June 30, 2014
Hello, Murphy, we meet again.
There’s just nothing like a few unexpected events to remind you that preparedness in ALL things isn’t a terrible idea.
An almost hilarious Rube Goldbergian chain of events left us near the beginning of a long road trip sitting to the side of whizzing-by traffic, having limped as far as we could on a completely blown out tire. And this is after our rear windshield had just been MacGyvered after being all smashed all to hell. Huge chunks of glass blew back at least 12 feet, so now that I think about it, it’s a minor miracle that no one was hit by it. Tempered glass or not, the force with which those little square chunks were flung would have meant major cuts.
Kind of like how your life might flash before your eyes in a near death experience, it suddenly occurred to me how many things were missing from our travel/car emergency kit.
* Duct tape for broken glass
* Gloves for dealing with any broken or pointy bits
* Something approximating orange cones
* A full med kit in case someone DID get hurt.
And if this had happened late at night, we would desperately have needed:
* A really good flashlight or even a lantern for hands free work
* Flares
* Blankets/pillows while we were waiting for help
We already had food, water, and a package of wet wipes for getting post-car repair grime off, and luckily we weren’t left waiting on the side of the road blocking traffic for too long, but it was definitely a bad situation that could have been much worse. (Though the surprise $1k+ in auto expenses is NOT going to be fun.)
I usually don’t think I need a AAA membership but PiC’s really helped out; we could not have singlehandedly swapped out the tire safely in under 15 minutes without that power car jack and an extra set of hands. PiC didn’t want me out on the road with him so he would have been dealing with it in the heat alone :/
This doesn’t happen often but if it happened with just me and Doggle, we would have had a struggle getting that tire changed out. It might be time to revise my opinion on a AAA membership.
What would you recommend for an emergency car kit?
Donna Freedman just wrote about this a short while back…
June 23, 2014
My short answers:
Credit cards first assuming it’s under 50K and not a long term recurring expense. Pay it off with….
1. Expenses checking account.
2. Savings specifically holding money for the expenses account.
3. Emergency cash fund.
4. Several CDs.
5. Sell off stock portfolio.
6. Retirement savings.
(How short is short??)
7. Sell the property if it’s that bad.
But of course that just triggered a bunch of questions. What are we talking about when we say, short?
If I “overspent” in any given month (wedding expenses, I guess are the only thing that has recently been in this category), it’d be on the credit card. Those are paid in full with cash in my our checking account specifically meant for paying bills. We put our paychecks in there, less our automated savings, so whatever’s in there is “fair game”. Of course, when that goes above a certain amount, I skim right off the top and put it in emergency savings too so that grows a little faster than generally planned. What? I LIKE SAVINGS.
(Shoot, I LOVE savings. Like I love donuts. And I love donuts.)
I still leave a healthy amount in there (up to several thousand) because nothing in the emergency fund comes out for anything short of a medical emergency, job loss or death in the family. At that, while we didn’t do anything extravagant so it wasn’t an unreasonable amount, Mom’s funeral was paid in full with a check the day of the arrangements. And before that, her major dental expenses went on my credit card, and was also paid off in full. So that checking account can bear up against a few strains pretty easily.
If we are talking job loss, though, that’s a different story. That’s ongoing expenses for an undetermined amount of time so I’d be looking at ways to mitigate the lack of income (unemployment income, freelancing, consulting – whatever) at the same time as tapping the emergency fund.
I spent almost a year unemployed. During that time, I worked the network HARD while freelancing and writing; back then the emergency fund wasn’t nearly as healthy but the expenses had also been trimmed back to a fare-thee-well, so the rate of withdrawal wasn’t truly atrocious. Scary, yes, because once I was tapped out, that was me AND my family on the street, but objectively, not that bad.
Our expenses now have grown: two households, two dependents, pets, long distance family to visit, etc. We CAN cut back in some ways but not a whole lot. So the list generally stays the same.
It’s both comforting to know that our savings could probably carry us at least a year based on our expenses not changing and assuming no emergencies (though c’mon, one bad turn tends to breed another), and scary to think it probably couldn’t last 2-3 years. My comfort zone lies in a much higher amount of savings.
:: Over to you! What’s your emergency money plan?
June 19, 2014
It’s a PF truism that we should always value experiences more than stuff. Mostly I agree because I love saving money and hate having too many things. Even now I’m having a bit of an allergic reaction to the excess stuff we have here at home, and can’t wait for a burst of energy that’ll help me organize a closet sorting things out for disposal or donations.
But only mostly. As much as I don’t like clutter – useful things? I LOVE THEM. Things that make my life easier, happier, or more comfortable are alright in my book. I have a terrible memory so while I do enjoy our occasional outings, weekending frequently would just leave me in an addled haze not recalling one special event or another. And PiC is pretty amazing at Things-Maintenance so if we choose something that fits us and our lifestyle, it’ll last us a long while. Things aren’t just disposable in this household.
Here are a few of my favorite things this year ….
These were a gift, and I use them every day. They’re great for: serving or mixing sauces, serving condiments, chopped ingredients like garlic and shallots, a real serving size of my favorite cookies, nuts or crackers and cheese, a dab of post-dinner ice cream …
How I’d never heard of these before, I’ll never know. But these are fabulous. And they have smiley faces underneath, so even better!
They really are soft and squishy which is wonderful for my generally aching hips and knees; the cloth bands are both snug and never pinch or dig into my ankles; they’re actually rather attractive. I never get compliments on my shoes because I typically choose really basic, boring shoes for their functionality. Here we have form AND function!
(6 Buttons, 3 DPI Adjustment Levels and 2000 DPI)
I work a LOT. Most waking hours of the day are spent on the computer. So it’s probably no surprise that my hand comfort is critical.
For years I used a lovely Microsoft mouse that a reader was kind enough to gift me because I couldn’t afford one at the time; that finally pooped out on me. This mouse is big in my hand, but that’s perfect because it allows my hand to relax while resting on it and mousing at the same time. The tiny USB connection is revolutionary after having struggled not to catch the huge-flash drive style connection of the old mouse, and best of all? This mouse works on any surface. I can sit anywhere and use the mouse on a relatively flat surface. Heck, I’ll confess to mousing on my belly when I’m using the laptop on the sofa and don’t feel like finding a pillow at the right height to rest my hand on!
I tentatively love this. Freedom from cable! It hiccups on occasion but that’s probably because we don’t have top notch internet. I don’t love the huge HDMI cable required but the Roku itself is tiny which is great.
:: What things are wonderful and delightful in your life?
NOTE: I have added Amazon affiliate links above if anyone wants to order through them, what pennies that brings in will go to keeping on the blog lights. 🙂
June 16, 2014
Change from May: 22% increase
Change from January: 61% increase
On Money
That wasn’t an anticipated, or even mostly a real jump, in Net Worth. I should really get my act together on tracking Net Worth – you’d think that I’d have plenty of practice at this but I totally failed to incorporate the home equity we have; the mortgage liability was included but hello, we do own part of the property. So whoops. Since I don’t feel like going back and correcting every month since January, I have an artificially large increase.
About 3% of that is a legitimate increase though, we had good deposits in the retirement accounts and have been saving steadily with every paycheck.
***
And the deed is done! We have canceled cable and sent the cable box back. We’re now entirely on Roku and while this means I probably won’t be up to date on Hawaii 5-O and Grimm, I am enjoying The West Wing, Studio 60, Downton Abbey, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly and other Doggle-approved shows playing during the day from the comfort of behind my laptop.
***
Even without knowing that our NW was increasing at least incrementally (actually, I tend to assume we’re overspending at any given time), I have been fighting the urges to spend. I want new pillows. I want to swap out a quarter of our furniture for more comfortable stuff like a recliner (for work I swear!), a dresser so I can start to organize that unholy mess that is our closet, a library while I’m dreaming…
In the meantime, I’m doing what I can to earn Amazon money through Swagbucks for the smaller things we need. Feel free to join and help me using this referral link if you like!
On Life
Two Sundays ago, I woke up late. Uncomfortable, as usual, I lay abed for another hour, and finally rolled out of bed. As I wandered over to my desk, it sank in that my limbs didn’t feel inutterably heavy, and my chest didn’t feel like an elephant was sitting on it. Hm!
I actually felt capable of sitting up in a chair! I didn’t need to slump in the corner of the sofa, propped up on cushions, like I’d been doing for … the past five weeks.
The most exciting 70 minutes in 5 weeks ensued: I hopped online, paid some bills, washed a few dishes, ate some breakfast, cleared a two month backlog of mail, signed and sealed documents that needed mailing, scrapbooked several things left over from our reception, scanned documents for my records, sorted my money tracking document, organized photos from the reception into envelopes to be sent out, wrote a card and sorted two piles of leftover wedding crap for recycling. In 70 minutes.
The point I’m making here is if I could pay for energy, I would ABSOLUTELY do it because with this level of effectiveness, I could take on the world with a few months full of energy.
June 7, 2014
If I had to toot my own horn, I’d say that my cooking skills are progressing nicely. Luckily, I have PiC here ready and willing to proclaim my experiments successful. I know, this is meant to be a money-life blog so why do I keep sharing recipes? Because good food IS life!
I have to thank Kristen for helping me make a few basic decisions, since I didn’t know what I was doing when it came to dealing with mushrooms AT ALL.
Small Bites: Stuffed Mushrooms
This was adapted from the Pioneer Woman’s classic recipe.
Ingredients
24 ounces, weight White Button Mushrooms
1/3 pound Hot Pork Sausage***
1/2 whole Medium Onion, Finely Diced
4 cloves Garlic, Finely Minced
1/3 cup Dry White Wine**
8 ounces, weight Cream Cheese
1 whole Egg Yolk
3/4 cups Parmesan Cheese, Grated
Salt And Pepper, to taste
* Added a strip of fried bacon. It’s the right thing to do.
**Left this out.
*** I use any sausage, really.
Directions
1. Wipe off or wash mushrooms in cold water. Pop out stems, reserving both parts.
2. Chop mushroom stems finely and set aside.
3. Brown and crumble sausage and bacon. Set aside on a plate to cool.
4. Add onions and garlic to the same skillet; cook for 2 minutes over medium low heat.
5. Pour in wine to deglaze pan, allow liquid to evaporate. (Deglazed with water since I didn’t have white wine handy)
6. Add in chopped mushroom stems, stir to cook for 2 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste. Set mixture aside on a plate to cool.
7. In a bowl, combine cream cheese and egg yolk. Stir together with Parmesan cheese.
8. Add cooled sausage, bacon and cooled mushroom stems. Stir mixture together and refrigerate for a short time to firm up.
9. Smear mixture into the cavity of each mushroom, creating a sizable mound over the top.
10. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown.
Allow to cool at least ten minutes before serving; the stuffed mushrooms taste better when not piping hot.
Thoughts
Allow to cool before serving – hahaha. I tried to try one almost immediately. Of course. And nearly burnt myself. Of course. Who doesn’t do that?
I’ve never loved mushrooms, but I’ve been trying to learn to like a new thing every few years, so this was my entree to not-in-soup mushrooms and I’m pretty happy with it.
Comfort Food: Chicken Pot Pie
Ingredients
1 pound chicken breasts – cubed*
1 cup sliced carrots (1 1/2 carrots)
1 cup diced potato (1 small potato)
1/2 cup sliced celery (1 celery rib)
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup chopped onion (1/4 small onion)
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 3/4 cups chicken broth
2/3 cup milk
2 (9 inch) unbaked pie crusts
1/4 teaspoon celery seed**
* I roast my own chicken so I used two cups of shredded roasted chicken instead.
**Left this out.
Makes 1 9-inch pie. 8 servings.
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C.)
2. In a saucepan, combine carrots, potatoes, and celery. Add water to cover and boil for 15 minutes. Remove from heat, drain and set aside.
3. In the saucepan over medium heat, cook onions in butter until soft and translucent. Stir in flour, salt, pepper (and celery seed).
Slowly stir in chicken broth and milk.
Simmer over medium-low heat until thick.
Remove from heat and set aside.
4. Mix chicken (and 3-4 strips of cooked bacon if you’re so inclined) into the vegetables.
5. Place the chicken mixture in bottom pie crust.
6. Pour hot liquid mixture over.
7. Cover with top crust, seal edges, and cut away excess dough. Make several small slits in the top to allow steam to escape.
8. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown and filling is bubbly.
9. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.
Thoughts
I could have made my own pie crust but between roasting a whole chicken (about 1 hour, 40 minutes) and prepping the whole pie recipe, it seemed wiser to just use a prepared pie crust. As it was, I totally wiped myself out roasting the chicken, breaking it down and cooking up the pie in a three hour whirlwind. At least I didn’t defrost the pie crust too late and half melt it again. (See, ugliest pie ever.)
This recipe actually worked out a lot better than the previous one that I couldn’t find. The liquid was actually gravylike and held together the dry ingredients really nicely.
I’d estimate the cost of this pie to be around $5 without breaking down the actual use cost of each ingredient I already had (butter, flour, salt, pepper, milk) or will be able to use in more than one recipe (potato, celery, onion, broth, chicken).
It’s not all about the cost savings though, I just like the taste of homemade better, where I’m able to control the use of butter, salt, etc., to precisely what’s needed and not overdo it.
June 6, 2014
“You don’t have to eat in the dark,” calls out PiC, sounding vaguely concerned that I’d finally lost my frugal mind and refused to use electricity for just one person. He doesn’t have to say it, I know he’s thinking it.
It’a not untrue that I was choosing not to turn on the light because it was just me and my croissant at the table, but that wasn’t the whole of it. I could see well enough in the near dark, but sometimes it’s just kind of nice to sit in the quiet night, with a snack, maybe poking through a blog. You’d think I get enough alone time, working mostly away from people everyday and seeing only PiC most days of the week. It’s a darn good thing I married a man whose company I actually enjoy in spades!It’s been a lot of long weeks, slogging through work day after work night after work day, in the midst of a fairly intense episode of fatigue, pain and more fatigue. But it’s also been a lot of exciting stuff going on too, taking up all my energy and brain space. I can see light at the end of the tunnel and even if I need more recovery time than ever to struggle up to the surface, it’s still pretty cool that I’ve pulled this off. I can share some of it in a month or two, probably, once the loose ends are tied up.
In the meantime, introspection in the dark is just what the doctor would order, I think, if I actually found a good therapist who’d recommend that which was soothing to my soul.
I feel like Mal at the end of the first episode of Firefly: my best effort today was only 2/3 good enough, I worked til 1 am the day before so was dragging from sleep deprivation, PiC had to pick up my slack from this week and run to the vet for Doggle’s ridiculously expensive medication and do the grocery run for me, arriving home exhausted, late and grumpy. I’d managed to make a soup but it wasn’t enough to serve as a meal for a normal human that expends energy so even my “sorry I couldn’t run the errands but have a nice dinner” gesture was… Well, inadequate. In an attempt to thank me for trying to make the day end nicely, he knocked a glass over and spilled water all over my pants, in a move that is so typically ME (confession: I forgot how to work a glass two days ago and spilled water all down my front); it was just so absurd we had to laugh.
But at the end of the day, we’re still flying.
Little as that may seem, it’s enough.
(By the by, I did figure out the old family recipe and made it twice without disaster, so I’m calling that a win.)
June 1, 2014
We stood in the driveway, watching him “craft”. Once able to pick up a pencil, pen, paintbrush or lump of clay, and fashion realistic or fantastical pieces of art with no training, he’s now creating smaller lumps of wood from larger lumps of wood. Inside, a bit of me shudders, watching the hatchet in his hand.
There’s a limited range of things one can say to him, now, without setting off fireworks. Defensiveness, rage, imagined boundaries, bristling. Only his sister can cross those lines, he snarls, and even she doesn’t! PiC backs off. He’d only asked, “so what are you up to these days?”
I haven’t talked about my sibling for a long time. I haven’t talked to him, for some while.
It doesn’t meant that I don’t think about him, constantly. Or that my subconscious doesn’t dwell on the exhausting morass that our lives have become.
***
In August 2011, my dad asked me, did I think Sibling was on drugs? There was something really wrong there, and he didn’t know what it was. At that point, Sibling had been driving me batty with his machinations and manipulations going on fifteen years; we were at loggerheads over every last thing and the struggle to force him to grow up had become steadily more useless. He hadn’t done a single productive thing to lift himself out of the mire his life had become and over the years, he’d become more nasty and more violently opposed to cooperating with Mom or Dad.
My resolve hardened; he’d spent far too long on the dole as it was, he was actively hurtful and hateful to my parents and it was too much. He had to go and I had to be the one to make the separation.
I went to talk to him and there were clear signs that something was not right. His behavior wasn’t completely the usual manipulative and egocentric, it became literally delusional.
He explained to me very carefully in the same breath that while everyone was concerned about him, he was “linear” now, and he had taught his pets to speak the English language. They could now understand every word we were all saying.
He went on and on about his beliefs about his role in the family, that of “protection” and of misplaced need to be “security”. I backed away slowly, realizing that he fervently believed every word he was saying and that he was simmering with the paranoid need to prove himself which would and could manifest in violence against any one of us should he experience a break and perceive a threat.
Dad was unconvinced that Sibling posed him any danger but it was, and still is, hard to believe him. I don’t believe that all mentally ill individuals, or even most, pose a threat to the people around them. Many of them don’t. But we have a family history of mental illness, and a trend of delusions and violence, that I cannot ignore. A cousin who sounds scarily like Sibling in his ramblings has attacked and injured more than one person. Sibling’s misplaced white knight convictions sound like the beginning of justifications of something awful and twisted.
And amidst it all, Mom’s spiraling condition, much of the anxiety centered on her son, prevented me from taking the necessary steps of getting Sibling away from them.
***
Leaving home, and him, in 2010, purchased a slice of respite for me, but in its place simmered my own anxiety. My nightmares got worse. I still fought with him: over the phone, during visits, in my imagination, epic battles raged over his transgressions now only inconsistently policed from afar. PiC and Doggle were no longer startled by my waking up screaming at dream Sibling, going yet another round in endless rounds of desperate attempts to get through to him.
It wasn’t working. It probably never was.
***
Somehow, it’s still unclear who I was and am fighting with. Is this my brother the master manipulator or some teenage version of him? In some ways, he’s getting what he wants: free housing, “doesn’t have to” work. It’s hard to imagine that this is how he wants to live but he’s rejected every overture of help, every attempt to support his efforts at anything productive. Aunts have come out of the woodwork, offering to sponsor his education, trade or higher ed, if he wanted; nothing came of any of it.
He’s ended up on the doorsteps of childhood friends, acting as though he had rewound life back to high school. If you can ignore that displacement, when he’s speaking to you, it almost sounds like nothing is amiss. He’s adamant that nothing’s wrong but his disproportionate outrage at being asked what he’s doing or what he’s planning to do indicates otherwise; his obsessions and refusal to do anything to live at more than a subsistence level and his insistence that the dog is as responsible for understanding his needs as a human, it’s all disturbing.
He spent weeks obsessively doing laundry, running the machine over and over, day and night, until he broke the machine. He was washing and rewashing the same clothes (in defiance of Dad?) for no discernible reason. Dad can’t afford to fix the machine because it’s a large unbudgeted expense for both of us, and isn’t willing to get it fixed because the amount of water and energy spent was astronomical. Dad has to choose to do his laundry at a laundromat, taking hours out of his already tough schedule, because Sibling can’t be trusted not to do the same thing again in the middle of a drought and wasting hundreds of dollars.
Sibling wanders in and out, leaving doors and windows open, turning on faucets and leaving them running, leaving the stove burning til everything’s scorched beyond recognition.
I banned Sibling from using my car years ago, unable to afford the constant repairs of having a careless driver ding it up, and most unwilling to risk his having a serious accident and heaven forfend, injuring or killing someone. He snuck the keys anyway, and I only found out about it when I received parking tickets because he couldn’t even be bothered to put quarters in the meter when he stole my car.
Dad’s a prisoner, unable to leave the house for more than a few hours at a time lest he come home to a flooded or burnt down house, a stolen or wrecked car. In more than four years, he’s never been able to even say that he would like to visit me because it wasn’t possible.
Sibling requires some kind of medical care but you can’t force an adult to get evaluated and you can’t commit an adult against their will until they pose a clear threat to themselves or others. This makes sense: mentally ill individuals don’t always have people advocating for their best interests and they do have rights. But the fact that we have to wait, amid the slow soul-crushing erosion of our lives around the shambling wreck that is his, until someone is hurt or killed to get any help at all belies the idea that anyone’s best interests are being served.
***
His dog is as much a prisoner as Dad, or worse. He’s utterly pitiful and needs more healthcare than Dad can afford. The breedist community we live in doesn’t allow Sibling’s dog’s breed, even though he is the sweetest, smartest, most compliant dog we’ve ever met. I’m still trying to disguise him in some way so he can come live with us; but I know that adding the burden of a second 90+ lb dog to the household is going to be a strain on our budget and tax both our severely limited energies.
I can’t just leave him there, but so many things have to change. We need to at least double the dog allowance budget and that has to come from somewhere. Dad would never kick Sibling out, and won’t allow me to do it so long as he’s clearly incapable or unwilling to find alternative housing, so I have to find some other housing for him. Finding housing for someone who can’t or won’t to help himself is a challenge; more so because I can’t convince him to get a diagnosis, unless maybe I go and drive him myself to a doctor. I’m not even sure he’d cooperate then, he didn’t when Dad took him.
Impossible as it feels, I have to do something to change things. This steadily degenerating stalemate is untenable. So, from somewhere, I have to make the time and dredge up the energy to “fix” this as best I can. I’m awfully tired but there’s really not much of a choice, is there?
A similar NYTimes story that struck very close to home for me
