About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
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September 16, 2008
And what does dandy, mean, anyway? (so asked a friend of mine, today. I know what dandy means.) Current news has Merrill Lynch selling itself to BofA, Lehman Brothers bankrupted, and A.I.G. and WAMU on the mat.
What’s a girl on a quest to do? Contrary to all the other doom and gloom, or PANIC! articles out there, though, this article by Brett Arend has a few bits of rather sensible advice, my favorites in bold:
6. Stop pulling a Monty Python when it comes to your worst investments. If you ever saw John Cleese and Michael Palin perform their famous skit about the dead parrot, you know exactly what I mean. No, your Fannie Mae shares aren’t “resting.” They’re lying at the bottom of the cage with their feet in the air. What more do you need to know? So stop waiting for them to “recover” before sorting out your portfolio.
7. Don’t panic. Journalists, like markets, tend to move in herds. And by the nature of their jobs they write about the plane that crashes instead of the thousands that land safely. Remember, too, that pundits want to seem really wise by putting on serious expressions and saying things like “we don’t know how this thing is going to play out,” and “the situation could get a lot worse”. Bah. Guess what? We never know how things are going to play out. And the situation could get a lot better too. That’s the future for you.
8. When it comes to your short-term money needs, nothing has changed. Any money you might need within the next year or two should be held in cash or equivalents. That was true two years ago and it is true now. The stock market is no home for money you may need urgently. It could fall 30% or jump 30%. Nobody knows. You can get a one year CD paying 5% right now, and it’s federally guaranteed.
Seriously, a Monty Python reference? Perfect. It’s a toss-up, really, between that and that very salient point that Nobody Knows what will happen in the next six months, or heck, six minutes in some cases.
I’m not a fan of suggestion number 4, to set up a HELOC for emergency cash, though. Isn’t relying on credit in case of emergency just a step away from relying on credit? It doesn’t really seem worth the fix you might find yourself in by depending on a line of credit that the bank could very easily close off.
I already know that my deposits, minimal though they are, are covered by the FDIC over at WAMU. My other deposits are at Citibank, Emigrant Direct, ING Direct, well under FDIC limits, or in a family member’s debt ledger, so that’s pretty much a loss no matter which way you cut it.
My Vanguard retirement holdings, however, are not covered by the SIPC. Then again, my understanding of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation is that it does not exist to function like the FDIC. It’s a protection against fraud, or loss of actual stocks and bonds when brokerages go bankrupt, not against the loss of value represented by those stocks and bonds. The retirement account will continue to accrue more shares than value, and I’ll leave well enough alone.
Karen’s reminded me that while I still feel like I’ve got a foot on the ledge, I’m in FAR better shape than I was just a year ago, and I’m going to keep working at the savings and asset building no matter what happens in the economy. If I can pull the belt any tighter, I will, but I’d like to avoid corsetting while I still can.
What, if anything, are you doing?
September 15, 2008
I put all other stressful parts of my life on hold yesterday starting at 2 pm. I didn’t take work with me, as I always do “in case of down time,” and I resolved not to even worry about getting back in time to put in another two hours of work. I was going to spend time with friends, end of story.
It was amazing.
I had organized a mini-massage day at a girlfriend’s house since we sickies were in sore need. My masseuse friend was happy to make a house call for me and two other friends, and a fourth came over just to spend time with us because she couldn’t afford the massage. She was recently laid off due to governmental budget cuts, so hosting friend and I agreed to split the cost of her massage to treat her.
At $40/hour, it was the right thing to do: she’s been searching for a job since July, on unemployment, and I could swing half the cost, as could hosting friend.
All in all, masseuse friend worked for four hours, with a nice break in between, so I know that helped her financially. I got to catch up with masseuse friend during my massage, we spoiled four hung out, chatted, ate Godiva chocolates and potatos chips and watched football. And a LOT of Food Network. Did you know that Alton Brown has yet another “Feasting on …” show? And I finally saw Dinner Impossible.
After the massages, we had an impromptu pizza party, AND I made use of hosting friend’s multifunction, multipage scanner to scan two inches worth of auto insurance and Rollover IRA documents. Which, I hasten to add, was not work, it was organizational and I loooove organizing. It’s good for my soul. As are good friends, massages, chocolate, potato chips, and maybe one less slice of pizza for dinner. Four slices of Pizza Hut pizza plus honey barbeque wings were, perhaps, a bit much.
Massage, mine: $40 (I’m not allowed to tip, masseuse friend scolds me when I do)
Massage, friend: $25
Pizza/wings: $6
Scanning services: 1000 calories burnt, running up and down the stairs from scanner to computer
Total: $71
Lucky me, the massages will come out of my FSA/medical account, so I don’t even have to feel guilty. And coming home without a single nagging bit of guilt about how much work I didn’t get done that day? Priceless.
I hope everyone had a great weekend! And if not this past weekend, then this next one!
September 12, 2008
This isn’t about my complete lack of cooking ability, not this time. It’s about what to do for a good friend who has been extraordinarily good to me and BF’s family. She’s been above and beyond for them so long that I don’t think that they even realize that what she does IS extraordinary anymore.
I do, though.
Recently, she’s been coaching, encouraging, and uplifting me in every way during some very tough times. She calls to check on my progress, devoted an entire day to helping me do research, given me career advice, listened to my stories and offered great analysis and suggestions. She’s also done the best thing I could ever have asked for: she’s tough on me. She doesn’t let me make rookie mistakes when I’m upset to avoid hurting my feelings, she gives me a firm shake whenever she thinks it’s necessary. And I’m so grateful to her for it all.
So, really, a dinner just isn’t good enough. Taking her out to a fancy schmancy dinner would be nice, but it’s not good enough. I ought to mention that she was a highly successful businesswoman for many years and can afford to spend in a year more than I earn, saved and am worth! ;P I admire her financial savvy so very much, but it does sort of make it a little more difficult to figure out what to do for her or get for her.
My gift giving instinct tells me that I need to dig deeper to figure out what would make her life easier, something that’s a gift of time and love, not money. I’m not concerned with spending “enough,” just that it conveys how very much I love and appreciate her.
Any suggestions would be appreciated, meanwhile I’m going to meditate on it.
September 11, 2008
Every time I think of WAMU potential failing, I think of my checking account, my three year supply of animal checks, and inevitably, Kiki. She’s a Sluggy Freelance character, a ferret who’s terribly attached to her friend Sam, a vampire. She’s always exhorting, in any given situation, for him to “Stay Good, Sam!” It’s a completely unrelated webcomic, having only the slightest of relevance to anything, but it still amuses me.
For a much more mature analysis of the state of affairs, Flexo’s really the man.
On a personal note, I’ve had a checking account with WAMU since I turned 18, and have been using this batch of checks since 2001. That’s really the main reason I’ve kept this account: I don’t want to pay for any more checks while I still have at least a good 300 checks left. They do have decent customer service for my free accounts, so I usually keep a minimal amount of money in there and transfer money from the Citi account as necessary to round out the checks I write.
It’s not comforting that my two primary B&M banks aren’t exactly stable, but I do have an ING account from which I could open an Electric Orange checking account in a pinch. That shouldn’t take too long. There’s probably about $500 in the WAMU account right now, and I’ve considered transferring it all to my Citi account to avoid the inconvenience of dealing with FDIC insurance if it comes to that. Taking out my $500 wouldn’t make a difference in the whole scheme of things, I’m just small fry, but if everyone took out their money, creating a run on the bank, that’d be a shame. Hm…
A friend posed this hypothetical question to me recently, and the ensuing bickering reminded me that I don’t play hypothetical money games well:
If your car was completely totaled and someone gave you a lump sum, say, $30,000, to buy a car, what car would you buy? (And you have to spend ALL of it on the car.)
*grimace* Eh. That’s too much to spend on a car, for me. Even given the hypothetical donor, even given the no-strings-attached, even given that the money’s not coming out of my pocket, I couldn’t really get all that enthused about the idea.
Honestly? I like my car. I like the mileage, I like the size, I’m comfortable in it, I like that it’s not brand new anymore (except for those little “personality quirks” she’s developing). If she was *sob* destroyed, I would … want the same car. Boring? *shrug* Yeah. But they don’t make her anymore, so I’d have to get a used version, which is fine, I’m D-O-N-E with new cars, new car insurance, new car registration and all that being oh so careful where I park because I’m driving a new car.
Admittedly, there’s a bit of me that still likes the MiniCooper, the Mazda 3, and remembers that I did say I wouldn’t be buying any more two door cars so getting the same car wouldn’t make sense but …. uh, let’s just say that all the fun of asking me a hypothetical question like that was long gone.
So how about it, folks? What would you get with a $30,000 (to replace your destroyed vehicle) budget? And yes, same parameters: If I had to spend it all, so do you! 🙂
I’ve used my impulse buy twice now, and I love it. I might like it more than my dog does! She loves the attention and fuss, but remains wholly unimpressed by the bags of fur collected during the grooming session.
She’s giving me the side-eye here because I can’t hold her paw AND keep brushing. Oh, and taking a picture instead of brushing? UNacceptable.
September 10, 2008
Just as I was thinking that the iPhone was slowly redeeming itself …. ok, I can’t blame this on the phone, it’s totally my fault.
I had my bag in my lap, and was reading Astonishing X-Men #4 this morning when, one station from my final destination, I heard *slither — thunk!* Immediate reaction: oh no! Sure enough, the phone had slipped out of my bag and fallen between my seat and the wall of the train. Um. Since my hands are pretty small, and I always have to fish papers and such from between my desk and the wall at work, I thought I could use a pen to lever the phone high enough so that I could pull it out.
No dice. Not only did the pen not reach, I hit the phone at just the right angle to push it down further on its side. The next tool I tried, the comic book (I was getting desperate), knocked it flat on its face. Crap!
I tried coming at it from the other side of the seat bank, no luck. I tried going under the seat, but there was only two cms of space between the ledge the phone was on, and the stupid face extending from the bottom of the seat. My hand totally didn’t fit. Eventually, I went to get the conductor, and he only succeeding in pushing the phone completely under the seat so we couldn’t even see it any longer. Rats rats and rats.
At this point, we’d missed our shuttle to work, and I was red with frustration and embarrassment. Stretched out underneath the seat, trying to see harder (no, that didn’t work), and make my hands smaller, I thought, “This is completely ridiculous!!” And friend chimes in, “Yeah! But it’s better than being at work!!” *sigh* I guess it is … which speaks volumes. The conductor gave us five minutes to work on it before he had to take the train to the Yard, at which point they’d have to remove the seats to reach the phone. We thought we were *really* going for a grand adventure at that point, but he kicked us off the train and told us he’d call when they retrieved the phone. We ended up running alongside the train yelling names and phone numbers for him to reach us, as the trains pulled away from the station.
That’ll teach me to complain about my phone. I feel like I just got taught a lesson about being grateful for what you have. 🙁
