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Month: June 2008

A Square Peg in a Round Hole: Biweekly pay in a bimonthly world

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As advantageous as a biweekly pay schedule may be to The Man, it sure is a pain to us wage slaves. Creditors expect to be paid once a month, not whenever our biweekly paycheck shows up. Because biweekly pay dates precess throughout the year, they don’t coincide neatly with due dates for bills. No matter how accommodating your utility company or credit card provider tries to be, there’s no way you can schedule bill due dates to be sure enough money will be available to cover every monthly payment. Why? Because you’re never paid on the same date. Some months, the second paycheck arrives after bills start to come due.

The phone bill is due the first of the month, and Qwest, my only uncooperative creditor, absolutely will not change the billing date. All my other bills come due on or after the 20th. Most months, two paychecks have arrived by the 20th, providing enough to cover all my regularly recurring household and insurance bills plus the credit card charges for groceries and routine living expenses.

But a look at the Great Desert University’s payday calendar shows problems arise in April, May, June, and September. In April, GDU doesn’t disburse its second paycheck until the 25th. By then, an American Express bill is due; I budget $1,500 for food, household, yard, gasoline, and such, all charged on AMEX. Usually I spend about $1,100 or $1,200. Utilities and other regular recurring bills can run as high as $840, especially in the summertime, when the costs of water and electricity track the thermometer. AMEX closes on the 20th and the check needs to be mailed by the 1st. Visa closes before then (sometimes I’m forced to use Visa if I have a lunch meeting at a restaurant near the campus—few of them take American Express). Power, water, insurance, and the Renovation Loan are due on or shortly after the 20th. With as much as $2340 due, I need that second $1,522 paycheck by the 20th, not whenever GDU gets around to paying me.

Meanwhile, each month I have to put into savings $300 a month to cover annual property tax, homeowner’s insurance, auto insurance, and car registration; $200 a month to put into the Renovation Loan payoff fund; and $175 for extras such as clothing and to cover emergencies such as vet bills, car repairs, and house maintenance. So in any given month, I’m disbursing up to $3,015 out of a $3,044 income. With $29 to spare, that’s too tight to cut corners.

But in April, we’re not paid until the 28th! That paycheck has to cover bills that have already come due and cover the $87 Qwest bill due on May 1. It also has to cover half the monthly savings setasides: $337.50. I don’t get paid again until the 9th, when again I set aside half of all the monthly expenses and savings. But this doesn’t cut the mustard: In May I again go unpaid until after my monthly bills come due. Same thing happens in June. And in September. And in October. In every one of those months, I wonder if enough cash will be available to pay my regular bills!

Another consequence of this annoying system is that I never know how much is left over from a month’s worth of pay, making it impossible for me to “snowflake” the Renovation Loan. With bimonthly pay, checks posted on the 1st and the 15th. Each check covered the same two-week period. So, on the 31st, I could look at my checking account’s bottom line. Any amount left after all my expenses were paid was mine. It either went into my diddle-it-away savings or, more recently, it went to snowflake down the Renovation Loan. But now the cash remaining in my account on the 31st has to last me until a week or 10 days into the following month. Who knows whether there’s any disposable money there?

I need to be paid on a bimonthly basis. I finally figured out how to swing that. If my employer won’t pay me bimonthly, I will.

Here’s how it works:

  1. Set up a savings account and a checking account.
  2. Try to get as many of your creditors as possible to bill you after the 20th-as late in the month as possible.
  3. Arrange to have all EFTs taken from the checking account, and pay for all other bills and living expenses from that account.
  4. Make an accurate estimate of all your monthly expenses. For amounts that fluctuate, such as power and water bills, use the largest amounts to figure these estimates.

Starting in a month when you get paid on or very near the 1st:

  1. Have your pay deposited to the savings account. (Or, if necessary, transfer the entire amount from the account that receives it into the savings account.)
  2. On the first of the month (or the payday that comes closest to it) pay yourself 1/2 of the estimated amount of your monthly expenses. Put this in the checking account, which serves as a “cookie jar” to hold funds to pay expenses.
  3. Bills that are paid before the 20th should be covered by this amount.
  4. When your 2nd biweekly check comes in that month, again pay yourself 1/2 the estimated monthly expenses. Try to pay yourself on the 15th. Because twice a year an “extra” paycheck arrives, your “pool” in savings eventually makes this feasible.
  5. Bills that come due after the 20th should be covered by this amount.
  6. On the last day of the month, transfer your monthly savings to whatever instrument you’re using (money market account, mutual fund, stocks & bonds, etc.)*

Now put your entire biweekly paycheck in the savings account as it comes in. Then pay yourself bimonthly from the fund that accrues in the savings account, by transferring the amount you need to live on from savings to checking and the amount you want to save from savings to the desired financial instrument.

The effect of this is that you should always have enough in checking to cover your regular expenses. If any money is left over from your monthly budget, you will see it in your checking account.

But because of the precession of the biweekly pay, over time extra money will also accrue in the savings account. You can determine this leftover amount ONLY in months where you get paid on or near the first. In my case, that’s January and July. It looks as though after about six months of this, something like $1600 of unused money should collect in the account that receives automatic pay deposits.

If you have my arithmetical skills, too, you can start paying yourself a bimonthly salary only in a month where you get paid on or near the first. Otherwise it’s impossible to make the transfer needed to cover the first two weeks of the month in any comprehensible way.

Here’s how this looks, over the second half of 2008:
Green type shows what is in the “Inflow” savings account. Black type shows what gets transferred to checking to cover expenses. I start in July, because we get paid on the 3rd, which is pretty close to the start of the month.

We’re not quite on track to “pay” me on the the 1st and the 15th, because GDU doesn’t cough up the paycheck until the third. In August we do get paid on the 1st. Not only that, but on the 29th we get a so-called “third” paycheck, which is not really three paychecks to cover a single month’s expenses but simply the check that, in a bimonthly world, would have been paid on September 1, arriving five days out of synch with the following month’s billing cycles.

In July, things are pretty tight. If I’m lucky, I’ll have $29 left from my July paychecks. Mercifully, in August a small miracle happens: we get paid on the actual first day of the month. So, that $29 doesn’t have to cover the $87 phone bill. This puts my monthly pay-me system on track. After I’ve paid myself on the 1st and the 15th, I still have just enough cash in the inflow savings account to cover the monthly savings setasides of $675; that amount isn’t actually coming out of the the August 29 paycheck, which now starts to form a “pool” from which I will pay myself bimonthly.

In September, things start to get interesting. After the three paychecks in August, we end up with $1,609 in the inflow savings account. We don’t know how much, if any, of that is “free” money, not committed to paying October bills, it has to stretch until September 12. The September paychecks, due on the 12th and the 26th, are totally out of synch with bill-paying reality, and so there’s no way for an English major to understand what’s what here.

Not until December do we see clearly how this is working out. All the December bills and savings setasides are covered by December 15, with $164 to spare. Then on December 19 another paycheck comes in, bringing the inflow savings balance to $1,684.

But… We see from the payday calendar that GDU cuts the next paycheck on January 2. In other words, January paychecks coincide with the actualities of monthly billing. The January 2 and January 15 checks will cover all January bills, and so that $1,684 is not needed to pay expenses! It amounts to six months’ worth of snowflakes, and it can be used to pay down the Renovation Loan or put into savings. w00t!

Not being an accountant or a mathematician, I have no idea how this works. Evidently forcing bimonthly pay from the biweekly paydays must capture one of the so-called “extra” paycheck every six months. When you disconnect your monthly “pay” from your biweekly pay, somehow you recover the 25th and 26th paychecks that otherwise would have to serve to cover their own two-week periods.

Biweekly paychecks come on or near the first of a month only a couple of times a year. But this is apparently the only time when you can be certain of how much unspent income has accrued.

It’s a damnable nuisance, of course, all the shifting of funds. But this system-pooling biweekly income to pay yourself bimonthly-works to cover your bills reliably. It ensures that the money to pay your recurring obligations will be available when it’s needed.

* Although in Quicken I “pay myself first” by posting transfers into savings and mutual funds on the first of the month, I delay making the actual transfers until the end of the month, so the cash will be there to cover unexpected budget overruns or small emergencies. Posting the transfer at the start of the month shows a balance after the savings setasides, which keeps me from overspending except in emergencies.

6 Comments left on iWeb site:

!wanda

I’m so happy I’m paid monthly.

Thursday, June 19, 2008 – 01:29 PM

Seeking Clarification

I’m confused by some of your terminology… “bi-” means “every other…”, and “semi-” means “twice a…” The title of your article is “Make bi-weekly pay work in a bi-monthly world” which says “Make an every-other-week payday work in an every-other-month world.” I don’t know many people who could get paid every other month and survive! Certainly not me! 🙂

Should that be “Make biweekly pay work in a semi-monthly world” meaning, get paid every other week, when twice a month would be more conducive to bill-paying?

Friday, June 20, 2008 – 08:45 AM

vh

Actually, in current usage “bimonthly” is correct. My Random House Webster’s, for example, defines “bimonthly” both ways: “2. occurring twice a month”; and “5. twice a month, semimonthly.”

A discussion of this usage appears with the entry for the prefix bi-. “Most words referring to periods of time and prefixed with BI- are potentially ambiguous. Since BI- can be taken to mean ‘twice each’ or ‘every two,’ a word like _biweekly_ can be understood as ‘twice each week’ or ‘every two weeks.’ Confusion is often avoided by using the prefix SEMI- meaning ‘twice each’ (_semiweekly; semimonthly; semiannual_) or by using the appropriate phrases: _twice a week, twice each month, every two months, every two years_).”

I usebimonthly to mean “twice a month” because that’s how my employer uses it and it’s how HR people and payroll accountants across the nation use it.

Saturday, June 21, 2008 – 06:30 AM

Sally

I just pay half of my bills each payperiod. I’ve been doing this with online billpay, and I’ve had no problems at all. The only thing it doesn’t work with is my rent. I have to save half of it.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008 – 04:14 PM

PKSublime

Okay I really don’t like your solution very much.There is a better, easier way to do this.
What you do is save ALL your paychecks from month 1 and then pay ALL your bills on the 1st of month 2 that will/are due in month 2.
The concept of “living off last months income” is a great way to operate, and is anthemed by followers of “The YNAB Way” over at http://www.youneedabudget.com./

Wednesday, June 25, 2008 – 01:45 PM

vh

@ Sally: It’s never occurred to me to ask my creditors if they would accept half-payments. Besides, how would you know how much to pay? Creditors send out a bill once a month, not twice a month; and except for the phone company (whose bill is always the same because I don’t make long-distance calls), every statement is different. The power bill ranges from $80 to $180, for example.

@ PKSublime: Unclear how what I’m proposing here differs much from YNAB. Over six months, you would end up with the equivalent of one paycheck residing in your account (a little more, if you spend less than you earn); over a year you’d have a full month’s worth. That would happen because of the payday precession, with no effort on your part. With YNAB, it appears that the amount you would set aside to pay down debt or build savings would have to go to build a month’s worth of extra living expenses. It would take you quite a while to accomplish that. The scheme above lets you start right now, with no waiting period while you build a stash. Personally, I’m put off by the blatant commercialism of YNAB: pay us and we’ll tell you our secrets (which appear to amount to “budget, pay off debts, live within your means, build savings.” Thanks…I’ll figure it out for myself.

Thursday, June 26, 2008 – 05:25 AM

Stop the presses…literally

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Word on the street has it that The Arizona Republic, the only daily metro newspaper serving the fifth-largest city in the nation, is laying off most of its photographers and much of its editing staff. A few unseasoned reporters will be retained. In the fall, we’re told, the Republic is slated to morph into a tabloid. Those who will staff this downsized entity, the ghost of our right-to-work state’s flagship newspaper, will have no health insurance and a pension plan that will be, shall we say, commensurately downsized. Thus saith the paper’s present owner, the Gannett Corporation.

The Republic, having abandoned journalism years ago, no longer has much of a readership. It’s losing readers even as the population of the Valley grows. There’s a reason for that: it doesn’t publish news.

This is no exaggeration. One year a mayoral campaign came and went with almost no mention of the candidates. Yesterday (we’ll give it this much), its print edition mentioned that unless Our Esteemed Legislators approve a budget within the next two weeks, the state budget will expire and state employees will not be paid on July 3. Having heard this from La Maya and having a vested interest in getting paid on July 3, I went to the Republic‘s online edition and found not…one…word about the possibility that Arizona’s largest employer may fail to pay its workers and that state government is, as we speak, preparing to shut down all nonessential services. The lead online story concerned the recent opening of a new ice cream store.

Turning this formerly major metropolitan newspaper into a throw-away tabloid will put it head-to-head with New Times, which succeeds because it has verve, sass, only the thinnest veneer of journalistic ethics, and lots of advertising. Lots and lots of advertising. New Times is entertaining but devoid of credibility. On the other hand, it does attempt to follow local politics. You can’t believe a word it publishes about local government, but at least it has some words!

Newspapers that abandon their mission to deliver the truth to the public and forget the importance of that mission have nothing to sell. For a long time the Republic has staggered along with dwindling advertising, but as readers lost interest in the paper’s content, advertisers lost interest in its ballooning space rates. Who reads the local newspaper’s classifieds when you can go to Craig’s List? What’s the point of pawing through page after page of irrelevant retail adds to clip a few coupons when you can download what you want from the Web? And why pay to advertise in a newspaper that nobody reads?

I canceled the Sunday Republic when I realized that the only things I was reading were the front page (part of it) and the funny strips; it felt ugly and irresponsible to throw away three or four pounds of advertising to read a half-dozen pages of ephemera. Just the thought of how many trees were pulped only to be tossed directly into the trash disgusted me, and I decided to stop abetting that kind of criminality. Not long after, I realized I’d rather pay to have The New York Times delivered to my house and so canceled the Republic altogether.

It’s a sad development. There’s a reason journalism is called the Fourth Estate. It’s an important part of the polity of a democratic republic. When we cannot get information about what’s going on down at City Hall or over at the State House, we as voters are in the dark. And our path through the darkness, as we have already seen over the past decade, is inexorably leading us toward tyranny.

Getting back on budget

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[sorry: this is an old post from iWeb. i neglected to change the date on it]

I am broke, broke, y-broke!

The $1,012.53 the vets charged for Anna’s care over the past month and a half ran my budget into the red last month and did it again this month. Every week this month has ended in red ink. For the current week, which began the day before yesterday and runs through the 20th, I’m already $3.09 in the red. And I need groceries, dog food, gasoline, repairs on the irrigation system, and repairs on the pool cleaner. Getting back on budget before my financial structure implodes calls for some serious fiscal strategizing!

Here’s where we are now:

The first step in getting back on track with a budget is to figure out what you absolutely must purchase before the end of the limping budget cycle. Luckily, I have plenty of food in the freezer to carry me over for a week. I’m out of orange juice, but I won’t die without it, and besides, M’hijito has neglected to harvest the Arizona sweets on the tree in his back yard; before the hour is over, whatever fruit is still usable will be in my refrigerator. The repairs can wait-whether they can or not, they’ll have to. One is a minor fix that I tried to do this morning but found my hands were not strong enough to perform; with any luck I can get a male to do this for free. If not, the plants will have to live for a few days without water, or I’ll have to haul a hose around the yard.

So, this leaves us with only two genuinely imminent purchases:

With the van down a third of a tank of gas, there’s no chance I can make five round-trip commutes to the Great Desert University without refilling. A fill-up now exceeds $55, and so if I have to buy more gas between now and the 21st, I’ll be deep in the red. The little dog turns up her nose at Science Diet (which, despite the hype and the vigorous marketing to veterinary practices, really isn’t all that great for dogs-it’s full of meat “meal” [you don’t even want to know what that is!], corn, and brewer’s rice, baleful ingredients one and all). I found a canned food that contains real meat, brown rice, and vegetables, exactly what I would feed if I cooked her food myself, but as you can imagine, it ain’t cheap. Luckily, she doesn’t eat much. She’ll have to make do with the Science Diet I picked up when I got her, which I’ll use to stretch a can or two of fancy dog food. If I run out of quality canned dog food, she can eat cottage cheese with veggies and rice, which I have on hand. So, $55 for gas plus about $7 to $10 for dog food will put me about $68 in the hole at the end of this month.

That’s the best-case scenario. But there’s only five more days to go, and so it COULD happen. I might not even have to spend that much on gas-half a tank purchased on Wednesday or Thursday would take the car back and forth to campus for the rest of the billing cycle and cost about $30. So there’s an outside chance the budget may be only $38 in the red. Only. Argh.

ther expenses are pending. This situation requires me to list upcoming expenses, distinguish what is urgent and what can be put off, and how I will do without them.

So, let’s suppose that between now and next Saturday I manage to restrict spending to two or three cans of dog food and some gasoline. Where exactly will the missing $38 to $68 come from?

One source is the emergency fund. As I’ve remarked before, I keep $500 of my emergency fund in checking, to serve as a “cushion.” So in fact, even if I overspend my $1,500 budget, the cash will be there to prevent a check to American Express from bouncing. I could simply end the month in the red, put it behind me, and try to stay in the black next month.

But I’d rather not eat into the emergency fund unless absolutely necessary. Even though the breathtaking veterinary bills for Anna amount to a budgetary “emergency,” I’m close enough to the black that my regular diddle-it-away savings could cover the budget overrun. In fact, my “play money” savings account contains about $1,400, so I could easily convert the red ink to black right now. I could transfer the $368.53 deficit that ran this week’s apportioned budget into the hole from savings to checking. That would put this week in the black and cause me to stop grinding my teeth about this matter.

However, I’d rather use my diddle-it-away savings for something fun, not to cover the cost of my pet dog’s death. This is particularly so since GDU’s dratted biweekly pay schedule has reduced the monthly play-money savings from $200 a month to $87.50 a paycheck, meaning it took a long time to accrue $1,400.

The most sensible strategy, I think, will be to wait until the billing cycle ends, on the 20th, and then transfer the amount of the overrun from play-money savings to checking. If I manage to keep the red ink to no more than $70, that’s a lot better than a $368 bite. In fact, all I’d have to do is not make one of this month’s biweekly deposits to savings: the $87.50 would more than cover it.

So, to summarize: What are the strategies to deal with budget overruns?

  1. Establish and maintain an emergency fund!
  2. As the budget nears zero, list pending expenditures.
  3. Separate out absolutely necessary spending from purchases that can be put off.
  4. Describe in writing which spending to put off, and write down what exactly you will do to cope without these items or services.
  5. Calculate the amount of your shortfall, after necessary expenditures.
  6. Use discretionary savings to cover the shortfall, to the extent possible.
  7. Fall back on your emergency savings when you have to.

Decision Made! Dog scored!

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Meet Cassie:

Cassie is a two-year-old Pembroke Welsh Corgi. I found her at the Humane Society, among the woebegone cast-off, lost, and abused mutts. She looked like she’d been immaculately cared for — her long hair was clean and perfectly groomed. What an amazing little dog!

It’s hard to believe you could find a relatively rare, apparently pure-bred pooch in the Humane Society shelter, but lo! there she was. Her picture had been posted for nine hours when I found it online, and I was at the door the next morning when the place opened. Eight people had already inquired about her.

Here are the advantages of adopting an adult dog from a rescue organization:

  • You get around the various puppy stages that entail destroying the carpets with excreta, unearthing the flowerbeds, and shredding the furniture.
  • If you’re lucky, the dog is already obedience trained.
  • You can see what the dog will look like when it’s grown up.
  • For $50 (make that $25 if you’re over 65 years old!), the Humane Society gives you the dog, throws in a cheesy collar and leash, neuters the dog, updates all its vaccinations, and treats the animal for fleas and ticks. You also get a free veterinarian’s check-up and five weeks of free care for common ailments picked up in kennels.
  • And you do the planet a favor by taking in an unwanted dog that’s already here rather than bringing yet another puppy into our overpopulated world.
  • Financially, adopting a grown dog represents a large savings, because dogs cost you the most when they’re puppies and when they’re old codgers.

The reason her humans gave for getting rid of her was that she barked. Apparently they were in the habit of keeping her in the house all the time they were home and then when they left, locking her outside.

Well, you’d bark, too, if you were locked out of your home in 100-degree heat.

We’ll return to that issue in a moment. Meanwhile, what a difference between a 23-pound dog and an 85-pound dog!

She eats 1 1/3 cups of dog food a day, barely a mouthful for a Ger-shep. She’s a dainty little eater and drinker, never slopping food and water onto the floor. That means the water dish can be in the house instead of on the back porch, and she only needs one bowl of water. In the backyard, instead of mounds she deposits pellets. Like a rabbit!

She doesn’t go on the furniture — won’t even go on a seat in the car. She did want to get into the bed with me last night, but finally settled for a nest on the soft rug next to the bed. She’s not interested in the pool and apparently doesn’t much like to get wet.

So we went for a doggy-walk this morning, down to the park. This exercise revealed a number of amazements.

Item: We don’t try to bring down vehicles by their oil pans. Anna’s atavistic psyche regarded cars and trucks as buffalo and mastodons, and she craved to chase them down and grab them.

Item: We’re not interested in yanking the Park Service’s lawn sprinklers out of the ground.

Item: We don’t even want to plunge into the flying (untreated!) irrigation water and frolic around in it. We will cross the street to avoid getting the stuff on our elegant fur.

Item: We like dogs. We do not trick them into a false sense of confidence by grinning and wagging at them before going for their jugulars.

Item: The human needs to find its old Sierra cup so we can have a drink of water en route.

Item: We can slip our collar. Yipe!

Item: But if we do, we don’t go very far.

Now about the barking issue:

The pound was a madhouse. Reports that people are abandoning their dogs as they’re evicted from their foreclosed homes are not exaggerated. The shelter was overflowing with dogs, most of them barking, yelping, and screaming nonstop, and it was jammed with prospective dog owners. But Cassie was absolutely silent.

When she was taken out of the dog run, she remained quiet and very calm.

“That dog doesn’t appear to be a barker,” I said to the volunteer.

“Sometimes people lie about the reason for turning in a dog,” she said.

Hm. Why do I doubt it?

Here’s why: Cassie is a Velcro dog. She wants to be with the human at all times. She doesn’t want the human out of her sight.

Cute, endearing . . . and not a good sign! Velcroing is never a good sign in dogs. It means the dog is uncomfortable in one way or another, either physically or psychologically. In the case of dogs that bark nonstop or rip up the furniture when the humans leave, it reflects canine separation anxiety.

It’s a sign of bad habits on the part of the dog’s humans: doting on the dog, carrying on with lots of cooing and petting when you leave, carrying on with lots of excited fawning when you come back in the house, failing to persuade the dog that it has to do something for you to obtain what it wants. I’m not suggesting you abuse or be cold to a dog; merely that you have to behave as though you’re the head of the pack and you expect the rest of the pack to believe you’ll be back when you leave. And not to act like ninnies who will bring predators to the den by yipping and whining while you’re out bringing down a mastodon.

I tried walking out the front door last night, and indeed, Cassie started yipping about 30 seconds after I shut the door. Stupidly, I’d left the side gate locked, and so I couldn’t walk around the house and come in another door. Walking back in the same door after she had begun to vocalize meant, of course, that I rewarded the vocalizing. Argh!

But this morning I took the opportunity to close the door behind me on the way into the garage, walk away from the door, and then walk back and open it before she could start to make any noises. And I locked her out of the bathroom when I went to the john without creating a fuss.

Then I started some sit-down-stay training, a crucial skill for the process of helping the dog get past this sort of behavior. It looks like someone trained her to sit, but the trick is remembered fuzzily. She will go down, but she’s so submissive she wants to roll over when you try to coax her into the “down” position. And “stay”? Surely you jest!

So, there’s some hope here. If a dog can be gently relieved of separation anxiety, it takes about two months of steady, consistent training. This could be a challenge, because I have to go to work.

However, because my house is on a third of an acre, she can bark herself stupid inside the house and not disturb the neighbors. I will alert my closest neighbor Sally, though, and tell her to let me know if the dog makes her crazy. If push comes to shove, I can take Cassie with me to the office (ah, the joys of working at a university in an office where your dean can’t see you!) until I can take some vacation time to focus on this matter.

So, we join the Queen of England and the House of Windsor in our admiration for these funny little dogs. Just call me Betty! Or “Your Majesty” will suffice.
Thanks to everyone who commented on yesterday’s post!

2 Comments left on iWeb site

Pinchnickel

That dawg has a sly look about it, as though already aware of a favorite air conditioning vent.Which part of the dawg carries the rear forward?

Saturday, June 14, 2008 – 12:33 PM

Mrs. Micah

Aww! She’s adorable!! And she sounds like a real sweetheart, if clingy. Good luck with the whole desensitizing training. 🙂

Sunday, June 15, 2008 – 05:55 AM

How do you make a long-term decision rationally?

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What strategies do you use when you need to make a decision that will affect your finances and lifestyle for years? Possibly for the rest of your life?

They may be huge decisions: Should we have a baby? Should we adopt a child? Should we move Mom into the spare room or pay to put her up in a life-care community? These are moves that will change your life permanently.

They may be decisions that, while still big ones, can be reversed or won’t necessarily last forever: Should I buy a car? Should I rent or buy housing? Should I quit my job and go back to school to finish a degree?

Or they may be smaller decisions that, while they won’t change the course of your life, will affect your finances for months or even a year or so: Should we get that new Play-Station? Maybe we should buy a $5,000 wide-screen HDTV and subscribe to cable when regular broadcasting goes off the air? Should I lend my weird cousin a couple thousand bucks to start a business, money that he’ll probably never repay?

Thinking through the costs and consequences of decisions like these takes some strategizing. And I must say, strategize as I might, I’m never perfect at arriving at the “right” decision, whatever that might be. Often I end up just going with my gut instinct.

Today, for example, I’ve discovered the Humane Society has a beautiful little Pembroke Welsh Corgi up for adoption, two years old, female, spayed…perfect! The Corgi is one of several breeds I’ve considered as a likely candidate for a new doggy roommate. They’re relatively small—about 25 to 40 pounds. And although they do shed, they’re generally sound, very smart, and because they’re herding dogs, they have a German shepherd-like disposition. They also have a big dog voice in a small dog body, a consideration for a woman who lives alone in an inner-city neighborhood.

When I consider the pro’s and cons of adopting another dog, I end up listening to a schizophrenic conversation between the Voice of Rationality and the Elf of Whim:

Rationality: You don’t need another dog. You need an engineer to fix the trolley that you’ve slipped!

Whim: Engineers can’t fix a broken heart. And as soon as that engineer has fixed the trolley, he’s outta here. I need some company, and at my age, you can be sure it’s not going to come with two legs.

Rationality: Moron! You spent $21,000 on Anna and Walt! Think of your pocketbook.

Whim: I spent it because I could afford it. You shouldn’t let your cheapskate instincts limit your life.

Rationality: The floors are clean. They’ve been clean for two solid weeks! You don’t even have to vacuum the darn things—you just dustmop and run the steam cleaner. There’s no dogsh** in the backyard to clean up every single day. The Burglar Portal is sealed shut. Corgis shed doghair dunes, just like Ger-sheps, and they track in mud that has to be scoured off the floor! Do you really want to do that again?

Whim: Uhm…well, no.

Rationality: You’re finally free—FREE, I tell you!—to go someplace on vacation! Do you really want to spend the rest of your life vacationing in the backyard?

Whim: Doesn’t much matter. I’ve seen the world and don’t need to see it again.

Rationality: What do you need a dog for?

Whim: To keep me company. To alert me if someone comes around.

Rationality: Join a club. Get a burglar alarm.

Whim: <<sob!>>

Rationality: Okay, okay. List the pro’s of getting a dog.

Whim: Companionship. Something alive to come home to. Rescue a nice dog. Walking burglar deterrent. Entertainment value. Maybe I will stop crying every day.

Rationality: Ducky. Now list the cons.

Whim: Expense, expense, expense, and expense. Dog dunes to clean up every day. Twice-a-day feeding. Filthy floors to scrub on hands and knees. Daily yard cleanup. Risk of dog drowning in pool. Possible excavation of landscaping. Restriction of activities—have to be home to feed dog, can’t travel without extra hassle and expense.

Rationality: I just can’t see a rational trade-off here.

Whim: Who are you, Mr. Spock?

Rationality: Have you thought of adopting a tribble?

The problem with making lists of pro’s and cons is that it’s very difficult to assign weight to subjective elements in the list. In this case, for example: What, really, is a dog’s companionship worth? How much, really, does having a dog limit your life and your ability to meet other people? How much, really, do you care about that?

Do you have any strategies that actually work when it comes to making decisions that involve both financial and subjective considerations?

Friday, June 13, 2008

5 Comments

Mrs. Micah

No tribbles. Ever! Wait…maybe just one would work, maybe it’s when there are 2 that problems start. But I think tribbles just might reproduce asexually.

Maybe while you’re still recovering from the loss you could spend a little time at an animal shelter? Volunteer or somesuch? It might make you want a puppy even more (in which case you could get to know the dog a bit) or you it might give you just enough. Or help your rational side emphasize the downsides.

Friday, June 13, 2008 – 02:13 PM

Debbie M

Oh, sure, I make the lists.And they are both the same length.

Then I weight each item on the list, and the two lists still total the same amount.

At this point I decide that either decision would probably be okay.

Another strategy is to think of the worst-case-scenarios for both actions.Or at least worst-case imaginably likely scenarios.For example, if you get a dog, it could be all sweetness and light during the interview, but once you get it home it shreds everything and is always escaping and biting someone.Or maybe you turn out not to enjoy the companionship of that particular dog after all.(Not: the dog could really be an illegal alien in disguise and since you saved it, it’s now going to destroy the planet.)

And if you don’t get the dog, you will always be unhappy and bitter, unable to make connections with anyone, and you get fired and kicked out of your house and die … oh, wait, I am exaggerating again.

And you can think of other ways to handle your concerns (like your “Join a club.Get a burglar alarm.” response)

You can think of ways to minimize the probable and possible negatives of both decisions, like start a pet savings account or brainstorm ways to find companionship.

I’m wondering if calling one point of view Rationality and one Whim is a hint for you.One could also argue that continuing having a dog is rational and suddenly deciding this is the time to go dog-free is a whim!

Good luck.

Friday, June 13, 2008 – 02:17 PM

andyjean

Hey there. I’m a believer in having a dog. The trick is to get the right dog. You’ve got other comments already with good advice on the list making. My only additional advice is that you need to start your list from true zero. When you made your list you were already focused on a specific dog so you are already locked into some of the cons. Think about starting over from the point of view that you will manage the cons any way you can, including choosing a breed of dog that will eliminate some of them, and then figure out ways to minimize the rest.

I had to go through the same process two years ago. When my baby girl wanted a puppy for her graduation, I was against it. My list of cons was very similar to yours. I know I’m not going to stay on top of cleaning up dog hair every day, and I’m not willing to live with it. Most of the year there is nobody at my house for 10 hours a day. That’s no life for a young thing. I also knew we couldn’t stand the chewing, puddling puppy phase. I also had concerns about traveling with a dog, how it would behave in public and whether it would trash my car. The list got long, but my baby wanted a puppy and all my reasons for denying her were selfish.

So for months I secretly researched dog breeds, finally settling on a miniature schnauzer. They don’t shed. Not at all. The breed also met my size requirements and had a decent reputation for health, temperament and activity level. With the breed picked out, I started looking for the right dog. I didn’t get far before I realized I had to define what was right for us. Based on past experience, I knew we needed a dog with a temperament midway between total alpha and trembling submissive. Instead of a new puppy, we needed one that was four to six months old. At that age they can stand more alone time, and if you get one that is socialized properly, lots of the bad puppy stuff is over.

As baby girl’s graduation date neared, I scoured pet ads, rescue organization postings, talked to local veterinary assistants, and tried every other possible source looking for leads. Then I went and actually saw all the pups I found in the right age range. It was hard to walk away from some, but I knew it was best in the long run to pass on the timid and the hyper, no matter how cute they were. With four weeks to go, I found the perfect little five month old male. His family had to let him go because they discovered their son had a pet allergy. Because I could see the dog with the family in their home while we visited, I could tell that there was a very good chance that he had the right temperament and had been well socialized. They were even willing to give the puppy a temporary home with the child’s grandmother until my daughter’s graduation day so that once he joined our family, she would be home with him all day every day for three months. That way he’d be even older before he had to face a 10 hour stretch without his family.

All the work and waiting paid off. We can’t imagine being without the little guy, and he is almost no trouble at all. The key is that I held out for the right dog even though it took four months to find him. The rest of the cons on my list have been easy too. He was mostly trained from the start and has practically trained himself ever since. The house stays cleaner than I imagined it could be with an inside dog. Keeping him clipped every month ($35/mo for me and well worth it) means he doesn’t drag leaves and crud into the house. I manage the muddy paws by keeping the doggy door locked on rainy days and meeting him at the door with a towel every time I let him in. I feed him outrageously expensive food made from human-grade ingredients with no cheap fillers and low on potential allergens. I’m fine with the expense because I know it will pay off in less pooper scooping and stave off expensive degenerative diseases. Now that he’s fully grown, he eats once a day in the morning before I leave for work. I feed him just enough to keep him trim and limit snacks and treats the rest of the day. Feeding him last thing before I leave helps to minimize the separation anxiety. It also means that I can run errands after work or go out with friends without worrying about him home alone wondering where his dinner is. When we go on a trip without him he goes to a doggy daycare. On the financial side, yes, we spend money owning a dog, but we’ve got it to spend and there is no question that having him improves our quality of life.

Wow, that was long. Sorry. I’ll be stepping off my soapbox now, except for one last thought – Walt and Anna gave you lots of good blog material. Are you really ready to give that up?

Friday, June 13, 2008 – 03:37 PM

Bret Frohlich

I learned about worst-case-scenario decision making a while back and it has changed my life for the better.Now, I can make quick well-reasoned decisions and I feel confident, even if it doesn’t turn out perfect.

Before, I used pros-and-cons decision making and it always left me with a nagging doubt, even if everything turned out OK in the end.

If you want the dog, then just get it.Life is too short to deprive yourself of the companionship.My friend had a Corgi and she loved it.Me, I love my aging German Shepherd.She sheds a lot, but nobdody jumps in my backyard.

Friday, June 13, 2008 – 11:13 PM

vh

I like the “worst-case” approach. It cuts through a lot of dithering…and listing pro’s and cons certainly does lend itself to dithering.

Finally I decided in favor of getting the little dog (see the next day’s post for a photo). It may be dumb…but what’s the worst that can happen? She’ll chew up $3,000 worth of leather furniture, bark until the neighbors call their lawyers, and end up back at the Humane Society. Hey…how could I turn her down?

Saturday, June 14, 2008 – 09:24 AM

Consumer-proof Packaging: A Modest Proposal

by

Yuk. Still suffering from the diarrhea I picked up at a restaurant last Sunday, I drove over to the local Albertson’s at 5:30 this a.m. to restock the generic Imodium.

Both the brand-name and the Albertson’s knock-off versions come in those damned consumer-proof packages, where each pill is individually sealed, like an insect frozen in amber, between a layer of stiff plastic and a layer of tinfoil-coated cardboard. I no longer have enough strength in my hands to push the pills through either of these substances. Whenever I get pills packaged in child-proof containers, I put them into a bottle or other container that I can get open, since I find the consumer-proof packaging well-nigh impossible to get into when I need the stuff.

You can’t slice these bubble-packs open with a box-cutter. The ditzy little pill bubbles are too small and sealed in too tightly, so that when you take a box-cutter to the flicking packaging you cut up the 25-cent-apiece pills. So you have to take a pair of scissors and cut each and every pill out. One at a time.

But cutting along the sides of the pills doesn’t break into the bubbles. Again, they’re too tightly packaged for a couple of slices to break them fully open. So now you have to get a knife and pick each pill out through the slices you’ve made along the edges of the bubbles.

So to get a couple of pills for your upset belly, you have to break out the following tools

  1. box-cutter
  2. scissors
  3. knife
  4. broken fingernail
  5. cut fingers

Fighting with consumer-proof packaging is the last thing you feel like doing when you’re sick.

Now I realize that many people are too stupid to store pharmaceuticals out of children’s reach (although believe me, a three-year-old could get into these things a lot easier than an old lady with arthritic fingers). And I realize that many people’s children are too dumb to distinguish between pills and candy. But “takes a village” or not, I believe that’s the parent’s problem, not every consumer on the planet’s.

If we must protect parents from their own carelessness or stupidity, how’s about we require manufacturers to market medications in two kinds of packages: child-proof and human-accessible. We could then legislate that if a parent who buys human-accessible meds allows a child to eat the stuff, the parent will be subject to prosecution for manslaughter and child abuse, and prohibited from suing the pharmaceutical manufacturer. That’s easy. Retailers could be required to post a sign to that effect, and manufacturers could be required to put a warning on every pill bottle, just as wine, beer, and liquor makers have to threaten every woman who ventures near an an alcoholic drink.

There’s a limit to how much we should protect people from themselves.

consumerism, consumer safety, packaging, pharmaceuticals, child-proof packaging

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

1 Comment

Mrs. Micah

That makes sense. Like they have those more accessible caps on Advil bottles and the like for seniors. Of course someone could get in trouble for letting a kid near one of those. *hugs*

Wednesday, June 11, 2008 – 04:03 PM