Working for Rachel

Minimizing

2009-11-06T06:58:00.000-08:00

I now officially own less than 100 books.

OK, 99. But several of them will be Paperback Swapped as soon as I'm done reading them. (And I'm not counting my collection of a series from my childhood. I consider that one item, cause I wouldn't get rid of any of them without getting rid of all of them.) This is down from something like 350 about a year ago.

According to the inventory I made when we moved a couple of months ago, I personally have 444 things. Not too bad, I don't think. Especially when you consider things like "bobby pins, about 20" are listed. (Come to think of it, why am I hanging on to those bobby pins?)

I still have this strong desire to minimize further. But I'm not sure how much more I can do. Books and wardrobe make up most of my stuff, and though I don't have a huge wardrobe, I do like fashion and can't see myself doing a Leo Baubata and bringing it down to seven outfits or so. In fact, right now I want MORE clothes.

I'm sure part of my desire to minimize and simplify is because my personal life is fairly complicated right now. If I simplify my material life, my emotional life will get easier too, right?

It's not like that. But by getting rid of one more thing, I feel a little bit more in control.

Now where did I put those bobby pins?

Welcome to 1932

2009-02-23T13:44:00.000-08:00

In 1932, the phone never stops ringing. Everyone is reaching into the depths of their rolodexes trying to find new business. You hear the notes of desperation in their voices. "I'm not gonna lie," they say. "Things are slow right now."

In 1932, you've stopped picking up. You don't have any business to give and you're so tired of trying to say no in the face of dogged persistence.

In 1932, no one returns your calls, either. They have 25% budget cuts, too, and there's not enough money to go around.

In 1932, Linda's husband has been out of work for nine months. He used to do something related to research and IT. Now he thinks maybe he'll try being a personal trainer.

In 1932, you go to McDonald's and hear six people in a row order off the dollar menu. You are the only one ordering a "value" meal. Did it used to be like that?

In 1932, you forgot to sign a new lease several months ago but the landlord hasn't asked. Maybe as long as you keep paying rent he figures it's best not to rock the boat.

In 1932, R. is scared to ask for vacation. They'll say yes but what if they realize while he's gone that they don't need him? He's good at his job but he's only part time--easy to lay off.

In 1932, you print things up on the office printer. You make the copies yourself. You talk about new products to offer and you come up with ways to shave $50 off a $10,000 bill. You're letting all your professional memberships lapse. You try not to think about what will happen if everybody else does the same.

In 1932, your company is holding its annual meeting in Hawaii. It was planned 7 years ago, when it seemed more like 1925. Bad luck, that.

In 1932, you pray that no one will quit. If they quit they probably wouldn't be replaced and then you'd have to learn graphic design or how to sell ads. You especially hope the woman who sells ads won't quit. She works on commission. There's nothing you can do to help.

When you were little, one of your favorite things to play was to pretend that you were poor. In 1932, you pretend that harder than ever. You're still just pretending. It still isn't that bad. You read Material World and What the World Eats to remind yourself of how it could be. You ate oatmeal for breakfast and kasha for lunch and will have pumpkin pie and who-knows-what for dinner. There's chocolate in your bag and shoes in your desk drawer and clothes, so many clothes, in your closet. When you come home the bed is warm and your boyfriend is waiting for you. No, 1932 isn't bad at all.

100 Things

2009-02-19T07:34:00.000-08:00

A small but well-publicized number of people have attempted to whittle down their personal possessions to 100 items. By personal items they mean that if you live with someone else, you don't include the things you both use, like living room furniture or kitchen items. Also, most people doing this don't include books or, sometimes, DVDs, and count, for instance, a week's worth of underwear as one item. Even with these exceptions, 100 things is a *very* short list--a very minimal closet might include 5 pairs of shoes (sneakers, work shoes, hiking boots, flip flops or sandals, dress shoes) and you're already at 1/20 of your total items.

I know full well I could never do this; while I'm pretty minimal compared to your average American, I like having a decent selection of clothes, accessories, and art supplies around.

Still, I was inspired by this idea to see how minimal I could potentially be, so for one day I tracked all the items I used and came up with only 67. It was a weekend and I didn't leave the house except to go to the mailbox, so I presumably used more items around the house than usual. And I included non-personal items like the treadmill and the items I used for cooking (measuring cup, pot, fork, etc.). I forgot to include the stuff I used while sleeping (bed, quilt, sheets), but I did include the blanket I wrapped up in while watching a movie.

This really surprised me. Only 67 items? And this was on a day when I read/browsed through several books (which I counted) and changed my shirt a couple of times based on fluctuating temperature.

One thing I noticed was that my computer serves many purposes. Before the personal computer era, I might have used several more items for activities that I did on my computer (red pen and multiple reference books for editing, DVD/VHS player and tapes for watching a movie that I viewed online, paper and envelopes for correspondence).

I spent most of the day in my office. At the end of the day I put everything that I hadn't used into the closet to see how long it would take me to actually need those things. This was a couple of weeks ago and so far I've only taken out a few things (stamps, scotch tape, crayons. Yes, crayons).

I also decided to start putting a slip of paper in books as I read or refer to them. I'm not planning on getting rid of the ones I don't use, at least not yet, but it will be interesting to see how many of my books I use in a given period of time. If it's ridiculously low I may have to consider doing another book collection purge.

In Which I Make Kasha Palatable

2009-02-17T18:40:00.000-08:00

Tonight I tackled one of the biggest challenges on my weird foods list: kasha. I bought this one-pound bag of misery in the form of a grain product at my neighborhood Mexican/Polish/yuppie grocery store about a year and a half ago for reasons unknown.
Kasha is roasted buckwheat, which sounds innocent enough. I think I saw the word "buckwheat" and thought, "Hey, don't some people make buckwheat pancakes?" It probably sounded wholesome and vaguely Wild West-ish.

Well, for buckwheat pancakes you need buckwheat flour, not whole buckwheat groats, which were the type of kasha I bought. Still, Joy of Cooking called kasha "irresistible," so I tried one of the two recipes in the book, "Basic Cooked Kasha," which yielded something vaguely like brown rice only several times less appealing. I ate one serving and kept the rest of it in the fridge for a decent interval until I could justify throwing it out.

However, I still had half the bag of kasha left, and it lurked in the back of the cupboard like a portent of doom for over a year--until tonight.

The Joy of Cooking recipe used only beef stock and egg, leaving the essential flavor of the kasha basically pure and unadorned. Tonight I added a pound of ground beef, an entire onion, tomato sauce, and the strongest spices I could find that wouldn't clash terribly with the Slavic roastedness of the kasha. When it was finished, I sprinkled it with sharp cheddar to mask the taste even more.

It still tasted like brown rice, but it was good enough to save it from the trash heap. It made so much I'll be eating it for the next week.

How Little We Use

2009-02-04T16:29:00.000-08:00

After purging many of my books about two months ago, I have approximately 244 books. I'm cheating big time with that number; I'm not counting a collection of about 200 paperbacks, nor a stack of books that I haven't decided yet whether to keep or discard.

But for the sake of argument, let's say I own 244 books.

How much do I use each of those books? How much use would qualify as adequate use of the book in order to keep it? Rereading each of them within a certain amount of time--six months, one year, five years--seems artificial to me. Many of my books are nonfiction books that I won't ever read again cover to cover, and others are favorites that I may not read for several years, but will then read several times in quick succession. On the other hand, if I look up one recipe in a cookbook in a particular year, it may not be worth keeping around.

So let's try to judge my entire collection of books based on the amount of time I spend using it.
Say I used each one for an average of an hour a year. That's much less time than it takes to read a book, but since I've already read all of my books and many are nonfiction books that I would use to look up particular facts for a total of much less than one hour, it'll do for an average. If I used each book for one hour per year, I would be spending 244 hours using my books. That works out to a bit less than five hours per week.

Do I spend that much time using my books? Not even close. Do I even want to spend that much time using my books? No; in general, I prefer to spend most of my reading time reading books I haven't read before. And an hour per book per year is awfully low--if I used a piece of furniture one hour per year, or used my computer one hour per year, would I keep it around? No way.

Based on this, I would judge that my book collection is still too large.

Seems like I should be able to apply this to other things--kitchen appliances, clothes. Some of my clothes spend hundreds of hours on my body per year; others see less than 8 hours of use per year.

Or I could calculate the number of items of clothing I have by the amount of time I would have to spend wearing each in order to get adequate wear out of them.

Obscure Interests + Family Far Away + Wanderlust + Limited Vacation Time = Augh!

2009-01-13T17:12:00.000-08:00

I don't get how people do this. As R. often mentions, I have a really great job: great benefits, great pay, relatively easy, 35-hour workweek (!), and a theoretically generous 4 weeks of vacation (!!), plus 2 personal days, plus 2 days comp time after our annual conference. Nonetheless, I can't seem to shoehorn all of the travel I *really really* want to do into that time.

I haven't taken what I would consider a real vacation since 2006. All of my travel since then has been for a purpose of one kind or another--conferences, visiting relatives, unschooling camp. I haven't been to a new country since 2005. This is really appalling. I almost dropped out of college to be able to travel more. I lived on peanut butter sandwiches in an apartment with no heat so that I could afford to travel to Egypt! Yet I still haven't managed to get my butt over to India, despite having wanted to go there for almost ten years.

I was supposed to go there last year. Then I found out about unschooling camp and did that instead. I was supposed to go there this year. But I'm committed to visiting my parents in Korea, which really needs to be a two-week trip just to get over the jet lag (the aforementioned Christmas present), and I also want to do unschooling camp again if they'll have me back.

What about next year? My parents should be back from Korea, but they'll likely still be a plane ride away, as will my brother and both my grandmothers. I'll still want to do unschooling camp. That leaves me with maybe two weeks for India. India is huge. All of the major cities and sites are ages away from each other. And who knows if I'll ever go there again? Two weeks is not enough.

Everything requires giving something else up.

Here's what I've got planned out for my vacation time this year:
literary conference in March, where I'm giving a paper
one vacation day in Hawaii after our annual conference
trip to Korea (two weeks)
family reunion in North Dakota (? hoping I can do this over a three-day weekend)
unschooling camp (one week)

Here's what I'm not doing that I would very much like to do:
a convention of fans of my favorite author, happens once every five years
another literary conference I went to last year (probably better than the one I'm going to, but I committed to giving the paper)
National Novel Writing Month in a cabin with a bunch of teenagers (a friend of mine runs this and offered me a position on staff, but I obviously can't)
trip to India
another session of unschooling camp

Each of the things on the second list is a sacrifice for me to not do. Each one relates to a major interest of mine that I have few outlets for. And I don't see any way I could possibly do them all while holding down a traditional job.

New Year's Revolutions

2009-01-02T05:59:00.000-08:00

I officially declare January 2009 to be the month of Using Stuff Up. I will be attempting to use up many of the aforementioned Weird Ingredients, personal care items, and a few odds and ends like the last roll of film for my old-style camera. I will also be decluttering in an effort to be able to fit our stuff into a smaller place.

January 2009 is also the month of Finding a New Place to Live. R. and I have been putting this off for almost a year. We've looked at several places but have never really dug into the project. Part of the problem has been that to find a similar place to ours in the same area, we almost certainly would have to pay more. R. really can't afford to pay more and I don't want to pay more. In the last week or so, R. told me that he doesn't think he can afford our place anymore and (without any interference from me, I swear) set a budget of about $600 a month for our new place. This changes the search dramatically, but also makes me much more excited about it. I'm looking into suburbs (! to anyone who knows me), much smaller places, and other alternatives. I think if I found a mobile home in a not-dangerous part of Chicagoland I could talk R. into it. Now that I've finished the draft of my novel and have it with my first reader, I have a half-decent chance of actually focusing on this and finding a new place by February 1st (oh, yeah, I'm writing a novel). I have a lot of research to do. Maybe I should start today, since I have basically no work to do.

What I Ate, 1/1/2009:
Breakfast: homemade mac and cheese
Second meal (eaten at around 4:00): "Soup Nazi" seafood bisque (gift)
Third meal: rest of mac and cheese
Snacks: one piece Walker's shortbread, small candy cane, two Andes mints (all gifts)

Slack-A-Doodle-Do: A post which eventually gets around to money

2008-12-30T08:13:00.000-08:00

It's too cold in my office to work today. The temperature is reportedly adjustable, but I have never noticed the slightest change in temperature when I fiddle with the radiators against my wall.

I have a bad feeling one of the women who I supervise has overslept again. Two weeks ago, I had to call her and wake her up at 11:00. It wasn't the first time. Makes me feel like her mother, which is odd, because she's four years older than me, and also jealous, because I would love to be still in bed at this hour. I don't think I've ever slept through the beginning of work, a class, or anything else important. Oversleeping for me means waking up fifteen minutes before I absolutely have to leave the house and rushing out the door without showering. I must have an internal alarm or something.

She just called. Indeed, she took some cold medicine and forgot to set her alarm. She'll be here at 11:30. Well, at least I don't have to call her.

This week I'm continuing to work on using up my weird ingredients. I'm eating bacon burgers, corn chowder made with dry-milk cream soup mix (contrary to my expectations, the only unpleasant part of the chowder is the freezer taste of the frozen corn), and grits with cheese. Oh, and Christmas candy. I just ate a white-chocolate snowman as a morning snack.

I have mixed feelings about Christmas. I hate getting stuff I don't like as presents. Really hate it. Unlike a lot of people, I'm pretty okay with disposing of/regifting the stuff, but I just hate the phenomenon of something I don't like coming into my house without me choosing it. And since I'm not going to just throw away something brand-new, it takes time and/or energy to regift, donate, or use it up.

As a result of this feeling, which has increased sharply in the last couple of years, I'm becoming really careful about what I buy for other people. Family is easy because they give me wish lists, so I can know that the gifts I buy them will be un-annoying. R. and I decided not to buy each other presents this year--we'll do birthdays, but not Christmas.

But two of the women I supervise gave me little gifts this year, and though I really should get them something in return, I'm finding it hard. Special office supplies? Who really needs office supplies? I personally have at least a five-year supply of post its, not to mention a massive stash of paperclips, bulldog clips, pens, etc. Frog-shaped paperclips are cute, but never work as well as plain old paperclips. Lotion? God, takes me forever to use up, and what if they don't like the scent? Candles? Same scent issue, plus is that really a good gift for the one who has kids? I'm pretty sure I'm just going to go the chocolate/cookies route, even though I'm fairly sure one of them isn't big on sweets. As a New Year's gift, since I have clearly already missed the Christmas window.

The office gifts I got this year were pretty non-stuff: a Starbucks card, soap, and a tote bag, which I will probably eventually use. Over Thanksgiving, a friend's kids bought me "Christmas" presents that I threw away as soon as I got home. I felt pretty horrible about that, since they're kids, but what the heck am I going to do with a lip-gloss set made for tweens? My brother and sister-in-law gave me some great homemade gifts--fudge sauce and Christmas ornaments, which were personalized (i.e., cute animals and an ornament that says "I love Chicago").

And then there were my parents. Sigh. I hope they don't read this. I gave them the address once but I don't think they quite understand what a blog is. First and foremost, they gave R. and I one absolutely fantastic gift: a trip to Korea! Wonderful. I'd been angsting over how I was going to carve the money for that out of my poverty-line budget, and R. didn't think he could go at all unless I seriously subsidized him. I would have been over the moon with just that one gift. But there was some other stuff involved. A bracelet that, even if it were my style, would be seriously annoying to wear. Bookends shaped like teddy bears (what?). And a small stone rooster. I guess that was it. So not a total overload of stuff. But it was still irritating to get things I knew I would never use.

Am I the only one who's Scroogy in this way? I love Christmas itself: the music, food, family, pine trees, etc. But minimalistic me really hates the stuff aspect.

4.5 Miles on Lincoln Avenue

2008-12-20T12:53:00.000-08:00

I walked home last night, 7.2 miles. It wasn't too bad. I mean, it did take forever. There was a lot of leaping involved, because there are huge slush puddles at every busy intersection. And
fellow pedestrians kept wanting to commiserate with me, but I wasn't feeling particularly social after, say, mile 3. But I did it. And I wasn't all that miserable or even particularly tired by the end, although I was absolutely exhausted this morning.

The last time I walked to or from work was in Lubbock, Texas. I was signed up with several temp agencies at the time, and one of them called me that morning with a job. Both my parents had already left for work. Mom worked an hour's drive away, and Dad wasn't an option either for some reason...maybe he didn't have a cell phone yet. There was a bus system in Lubbock, but the closest stop was several miles away from the place in question. So I walked.

I'm not sure why I didn't take a cab--I can only assume I didn't have any money. I don't remember anything about the walk, but I do know I got to work by the time I said I would and I got the job, which lasted for several more months and earned me enough money to get out of Lubbock. I started to walk home that evening, too, but before I'd gone more than a quarter mile a coworker drove past me and forced me to accept a ride. After that day, I worked out a system with my parents where I could either borrow the car or get a ride from Mom.

If last night's walk went well, I was going to consider doing it regularly. It didn't go well enough for that. In spring I might try biking. I'm terrified of being in city traffic on a bike but I'm sure I can get over that after a couple of tries. We'll be in a new place by then, anyway--although it's more likely to be farther away from work than closer.

My Weird Foods List

2008-12-16T16:50:00.000-08:00

Jacob at Early Retirement Extreme has started a 30-day makeover series. I absolutely love it. Ramit at I Will Teach You to be Rich is just finishing up something similar, but I lost interest in that one pretty early. It wasn't, well, extreme enough for me.

One of Jacob's first posts is about grocery shopping. He recommends a "staples-based" diet--eating the same few meals over and over again. I'm interested in trying this out, but according to Jacob, first I have some housecleaning to do: "Before switching to a staples based dinner plan, I recommend getting rid of all the weird things in your cupboard. The best way is to not buy anything until your last strange ingredient is gone."

One of my weak spots is a tendency to go crazy at the supermarket buying things that I've never heard of and have no use for, but that look intriguing. Since one of our usual shopping places is an ethnic grocery store with lots of weird foods, this happens pretty often. Combine that with the low-carb diet I was on for a year, and I have an impressive (scary) number of weird things in my cupboard and freezer. I don't think I can actually not buy anything until they're all gone, since a number of them are things that can't be eaten on their own, but I can at least give it the old college try.

For my own recordkeeping and your horror/amusement, I herewith provide a full list of the strange foods I need to use up (along with a few possible uses). By including these foods on my list, I do not intend to cast aspersions upon the foods involved. They are simply weird because they do not make up a regular part of my diet (i.e., I have not opened the package for a month or more).

Weird Foods/Ingredients
soy nuts, sizeable bag
unpleasant protein powder (for protein shakes)
fiber/Metamucil, orange flavor
bruschetta (found a good pasta recipe that will use the whole jar)
pork rinds
sugar-free jello (three boxes)
marshmallows
corn syrup (apparently I can make this into fake Crunchies, which I wish I'd known a year ago when I purchased the corn syrup, as I have in the interim purchased several overpriced and disappointing imported Crunchie bars)
malted milk powder
sunflower seeds (could shell and mix in with my oatmeal)
mate
kasha (there seems to be only one actual recipe that you can make with kasha, and I didn't like it. Adding raisins might make it palatable.)
grits (just made most of these into an ok grits casserole)
onion soup
cous cous
generic Slim Jims (ew)
cream soup mix (homemade, but I never use it)
soy flour (the pancakes I made with this were hideous and I haven't touched it since)
flaxseed meal, way too much (flaxseed muffins were a pretty good breakfast when I was on Atkins, but they're not good enough when you're eating real carbs)
cocoa
cornmeal
rye crackers
mint extract (failed attempt to make generic vanilla ice cream taste like mint ice cream)
molasses
honey wheat germ
TVP (God, I think I've moved twice with this stuff)
lentils, small amount
whole frozen strawberries
roasting chicken
freezer-burned hot wings
buffalo chicken skewers
French fried cheddar onions (don't ask)
dry milk (I used to use this for cooking all the time, but now we almost always have fresh milk in the house)
2 sour cream containers full of pepperoni
hamburgers wrapped in bacon (nice idea, but the bacon never seems to cook)
3 round steaks, possibly too freezer burned to eat
frozen corn
whole cauliflower, frozen in a moment of desperation just before I left on a trip
whipping cream, ditto. Less likely to defrost successfully than the cauliflower
two kinds of sugar-free jam
malt vinegar
balsamic vinegar
red wine vinegar
white vinegar (WHY? Why FOUR kinds of vinegar?)
peanut sauce
tandoori chicken marinade
mild curry paste
sauerkraut, large container
dijon mustard
Frank's hot sauce
horseradish sauce
Gum (Juicy Fruit and Doublemint, can't fathom where we got this; I never bought it)
granulated Splenda, lifetime supply

Spices
chili powder (three kinds, huge amounts of all!)
Splenda packets, 50 or so
onion powder (I thought it was the same as dehydrated onions)
thyme
rosemary
5-spice powder (from when I lived in Chinatown)
coriander seeds
pod-like spice (cardamom?)
tons of colored peppercorns
bay leaves (what IS the point?)
hamburger seasoning (R. might use this)
feta cheese
mulling spices (which one would use for making cider, which I have never made)
pizza spice grinder
steak spice mix
Mrs. Dash (original), purchased in a wild phase when I thought I might cut down on my salt intake
Mrs. Dash (spicy), ditto

Dirty Little Secrets

2008-08-15T11:51:00.000-07:00

So theoretically, I'm saving 75% of my income. Every month, I put $2650--after tax--into my Roth IRA and savings account. I decided on this percentage based on Jacob of Early Retirement Extreme's guidelines on how to retire in 5-7 years. And when I talk to people in real life about my early retirement plans, that's the number I throw around.

"I'd like to retire when I'm 35."
"How are you going to manage that?"
"I'm living on about 25% of my income."

Something about that hard number tends to quench any potential naysaying, which is awesome.

The trouble is, it's not quite true.

I am saving my $2650 every month. And that is 75% of my after-tax salary. But my irregular income--gifts, rebates, and, most significantly, freelance income--is disappearing into my checking account and inflating my lifestyle. That's not what I want. I want that freelance income--hard-earned through the work squeezed out of vacations, evenings, and weekends and the time spent reading poorly written and poorly conceived manuscripts--to be padding my savings, not my lifestyle.

This is actually quite easy to solve. All I need to do is deposit all checks I receive into my savings account rather than my checking account. So why don't I?

Because I'm scared. I like having that extra money in my checking account in case I want to buy a new shirt or splurge on entertainment. Putting all my "extra" income into savings would mean that I'm really committing to this early retirement thing. I'd have to start paying attention to the amount of money in my checking account again to make sure I don't pull an overdraft. I'd have to actually live on this theoretical miserly budget I've set up for myself.

That's what I say I want. And I think it is what I want. I spent $119 on opera tickets a few days ago, and I feel foolish. I don't really enjoy seeing opera live all that much. Sure, it's nice to have an excuse to dress up and go to the lovely opera house, but the seats I get are so far away I can't see the singers, and I could essentially have the same experience in my own house, for free, by renting a video of the opera from the library. And when I'm totally honest with myself, I find opera kind of boring. It's one of those thing I want to be familiar with, but don't actually enjoy that much. It is not worth $119 to me.

From this day forward, I will be depositing all "extra" money directly into my savings account. The fear is a chimera. If I ever actually need the money, I can transfer it instantly. And keeping the amount in my checking account to my actual budget, instead of just a kind of "funds on hand" account, will keep me honest.

July Budget Busters

2008-08-08T10:06:00.000-07:00

July was my most expensive month yet since starting my early-retirement savings plan. It even came pretty close to last November, when I spent over $3000, largely on clothes and accessories (I had free rent that month, and I still managed to spend that much money! It had been a really long time since I'd bought any clothes.)

Total July spending? About $2700 dollars. What did I do to create that kind of wallet damage?
- $600 gift card at Jewel-Osco. As a promotion, they offered a 10% bonus on gift cards if you gave them your economic stimulus check, so my $600 got me $660 to spend at Jewel. We do most of our shopping at Aldi, but go to Jewel every few months for specialty items like dill (not sweet) relish and the particular rye crackers I like. I think the gift card will last us most of a year, and since we only buy items we can't find elsewhere for a cheaper price, I consider it a 10% return on investment--not bad when I've lost about 9% in stocks since the beginning of the year.

- $691 on a plane ticket. A domestic plane ticket. To Minnesota. It was a family reunion for the side of the family that isn't very close--some of the people there I hadn't seen in fifteen years. I tried to find another option, but the town I was going to doesn't have a train or bus station, is very far away from any other city, and even if I had a valid driver's license I don't think I could have managed an eleven-hour drive by myself. I think being able to spend a lot of money to see people who are important to you is an important luxury, if that's not an oxymoron. I hated spending the money, but I am very glad I went.

- About $80 on books. Part of that was a Korean bird book for my mother. They moved to Korea on Monday. Neither of them was terribly excited about it, but my mother in particular seems a little depressed by the prospect of spending two years in Korea--there's basically no chance of her getting a job in the ministry, and from past experience I think she's really much happier when she's working in her chosen field. At least once this tour is over they're done with the military for good.

The rest of the $80 was postage on books I sent out for paperbackswap. I posted a bunch of new books and most of them got requested, so I have a bunch of credits waiting for when books I want become available.

The good news is I still made my savings goal for the month, thanks to a bunch of freelance income, and my net worth is catapulting towards $40,000. At my current spending level (about $20,000 a year) that's about 8% of what I'll need to retire. I feel like I'm making real progress, and once the market starts to recover (I swear it's going to someday) I should be heading towards early retirement by leaps and bounds.

2008-08-08T09:47:00.001-07:00

Hey, cool! Beany gave me an award! I really love Beany's blog--she always has interesting things to say and I think her oddnesses kinda match up with mine (super-cheap, introverted...).

I'm pretty out of the loop blogwise right now, so I don't have seven nominations, but I would like to nominate Carrie, who just stopped by and has a cool blog about environmental living in Chicago. I especially like reading blogs by people from my neck of the woods...The Budgeting Babe is another Chicago personal finance blogger I like.

Award Rules:

1. The winner can put the logo on her blog.
2. Link the person you received your award from.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Put links of those blogs on yours.
5. Leave a message on the blogs of the people you’ve nominated

The Cost of Location

2008-08-03T18:13:00.001-07:00

In the past month, I've made two trips to small-town Minnesota, both of which included some discussion of real estate prices in small town America.

Real Estate Prices in Chicago (rough estimates):

A smallish two-bedroom condo in my neighborhood: approx. $300,000 with assessments of about $200 a month.

A "nice" two- or three-bedroom condo in Chicago: $400,000 to $500,000 with assessments of $400 to $800 a month

Any sort of single-family home in a non-scary neighborhood in Chicago: At least $650,000, and usually much closer to a million.

Real Estate Prices in Small Town Midwest:

1. Small two-bedroom house on large lot, no garage: bought for $27,500 in June

2. Grandma's old lake house (three bedrooms, two baths): currently offered at $97,500. Grandma thinks a fair price would be $65,000.

3. Victorian "mansion" (three floors, at least four bedrooms, adjoining barn and other outbuildings): bought for $70,000 in 1988

4. Grandma's custom-built, architect-designed four-bedroom home with large lake-facing lot, huge kitchen, dining room, two fireplaces, spectacular living room with very high ceilings and view of lake, three-bedroom garage, almost infinite storage: sold in June for $250,000

But what do you give up to pay this kind of money for real estate?

Properties 1 and 2 are in a town of about 6700. The nearest town of significant size is a three-hour drive away. The paper mill is the largest employer. The second largest industry is tourism to the beautiful nearby lakes and national parks.

Property 3 is in a town of about 1000, which is about 40 minutes away from a larger town of about 50,000. The larger town could provide some employment prospects for someone who wanted to live in a very remote place. My relative who owns this property is a doctor with a family practice for the town of 1000. Other relatives who live here own a drugstore and farm.

Property 4 surprises me the most. It is in a town of about 18,000. Like the other towns, this town is slowly aging and dying. But it is much more centrally located--if you were motivated, you could commute to either Rochester or Minneapolis. I could see this town becoming an exurb of one of these cities in 10 or 15 years. The largest employer is a fast-growing health care center. But a comparable house in Chicagoland would easily go for over a million dollars.

All of these towns have limited options for what big city dwellers think of as entertainment. A few dive bars. Maybe a music venue or two. Restaurants are mostly chains or independent places serving diner-type food. The Elks or Lions Club might be your best option for a good meal out.

On the other hand, fishing, boating, and other outdoor activities are common and much cheaper than they are in Chicago. It's plausible to have several pets and even a horse or two. The two larger towns have airports that offer flying lessons and manage to support small concert series and community theaters. Shopping is decidedly limited, but can't you do most of that over the Internet anyway?

I hate most suburbs and the sorts of medium-sized cities that seem to consist mainly of big-box stores and strip malls. I like the place I live in to have a sense of place. Chicago does. So do these tiny Midwestern towns. Someday, when I have a primary source of income other than my job and if my other activities are pretty location-independent, I might consider moving to a place like them.

Current Obsessions

2008-07-28T18:55:00.000-07:00

- reading about real estate investing. I don't have enough capital to actually do it yet, especially since I just tied up about half my net worth in a 6-month CD in a spontaneous effort to a) earn a little more interest than my not-so-high-yield-anymore savings account and b) prevent myself from doing something rash with it, like trying to qualify for a loan on a condo when I know perfectly well that prices will probably be lower in six months.

- free TV. I love Joost (sorry, R), and Netflix on Demand (ok, not exactly free), and the way most networks are now posting scads of free content online, which makes it seem almost like I have a) Tivo and b) cable, even though I don't.

- trying to figure out some way to make positive returns in this almost universally crappy economy. My 35-year-old retirement plans are based on small, but positive returns!

- asset allocation. Which asset classes do I want to own? Which ones can I get in my 401(k)? Which ones can I cover in my IRA? Which ones are ok to hold in taxable accounts? If you had told me a year ago I would soon be making charts of potential asset allocations, I would have promptly fallen asleep.

- reducing the number of books I check out of the library at any one time. This may not seem worthy of obsession, but I'm starting to feel pressure to finish books in time for the due date (these are usually books that have already been renewed at least once). I think that means my library eyes are getting bigger than my library stomach.

Greetings

2008-07-28T18:45:00.000-07:00

So, uh, hi. Guess I took a summer hiatus there. I kinda burned out on blogging. Trying to do a post every weekday was way too much for me, and the kind of posts I was trying to do (advice posts and reviews) weren't very fun for me to write.

I still want to write about personal finance in some semi-public way, but I think from now on this blog is going to be more focused on personal stories, thoughts, etc. That style of writing comes more naturally to me and makes me feel like I'm getting somewhere as I work out a subject in my head. I'll probably still post some book reviews from time to time as I do like having a record of the books I read--and passing judgment on them!

If you're still reading, please stick around--when I was posting regularly I really enjoyed getting feedback and comments!

Review: A Million Bucks by 30

2008-06-03T04:45:00.001-07:00

There need to be more books like this one. Alan Corey did something extraordinary and then wrote a book explaining exactly how he did it. A while back, I talked about how lots of people discuss step 1 and step 3, but few people talk about exactly how to get rich/build up enough money to retire early. Alan Corey talks about the journey in lots of detail and provides an entertaining story besides.

By being extremely cheap, creating side incomes, and making good real estate deals, Alan Corey made a million dollars by (actually, somewhat before) his thirtieth birthday. (Quite a bit of that was equity rather than cash, but hey, the guy was 29!)

I'm pretty sure I'd hate Alan in real life. He spent college partying and his initial goal was to keep his college lifestyle forever. He's forever throwing in references about how he did something to meet women. But his self-deprecating humor when he talks about the stupid and naive things he's done is so endearing that I couldn't help but like him as an author. (Example: His first post-college email address--the one he put on over 500 resumes--was bigal@models.com. That was supposed to be BigAl, not BiGal. Oops!)

But Alan gets smarter, and through a combination of nonconformity, chutzpah, and persistence he bumbles his way to a million dollars. He masters the basics fast--living way below his means (he claims to have once eaten ramen for three months straight), socking away money in a 401(k)--and moves on to trying to figure out how to make big money. He starts by studying every get-rich-quick scheme out there to find out what they have in common. Then he starts looking for ways to increase his income, first with some interesting side gigs, then by investing in real estate. When he sees a good opportunity, he finds a way to take it, even if he has to do some fancy footwork to do so. He takes bold risks, even though he's often ignorant and scared.

It's worth noting that Corey did a few ethically questionable things on his way to a million. These things didn't make him much money and are portrayed more as college pranks than strategies that he recommends.

The book includes nuggets of financial advice, but the real value in this book is in Corey's story. A great read for people with big money goals.

The Curse of the $13 Drink

2008-05-27T19:01:00.000-07:00

A cousin of mine moved to New York at the age of 18 to attend college. His first month there, he spent $500 going out to bars and clubs. He spent so much on going out that he had to get a second job to pay his bills, and a few months later, ended up transferring schools to live somewhere cheaper.

I love my cousin, but this has to rank up there with the dumbest financial moves I've ever heard of. $500 is a lot of money. $500 is a plane ticket to Europe, a big pile of clothes, or, for many people, a month's rent. I believe that people should spend their money on the things that are most fulfilling or important to them, even if those things seem frivolous to others. I also believe it's extremely unlikely that anyone could get $500 of fulfillment out of a month's worth of dancing, drinking, and cabs.

For many young people, especially college students and singles, having a social life seems to be synonymous with spending large amounts of money every weekend. How can you avoid spending an entire paycheck on cover charges and overpriced fruit-flavored "martinis"?

Rule 1: Don't Go Out Unless You Really, Really Want To
If your friends are in the habit of going out every weekend, suggest more creative pursuits once in a while (Whirlyball? Themed movie night? A potluck where everyone brings an intentionally bizarre dish to share?). If they really can't see beyond the bar scene at all, they're probably not all that interesting to begin with.

If you're looking to knock back a few, drinking at your place or a friend’s place is much cheaper, safer, and often more fun than going out to a bar or club. Discover, or rediscover, the joy of the house party. Personally, I much prefer the atmosphere of a few friends and a bottle of whiskey to a club full of pounding backbeats, sticky floors, and sweaty drunks.

Rule 2: Go out for the right reasons
Good reasons to go out:
1. To dance (especially if the kind of dancing you want to do requires a partner).
2. To see a particular band or hear your favorite type of live music.
3. To meet other women, if you're a straight woman.
4. To find a short-term romantic interest.

Bad reasons to go out:
1. To get drunk (much, much cheaper to do this at home--and no worries about how to get home afterwards).
2. To meet the love of your life, or your next boyfriend/girlfriend. The first one won't happen. The second one might, but eventually, you'll probably wish it hadn't.
3. To spend time with your friends. It's too loud in most clubs and bars to carry on anything resembling a decent conversation.

Rule #3: When you do go out, don't drink at the bar.
Do everything you can to avoid buying alcohol at inflated club and bar prices. If your goal is to get buzzed, do most of your drinking at home or at a BYOB restaurant before going to the club or bar (using public transportation, a designated driver, or a cab to get to your final destination). If you're drinking just to be sociable, limit yourself to one alcoholic drink and go dry the rest of the night (Coke is more expensive at bars, too, but not as expensive as vodka). If you need something in your hands, make it water or soda--alcohol is an expensive social prop. Better yet, if you're not planning on drinking anyway, volunteer to be designated driver, and many places will subsidize your soda, or even virgin cocktails.

Rule #4: Don't use guys as drink dispensers
A bonus rule just for the women. While it should go without saying, I've seen some of my best friends engage in dubious behavior in this area. Obviously, if you're already on a date, let the guy buy you a drink or five. But when it comes to accepting drinks from guys you don't know, please be a) safe and b) kind.

Safe acceptance of drinks is self-explanatory. Don't accept drinks from guys who seem creepy, sleazy, or are too drunk to stand straight. Avoid anyone who gives even the slightest indication that if you accept a drink, they will expect something from you. Even if the situation doesn't turn nasty, guys in any of the above categories will inevitably get seriously annoying after a while.

Kind drinking behavior is easy to ignore, but just as important. A guy buys you a drink because he's interested in you. Period. Decent guys will not expect any sort of physical reward for buying you a drink, but they DO take your acceptance of the drink as an indication of interest. If he doesn't stand a chance with you, do him a favor and don't accept the drink. You may have to buy your own drinks, but you get to retain your self-respect. And when the planets align and a cute, coherent guy offers to refill your glass, you can say yes with a clear conscience.

Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman

2008-05-23T06:27:00.000-07:00

My high school geography teaching recommended this book to me. He wrote the title on the edge of my notebook while I was reading something else; maybe Summerhill. He liked me even though I spent most of his class reading, I guess because a couple of times I misunderstood the assignments and accidentally turned in something interesting and also because I had these jeans I'd written all over. They were against dress code but he never sent me to the office for them. When another girl asked why he didn't he said it was okay because they had "philosophical quotes" all over them, although I think the closest I got to philosophy on those pants were some Smashing Pumpkins lyrics.

He wrote on one of my assignments, "Never stop writing. It will be your lifecraft." I still have that note. I was about to say he was the first person who ever told me I would be a writer, but now that I think about it he might be the only one who's ever said that.

He was pretty crappy at being a high school teacher. He was young and insecure and tried to be cool, not realizing how cynical we were. He told us there was only one rule in his classroom, "respect." I guess he didn't know that half the teachers said that and that they all found ways to make "raise your hand and ask for the bathroom pass," mandatory parts of respect. I guess he didn't know he would do that, too.

After a while, he started calling the campus police over really stupid stuff, like someone raising their voice but not even actually yelling. It seemed like he pressed his red emergency button about twice a week. Officer Nino would come to find out what was wrong and talk to the kid and tell them to cut it out while Mr. Caesar got redder and redder in the face trying to explain what a huge disturbance the kid had caused. In other classes, they only called the campus police when actual violence was occurring.

I had learned to tune stuff out, so while all this was going on I sat in my seat in the back row playing Magic with my friend Jesse or reading Of Mice and Men for English.

I kept that bit of paper where he wrote Steal This Book for many years. Every once in a while when I was in a new bookstore or library I'd look for it. I either didn't think you were supposed to use interlibrary loan for something like that or I was too shy to ask about it.

My senior year of college some friends and I went to San Francisco and found Steal This Book in the City Lights bookstore under a section named something like anarchy. I was a little tipsy and spent almost $70 on books, which was a lot for me at the time, especially since I was financing the entire trip on a credit card.

I bet Mr. Caesar, who if he is still a teacher is almost certainly battered and bitter by now, would like this story.

After six years of waiting to read it, what did I think of the book? I'll leave that to the next entry.

Splitting the Check

2008-05-16T15:13:00.000-07:00

Why is it that whenever four or more people go out to dinner together, even if everyone rounds up generously and even if everyone got almost the exact same thing, it always takes about half an hour to settle the check?

Our annual conference has started, and so has company reimbursement for my meals and transportation. Yesterday I took a cab with some coworkers from the location of a board-staff reception to the hotel where our conference is taking place. We asked the beleaguered driver for a dollar in change and three receipts.

Due to the conference, I'll be working long days every day until next Friday, so posting will continue to be spotty and/or short. Please stick with me--I'll definitely be back to full strength soon. Enjoy your weekend!

Virginia Woolf, Financial Guru?

2008-05-12T20:04:00.000-07:00

"It is necessary to have five hundred a year and a room with a lock on the door if you are to write fiction or poetry." - Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

The idea of having a private room or space in which to work on creative pursuits is still embraced by artists and writers 80 years after Woolf wrote these words. The importance of "five hundred a year"--in other words, financial security--is less often mentioned.

The idea that money is important to creativity, that great creative achievement perhaps cannot be achieved without it, seems to run counter to conventional wisdom. The "starving artist" cliche is romantic, and perhaps more importantly, democratic. But Woolf conveys the romance of financial freedom and its positive intellectual effects more eloquently than any writer on personal finance could ever do. She begins by showing us her main (fictional) character buying lunch in a restaurant.

"I gave the waiter a ten-shilling note and he went to bring me change. There was another ten-shilling note in my purse; I noticed it, because it is a fact that still takes my breath away--the power of my purse to breed ten-shilling notes automatically. I open it and there they are. Society gives me chicken and coffee, bed and lodging, in return for a certain number of pieces of paper which were left me by an aunt, for no other reasons than that I share her name.

The news of my legacy reached me one night at 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."

(In 1928, five hundred a year was a comfortable but not exorbitant fortune, perhaps equivalent to an income in the high five figures today.)

"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 kindergarten. 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 being 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; and then the thought of that one gift which it was death to hide--a small one but dear to the possessor--perishing and with it myself, my soul--all this became like a rust eating away the bloom of the spring, destroying the tree at its hard."

The effect of soul-crushing jobs hasn't changed. Debt and runaway consumption raise the stakes and intensify the feeling of slavery.

"Whenever I change a ten-shilling note a little of that rust and corrosion is rubbed off; fear and bitterness go. Indeed, I thought, slipping the silver into my purse, it is remarkable, remembering the bitterness of those days, what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about. No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house and clothing are mine for ever. Therefore not merely do effort and labor cease, but also hatred and bitterness. I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me.

"They, too, the patriarchs, the professors, had endless difficulties, terrible drawbacks to contend with . . . Watch in the spring sunshine the stockbroker and the great barrister going indoors to make money and more money and more money when it is a fact that five hundred pounds a year will keep one alive in the sunshine. These are unpleasant instincts to harbour, I reflected. They are bred of the conditions of life; of the lack of civilization. And, as I realized these drawbacks, by degrees fear and bitterness modified themselves into pity and toleration; and then in a year or two, pity and toleration went, and the greatest release of all came, which is freedom to think of things in themselves. That building, for example, do I like it or not? Is that picture beautiful or not? Indeed my aunt's legacy unveiled the sky to me, and substituted for the large and imposing figure of a gentleman, which Milton recommended for my perpetual adoration, a view of the open sky."

This eloquent passage describes exactly why I place so much importance on financial freedom. Of course, financial independence isn't the only way to get to the point of "thinking of things in themselves." I try as much as possible to intellectually distance myself from my job in my off hours and on weekends. I also try not to attach too much importance to what any person thinks of me or to this particular job--I had a different job last year and will have a different job five years from now.

For most present-day Americans, financial independence may be only a blip on the far-off horizon, but Woolf's passages on money make some points that can be useful even for those of modest means.

1. Money and material comfort are advantageous even for artists. Poverty is not more noble; it simply puts more roadblocks in the way of creativity.

2. The best situation for an artist is to have a completely independent source of wealth.

3. The next best situation is to have work which frees one as much as possible from sucking up to people or chasing after ever greater amounts of money.

4. Don't let your job interfere with your creativity. (Easier said than done, but worth keeping in mind.)

5. Think of money in terms of an amount of interest per year. Five hundred pounds "forever" means that only interest is being consumed, not capital. At a five percent rate of interest, five hundred pounds of income would have been 20,000 pounds in capital.

Oh Frabjous Day

2008-05-08T21:05:00.000-07:00

[oh frabjous day by jchatoff]

After nearly a week of trepidation, planning, strategizing, and frantic phone calls to camp headquarters to see if I could switch to another session, I finally talked to my boss.

"I'd like to take vacation during a time when vacation normally isn't allowed."

"When?"

"During the September board meeting."

"That's fine."

I almost offered to take the time unpaid, do kitchen duty, and write a conciliatory email to the board anyway, because I'd been thinking about the various negotiating strategies I could use for so freaking long. Next time I do this? Obsess and freak out about something for days on end? Remind me how this was so not a big deal.

So in September, I'm going to Vermont (state number 46!) to hang out with a bunch of unschooled teenagers, some crazy hippie unschooled adults, and this woman. Life is officially great.

$5 Adventures: The Newspaper

2008-05-06T18:17:00.000-07:00

Get a newspaper. Not the New York Times, unless you live in New York. The local one. The more local, the better. If your city has one of those crazy free papers, that’s the one you want. Even if you’re a Republican or fifty-five and would never read it otherwise. For our purposes, it’s the best one.

Throw the front page away. The latest developments in the Rezko trial or the Democratic primaries aren’t important today. Ignore everything remotely socially relevant. What we’re looking for are the listings: movies, festivals, sports events. Gardening clubs. If you found an alternative weekly, probably about half of it is devoted to such listings. In a mainstream paper, they may be more scattered around, but they’ll be there, on the edges and bottoms of pages, in tiny one-paragraph articles squeezed into corners, in ads. Go through the entire paper and look at them all, even the ones that sound boring. The sports section might list a contra dancing club or a roller derby. The “lectures” section might include a book signing with Rachael Ray (she makes me want to claw my eyes out, but maybe you like her). Many papers conveniently mark free events so they're easy to spot. Read the classifieds and the personal ads, too. Just in case the one other wakeboarder in town or the one other woman in Lubbock who reads Bust magazine is advertising for a likeminded buddy.

After you've finished looking through the entire paper, flip back to something
that sounded interesting. Then go.

Against Work, Redux

2008-05-04T20:46:00.000-07:00

Back in February, I spent a week laboring over an application that made my hands sweat. I applied to be an adviser at a camp for homeschooled teenagers. The camp is run by one of my heroes and would be an opportunity to actually get involved in homeschooling instead of just thinking about it and reading about it, like I've been doing for the last ten years. This camp is completely one of a kind, and really the only way I've come across for an adult who doesn't have kids to get involved in homeschooling.

I was convinced I wouldn't be accepted, since I wasn't homeschooled myself and live a pretty traditional life, in contrast to the other advisers, profiled on the camp's site, who do things like raise sheep and live in communes. I knew there was a lot of competition.

On Friday, I found out I'd been accepted for the session in mid September! Ten shades of awesomeness!

Except...the board meeting is the same week. I'm expected to attend board meetings. I confirmed with a coworker who's been there for two decades that no director has ever taken vacation during a board meeting.

I hate that I have to ask for permission to do this. My actual participation in the board meeting is *extremely* minimal...at the last one, I believe I uttered three sentences. My presence, and the presence of the rest of the staff, is really symbolic more than anything. If it wasn't an expected part of my job, no sane person would expect me to choose going to this board meeting over participating in an event that's personally important to me. Yet there's a very good chance my boss will say no, either because (a) she doesn't want other staff asking for vacation during board meetings or (b) because it wouldn't look good to the board for me not to be there. Reason #134 I'm looking forward to freeing myself from full-time employment as soon as possible.

Going to this camp is so important to me I would actually consider quitting my job over it. It's a unique opportunity, and if I turned it down I have no guarantee I'd ever be invited again. I've spent all weekend formulating a plan for how I can convince my boss to let me take leave. I think I've come up with some pretty good bargaining chips. Wish me luck!

Against Work

2008-05-01T20:22:00.000-07:00

[Photo by laffy4k]

Today I spent eleven hours at work. I think that may be the longest I've ever spent in the office, with the possible exception of that time I accidentally got drunk with my boss and ended up sleeping on the floor underneath my desk. (Don't ask.)

My parents both worked while I was growing up. My mother always worked part time, usually arranged so that she was home when my brother and I came back from school. My dad started out working part time as well, spending his off hours doing hippie-dad things like baking bread. By the time I started kindergarten, Dad had gotten a full-time job.

Dad was always home for dinner to spend time with us and ask about our days. But after dinner, he often went back to work. I don't remember how often or how late he stayed. I do know 10:00 wasn't uncommon and that he worked after midnight more than once when I was small. I do know he was always working on our home computer and that as time went on I saw more of his tense back than his face. I do know that when he takes a "day off" these days, that can mean going to the office from 5-8 a.m. and working on his home network for several hours after my mom goes to sleep at ten.

He was a good dad. He is a good dad. And I don't want to be like him. I want to be as good at relaxing as I am at work.

In honor of Friday, here are a few ways to make sure you don't become a workaholic:

-Go home on time.

-Take all the vacation time you're given.

-Take personal time if it's offered. Take sick time when you're sick. Even for colds.

-Don't take work home.

-Take time off between jobs.

-Travel. The more remote and further from Internet connections, the better.

Happy Friday!