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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March 24, 2010
Six months ago, we said goodbye to a very dear friend.
It’s tax season, he always thrived during this time of year.
“Uncle,” they called him. As in, “Uncle, here are my forms, will you do my taxes?” Or “Uncle, I have a problem, I need your help.”
Through the years ….
“Uncle, it’s good to see you again. [hug] How have you been? Are you ready for another year of Comic-Con? Is there anything we can bring you back? No? We’ll see you for dinner tonight, I’ll call when we’re on our way home!”
“Uncle, we got you a t-shirt! Thanks for all the fruit you picked out, they were all fantastic for lunch. We saw so much today, I’ll tell you all about it …. “
“Uncle, what were you like as a boss? I’m going to be just like you, never stop working.”
Today …
“Uncle, we miss you. Your oldest is doing so well at his new job. You’d be so proud of him. You’d shake his hand. And give him a good pat on the back. He’s taking care of the family just like he promised. It’s not easy, you knew it wouldn’t be, but you just trust in him. He can do it. Youngest is still, well, still the youngest. Still needs a lot of attention, and more now that you’re gone. Youngest always needed someone to fight with and you were a sure thing. Youngest is a little lost without that anchor now. We all are. I’m still going to be just like you when I grow up. I just wish I’d taken better notes.”
He’s sorely missed.
March 23, 2010
Subtitled: So this is what it’s like, parenting.
Be forewarned, this here’s a rant.
The codependent sibling has struck again. This time, he’s proposing that he move the family to cheaper housing [don’t ask me how he thinks it’s going to be a) attainable, b) affordable, or c) tolerable as I have done my research on this front already], while he stays at the house with the dogs who wouldn’t be allowed in apartment housing, and renovate so that he can sublet to his prospective coworkers.
Leaving aside the costs of moving and maintaining a whole new household, the insanity of depending on him to renovate the house, and the utter lunacy of trusting him with my dog’s life and health, it’s like he’s a newborn babe innocent to all the ways of the world. [A thirty year old newborn.]
He really thinks it’s as simple as that summed up statement there. If I were crazy, foolish, or suicidally inclined, I might be tempted to say, why not? Let HIM take some responsibility for once. Except I’m not any of those and the second everything fell apart, I’d be asked to take over. Aw heck no!
This is the guy who hasn’t managed to pay $200 in rent once a month on time for more than 6 months. This is the guy who couldn’t keep up with his car payments more than halfway through the term, before abandoning the payments to me. This is the guy who evidently thinks I’m a moron and will cede to his Big Plan. Based on what? The essence of fairy dust?
Instead of smacking him upside the head Gibbs-style (ask Mrs. Micah or DebtHater what I mean 😉 by that), I listed just a few responsibilities “taking over the house” entailed, off the top of my head:
1. Are you prepared to feed and care for the dogs? Can you feed them on time every day, no excuses? Can you clean their ears, clip their toenails? Can you bathe them twice a month? Can you get your dog fixed? Can you pick up after them every single day?
2. What are you going to do when one of them gets sick?
3. Can you keep every public room in the house clean, vacuuming everything once a week, cleaning the windows once a quarter, washing the floors once a week?
4. Can you wash the dishes after every meal and wash down the kitchen once a week?
5. Can you turn off every unnecessary light in every room?
6. Can you make sure that no faucet, sink or tub in the house or the garage leaks?
7. Can you make sure that the windows are airtight?
8. Can you live without running the heat or the a/c?
9. Can you pay rent in full, every month, on time?
10. Can you pay the water/trash payments in full, every month, on time?
11. Can you pay the gas payments in full, every month, on time?
12. Can you pay the electric payments in full, every month, on time?
13. Can you pay the insurance payments in full, every month, on time?
14. Can you pay for groceries and gas after paying all those expenses without resorting to credit cards, borrowing money, or otherwise using money you haven’t already earned and received?
15. Can you live on what’s left after paying all those expenses without resorting to credit cards, borrowing money, or otherwise using money you haven’t already earned and received?
16. Can you make sure that the subletters pay their rent money to you on time to cover all of the above bills that you cannot handle on your own?
17. Can you make up the difference between $2500-3000 a month if your renters don’t pay you without resorting to credit cards or borrowing money?
18. How long can you subsidize your friends when someone doesn’t pay? You do know that just your living here doesn’t force them to pay?
19. Unless you have a legal written and signed document, you have very little power as a landlord. But the converse is that evicting someone for non-payment is extremely difficult in the state of California. You have to be unpaid for between three to six months before you’re allowed to evict them.
20. Who will be responsible if there’s an emergency?
21. Who is going to be responsible for a lawsuit if one of them or one of their friends gets injured on the property? You will. As the “landlord” you are legally responsible for injuries that occur on the property whether or not you were there to witness it.
22. How are you going to make time to renovate the house while going to school, working and managing finances for renters when you’ve never done the first two while managing your own finances responsibly consistently?
Now I think I’m going to go smack him upside the head. Honestly!! I have so many more things on my plate to deal with, I don’t have time to raise a 30-year-idiot.
*sigh*
Alright, fine. I’m a liar. I’m still in parenting mode. Because instead of just dismissing him and walking away, I’m giving him rules to abide by if he really wants to prove he’s serious about making things right. I am not sticking around to make him toe the line. Either he does it or he doesn’t, I’m not ceding any rights
School:
1. You lay out what your classes are from now until you graduate on a calendar.
2. You calendar when you will be looking for work that’s related to your degree or what comes next after graduation and how you’re going to make it happen.
3. You list out on a spreadsheet what the cost of school is, how much is covered by the government and what you will pay out of pocket for tuition, fees and books.
4. AND you show on a calendar your registration dates and the tuition due dates.
Rent:
1. You continue to work and earn at least $1000 a month.
2. You set out a budget that I approve in which you lay out how much money you’re earning against how much and what you’re spending. That will include a line item for rent, amount and due date set for the same time every month. It is your responsibility to make sure that I receive payment in full, on time.
3. You note your cash and every single item you spend on in the spreadsheet.
4. At the beginning of each month, your first payment is rent, at the end of every month, you post your spreadsheet with receipts.
House:
1. Whatever you think needs work needs to be scheduled to let everyone know what and when you’re doing a project and how long it will take. Renovations inconvenience everyone and you need to reduce that inconvenience as much as possible.
Does anyone want to start laying bets what kind of response my counter-proposal will get?
March 22, 2010
“Finite means, and deciding how to spend them, has a delicious tension that infinite means can’t supply.”
– From Carla Power’s The Pleasure of Pinching Pennies on Oprah.com
I can’t tell you know much I love that sentiment. The paragraph continues …
“If the lamp’s genie had granted Aladdin limitless wishes instead of just three, where would the fun be in that? The link between thrift and being fully engaged with life’s possibilities was recently noted by Barbra Streisand, of all people. Back before she got famous, she had to stretch her $45 clerk’s salary all week. “Those were amazing times,” she told a talk-show host, “when you have your future ahead of you, and the challenges of making that $45 last, and appreciating every penny.
Spoken like a true multimillionairess, you may scoff. The glamour of making ends meet frays pretty fast when you’re worried about losing your house or going without health benefits. There’s thrift, and then there’s fear, and nobody should confuse the two. But for those fortunate enough not to want for basics, there is a glorious discipline in trying to stretch your money to fit your vision of the world. Like a good workout, or great sex, weighing up how you spend your money recenters you, allowing you to feel the reach and heft of yourself moving through the world.”
The distinction made here between thrift and penury is critical — there was absolutely nothing fun about working 80 hours a week, trying to make decent grades in college, all the while wondering if I was going to bring home enough to pay both the rent and utility bills. There was nothing glamorous about dropping silent tears over my checkbook, willing the numbers to match up and stay in the black.
But years after that was over, when I graduated and started making a little more money, I made choices for myself. I started to appreciate what was truly important and why they meant more to me than eating out or buying Stuff. My parents’ choices made more sense: buying used clothes; handing clothes down through four cousins; only allowing me to borrow, not buy, books; and helping displaced family with comparative luxuries like take-out food, money and shelter. It took some years before I realized that they were making perfectly acceptable sacrifices for their kids to provide basic necessities to our extended family.
When you have just enough to get by, your choices are your values. Your lifestyle brings out the grit and creativity that usually hides deep in your bones.
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My post on buying a car (should I or shun’t I?) was included in this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance! ’twas rough times out there, the Carnival is overrun by the classic ninja vs. pirates vs. nuns vs. fighting robots vs. real estate agents vs. zombies!
March 20, 2010
Deep in the throes of moving and organizing preparations, I keep taking time out to do regular life things.
We had another impromptu sushi dinner last night post-finals. I desperately needed to get out and re-focus my eyeballs after 6 hours of exams. Robin to the rescue!
Speaking of Robin, his promotion came with strings attached; the kind that are designed to make you fail out of the gate because someone else has a pet project/agenda they’re determined to push at someone else’s expense. Unbeknownst to that higher-up, Robin has been heavily recruited by another company for years and their offer was still good. He traded that promo-with-strings for a vastly improved commute, better hours and decent money. Kick rocks, senior management!
The renters insurance paperwork came in today and I’m scanning in all 50 pages of it. While I do that with one hand, the other is making calls to find out why the policy coverage summary is incomplete. I’m pretty sure that splitting my attention like this will cause me to drop the ball on *something* but I can’t just do nothing else while I want for the Epson to scan one page at a time.
If I can navigate the shredder out from behind half a dozen packed boxes, I’m going to start shredding that junk mail; I’ve also just opted the entire family out of receiving prescreened credit card offers using OptOutPrescreen.cpm.
Oh, and I have to do something about those bees. I have no idea what, but there are a LOT of kids in this neighborhood and I would hate for one to go running through that pile of bees, squash some and get stung by all the rest. If anyone’s allergic, that would be a disaster. I don’t want to hurt them either, though, so kill options are not. Not an option, that is.
Oh! And I have to hunt through the house for my boots. I had an old pair of boots and a helmet somewhere around here and they should really come with me.
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And of course, keeping up with the blogging world! Reading and commenting, dashing off notes, etc.
Couple Money has a Netbook giveaway for their 6-month anniversary!
March 19, 2010
Michelle lit a fire under my butt with the suggestion to get my renters insurance in order. I hadn’t committed to a policy since talking about it in October for a very stupid reason: I was grumpy that my quotes were so high in comparison to everyone else’s. That’s just nonsense. I’m insuring a 3-bedroom house with two dogs and earthquake insurance in California; clearly I forgot I wasn’t comparing apples to apples.
But I’ve finally just bitten the bullet – I’ll be gone soon and won’t be here to take care of anything in case of theft, break-ins, etc.
With the following sage advice from my previous post
@Funny About Money: Be sure it covers full replacement value…that is, what it would cost to buy new stuff. Unless a policy specifically says that (and check with the agent to be sure what the wording means), the insurer may pay you only what it decides is the used value. And used furniture and clothing isn’t worth much, by anyone’s reckoning.
— My policy covers full replacement value.
@The Lost Goat: Make sure the plan covers your comic books … I have to get riders to cover my firearms, because they are not considered general household items. Expensive collectible things like firearms, jewelry, and stamps generally require riders (read: more money) if they are valued past a certain amount.
— A comic book rider will cost something like $15/$500 increment, well worth it. The interesting detail about the rider is that if a loss occurs just to the books, I don’t have to pay a deductible. They would simply pay out the claim in the amount insured.
I set up two policies
I’ve increased my required monthly contribution amounts to the Insurance Fund accordingly to make sure that I’m covered this time next year when the renewals come up. When I get the chance – honestly, probably in a month or so, I’ll rate-review again just in case another company had better rates. I don’t get a multi-policy discount anyway so there’s no real reason to be loyal to a single company if I can find comparable value and better rates elsewhere.
March 18, 2010
Does anyone have a safe deposit box for their important documents?
Now that I’m going to be more or less a denizen of California as a whole, and not just local to one or the other region, I feel even more nomadic than when I was just traveling during unemployment. I want to have a secure location to keep my birth certificate, passport, Social Security card, and eventually my will. (The will is still under construction.) It seems a little pretentious to rent out a safe deposit box for just those documents, though, and as though a fireproof, waterproof safe might be a better long term choice.
Until I called the bank, I had no idea the boxes were so expensive, so I’m a bit put off by it. I’d love to hear some arguments for or against the whole idea. Or alternative solutions I’ve not yet considered, even.
March 17, 2010
I was catching up on my Consumerism Commentary when something Flexo said held my attention: “I believe there are several stages to becoming financially secure or independent. There may be a time where it makes sense to save every cent possible…… I had to survive without a car (relying on friends and public transportation), eliminate cable television, and share an apartment with three roommates. Now that I’m earning more than what I need for basic expenses and long-term saving and investing, I don’t have to be as tight. I willingly give up some income in order to buy myself more convenience.”
Earlier this evening, while discussing the car hunt and the various finds under inspection, a friend asked me, “Do you really need a car? Public transportation won’t cut it?”
My initial answer was a glib “no, public transportation doesn’t quite cut it.” Reading Flexo’s comment above pulled me up short, though. Is that true? Do I really need a car to supplement public transportation or am I taking the easy way out and spending more money I can’t actually afford for convenience? *note: Flexo can afford to expand his spending horizons. I don’t mean to imply that he’s taking the easy way out.*
Since the search began, the budget grew to more than I’d wanted to spend because my requirements haven’t been met. If I’m spending enough to dip into the emergency fund, job or no, the decision has to be sound so I returned to the drawing board to rehash my reasons and evaluate their premises.
Reasons I thought I needed a car
1. Because of the Big Lie and the need to transport my personal effects, I needed a long-term car. A one-way rental is too expensive, a round-trip rental is a waste of time and I’d need to fly back.
— Since relocation was successfully negotiated, I should be able to afford to ship personal effects and fly.
Evaluation: Don’t need a car.
2. Driving would be easier due to potentially abnormal working hours.
— I haven’t experienced rush hour in the metro areas yet so I can’t speak to that, but parking costs between free (minimal street parking) to $20/day depending on the various lots. On average, $7/day, $140/month.
Meanwhile, commuting options exist, though inconvenient. The morning commute would require some combination of two buses and 1 rail system with a minimal amount of walking on both ends ($6.50 – 9.30/day) and travel time of 30 minutes. If the location changes as promised, the new commute requires some combination of two buses and 2-3 rail systems with a minimal amount of walking on both ends ($7-9.30/day) and a travel time of 1.5 hours.
Evaluation: The cost could actually be equal, given the trade-off between commute time/transfers and the wear and tear on the vehicle.
3. I’m choosing to find housing in more suburban areas for more affordability which also lends itself to free parking/no zoned parking.
— If I chose to live in the more urban area, I’d likely be in walking or biking distance of most nearby businesses such as restaurants or groceries, entertainment and shopping. But not #4.
Evaluation: I need more data.
4. My preferences for entertainment are far-flung and while potentially cheap or free, require that I be able to reach them somehow.
— I could always hole up in the room with a stack of books and become a hermit. I’m kind of kidding. The reality is that my preference for entertainment is rarely to go out. I prefer to spend quality time with friends or animals. While that can be low-key, it can only happen if you’re mobile.
Evaluation: At first I thought: I spent several years being a hermit in the name of saving money and paying down debt. But my social network won’t be strong enough to rely on friends for transportation.
5. I need to be independently mobile.
— I need to keep costs to a minimum.
Evaluation: No car.
That last part is really a tosser, though, because I have to be honest – I rated the anti #5 argument higher because I’m afraid to stop being being hardcore, down to the bone, slasher frugal. I’ve lived that way for years. Now that I have two (or 1.5 households) to pay for my instincts scream at me to stay that way.
Meanwhile, a competing sense of self(ishness) says that I’m old enough to be on my own and do what I want, and what I want is to be independently mobile. Is my desire to Stop Sharing so strong that I’d pay the cost of another car?
Let’s face it, a car will cost a lot of money for someone who won’t be making serious bucks.
First, there’s the fixed cost of purchase. Let’s say I go wild and plunk down $10k. A little more than half of that was my tax refund and money saved for two years just in case I had to pay taxes. So a little less than that comes out of the emergency fund.
Then we tack on a conservative $1000 for insurance annually. We also have the costs of maintenance and repairs which are typically budgeted around $1500/year. Remember now, that’s not just for the new car, that’s also for my old car which I remain responsible for. So the insurance and maintenance budget has doubled. Then of course, we have fuel, and since I live in CA we have fuel + $$. Conservatively we’ll call it $100/month, with say, $70/mo for parking assuming I cannot always get parking for free.
Can I afford an annual Convenience Fee of $4540, while replenishing a $5000 hole in the emergency fund?
Probably.
Can I afford an additional expenditure of $4540/year without creating major drag on my savings goals for the year?
Well, unemployment already did a number on them so I honestly haven’t set any, but probably not.
To be fair, let’s compare the cost of public transportation commuting against that annual fee.
On the low end, 20 days a month, 12 months a year at $7/day: $1680 x 2 trips a day = $3360
On the high end, 20 days a month, 12 months a year at $9.30/day: $2232 x 2 trips a day = $4464
I’ll be honest, I didn’t see the math playing out this way. I was pretty sure it’d come very firmly down on the side of public transportation. Tolls (for driving) and fare increases (for commuting) were not factored in as they’re not predictable. In truth, even with the car, I’d likely be doing some pub transportation once I figured out that traffic and parking vagaries so these numbers (and the difference in cost) remain soft. With any luck that would bring the daily amount down on average by half.
At the end of the day, after running the numbers, it’s partly a math and partly an emotional decision. If I’m willing to take the initial $5k+ hit to my net worth on the math side, then my emotional side argues for the buy as well.
I am, in essence, the personification of Newton’s Law. When “at rest,” I tend to stay “at rest.” When I’m limited to sharing a vehicle on someone else’s schedule, I have been categorically a shut-in working on my projects indoors from dusk to dawn and back again, without a break. I leave on the spur of the moment and if that’s not possible then I just don’t bother.
Historically then, my sense of stability and productivity is found in part in my ability to go about my business at will, without wondering if the car’s been taken by the shared individual, without having to cut short my errands or reschedule to accommodate someone else’s schedule. It is, I’ll admit, kind of ridiculous. But that’s how I function and that’s what I have to work around. And it’s kind of more ridiculous to refuse to make a purchase that is mathematically acceptable simply because I don’t want to backslide on my monthly numbers.
Note: the calculations for the car are based purely on the commute numbers, but clearly the car will be handy for longer road trips that are tentatively planned for later in the year. Increased usage would increase cost but it’s the function of the car to be used.
