May 23, 2016
Sarah Jeong’s experience with someone getting hold of her account and routing numbers confirms that I’m not paranoid about bank accounts. I’m exactly worried enough.
We have to give out our routing and account numbers to receive payments but, as her experience shows us, money can be withdrawn that way, too, without any authentication or verification required.
Fifteen years ago, before there was actual proof or anecdotes that giving out my account information for deposits was a problem, Dad asked me for them both so he could deposit some cash for me. That in and of itself wasn’t an issue, but it did raise a question mark in my mind.
The bank assured me that my account and routing numbers could only be used by non-accountholders for deposits but they didn’t back up any of those assurances with facts. It was a very “trust me” moment. (Needless to say, I don’t.)
How I protect my money
That left me with an uneasiness that never went away. When I started simplifying all my bank accounts, after the wonderful days of 5% interest yore were a distant memory, I still opened 2 extra accounts.
We have a joint checking account where all our money gets funneled. I keep one month of expenses there. The cash that I need easy access to goes into a nearby savings account, the cash that doesn’t need to stay liquid, is immediately transferred to be invested or into the Super Secret Locked Up Bank Account.
We have a second checking account for the real estate investment property: income is auto deposited by the property manager and the expenses are automatically paid every month. There’s not much left at the end of each month, but there’s some. That overage is swept into a savings account too.
This way, if anyone gets the account and routing numbers of either checking account and manages to finagle a withdrawal, I’d be out a month of cash and Really Annoyed but at least the damage should end there.
:: Do you worry about bank security? How’s your banking set up?
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May 16, 2016
I found a dime in the couch cushions, which never happens by the way, and not ten minutes later, PiC stole my thunder with his goof.
The man is practically perfect in every way but he does have the occasional humanizing flaw, and this particular one happens to be the kind that drives me right up, over, down the wall again.
He misplaces things.
It’s always something important: wallet, credit card, sunglasses. (And he likes his sunglasses so of course they’re nice ones.)
This time it was his iPhone – he had it when he went to run a last minute errand in the evening. He didn’t have it when we were clearing up for the night.
!!!
After we both tore the place apart looking for it, he realized the last time he remembered having it in his hand was at the store. And remembered setting it down and thinking DO NOT FORGET THIS. For my part, I knew he took the phone and could not for the life of me recall seeing it in his hand when he returned. I knew that didn’t mean he didn’t bring it back but, well, the chances are ever not in our favor in these things.
Don’t Panic! (oh, we panicked)
For us, the three most important things about our phones are the pictures we take on them (thousands!), access to personal data, and the cost of replacing the handset (hundreds!)
The first problem was covered, mostly. Both our phones are set up to back-up to a server. I hate that his phone only runs the back-up when it’s plugged in to charge. It makes a certain kind of battery life saving sense but it’s a crappy feature because if it went missing during the day before being plugged in to charge for the night, we’d lose a day of photos. Really cute family photos, as it happens.
The second problem had me in a silent tizzy. See, after a bit of research, the Internet confirmed my fears. If your phone is picked up or stolen by a scumbag, the best case scenario there is they wipe the phone and sell it. The NOT best scenario is that the scumbag is an enterprising individual and uses the power of existing hacks to hack the phone with the data intact. That means PiC’s emails and various apps would be as unto a Giant Buffet of personal information for the entrepreneurial jerkbutt.
I sent PiC on a mission to change all his passwords for his emails, at least, and then we’d figure out the rest of the apps and access thereof.
The third problem was bubbling away in the back of my mind, not least because I still haven’t replaced my handset yet: $$$$. Unprepared as I am to pay $400-600 for a new smartphone (even though, yes, I do a lot of work on it), I am less prepared to spend double that for two new phones. There was an almost unfair amount of grumpiness in my belly as I tried to digest this grotesque bill.
What we should have done before losing the iPhone
Now, if you’re smart or self aware, you can take steps to protect yourself before losing your iPhone that will help you out if the unhappy event occurs. I do most of our technology set-up but was chagrined to realize that this was something I’d neglected and he couldn’t remember if he had done it.
Know your security features and, as my Filipino mama would say, turn them things on! Go to your Settings, iCloud, and Find my iPhone. Also, turn on “Send last location” – if your phone is on the last drops of battery life, it’ll send its location at that time before it dies.
I’m being very specific to iPhone as we go forward because I have an Android and most of this doesn’t apply to users of my ilk.
After we lost the iPhone
We’d turned the place upside and shaken it. No phone. Searched the premises of where it was last seen, no phone. Checked with security to see if anyone had turned it in, no phone.
It was late, and only getting later, so as he considered whether it was worth leaving a note at the presumed location of the loss, I texted his phone with a contact number. I had a feeling that it wasn’t worth doing because as late as it was, no one was going to hunt down security to give them a found object, phone or not. They’d likely not see it til morning, and so we wouldn’t know til the next day whether a Good Samaritan would have handed it over or if it was really missing. But there were a few things that we COULD do.
Use the Find My iPhone feature! You don’t need the app to check on your phone’s whereabouts, you can check it on a desktop. When you use this Find my iPhone feature, it turns on Activation Lock so that your Apple ID and password would be required to open up the phone. If you can’t quickly track it down safely, turn on Lost Mode. This will remotely lock your phone with a four-digit code, displays a custom message with your phone number on your Lock screen, and keep track of the phone’s location. It also suspends the ability to make payments using Apple Pay, if you use it, until the phone is home safe. Unfortunately PiC hadn’t turned this on, or we might have saved ourselves a lot of trouble.
Make sure you have the ability to brick your phone: Remote Erase. If you’re sure it’s never coming back, my personal recommendation is to brick that sucker. Mind, you should only do this when you’ve given up hope of getting it back because this wipes your phone clean and you won’t be able to track it anymore if you were doing so before. You can, however, restore the device if you do find it again so that’s good news.
Make sure that you know how to remove access to your accounts. Gmail has a handy option to revoke access to your email account to specific devices. One click security protocol, I dig that. If you have other apps, like I have Twitter on my phone, you should be able to log onto those programs / accounts from a desktop and revoke access to the missing device.
Google also reports the last time there was activity on the phone so we knew, for what it was worth, that it had synced to Gmail two hours earlier.
Make sure that your cell phone isn’t the only backup identity verification. While changing his email, PiC’s only option for one of his email addresses, if he didn’t get a security code texted to his potentially compromised phone! was to wait 30 days for a new secondary email address. This is intended to prevent hackers from slicing through your security in a neat 30 minute period, I’m sure, but it was highly frustrating because we hadn’t considered it from the lost the phone angle.
Many programs let you have two options: a backup email address or a phone number. We will be setting up backups to each other’s phones instead of our own so that we’re not up a Crap Creek without a paddle again.
Duh.
The Almost Anticlimactic Conclusion
After the two hours of high drama, trying to find the phone and revoking access to it, our friend wandered into the living room.
“Rev? Did I take your phone?”
…
We’d had a family night and friends were staying over. Forgetting that her phone was still in her purse and mistaking PiC’s phone for her own, she’d pocketed it and gone to bed. We two were talking, distracted, and never saw it happen. It didn’t occur to us for a second that that might have happened. The phone was and had been safe the whole time!
We’re calling this a cheap lesson in the importance of Stop Leaving Your Stuff in Random Places!!! and in securing mobile devices. It’s kinda like the kid who runs away to teach his parents a lesson in appreciating him, only better/worse.
Also I confiscated all phones in the morning to check everyone’s settings to make sure they were properly set up. Now we all have a handy list of what to do if you ever lose your iPhone (for real).
:: Have you ever lost your phone? Do you routinely back up your phone? What’s the most valuable thing about or on your phone?
*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich, Disease Called Debt and Frame to Freedom*
May 11, 2016
It feels like we’ve been tossing in the tempest, caught up in a life twister, for weeks. Nay, months!
Normally I run at 70% efficiency, sickness took me down to 40%. I regained some health points just in time for a long travel weekend (write up to come when my head is back on my shoulders), and oh, by the by, finish ALL THESE THINGS NOW.
It’s tax time so I have to review our return before signing off on the ma-hoo-sive payments to state and federal.
SoFi finally got off their collective posteriors and sent our application through underwriting after requesting additional documents in a dozen back and forth emails. (Hint, professionals ask for everything they need at one time. Clearly and in complete sentences, not half sentences and in ones and twos.) ((Second hint: professionals get the name of their own company right and don’t call it Sofee.))
Naturally, right before we left town, I had to URGENTLY sign and initial 78 pages of initial agreements. Guys, I started this process at the beginning of January and it’s been radio silence for 14 weeks. Now it’s life or death urgent. Of course!
Then I have to pay for an appraisal: $575. That same day I get an email: schedule it IMMEDIATELY. Bear in mind, we’re on the road. Then SoFi comes back asking for MORE documents and nags me for them when they’re not uploaded in 48 hours. Man, look.
While that’s going on, our estate planning paperwork came back almost completed and needs to be reviewed so I can schedule a signing. I refused to drag myself to a lawyer’s office when I was sick, there’s something about law firms that make me feel like I have to look like I’ve got my shit together. So, note to self, find time for reading another stack of serious business.
Meanwhile, PiC has been laboring mightily searching for cars. The last of the three prospectives were so close to the right fit, enough so that we thought he’d have to buy the dang thing right before we flew to Washington, but they were all half a state away. It was nearly a relief that the prepurchase inspection revealed about $3500 of repairs, ignoring the non-critical ones, so we couldn’t agree on price.
He and I had agreed that if it fell through, though there is a cost to our time, the cost of paying for a vehicle that only sort of fit our specifications was both too much frustration and money. We’d rather wait and get the closest possible fit.
With all these things weighing on our minds, and traveling to a fly-away Con with LB for the first time, the watchword has been: frantic.
Friday morning, of course the energy checks I’d been writing were cashed and my body could not pay up. So, tucked back into bed after a wearing morning ended with a sleeping LB nearby, I sent him off for a run while I answered some household and money emails. Rent’s in. Baggage problems. Taxes. Etcetera.
He sat down next to me, unreadable expression on his face.
I nudged. Go work out.
He sat.
Sighed.
Said, I hope you know you can ask me to take on some things. Even if it take me longer.
Confused.
He said, you make a lot of this (our lifestyle) possible.
It’s true, what he says. I do massive amounts of work managing our income, savings, spending decisions so we can have what we need and some of what we want. Planning for a possibly long future, planning for our family in case of the worst possible circumstances. None of it’s exactly FUN, in the sense of confetti bombs and popping balloons, but it’s a comfort to know that working my butt off isn’t squandered on someone who just wants what he wants and devil take the hindmost.
I guess what I’m saying is that a metric ton of weight on your shoulders doesn’t feel quite so heavy when you have a partner doing his share and reminding you that you’re not alone in your share either. And it makes an enormous difference that he wouldn’t for a split-second consider undermining the work I do for our family because he wants something that’s greater than our budget can currently bear, in the same way he wouldn’t take it for granted that he’s financially set because I manage our books.
It’s nice to have a quiet hour in the eye of the storm before it takes us up again.
:: Do you feel like your contributions are appreciated? Are your affairs are in order or on track to be in order?
April 11, 2016
Life, death, and taxes, my friends. But unlike the other two, taxes happen on schedule every year.
And this year, boy o boy am I not so ready.
Life doesn’t discriminate
Between the sinners and the saints
It takes and it takes and it takes
And we keep living anyway
– Wait For It, Hamilton
In 2014, I started using a CPA to put together the return itself. I still compile all our financial documents and a spreadsheet listing everything, including our itemized deductions, so really the CPA just has to plug the numbers in and advise me on the trickier parts like the investment property.
It feels absolutely silly in retrospect to feel guilty over hiring it out but it was hard to fight the feeling that as the Family CFO, I was abrogating my responsibility by doing so. Of course I could do it myself but I don’t have that kind of time to spare, and the headache was getting to be too much. See? Even now I feel like I have to justify the decision.
Never mind. This year, I’m extra grateful for making that decision because what we’re looking at would have been much worse at the butt-end of 20 hours of tax agony.
It’s a long story, and I can’t get into the specifics of it, but we have an on-paper only “income source” from a family thing, from which we don’t derive any true income. This year, there was a huge one-time income bump that we wouldn’t see but, of course, would impact our return. I knew we’d owe something. That part I was braced for.
The other part, the first draft of the return, staggered me. No, let’s be honest, it knocked me on my ass. Might have actually stopped breathing for a few solid minutes.
We would have had a modest tax refund this year from both state and federal. Instead, the bill totals up over $13,000. It’s not that we failed to pay quarterly taxes, this is truly a one-time thing, and it won’t be a problem going forward after this year. That’s cold comfort in a cold spring, but payment is due on April 18th this year, so, yay grace period?
We’ll have to use our long-term savings to pay that sucker, which sucks, but at least we can swing it. Meanwhile, let me sit down and put my head between my knees until the world stops spinning.
Have you filed? Are you likely to get a refund or a bill?
*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich, Disease Called Debt and I Am the Future Me
March 28, 2016
I wrote a response to Nicole and Maggie’s question: How do you balance the importance of your salary with the importance of your partner’s?
But the site wouldn’t accept my comment either because WP.com is weird or I went way off track and it’s judging me. Whatever the case may be…
I’ve been single longer than married and that heavily influences my answer, as much as peering into some key past experiences.
My salary, Version 1.0
Just after high school, I started a minimum wage job full time. My parents were skeptical, college was due to start in a few months, but trusted my judgment juggling work and school.
Sidebar: Lucky for them, and lucky for me, that I took that job. It kept us afloat for the next four years.
A friend of a coworker was in her mid-40s when she joined our staff. It was an entry-level, no experience required, training on the job situation. She had no work experience. In her late teens or early 20s, she married a man who made the money and wanted a good looker on his arm to bear him children. Her job was to make him look good by looking good, raise the kids, and have an acceptable hobby or two to keep herself entertained. Her job benefits were a roof over her head and food on the table (that she cooked, of course).
At some point, and before he replaced her with a younger model, she realized she wanted to actually live a life while she had any hope of one. Giving it all up, she went to work for the first time and sank like a stone. I was in charge of training her and it took months for her to learn all the things people have to learn about the workplace, many years later than they do. Eventually even she, who was hardest on herself, was proud of how good she’d gotten.
That lesson was burned into my soul.
My salary, Version 2.0
In truth, I don’t think it’s just one single decision, it just looks like it. Over those 20+ years, she would have make that decision more than once not to work. But the sum total is that she trusted him to take care of her, and didn’t consider the bargain a poor one, until it was quite late.
Kids were not an option back then but for sure I didn’t want to be a stay at home me. My temperament was not suited for childcare. Mom was more than ready for grandkids but my mind, body, and soul needed to hustle and earn. Besides, I had more than enough to take care of: Mom and her illness, Dad and his badly hidden depression, Trainwreck Sibling and his multitudinous mistakes in life.
By the time PiC came into the picture, I’d been on the grind for what felt like a lifetime. 80 hour work weeks, school, family, my plate was full, stacked atop another full plate, and precariously wedged between a thumb and a finger while the other hand walked the dogs. Fresh at a new job and out of school, “only” working full time now, my earning power was laughable. Rather than wanting to lean on him, my pride was pricked. Until I could match, and overmatch, his salary, I didn’t consider us on equal ground.
We had widely disparate backgrounds and it mattered.
I hated that I was the poor girl from the poor family that had never had money while he came from a real upper middle class family that was quite comfortable and had never gone without a meal. Months before we met, I was still living off my puny earned wages, eating one meal a day, and our economic class differences burned.
It didn’t matter to him, it never mattered to him, but it did to me.
He didn’t know it for years because it also felt like a shameful weakness. So I buried it, and I earned. And I earned. I negotiated and earned some more. There were many other good reasons to do that, and they were much more important, but looking through the view of the relationship glass? I needed to make my way in the world, I needed to blaze my way, to prove my worth to myself before I would allow anyone, any man, or any man’s parent, question my worth, ever again.
I’d dated boys whose rich and racist parents weren’t shy about telling me that I was less-than-worthy, “because the Chinese are far better than the [insert any other Asian race here]”, and damned if I was going to let that shake me again.
I’d had a crawful of being demeaned and it taught me a simple lesson: if they didn’t respect you when you had no money, that’s not respect now that you do have money. (But go get the money anyway.)
My salary, Version 3.0
I went after the money for a lot of reasons. Survival. Self respect. Confidence. Achievement. Pure buying power. Investing power. Security. Most of those reasons still apply now. It’s less fraught, though.
At this stage of our money journey, PiC’s and my salaries are both respectably high and nearly on par. Together, we can afford our lives here, we can save, and take care of family. On one salary, we would survive but things would be much less pleasant. One salary would have to outpace the other by at least 50% before we’d even consider relying solely on one salary. I’m not sure what we’d decide at that point.
Philosophically, I still value earning power as an expression of my worth more than not. It gives me a competitive edge in the workplace but, mostly, it should be left there. PiC values it as an expression of money in the bank and the ability to buy foods and things. That’s better than the other way around, I expect.
How about you? Do you associate your worth with your earning power? Would you feel comfortable relying on a partner if you had that option?
*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich, Disease Called Debt and Thrifty Meets Spendy
March 7, 2016
I hate the phone. I hate talking on the phone. I hate making calls. I hate waiting on hold, all of it. But darned if I won’t get over all of that in a right hurry to save myself $515.
Here’s what happened.
I had some fillings last December and the hygienist and receptionist encouraged me to get everything done in 2015 so everything would be covered by my annual deductible. I know, I know, the dentist in December, does anything scream poor planning! louder? When I have my act together, I visit the dentist in March and again in September for twice yearly cleanings and avoid all scheduling disasters to do with holidays, school being out, high season at work, all of it. 2015 was not the year of any part of my act being in the same vicinity as any other part of itself. Thus, I found my way to the dentist’s chair, garbling away, in December.
Post-filling comes the billing ordeal.
I’m not afraid of dental treatments but I sure do hate what comes after.
The secret I learned the hard way about dental insurance and billing waaay back in ought-2: Unless your insurance pre-approves all of your expected treatments, do not pay the estimated patient owes amount before your treatment is done.
Heck, don’t even pay it immediately after treatment if they haven’t already pre-billed the insurance or gotten pre-approval. They really want you to do. Every dental office here in California that’s taken our basic Delta Dental plan has patients sign a quote agreeing to pay anything the insurance doesn’t cover. If they can get you to pay the hundreds in advance, promising to reimburse you when the insurance comes back, then you’ve adhered to the letter of that agreement, but they will not adhere to the letter of theirs and you will be out of luck.
This is what I mean
Delta Dental (DD) has negotiated rates and set percentages that they’ll pay for every service. After a visit, Dental Office (DO) sends me a bill, and bills DD. The submitted claims are reviewed, DD determines both what they’ll pay and what I should pay, then mails me their statement.
My twice yearly exams are covered 100%. Patient pays column says $0.
My xrays are covered 100%. Patient pays column, again, says $0.
My filling on surface 30 was done in the last 2 years, so DD won’t pay them for that. Patient pays column says $0. DD’s notes say:
*You’ve already been paid once in the allowed 2 year timeframe for that, so we’re not paying again.
**DO may only bill what DD lists according to their pre-established agreement.
My fillings on surfaces 20, 22, 28 were approved and paid at 80%, leaving me with the other 20% to pay.
All told, DD said my bill was $95. Meanwhile, DO is over here sending me a bill asking for $610.
Now, according to my agreement with them, disregarding all else, I was responsible for $610 because DD didn’t cover it. However, because they accepted my insurance plan with the accompanying rate plan and rules, they are first subject to billing according to those rules. My plan specifically says they cannot charge me anything that DD doesn’t agree with, even if it’s something DD will not pay. If DD says they won’t pay it but I must, then DO may bill me.
Back when I was 20 years old and didn’t know about the DD to DO agreement, I thought I had to pay up in full so I did. My poor wallet. Much older, and a little wiser now, I know better.
Somewhat reluctantly, on the principle that this is the year 2016, should we not be able to handle all our bills online without having to talk to a person yet?? I called DO and asked to speak to someone about billing.
I politely suggested that we go over the discrepancies between the bill they sent and DD’s statement. Would you believe that before I could finish pointing out the problems, the office manager was striking out charges left and right? That’s right. She knew they were trying to get around their agreement with DD by billing me the full amount and was quick to rectify this, but only after being called out.
Line by line, we fixed all the “discrepancies”, and lo, my correct remaining balance was $95, NOT $610.
Protecting our cash: all part of a good day’s work.
Does your health or dental insurance work similarly or is this a quirk of California providers? Are your dentists reasonable and not scary? Do they recommend work too often? (PiC thinks my dentist always wants to be billing. He may be right.)
Late Note: This isn’t to demonize dental providers, mind you. The same one that got me to pay over hundreds that I shouldn’t have was also the one that cut their costs to only their own costs when they were aware that I had been laid off and was paying everything in cash. So they have their good and bad, in somewhat equal measure.
*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich, Disease Called Debt and Dream Beyond Debt*
February 17, 2016
The cynics among us say that we all have a price.
Although my instinct was to reject that truism, it may be true. We all care deeply about something in our lives. Sometimes we care about those things more than our own lives, sometimes they mean more to us than our principles.
Sherry and I were chatting about money as a tool for manipulation. Her extended family has ways they manipulate family members using money and so does mine. In most cases, I’ve gotten a very small dose of the Controlling Juice, but it’s bitter enough to inform my independent streak which has grown a league and a half wide.
Both our families have a cultural tradition of Filial Piety, though it plays out in different ways.
My parents were a mix of traditional and non-traditional in their approach. They instilled in me a sense of responsibility using filial piety, but it was an example, not an expectation. “Big Cousin bought his mom a house because he loved her, wanted her to be comfortable, and because he could afford to. Not everyone can do that so it’s good that he’s been so responsible with his money that he could.”
Showing your love was important, but being sensible was much more important to them. They cherished the salt dough handprint made in kindergarten as a gift as much as anything I bought with my red envelope money. Thanks to those conversations, I knew everything they did for me was out of love, not as a down payment for retirement (and some parental obligation to keep me alive). And everything I did for them was out of love for them (and out of my self-imposed obligation to keep them off the street). Neither of us expected money from each other.
But the idea of bragging rights that Sherry described was absolutely part of the mainstream culture and there was talk in the community of how I was taking care of my parents. No one said a word to me directly, it simply became obvious when I hit 25, “marriageable age”, and suddenly people I’d never met before were coming over for tea and a visit.
It was all a ruse to introduce me to their sons. “This will be a good daughter in law,” they said, “she would take good care of us in our old age.” As if there was no more to me as a person and a potential spouse than my ability or willingness to support my family. But they’re an older generation, maybe there wasn’t anything more important to them.
Obligations, everywhere I looked. Thus, any offer of money is looked at not as a gift, but sideways and scrutinized for intention, strings, and expectations. Is there any situation in which I need money badly enough to take it as a gift rather than taking out a loan?
So far, history says “no.” There’s no situation where I would want something badly enough that I’d take a lien against my integrity for it. If I need it, and can’t afford it, I find a way to pay for it. If I want it, and I can’t afford it, too bad. End of story.
Why so stubborn?
Two reasons, same experience
Number 1: Mom’s family. Immediately after her death, knowing that their behavior to her had been despicable, and was going to be public knowledge now that she was gone, they desperately wanted to look good. In our culture, the way they could fake it would be to pay for her funeral. That way, after treating her like dirt beneath their feet during the worst years of her illness, they could say “Of course we loved her, we paid for her funeral and everything!”
The price tag on “saving face”: $7,000
They harassed me endlessly, from the moment they knew I was coming back to arrange the funeral, to the moment the funeral began. CLASSY.
I didn’t consider it for a second. I also didn’t give them the courtesy of an answer. I just ignored them and wrote the check, letting the few sane elements of the family tell them to Back Off. A few of them went a bit further and pointed out that, money notwithstanding, I’d always taken care of my family. It’d be a cold day in Hell that I’d accept a handout from them, even if I went into debt in the refusal.
They were right, of course.
I didn’t go into debt but nothing would have convinced me to give them the satisfaction and I don’t regret it for a millisecond.
Number 2: I grew up poor. In most cases, money gifts within closer members of the family are just part of cultural traditions and mean nothing more than well-wishing. But in cases where there’s great disparity between the giver and the recipient, “gifts” become “charity.” And like it or not, charitable giving is considered a virtue, charity acceptance is not. By the same token, someone who gives to charity is good. But someone who needs charity is looked at through a different lens, one where they’re judged, and found wanting. I learned quite early on, there is so much stigma around accepting help that I wasn’t willing to ask for help of any kind.
What if the situation had been different?
What if she was still alive and they offered money for her medical care, money that I couldn’t afford at the time? I’d already paid over thousands to fix her terribly painful dental situation. I’d already paid hundreds of thousands for their living expenses, over the previous ten years, and that’s after I’d paid several tens of thousands of their debt. All of this before my salary reached $60,000, annually.
What if they had offered me enough money to buy her good health insurance?
What if they had offered me enough money to ensure some level of stability, as a hedge against my ill health, loss of income, and homelessness?
For nearly two decades, I’ve dedicated my life to save, invest, and plan for the worst possible scenario. We’re not free and clear yet but that self reliance and drive has gotten us pretty far down the road. Ten years ago, though, it wasn’t clear if and when I’d get clear.
What if I’d been offered an easier way out that could have saved Mom some suffering, for some unspecified obedience or compliance, all those years ago? Would I have swallowed my pride and taken it? I hate to think that I would cave but in hindsight, knowing that my best efforts weren’t enough to help her, the smart money is on YES.
What if it was an outrageous amount of money?
Barring the scenario above, the highly unlikely theoretical in which my mom’s family cared enough about her to offer me help to help her (they didn’t), what if the situation was less about your need, and more about the amount?
What if it was millions? Billions?
There’s a point at which our instincts must be to start rationalizing how much good you could do with that money, isn’t there? I know mine starts to say, with $5M, you could do a lot of good. With $5B, you could do a whole lot more than that. You could, for this outlandish amount, put up with the price of [something really annoying].
Or substitute “do a lot of good” with whatever it is you’d want to do.
Would it be worth accepting the money with one hand, and a possible shackle on the other?
If we’re talking purely in currency, how big would the bucket of money have to be for you to willingly walk away from what you believe? What would you be willing to sacrifice, or tolerate? If we’re talking about valuable gifts not calculated in currency, like good health, what would you think, then?
*Part of Financially Savvy Saturdays on brokeGIRLrich, Disease Called Debt and Frugality 2 Freedom*