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 4, 2013
Well well, look at it being September already!
SingleMa had a great topic and discussion thread so I’m borrowing it for both my answers and to ask you what you thought:
1. What’s the most money you’ve ever loaned someone?
B. Did you get it back?
C. How did it turn out?
2. What’s the most money you’ve ever borrowed from someone?
B. Did you pay it back?
C. How did it turn out?
3. Based on the above experiences, what is your current philosophy on personal loans (giving or receiving)?
My Answers
1. [Stupid Alert] As an indirect loan, I’ve purchased a new vehicle for my family and my sibling was supposed to pay me back in the monthly payments. That turned out terribly and cost about $20,000. He probably managed to pay back as much as $7000? I had the paperwork for a long time but decided to get rid of it after it had long been clear I wasn’t going to get another penny out of him.
2. About $50, at most, when I didn’t have cash on hand and paid it back within days. With a couple friends, we’ll foot the bill for each other for one thing or another knowing they’ll either pay you back or get the bill for us the next time. This mostly applies to meals, though occasionally, to things like ordering from a store together to save on shipping.
3. Mostly based on getting burned time and again by my family and their bad (though mostly well intentioned) decisions, I won’t lend to anyone ever again. I’ve been asked to, and demurred, and asked to consider financial commitments that hadn’t previously been part of my plans but so far I’ve steered clear.
An additional question: Do you think your philosophy is subject to change? What would that depend on?
August 31, 2013
I did say that we’ve been doing a lot of traveling lately, didn’t I? A big part of that has been food, food and food. YUM.
On review, it does seem like the options weren’t always super healthy… Whoops.
Upper left corner On a day when the pain was overwhelming and sleep was elusive, food was so unappealing that nothing on the menu looked good. PiC ordered a funny-sounding dish and it turned out to be perfect: a hearty vegetable soup, sliced bread, generous chunks of cheese, a handful of blueberries and a wafer thin slices of peach. I’m not normally vegetarianly inclined but I didn’t miss the meat in this at all. Never knew how delicious such a simple combination could be. Also never I liked Brie.
Marché Provisions: Eugene, OR
Upper right corner This waffle has basically ruined waffles for me, forever. A sweetly crispy, bacon and syrup infused waffle, topped with perfect bacon pieces – not bits, not slices – and topped with a runny egg. Hea-ven on a PLATE. Pretty reasonable at around $8-10 per waffle that’s basically a meal.
Off the Waffle: Eugene, OR
Lower left corner Wandering the city, headed for Laughing Planet Cafe, we got distracted by a furniture clearance shop and then too starved to go any further, ran across the street to Oven & Shaker for their happy hour instead. The prices weren’t nearly as good as we had expected for a happy hour but the Wild Fennel Sausage pizza with tomato, smoked mozzarella and potatoes was perfect for two.
Oven and Shaker: Portland, OR
Lower right corner For all my love of cheese, I hadn’t tried any of the grilled cheese trucks or shops hereabouts, until now. The Mousetrap sandwich (Tillamook sharp cheddar, creamy havarti, Monterey jack, on artisan sourdough) and added grilled onions and tomatoes. With an ice cold drink, what more could you ask for? Fresh strawberries on the side of course. Summer at its best.
The American Grilled Cheese Kitchen: San Francisco, CA
We had a few other amazing meals, both homecooked and out and about, but I’ll spare you the extra drool 🙂
August 27, 2013
In our almost-whirlwind search for a reception venue, we found that doing this thing in Southern California, and from afar, most definitely has its costs.
The Bay Area is suffocatingly expensive in some respects but one of the family truisms is that it’s twice as expensive and half as good as Southern California as far as Asian cuisine goes. For the most part, I have found that that is true.
We pieced together the costs of doing a separate ceremony and reception, having realized that we do need to do a small/quick ceremony lest we utterly confuse the close (but not close enough) relatives who don’t know about the courthouse deal, and found that renting any kind of venue for about 200 guests in the general area that we’re considering is a pricey matter.
We were finding that before food, venues wanted thousands of dollars just to reserve the damn place. Then we’d have to pay for food, and drinks, and whatever foo-for-rah we decided that we wanted. I never thought of ourselves as having champagne taste on a beer budget, I figured that we really had tap water and pretzels taste on an equivalent budget, especially considering the cost of Fancy Craft Beer.
That didn’t really help us much. 🙂
So far, we’ve been getting prices between $75-120 per guest and that’s a bit appalling considering the alternative. (The culturally traditional alternative would cost more along the lines of $40/guest. And mercenary as this is going to sound, I’m not going to be inviting many of the relatives who are obligated to give a fair amount of money to “repay” the gifts my parents gave, so we’re going to take a loss on the wedding. That’s just how the cultural version works, the couple is not expected to have to go into their marriage in debt from the wedding because the community gifts them with a solid start.)
Given my usual frugal (ahem even cheapskatey) ways, I would have preferred to paying that much lower cost but I think we’re going with a higher price tag for a greater degree of convenience: an “almost all-inclusive” that rolls in all the costs of your decor (which I don’t care much about), food, alcohol, a coffee station, cake, venue, set up and teardown, parking and transportation for the guests, and a ceremony place. It doesn’t include music or photography but those weren’t huge priority items in our minds.
I did cost out a few restaurants where we could do the ceremony and reception together, and the total cost after food, drink, venue, sales tax and service fees? Was about a $1000-2000 difference. And we’d have had to do between a little to a lot more legwork. At this point (and I can’t believe I’m saying this when I go back for refunds on an incorrect receipt for as little as $1) that’s just not worth the work and coordination efforts.
As an example, I checked for other possible venues just now, and Middle Ranch seemed appealing. For 200 guests, we’d be paying: $5000 venue fee, $11000 for food and moderate alcohol, and tack on sales tax and service fees for a total of: $20,800. Still to be added: whatever cake, decor if any, photographer, DJ if they require one rather than letting you set up an iPod. Cons: this is a long drive away from most people we know so it’s not convenient.
Every time I revisit the cost, I wonder if I’m making the right choice, but I suppose it’s not a lie to say that I’d rather pinch those pennies where I like doing so, building up that cash reserve against these times that we need to spend it on convenience. That still feels specious and at least a little bit like a waste of money.
At this point, I’m still looking at back-up options because our first choice vendor/venue’s hasn’t responded in a few days and I get fidgety. We’ll see if I come up with something better!
___
State of mind: Mostly calm, mildly anxious, wanting to get it over with, but wanting to have a party that’s fun if we’re going to do this because I did kind of hate our first wedding. Because I didn’t get to feel anything but fear and anxiety over my mom, and then guilt because she wanted to come to lunch but I couldn’t let her. It would have pushed my dad over the edge with taking care of her, and I couldn’t risk their safety and health. Because there were half a dozen weird things that were just Not Nice. Because it was followed up by Mom’s death and a horrible year. I have no good feelings about the wedding even though there were really nice spots in it like my best friend flying to be there at the last minute, another really close friend making a Literal Drop Everything Dash to make it. This is my do-over.
___
It’d be nice to have an outdoorsy thing that is bright and cheerful and fun like this, but with more of my idea of fun.
August 26, 2013
A friend’s spouse and I bonded over a plate of overcooked eggs.
“I was really looking forward to my runny egg!”
“I was too!”
“Let’s go get runny eggs.”
And like new playground besties, we ambled off to register our complaint with the server, leaving our spouses to look at us fondly and remark: It’s nice that they have someone to do that with. I would just gripe about it endlessly and do nothing about it.
We all laughed about how much Z and I are alike in refusing to take guff from anyone or be cheated of what we paid for, whereas friend Y and PiC are alike in preferring to let things go, even if they were unhappy.
Since we had, just the day before, gone back to a store for a $4 refund on a candy bar that should have been discounted, I think Y knew I was that type already but it was nice to discover my fellow introvert was also a fellow finance manager.
This led me to wonder, knowing that there are certainly extroverts among us, whether there’s any kind of predisposition for introverts or extroverts to enjoy managing their money more.
*Without assuming that introverts and extroverts are incapable of acting differently from the standard definition of their “type”.
**Borrowing from Wikipedia, working from these definitions and not the assumption that the extraverts are socially competent while the introverts are socially incompetent:
An extroverted person is likely to enjoy time spent with people and find less reward in time spent alone. They tend to be energized when around other people, and they are more prone to boredom when they are by themselves.
Introverts are easily overwhelmed by too much stimulation from social gatherings and engagement, introversion having even been defined by some in terms of a preference for a quiet, more minimally stimulating environment.
August 23, 2013
I have survived!
We have had weeks, literally consecutive weeks, of travel and visiting friends lined up for this summer and we’re finally home with no plans for a good while ahead of us. As an introvert, I’m not 100% sure that it didn’t break something in my brain. But we have returned, and I am alive. And not gibbering. This is good.
Rituals, settling in and shaking down
There have been dozens of trips where I’ve felt completely unready to take the final step out the door and lock it behind me. Either it was unfinished work holding me back mentally or the certainty that I’ve forgotten something. (It’s usually a hairbrush or pants. Or shirts. Sometimes I really shouldn’t leave the house.)
These last few trips have been harder because I’m working my way through juuuust keeping it together, there’s all kinds of family stuff I’m feeling like I’m being dipped upside down in, and we’ve been on the go constantly. The motivation to keep going, it was missing.
As it turns out, the best Getting Ready to Leave routine, aside from actually packing with a whole brain instead of half and getting a sensible majority of work wrapped up, is doing all the laundry and cleaning the house. Coming home to a clean and nearly fresh smelling house is balm for the soul, no matter why the travel and how it went. Even better when the trip was awful and I just want to disappear into Home for about a month.
This does mean that whenever I get home toting bags and bags and bags, I go into a flurry of unpacking, putting-away, and starting the laundry because I came home to a nice clean house, I can’t sully that!
Coming back this time was no different. I wanted to do ALL THE THINGS upon return. All in one night.
Open the mail, pay the bills, sort out a To-Do list for the weekend, finish all my work that I’d fallen behind on, write up some blog posts with recent thoughts, edit photos, finish designing simple wedding things, read one of the new books I bought from the Amazing Bookstore, watch all the Castle episodes that might be new (none, as it turns out).
Apparently I can’t do anything in moderation, not even recovery! I honestly don’t know how @mochimac and @eemusings hold up after months of travel. My travel meter seems to run out after about 2.5 weeks away from home.
August 17, 2013
Friend 1: “Why didn’t you ask for help?”
Friend 2: “PSH, Revanche? Ask for help?” *proceeds to laugh her head off*
– On me nearly unsuccessfully heaving a suitcase into the overhead, thinking I’d be damned if I didn’t get it in there myself.
There’s something almost therapeutic about old friends who know my foibles. I’m terrible at this.
It’s 2:30 in the morning. PiC and I have just set the date for our reception that’s oh, about 2 years overdue or something like that and now it’s time to actually plan this thing. I only get the occasional rage-attacks that tend to leak out when I think “wedding” and “Mom” and “family that was horrible” so this should absolutely go smoothly now.
For the three years since our engagement, the idea of asking people to be involved, to help or stand by me as I navigated the road of being engaged and getting married tasted sour. It was hard to fathom how it wouldn’t be an imposition, that family or friends who hadn’t volunteered might actually be willing to lend an ear, a hand or a brain.
And for the past four months, talking about setting a date and finding a venue, the thought of even asking them to make time to attend felt like a definite imposition. As much as I don’t care about what people think in the abstract, that non-caring only works when I’m doing my own thing and working on my own life. Not when I have to *shudder* share part of my life. Setting a date was something of a random process, filtered and narrowed down as I frantically tried to ensure that the really important people wouldn’t be put out too much.
Not all of this is the rambling of a paranoid, oversensitive loon. More than some of my oldest friends have moved thousands of miles away and it’s no small thing to travel cross country for a wedding.
I mean, weddings. High probability of mediocre food, questionable music, and dozens if not hundreds of strangers surrounding you while you don’t spend quality time with the person you came to celebrate. (yes, i a wildly sentimental.) That hasn’t been the case for most weddings I’ve attended since becoming an adult but only because I started self-selecting out of the ones where I don’t love the person enough to put up with nearly anything for them years ago. As a kid, I was the unwilling baggage at dozens of family weddings, and believe me, when you’re related by way of dad’s mom’s sister’s brother in law’s nephew’s elephant’s trainer, “family” didn’t make them any more special. (Kidding about the elephant trainer because honestly, I would have been 100% all over the elephant trainer thing.)
But it’s time. It’s time to commit to a thing that’s supposed to be special, supposed to be for us to enjoy with our family and friends, and supposed to be memorable in good ways and not the kind that leave me up at night pondering the meaning of life. And for that, it might also be time to learn how to ask for help in a way that lets our loved ones know we want them to be part of it.
We didn’t get here all unwilling after all. We really did want to share some part of this with good friends and family.
~
And speaking of loved ones, maybe I’ll learn how to talk to Dad again. Those conversations have not been going well these past months and I feel like the World’s Worst Daughter for it.
In trying to talk about wedding receptioning, he and I have butted heads far more severely than I ever imagined possible, leading to my insisting that he’s obligated to support me and my decisions rather than insisting that we must invite “all or none” of our relatives. The grief hasn’t been doing either of us any good, and in this situation, being the only child he’s likely to parent at a wedding, I understand that he’s suddenly got a vested interest in “Doing It Right” culturally but … guys. “All” is approximately 500+ people. I would lose my mind. I’m going to do that anyway, what’s the thing after that?
Ach.
In any case, we have a date and a possible venue and we’re going to spend twice as much as my stingy soul’d prefer but whatever. Full service. Small wins, right?
August 8, 2013
These days, especially since the summer started, I’ve been feeling like the days just blend one right into the other.
Not for any bad reason particularly. Or any bad reason generally. I work a lot. PiC’s working a lot. We don’t “get home” from work until around 8 most nights now and we’d normally be eating a lot later than that, and eating out most nights, if I weren’t taking out time in my workday to prep dinners.
My work flexibility has been a serious lifesaver in this regard.
Also on our plates: working the mortgage refi (slammed into a brick wall there); coordinating and scheduling summer travel plans; bills; taking care of Doggle’s various needs; again, keeping ourselves fed with actual groceries. No wonder all I talk about is food and … food, these days!
Our continuing experiment in shared finances is, well, continuing. Halfway through the year, I see that we have spent nearly half the annual budget in some categories and in others, we are way over already.
Household: We both bought new phones this year, a first in a few respects for me. I’ve never paid more than $40 on a phone and I’ve certainly never bought one outright until my contract expired. This time, however, my contract was expired and everyone else on the family plan still had ten months to go. The way my phone wasn’t working, waiting wasn’t an option. Same for PiC, a couple months later.
My verdict after several months of use: I generally like the phone even if it’s too big for my hands but it, like most of my new phones, seems possessed. It’ll randomly turn off without a peep, and other times the screen is slower than molasses. The battery life used to be great but unless I am considered a power user, I think it drains batteries far too quickly. Combined with the fact that sometimes it hates every charging cable but its own so I have to carry my own charging cable everywhere.
Gifts: With two more planned gifts, and not even accounting for yet another wedding we’ve been invited to, we’re already tapped out here. We budgeted $800 which seemed like plenty for giving away of things for a year. I’ve suggested that we skip Christmas gifts for the whole family entirely – you may now call me the Grinch.
Travel: This budget was set pretty high for the year and even though we actually skipped two of the originally planned trips it looks like we’ll use a good percentage of this budget, if not all. And it was a very generous budget, IMO. We’ve spent more time on the road than ever, with more miles to go, enough so that I’m sort of looking forward to end of the year and clearing the slate. And staying home for months on end.
Honestly, I’m kind of running a mental marathon here and I’m not sure when I got so busy but for the first time in my life, I’ve found myself thinking: So much work! But, I like my job and I’m happy.
Hand to JossWhedon, I’m happy with my job right now and that’s one hell of a thing.
Traveling on the hottest weekend EVER. Awesome.
If you can’t tell, the dashboard is showing an outside temp of 110 degrees Fahreinheit. /frazzled.
Doggle was traveling with ice packs on his bed to make sure he stayed cool, even with the air conditioning blasting. Thank heavens the used car we bought really was in excellent condition.
I looked up and it’s already August. How are you guys doing out there?
To answer my own question with a few links:
Can I ever complain about heat to Funny About Money in Arizona? Nooo….
I’m semi-stalking The Asian Pear for Hawaii updates.
Donna’s scold about checking your email for giveaway wins made me smile. If I won more often, that’d be the sole reason I checked email sometimes, these days it’s mostly Twitter doing email’s job trying to tell me all kinds of things. But really, it was the employment of the neighbor children that made me smile. I loved working as a kid, whether it was babysitting or doing my parents’ finances, or whatever and getting paid for it was really some major icing on the cake. Now I love getting paid 😉
My friends in (or done with) academia may enjoy Rebecca Schuman’s thoughts on leaving it and the real definition of sour grapes. It’s a good read.