Coffee heat rising

Month: December 2008

Cleaning help scored!

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All RIGHT! I decided to use some of the buckolas I’ve been stashing in savings each month to hire some cleaning help. Someone left a business card on the gate asking for work, so I called. Two delightful Latina women showed up at the door, one of them sort of speaking English and the other less sort-of. They look smart and they sound like they can do the job…and they both need the work. They were thrilled to land a job, and I am thrilled at the prospect of having someone to take over some of the labor around this place.

I know, I know. It violates one of Funny’s Money Principles: Do it yourself.

But Funny has done done it herself and is done doing it.

mopTruth to tell, I’m getting too old to handle all the work around this place. It’s simply more than I can do by myself, what with the pool, the yard, the dog, the four-bedroom house, the errands, the bookkeeping, the endless Workman Waltz, the chronic sleep deprivation, the freelance business, and the job with the two-hour commute. Result is that I’m falling behind, and the result of that is that nothing is getting done. First I let the weekly cleaning morph into biweekly. Next thing I knew, I was only cleaning once a month. If you let it go that long, then you have a HUGE job on your hands, one that leaves you dead exhausted by the time you finish. Especially if you start pretty near dead exhausted because you didn’t get any sleep the night before. Then you still have to deal with the laundry, the pool, the shopping, the dog, the yard, Quicken, and the freelance work you didn’t attend to while you were scrubbing floors and bathrooms.

This is great. Today I can vacuum the DE off the bottom of the pool, do the laundry, and edit another 100 pages of detective novel copy without feeling bad because the bathrooms need to be cleaned and the floors need to be vacuumed, dust-mopped, and steam-cleaned. Yesh! Tomorrow I can make a Costco run and that will be ALL I have to do (except for editing copy): no vacuuming, dust-mopping, steam-cleaning, bathroom-scrubbing, kitchen scrubbing, mirror-polishing, window-washing, furniture-dusting, sheet-changing misery. Yes, yes, yes!!!!

The ladies want $85 for their trouble. They asked for $90 to come once a month, but I talked them down a few bucks. That’s only $42.50 apiece for plenty of un-fun labor. If they come around once a month, then I’ll only have to do the job myself once a month to get the place thoroughly cleaned every two weeks, which suffices. Eight-five bucks is less than half of what I will earn for proofreading & lightly copyediting a detective novel.If I’m working very hard and very fast, I can clean the house in four hours. Why should I use four hours of my $60/hour time (i.e., $240) when I can pay someone else to do an unpleasant job for the price of 2.8 hours of my time? What the heck am I working for, anyway?Any day, I’d rather get paid $60 an hour for reading fiction than save $85 by doing four hours of noxious work.

A bargain, my friends. It’s a bargain.

Clutter as mental illness

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junk2What possesses people? Just imagine having to dust all this stuff. And heaven help us, it’s all jammed into a condo! Some soul felt it was right and meet to live with enough junk to populate a boutique. A whole row of boutiques!

There probably are some nice items here. But for heaven’s sake. How many sets of dishes do you need to eat dinner? What do you do with scores of crystal pieces? How many times can you possibly use them? Once? twice? How many sets of sheets does it take to make a bed? How many hundred tchochkies do you need to take care of before you feel fulfilled?

junk3There must be something missing in my personality. As a confirmed cheapskate, I can’t understand why anyone would want to own stuff they can’t use in daily life or that occupies their time with needless dusting and cleaning. It escapes me.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not exactly dwelling in ancient Sparta here at the Funny Farm. I own nice dishes, good silverware, top of the line cookware. The walls are hung with artwork—some of it real—and the coffee table is punctuated with decorator items. What I don’t understand is the curio cabinet mentality: whole lighted cabinets full of collected junk that you never use except as objects to run a dustrag over. Mantels and hearths overflowing with collectibles. Plant shelves (what accursed developer first thought of those dust-catchers?) jammed with baskets, pots, “antiques,” and stuffed dolls. Windows barred with shelves bearing glass jars and trinkets.

junk4Think of the amount the woman (it’s clearly a woman’s home) spent on this stuff. What else might she have spent it on? There’s at least one trip to Paris invested inside that house. Dozens of season tickets to concerts, plays, and symphonies. A set of Thomas Moser furniture. Several pieces of fine art: a real painting by a real artist, a real sculpture… An endowment for a charity or a scholarship fund. A score or more of computers for a school in a poor neighborhood. A drugstore full of meds for Africa.

It’s not that you must live like an anchorite and devote your assets to altruism—though it might help make the world go round a little more smoothly. It’s that there’s something hideously wasteful about investing resources in useless junk. And something perverse about collecting it.

This morning’s Times runs a front-page story about the coming new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, discussing the soul-searching that psychiatrists and psychologists go through in their efforts to identify mental illness and distinguish it from those little quirks we all have. Stuff-squirreling definitely should go into the Manual. No question of it.

To my mind, it’s a manifestation of the demented consumerism that permeates our culture. We’re all made to feel we should have stuff. Buy stuff. Get stuff. Keep stuff. Store stuff. Display stuff. And by all means, please: purchase more stuff than we need. Preferably with some company’s logo on as much of it as possible.

Snap out of it, America!

The thrifty farmer owns no more than is needed. And of course, we’re all farmers: our lives and our jobs are our farms. Il faut cultiver notre jardin.The garden of life ultimately grows a lot greener when it’s not burdened with junk that blocks the sunlight and water.

Stuff Therapy

Buy: the best you can afford (don’t be penny-wise and pound-foolish)
Buy: only what you need, reallyneed, in daily life
Don’t buy: anything you won’t use or wear this week or this month

? If all you do with it is dust it, get rid of it.
? If you haven’t worn it in a year, get rid of it.
? If you haven’t used it in a year, get rid of it.
? If it doesn’t have real, genuine, personal meaning to you, get rid of it. Just because it was your grandmother’s doesn’t mean you have to store it for the duration of your time on earth.

Sell it on e-Bay or Craig’s List. Yard Sale it. Donate it. Then take all your savings from not buying junk and all your proceeds from selling unused stuff and buy yourself an experience: take a trip, go to a concert, go out to eat at the best restaurant in town. You deserve it.

You don’t deserve to live in a houseful of Stuff.
junk

Christmas dinner plans

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What are you doing for Christmas dinner? I’m expecting five to seven people, which should be great fun. Since I like to enjoy my friends, my plan is to make a home-cooked meal that entails as little work as possible. Two work-avoidance strategies: make things ahead, and use the oven with maximal efficiency.

Here’s the tentative menu:

Roast prime rib
Yorkshire pudding; OR delicious gravy
Baked potatoes with sour cream & chives
Yam casserole
Brussels sprouts
Green salad or Waldorf salad
Ice cream or store-bought pie
Wine; iced tea, water, or good coffee for nondrinkers

Nothing could be easier than roast beef: no stuffing. 😀

One standing rib roast
Two or three cloves of garlic
A little olive oil
Salt & pepper

Slice the garlic cloves lengthwise into slivers. Take a knife, poke holes into the roast, and stuff a piece of garlic into each hole. Rub a little olive oil over the outside of the roast. Season generously with pepper and salt. If you’re planning to make Yorkshire pudding, place the roast on a rack in a roasting pan. Otherwise, just set it in the bottom of the pan.
Preheat the oven to about 350 degrees and roast the meat according to the doneness you prefer.

Baked potatoes: Well…baked potatoes could be easier than roast beef.

One fine Idaho potato per diner

Wash the potatoes. Stab each potato all over with a small sharp knife—you want to puncture the skin so none of the potatoes will explode in the oven. About an hour before the meat is done, place the potatoes directly on the rack in the oven.

Serve with a bowl of good sour cream (organic seems to taste best) or, if you’re the fat-free type, a decent organic yogurt mixed with juice of half a lemon. Also provide a bowl of chopped chives or green onions.

Yorkshire pudding is really just popover batter cooked in the drippings from your roast. A blender makes preparing this stuff extremely easy.

1 cup flour
1 cup milk
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt

About a hour before the meat is done, put the eggs in a blender and mix on “high” until lemon-yellow. Add the flour and milk in alternate batches of about 1/3 cup at a time. Toss in the salt while you’re doing this.

Pour this batter into the drippings that have collected beneath the roast. If there’s not enough drippings to cover the bottom of the pan, put a half a cube of butter into the pan and allow it to melt before adding the batter.

Alternative: Delicious brown gravy. I’m not nuts about Yorkshire pudding…it soaks up all the drippings and leaves you with no gravy. If you like popovers, you can use the batter above to make your bread serving for this dinner—just generously butter a muffin tin and fill the cups about a third full. Really, popovers should be cooked at 450 degrees for about 40 minutes. So unless you have a second oven or you’re willing to let the roast rest that long, substitute store-bought French bread or rolls and make yourself a wonderful gravy.

Pan drippings from roast beef
flour
red wine
possibly a little beef or chicken broth

If the pan drippings are mostly fat: place the pan over a burner on the stove. Remember to use a hot pad, because the pan will be hot. Sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of flour over the drippings and stir briskly over high-medium heat. As the flour starts to brown a bit, add wine and broth, ad lib. Stir well, scraping up the drippings, until the gravy thickens. Add more wine or broth to achieve the consistency you like.

If the drippings contain a lot of liquid: skim off most of the fat and discard. Take about a cup of wine or broth and add a tablespoon or two of flour to it. With a fork, whip these together so no lumps remain in the liquid. Bring the drippings to a fast simmer or slow boil over medium-high heat. Pour the flour & wine into the simmering roast drippings and stir briskly until the gravy thickens. Allow to simmer for a few minutes to cook out the “raw” taste of the flour.

Cashew-Yam Casserole: This is a fix-ahead dish that bakes unattended with the roast.

About 2 1/2 pounds yams or sweet potatoes, whole or halved
Boiling water
about 1/4 cup sugar, to taste
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
About 1/4 cup pineapple or orange juice
About 1/4 cup water or rum or bourbon
3 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup salted cashews, coarsely chopped

AHEAD OF TIME: Cook the yams in boiling water until very tender. When cool enough to handle, peel them.
Using an electric mixer, beat the cooked yams until mashed, and measure. You should have about three cups. Add cinnamon, salt, egg, juice, and sugar. Beat until fluffy, adding more fruit juice if the mixture seems dry. Taste and add more sugar or salt, if needed. Mix in two tablespoons of the butter.

Spoon into a one-quart casserole or soufflé dish (you can cover and refrigerate, if desired).

Add the cashews to the remaining one tablespoon of butter in a small frying pan. Heat, stirring, until lightly toasted. Sprinkle over the casserole.

About 40 minutes before dinner is served: bake, uncovered, in a 350-degree oven.

Et voilà! Add a nice green salad and have your friends bring dessert, and you’ve got a large dinner with little work.

Privacy: It’s none of their business

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Peter at Bible Money Matters reports that when he called American Express to cancel an old credit card account that hadn’t been used in years, he was blitzed with a high-pressure pitch to keep the card. Among other things, the person who answered his phone call asked him why he would want to cancel a perfectly fine credit card. One of Peter’s readers also reported having been asked a similar question and then pursuedwith attempts to discuss balances on other cards and her arrangements for emergency funds. Wow! All of these matters come under the heading of nobody’s business but yours. Stand in front of the mirror and practice uttering these phrases:
That’s none of your business.
Why do you want to know?
I don’t share that kind of information with strangers.

Be prepared to use them at the drop of a hat.

The psychology of phone interactions between companies and consumers is fascinating. Decades ago, my mother worked for the phone company in California. Part of her job was to check up on fraudulent long-distance calls, which in those days were pretty easy to make. When a customer called in and said a call to thus-&-such a number was incorrectly billed to him, she would telephone the number and ask whoever answered who had called them at the time and date shown on the bill. Amazingly, when asked point-blank most people would blurt out the perp’s name without thinking.

She said she’d been taught during the phone company’s training sessions that when confronted with an unexpected personal question, most people will answer honestly before they think about it. A lot of the conversation that Peter and his readers report entails having some minimum wage employee at a phone bank—possibly in some other country—engage the mark in a conversation about matters that are none of his or her business, solely for the purpose of manipulation.

It’s another reason we should protect our privacy and draw a line where information that belongs to us is concerned.

Remember: Just say no!

Moments of Fame

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The 183rd Carnival of Personal Finance is online at The Frugal Duchess. Funny’s long-term care article appears in this week’s line-up. LOL! You’ve heard the term”filthy lucre”? It must have been invented by a banker: check out Broke in the Suburb’s tales from the (corner bank’s ) vault!In less lurid realms, I’d noticed Room Farm’s Lessons from the Depression before and was happy to see it in this carnival. In the weird department, check out the strange pitch Squawkfox got from some advertiser. Retire at 40 discusses a topic that has become especially apposite of late: lifestyle deflation. Absolutely do NOT miss The Digerati Life’s 21 Deal Sites and Online Tools to Help You Save Money—I’m bookmarking this page right now!

Retire at 40 has posted the 89th Carnival of Money Stories, where Funny’s first report on the Yard Sale Adventure appears. Here’s something strange: instead of cutting credit availability, American Express actually increased Credit Addict’s limit—by 25 percent! Dough Roller tells how, in a moment of amazing ingenuity, he figured out how to earn $826.75 in ten minutes. The Greenest Dollar discusses the pro’s and cons of paying off your mortgage early. Across the Pond, Find Financial Freedom realizes that buying a rental property could now be a profitable move; don’t know how that would apply in other countries, but note the calculations and try applying them to your own circumstances. And Peter at Bible Money Matters tells of being high-pressured when he went to cancel an old, inactive credit card.

Funny made Editor’s Pick with the squib on saving your pay stuns at this week’s Money Hacks Carnival, hosted by surfer François Viljoen at Liberta. This is a pretty entertaining site by a guy who has freed himself financially and is now volunteering for a South African aid group and…well, surfing a lot. Check out Living Almost Large’s story of diverting her husband from his craving for a new vehicle. At Monevator—another new-to-me site—the Investor offers three ingenious ways to control (or at least defer) spending. Cash Money Life describes how to collect unemployment benefits…and along the way reveals that the average amount states pay is a heckuva lot more than my state pays. Jim at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity lists the annual year-end tax strategies. And, good anytime, Wenchypoo discusses the art of saving big (and small) bucks through negotiation.

Rain!

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Rain in the desert is a wonderful thing, especially these days. This morning we awoke to a steady drizzle that started during the night. The Sonoran Desert has allegedly been suffering drought conditions for almost a decade. In recent years, reservoirs dropped to alarmingly low levels, and some lakes went dry.

Within living memory, we’ve usually seen slow, gentle rains (called “female” rains by the Indians because of that gentle quality) in the winter and hard monsoon (“male”) rains late in the summer. But during the current years-long drought, we’ve had little or no winter rain and precious few monsoons. The monsoons finally returned last summer, and now we’re getting rain in December.

Several Southwestern states engaged in a compact to distribute water from the Colorado River. The calculations for how much would be available and which states should be served first were based on historic rainfall records. And, thanks to the generous allocations of water based on these optimistic figures, development proceeded. Apace.

Until the real estate crash brought a stop to building, Las Vegas and Phoenix were the fastest-growing cities in the nation. At one point, our wise leaders were allowing builders to blade an acre an hour of precious, irreplaceable Sonoran habitat. The result is mile on mile on ugly mile of Southern California-style sprawl, endless acres of Styrofoam-and-plaster houses on postage-stamp lots that now sell—if they sell at all—for pennies on the dollar.

All of which is heartbreaking for those who love the desert and ultimately frustrating for those who invested in real estate.

But a much bigger bust is lurking. Scientific studies have shown that over the long term, the so-called “drought” conditions we’ve seen recently represent the Sonoran desert’s normal climate. In other words, the assumptions upon which the water allocation agreements were made and according to which development was permitted were wrong. When a municipality or state requires that 100 years of water be available if a site is to be developed, the calculation to arrive at that water availability may also be ersatz. No one really knows how much water will be available for how many years. So, there’s a good chance that not enough water exists in the Southwest to support the huge populations being lured into the area. The classic discussion of this issue, which has yet to be beat, is Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert.

If I were a young person trying to decide where to build my life in a time of global warming and the political and social unrest likely to accompany it, I would be looking at areas where plenty of water is available. While it’s true you can’t shovel heat, you can’t melt it and drink it, either. The Pacific Northwest, which is relatively unpolluted, reasonably progressive in most areas, and economically active, strikes me as a likely place to start a career and a family. Possibly the Great Lakes region, despite environmental degradation from historic mining and industrial activities, would be a reasonable second choice.

Water will be one of the great challenges of the 21st century, globally and in large parts of the United States. A young person with the flexibility to build a life where she or he wishes would be wise to take that fact into consideration.