darien Rowayton Bank, or DRB.
The rates were better than what SOFI offered, as I’d read many other people experienced, but be forewarned: they have more demand than they can handle, and it could take a very long time to process. It took about 2 months for my first loan to be refinanced, and their online application process is a confusing mess. I got several “oops” emails from the automated system saying I needed to submit things I had already submitted weeks ago. BUT, those rates! And once you set everything up, it should be smooth sailing afterward. So, if you can deal with a bit of annoyance and some extra time to get things started, it’s totally worth it.
This time, I got my hellish Sallie Mae loans – the bulk of my student loan debt, about $30,000 – repacked into something much friendlier. Sallie had me by the apples for over $260 each month and charged over 6% interest. I asked DRB to give me a ridiculously long 20-YEAR variable rate loan for the whole shebang. They offered a 4.03% variable interest rate with the same 0.25% deduction if you do automatic payments, so 3.78%. My monthly payments are now about $180/month for this chunk. DRB bases their rate on the 3-month LIBOR (as opposed to SOFI’s one-month), and it’s capped at 10%. There is an extra bit of complication with DRB here, as you need to open a checking account with DRB for automatic payments, but that part of the process went relatively smoothly. The DRB checking account can automatically deduct from another personal checking account you hold with another bank a few days before your loan is due and then make your payment automatically and on time.
With DRB, I saved around 2.7% APR on about $30,000. So, that’s 0.027x$30,000, or over $800 that will be going to my bottom line instead of the bank’s over the next year. Of course, as the principal gets paid down, I’ll be paying less in loan interest anyways, but this still serves as a good rough idea. Plus, who are we kidding, I was barely making a dent in my Sallie Mae loans anyways.
The credit score DRB found for me through TransUnion in August 2015 was 810. This was lower than the 833 SOFI found for me, but still very good. I’m not sure if the difference stemmed from different credit checking sources or just the fact that the SOFI refinancing required a pull on my credit score, or both. Otherwise, my financial picture was exactly the same, if not a little better, as I had more cash in savings in August. Whatever the case, if one company turns you down or gives you terms you don’t love, it may be a good idea to try out the other. Here is the very different credit score chart included in my package from DRB:
FICO Chart From My DRB Loan Packet – August 2015
After I found out DRB would still offer me a 20-year loan term, and at great rates, I refinanced my SOFI loan through DRB, as well.
After all my playing around with the loans, my final savings in interest payments was over 1,000 bucks per year, and my monthly payments went from around $400 to $250.
So how much money can you put back in your pocket? Well first, here are the rate ranges and terms offered by SOFI and DRB as retrieved online 11/8/2015.
SOFI Rates and Terms, pulled 11/8/2015 from THIS LINK:
If your current rates are higher than these, you can subtract your current rate by something in the stated ranges and see roughly what you could save in a year. So, for example, if you wanted to refinance a loan for $30,000, and you expect to still owe about $25,000 worth of it in 12 months, you can use the $25,000 column under “TOTAL AMT. of SAMPLE LOAN” below. Then, you can see what lower APR’s could save you in cash for a year. Say that $30,000 loan is sitting in Sallie Mae’s hands with 7% APR fixed rate. If you want to see what going to a 5-year fixed rate loan at SOFI could save you, subtract 7% APR by something in the range listed in the charts above. If you assume you’d get a 5% APR with SOFI, that means the difference in APR is 7%-5% = 2.0% Difference in APR.
So, take that $25,000 column, follow it down to the “2.0% per yr.” Difference in APR row, and you get a super rough estimate of $500 savings for you over the next year. If you want a more precise estimate, the refinancing companies have calculators as you’re going through the process, but this should give you an idea if it’s worth your time in the first place. And remember, you’ll be saving over the life of your loan, not just over the next year! …But you’ll (hopefully) be saving less as time goes on because you’ll owe less.
Annual Savings Estimate from Student Loan Refinancing
If you’re ready to look into refinancing with either SOFI or DRB or both, please let me refer you. If you follow through with the refinancing, you could score me a referral bonus, and I would appreciate it very much!
For SOFI, you canCLICK HERE and get started right away.
For DRB, you can CLICK HERE and fill out the form. I’ll manually refer you and DRB will contact you from there.
Some caveats:
You need Amaziballs Credit
You need either a specific degree (DRB) or to be a graduate of a preferred university (SOFI)
As of info posted today (11/8/2015), the minimum amount you can refinance is $5,000 through DRB or $10,000 through SOFI
The rates and terms posted here are subject to change
Good luck and feel free to ask any questions about student loan refinancing!
With plenty of time and unprecedented levels of freedom at my disposal, I decided to paint myself every color in arms’ reach.
If sitting along the River Liffey for the afternoon was done to please my inner child, I did this to please my inner teenager. 19-year-old me is SO PSYCHED we could finally do this! Gray, corporate environments are so stifling and lame. Now, I finally don’t have to play by their rules for the first time in my adult life!
If your student loans are as stifling as corporate culture and the payments are too high for you to entertain doing anything else with your time, look into refinancing! There are some great companies out there now which may not have existed last time you thought about it. To be referred to SOFI or DRB by me and possibly earn me some cash, please go here:
Are they like England and drive on the left side of the road? Yes.
Is it true it’s hard to get automatic transmission rental cars? Yes.
Are there roundabout things? Yes.
Those are the basic points most Americans are curious about when imaging driving a car in Ireland. Yet it doesn’t even come close to giving an idea of what it’s like. Here’s a video where I take you along on a whiskey-seeking adventure with me to give you a better feel.
For the full effect, though, you’re really going to need to come visit me. Maybe if you refinance your student loans you can save over $1,000/year cash money like I did and be able to do so! SOFI has excellent terms and rates, and DRB has even more excellenter options.
Prints are now available for purchase of a slightly fantastical watercolor painting of the River Avonmore.
After trekking through the woods in completely inappropriate footwear, I stumbled upon the banks of the Avonmore. The word “Avonmore” stems from Irish words meaning, “big river”, and it’s no wonder why those who view images of the river frequently refer to it as a lake by mistake.
Standing there, I felt as though the branches of the tree to my left flowed wistfully out to the tree on my right. She looked like a woman’s scarf unraveling in the wind. The tree to my right also reached and longed to cross over, but he did so rigidly. He was inhibited by his masculine form.
River Avonmore, the Original Photograph
I decided to give the two lovers a little help in my reenactment of the snapshot of their dance. The woman received an array of colors and even more sway to her branches. The man received a deep, ruddy hue and his skeleton became the grasping hand in my imagination. The rest I left to its ordinary splendor.
“Lovers on River Avonmore” — Finished Piece Available for Sale
If you wish to purchase a print of this piece, they are available through the link to the distributor above. The majority of the cost goes to the distributor for production and shipment of the prints, with a smaller portion going to yours truly. They show the most expensive options first, but if you’re looking for least expensive, go to “FINE ART PRINTS” at the bottom, right side of the page. Click “buy now”, then on the next page that opens, change the “paper type” to anything other than “hahnemuehle rag 308”. The “luster photo” and “glossy photo” options are the least expensive, but I would recommend at least the “fine art matte” for this piece.
Life is different now that I no longer trudge into a freezing cubesicle every weekday, and instead awake to views of an Irish mountainside. For one thing, I grew out a beard.
Becoming Old Man of the Mountain Means You Stop Tweezing
For another thing, I’m paying WAY LESS in student loans after I refinanced through DRB. Whether you want to become an old hermit too, or you’re just paying too much in student loans, it makes sense to look into student loan refinancing. You might be eligible for lower interest rates, meaning more cash toward actually paying down your loan or lower payments, and/or better repayment terms which change how much you owe each month. DRB (Darien Rowayton Bank) offers the best rates and widest range of payment plans I’ve personally seen, second to SOFI.
If you’re interested in refinancing please sent me a message via the CONTACT tab at the top with your name and e-mail address and let me know! I can then refer you to DRB and possibly earn some cash from them for doing so — meaning at no cost to you, you’ll be funding a way for me to leave the mountain and have a pint of Guinness with real, live people. AND I WOULD APPRECIATE IT SO VERY MUCH!
Or, if you know people who are also choking on student loans, please share this article or the video below! You’ll be doing us both a big favor.
For more insight on my new life, watch the Old Man of the Mountain take you through his day:
