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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April 8, 2008
I’ve finally encountered the awkward check splitting scenario wherein you don’t know the party you’re with well enough to have a well-established routine to take care of the check, and I paid more than my share. GR!
Here’s what went down: C2 and I hung out with her boyfriend and their mutual friend before we gals went out to celebrate C1’s birthday. C2 and I were still full from a late lunch at work, so we just split an entree that was under $7. C2 had a drink, the boys had their own entrees, and drinks. In fact, her friend had two beers. When the bill came, her friend had gone to the restroom, and I threw in my credit card, not really thinking about it, and nearly got stiffed with half the bill. As it was, C2’s boyfriend remembered and called the waitress back to tell her to charge 1/4 of the bill to my card. Except, I should only have paid $5 or $6 for tax and tip. It’s not bank-breaking, but it’s a pointed little reminder that I just paid for some stranger’s beer because I wasn’t paying attention.
Next time, I’m going to remember that this is why I keep mini post-its in my wallet: so that I can write down my share and stick it to my card, thereby avoiding the awkwardness of saying, “er, I had water and half an entree, I’m not sure that I’m responsible for 50% of the bill!”
April 7, 2008
The local chain supermarket has a great (compared to all the other stores right now) sale on fresh asparagus and broccoli. They’re each a dollar a pound, so I went nuts buying three bundles of asparagus, a bunch of broccoli and 4 bananas for just under $6.
One bundle of asparagus, about a pound, will go with me to work this week where they will be roasted in the toaster oven with a drizzle of olive oil, and a sprinkling of salt and pepper. We’re creating our own little office potluck, and I’m super excited about how well these veggies will go with the rest of our lunch: honey baked ham, garlic mashed potatoes, fresh corn, homemade macaroni and cheese (the macaroni pasta will be homemade too!), and steamed broccoli. Yummmmm…. And the total cost for my share? About $2! I might pick up another bundle of asparagus because I don’t know how far one pound will go divided amongst 4-5 people, but that’ll only bring it up to about $3-$4.
I wonder if there’s any use in buying extra asparagus and freezing it? Does anyone know if it keeps well and revives well from freezing? I know that it’ll go on sale again periodically, but once I’m in the mood for asparagus, like when the season starts, I get a bit obsessive about the crunchily delicious veggie.
Not Starring: Denis Leary.
More than ever, I’m realizing how blessed I am by the generosity of my friends. We all hear people say, “Let me know if you need anything,” knowing that we’re never going to ask them for a helping hand. I know I’ve been guilty of that myself, both in extending vague offers of help with the best of intentions, and accepting the sentiment but never actually taking the gesturers up on it. I’m simply not the girl who waits a knight to ride up on a horse of any color to dramatically save me from my lot in life, and actively discourage any such pretensions from the get-go if I share my “tales of woe.” That’s a pretty big if, since I know that some of my back story easily sounds like a plea for pity or martyr points, and that’s just not the game I play.
It’s a whole different world, however, to have trusted friends who actively enable you to join them and leave your worries behind, or descend upon you as A did to me yesterday, and kidnap you for an entire afternoon of talk and being away from home. Her immediate response to my stressful day was simply beyond price.
A took me to Fuddrucker’s for lunch, my first experience there, and I had an amazing turkey burger with about two inches worth of toppings and condiments. I like my veggies š If you’ve never been there, they have build-it-yourself stations with fresh lettuce, sliced tomatos, sliced onions, diced tomatos and onions, and pickles. There’s another station with all sorts of condiments: ketchup, BBQ sauce, three or four kinds of mustards, etc. We settled in with our massive burgers and had a good long discussion of how things stand at home, and the short talk I had with PaDucky about my need to leave. He was very accepting of that statement, but I don’t know if that’s because he was taken by surprise and didn’t know how to react, or if he simply understands. I can only hope it’s the latter.
Another friend joined our chat, and we had a chance to mull over some of the decisions I’m going to need to make. This won’t happen overnight, or immediately, but it helps to have sounding boards, and it’s a little comforting to know that my decision isn’t completely crazy.
April 6, 2008
In a few months, I’ll be 26, and have never left home. Traveled a bit, yes, spent a little time away from home, yes. Moved out for college? No. Moved away for a new job? No.
There are, of course, reasons. First and foremost, I’ve always taken my responsibility to my family to heart. It seemed the obvious choice: family in trouble? I can help? A + B = C!
Second, it was practical. So long as I was within commuting distance of work, what sense did it make to maintain a separate household? After all, I was supporting the family, and it’s only logical to conserve limited resources.
Third, it was a form of safety in numbers. BroDucky has a history of abusing the family’s resources, and I’m the only barrier he respects. For myself, I could work extraordinarily long hours to bring in extra money, and not have to worry about cooking for myself, grocery shopping, cleaning, home maintenance, or change for the laundromat, or living in a crappy apartment or bad neighbors, or any of the thousand and one minor details involved in living alone.
Fourth, it was my duty, wasn’t it? The essence of filial piety is to be there when needed. After all, they raised and supported, suffered and sacrificed for me for twenty odd years. More importantly, someone had to offset my bum of a brother. Since my parents had settled for two kids, I was left holding the bag.
In essence, all the reasons to stay seemed logical, practical and sensible. I could come and go as I pleased if I had time, and there was usually food in the house, and for the most part, I just paid the bills and did my thing. Sure, I thought it’d be awful nice to experience independent life, and have my own living space, and all, but it wasn’t a terrible situation, living at home, and that was a want, not a need.
But.
The past several months have really shaken my emotional balance to the core, and I’m realizing that as things just continue to deteriorate in my home, I just can’t stand it any longer.
I have to stop enabling my parents, namely my father, by subsidizing their lives while he searches for the right thing to do. Now, don’t get me wrong, he has been trying to some degree. He wasn’t sitting at home doing nothing the last several years, but he could really have done better. But, frankly, it’s only been in the last few months that he’s really set aside his pride and taken more drastic steps to produce some income. His previous approach to employment and the choices he made to be picky about some job offers were less than satisfactory to me and MaDucky, but neither of us could sway him to the sensible choice at that time. (It’s amazing how similar this situation is to my brother. Or not so amazing, really.) Now that he’s in motion, I’m trying to encourage the momentum.
Adding to the conflict is MaDucky’s health has declined, and she’s become extremely irrational, combative and accusatory. She’s forgetful and easily confused, and very shaky on her feet. She’s fallen countless times in the past few months, as PaDucky has reported back to me, and matters are further complicated by her insistence on finding a job. I’ve spoken to her at length, explaining that the only thing that’s important is her health, and that PaDucky and I would take care of the finances, but she’s so paranoid that she doesn’t trust him or his judgment, and spends most of her time accusing him of not caring about her, and blaming him for all his mistakes up to this point. Combined with her insistence that she’s “fine,” her mentality makes for very frustrating discussions because she can only focus on all his failings, and how they’ve hurt her. I understand that she’s depressed, anxious about money and more than a little mentally distraught, but her absolute deathgrip on negativity is nigh on impossible to break. She’s so tightly bound in her feedback loop of blame and anger that all she can do is drag me into the downward spiral with her, and that seriously stresses me out. Getting her to comply with the least little thing is like pulling teeth.
Between the three of them, I’ve come to the end of my rope. I simply can’t maintain my sanity when all I hear is bad news and tattling about the other family members’ behavior.
I’ve certainly been encouraged by my friends to get out, but it seemed so selfish to say that I no longer want to be here at Ground Zero because …. because I just didn’t want to. Close friends have insisted that it’s not selfish, but when my reason is simply that I just don’t want to be here anymore, it sure seems that way. There are other reasons, of course, like not wanting to sacrifice my life for my parents’ lives, not wanting to live their lives instead of mine by making decisions that are solely based on helping family and thereby eroding my own personal stability. But that sounds selfish. Friend A’s response was the only one that assuaged my guilt: No animal is meant to live with their parents forever. And besides, it’s not like I won’t still be around to help. I would just have a safe haven to retreat to at the end of the day.
So, for the first time, I’m seriously thinking about an exit strategy. It’s arguably the worst time to make this decision, yet, I can’t NOT. I don’t know where I should go, no idea when I’m planning to be out, heck, no idea if I can even stand this job much longer if Little Boss continues his madness! And despite my conviction that I always wanted to be going to something and not running away when I leave home, I feel the desperate need to do this for myself, never mind the overwhelming guilt that I’m abandoning my family, nor the feeling that I’m lacking in filial piety or humanity. And I’ve never said that before.
April 5, 2008
Remember my great couple friends? Last week, they invited me to join them this weekend for a play or musical. They’d been getting tickets on the cheap, they’d said, and threw out a $20-ish price range. Even though I’m on a pretty strict spending diet, I’ve never seen Phantom of the Opera, and getting out for a cultural experience for $20 sounded great.
Sadly, the tickets were priced out at $70 yesterday, and I had to decline. I can spare $20, but definitely not $70. Instead of letting me off the hook, Friend C offered to pay the rest of the ticket’s cost. I felt like that was just too much, and I told him so, but he insisted that not only was it not too much, he was perfectly happy to do it. Still, uneasy with his spending that much on me, I told him to think about it and be absolutely sure he was ok with it before buying my ticket.
He called me this morning to let me know that he’d picked up our tickets, and in a little over an hour, we’ll be bound for the Performing Arts Center. I’m really excited, but mostly keep thinking that they’re way too good to me.
April 4, 2008
Readers, please head over to MoneyDummy’s and laud her for an amazing job of paying off her student loan debt over the last year and a half. She (and he) managed to pay off eighteen thousand dollars with one child in the home and a new one during that time.
What an incredible accomplishment!
This isn’t the first time I’ve pondered this and I’m sure it’s getting old. I’m mulling over the various adjustments I’d like to implement for Tax Year 2008. I know what my annual goal was fairly sensible, but in light of some mistakes made in Tax Year 2007, I need to make some post-Q1 adjustments.
Mistake Number 1: Underestimating the amount of “contractor” income I was going to make.
This led to Mistake Number 2: Adjusting my withholdings drastically to make up for what I thought had been excessive withholding, given my Head of Household status. For the last few months of the year, I was paying very little federal tax.
Had I not received so much untaxed income in Q4, too late to correct the withholding and increase my retirement contributions correspondingly, my estimate of my taxable income and corresponding tax bill would have been just about perfect.
Instead, the effects of the two mistakes above were:
1. I ended up owing the entire amount of taxes assessed on the untaxed income, and
2. My percentage of retirement contributions of total income was significantly lower than it should have been.
3. I think I’m being assessed a $32 federal penalty for not making quarterly payments on that income because I withheld too little. š
Rather than making quarterly payments this year, I’m considering the following:
1. Increase my retirement contributions for the rest of the year to include the equivalent of 30% of the untaxed income.
2. Save 10% of the untaxed income for taxes, instead of the usual 30%.
3. Keep my withholding at 1 and add a small, additional amount per month so that I don’t have to waste time, money and brain capacity on sending in quarterly payments.
I like this plan because I really like watching the balances in my Vanguard account go up (despite the market volatility, it creeps up now and again). I really like the idea of committing to a bit more in the retirement accounts. I like reducing that feeling of false security when I’m holding a lot of cash in anticipation of a tax bill.
Cons of the plan: reducing my take-home pay even more will make budgeting even more difficult. I’ll have to be ultra-careful about juggling expenses because I’m no longer holding out until that next fat supplement check, what I gots is what I gots!
Any cons that I’m missing here?