cheapbohemian

What I Did All Summer

2013-05-10T10:38:00.000-04:00

(...and Also All Fall, Winter, and Most of the Spring)

Sorry I'm late. But read on--I have a poem for you at the end of all this. Even better: IT'S NOT MY POETRY!

So, I miss you guys, and I miss being the cheeky, moxy-afflicted personality of the Cheap Bohemian.

But out in the world, a lot has been happening. I keep meaning to come back here and look at all of it through my Cheap lens, and maybe even impart some money wisdom. But a lot of what has been happening has been so profound (and frankly some of it, so profoundly not funny) that words have failed me. Repeatedly.

That's a good thing. I really wouldn't want to live the kind of life that could be summed up in mere words.

Since about February 2011, there's been every kind of challenge to a budget-minded non-consumer like me. Note the conspicuous absence of links around some of the most important things:

love,
family illness,
major diet changes that doubled our grocery bills but are still cheaper than medical bills,
marriage,
leaving teaching (last day was in December!),
starting back to my work as a full-time writer and bearing the huge swings in cash flow that come with it.
beginning to permit more silence in my life (thank you, Eliza King).

Meanwhile, the world goes on. Meanwhile, terrible things have happened everywhere, wonderful things have happened somewhere, and the sky continues to arch over them all. I remain maxed out on debt and slowly coming out of it, just as I was doing in 2010. Also: I am wildly happy a number of days every week.

But that is not why you are here. Today you are here for a poem.

Today, that poem is Naomi Shihab Nye's "Famous." I won't be reproducing it here. I will simply say that as I warm up to write today, this poem asserts itself again and again. I don't know why yet, which is why I am sharing it with you. Maybe you can help me connect to it with my head, for surely my heart already knows that

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

[photo taken by the Lisa Schamess in London, 2010.]

Poem Tuesday

2013-03-12T13:00:00.000-04:00

The Clam
Mary Oliver

Each one is a small life, but sometimes long, if its place in the universe is not found out. Like us, they have a heart and a stomach; they know hunger, and probably a little satisfaction, too. Do not mock them for their gentleness, they have a muscle that loves being alive. They pull away from the light. They pull down.They hold themselves together. They refuse to open.

But sometimes they lose their place and are tumbled shoreward in a storm. Then they pant, they fill with sand, they have no choice but must open the smallest crack.Then the fire of the world touches them. Perhaps, on such days, they too begin the terrible effort of thinking, of wondering who, and what, and why. If they can bury themselves again in the sand they will. If not, they are sure to perish, though not quickly. They also have resources beyond the flesh; they also try very hard not to die.

Thrift Shop Boyz

2013-01-30T20:48:00.000-05:00

Garrett Wesley Gibbons is a very talented individual.

Those guys Macklemore & Ryan Lewis aren't too shabby, either.

Also, THIS. Via Alert Reader Amina.

CB Redux: Virginia Woolf Is My Homegirl

2013-01-28T05:30:00.000-05:00

Money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for.

--Virginia Woolf

Once in a great while, I make quick surveys of the creative, political, intellectual, and philosophical forces of the known world who were also Cheap Bohemians.

Where better to reboot this effort with a tribute to the woman who made the phrase "money and a room of one's own" the battle cry for generations of us? It's Virginia Woolf's birthday today, and that makes it a very good day.

Go to the source and read the 1929 book based on her lectures to the dons and swans of Cambridge. You'll come away with a solid grasp on just how pragmatic and blunt Virginia Woolf really was in matters fiscal and creative:

"Dogs will bark; people will interrupt; money must be made; health will break down. Further, accentuating all these difficulties and making them harder to bear is the world's notorious indifference."

But here is why I really love Virginia Woolf: Her unflinching, unsentimental, wholly human admission that having money feels fantastic even if your aunt has to buy the farm for you to get it:

My aunt, Mary Beton, I must tell you, died by a fall from her horse when she was riding out to take the air in Bombay. The news of my legacy reached me one night about the same time that the act was passed that gave votes to women. A solicitor’s letter fell into the post-box and when I opened it I found that she had left me five hundred pounds a year for ever. Of the two — the vote and the money — the money, I own, seemed infinitely the more important. Before that I had made my living by cadging odd jobs from newspapers, by reporting a donkey show here or a wedding there; I had earned a few pounds by addressing envelopes, reading to old ladies, making artificial flowers, teaching the alphabet to small children in a kinder garten. Such were the chief occupations that were open to women before 1918. I need not, I am afraid, describe in any detail the hardness of the work, for you know perhaps women who have done it; nor the difficulty of living on the money when it was earned, for you may have tried. But what still remains with me as a worse infliction than either was the poison of fear and bitterness which those days bred in me. To begin with, always to be doing work that one did not wish to do, and to do it like a slave, flattering and fawning, not always necessarily perhaps, but it seemed necessary and the stakes were too great to run risks....whenever I change a tenshilling note a little of that rust and corrosion is rubbed off, fear and bitterness go.

****

Fear and bitterness are still the portion for many women--artists and other creators--and for men and women who had the misfortune to be born poor. Virginia Woolf was not the last to speak of the corrosive connection between financial want, economic dependence, and creative silence--Tillie Olsen would soon take up the cry in her stunning book Silences. How many voices are lost every day to the crushing want of money, the demands of soul-destroying, bone-grinding work? To say nothing of the way we devalue the only work that is utterly demanding and routinely done for free or far too little: raising and teaching children.

As for me, today I am lucky. In the bedroom I share at this moment, with barely enough money to get home from this family vacation, I listen to three little girls aged six to eleven bicker behind me in preparation for a family show, rooting through my luggage for suitable clothes, including necklaces and bracelets.

"So are you going to appear as a human or as a god?" asks one.

"First I'm going to appear as a god," says the other. "And then I'm going to announce that I'm going to a Goodwill store."

I know exactly what she means.

[image via Wikimedia Commons. You can buy the shirt here.]

Poetry Thursday: Stanley Kunitz

2012-10-25T09:11:00.001-04:00

This, hands down, is my favorite poem toward the Thanksgiving season.

Take the time to hear Stanley Kunitz speak his profound witness here.

Enjoy, my tribe. Thank you for traveling with me.

The Layers
by Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle

not to stray. When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

"Live in the layers,

not on the litter."

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

[Image via Fly Brother, my partner and friend in all metaphysical travels]

Poetry Thursday: Ruth Forman

2012-10-04T07:21:00.000-04:00

Prayers Like Shoes

by Ruth Forman

I wear prayers like shoes

pull em on quiet each morning
take me through the uncertain day

don't know
what might knock me off course

sit up in bed
pull on the right
then the left
before the shower before teeth

my mama's gift
to walk me through this life

she wore strong ones
the kind steady your ankles
i know
cause when her man left/her children
gone/her eldest son without goodbye
they the only ones keep her
standing

i saw her
still standing

mama passed on
some thing to me
ma smile sense a discipline
ma
subtle behind

but best she passed on
girl you go to God
and get you some good shoes
cause this life ain't steady ground

now i don't wear hers
you take em with you you know
but i suspect they made by the same company
pull em on each morning
first the right then the left
best piece a dress
i got

Poetry Thursday: Russell Edson

2012-08-02T00:18:00.000-04:00

The Airstream Bambi: So awesome it lives
at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

With all this talk lately of Airstream trailers and the open road, of what we'd do with the lottery winnings and how we might just have to start before we win, it all minds me of a particular poem by prose-poet Russell Edson.

************************************

The Adventures of a Turtle
by Russell Edson

The turtle carries his house on his back. He is both the house and the person of that house.

But actually, under the shell is a little room where the true turtle, wearing long underwear, sits at a little table. At one end of the room a series of levers sticks out of slots in the floor, like the controls of a steam shovel. It is with these that the turtle controls the legs of his house.

Most of the time the turtle sits under the sloping ceiling of his turtle room reading catalogues at the little table where a candle burns. He leans on one elbow, and then the other. He crosses one leg, and then the other. Finally he yawns and buries his head in his arms and sleeps.
If he feels a child picking up his house he quickly douses the candle and runs to the control levers and activates the legs of his house and tries to escape.
If he cannot escape he retracts the legs and withdraws the so-called head and waits. He knows that children are careless, and that there will come a time when he will be free to move his house to some secluded place, where he will relight his candle, take out his catalogues and read until at last he yawns. Then he’ll bury his head in his arms and sleep....That is, until another child picks up his house....

"Luck Is When Knowledge Meets Opportunity"

2012-07-29T20:12:00.000-04:00

Collecting is pretty addictive.
(Image via Maureen Stanton, Killer Stuff and Tons of Money).

So says antique dealing whiz Curt Avery (a pseudonym) in Maureen Stanton's book on the flea-marketing and antiquing world, Killer Stuff and Tons of Money. With Avery's sturdy guidance, Stanton scavenges the realm of bottle-diggers, gramophone dancers, shrunken-head purveyors, stalwart dealers and tentative feelers at the tables and tents of America's auctions and antiques fairs.

There are thousands of books out there for collectors and wanna-be dealers, but few capture the carny atmosphere and canny arcana of flea-marketing quite like Killer Stuff. It's a behind-the-scenes peek at how vintage and antique dealers make their trade, told through the eyes of one successful dealer who has built a steady business over decades of self-taught and hard-won lessons in eyeing the prize. Part road biography, part History of the World As Seen from Card Tables, Killer Stuff is also a friendly and fascinating compendium of information as diverse and diverting as anything you might spot among the estate lots.

Stanton takes us from the first known weathervane (48 B.C.E., Athens) to the development of auction theory and its implications for economics (William Vickery won the Nobel Prize for it in 1996), with side trips to the introduction of tea to England (documented by none other than my personal hero Sam Pepys) and the invention of heroin (as an aid to kicking opium). As Stanton unpacks a slew of factual finds she leads us through her encounters with passionate collectors and errant oddballs, fakes, fanatics, and fabulous finds, investing her tale with the rugged and eclectic charm of the hunt.

Stanton became interested in her subject in a very fitting way: It grew on her over a lifetime. "Scavenging is a habit that dies hard, or maybe never dies," she writes, recalling a childhood of “dump picking” with her frugal mom who reassembled old rotary phones as an avocation. In her college days, Stanton haunted junk stores and flea markets and "wore 'bag lady' coats I now know were swing coats from the 1940s," along with "1950s dresses, costume jewelry, funky plaid men’s blazers (one in mustard color—still have it)."

Still, Stanton didn't think about writing about her interest until Avery, who'd been a friend in college, looked her up when he was attending a glass auction in her city. "He needed a place to crash. I went with him to the auction and took notes. A few years later, I asked to tag along with him to a flea market. I found myself drawn further and further into that world. It was fascinating and entertaining."

Surprising, too: "I thought I was entering a world with fairly low-level vendors, maybe even down-and-out people who had an edge of desperation. I didn’t even know my friend had transformed himself into a really knowledgeable, successful dealer." Stanton became acquainted with "this whole subculture of people...who are experts and authorities at little cells of our collective history—the guy who sells and repairs only antique and vintage toasters.... the collector who self-published a book on Wistarburgh glass, the oldest glass manufactory in the country." Many of the most successful denizens of the flea market circuit are as knowledgeable as art historians and scholars--and sometimes more so. "These squadrons of people are lay historians, quasi-curators, and they are driven by a passion and love for objects—not money, because it’s just not an easy way to make a living."

Now that she's been on the road with the best in the business, can Stanton spot a fake or a find herself?

"I have definitely gained knowledge that has helped enormously." In fact, Stanton has shopping tips and a few other bonus items at her website. Yet, "I still get caught by reproductions, though, like a pair of Roseville candlesticks I bought about a year ago. Within a minute of researching them at home, I realized they were repros. I’d been careless and hasty and made some classic mistakes. The price was too good to be true, they were dirty so I did not see that there wasn’t really any “wear” where there should have been but didn’t look closely enough, lighting was poor and I didn’t have a flashlight or magnifying glass, they’d been sitting there for hours in the open in a large group shop that dealers pass through all the time, so they would have been gone if they’d been real. I didn’t know the dealer or his reputation, but it was a lower-level indoor flea market so he wasn’t really knowledgeable (though I think he knew these were repros and did not let on to me). I’m doing a lot better than I used to in spotting reproductions. Fakes are harder to tell because someone went through a lot of effort to make something look old, but I do know how to tell fakes in a few categories. I think you have to worry more about fakes as the price goes up. I paid $35 for those candlesticks and that was the cost of my lesson, and a mistake I’ll never make again."

Although the book is full of insights into aspects of collecting, this is not a how-to, but a firmly driven narrative about the thrill--and frequent upsets--of the hunt for killer stuff.

"As I was researching and writing over seven years, I kept thinking someone was going to come out with a similar book at any minute since this story hadn’t been told," recalls Stanton. No books, so far, "But there has been a huge onslaught of reality TV shows," including a new competitive show called Market Wars, just announced by PBS. "There was one when I started—Antiques Roadshow," Stanton remembers. At last count, Stanton says there are now 45 shows on the topic, with 30 of them being launched in the last two years or so (from 2010 to 2012). As entertaining as they are, none of those shows gives an in-depth or truly authentic or holistic look at the subculture because the medium doesn’t allow for that sort of depth."

Killer Stuff and Tons of Money is available in hardback, paperback, and ebook. You can still probably pick up a first edition of the hardcover--and keep it in good shape if you do. It could be worth a lot more one day.

Go Big or Go Home

2012-07-25T09:26:00.000-04:00

There is a free lunch. It is in Redstone, Colorado.

It's not every day you're a newlywed. By the book, in fact, it's only 365 days. So you can't blame me for trying to make each day after July 15, 2012 count for a little something toward the bottom line. I started before we even exchanged vows.

"Tell them we're getting married on Sunday!" I hissed in John's ear as the flight gear went up and we departed for Colorado. "They'll give us stuff."

John looked skeptical. We've both been married before, and I could see him racking his brain for an example of when his marital status ever entitled them to anything free.

Over the next two weeks, as we prepared to tie the knot and then tied it, we tried the newlywed card in a number of situations. At the car rental counter. At the hotel check-in desk. At the nicest restaurant in our honeymoon town. We even announced our marital status proudly to the deli lady at the Safeway in Delta, Colorado about 36 hours into our bliss.

We got a lot of congratulations, and if you squinted hard at the Safeway incident you could say we got some extra mustard packets for the corn dogs. The fancy restaurant in the honyemoon town offered us a premium bottle of wine at a fraction of the typical price, but they were offering that to everyone. In essence, we discovered that the newlywed card doesn't get you much these days.

Luckily, we had a Plan B. Our Plan B consisted of throwing money at any wedding-related task or entertainment until it fell off our to-do list. There are times when this has to happen.

"Go big or go home," we told each other.

Then, days later, when we'd long since stopped hoping, a miracle happened.

We got a free lunch at the Trading Post Cafe in Redstone.

Sure, it had nothing to do with us. We didn't even tell them we'd just gotten married. They comped us a French Dip and a buffalo burger for reasons that still escape us. We think it was because the order was late, or badly cooked, or both. Anyway, we celebrated.

All we had to do was spend a few thousand dollars for that magic moment.

Trust me, our budget's blown. But we got some nice stuff:

Playing Ticket to Ride at the China Clipper Inn, Ouray, Colorado

Flowers stolen from an undisclosed location.

Box Cañon Falls Park, Ouray, Colorado

Union Station undergoing renovation, Denver, Colorado

The Oxford Hotel, Denver, Colorado

Domo Restaurant, Denver

Tomorrow Is the Day After the First Day of the Rest of Your Life

2012-06-09T13:43:00.002-04:00

I've been doing it wrong.

You have, too.

Like me, you have made list after list, and lists OF your lists, to the point of listlessness, trying to do what you know is To-Do, and making occasional enormous Life Changing Goal Lists that will Make You Way Better in Ten Days.

I know. You're still not better. Me neither.

So listen up: I just bought us a clue.

I've figured out something really important: My daily lists only include the things I think I can get to, or the things I have to get to, or the things I believe I can control.

Right? I've been forgetting the most important thing of all: Every daily to-do list should include at least one meaningful task that is beyond my control, not do-able in a single day, or otherwise just plain impractical. Otherwise, I will never get to those six impossible things before breakfast.

My favorite way to make a list, generally, is to restrict it to the stuff I have to do before I can get to the stuff I want to do.

Or, if I do branch out and go list the stuff I want to do, I ghettoize it into a wishlist. Don't get me wrong: I love me some wishes, all the better if I'm keeping them at a social place like, say, Bucketlist.

Thing is, only today--after walking around on the planet for nearly 50 years--did it actually occur to me to mix them.

That's right. I am introducing aspirational diversity into my To-Do List. To-Day.

Like, here's today's list.
~~1. Post this.~~
2. Pay outstanding bills.
3. Finish Lucas project (small client)
4. Become fluent in French.

I mean, how am I going to keep Item #4 uppermost in mind or even have a prayer of finally making it real if I keep shunting it off to my dream list?

I won't be leaving behind some of the wonderful tools I've been using to stay organized, apps like

43 Folders*
Manilla
Mindmeister
Remember the Milk**
Smartsheet

And I won't stop finding sites like this one that make me want to put a cold washcloth on my head and lie down for a while.

Still. I like to think I am baby step closer to actually tossing off bon mots in our time.

Try it. What's the thing you want to do today, every day, that never gets done? Put it on your list every day for a week and see what happens next.

*Okay, I don't really ever succeed at using 43 Folders, but I feel like I should.
**Okay, I also ignore Remember the Milk.

Poetry Thursday: Jim Carroll

2012-06-07T00:37:00.000-04:00

Prologue

Starting with little in mind
the best you might do is begin it
over and over again. transforming

the real earth to a texture, and strength
beyond control. I am thinking of a wave.

We sit, huddled in winter coats, transfixed
to the logic of stars collapsing. The fresh
gravity pulling at stones we grip.

Locked tightly to the seams of night,
the moon rears like a fenced stallion,
and, its rage subdued, turns back.

Then the hour is loose as the music,
a vapor passing through. It defies
each change. As the wind outdistances
each word spoken, and replies with
a promise already broken.

--Jim Carroll

[sky at VCCA, 2/22/12]

Huzzah for Samuel Pepys

2012-05-28T21:11:00.000-04:00

is that a pen in your hand, Mr. Pepys, or are you just happy to see me?

Update: On Thursday, May 31, the amazing Phil Gyford will put the Pepys Diary project to bed at 9:00 p.m. UK time. Let's shed a tear for a beautiful project, well done. Here is what I wrote about the Diary earlier this year.

****
Look.

No, look up here.

I don't do this for just everyone, every day.

But if the online version of your essay about Samuel Pepys in the digital age comes out in Creative Nonfiction Magazine on the very day of the old man's 379th birthday, and you just happen to have made a "Samuel Pepys Is My Homeboy" t-shirt available for purchase back in 2010 because you really have the hots for dead 17th-century diarists, well--

You have to come across with the goods, right?

Seriously. I know you just read me for the articles.

An Impolite Conversation

2012-05-18T15:24:00.001-04:00

I've been having fun with charts again.

It's good that the charting is fun, because the information isn't so fun.

I believe this is what my friend Nancy refers to as "the horizon always receding":

(Click the chart for a better view.)

This chart represents the changes--both subtle and, ultimately, virtually nonexistent--in my debt load since May 2011. The top bar is last year, and the bottom is now. So to speak.

You see, I've reduced my overall debt by about $7,000, which is nothing to sneeze at. But in real terms, I've made neither net gains nor losses overall. The biggest chunk paid down was on my house mortgage, owing to this helpful scheme. My student loans have shrunk, too, by another $2,500 during the past year.

The big growth is in credit consumer debt, but the picture is not as dire as you may imagine. More than 75 percent of my current credit card debt is actually sitting on balance transfer cards, not accruing further interest. My credit is costing me less than it ever has.

I've finally paid the last of my $5,000 loan to The Lending Club this month, and I am refinancing my house at a lower interest rate, which will help me pay a little more toward credit cards. I have managed to incur no additional debt during the past six months in spite of several major expenses, including a big 13th birthday party for my daughter and travel expenses associated with a couple of professional conferences, plus some major repairs to car and home.

Yes, delightful. But at the end of the day, I am frustrated, my fellow CheapBohemians. Because basically all this means that I am just winning at running in place.

No Fooling

2012-04-02T00:11:00.001-04:00

I might as well slap this up for all to see.

So guilt and shame remain crucial elements of my savings plan.

Problem is, at the moment my expenditures are outstripping my savings, so, uh. This isn't what it seems.

It's worse. Eventually to get better. One hopes.

In the meantime, this post acts as a placekeeper, just to keep myself more or less honest.

I kid you not.

Poetry Thursday: Darrell Grayson

2012-03-28T23:05:00.001-04:00

The Nature of Being
by Darrell Grayson

Perhaps
Through humor, love cascades
As a display of stars—these
The gods have reasonably essayed—
And further, they whispered the
Punch-line into clay to ease
Their boredom.

This
Essence is conveyed as light.
These artists crafted the senses through
Bold explicit strokes, painting us
Breathlessly across a winking sky.

Folly
Portends tragedy
Sweetens the earth like music
Caressing the senses, in
Blue jazzy waves.

Shapes
The Temple of Our Familiars
Mazes of reason are conquered
Allowing us to consume dementia
And expel rose-colored bubbles
Our gossamer wings
Shimmer in quiet desperation.

Our
Brilliant abstraction no longer loll
Over horizons that once captivated
Or swayed us through chants
From ego-centric lands, where
Philosophies eat souls as tender fruit.

Nature
That singular crown of a face
Edified to the magnificence
Of hearts redeemed.

[via The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature]

On Saving, and Saving Again

2012-03-05T08:46:00.000-05:00

Behind this modest update lies a world of pride.

About two years ago, I started this blog after realizing that a costly, avoidable tax mistake had jeopardized a once-in-a-lifetime trip overseas with my daughter.

To put a keener edge to the blade, the extra amount I owed for taxes was roughly the cost of the trip.

It was a preventable mistake. Most money mistakes are. Problem is--I, like many people I know, was terrified of money. So I'd lived for years skimming the surface of my own finances, afraid to look too deeply. Who can blame me? Deep in one's wallet, there be monsters.

The little screencap above represents less than 10 percent progress so far on my second public savings goal, a two-year project to clear $26,000 in consumer debt, leaving only my student loan and mortgages thereafter. (Read about both savings goals here, along with money-hacking tips for changing your own habits; or check out all of the posts via The Big Drift, updated monthly).

It doesn't look like much, but this week I realized how far I had come. Not because of what I've paid down, but because of how quickly I bounce back from big, out-of-pocket expenses.

You know the drill. You get caught up, maybe you even start dreaming about paying cash for something you've been wanting, and then BAM. The car needs a repair or an appliance needs fixing, often in the same week. Maybe a great opportunity arises (I got a scholarship to this conference but still have to pay my travel), or you want to throw a big birthday party, plus an out-of-town wedding, plus accommodate the Passover weekend all in a period of six months.

Well, you don't, but I do.

Turns out, although I am not out of the hole just yet, my still-new savings habits have enabled me to budget for thousands of dollars of unexpected expenses during the past six months, without changing my bottom line. My daughter's big December birthday party at a restaurant was paid for by the end of January, and during the first two months of this year, I have been able to identify funds to pay off major expenditures (wedding deposit, plane tickets and hotel for a conference) within 60 days of incurring them.

It doesn't prevent me bitching, mind you. That's a blogger's prerogative.

Three things you can do today to get more savings in your pocket:
1. Set a goal to save 30% on groceries. For a family of four, this could be about $150 or more per month. Consider a grocery delivery service like Peapod, and seek out coupon-strategy sites like CouponMom. Here are other tips for surviving the couponing wars.
2. Scrutinize your debt, and shift it like a fat cat. Use a debt payoff calculator to figure out the big picture. Don't be sentimental. The principal debt may look worse initially while the long-term debt improves. In April 2010 I had about $18,000 in consumer debt, including a car loan, all at interest rates between 8 and 16 percent. Today, about 90 percent of my consumer debt is interest-free. My overall debt (including mortgage and student loan) has dropped by $5,000 during that time.
3. Celebrate the victories and have fun. I have the attention span and temperament of a magpie, and if I can't enjoy what I am doing, I move on to the next shiny thing on the pavement. So I use sites like SaveUp and PiggyMojo to make saving as fun and shiny as I can.

Poetry Thursday: Matsuo Basho

2012-03-01T19:04:00.001-05:00

In 1689 a man left his home and traveled for 1,200 miles with a companion, a few changes of clothes, writing brushes, and notebooks. The two walked throughout their homeland of Japan for five months. He was already known as the master of haiku, a poem form that relies on a foundation of 5- and 7-syllable verse.

The poet did not know then that he had only five years remaining to live. Today, the trail he followed on his final journey is a pilgrimage route held in high esteem.

This ruined temple
should have its sad tale told only
by a clam digger

[via The Illustrated Poems of Matsuo Bashō. Image via Wikimedia Commons]

Zen and the Art of Debt Management

2012-02-26T22:09:00.001-05:00

I figured if I confused you with my whole desktop you might not immediately notice that--

I SAVED NOTHING THIS WEEK.

Zero. Goose eggs. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Bupkis.

And I am not a bit sorry.

I went away somewhere far away where they serve you meals to spend a week writing (and yes, I had to pay for it, but I was able to pay cash). So in addition to working out about five years' worth of work on two books, I also became a calmer individual. At least until 6:30 a.m. tomorrow, when the rat race starts up again.

I am on track overall, and moving toward better savings weeks soon, as I have started to seriously mess around with a dynamite little site called SaveUp (about which you will surely hear more soon).

On a more pragmatic note, I have begun seeking new freelance writing work, which might bring the official tally of my money-making gigs to three at any given time (teaching at a university, counseling at a high school, and then writing when I can).

So, I'm with Alfred E. Neuman.

There is no worry. There is only Whatme Worry.

Notice Anything Different?

2012-02-19T18:38:00.001-05:00

Nah, me neither.

That's good, though, really.

This week, I've got nothing to say about this debt, and I'm still saving it.

Poetry Thursday: Fathers and Other Strangers

2012-02-16T06:13:00.008-05:00

iconic dad and salesman, Willy Loman

I've been thinking a lot about fathers, breadwinners, and fathers as breadwinners, which is what stirred yesterday's reposted Valentine to my dad.

The theme has been coming up in my teaching, too, with Sherman Alexie's wrenching work "Father Coming Home" at the forefront.

And anytime I think of poetry about fathers--about the grind of earning and making a living for the family--I think of Robert Hayden's superb "Those Winter Sundays."

Today's Poetry Thursday is devoted to a poem I discovered tonight in a similar vein, "Hard Times," by Michael Ryan. Here's the part that got me, Ryan's description of the pigs-in-blankets cooked for a meal to celebrate a new job:

They’re doom and shame and dumb pig fate.

I tell my mom I think they’re great.

Oh God. I have been at that dinner table. Repeatedly.

Happy breadwinning, everyone. Tomorrow's Friday. Time to feed the pig.

[with thanks to the Poetry Foundation]

Local Heroes: Money and Love (CB Redux)

2012-02-14T07:14:00.005-05:00

This post originally ran in August 2010. It's a love letter to my dad, who passed away in 1997.

Happy Valentine's Day, all. May your love bring you riches.

Here's someone else for the panoply of towering intellectuals who knew the value of a buck. His name is J.J. Wormser.

He was a gifted electrical engineer and inventor whose employers read as a Who's Who of cutting edge technology companies: Bell Labs, Continental Electronics, Southwest Research Institute.

If the Internet existed and the electronics companies of the 50s and 60s had been as good at hyping themselves as the dot.coms are, he would have had a ribbon of Google hits as long as this.

As it was, he was just my dad. But, Google him: still pretty good for an old guy.

He was a work-for-hire guy in a pre-intrapreneur world, so all his patents belong to the big boys. Product of the G.I. Bill and youngest son of a ranching family, he was considered so dumb there was no money for college when it came time. With only a high school diploma and an incurable love of tinkering with radios (later TVs), he earned a place among the holy brethren of pre-digital geeks through sheer force of will.

He was also great with money. He did his own taxes year after year, keeping every receipt in shoe boxes that came down from the shelf of his closet ceremonially every January and were neatly filed in the attic on April 16. He and my mom (who had to put herself through college) put the three of us through college all the way because by God what happened to them would not happen to us.

He used to dream aloud on long car rides about crazy inventions for everyday problems, and how he'd make all of us rich. He painted oil landscapes in the garage, with only his mind for a view. He studied sculpture and drove a VW bug, sold his beloved motorboat when my mom finally made him, and loved to snap open his menu in restaurants and say to the whole assembled family, "Order whatever you want."

In the couple of years before he died in 1997, widowed and insomniac, he wrote us long emails about his will, his safety deposit box, and what he would do with the money if he won the lottery tomorrow. It was always about us.

But I digress.

In 1972, at age 50 he did something he'd never done: He left the Company. Lay-offs were afoot and he wanted to leave as his own man, get a better job, maybe even start his own company. The kids were sixteen, fifteen, and nine (me). Oh, and, yeah: there was a recession on its way.

So here was my dad's great new job: floor salesman at Levitz Furniture. My shy, wise-cracking, self-taught, Melville- and Conrad-reading father was set loose in a piranha tank filled with other desperate, underemployed, middle-aged men with kids to feed. He did it 6 and often 7 days a week every week for the 10 longest months of his life. He brought home a pittance and there was no menu-snapping.

Thing is, he showed up. Every day. And when he got a solid job offer, way below market, he jumped at it and got to be an engineer again for another decade and a half.

Showing up is what I am thinking about today. Where money and love (lack of one and consequences of the other) are concerned, the people who show up are the heroes.

Who is your hero?

[still is from Glengarry Glen Ross]

Shame Works Overtime

2012-02-12T11:13:00.000-05:00

It's still an excellent gig for shame at my house. This week's success owes a lot to my parking problems at the downtown location of my job, and the lack of dedicated parking for employees. Which reminds me of this.

Note that the money I put toward debt by matching what I paid for commercial parking one day($17) is way outstripped by the money I "earned" toward debt with two consecutive street parking tickets ($60).

What have we learned from this? That my form of repaying debt resembles the proverbial hole to China more than just a little bit. At least I'm getting somewhere. Mostly in the dark.

Strip-Down Saturday: Seeing

2012-02-11T09:01:00.001-05:00

I am afraid to see.

This happens now and again, and it started on Thursday. That night, I came home after a rough day, and my daughter said, "Just breathe, Mom. Do that thing you do. Just breathe and settle down and focus."

I stood in the kitchen with a beer in my hand and didn't dare.

"If I do that," I said, "It'll all be over."

Two days later, that's still how I feel. That terror is at the root of a lot of the problems I--you, we--have. The debt, for sure. The overwork. The disconnect I suffer with too many friends and close family.

If I actually look at everything I really should do, I will lose grip for a moment.

Where do we begin claiming a life, when mere seeing pains us?

I'm going to try by seeing just a very little bit. I'm going to try by making a list of what to do. When I reach the fourth item on the list, today--and only today--will be a success.

1. Make coffee
2. Write this post
3. See, as clearly as I can, all the things. List them. Claim them. But don't try to clean them.
4. Put them aside, and look for a long time at something beautiful.

(More coffee optional).

Poetry Thursday: Marge Piercy

2012-02-09T07:30:00.002-05:00

via Public Domain Images Online

I'll go with a fairly easy revelation from my morning, the poem featured on today's The Writer's Almanac, the radio program that basically gets me out of bed each day.

As I gain more readers, I have to revisit my "whole body" approach to Poetry Thursdays because I want to maintain fair use. That'll mean planning and gaining permissions from the amazing poets whom I read and think about.

Till then, I leave you with Piercy's final stanza, and urge you to visit this link to read the poem in its entirety:

Everything revealed is magical,
splendid in its ordinary shining.
The sun gives birth to rosebushes,
the myrtle, a snow shovel fallen,
overcome on the field of battle.

From "February Ground," by Marge Piercy.

[Image via a richly Cheap Bohemian, havealittletalk at Public Domain Images Online. This particular image from the NOAA Photo Library at the National Weather Service was taken by farmer Wilson Bentley in 1902, a hobbyist who photographed many snow crystals for public information. God bless the hobbyists].

Making with the Grocery Savings (CB Redux)

2012-02-07T00:06:00.000-05:00

via Modern Mechanix

Many times, fans contact me to ask, "Cheap Bohemian, what's your secret? How do you, an ordinary American on the short and dumpy side, manage to lop 30 percent off your grocery bills every week?"

No they don't. But if they did, here is what I would tell them.

Two words: Grocery delivery.

Five more: Peapod. Safeway. Netgrocer. Homeland. Schwan's. Who'd I leave out?

What? Don't those deliveries cost money? Don't you have to tip the driver? Isn't is a total violation of the Slow Food Ethic, and won't Cynthia Lane Schames come after us? Don't you go crazier online at the Internet grocery than a drag queen on Zappo's?

Yes, yes, it depends, and no.

In fact, grocery delivery is the reason I can aim myself at the sweet spot of $100 every week--the point at which the base delivery fee drops to $7.95, which can be further reduced by up to $3 depending on your payment method and choice of delivery time. I try only to shop the specials, and I plan ahead so I can stock up. I can research prices, locate coupons, and revise my order repeatedly right up until midnight the night before delivery. My delivery fee is usually only $5.95. I clip enough coupons to pay for the tip of about $5, and since I am saving between $30 and $40 each time now, I can still call the net gain pretty sweet.

I often use CouponMom to cross-reference the weekly specials in my neighborhood with the coupons in the paper that week. Their system is so straightforward, even I can use it. Peapod doubles the coupons under a dollar, so that's extra nice too.

Peapod is a better environmental choice for me and the customers it's serving, as a single truck will save perhaps a dozen trips in a day. I am less sure about Netgroceries and other delivery-by-mail outfits. One compromise might be to order dry goods through a net delivery service and buy fresh items locally.

Peapod often uses discount promotion to lure unsuspecting new customers into their web and reward stalwarts. Sort of like a cult. Since I am already a member, I cannot test-drive the first-time codes, so please email me if they do not work. You will likely be prompted to enter the email of the person who referred you. That's me: lisaschamess@gmail.com.

Refer-a-friend: You can save yourself and me $10 each when you use this link to start a Peapod account.

Other first-timer special: Since I like you, I'll tell you that you can actually get a full $15 off all by yourself by going directly to Peapod.com (is this like the Prisoner's Dilemma?).

The other sites I've gathered up contain information about areas they serve. I would not say I've provided an exhaustive list here, but I am happy to help you find out more.

Especially if I get a kickback.

[republished with new information on 7 February 2012]