May 11, 2015
“A tiger can’t change his stripes” strikes me as a terrible metaphor. No, he can’t, not without a bucket of hair dye and opposable thumbs but what does that have to do with whether not he can be trained or taught to hunt differently? Or, say, whether a person change their habits?
Anyway. That came up because I have a secret. Or I had a secret. I shared it with PiC and now it’s your turn.
Several years ago, I made a large loan, with a very long payback date. Large to the tune of five figures. Not high five figures, I didn’t have that kind of buying power. But five figures that I scraped and scraped (and scraped some more) to save at a time that every penny was cherished. That savings, and the loan, represented my hope that things would get better someday.
Because the loan mixed family and money – which I’ve since learned almost always equals disaster – and because making mistakes like making loans on unfounded faith irritates me, I buried it. Refused to even think about it. That’s not like me, but since the money was gone, ostriching was to preserve my sanity. And embarrassment. You understand.
PiC never knew I’d made this loan, it was made long before our marriage and my policy of “la la la that never happened” kept it safely buried.
Over Easter weekend, it occurred to me that the loan is officially due this summer. It’s time to either get it back or truly mentally cut it loose. This particular monkey’s had a free ride long enough on my back!
About three stilted and awkward conversations later, it’s been suggested that I might actually see my money back mid-summer. This is me not holding my breath… sort of. (Just in case, cross your fingers?)
Then it was time to tell PiC.
I would have told him anyway but, regardless, it felt weird. “Hi honey, I either gave away or am getting back a LOT of money!” He took the news like he takes most of my money maunderings: with a nod and a shrug.
I mused aloud: assuming it really is repaid, what am I going to do with that money?
He piped up: I can think of a few ways to spend allllllll that cash!
*pause*
Me: [skepticism face] [I know he’s trying to get my goat]
Him: Dammit, no, I couldn’t! I’d want to put it on the credit card for the rewards! What have you done to me?!
Me: HAH! HAH! I knew I trained you better than that!
I kid, but at the same time, I’m immensely proud of how PiC has taken in all the money talk that’s come his way in the past decade.
He’s really easygoing in his money habits which means that in our relationship, I’m the “doer” as he calls it. When I’m dissatisfied with a service or when someone tries to overcharge me, I’m not confrontational but you know I’m going to write a letter or make a call and get my darned satisfaction!
In recent days, he’s done me proud, I tell ya!
A) He called out the car rental folks for causing a serious delay for us. They borked pickup, sending someone out to get us more than an hour after they were expected, didn’t have the reserved vehicle at the location I’d specifically called to confirm, and didn’t have a clean vehicle at the second location. Hugely inconvenient. He got a day knocked off the rental bill.
B) After I explained the long term consequences of an “only happened once” interest charge on a credit card, he called the company and had the interest charge removed and the now-triggered ongoing charges waived.
What does this have to do with tigers and their stripes?
Not a lot. Just that, with time and patience, maybe some of the familial relationship can be repaired. Maybe not.
Either way, PiC’s a great example of someone learning to be better with money even when it’s not strictly for survival.
And if we get that money back, it’ll go a long way to shoring up our cash flow, and just maybe my faith in people.
April 27, 2015
How about I just don’t spend $150+ and save $150+?
Walking to the counter, arms loaded down with pump bottles, I turned and stopped in front of PiC. “We’re buying nearly $80 worth of hand soap. HAND SOAP.”
It was 50-70% off, but still. Hand soap.
A Bath and Body Works holiday sale nearly sucker-punched our wallets. After 30 minutes of sniffing and picking bottles we were walking over to the counter when reality sunk in. The soap smelled great, of course, that’s how they got us in the first place but thankfully my brain turned on. I can pay $5 for a gallon of soap that smells just fine! It’s a testament to the pull of the new scents that I was actually sad putting the bottles back on the shelf.
I’m a sucker for products that smell good, and I’m not the only one. There’s a whole science behind manipulating your senses between scent and organization to get you to stay longer and spend more.
Some scents transport me to very specific moments in time:
Softsoap: high school, childhood best friends, horseback riding, the red-brown dirt of the riding stables where I learned to “be a rider, not a passenger”, hand scrubbing my one pair of riding pants and line drying them every week.
Garnier Fructis: high school and college, couponing, youth
Incense: temple, death, grieving, parent loss, tradition, childhood Lunar New Year celebrations, grouchy old grandma, ancestors I only know through faded black and whites and stories passed down from generation to generation
Bath and Body Works brown vanilla sugar: college best friend during college, picking apples at the grocery store, Southern California sun, driving my new car to work/school/work
BBW plumeria (long discontinued but there are a few scents reminiscent of this): junior high school phys.ed., black shorts and white tees, an old friend I haven’t seen since New York, braces, REALLY terrible looking long hair, weighing less than 70 lbs and being mocked about it.
Pears/apples (artificially): being carefree, young, and silly. Life before kid, jobs, degrees, or college majors.
Coffee: five years old, learning responsibility, trusting my parents implicitly and completely, discovery
Gingerbread and fresh baked cookies: Christmas, family, holidays
“New car” smell: Age 19, negotiating my first major purchase, driving a new car in torrential rain, paying off a loan early
Scents are such a powerful trigger for memory, no wonder it’s a tool to manipulate our emotions and buying habits! I’m safer shopping online from home.
What’s your shopping weakness?
March 9, 2015
I think about homelessness a lot more than your average middle-class partnered person might.
We’re living my financial high point right now, why can I still taste tomatoey canned sardines and rice porridge thinned with water to stretch? True, the flip side might be that it’s all downhill from here but it’s also true that I’ve not been a slim paycheck away from Final Warning-stamped bills, rent going overdue, and making just the interest on the credit card bills for almost a decade now. Prosperity, not poverty, should be the reflex.
We weren’t always a nickel toss from disaster but we lived in the fire swamp, a wander into the lightning sandpit wasn’t inconceivable. In those days, due dates were more like suggestions. Good thing I didn’t apply that to homework or library books! My nine year old brain didn’t recognize the signs of juggling bills to avoid overdrafts, I just obediently post-dated the checks as instructed. Well trained not to ask questions, it was another 8 or 9 years before I grasped what that said about our finances.
Young adulthood was equally precarious. There’s a big gap in my memory of my college years because all I did was work, school, and take care of Mom. After hiding her diagnoses for years, she’d finally admitted she had serious health problems and when I was 17, it became my second job to look after her. (That had a lot to do with why I feel responsible for decisions made long before I was a competent adult.)
My parents faced incredible challenges immigrating to America and in some ways, there was absolutely nothing more that I could do for them.
I can’t help but feel for them. They struggled in a time where the kinds of debt reduction and financial information we now have access to simply didn’t exist. Before the internet? It truly seemed like the Information Dark Ages. If the internet and money blogs and forums were a thing when I was 13, rather than 17, I can’t help but think maybe I could have made a real difference.
But that is exactly why I am so fully aware of the consequences of failure.
Questions about homelessness and what we do about it, posed in SaverSpender’s recent post, haunt me. What more can I do?
It’s a seriously personal question as I do my level best to keep my immediate family off the streets. I am their last resort, the last one with any dignity or safety, that is. It’s neither an easy or a painless task, and I do get frustrated with failures to communicate or comply. But it still startles me when people feel it’s appropriate to respond, in the face of one frustration or another with my family, that they ought to learn their lesson, that Dad ought to be left to suffer the consequences of his actions.
Perhaps on the face of it, that is the most logical answer. But is that really so simple? Is it that cut and dried as a human being to say that another human, older and unable to get hired back into the workforce, should be taught that the lesson for irritating me is to lose basics like heat, water, and shelter? What lesson is that to to be teaching someone at this stage of life? And what kind of person does that make me if I’m willing to throw him out on the street? Not that I spend a lot of time mirror-gazing, but it would even more drastically reduce how much I could bear the sight of myself.
I’ve observed that not even my oldest friends, though incredibly conservative politically, have ever responded to my sighs over the situation that the “obvious” answer is to do anything but continue to treat my family with grace and take care of myself. Never have they suggested that I ought to abandon my family in some moral object lesson.
“There but for the grace of God go I” is always in my periphery. I’m chronically ill but cannot afford to rest on my laurels because I am their last line of defense. And my responsibility grows with each day.
I don’t know what the answer to homelessness is, other than making sure no one I care for has to endure it.
March 2, 2015
This post is part of Women’s Money Week.
SDI, FMLA, PFL, oh my!
PiC and I are eligible for protected leave in various forms after Little Bean’s birth, not all the same, and not all equal, so it was a bit of a maze figuring it all out.
PiC is entitled to six weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave under FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act), and qualifies under the birth of a child. This has to be taken within one year of birth.
His employer also pays for an amazing six weeks of parental leave to be taken during the year following the child’s birth.
I was not eligible for this but, as the child-bearer, I can take 6 weeks of partially paid, job-protected leave under CA’s SDI (state disability insurance) after birth. Pregnancy is considered a disability for this purpose and considering how you feel in the last few weeks, yeah, that’s justifiable. I could (should) also have taken off 4 weeks prior to our expected due date, and would have liked to, but I wasn’t willing to go to essentially half pay a month in advance. Chalk that up to my neuroses … if there was going to be a next time, I’d probably try to plan better so I could take that time.
Half pay was a hard pill to swallow as we stare down the barrel of childcare and various costs associated with a brand new human.
Quick Facts about FMLA
- FMLA is unpaid, job-protected leave for specified family and medical reasons
- You get 12 workweeks of leave in a 12-month period
- Your employer is only required to comply if they employ 50 or more employees.
Quick Facts about SDI
- You cannot apply for SDI until you have stopped earning wages. Therefore if you don’t go on leave until the last minute, you’ll have to wrangle paperwork when it’s least convenient: squalling baby, sleep fogged brain, fiddling with a state administered website. That’s one reason to go on leave earlier if you can afford it!
California now issues payments via an EDD Debit card instead of checks. I hated this until I realized this is really good for the unbanked – if you don’t have a bank account, getting a check from EDD would be another barrier to receiving much needed income.
Following his FMLA and my SDI leaves, taken concurrently, we are both eligible to take an additional six weeks of PFL (Paid Family Leave)
Quick Facts about PFL
- You can roll directly over from an SDI claim to a PFL claim.
- Covers individuals who take time off of work to care for a seriously ill child, spouse, parent, or registered domestic partner, or to bond with a new child.
- This is also partially paid at 55% for six weeks.
Because we don’t have a great plan for childcare (that is a whole other post/conversation) once our leaves are up and we don’t have much in the way of a support network, we have to be careful to take enough leave to recover from the whole ordeal of childbirth and bringing a new baby home but not so much that we’re out of luck later on if we have to deal with health problems.
We had a good first well baby visit, for which we are eternally thankful, but you never know what tomorrow may bring.
At the same time, these first weeks and months are precious. We don’t know if we’ll do this again so we are trying to be present for this experience, the good, bad, and poopy. Paid leave makes it possible to actually do that: support each other, get to know how best to care for our new family, establish new routines, and actually recover. There’s a darn good reason sleep deprivation is a torture tactic, most of us do not truly function well on the couple hours of sleep that a newborn allows!
Ultimately, I think it just makes so much more sense to have some kind of parental leave policy that gives new parents the space they need to regroup. For us, I would feel like we can return to work with a renewed sense of purpose.
For other states, have a look at Babygate.
February 16, 2015
Effective Jan. 1, 2011, distributions from health FSAs and HRAs will be allowed to reimburse the cost of over-the-counter medicines or drugs only if they are purchased with a prescription.
This change to the FSA/HRA rules was a real downer.
I use quite a lot of OTC stuff for my chronic pain and it’s not cheap. Thermacare heating pads, for example, are great and last 8-12 hours but a pack of two or three costs anywhere from $10-26. A week of back or shoulder pain could cost $75 just to keep heat on, and it’s rare for the pain to be confined to a single area. Usually it’s one half of the body, right or left side.
To a more astute person, there is an obvious solution so I confess, I totally missed the obvious here.
OTC medications aren’t allowable unless you have a prescription for them. I read that as: if the pharmacy didn’t fill it as a prescription then it wasn’t eligible. I was wrong.
I’ve been doing this with my massages for the chronic pain, but it didn’t occur to me til recently that the same thing would work for the numerous OTC items I’ve had to buy for prenatal and pregnancy related conditions: the letter of medical necessity!
If it’s for any kind of treatment that your doctor is aware of, or if your doctor is happy to fulfill such requests, then all you’ve got to do is ask for a letter stating that these items are being used for treatment.
Make it really easy for your doctor to fill in a form letter by providing the list of OTC meds and send a copy of that letter in with your receipts.
We’ve spent a significant amount on OTC meds and supplies during this pregnancy, it was awesome claiming it back.
Go forth, my friends, and save your effective tax rate in OTC FSA costs!
December 12, 2014
Saying “challenge” was always like waving a red flag in front of me, or firing the starting gun at a race. It’s nigh on irresistable, that knee-jerk Get In There! reaction.
These days, though, my contrariness has decided to take a new turn: if I tell myself I can’t spend or have something, it’s more like telling me not to think about the pink elephant in the room than a wave-off. Instant fixation (just add water…).
Is this a bad thing? It depends. What’s the point?
It’s a useful tool for someone who’s new to getting their spending in hand to really see how easy it is to spend, day in and day out.
It’s a handy way to harness the power of solidarity. Like Tonya’s Health and Wealth Challenge (which I think sounds like a lot of fun), knowing you’ve got others out there working on the same challenge helps.
It can spark some creative approaches to getting through the challenge period. Theoretically you’re not just waiting on making purchases until you can buy them all at the end of the challenge, you’re learning how to make do or learning what you truly need versus just what you want. (On the other hand, it can wonderfully focus your mind on that thing you really really want.)
It’s not the worst way to force yourself to consciously spend only on your bills when you don’t have disposable income.
My problem is …
Other than the fun of doing a challenge with other people, I don’t need to remind myself not to spend for the sake of spending. There have been plenty of lean months and years to train that right out of me.
What I really need to learn is how to spend in moderation, not bouncing from the one extreme to the other.
I have disposable income now. In the grand scheme of things, I have a TON of disposable income. Rent, utilities, groceries, eating out, gifts, and travel are already covered by the household budget. My allowance is just for me. As in, to spend at will. On anything. ANYTHING. Ten years ago, my allowance was for any groceries, eating out, gifts, charity. It never stretched to paying for things I wanted.
When my broke college student mentality is in residence, that allowance tends to be hoarded. Then I break out in “I want everything” hives. You’d think it wouldn’t be such a problem figuring out how to spend in some normal, moderate, way.
Or I could just keep on either spending $0 or all the dollars. One offsets the other, after all.
November 15, 2014
A five minute geeky money chat with J.Money inspired this post. Most of the time, I just take our savings as a routine thing and forget that creative stuff to bring money back in that’s not just job-centered is fun.
Yes, I’m still all about the big wins in money:
- Increasing salary (then increasing it again).
- Building a solid professional reputation that helps catapults you from one serious promotion to another.
- Slashing costs for things like cell phones, cable, internet.
Over 15 years, spanning retail to professional office work, busting my butt on those bullet points resulted in killing off a huge pile of debt and then making savings happen. This is Excellent.
But I absolutely do not scoff at the little money. I’ll take a minute to:
- Ask for a discount.
- At checkout for items that are imperfect.
- Get a refund on a late fee or whatever fee.
That stuff adds up quickly over time if you ignore it which is antithetical to my policy of My Money is My Money. Note: Fees are no longer the absolute devil BUT if I’m going to pay one, it’ll be for something of value like a travel rewards credit card that makes rewards redemption easy and is stellar at handling disputes.
While we are somewhat conscientious about not buying crap we don’t need, over time, you find that “need” was really a “want” or that people gifted you things they thought were needs but were really “eh?” etc.
And so Crap Accumulates. In getting rid of it, mostly I’m happy to donate the little things but we have a lot of bigger things this round, and so PiC took on the job of Craigslisting. Craigslist is where he lives on the internet.
So add to the list, for entertainment’s sake:
- Earning via programs like Swagbucks and CC rewards.
- Craigslisting!
Y’all, that man has been on a ROLL unloading the stuff we unearthed during The Purge (still ongoing). He does all the work, brings me the cash and I log it in Mint. And now I’ll log it here!
We didn’t set anything like J. Money’s Craigslist Rule (List 1 item for sale on Craiglist every week) since this is more of an EVERYTHING MUST GO approach.
Benefit #1 is the cash coming in, of course.
Benefit #2 is the space it’s clearing up.
Benefit #3 is the demonstration the cost of buying things (new) that you don’t actually need. Resale is not what you’d generally call competitive. Though, probably just to needle me, PiC decided to call it “renting” goods. *scowl*
After setting this page up, I was inspired to add a couple tables of my own.
For those, on a much smaller level, I’m recouping some change by selling little things and earning non-taxable gift card rewards as part of my daily routine. As much as buying discounted gift cards saves some cash for important things, so does earning gift cards outright for those piddling household things that add up. As much as the masochistic part of me likes to wander through say, Target, and gawk at things I really don’t need, we’re all better off if I spend that time doing something else.
