Frugal Zeitgeist

Anticipating the sting

2009-11-08T15:15:00.006-05:00

Normally I get a nice little bump in my last five paychecks over the calendar year because I've already maxed out my annual FICA limit. That bump allowed me to sock away some extra cash in October and I'm expecting the same for November, but it turns out that I'm not going to be able to put away as much extra as I wanted without pretty much turning into Scrooge, because I have a bunch of different expenses all hitting at the same time. They include:

Doorman tips: $400
Holiday tips for building staff are customary and expected in New York. We have a small building staff, so I give each of them a holiday card containing $40 to $100. The porter gets the most because he does a demanding job heroically; the super gets the second most because I'm secretly not very impressed with him but at the same time need to be able depend on him to be responsive when I have non-emergency repairs. The doorfolk who are nice and friendly get more than the ones who sit there sullenly and don't make eye contact.

Food bank donation: $500
I raise money for the food bank from other people during the holiday season, so it's important to put my money where my own mouth is. This is a cause that really matters to me, so I consider it one of my fixed holiday expenses.

Other donations: $200
This is also the time of year that other people are doing fundraising, so I normally cough up $50 if it's a cause I believe in, sometimes less (e.g., a token $25) if I think the organization doesn't utilize its funds efficiently.

Homeowner's insurance: $250
Self-explanatory.

Passport renewal: $75
It's only once every ten years, but my passport expires in February so I'm already in the soup if I get asked to travel for work in the next couple of months. (We have a pretty strict travel ban on at the moment, so I'm not expecting it.)

Dentist: $200
Yay, I need another crown in December! I already maxed out my flexible spending plan, but about 70% will be covered by insurance as long as I don't get whacked in the upcoming layoff. If I do, this will cost a heck of a lot more.

Christmas gifts: $350
Ugh. I was almost entirely off the Christmas gift train for years, but I always give my mom restaurant gift certificates for Christmas and birthdays because she NEVER lets me pay when we go out. Beyond that, I need to get a couple of things for my SO and his kids. SO is good about agreeing on modest gifts, but he doesn't want to waive gift-giving altogether. I don't overdo gift-giving with his kids because I don't want them to see me as a gift machine or make either parent feel like I'm trying to compete, but there's no way I'd ever not give them Christmas and birthday gifts. Finally, I need to pony up something fairly respectable for SO's brother and his partner since they always include me in the annual family Broadway musical event.

Marathon travel: $150
Car rental, gas, meals, and hotel. I'm sharing a room with one person and pooling car rental and gas with three.

That works out to just about $2000, but there's not much I can do to bring it down other than skipping the marathon (not gonna happen), going completely bare-bones on gifts and doorman tips, and cutting out charitable donations. The FICA bump covers close to everything, but even if it didn't I've made my peace with it.

Do you have any special end of year expenses? What are they and how do you plan to cover them?

The healthiest sickie around

2009-11-04T20:00:00.006-05:00

It's annual enrollment week at work, and I finally had time to sit down and read through the plan changes. At first I was really pleased: Despite all of the horrible things I've been reading in the press about skyrocketing employee insurance costs, the monthly cost of my plan isn't changing at all. Isn't that great?

And then I got down to the details.

The cost of generic medications is remaining the same, $10 a pop for a three month supply. For non-generics, however, it's a different story. Instead of paying a flat $45 for a three-month supply, employees are now required to pay a significant percentage of the medication's retail cost.

I'm on three generic medications and four non-generics which are still under patent, so there's no generic alternative. I phoned the pharmacy that processes my prescriptions to find out what the retail cost of the four non-generics is and found that my costs are indeed going up.

The magnitude of the increase relative to what I pay today?

More than four hundred percent.

Yeah.

I'm seeing a couple of different sources of irony in this situation. First, I'm lucky because I even have insurance, even though it's costing me more than two thousand dollars extra in 2010 just to get the same medication I take today. Second, even with the de facto salary hit I'm about to take, I'm also lucky to have a job right now.

Finally, you'd think that with seven medications, I'm probably a pretty sick person. Nothing could be farther from the truth: I have two auto-immune disorders that certainly could make my life miserable (the reason for three of the medications), but they're under control and most of the time I hardly even remember they're there. I also have extraordinarily sensitive skin that looks good because a few years ago my dermatologist hit on a combination of control meds (four in total) that works for me. My heart rate is 40, my weight is perfectly normal, and I'm running a marathon in a couple of weeks. If I'm sick, I've got to be the healthiest sick person around.

I've given polite but admittedly strained feedback about this change to my plan administrator, but I already know it's not going to do any good. In the meantime, I was looking forward to resuming online investing in 2010 after I top up the rest of my emergency fund, and I was even thinking about splurging on a little piece of jewelry if I qualify for the Boston Marathon in a couple of weeks. In the short term, I guess I'll be saving up an extra couple of thousand dollars to blow on medication instead.

For some well-reasoned and far more articulate thoughts on health care and health care reform than I can give you, I'd suggest stopping by my friend Shadox's blog. In the meantime, I don't recommend watching this if you get the vapors about crude language or gestures, but here are my thoughts on the matter, more or less:

What's your health insurance situation at the moment?

The Halloween grumpies

2009-11-02T15:41:00.003-05:00

I loved Halloween when I was a little kid. Like many of you, I have very fond memories of trick-or-treating through the neighborhood with my dad hovering in the background, while my mom stayed home to hand out candy to kids who came to our house. As I got older and began to make the rounds with my friends instead of my dad, my parents began to gently hint that there wouldn't be that many more years of trick-or-treating left. By the time I was in eighth grade, they openly disagreed with it on the grounds that I was too old, and in fact I did feel weird about it as a thirteen-year-old. It's all lost back in the fog of time now, but I think we all felt a little strange and quit early. That was my last year trick-or-treating.

In recent years, I've handed out candy at the door. It was great for a while, but in the last couple of years the cute little Power Rangers and witches have given way to much older kids, many of whom are a lot bigger than I am and don't really bother much with costumes. I've never, ever turned a kid away on Halloween, but the biggest kids make it feel more like a shakedown than a holiday.

This year, I managed to get myself invited out to the suburbs to help take a couple of great kids out. The kids are getting a little old for trick-or-treating themselves (fifth grade and eighth grade), and I mentioned as much to their dad. He laughed and informed me that he fully expected his kids to insist on trick-or-treating for years to come. He then mentioned to the eighth grader that I figured it was her last year going out, and she was horrified at the thought.

Are you kidding me? she asked. It's FREE CANDY! Why wouldn't I go until I'm TWENTY-FIVE???

Meanwhile, this kid towers over me.

I don't really approve, but I'm not the parent here so I decided not to say anything.

The kids put on their costumes at six, and Dad and I went out to make the rounds with the neighbors and their kids. The kids ranged in age from a tiny little thing in a stroller, dressed up like a pumpkin (hilarious and very, very cute) to the oldest, both in the eighth grade and very quickly fed up with being stuck with a bunch of littler kids. At their age, my parents would have been way too embarrassed to take me around trick-or-treating on the grounds that I was too old (they only grudgingly agreed to let me go out with my friends as it was), but in this case the parents wouldn't let the oldest out of their sight.

I know, I know. The world is a more dangerous place than it used to be.

Meanwhile, nearly every parent was dressed up in a costume of his or her own, and several of them were towing wagons filled with coolers. I edged close to the wagons to see what was in them and discovered that the coolers were full of cheese, crackers, and bottles of wine. The parents themselves were clutching plastic cups filled to the brim, and several of them made repeated trips to the wagons in short succession. As we meandered through the neighborhood, I noticed that although a few of the kids said Thank you! at every house, this was by no means universal and the parents only prompted sporadically when the kids forgot. Our paths crossed several times with those of some big, rambunctious high school age kids and I wondered if the people whose bells they were ringing felt as shaken down as I think I would have.

There were also houses where no one was home but a bowl of candy was left out front. (This is what the people I was with did since no one was home while we were out.) I don't think you can really expect kids not to empty close to the entire bowl into their bags, but I saw this happen more than once right in front of the parents, and the parents didn't say anything. I didn't say anything either, because I didn't think it was my battle to fight.

I like kids. Don't want my own, but I do like them. Either I've got a serious case of memory blinders on, though, or Halloween culture has changed significantly. There's much more greed and much less courtesy than I remember, and I found it a little distasteful. It makes me not want to shell out money to participate next year.

Am I off base with my perspective here?

I'll bring home the bacon, but you have to cook it

2009-10-30T18:34:00.002-05:00

The other day, I read an article that was in no way a surprise, but interesting nevertheless. It was about how women are increasingly becoming the primary income earners in their households.

To summarize, the number of wives earning more than their husbands has been on the increase for several years, but this trend has jumped significantly since 2007, largely as a result of the recession. One reason for this change is that men have been impacted much more than women by the waves of job losses over the past year. Women now make up half or slightly more than half of all adults employed in the United States.

So where does this leave the men?

In many cases, still job-hunting. Other men are starting their own businesses. Some men are embracing domestic duties, taking a leading role in chores and childcare. Although the situation of wives stepping up to be the primary income earner doesn't necessarily sit well with everyone, poll evidence suggests that more and more couples are becoming increasingly accustomed to and comfortable with the idea of women being the family breadwinner.

One reason why women may be impacted less by layoffs than men in the United States is that women still earn less on average. One unintended consequence of women being the family breadwinner is that many families are making do with less income, leaving them more vulnerable to financial disaster if something happens to Mom's job.

Personally, I haven't seen this situation much in either my work life or among my friends. I work predominantly with men, most of whom either have wives who work part-time or stay home with the kids. Among my married and cohabitating friends, both partners generally work and I don't have a clear idea of who makes more. In the rare cases where one partner works part-time or is out of work altogether, it's usually the woman. (For what it's worth, I'm only referring to straight friends in this last instance. I haven't seen this situation with my gay friends to date.) According to some of my friends, however, many of their colleagues are women with male partners who are stay-at-home dads, to everyone's apparent satisfaction.

If you're married or living with someone, who is the primary income earner in your household? Are you happy with the way things are, or would you rather change? Why?

We have a winner!

2009-10-29T18:35:00.004-05:00

Thanks to the good people at Random.org, we now have a winner for the UPrinting Postcard Giveaway. The drawing went like this:

I assigned a number to each comment, where the first comment = 1 and the last comment = 7. I then used a random number generator to produce a random number between 1 and 7, inclusive. This was the result:

Comment #3 belonged to Songbird. Songbird, please email me as soon as you can and I'll hook you up with your prize.

Check back tomorrow for a new post. In the meantime, I hope to have another giveaway up in the next couple of weeks.

There's gold in them thar beads

2009-10-26T19:40:00.006-05:00

This weekend, a Michael's craft store (the only one, as far as I'm aware) opened in Manhattan. I had heard about Michael's from other bloggers and was curious to have a look, so I scooted on over late in the afternoon.

The place was a madhouse, which I suppose is more or less status quo for opening day, but I noticed a few things:

1. The place was full of all kinds of craft supplies, from framing to scrapbooking, knitting, baking, candlemaking, beading, flower arranging, and jewelry-making, including pendants to celebrate just about everything (nothing for running or marathons, though).

2. Everything was really, really cheap.

3. Stuff of every kind was flying off the shelves. I never knew there were so many people in New York who are into crafts!

I couldn't believe the prices. They must depend on being a volume business. I mean, what serious crafting person stops at five dollars' worth of ribbon and beads? I know I wouldn't.

I deliberately didn't take any money or credit cards with me when I went because there's not a thing I need, but as I walked through aisles and aisles of domestic arts, my nesting instincts kicked in big-time. There's a big part of me that is very home-oriented, and I'd like to be the kind of person who could make nice wedding favors or fancy cakes.

The only problem is that I'd be buying things for a life I don't live.

I can knit well but I don't have the time to do it, or the patience anymore. I studied Japanese flower arranging for two years, but fresh flowers aren't on my shopping list right now and won't be until I'm a little more certain about my job situation. I can sling a pretty good dinner on the table for friends, but I only manage to pull that together once every six months if I'm lucky. In a perfect world, I'd do all of those things and more, all the time. In real life, it's not going to happen very often. As far as other crafty things go, I pretty much suck at it. Learning them would be fun, but it's not a priority at this point in my life.

At least accepting that I can't do it all helps money stay in my pocket.

What do you want to do in future that doesn't fit into your life or budget today?

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Want free postcards printed with the design of your choice? Enter the drawing here by noon EST on October 29 for your chance to win!

More free stuff, for one week only

2009-10-22T17:37:00.005-05:00

The good people at UPrinting are back with some more neat stuff to give away. One lucky reader will receive one hundred free postcards in the design of his or her choice with free ground shipping in the US. (Canadian residents, you are also eligible to win but unfortunately you will need to pony up for shipping and taxes.)

The postcards are size 4x6 on 14pt cardstock gloss with full color on both sides, and you can use them to advertise your business or anything else you like. I'm receiving a batch for posting this offer, and I'm planning to get them printed with either a picture of a flower I took at a famous West Coast rose garden this summer, or possibly a monkey. I'll send them out to friends and family over the coming months, and hopefully they'll bring a smile or two to the recipients.

This contest expires at noon EST on October 29, so if you want a chance to win, please leave a G-rated comment below detailing what you would do with a hundred free postcards. If you post this link on your own blog, drop a comment to let me know and I'll give you a second entry.

Good luck, and I'm looking forward to seeing your ideas.

Food is love

2009-10-21T10:00:00.004-05:00

I blew in Tuesday night from San Francisco, and what a fantastic trip it was. A week of rest from running actually made for a good half marathon, despite the horrific lung clearing I did all the way through. I crossed the finish line about five minutes slower than my normal finish for a half marathon in New York on a significantly more challenging course, so there was definitely nothing to complain about. I don't know exactly how many people competed in the half marathon (there were about twenty thousand including about three hundred men in the half marathon and full marathon combined), but I'm pretty sure I finished in the top three or four percent overall for the half, and maybe even a little bit better than that.

Lest that sound more exciting than it actually is, there were a lot of walkers on the course.

Best of all, the finishers' medal wasn't a medal as such: Instead, the giveaway at the end of this race was a really, really nice sterling silver Tiffany necklace. It was fun seeing how many necklaces we spotted throughout the city in the couple of days afterwards.

We ran in the mornings every day we were there, but the rest of the trip was mostly about the food: We hit the farmer's market and sampled tamales featured on Cheap Eats, drank many, many cappucinos and lattes, visited Saulsalito and the wineries in Napa Valley, and finished up with a really wonderful dinner at one of Thomas Keller's restaurants.

My friends are a little more normal about money than I am, and I decided that as long as I stayed within my planned budget, I wasn't going to worry about where the money was going. I budgeted $700 for everything excluding the flight and was pleasantly surprised to come home with $93.

Here's where the money went:

Hotel: $248
Organic dried fruit from the farmer's market: $10
Gift chocolate for a dinner party next week: $10
Candy for SO's kids: $14
Gourmet honey for SO: $16

The rest went towards car rental, trips to and from the airport, and food. Didn't track a cent of it.

I feel totally recharged from getting away from all the stress and worry, and I wouldn't change a thing about this trip. I'm not sure I want to get back to reality, but reality looks just a little bit better than it did last week.

Will catch up with comments later this week; thanks for your patience in the meantime.

How many shopping days left until Christmas?

2009-10-19T08:00:00.000-05:00

No, I'm not thinking about Christmas shopping already. There is a little bit of retail therapy that's been on my mind lately, though, and I thought I'd share it with you.

When I get stressed, lots of ugly physiological things happen. One that bothers me the most is that I get horrendous knots (tissue adhesions, I guess) in my back. I don't know the exact cause, but I do know that I get them more when I'm carrying around a lot of worries. Professional massage is one very effective way to get rid of them, but as much as I'd love to make a habit of massages (I've only ever had two), it's not going to happen in the foreseeable future.

When I was was going through nine months of physical therapy for a running injury in 2007, I remember having a terrible, painful knot on my back. While I was waiting for the physical therapist to start working on my injury, I sat perched on a table, craning my elbow around my neck to self-massage the sore spot with my fingertips. My PT saw me doing this and asked what the problem was. I told him, and he said Wait one minute. He left and then came back carrying . . . well, this:

This is what's known as the Back Knobber 2. It's a plastic hook with a ball on each end, and it's meant to hook over the user's back so he or she can effectively self-massage a knot out over the course of a few days. I tried it for five or ten minutes before each of my sessions that week, and in just over a full week the knot was completely GONE.

I have a really large, painful knot on the right side of my back right now, and I'm sorely tempted to order this doohickey. It retails for around $30 on Amazon and is often (but not always) available with free shipping. I've had trouble getting myself to order it because I don't think I'll use it that often, but right now the knot I have really hurts. If it's still bugging me after a weekend of fun in San Francisco, I'll probably end up buying it.

What's on your mind to buy right now? Are you buying it now or waiting, and why?

Not attracted by the Law of Attraction

2009-10-17T08:00:00.002-05:00

Okay, a couple of caveats up front: First, I've never read The Secret and I have no plans to read it. All I know about the so-called Law of Attraction is what I've read on Wikipedia. Aside from being my favorite resource for playing Where are they now? with 1970's TV stars, I realize that it's hardly an authoritative source about anything, especially since this particular article is already flagged as being problematic in its current form.

Having said that. . .

I think this Law of Attraction stuff is a load of hooey.

According to the Wikipedia article, proponents claim that the roots of the Law of Attraction lie in quantum physics. Under this theory, thoughts contain energy, and this energy attracts whatever it is the person is thinking of to draw it nearer. In order to control the law of attraction, practitioners must do the following:

1. Know exactly what you want.
2. Ask the universe for it.
3. Feel, behave and know as if the object of your desire is already yours (visualize).
4. Be open to receive it and let go of (the attachment to) the outcome.

Following this line of thought, thinking of things in terms of not having them becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

To me, this is a dressed-up version of closing my eyes and wishing really, really hard for a pony. Believing that wishing will provide is natural for little kids until they figure out that it doesn't actually work, but I have a very hard time believing that adults willingly buy into this.

I think there's a much more reliable way to attract success and make all your wishes come true. All you have to do is:

1. Set S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely) goals
2. Work hard, but only at the right things (i.e., don't waste time on busywork)
3. Know what finished work looks like and deliver it only when finished
4. Follow through on commitments
5. Mean what you say, say what you mean
6. Use tact and good judgment
7. Respect others
8. Make friends wherever you go
9. Rinse and repeat

If that doesn't get you on the road to success, you can see this video for a backup plan. The key words that brought it to mind were If you vote for me, your wildest dreams will come true:

(In case you're wondering, thanks to this, Pedro beat the popular girl and won the election for school president. It's all in good fun, folks.)

What do you think: Am I being too judgmental about the Law of Attraction?

It's got to be midnight somewhere in the world

2009-10-15T20:08:00.003-05:00

I realize it's a few hours early, but since I have to be out the door at 5:30 a.m. and it's been a while since anyone entered the banner giveaway, I took the liberty of ending the contest at 9:00 p.m. EST and drawing a random winner. The winner of a 24" x 36" vinyl banner from Uprinting is Cat!

Cat, please send me an email at frugal (dot) zeitgeist (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll tell you how to claim your prize.

In the interest of full disclosure and in accordance with a new law passed a couple of weeks ago, I must also tell you that Uprinting is also giving me a banner for hosting the giveaway. I'm having a Canadian flag printed on it in anticipation of my citizenship party next summer.

I've pre-written a couple of posts that will publish while I'm away, so keep on checking in. I'll be back to answer comments after I get back from San Francisco.

Still sick, but things are looking up

2009-10-14T21:12:00.009-05:00

I'm better than I was on Monday, but the crud settled deep in my chest and the timing could not be worse: I'm leaving on Friday morning for a long weekend in San Francisco. I'm going out with some friends to run the Nike Women's Half Marathon, and we have a full itinerary that includes a trip to wine country, dim sum in Chinatown, and dinner at one of Thomas Keller's restaurants.

I seriously thought about cancelling the trip once job stability went down the crapper and my closest colleagues started disappearing, including the best boss I've ever had. In the end, however, I decided to go regardless of what happens. It's not going to be cheap as long weekends go, but the money we'll spend over four and a half days is not going to make a bit of difference in the big picture, even if I get laid off tomorrow. Too much of my energy has gone into stress and worry lately, to the point where one of my friends scolded me the other day for being a Debbie Downer. Fair criticism or not (and I think it probably was, although the delivery could have been better and she ended up being very apologetic), I think the way I've been letting the work situation affect me certainly helped me get sick. It's not really necessary: Even if I'm not quite as prepared as I'd like to be, I wouldn't go broke tomorrow.

In addition, the job situation looks more stable than it did a few weeks ago. There's an org chart and my name is on it, with a defined area of responsibility and a team of six. In my extended group, I also got flagged as the lead for counseling and performance management for my region (there are three) because my new boss heard that that's one of my strengths. I'm not looking too far ahead, but so far all signs are pointing to surviving the upcoming layoff tsunami - and that's all the more reason to get my perspectives in perspective and celebrate.

Are you celebrating anything right now?

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Feeling in the pink

2009-10-12T12:14:00.002-05:00

I'm not feeling in the pink just now: I'm sick, so this is going to be a short one.

Does buying pink products or pink-ribboned items make you feel good because you're supporting the fight against breast cancer? This article suggests that you should do your homework before spending your money: the support you think you're giving may not be exactly what it seems.

Does ribbon-branding (whether it's pink or any other color) make you more inclined to buy a product? Why or why not?

Shuffling back to bed now. See you when I'm over the crud.

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Frugal blog network: The marathon edition

2009-10-10T18:37:00.005-05:00

Mea culpa and apologies to my friends at the Frugal Blog Network: I missed not one but two monthly roundups.

I haven't been reading or commenting on many blogs much lately, and if you read regularly around here, you might have noticed that I haven't been posting as much. In addition to all kinds of exciting things related to staying employed, I'm in marathon training crunch time. At six weeks before liftoff, I'm approaching peak mileage and feeling every step of it. Nevertheless, it's not nice to neglect one's friends and obligations, so without further ado, here are some interesting links from other members in the network:

--Oh, the horror: Kelly from Almost Frugal just moved and lived to tell the story

--Frugal Babe has a lot of love to give, but she doesn't waste on things that won't love her back

--For The Frugal Duchess, ironing and finances have some striking similarities.

--Not Made of Money covered a topic close to my heart (which apparently lives in my stomach) when they posted about tasty casseroles that won't break your budget.

Tight Fisted Miser is thinking about spending part of each year living abroad.

That's it for this month's roundup, and boy howdy am I looking forward to tapering down the mileage in a few weeks.

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Family values

2009-10-08T17:04:00.004-05:00

Today, Brooke Astor's son Anthony Marshall was convicted of fourteen charges relating to defrauding his mother of millions of dollars as she sank deeper and deeper into Alzheimer's.

This case, which I've followed with horror and fascination since the story broke, brings to light two important issues: elder abuse, and the sick ways that greed can twist family relationships.

I understand that greed has a terrible warping effect on character. As shocking and awful as it is for fraudsters like Bernie Madoff to commit fraud against friends and acquaintances, though, defrauding and taking advantage of family (especially family that is particularly vulnerable because of decline or disability) is a whole other class of crazy. My sibling and I are actively involved in my mom's finances to look after her well-being. When my dad was alive, we were even more protective because he was so physically, mentally, and emotionally fragile in the last ten years of his life. I can't imagine doing anything different, and this is one of those situations where I simply can't put myself in the other guy's shoes to even attempt to understand his motivations.

Have you dealt with a fraudster in the family? If so, what happened and how did you deal with it? If not, is there someone you're actively working to protect from fraud outside the family, and what are you doing to protect that person?

If you're anxious and you know it, clap your hands

2009-10-04T13:26:00.003-05:00

The New York Times had a fascinating article in the weekend magazine about anxiety. According to research, children who are naturally anxious and afraid of new things as babies commonly grow up to be anxious adults. Many of these adults are social, stable, and high-functioning, but deep inside they see themselves as little more than a mass of nerves. Anxiety can increase to the point of becoming a debilitating clinical disorder.

According to the article, severe anxiety is often correlated with hyperreactivity in the amygdala, a part of the brain that processes perceptions of novelty and threat. As a result, chronic anxiety is becoming recognized as at least partially an inherent, inborn trait, albeit one whose effects can best be mitigated by early intervention and treatment.

Personally, I don't know my amygdala from a hole in the ground. I do know that I have a mild but definite tendency towards anxiety, though, and there have been one or two brief periods in my life where it threatened to become debilitating. The best way I know to manage it is to reach out and take ownership of whatever's freaking me out. I suspect that's one reason that I'm a martinet about personal finance and minimizing my exposure to bad financial situations: If I'm adequately prepared, there's a whole lot less to worry about if something bad (like a layoff in the next couple of months) actually happens.

Do you think of yourself as naturally anxious? How has your natural anxiety (or lack of anxiety) influenced how you manage your money?

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Home repairs from hell

2009-10-02T19:13:00.007-05:00

I've just spent the last two days dealing with the worst mofo backed up kitchen sink you can imagine. Last night, SO and I stopped up the garbage disposal and attacked the main sink with a plunger. We brought up some interesting gunk (I've lived here eight years and my hair isn't black, so that was pretty gross) but despite all our efforts, the almost complete stoppage remained.

Today I attacked the sink with three separate sessions of Drano. I don't like using chemical drain openers because they're so environmentally harsh, but the situation was getting pretty desperate. I also plunged again before and after each application, which you should NOT do because if chemical residue is in the pipe, it can splash back up and cause injury. (This didn't happen to me, but you still shouldn't do it.) Finally, I gave up and consulted the Google.

Most of the advice I saw was standard drain opener-plunger-snake-call the plumber, and I was just about ready to give in and pay for a professional. I tried one more site, though, and am I ever glad I did: I found an article noting that in modern homes, the dishwasher drain is usually linked to the sink drain, so plunging a sink without blocking the dishwasher drain usually doesn't result in enough pressure to move a clog because the water simply backs up into the dishwasher.

I opened the dishwasher, and sure enough: NASTY WATER!

Nas. Tay.

The article went on to say that if you have a sink and garbage disposal whose drains are attached to a dishwasher drain, you should do the following:

1. Block the sink drain
2. Run the rinse cycle in the dishwasher (I just opened the drain, since it was already full of nasty water)
3. When the dishwasher is draining, run the garbage disposal

I did that, and the clog was gone in seconds. I'm out $15 for Drano (but I can get up to $8.75 back by sending in a claim against their money-back guarantee since it didn't work). Nevertheless I decided that fixing the problem myself without having to pay for a plumber just might be the best feeling in the world.

For some truly horrible images of home repairs and other DIY's gone awry, take a look at this site: There, I fixed it.

Do you have any good home repair tips to share?

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Here we go again

2009-09-29T19:21:00.005-05:00

Q3 of calendar year 2009 wraps up tomorrow. That means it's time once again to check progress against this year's goals.

Financial
Max out Roth 401(k)
I'll do this through ongoing payroll deductions into diversified investments throughout the year, and I'll try not to throw up when I look at the volatility in the short term.

Q1 result: On track.
Q2 result: On track.
Q3 result: On track.

Max out IRA
I'll do this through one to four investments totalling $5000 before the end of December. Ditto the throwing up part.

Q1 result: Complete. I caught the second half of the recent rally and dumped the entire $5000 into my IRA at once. Tsk, tsk, tsk on me for attempting to time the market.
Q2 result: Complete.
Q3 result: Complete.

Save $65,000
Between my 401(k), IRA, and after-tax savings, I plan to sock away this amount in total over the course of the year. I'll do that by maxing out my 401(k) and IRA, and by dropping a predefined amount every month into a money market fund. I haven't decided when or how much of those after-tax savings I'll invest, but I'll assess my options, outlook, and investment priorities on a monthly basis.

Q1 result: On track. Total long-term savings in 2009 so far = $16,000.
Q2 result: On track, but on the verge of slipping behind. So far, I'm at $32,000 in total, which is on track with where I expected to be since I normally pick up a little extra savings towards the end of the calendar year. Unfortunately, that figure doesn't reflect the fact that I was ahead of the game by $3600 after my tax refund came through. I've blown through that extra cushion in this quarter, and next quarter I guarantee that I'll be behind on this goal. I'll tell how you I did that in my next post.
Q3 result: Yay, I'm behind! I'm at $45,000 in total, which is about $3000 shy of where I had planned to be by now. Since I was ahead of my goal by $3600 in April thanks to my tax refund, it means that I actually spent $6600 that could have gone into savings. Here's where it went:

--Summer trip to Europe: $1500
--Mini-remodeling (regrouting, repainting, new custom cabinetry in the bathroom): $4700
--Replacing the ceiling lights: $800

I hadn't planned for the new lights or the mini-remodeling at the beginning of the year but I'm glad I did them, even if it means missing my end of year savings goal by nearly 5%.

Commit to keeping my monthly spending under $1500
$1500 is enough to accomodate regular spending on everything in my budget (including apartment maintenance fees and property tax), with a little extra for entertainment and gifts. I also left some wiggle room between my budget total and my savings goals to cover five or six flights to the West Coast to see my family.

Q1 result: Not succeeding. I'm consistently running about $100 to $150 or more above goal. I'll track this one for another three months and possibly revise at mid-year.
Q2 result: Blew this one completely out of the water. Check out my next post to see how, why, and what I'm doing about it.
Q3 result: I'm being much more mindful about spending, but I don't think $1500 is realistic once I factor in periodic travel expenses to see my family plus other recurring expenses (like homeowner's insurance) and unexpected expenses (wedding gifts, work attire, and the like). I think it's more realistic to add a little padding in for the unexpected. If the unexpected doesn't occur, the padding can carry over into subsequent months.

Maintain elite status on my preferred airline
I'll do this by taking either four trips to the West Coast to see my family and one elsewhere, or five trips West.

Q1 result: On track. One trip down, one coming up, and one more booked for San Francisco in the fall.
Q2 result: On track. I've booked all planned flights for the rest of the year, and I should just squeak by with 25,000 accrued air miles in 2009.
Q3 result: On track, but it's possible that I'll need to cancel my next trip because of work.

Fitness
Run at least three half marathons
I'm already registered for two, and I should be able to pick up the third with no problem before the end of the year. I haven't had a concrete fitness target to work towards in a while, so let's see what this does for my motivation.

Q1 result: On track. I missed the second half that I was registered for thanks to the flu, but I ran a decent first half marathon. I'm scheduled to run one in San Francisco in the fall, and I'll probably pick up another one locally before then.
Q2 result: On track. I did a second half that became a fun run because of unseasonably hot weather, but it still counts. I also signed up for a full marathon in the fall.
Q3 result: On track, but #3 is in San Francisco and there's a possibility that I'll need to cancel for work. Marathon training is on track.

Increase my flexibility
I'll do this by taking a yoga class once a week throughout the year no matter what, and twice a week whenever possible.

Q1 result: Mostly on track: The flu flattened me for two weeks and I didn't do squat for yoga while I was out of town in February, but I've been consistent otherwise. Improvement in flexibility is only incremental (and the increments are small), so I might need to squeeze out more time for another couple of classes or home practice every week.
Q2 result: Mostly on track. I was getting to yoga consistently three to four times per week until I started the heavy lifting with the mini-home renovation a few weeks ago. I'm going to two classes this week, will miss a week over vacation, and then it's back to the regular schedule until the end of August.
Q3 result: Mostly on track. Twice a week is about all I can manage at the moment, but there have been a few weeks this quarter in which I couldn't even manage that.

Bring my cholesterol below 200
To my chagrin, I cracked 200 for the first time this year. I'm achieving this goal by reducing consumption of saturated fats (goodbye eggs and ice cream), exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, and hopefully shedding a few extra pounds in the process. This is an ongoing goal, but I'll check in on a quarterly basis to measure my progress.

Q1 result: On track. The unofficial, non-fasting results from an on-site health fair at work pegged my blood pressure at 100/70 and my cholesterol at 144.
Q2 result: Probably on track: I'm due for a checkup this summer and will confirm at that time. Unofficially, my self-measured resting pulse is 42 beats per minute.
Q3 result: Complete! Blood pressure remains 100/70, fasting blood test at my annual physical resulted in cholesterol of 165 and unusually good HDL to LDL ratio, and pulse clocked in at 40.

****I decided to break out the goal above into three additional goals, since this one covers a lot of ground in just one sentence.***

NEW GOAL: Get off of refined sugar
On January 09, after a massive chocolate binge that followed a layoff at work, I gave up sugar in the form of sweets and as an additive in more than trace amounts. (Naturally occuring sugar - like fruit - and alcohol are still on the menu. Honey, agave, and artificial sweeteners are not.)

Q1 result: On track. If I make it through today, that totals 81 days sugar-free to date.
Q2 result: On track. As of today, I've been sugar free for exactly six months. The periods between sugar cravings are getting longer, but the sugar cravings themselves are still awful, awful, awful.
Q3 result: Mostly on track for nearly nine months. I do guzzle an occasional glass of liquier, but I'm pretending it doesn't count. Haven't had sweets of any kind since January 09.

NEW GOAL: 7 hours of sleep per night during the week
After I had the flu, I started getting more vigilant about getting enough sleep. Lights out is 10:15 during the week.

Q1 result: Mostly on track. I've had a few late nights during the week, but very few relative to the quarter as a whole.
Q2 result: Not on track. I've slipped far, far back into the land of five hours of sleep per night or less. I definitely need to recommit to this one.
Q3 result: Moderate improvement. It's not the getting to bed that's usually the problem, just the damned insomnia.

NEW GOAL: Achieve and maintain goal weight
Losing weight at my age is suddenly both difficult and agonizingly slow. Despite a great deal of effort, I lost a grand total of two pounds between my last physical in June and January. Intense stress triggered another five-pound drop, and then I lost a whole lot more (too much, in fact) while I had the flu. I regained a few pounds after I recovered, and my weight stabilized at at one pound above goal, possibly the most irritating thing it could do.

Q1 result: Mostly on track. Overall, I'm sixteen pounds lighter than I was last June and it feels really, really good.
Q2 result: Mostly on track. Aside from occasional fluctuations, I'm maintaining a sixteen pound loss. That leaves me one pound that I just haven't been able to shake above goal.
Q3 result: Mostly on track. Blipped up by three pounds that won't go away (how does this happen during marathon training?), but I don't see a difference and my clothes fit the same way they did three pounds ago.

Personal development
Read more news and ideas
I don't always finish the New York Times and the New Yorker, my two favorite subscriptions. I think I can do better in this area by spending less time at home indulging in escapism on the internet and more time facing up to what's in the news on a day to day basis. This is an ongoing goal, but I'll check in on a quarterly basis to measure my progress.

Q1 result: Mixed. I switched to reading the New York Times online during the week because the paper started arriving after I left for work. After six weeks and numerous complaints, I finally cancelled the subscription except for Saturday and Sunday. To my chagrin, I've found that I have less focus when reading the paper online. On a more positive note, I'm reading the New Yorker during my commute, so I'm having much greater success in getting it read consistently.
Q2 result: Mixed. I'm focusing better on what I read, but the lack of breadth bothers me.
Q3 result: Mixed. Focus when reading the paper online hasn't improved, and I'm not trying as much as I used to.

Give more
I plan to spend more time helping people I know who need it (like my New York mom), more time volunteering in my community, and more money on donations to charitable causes. This is an ongoing goal, but I'll check in on a quarterly basis to measure my progress.

Q1 result: Mostly on track. I've done several charitable donations this year so far, and I've continued helping my New York mom. I'm short on the volunteering front, though.
Q2 result: Mostly on track. Did one more charitable donation during the quarter, and I've been helping out during my New York mom's most recent hospitalization. (She just got out this week.)
Q3 result: Mostly on track. Two more charitable donations, and I'll be organizing a food drive fundraiser next month. If I still have a job, I'll make a fairly generous contribution myself.

Professional development
Keep my job and continue building my career
I don't want to delve into jobworld too much on this blog, so let's just call this doing my best work every day, with the understanding that I have much more specific and concrete goals in real life.

Q1 result: No details, but this one is on track.
Q2 result: Got an outstanding performance review, plus one of the best compliments ever: Someone in the office approached me a few weeks ago and said "I want to come work for you." That's the third time that's happened over the past nine or ten months, but it never gets old.
Q3 result: Still employed, but it's definitely shaky as a result of a very large restructuring. All bets are off.

Become a better public speaker
Public speaking is fast becoming an integral part of my job. Without going into more detail, let's just say that I've managed to wrangle a few opportunities to get more practice, and I plan to leverage them to the best of my ability.

Q1 result: No details, but this one is on track.
Q2 result: No details, but thanks to a few really good opportunities, this one is still on track.
Q3 result: No details, but still on track.

Relationships
I have some goals here, but nothing I'm inclined to share. ;-)

Q1 result: No details, but mostly on track.
Q2 result: No details, but mostly on track.
Q3 result: No details, but mostly on track.

Overall, this has been a much tougher quarter than I had hoped in many areas. Marathon training is going better than anything, mostly because it's the main way I have of blowing my stress out.

How are you doing on your 2009 goals?

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The costs of clutter

2009-09-27T12:24:00.005-05:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again: My own personal aesthetic is minimalism. Part of this is related to living in a small space, which can get unlivable very quickly. Even when I've had more room, though, having an excess of stuff feels suffocating. I keep the feeling of suffocation at bay by being neat, handling paperwork as it comes in and shredding it afterwards, and adhering religiously to the one in, one out rule. There are still a few hot spots that I have trouble managing as effectively as I'd like (file cabinet and front closet), but my home feels much bigger than it actually is overall. It might seem a little stark to some people, but to me it's tranquil and relaxing.

With all that on the table, I guess it's not surprising that I'm fascinated by the television show Hoarders. Hoarders is a pretty self-explanatory title: each week, the program follows two individuals or families that are coping with severe inability to get rid of things, which has resulted in living conditions that range from squalid to truly horrific and dangerous. The program looks like it's been edited to heighten drama and tension between hoarders and their families, but on the whole the perspective of the program is compassionate. The time frame allocated to clean up each disastrous home on the show is patently ridiculous (two to three days!), but I think it's somewhat mitigated by six months of after-care therapy and/or help from a professional organizer.

The perspective of hoarding presented on the show is that it's a challenging but treatable mental disorder, not the result of laziness or slovenliness. In some of the background on the show, I was surprised to see that hoarding and squalorous living are often related to a strong sense of perfectionism in that many hoarders feel that if they can't keep a home spotless, it's pointless to even bother trying.

From a personal finance point of view, I think a person's relationship to his or her stuff is intimately tied to financial health in many ways. As one example, hoarding seems to be closely related to compulsive shopping, which is a drain on savings and overall financial well-being. Living in an extreme mess often means losing track of important paperwork, including tax forms, checks, or bills, and that's a second form of financial hit. A third costly complication of hoarding is having to buy the same item over and over because it's disappeared in the mess. Of course, there are many, many other non-monetary costs of hoarding, including anxiety, isolation, and risks to physical and mental health.

What are your thoughts and/or experiences related to hoarding? Do you see any other relationships between hoarding and financial well-being? If you don't know the show, you can see it online here.

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The giveaways just keep coming

2009-09-25T12:27:00.006-05:00

In an effort to end what's been a pretty rough week in my part of the world on a high note, I'm really happy to present another very, very cool giveaway offer from the good people at Uprinting. In this giveaway, the prize is one 24" x 36" high-quality vinyl banner with grommets. Banner printing of these dimensions normally retails for $62, but your cost here is FREE, along with FREE shipping.

Why a banner?

Well, you can use a free banner like this one to advertise your business, a special event like a wedding (maybe a divorce?) or a graduation, or whatever your exhibitionistic little heart desires. Personally, I'd order a giant Canadian flag in honor of my citizenship card application, which is probably parked on a desk somewere in ~~Ottowa~~ Ottawa (corrected - thanks, Gord).

To enter, simply leave a comment on this post describing what you would do with the banner and I'll pick the winner via random drawing on October 31. Fellow bloggers, if you advertise this giveaway on your own blog, let me know: That'll score you an additional contest entry.

Have fun, and I'm looking forward to seeing your ideas!

When marriage isn't all it's cracked up to be

2009-09-23T17:32:00.008-05:00

Time magazine published an interesting article this week about marriage. According to the article, even though marriage is often a foundation to economic gain, it doesn't bring as many financial benefits as it used to. It's still true that the overall cost of living comes down when two people share housing or when they can leverage their combined skill sets to avoid paying for repairs or other costs that come from running a household, but the change in women's roles over time has closed the gap between married people and single. In today's world, women's wages are much more competitive with men's than they used to be. In addition, women are having fewer children and having them later in life, giving them the opportunity to build more solid careers and work histories beforehand. Finally, unmarried doesn't necessarily mean unpartnered: more and more couples are living together (and benefiting from two incomes) without being married.

If you are or were married, did marriage make you better off financially than when you were single? If you're single, do you think marriage would improve your financial situation? Do economic considerations play any role in your romantic relationships (including a decision to marry or not), and if so, how?

The wheels of the bus go round and round

2009-09-20T11:24:00.005-05:00

Well, it's starting. I'm expecting a big wave of layoffs by mid-morning tomorrow.

I should be okay in this wave; October to December will most likely be my scary time. The possibility that I might be wrong about all of this is always at the back of my mind, though, and it's really taken it out of me lately.

The one positive impact the stress has had on my life is that this marathon training cycle is going very well indeed. I've got three twenty-mile runs in the bank so far and three to go, and yesterday morning I put in eighteen miles at just over 8:30 pace. I'm pretty sore today, but that kind of a run is a good indicator that I just might be able to pull off another Boston qualifier in November.

Take your happiness where you find it, that's what I say. Where's yours right now?

Then and now

2009-09-15T18:09:00.008-05:00

My net worth peaked in June 2008. Since then, I've held onto my investments (including one I should have offloaded) and stayed the course with pumping up my 401(k) and IRA, trying not to look at the sickening decline over time.

Exactly one year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, I'm less than 1% away from my June 2008 net worth figure, not counting the value of my apartment. The number is essentially back where it was, but where I have it is altogether different. Since I paid off my mortgage, my biggest priority has been building up a substantial cash cushion. To that end, I've stocked up 22 months worth of living expenses and am planning to keep on keeping on until the end of the calendar year. On the equity front, I've continued maxing out my Roth 401(k) and IRA allocations, and the gradual recovery since March has given them a little extra buoyancy so far.

Being so close to my highest net worth figure feels really good in some ways, but all the aggressive saving in the world doesn't mask the fact that my portfolio is still down 18%. The figure 18% sounds better than the actual number, though: when I came up with the dollar figure that I'm still in the red, I felt pretty nauseated.

With a little more than nineteen years to retirement, I'm optimistic that the losses will eventually be erased. According to a cautionary story in the New York Times, however, the fact that substantial change in banking regulation and oversight is still lacking goes a long way towards convincing me that a large cash cushion is more important than ever.

One year after the fall of Lehman, how are you doing?

Something is catchy (and it's not swine flu)

2009-09-13T15:06:00.007-05:00

This weekend's New York Times Magazine had a very interesting article about how family, friends, and even friends of friends influence a plethora of our living conditions, from happiness to weight gain or weight loss, and more. According to data sourced from the Framingham Heart Study (which started in 1948 and continues today), when our friends gain or lose weight, we tend to do the same. When our friends are happy or sad, we tend to reflect their feelings as well.

Well, duh. Right?

There's more. Apparently, the study how other people influence us found that a nodding acquaintance with friends of friends can be enough to heighten the likelihood that we'll model their behavior. One strong tastemaker in a social network can lead other people who barely know the originator to reflect his or her feelings or behavior. This type of influence is considered to be the reason why buzz marketing (getting people to talk up a product to their friends) can take on an almost viral life of its own.

In some ways, I can see an element of accuracy here in my own life and relationships, but I'm not sure it's as strong as the researchers claim. One example is that I like to run. Most of my friends are runners, and we train together or at least encourage each other. This brings up a chicken-or-egg question, though: Is my affection for running heightened by the fact that my friends enjoy it too, or am I friends with these people in part because we share a common interest? In this instance, I think both are true but the second condition seems more influential to me than the first one because I liked running long before I met these friends. As a result, I'm not convinced that the contagion factor is necessarily as strong as the study suggests.

So, what does all this have to do with personal finance?

I'm curious to know if attitudes towards personal finance are influenced by the people around us. I think I'd grudgingly have to admit that I spend more money around some friends than others, but not to the point that I'm endangering my reputation as being a little OCD on the topic. Again, there might be some truth to the contagion factor, but I don't see evidence in my relationships that it's as strong as the article claims.

Are there friends or family who either influence you to spend or influence you to save? Why or how does that happen?

Dropping the shopping

2009-09-09T18:51:00.005-05:00

While I was away last week, I had the opportunity to read a book I picked up at the library, Not Buying It by Judith Levine. Not Buying It is a narrative of Levine's and her husband's year-long committment to not buying anything but absolute necessities and her musings of the role that shopping has in defining our own self-images.

I should caveat this review by saying that when I'm reading on vacation, my concentration and focus have usually gone to pot and I can easily miss important things. This time was no different, and that may be part of the reason why I found Levine's book a little disappointing. I was put off early on, when Levine and her husband decided in December that enough was enough and that January 01 would start their year of not shopping. For the week or two leading up to the start of the year, they spent like drunken sailors stocking up on things that they wouldn't be allowed to buy under their self-imposed rules. To me, that's building in a cheat factor from the get-go and it seems a little dishonest.

Another thing that bothered me was that I don't recall seeing a clear explanation of how they decided what things count as necessities and what things don't. I don't really understand why the New York Times counted as a purchase necessity, for example, when it's usually available at the library. At the same time, Levine's husband is a serious oenophile, but for some reason wine didn't count as a necessity and they ran out over the course of the year and didn't feel like they could restock. Creating a situation of deprivation is usually self-defeating in that it sets the stage for anger, frustration, and failure and it seems that in this case, that was avoidable. (To his credit, Levine's husband didn't cave, although Levine herself did a couple of times.)

I did like the fact that Levine brought in classical sociological and economic theory in an effort to explain why shopping helps us define ourselves, and I grudgingly had to accept that the brand loyalty I have for things like running shoes that don't make my toenails fall out and jeans that look nice and fit my stumpy little legs without needing to be hemmed reflects that. I also have to applaud her for using her savings to pay off nearly $8000 of credit card debt. After eight months without sweets and numerous bouts of cravings that range from mild to horrendous, I can also empathize with the frustration that both partners struggled with over time as deprivation set in.

On the whole,I thought that both Levine and her husband would have been better served and a whole lot less frustrated by figuring out their values and tailoring their spending accordingly. That's the kind of change that is more likely to last over time. It's possible that they felt they needed a full detox from spending the way I I needed a complete detox from sugar, though. I'm pretty sure that the first time I sink my teeth into a cupcake, it'll be like an alcoholic hitting the bottle. I'd be very interested to know whether that happened for Levine and her husband, and I would have enjoyed seeing an epilogue six months after the experiment ended to see what changes (if any) stuck with them.

Did any of you read this book? If so, what did you think? Feel free to comment about any other personal finance books you've read lately as well - good or bad.