Living in the time of pandemic: COVID-19 (29)
December 21, 2020
Week 39 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Week 39, Day 270: I enjoyed reading Jessica’s How to Cope (and Hopefully Even Thrive) in Times of Disaster. I’ve been doing financial stress testing since 2018 in preparation for a recession and other Bad Times:
- How are you recession-proofing?
- Ripples from the Great Recession – ten years later
- Preparing for a recession: practicing patience
This exercise didn’t specifically take illness into account but that has always been in the back of my mind as a fourth scenario that I’d have to cover – what we should do in case one of us (most likely me) became unable to work and earn income. I just didn’t outline it in my list back in 2018 because I wasn’t ready to wrap my head around a prolonged term of illness for any one of us.
And along come a pandemic. *facepalm*
I am grateful that I stuck to the year of cash equivalents in the bank. That really helps my sense of anxiety. I find myself wanting more but that’s my old friend hypervigilence talking. I’m getting better about that – I can see that that’s the fear brain worrying itself to bits and not a logical need, but it’s still there.
Also, it’s time we finalized our last year-end donations! We need to do this now!
Week 39, Day 271: Speaking of preparing for disaster, this bout of research is a combination of disaster and run of the mill power outage (because that’s a normal thing in CA more and more now) coverage.
I’ve been verrrry slowly adding to our power supplies.
We have a gas generator that will keep our fridge running with the assistance of an extension cord (since of course you can’t be running that thing indoors), and a couple of power banks for our phones. In a pinch, the fully charged high capacity power bank could keep my laptop powered for a time but honestly that’s not going to be much use for too long during work hours since the modem won’t have power. Also we now have to consider keeping three laptops charged with everyone home. So I think of the power bank as power for our phones. I’ve been looking into larger portable “generators” (really just higher capacity power stations/banks) and uninterruptible power supplies. At first I was laser focused on portable power stations, second guessed myself thinking the UPS system was more sensible, then came around to thinking my first instinct was right.
I am looking for a power solution that gives us portable power anywhere in the house, can be used in or outdoors in case we actually ever go camping or have to decamp to a safer location that perhaps lacks power, and is compatible with a solar recharging option in case we’re looking at longer term power loss in case of an earthquake.
A UPS can’t do any of those things. It can protect against power surges and offers a whole lot more plugs (8-12) than the portable power station (2) but that presumes that all my devices that need coverage are clustered in one place. They are not.
Having gotten that far, I now need to figure out WHICH power station to buy and how many. We are normally spread apart across three rooms, JB’s power needs are the lowest, PiC and I are about equal, and he and I can (in a pinch) consolidate into one room. We could share one power station for a short day long outage to get through work (modem, two computers, possibly an extra monitor).
Depending on the capacity, though, a single power station might not be sufficient for a 2-3 day power outage.
Do you have anything like this set up for your homes?
Week 39, Day 272: It’s long overdue but I just did an assessment of all our Vanguard funds. PiC’s money is held in Fidelity and unfortunately the employer target fund is incredibly annoyingly opaque so I can’t be sure what all is going on in there. I’ll deal with that later. For now, I hold the majority of our invested funds at Vanguard.
We are holding an asset allocation of 92% stocks and 8% bonds in our index funds. Across all our holdings in my name (or shared), we’re holding 94% stocks and 6% bonds in index and individual stocks.
I’m an aggressive investor to make up for lost investing time but I probably shouldn’t go below 5% in bonds. (Quick Background: I couldn’t invest for about ten years of my earlier working career because I didn’t have access to retirement accounts or didn’t have more than micro amounts of cash to spare.)
Week 39, Day 273: I finally took the time to check our PGE rate plan to see if we have the most economical one. They have a comparison tool that estimates what the yearly usage would cost. We don’t actually have an EV but if we switched to the Home Charging EV2-A rate plan, we might save $40 a year. This charges higher pricing during peak hours (3-4pm, 4-9pm, and 9pm-12am) and lower pricing during non-peak hours (12 am to 3 pm). I’m puzzled why this plan that relies on higher use during off-peak hours would save us anything because our usage now is across all peak hours.
This may have to be a mystery for another day. My brain isn’t up to this.
Week 39, Day 274: I’d been avoiding my heavy-duty pain meds this whole year in an attempt to protect Smol Acrobat but there are times when the best protection for the babies is saving myself first. I can’t be a whole human and mother if I’m in too much pain to exist. I’ve judiciously taken some half doses of the pain meds to break the pain cycle and lo, it actually worked. I was able to get a little more sleep, which helped reduce the pain too.
In a bid to close out our financial year and push myself away from depression, I went on a donations spree to the remaining organizations on our list, and to a few repeat organizations. Some years we’ve given to those who needed gifts for a bit of holiday joy. In this year of COVID and job loss and economic devastation, addressing basic needs felt like the greater gift.
If anyone needs ideas for that specific category before they close out the year, we have given to: The Human Utility (for water bills), Chef Andres’ World Central Kitchen, our local food bank (double checked at Feeding America to see if there were any we’d overlooked), our local homeless shelter, The Okra Project, Experimental Station in Chicago’s South Side, Feed Iowa First, Eastern Iowa Diaper Bank, the Navajo Water Project.
We also continued to support our local library, museums, animal shelter, CASA, and animal rescues. I’m glad we are able to spend our money like this, as glad as I am that we can spend on our own needs. I remain hugely grateful for so much, despite this tough year.
We have this power station for pretty much exactly the reasons you describe:
https://www.goalzero.com/shop/archive-power/goal-zero-yeti-1400-lithium-power-station-app/
We haven’t actually had a long enough power outage to test it, but have used it for charging devices etc with no issues. We didn’t get the solar panels for it, but they exist. Looking at the website it looks like that model got phased out and replaced by the 1500 which seems slightly better.
We also have a couple of dewalt power stations but figure those would be more for powering laptops and devices so the yeti can use all its power for appliances.
Thanks for sharing! Yeti / Goal Zero was on my list of brands to review so it’s nice to hear from an actual user. I’d like to go with a power station that is compatible with solar as well.
I’ve seen you write about the Navajo water project elsewhere. Last Christmas, my sister must have had an amazing crystal ball, because she gifted us all with toilet paper from a social corp, “Who Gives a Crap” (that uses half their profits to build toilets for people who don’t have them). Even pre-pandemic, we all loved the gift. (It’s good quality TP, and the company has a great sense of humor, so that helps).
This year, she’s repeating the TP gifts, and I’m complimenting that by giving soap and water. My fam is getting soap made by a friend who runs her own soap-making company from a shed behind the home where she raises her six kids. And the water is the Navajo wp. So, thank you so much for this suggestion!
You’ve made my day, I’m so happy that this fits your hilarious family thematic gifts and that the Navajo WP will get some more support. Do you want to share the link for your friend’s soap company as well?
It’s at https://www.facebook.com/lancastersoapco/ . . . but I don’t know if (to what extent) she mails soap out? That’s ignorance on my part. I know she has a devoted local following.