May 15, 2010
It’s been long enough since any graduations of my own that graduation ceremonies are now utterly unmotivating. Or so I say now. May is a bit early for my taste, but maybe around June I’ll feel the energy from Pomp and Circumstance!
In the meantime, there’s something about a) coming back to my old room and b) traveling on a Saturday that makes me just want to hole up like a hermit and so that’s what I’ve done today.
I’ve emerged to spend $30 in pursuit of grooming and feeding. Both were good.
The latter was a catch-me-up session with a dear friend whose family news left me stunned and wandering the mall with unseeing eyes for half an hour until my brain cleared. While there were no deaths, there was a close call, and several other life events as defined by say, your health care provider for qualification to change your plan have or will occur. None of the good ones, though. The best I could do with give great big hugs and wish things would improve, rapidly. Y’know the weird thing? I felt guilty. It all happened after I moved, and I thought, “well crap, my world didn’t completely fall apart aside from that one really tough week, but your family took the hit.”
It felt like the odd void of disaster in my family was moved to someone else I love. Crazy, I know.
In any case, I’ll be writing the usual cousin check for a graduation and another four years completed. As always, I’m inmensely proud and scrambling for an appropriate card to tuck it into because darned if I didn’t take the box of cards up north with me when I moved!
And can I say? I’ve missed this crazy SoCal sun!! I’ll have to remember how not to get sunburned tomorrow.
February 10, 2010
Could I have the mic, please?
I must express my sincere thanks to each of you who reads this blog, shares your experiences, and supports me through some of my ugliest, most painful moments.
More than that, several of you whom I don’t yet have permission to thank publicly but would really like to!, were overwhelmingly compassionate when Fabulously Broke and Rina of Gotta Little Space sent out a plea of comradery and community after my post on Sunday. It had been a soul-rending sort of day and I deeply needed to purge the poisons of paralytic despair, never dreaming it would become a call to arms.
FB made the argument for a spot of help better than I ever could have – I couldn’t have justified asking for anything. I trek from today, to tomorrow, to next week, making the best of it. Nobody was compelled, no one was importuned with expectation. But you gave anyway. And you gave with wishes that it could be more, when no matter how much (and never ever “how little”) you gave, the gesture meant the world to me.
I’m not destitute, just heartwrecked. I didn’t have the words, who knows if I ever would, to ask for help for myself but I am blessed with friends who know me well enough to step in anyway.
Because my parents are destitute. They’ve lost the joy and freedom that parents earn after raising two children, they’ve stalled in gear, in survival mode. Instead of pride in a job well done, instead of relishing time-mellowed relationships with their adult children, they’re always fretting. Reliance on their daughter must be crippling her future, they think, and so they pinch every penny, unable to partake in the most basic pleasures in life. Rarely taking good enough care of themselves. Asking, needing yet more from me, was destroying the definitions of their parenthood, shaking already fragile psyches.
It is on their behalf, I gratefully accept these helping hands that aren’t about me, that are about helping people over an increasingly rough road until we can make more permanent decisions. Those decisions cannot be made lightly, they take time and ever-limited resources. Resources like extra gas money for twice or thrice weekly 60-mile round trips to the nearest, properly-equipped adult day care center and the invaluable benefits. Resources like that can buy time, a chance for rest, for solace, for reflection and planning. And time can bring a measure of peace and clarity.
A wise friend said, “if we don’t help each other, who will?”
Though I firmly believe the same, that fact has never before come home with such grace and selflessness. For our good fortune, in this wealth of friendship, please know that this will be put to good use, and will be passed forward.
January 15, 2010
Back in November, I enjoyed the pleasure of my friends’ company in their well-appointed timeshare in Hawaii.
There are many financial reasons not to buy a timeshare: they’re expensive, they require a substantial upfront fee, they require substantial annual maintenance fees, and unless you’re willing and able to buy a more premium tier in whatever program you buy into – they’re very hard to unload.
My friends, Dee and Jay, don’t have any of the above problems. In their previous lives as relatively high level executives more than ten years ago, Dee purchased three timeshares which they enjoy to this day.
Another friend Bea, my age, bought a timeshare back in 2005. The math she described to me didn’t sound like a wise purchase but I have the benefit of hindsight.
She took out a loan for $14,000 for the base cost of the timeshare, and pays an additional $1200 per year for maintenance fees. Her timeshare works on a points system so for her purchase she receives 7,000 points per year for redemption towards any property in the system. Redemption works much like hotel points. She has the flexibility to hold points from one year to the next, and to borrow and advance from the upcoming year so she can essentially triple her buying power in a trio of years.
The problem here is that at 23, she owed $60,000 in school loans, and at least $20,000 in credit card debt. When she earned her Master’s degree and was making $60,000/year, not an awful lot of that money was paying down the debts, and she was continually spending more money. She admits that a good deal of that money frivolously, like that time she blew through the mall on a $300 shopping spree. I witnessed that one, she told me about a few others of varying costs.
With that shaky background, she finally hit the skids when she was laid off for several months last year and had to live off her modest savings – unemployment just covered her rent. And now that she’s found the guy she wants to marry (this year), the timeshare costs are keeping her from saving because she’s not making enough to pay all the bills and debts and save.
Worse, due to the stint of unemployment, she’s currently upside down on the loan so she must sell it for the amount she owes which is much more than other owners are pricing their ‘shares. It’s definitely a buyer’s market.
From what she’s told me, I can identify the basic warning signs that were ignored:
1. Her existing debts were quite significant.
2. There was no plan to quickly eliminate that debt.
3. She hadn’t factored the cost into her cost of living in case she lost her job.
4. The timeshare wasn’t considered “high value” which has more options and can be more easily sold.
5. An insufficient emergency fund.
My instinct when people are in financial difficulties is to jump in and offer to help, but we all know how well unsolicited advice is often taken. If she wants my help, she knows I’m more than happy to lend an ear and a hand, but in the meantime, I’m wondering what I would advise to start her on a debt-free journey.
As a salaried employee, she can count on the paycheck to be consistent but at the same time, that means that she has to look elsewhere to make extra money.
1. Accept that money will be tight for a while
2. Honestly evaluate all wants and needs, and decide what level of commitment you’re willing to make towards paying down the debt
3. Hunker down and start cutting away any fat in the budget (there IS a budget, right?), putting all the money toward debt and savings
4. Make some realistic decisions about the prospective wedding
5. Consider ways to generate extra income to put towards the debt
6. Start an emergency fund
I’d say that given her career choice in the education field and the non-existent hiring she’s described, this is probably enough to work on for the next six months.
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Daily Exercise Update: I found 3 pound wrist/ankle weights at Target, and proceeded to walk in them for an hour. A veritable cripple I may be by the time you read this. Pity me.
December 16, 2009
I have a friend serving in military right now, and he’s stationed in the cold of Afghanistan for at least several more months this tour. Last week, my biggest worry was that I’d never get to sleep. A couple weeks ago, his base was rocket attacked and an entire side of the base was damaged.
So I did what I do best: offered him a care package with any food, candy or snacks he wanted. (He wants.)
Hint: I’m told that hot chocolate packages are care mail GOLD.
If you’re looking to send a care package to a member of the military, pick up a flat rate APO box and customs forms from your local post office, I was quoted a rate of under $15. The packages are taking about ten days to arrive when posted from the West Coast, though the holidays may slow that delivery time down a bit.
If you don’t have a special family member or friend and would like to send something anyway, check out Any Soldier for information on how to send care packages to the military. [Thanks to The Lost Goat for the link.]
September 17, 2009
In a way, it’s good that I’ve done this before. The vigil, the family meetings, the doctors meetings, the family-doctor meetings. It means that I viscerally understand that there’s a good time and not so good time to have visitors.
Friend asked me to be on call for my visit, so I’ve obliged. The original plan was to be there first thing this morning and take care of household stuff like laundry and cooking and cleaning. Stuff that their mom would feel compelled to do. But it turns out that it’d be easier for them if I were to be coming late this evening or early tomorrow morning.
In the meantime, I’ve done my deed for the day and emergency babysat for a girlfriend whose back has been bothering her. The timing was perfect: my day was opened up just a few minutes before she needed me. Now she’s been to the doctor and back, tended to, and is resting.
Now I’ve got to rest up, and then pack. And also locate new, cheaper auto insurance. And perhaps renters’ insurance as well. It’s what he would expect.
July 10, 2009
What day is this? Is it Saturday? Again? Everyday would seem like Saturday if my friends weren’t mostly working during the day.
Update update update ….. My gamut of interviews is over for now and now we wait and we see. I won’t hear back until August about the most-wanted job but I’ve had good meetings with senior folks in the company and am now being totally Zen about this. If this is meant to be, it’ll happen.
I had a wonderful walk in Central Park with MoneyMateKate, and a lovely dinner with another friend I was meeting for the first time today! Funny how this trip has turned into an opportunity to meet so many new friends or old acquaintances.
My tour of a friend’s workplace turned up another set of informational interviews, and my resume is winging its way through another set of connections. It never fails to amaze me that people are willing to make that sort of recommendation based on knowing me for about five or ten minutes. Not that I’m not worth it! 😉
Oh, and I did extend my trip, at least until Tuesday. If the last round of meetings bears interview fruit, I have the freedom to extend again until just before Comic Con. Get this: my free ticket voucher from getting bumped from a flight allows me to change the dates of travel at will, for free.
And now, a little food porn to hold y’all over:
July 3, 2009
The other night, my phone rang. It was one of my best friends, let’s call him Robin, asking if I was home. It was 9 pm, “sorry, I forgot to call you back in ‘two hours’….!”
I had to laugh. We’d last talked at 11 am, and here he was calling me back the rest of the day later. I shook my head and told him to swing by. We ended up sitting outside chatting for hours. [I have multiple mosquito bites to remember it by.]
The subject of careers and jobs was high on the list of topics: goals, strategies, and reflections on our decisions. Another old friend, practically family, had made an off-hand comment about me that I shared with Robin that night: “You’re going to turn into one of those SATC women. All career, no family.”
Now, Robin’s a thoughtful fellow. He looked at me and said, “you know? From the outside, people think that’s where you’re headed, and …. well, I always just thought you were like me.”
He’s done so well since we graduated from college, working for a school district and then striking out from that “safe” position to a private company three years after that. The calculated risk to grow his job description for a good bit more money, and a huge commute, panned out in a big way. Not only did he get out of a soon-to-melt-down sector, he asked for a major raise after six months, and despite initial balking, received it six months after that. He’s taken on more responsibility, studying for certifications, and worked his butt off in pursuit of another significant raise soon.
“We care about our jobs and careers, and we’re going to keep pushing ourselves, pushing for the next level, and the higher salary. But we’re doing it because we’re aiming for that point when we have stability and freedom, and we’re ready to settle back and grow our families. People see me at work, and they keep asking, ‘why are you working so hard, why don’t you take a break?’ They just don’t see the bigger picture. We’re reaching for the long-term, and we’re going to take that break. But it’ll be a heck of a different break than they’re thinking of!”
His analysis and observations were pretty spot-on. It’s not about the money so much as the expertise, the challenges we take on, and the resumes we build that will pave the way for us to make the choices we want in life. We’re neither of us particularly genius or highly entrepreneurial. But in our own quiet ways, we’re going to aim high, reach high and create some kind of stable lives for our families. And we’ll know when enough is enough. Like Frugal Dad, we don’t need a corner office or the outward trappings of success for the sake of having them. We have longer-reaching goals.
It never fails to amaze me how much we have in common so many years and disparate experiences later.
On Living Almost Large’s post about the recession ruining friendships, Meg asked:
We DO need better friends. But how do you find them? We’ve been burned so many times! And we’re tired of expending so much energy and even money on these vampires.
I don’t have any single answer to that, but as we get older, I understand how important it is to find and keep friends with the same values. Superficially, Robin and I are rather unlikely friends. He’s devoutly religious, I’m completely not. He’s a big earner and spender, I’m neither. He’s unreservedly charming, physically adorable, a frat boy, and athletic beyond words. I’m pretty plain Jane with some alarming health limitations. But none of that really matters when it comes down to cases. What does matter is who you can sit on the front step with in the middle of the night, sharing any and everything.
