Coffee heat rising

Month: June 2011

Tardy Roundup: Dishwash detergent edition

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Finally am climbing out from under the mountain of work. Monday the last of the five courses I’ve redesigned and rewritten went up onto their new sites. Yesterday I gave myself a vacation day. Soooo…. More work has already started to accrete: Haven’t written the newsletter that was supposed to have been done last week; haven’t got a single post ahead and so am late with today’s post.

Yea, verily. It’s quarter after 11 and I haven’t done anything even vaguely resembling paying work. Whyyyy? Because I spent half the morning scouring gray film off my glasses and stainless cookware, that’s why.

And why would that be? Because dishwasher detergent no longer works, thanks to the infinite wisdom of the Green Shirts and their lobbyists. As you know, last year the government mandated that detergent manufacturers remove phosphorus, the ingredient that softens water and makes dishwasher detergent function in hard-water areas. In going through my stockpile, I broke into a new container of Finish (phosphorus-free) Powerball tabs, to ill effect. First thing I noticed was that the price hasn’t changed but the package size has: 20 fewer packets. That’s 16% less product for the same or more money. (But don’t worry, folks, be happy: there’s no inflation!) Second thing, of course, is that the stuff doesn’t get the dishes clean. However, it does coat them with a sticky film of whitish-gray gunk that has to be scrubbed off with Barkeeper’s Helper.

To get that $500 appliance sitting under your kitchen counter to do something useful now, you can try one of four things:

• Add a teaspoon of TSP (available at paint stores and some hardware stores—read the label and be sure to get the real thing, not “substitute”) to each washload; or
• Buy commercial dishwasher detergent, which thanks to the wisdom of the restaurant and hotel industries and their lobbyists, was exempted from the new law; or
• Use the dishwasher as a giant dish rack to drain the dishes you now have to wash by hand; or
• Replace the dishwasher with a wine cooler or a new under-counter cabinet.

Me, I’m opting for the commercial dishwasher detergent, which can be found in restaurant and janitorial supply houses or through an online retailer. Yeah, I know: shameful unregenerate environment-wrecking earth-killing megabitch! But…before you hurl that epithet, consider: in these parts sewer water is not returned to rivers and lakes (we don’t even have any rivers or lakes anymore). It’s filtered, which removes most of the phosphorus, and then it’s used to irrigate golf courses, of which we have more, per capita, than any other state in the nation. There, what little remains of the phosphorus is consumed by the grass: it’s a fertilizer.

Well. That project done, that issue resolved, it’s on to more interesting things. To wit: what’s been going on in the blogosphere while I’ve been wandering around the seventh level of Hades?

I got quite a boot out of Crystal’s daily and weekly blogging checklists, over at Budgeting in the Fun Stuff. Oh, to be young and full of energy again! 😉 Seriously, if I would get my act that much together, I’d spend a lot less time spinning my wheels.

Frugal Scholar has published SO many nice posts lately, it’s hard to pick one out. Blogger won’t let me comment on that site anymore—it’s decided I have to sign up first for my own Google Blogger site, for which I have no use and which I ain’t a-gunna do. So about all I can manage is to tell you from here how great some of these stories are. Check out her interesting observation that one may not need to shred documents after all. (But, by way of comment, Frugal: one day my neighbor walked into the alley to dump her trash and found a man sitting on the ground next to our four-house dumpster going through the paper he’d pulled out of there.) Also don’t miss Frugal’s post on frugality and aesthetics, which contains a link to some very inspirational decorating images.

Had to forward Revanche’s post about her new doggle to M’hijito, whose puppy was born just a few days ago. Heh heh heh heh…  As Gai Shan Life fans know, Revanche and her PiC have been contemplating their coming wedding, which has led her to some fairly amazing ruminations. How many of us can lean back and murmur, smugly, Thank God we’ll never have to go through that again?

Over at My Journey to Millions, Evan has found a site that will disgorge a free credit score for you. As you’ll recall, I recently ordered up credit reports from Annual Credit Report.com, but credit bureaus do not normally share your actual credit score without charging a fee. There’s a sales pitch at the site Evan discovered, but as he explains, it’s easy to avoid if you know about it.

Money Beagle, who apparently is still biding his time until Mrs. Beagle delivers the latest Beaglet, tells a very funny story on himself (uhm…funny if you enjoy watching other people’s Laurel & Hardy antics).

OMG! Hang onto your hats, folks, and check out the entire freaking wardrobe Mrs. Accountability scored for under twenty bucks! Not only did she practically steal the stuff, the clothes are cute and will look great on her.

Nicole and Maggie… Theirs is one of my fave blogs, which I’ve finally, just this minute, gotten around to adding to Funny’s blogroll. This post from Grumpy Rumblings felt particularly apposite this week, after I’d spent a fair amount of time listening to both KJG and La Maya hold forth about the peculiarities of their extended families.

Over at The Digerati Life, Silicon Valley Blogger has been posting a lot of nice pragmatic stuff. But in amongst the good advice, what should pop up but one of those ruminations that I tend to favor, a piece by writer Jacques Sprenger on money and couples relationships.

Y’know, I doubt if any living, breathing blogger can crank more posts in a single day than Julia at Bargain Babe. Every day, it’s deals deals deals—you really need to subscribe so you can keep your eye on this site. Today there’s a cookbook giveaway, and then leads to fistfuls of grocery coupons and free seeds and paw cleaner…paw cleaner? Go there, get that.

Check out this fast but interesting post on the psychology of brokitude, over at Money Crush. As much is not said here as is said…and that’s what makes it intriguing.

Microfibers, microfibers, OMG microfibers! At Ultimate Money Blog, Mrs. Money does a dance to spring microfiber cloths and asks readers for creative ideas on using the things.

So it goes. And now I must excuse myself to write a very, very, very overdue newsletter.

Gorgeous Summer Schedule

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Even though daytime temps have risen into the 100s, early mornings out here on the back porch are beyond gorgeous. This is, bar none, the best time of the day during the summer. Evenings are pretty darned spectacular, too.

This morning for the first time in forever I rolled my lazy tush out of the sack and took Cassie for a walk before breakfast. She was puzzled but delighted. It was still cool by the time we got back to the house, and so it was outdoors for a slice of watermelon and a cup of coffee.

Item: Dog and I need to do this more often. We’re both turning into lumps of Jell-O as I labor in front of the computer between ten and twenty hours a day.

Item: When summer classes start on July 5, a whole new daily schedule is gonna have to kick in.

The 102 class, which runs for 7 weeks and meets 4 days a week, starts at 7:00 a.m., meaning I have to be out the door no later than 6:30. The 101 section is only 5 weeks long; class meets straightaway after the 102s escape, which is great: that means I’m headed homeward by 11:30, and after that section ends, I leave campus at 8:50. w00t!!!!!

Because I naturally awaken at dawn, I’m usually up by 5:00 or 5:30 during the summer. So…it occurs to me that now is the time to build a new and more healthful daily schedule. Mwa ha ha! Check this out:

Evening:

• Prepare breakfast stuff and stash in fridge, ready to be microwaved and toasted.
• Make large batches of orange-juice/fruit smoothies; store some in fridge and freeze some for future use.
• Lay out clothes.
• Load the car.
• Take the dog for walk: approximately 45 minutes.

Voilà! the most time-consuming morning tasks are done. It takes approximately two minutes to microwave a slice or two of bacon and toast a piece of bread.

Next morning:

• Alarm goes off at 5:00 a.m., just in case I happen to be asleep at that hour.
• Out the door immediately to range about the neighborhood in the company of a small dog: approximately 1/2 hour.
• Race in the door; feed dog; put human food on to cook; pour juice or iced tea.
• Water potted plants while food is cooking.
• Eat, read paper, enjoy the cool of the morning.
• Dip in the pool; then bathe and shampoo hair under the outdoor hose shower.
• Paint or don’t paint face, as time allows.
• Throw on clothes.
• Fly out the door.

If I could get out the door with Cassie the first thing in the morning four days a week and continued to walk her every night, as usual…consider the exercise possibilities!

4 days x 30 minutes = 2 hours/week
7 days x 45 minutes = 5.25 hours/week
2 + 5.25 = 7.25 of walking a week!

Dang! Not bad, for virtually no effort at all, eh? If I can find time during the day for a few minutes of yoga and then manage to actually swim in the pool (that’s extreme, I know), I might start to revive a bit.

Cassie’s a pound overweight, so a bit over seven hours of weekly strolling can’t hurt her much, either.

I’ve been terribly spoiled by not having to be anywhere before about 10 a.m. So, getting my act back together is going to require a little self-discipline. But it’ll be worth it!

🙂

Credit Report Check

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If you don’t already know it, take note: Going online to get annual credit reports is amazingly easy and fast.

The site to visit is Annual Credit Report.com, because it does not try to sign you up for any gimmicks or paid recurring reports. You get what you order here, with no hassles and no sales pitches.

You can order reports from any or all of the three major credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. They don’t give you your credit rating (though you can purchase it for a nominal fee), but they do signal any problems.

Because each credit bureau is required to provide one free credit report per year to consumers, it’s a good idea to set up a calendar reminder to hit one bureau every three months, giving you an ongoing record instead of one annual picture.

However, each bureau is a little different; they don’t all have identical data. I was concerned enough about the late, great Macy’s fiasco that I wanted to be sure no black blot was lurking on my records, especially since one’s car and homeowner’s insurance rates can be affected by negative credit reports. If I decide to buy a car, even though I pay in cash I don’t need whatever extra hassles or charges might ensue from any negative items, so I decided to order all three reports this time.

TransUnion was the only bureau that disgorged a detailed report for me. Equifax and Experian produced one-page summaries, and I couldn’t see any way to get in and see a full report. The summaries, though, sufficed, because they both reported no negative items.

At any rate, it’s extremely easy. Where in the past you had to fill out three separate online forms and enter a lot of data, now you fill out one form at Annual Credit Report.com plus answers to a few identifying questions at each site, and voilà!

It’s worth your time to do it.

Car: To Buy or Not to Buy…

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Well, the verdict on the car is it’s leaking oil from the head gasket (or something like that, which I’m not very clear about) in addition to needing a new timing belt. To keep it running is going to cost around $1,200 or $1,300.

Rather more than I’d like to spend on a car that’s well over 11 years old.

I have enough money in savings to buy a new vehicle, if I don’t go overboard. However, this just does not feel like the time to go out and drop fifteen or twenty grand on a car. On the other hand, with permanent unemployment a fact of life, no time is the time to go out and drop fifteen or twenty grand on a car.

On the third hand, I know the clunk is not going to run forever, and sooner or later I’m going to have to give up and buy a new car.

The issues are more complex than they seem on the surface:

Money

Before I was laid off, I had a Vanguard short-term corporate bond fund in which I’d saved more than enough for the next car purchase. That piggy-bank was raided when M’hijito and I bought the downtown house, which is now so deeply underwater that it looks like we never will get out from under it. Basically, everything we put into that house is gone, including a large chunk of the car-buying fund.

When GDU canned me, I consigned what remained of that money to my financial managers, who invested it intelligently. So, now that the market has revived a little, there’s just about enough to buy one more modestly priced car.

The Market

The stock market is on its way down. I really would like not to pull around $15,000 out of the market on the down-tick.

Taxes

However, the new accountant tells me that 2012 is the last chance I’ll get to withdraw that money without taking a tax wallop. The dividend tax will kick back in at the beginning of next year, and so if I want to use my savings to buy a car, I need to do it before the end of 2011.

The vehicle won’t run more than another few weeks without major repairs, and so I actually need to do this pretty quick, if I’m going to do it.

Insurance and Registration

I called The Hartford to see what buying a new car will do to my auto insurance bill. Add about $420 a year is what it’ll do.

To register a new car in Arizona costs $370. Although that amount dwindles as the car ages, it doesn’t drop fast enough to make the cost affordable, not for a very long time.

Right now I self-escrow enough from my monthly income to cover the annual insurance bill. However, the amount I set aside is not enough to cover the outrageous cost of new-car registration. The annual registration and emissions fees for an 11-year-old junker are so low I can pay them out of pocket; if I buy a new car, I’ll have to start self-escrowing enough to cover the new tax bill as well as the larger amount for insurance.

($420 + $370)/12 = $65.83 a month

I am just making ends meet on my piddly little scrabbled-together income. The truth is, I’m spending more than I earn almost every month, because every goddamn month some new unexpected expense comes up that causes me to go over budget. And “budget” = every after-tax penny that hits my bank account.

To save $66 a month on gas, I’d have to buy a Prius. The trade-in on the Dog Chariot is not enough to make it possible for me to afford a Prius. Nor am I even faintly interested in repeating my friends’ experience of having to pony up $3,000 for new batteries after five and a half years.

Thus I’m looking at something like a Hyundai Sonata, a Hyundai Elantra (too small for safety in this city, really, and uncomfortably low to the ground for an old lady to be climbing in and out of), or a Hyundai Tucson. The Sonata gets about 24 mpg in town; 35 on the highway. The Tucson, the Elantra, and Toyota’s RAV4 all get similar mileage: about 22/28. My car, in its decrepitude, registered 20 mpg on the last fill-up. IMHO the desired vehicles don’t do that much better than the Dog Chariot…certainly not enough better to save $66 a month on gas.

Honestly, I don’t know where an extra $66 a month is going to come from. Every time I cut expenses—which I just did, by shifting the cost of the DSL to the S-corporation, which pays for it with before-tax funds that cost me money to access otherwise—the cost of living goes up by just about the amount I save. Mostly it’s the cost of blindsiding, actually: the nasty little surprises never seem to stop, and they’re always worst when living costs are highest, during the summer months.

Jeez. I could not believe the $300 the damn Medicare would not cover. Did you realize Medicare does not cover what its bureaucrats regard as “preventive” care? So if you go in for a routine physical, most of the costs, except for some of the blood tests, are not covered? This means that you get to wait until you develop symptoms of, say, cardiac failure or diabetes, before you can have the treatment needed to prevent astronomically expensive medical costs, which of course Medicare will then have to pay. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Well. Back to trying to make sense of the problem at hand. We have the issue of…

Timing

When I started out buying cars, I realized I couldn’t easily afford to make car payments out of cash flow. So I snowflaked and snowballed and hustled to pay off the loan on the Camry that I purchased a year or two after I divorced, and then I started saving money toward the next car. I actually saved enough in that short-term corporate bond fund to cover more than one car.

Then I got the thousand-dollar-a-day dog, who was given to sitting on the back seat of the Camry, sticking her nose between my head and the driver’s seat window, and shrieking into my ear. By the time I’d get out of the car, my ringing ears literally hurt.

To avoid losing my hearing (and throttling the dog), I decided to get a larger vehicle, which would position her further back from my head. The Camry was only about six years old at the time.

My son needed a functioning vehicle; he was driving a car his dad had gotten him in high school, and it was falling apart. So instead of trading in the Camry, I gave it to M’hijito.

This meant I used a large chunk of the car-buying fund for the Dog Chariot.

Before I did that, the car fund contained enough to buy not one but two cars. At the time I bought the Camry, I figured I could drive it for ten years, carrying me to 2004: age 59. The next car would then run until I was 69; the final car I could afford from that fund would run until I was almost 80. At that point, if I lived that long enough (there’s a good chance I won’t), it would be about time to quit driving. If by some miracle I was still living, the theory went, I would buy a second-hand car to run the two to five years left in my driving career.

When I gave the Camry to my son after six years of ownership, I torpedoed that plan.

What this means today is that if I buy a new car now, in 2011, it will be ready to crap out in 2021. I’ll only be 76 then: I should have another five to ten years of driving time left, assuming my health holds. But by then I won’t have any cash to spend on a new car, because I will have used it up on the car I buy this year.

So, in that light, it’s in my interest to keep the Tankmobile rolling for another five years. Chuck the Wondermechanic says it should run another 50,000 to 60,000 miles; since I put about 10,000 miles a year on a car, that would fill the bill.

Salesmen

I just dread going into a car dealership and getting sheared by some crook. And I know that’s exactly what’s going to happen. In the past, I’ve dealt with those people by proxy: through a car broker. He would apply his savvy and his male voice to extract a fair price from the Toyota sleazes, and I would not have to go through the “I’ll have to talk to my manager” torture.

The broker is retired now.

Costco and the credit union both have auto purchasing services. It’s unclear how much you save off the bottom line, but it looks like a take-it-or-leave it deal. The amount Costco claims is the price is about two grand more than Edmond publishes, so that smells a little funny. You have to go through their dealers, and you have to give up your phone number, which means you get on their phone list, which means you’ll never stop getting soliciting phone calls.

The Earthquake

Japanese vehicles are in short supply, a situation expected to last until the end of 2011 (at least). This means prices of Toyotas, Nissans, and the like—if you can even find one—are through the roof.

Hyundai is manufactured in Korea, although you can be sure that company has been using parts made in Japan. That factor and the increased demand for alternative Asian cars probably also will drive the price of the proposed Sonata, Elantra, or Tucson.

Where the Repair Money Would Come From

The cash to buy a new vehicle would come out of the new-car-buying fund, which presently resides in the stock market.

But the cash to pay for repairs will come out of my bank account, which, assuming I get a decent tax refund next April, holds  just about enough to delay my having to start a monthly drawdown from savings for about 18 months. At least, it did until the dental and medical bills came along. I think we’re down to about 16 months now. Another $1,300 bill will shave a month and a half off that, hastening that particular day of reckoning.

On the other hand, obviously drawing $15,000 out of savings to buy a car now does nothing to keep me from drawing money out savings. It may be better to take the money out of cash flow and let the future take care of itself.

But on that third hand, if I don’t take the money out of the market in 2012, I’ll end up paying dividend taxes on it, which could be around 20 percent. That will not leave enough to cover the cost of another car!

Aaaaaauughhhhhh!

I guess I could take the money out in December (by which time, if we’re lucky, the market may have recovered from its latest swoon), stash it in a CD, and let it sit there until the clunk falls apart like the Minister’s One-Hoss Shay.

I don’t know. Well…yes, I do. It’s four in the morning. I’ve been up since 1:00 a.m., and it’s time to go back to bed.

The Empty Garage

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{sigh} It’s strangely disorienting to walk into the garage to toss the trash in the recycling bin and find the darned place empty. Vacant. Lonely.

The Dog Chariot is down at Chuck’s Auto Service, there to have its oil leak diagnosed.

Weird, isn’t it, how one develops an affection for inanimate objects? (Or does one? Maybe I’m crazy as a loon!)

My favorite car was the beautiful little Camry I gave to my son at the time I bought the Dog Chariot. I loved that car: gave it a name, “Katydid,” because its license plate (the first I’d ever bought on my own, as an independent person!) started with the letters KTD. But in due course I had to have a vehicle that was large enough that Anna the German Shepherd couldn’t stand on back seat, plant her muzzle next to my ear, and bark (nonstop!) in the decibel range of a nuclear blast.

LOL! Buying a minivan so Anna couldn’t deafen me had a lot to do with the 40 grand I spent on that animal during her lifetime. Hence the sobriquet the thousand-dollar-a-day dog.

At the outset, I wasn’t nuts about the Sienna, an ungainly, lumbering, gas-guzzling bison. Looked like and drove like a suburban mom’s car-pooling bus. Oh well.

But over time, it grew on me. It has a lot of room: room to haul junk around, room to haul not one but two ninety-pound dogs, room to sleep in when you’re car-camping and a scary lightning storm blows up. With its Camry chassis, it’s one helluva lot more comfortable to ride in than a Suburban or a Land Cruiser or a Chevy van (all of which I’ve driven endlessly). And it puts plenty of steel between me and my fellow homicidal drivers.

It is, in short, like a good man: maybe not so rakishly handsome, but kindly, capacious of heart, and reliable.

Last time the cost of gas went through the stratosphere, I took out three of the four back bucket seats, by way of relieving the vehicle of some weight. The effect was to create a cargo bay the size of a limestone cave. Never put them back. It seems to have worked. Despite the car’s decrepitude, this morning I calculated that it made almost 21 mpg over the past two weeks’ worth of exclusively in-town driving. Not bad, for a tank with an EPA rating of 18 mpg.

So, it makes me feel sad not to have the Dog Chariot sitting in its familiar place, right next to the water heater in the garage. (Yeah. I know.) (There’s a fire door between the garage and the house. Yes.) And I guess that’s why I don’t feel in any great hurry to run out and buy a new car, even though it’s past time to get one and even though my financial dude says I can afford it.

Nothing lasts forever, of course. Not even you and me. But I’m going to miss that car when it’s gone.

Why EVERYONE Needs to Learn How to Manage Money…

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…Especially women.

Today I met a sweet and kindly lady in the course of a volunteer project I signed up for. While we were figuring out what we were supposed to be doing, we of course struck up a conversation, during which she came to tell me her life story.

At 60, she’s struggling financially: always “on the edge,” she says, despite holding down a full-time job and juggling three side enterprises. It was not always so.

She was widowed in her 40s. Her husband, retired Air Force, died unexpectedly at 54. He left her an annuity, some savings, and a paid-off house. They had been married for about two decades.

Being a relatively young woman, she soon took up with a new man, one who appeared to be acceptable. They were together for quite a few years.

During that time, this gent took over paying the bills and managing their finances. They owned a business together, and he ran it.

What he really was doing was quietly cleaning her out. We won’t mention the womanizing he was doing on the side, also quietly, because it’s not especially relevant.

Then one day the license plates were stolen off her car. She called the Department of Transportation to get them replaced and was told she couldn’t have new licenses because the car was uninsured. This was news to her. She became so confused in the bureaucratic maze that her S.O. offered to take over and get the job done for her. She gratefully agreed.

He told her he needed a power of attorney so he could represent her with ADOT. She agreed to give him one, signed and notarized.

He sallied forth and did battle with the bureaucracy, eventually returning with new license plates.

Time passed; she didn’t think much more about it.

Then the day came when their relationship started to dissolve. That’s when she discovered that he’d used the power of attorney to take out a second mortgage against her paid-off home, to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. Having convinced the credit union manager that she was sick, incapacitated, and needed money to pay medical and skilled nursing bills, he’d drained her bank accounts and taken pretty much everything she had, except for the small annuity and modest savings in a 401(k).

He’d spent it all on his chippies, leaving her in poverty.

And, as it developed, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Because she had given him a power of attorney, she had authorized him to do as he pleased. The police and the state attorney general told her no crime had been committed—or at least, not one that could be prosecuted. She did not pursue him in civil court because she believed he had no money, and she certainly couldn’t afford lawyers’ fees for a suit that would return nothing.

She’s still trying to pay off the loan against the house, which is now worth less than she paid for it. She came close to losing the house, because she didn’t know the loan existed until the payments were far in arrears.

She expects to work to the age of 70 to maximize her Social Security benefit. But she doesn’t have a nickel or a dime, and at the rate she’s going, she never will.

No one should ever let somebody else control their finances—even communal finances—without oversight. I think this is more common with women than with men, at least in my generation. But I know of men whose finances were similarly drained by designing women. Even in these more enlightened times, I’ll hear 20-something women students remark that they don’t understand money and don’t want to—it’s too, too boring.

Well, get bored, laydeez and even yents. A little tedium is a heckuva lot better than spending your old age in penury.