Coffee heat rising

Month: February 2022

Theft Damage Control: Battening down the hatches

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So yesterday morning I traipsed to the credit union, whereinat to deal with the stolen credit, debit, and ID cards. Bob, the front man there, didn’t seem too worried. He said the steps I’d taken to inform credit card issuers and others involved should head off any attempts to hack into our accounts.

I had delayed telling my son about the credit-card heist, because I feared he’d have a sh!t-fit and there was a limit to how much I could cope with. But Bob felt no one would be able to get into our shared account for the mortgage, nor, he thought, would they be able to get into my new AMEX accounts or much of anything else. So that was reassuring. Sorta.

Meanwhile, now that I have a new AMEX account, I’ll have to tell every creditor who auto-charges on that thing what the new card number is, a prospect that exhausts me. Yea verily, yesterday Apple sent an email demanding that I enter a method to charge up a $3.25/year bill for use of their vast web space. I couldn’t make their guy or their machine or whateverthef^ckitis understand that they need a new credit card number and that is all they need. So next week I’ll have to drive way to Hell and gone out to the far west side, whence the Apple store has decamped, find a human being, explain what is going on, and see if THEY can re-up my subscription.

Endless!!!

After fleeing the credit union, I stopped by the big new Sprouts near the university campus. It was quite a nice shopping experience…that store is larger than any of the other Sprouts stores I’ve seen here in Phoenix. Their produce is wonderful, they have drinkable cheap wine, and a wide variety of other loot. I came away feeling pretty pleased.

Which led to a rumination about Costco…  As in why am i PAYING to shop there??? Especially ever since they closed the store nearest to the ’Hood, necessitating a twenty- or thirty-minute drive across the city. I got everything I needed at Sprouts…and then some. True, at Costco you can buy clothing, shoes, sheets, towels, office supplies, and on and on. But hey! You don’t buy that stuff every week. And besides, if it’s something you really want, Instacart delivery is free for Costco members. If you sent an Instacart runner over there once every month or six weeks, it would pay for the membership…which is 60 to 120 bucks.

Sprouts has an excellent selection of drinkable low-rent wines — Costco seems to have gotten rid of all its decent brands in the $9 to $12 range. Sprouts has a much larger selection of fresh produce. And it carries CBD oils and creams, which go a whole long way toward soothing the peripheral neuropathy. A-n-n-d how crazy IS it to drive halfway across the city to stand in line at the pumps for twenty minutes so as to save a couple bucks on a gasoline fill-up? We have two perfectly fine QT’s right up the road, both of which generally undercut the competition.

So I think I’m going to shop a WHOLE lot less at Costco. Matter of fact, I may stop shopping there altogether.

Fill up that afternoon…

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…with HASSLES!

Yep: I spent the entire afternoon shift down at the church reception desk putting out fires ignited by the theft of my card wallet and every credit card and ID card to my name. Three hours of figuring out what recurring charges need to be OKed by the credit union, which ones have been in place since the memory of Person runneth not to the contrary, and which are new charges that the CU staff need to know about.

I’m now prepared to gallop into the CU tomorrow morning, let them know which autopays are legit and should stay in place, which autodeposits are real and must not be fu*ked up, alert them that my son’s account is vulnerable, too (won’t he be thrilled?), and try to order up a new Medicare card (good luck with that!).  This afternoon — just a few minutes ago, I found the original of my Social Security card, so that is one truly major hassle evaded. But trying to get a new Medicare card involves a fine hoop-jump with a faceless, brain-banging system. And…because my son has linked his credit-union account with mine by way of juggling payments on the mid-town house…ooooohhh gawd! Presumably if the sh!thead can get into my account, he can get into my son’s.

So THAT highly convenient arrangement will have to be demolished.

I’ve been afraid to tell M’hijito about this débâcle. But…depending on what CU staff say tomorrow morning, I may have to tell him about it. And oh my friends and ah my foes, you may be sure I’ll never hear the end of it!

😀

Man! I’ll tellya…I’m hoping (against hope) that tomorrow’s visit to the credit union will be as close to the end of this headache as we can get. If push comes to shove, o’course, we can close both accounts and start over with new account numbers. But that will just be stage 2 in the marathon headache.

I have a sh!tload of autopays that will have to be re-done; probably will need the advice and consent of credit-union staff to pull that off. We already have a new debit card. But some of this stuff, like Social Security and Medicare cards, cannot be issued anew. Big Brother will give you a new card, but  with the same number. So if the jerk has got your name and your card number, you’re just flat outta luck for whatever bills he runs up.

So, what can Funny’s readers learn from this fine fiasco? Well…

1. Photocopy all the cards in your wallet, front and back. Store these copies in a safe place where you can find them quickly.

2. While you’re at it, compile a list of all your credit-card issuers with contact information. Do not lose this!

3. If some doctor’s office’s staff demands that you carry your Social Security card around with you and show it to them every time you visit (ahem! are you listening, Young Dr. Kildare?) tell them to take a flyer at the moon. Remind them that it is illegal to use a Social Security card as ID and that they have no business demanding that you bring your Social Security card every time you walk in the door. Nor, for that matter, once they’ve recorded your Medicare data, is there any reason to expect you to flash your Medicare card for every visit.

4. Keep an up-to-date running record of every charge, credit, and debit you make. Don’t wait for statements to come in. Keep your own list of debits and credits!

5. Although auto-pays of recurring costs like utility bills are convenient, consider that they may morph into first-class hassles if a theft requires closing a bank account. It may be better to write (gasp!) paper checks or manually send electronic payment. While manually paying every little routine bill is a time suck, undoing your carefully crafted bill-pay system is even even greater time suck…and a chaotic one.

Wow! How long can this go on?????

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Real estate prices have gone bonkers here…and they continue to bonk! Every day some new ad comes in with yet another Never-Neverland price that just BOGGLES the mind.

Check  out the latest…

THIS thing…holy mackerel. Scroll down in the data and you see the original list price was a bargain $399,000…they’ve RAISED THE PRICE by 51 grand!!!!!!!!!!

Gasp!

The Coronado district is an aging tract of houses dating from the early 20th century. Young people regard them as “quaint” and “historic.” And they’re located conveniently to downtown, to several fairly respectable schools (private and public), and to the mid-town amenities (restaurants, shopping, hospitals, office buildings, community college, cultural center, AJ’s…and the like). A-n-n-d…don’t say it too loud: the houses generally require rewiring, replumbing — both of these by guys who know how to work on antique infrastructure — and termite treatment.
******
Speaking of mid-town… You, too, can live conveniently within walking distance of Chuck’s Auto Repair. Good thing: you could work a deal to leave your car parked in his fenced lot….. The house is in a highly questionable area, and note that there’s no safe place on the lot to park your car. The entire decrepit…ahem, quaint 1,000 square feet can be had for a bargain FOUR HUNDRED AND NINETY GRAND.
:-0
Dontcha love the Day-Glo turquoise paint? No pool, no play equipment, no garage, no space for a full-sized dining table, no… You could rent an apartment that’s bigger than that and nicer than that, and not have to take care of tired-looking yard!
*****
Then we have this astonishment: for half a million bucks, you too can live in lovely Sunnyslope. Nevermind that Sunnyslope is a dangerous slum, where you get your entertainment by dodging bullets and where each night you’re serenaded with the cheery buzz of cop helicopters and the merry melody of ambulances and fire trucks hauling victims to the nearby hospital… Sunnyslope is dominated by biker gangs. This house backs onto a large urban high school and is about two blocks from the Arizona Canal, also known as the Bum’s Highway.
The boggle minds!
*****
Where are people getting the money to buy these fine palaces? And even supposing a person has no qualms about going into debt for an amount equivalent to the contents of Uncle Scrooge’s money bin, how on earth have people been persuaded to dump it into a decrepit shack in a notorious neighborhood?
….
Obviously, this is an overheated market that can’t last. One of these days — in the not too distant future, I’d guess — these prices are going to come back down to earth. They may even drop to less that the houses’ pre-bubble prices. To my mind, you’d be far better off to rent until such time as that happens.
…
Caveat emptor!

The Endless Tide of Hassles…

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In the Never-a-Dull-Moment department, Funny has surely taken the proverbial cake. The past two weeks have devolved into hassle after hassle after ever-more-astonishing hassle.

Surprisingly, Funny is still on the air. Fancy that! Since last we scribbled at each other, in came another threat from the scammers impersonating staff at BigScoots, which provides the web hosting service for this blog. By then we had ascertained that this is a fraud, a fraud, and nothing but a fraud.

Problem is, it’s extremely difficult to tell whether the demands for money are coming from the scammers or whether in fact it’s time to update the auto pay for BigScoots. As we sit here, yea verily here’s another dunning email floating around in MacMail. Just now I’m too harried and too maxed out on annoying ditz to try to figure out whether it’s real or not. I believe not, though: BigScoots was auto-paid.

Which sounds good EXCEPT….

Yeah. Always an except, right? Just now the True-Life Except is that BigScoots is still paid out of my corporate account. I decided to close down the technical editing business...think I will just freaking DIE if I have to read another 30-page scholarly disquisition that purports to prove, using the highest and most intricate of intricate higher math, that automobile exhaust emitted from cars traveling along an inter-city highway in China backs up against the foothills of a bordering mountain range and…

…wait for it…this is too, too amazing…

causes smog!!!

Holeee mackerel! Who’d’ve thunk it?

Academia. What a place! Apparently it’s no less ridiculous a place in China than it is here in the U.S.

Face with Rolling Eyes on Apple
So anyway, in my enthusiasm for BREAKING FREE(!!!!!) of academic editing, I conveniently forgot that the corporate bank account happened to host a whole slew of auto-pays. Meanwhile, it’s been one fiasco after another, leaving exactly zero time and energy to dig out the paper statements from the credit union and figure out exactly what those auto-pays are and track down the creditors and change the auto-pays to my personal account. So not only do I not know for sure that the latest nuisance demand for payment to BigScoots is real, neither do I know exactly which creditors need to have new auto-payments set up.

Speaking of the meanwhile….I’ve got to wrestle with the income tax data for WonderAccountant. That  took up the better part of two afternoons last week. Mind-numbing, grinding, booooooorrring ditz, hour after hour after hour of it. For the life of me, I do NOT understand how accountants can stand it

To frost all those cookies, last week I again had to traipse up to Young Dr. Kildare’s office and beg his staff to give me a password to their accursed portal. Been there, done that…and promptly lost the damn thing.

The accursed peripheral neuropathy is flaring, and it’s driving me crazy. He only just found out about that, because we haven’t had time to go over all my endless series of effing ailments since he arrived in my precincts. I had to drive up there AGAIN and get them to give me another new password, because I promptly lost the one their gal made for me, and then finally we made a new appointment.

He thinks the dizziness is caused by allergies…apparently it didn’t occur to him that peripheral neuropathy can also take the form of vestibular neuropathy, an affliction of the nerves in the inner ear that can also cause vertigo. To his credit, though, he referred me to a neurologist. Haven’t had a chance yet to call and make an appointment with that guy…and I have a very bad feeling that I don’t wanna, because whatever treatment they inflict on you is likely to be worse than the ailment.

YDK has theorized, though, that the endless spin stems from congestion in the eustachian tubes. And that actually make sense. The air here in lovely uptown Arizona has been just ungodly bad, with days when the haze obscured houses a block away, and the hills to the south have been submerged in a blanket of dirty air. Most of the time my parents and I lived in lovely Southern California, the air was always like that. And I was sick all the time. This was in the early 1960s, before air pollution laws kicked in — SoCal enjoyed phenomenal smog In fact, all the time I lived there, I didn’t even know there are mountains behind the LA basin. Never saw them once, in all the time we dwelt in lovely Long Beach.

Tellingly, a light breeze has come up and this morning you could see the North Mountains….a-n-n-n-d this morning I could breathe. This morning the world was only gently revolving around my head. So chances are YDK’s guess is right — especially when you consider that 1 aspirin and 1 Sudafed will do the trick pretty well.

At any rate, one more distraction, that.

In the meantime, the other day I hired a guy from Barbecue Doc — a backyard grill-cleaning enterprise — to come shovel the grease and crud out of my barbecue. He was the first of two workmen that day: in the morning we had a guy come over to repair and lubricate the garage door.

The barbecue dude, who came over in the afternoon, stole my my credit-card wallet off the patio table, where (after paying him) I’d set it down  between the time we inspected his (highly excellent!) work and the time I showed him out the door.

The upshot has been (and apparently will be, into the foreseeable future and then some) an amazing series of hassles. I’ve been running from pillar to post ever since I discovered all my ID, all my credit cards, all my whatnot was GONE.

Spent an entire day running from pillar to post and back again. All the way out to darkest Maryvale, a low-end suburb (the term we’re groping for is “dangerous slum”) on the west side, there to stand in line for 40 minutes to apply for a new driver’s license. Get up to the front of the line — which moves fairly fast, since they’ve got about two dozen windows open — explain the predicament, and the clerk kindly arranges for a new license to be sent to the Funny Farm. While I’m watching her work, I remark that her tattoos — full-color works of art decorate her arms — are really cool. (No, I’m not what you’d call a tattoo lady, but this was really out of the ordinary and the finished project actually was beautifully decorative.) She, sounding a little tickled, says “Oh, thank you.”

When she finishes taking my picture and filling out all the paperwork and generating a temporary license, she pushes the thing across the counter quietly and says g’bye. Got it? SHE DIDN’T CHARGE ME THE $25 RENEWAL FEE.

Yeah. Be nice: it pays off. 😀

Canceled both AMEX cards — corporate and personal. Arranged (I sincerely hope) for a new personal card to be sent my way; decide to opt the separate account for “business,” since I’ve decided to fold the business. If I get some little project from a former client, it’ll be easy enough to flag income from that for WonderAccountant, but I don’t expect to be making enough money to make it worth any elaborate apparatus to divide out bidness and personal income/expenses.

Meanwhile, because YDK’s staff insists that you show a Social Security card when you check in (is that even legal?), BBQ Dude ripped that off, too. Y’don’t s’ppose this is WHY the SS Administration emits a warning, when they send you the card, NOT to carry it around in your purse or wallet?

I figured I was going to have to trudge up to the SS office in Paradise Valley and sit there for the usual four hours to get in to see a live human being to beg for a new card. But…lo! Believe it or not, you actually can order a new Social Security card online!

If this works, it’ll be some kind of a miracle. The proverbial ointment fly is that to make the online form work you must have a current driver’s license. And of course BBQ Boy ripped off my license, too. So I’ll have to wait until the replacement gets here to do virtual battle with the Social Security bureaucrats.

Fortunately, I do have a photocopy of the SS card. Which brings us to the Aesopian moral of this tale: Keep a list of all the cards in your wallet, AND keep a photocopy of each one.

Can’t wait to see what new headaches and fiascos this latest gambit causes. Pool Dude, who has been around the block more than once, says that identity thieves who know what they’re doing always make a small, preliminary debit from your checking account — small enough that, with any luck, it won’t be noticed. If it goes through, then they head off to the nearest Harley-Davidson dealership to buy themselves a new hog. Or some such.

A-a-a-n-d…damned if he ain’t right. A day later, up popped a debit for $2.17!

The theft has been reported to the credit union and they’re raising the barricades. But it means that for the next few months, I’ll have to check my online accounts virtually every day, and flag every fake debit. Actually, they may be able to change the account number and issue a new card with a new number, which will foil our boy. Or whoever he sells the card to.

In theory BBQ Boy’s gambit wouldn’t be that big a deal, if it hadn’t come on top of the health-care hassle and the headaches entailed in closing the business account and the 2022 tax calculations hassle and the PITA auto-pays hassle and…JAYZUS am I tired of this stuff!

Interestingly, you can’t report a credit card fraud or theft to the Phoenix Police Department. At least not over the phone. They have two numbers for the Great Unwashed to call: “emergency” and “non-emergency.” When you dial the latter, first you get a blabathon, and then you get a high-pitched, LOUD, eardrum-shattering squeal SKWEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!! blasted into your ear. No, it’s not some kind of fluke: it happens every time you dial the non-emergency number.

What are they tryin’ to say to us?

To further frost the cookies (you didn’t imagine we’d run out of frosting, did you?), the roll of (expensive!!) dog food I bought for Ruby proved to be slimey-spoiled when I cut into this morning. Normally one of these things lasts her about ten days. But this one: less than 20 seconds: I had to throw it directly in the garbage.

Fortunately I have a few cans of dog food to act as backups.

But this is the second time it’s happened. First time, I schlepped the stuff back to AJ’s and they replaced it, gratis. But this time…y’know…I’ve got quite enough to do, thank you, without having to drive way to Hell and gone down to Central and Camelback to return the stuff. Again.

So, I believe that will be the last time we patronize that maker of overpriced dog food.

Fortunately, deep in the freezer reside the makin’s for DIY dog food, which I know Ruby will love. So tomorrow (or maybe this afternoon, if I manage to get off my duff) we’ll be concocting a week’s worth of chicken dog food for Her Ladyship. And so it will be henceforth.

And all that ain’t the half of it…

Bold little scammers, aren’t they?

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Well, in the course of the last threat to remove Funny about Money from the air for alleged non-payment of hosting fees, we learned that the autopayments to the host and the Web guru are indeed going through, and the threat was a scam.

Interestingly, they came back. Yesterday was largely absorbed by another threat to kick my site off its host. After literally hours of farting around, we ascertained that yes, the payments are being received.

So we seem to be looking at a persistent scam.

However, I have to allow that I’m not very techie, and there’s a whole lot about online website hosting that I do not understand and do not especially want to understand. And if this campaign is over something real, then Funny is gone. Ohhh well. We’ll all have to find something else to pass the time.

Like you (no doubt), I already have plenty of tasks to fill that purpose. But if FaM goes off the air, keep an eye on Amazon. I’ve downloaded all its content and, if the site is closed down, will put it together in a book and peddle it on Amazon — probably in both e-book and hard copy format. So, for old times sake, do buy the thing. 😀

 

What’s a Dollar Worth, Anyhow?

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The other day I was reminiscing about my father and his times.

Born in 1909 in Fort Worth, Texas, he was a change-of-life baby. His mother apparently was in her late 40s, and, having raised two sons to adulthood, his father decidedly did not want to bring up another child. He walked out, ran off to the Chisolm Trail and waypoints. After some time (how much time, I do not know), he was found by the side of a road, a bullet in his head and a pistol in his hand: presumed suicide.

The mother, however, prevailed. She had inherited what was then a handsome fortune from her father, who’d struck it rich freighting buffalo hides out of Oklahoma into Texas, there to be shipped to the East Coast. By the time her husband ran off, she not only had that substantial chunk of dough, she owned a gas station (in 1909 that must have been a novelty!) and a large home. Fort Worth was a wide spot in the road, where the family presumably enjoyed a very comfortable lifestyle.

My father’s two brothers were adults by the time he came along. One was a cowboy who eventually became a ranch manager, and one went to work for Metzger’s Dairy, where over time he became a mid-level manager or executive.

In her husband’s absence, the mother fell prey to any number of opportunists and con artists. She got into spiritualism, which was quite the rage in the early 20th century. Adherents to this nouveau-religion believe the soul persists after death, and that it is therefore possible to communicate with your deceased loved ones. This activity drew the woman right in: my father described séances conducted by supposed mediums…who really acted not as a medium to chat with the dead but to funnel the credulous client’s money into their own bank accounts.

Then she got taken in by some building contractors, whom she had hired to make a few improvements on the family manse. Next thing anyone knew, she was paying them to construct grand additions to the house.

By the time the absent father was found, kaput, she had diddled away all of the money she had inherited from her father, including the gas station (which she sold to help fund her spiritual advisors and her construction crews). My father was still a teenager, but his two older brothers fell to blaming each other for not keeping an eye on her. This led to a permanent alienation between the two men. At 16, my father dropped out of high school, lied about his age, and joined the Navy.

Naval service started him on a decently-paying career in the Merchant Marine. By then he had formed a lifelong ambition: to earn back the entire amount his mother had squandered, and, once he reached that goal, to retire and live the life of Riley for as long as he had left to inhabit this earth.

That amount was $100,000, and that was his target. He worked, he scrimped, he saved, and he invested every spare penny.

By 1962, he had stashed away that amount: the cache he figured he could retire on.

So the other day I was contemplating the absurd rise in housing prices that has taken place recently — a house just down the street from my first house here in the ‘Hood, for which I paid $100,000, is on the market for $640,000. Same model as mine, a block closer to Conduit of Blight and its crazy-making noise. For a middle-class tract house, apparently it was underpriced: it sold in a few days. Six and a half times what it was worth when I moved into the neighborhood!!!

This led me to wonder how much that $100,000 of his would be worth today.

To live in the style to which that amount would have supported my father — just about in my present rather modest middle-class style — you would need $923,185.43…almost a million dollars!

And how much would he have needed to replace the buying power of his mother’s hundred grand in the year he retired, 1962? $173,563.22 when he bought their little house in Sun City.

He wasn’t so far off: only $23,563 short.

What it means is that in the time since he retired — 60 years — inflation has vastly devalued the dollar’s buying power — much more so than during the time he worked: 37 years.

So what does it mean to us, here in the first third of the 21st Century?

My guess is that if you’re a young adult today, you would need to calculate how much you need to earn now and how much you need to save to retire comfortably in middle- to old age, and then multiply that figure by a factor of two to ten. Depending on the style to which you hope to remain accustomed…

You can’t rely on today’s dollar to support you tomorrow.