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Paper!!!

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Wads and wads and wads of paper… Am I the only sheeple who’s sick & tired of having piles of paper inflicted on her? Paper physical and paper virtual, makes no difference: it’s all time-consuming, annoying, goddamn clutter.

Every April, I have to file an annual report with the Arizona Corporation Commission for The Copyeditor’s Desk. What this really is is an excuse to extract $45 from you. To distract you from the reality, they blitz you with pointless paperwork, which you now have to fill out online.

The annual report entails plodding through four pages of pointless questions, all of which are the same pointless questions posed last year. The pointless questions never change.

Their pointlessness aside — there’s really no reason to ask most of the questions in the first place, and there’s certainly no point in posing them over and over and over and over, once every year that your company is in business — because they’re endlessly repetitive and pro forma, all the ACC really needs to do is ask you “has anything changed since last year.” But this would absorb about 20 seconds of your time — as opposed to half an hour or so — and would consume only one line of electronic copy. As opposed to making you click through page after page after pointless page.

Once this exercise is completed, you have to — or rather, if you have a brain in your head you will — download and print a lengthy PDF showing what answers you made and attesting that you filed the document and ponied up 45 bucks. You also will download and print the receipt for the 45 bucks.

Stash this in your already bloated file folder, and then move on to the next exercise in futility: You’re also required to write and keep the minutes of your corporation’s annual meeting. Nevermind that your board of directors consists of one (1) person: you’re still required to meet with yourself and record what you said to yourself.

Interestingly, you’re not required to file this silly document with the state. But you are required to write it and keep it on file…in perpetuity.

Honestly. The amount of paper that comes into this place, whether for business or personal matters, defies belief. You could, in theory, store it to disk… But who wants to trust that a computer will not crash or a hacker will not hack when it comes to documents that the government or some insurance company requires?

Okay, so much for that rant. Now to emit some paperwork of my own…

Image: Depositphotos, © gemenacom

Stylish SPENDING!

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So my friend KJG and I made a run on our favorite clothing and kitsch boutique, tucked away in touristy downtown Glendale. Their clothes are awesome, and many of them are made in the USA, miracle of miracles. To tell you how much we love this place, KJG has to drive 40 minutes to get there.

I’ve been needing some  new shirts to wear with my uniform — blue jeans. And I wanted some that would come down far enough to cover my tush if I chose instead to wear a pair of stretchy yoga pants, which are much more comfortable for choir practice because they don’t bind when you try to breathe.

Woo HOO! I found not one, not two, not three, but FIVE tops, each one cuter than the other. These are casual shirts with a mildly countercultural look to them, the kind of thing no one expects an old lady to wear (yet not so much so that people wonder what you’re trying to prove). They’re the sort of tops that elicit compliments from other women, about the be-all and end-all of ego gratification.

Lately they’ve started carrying shirts by Jess & Jane. The proprietor says they fly off the racks — she can’t keep them in house very long. and they are perfect for the purpose. (And yes, you can buy them on Amazon, in limited size choices…but I prefer to try on clothing before spending. And given a choice, I’ll always buy local.)

This spending spree set me back $280.

{gasp!}

But before too much hyperventilation sets in, consider: I may go out to this place once or twice a year.  And these clothing items last. Each of these tops will stay in the active wardrobe for at least three years.

When I buy clothes in other stores, they often fall apart after a few wearings. Or they just start looking shabby. That gets old, real fast. IMHO, the new fashion of buying cheaply made clothes engineered to last about three months comes under the heading of “penny-wise and pound-foolish.”

If I replace a $40 shirt in three years, then the privilege of wearing it has cost me $13.33 a year, or a little over a dollar a month.

If I replace a $10 shirt in three months, that shirt — which may fall apart in even less than three months — will cost me $3 a month.

That’s three times the cost of a better made and prettier piece of clothing!

So…in reality, I didn’t spend money. I saved money.

 

 

 

 

Nope…not a paid ad!

 

March showers bring April winds…

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So the spring winds are here. These are somewhat more brisker than a breeze but don’t (usually) rise to monsoon levels. Normally they blow the leaves and flowers off the shrubbery and the fruit off the trees, with the aim of dumping all that stuff in the natives’ pools.

Over the past week or ten days, though, we’ve had some passing stiff blows. Conveniently, these have provided an opportunity to test the latest panty-hose approach to pool filtration. And, by golly, it works!

Picked up some cheap hose on sale at a grocery store the other day. Lobbed off the legs, tied them off, and tied the resulting bag to the leaf-catcher. The booty-bag vacuumed up the leaves and twigs in about twenty seconds, without once threatening to slip off the device and dump its cargo all over the bottom of the pool. The one I secured inside the skimmer basket filter also stayed firmly in place; it was chuckablock full of leaves and blossoms this morning.

The trick is to disconnect Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner whilst the wind blows. This keeps him from choking on twigs, flying pecan shells, and the like. Dust, twigs, palm tree cuttings, and heavier leaves drop to the bottom of the pool; small blossoms and the BB-like palm-tree seeds alight on the surface and flat. After the wind dies down, one then turns on the pump, which sucks the floating debris into the skimmer basket and, by way of the current it sets up, pushes everything on the bottom into a convenient pile in one spot. Hence: the garden-hose driven leaf-catcher, which easily lifts the mound off the bottom and sucks it into the booty-bag.

Despite the half-bushel or so of plant debris, the pool is still holding its own against the recurring mustard algae, which by this time last year was joyously coating the walls with moss.

At one point earlier this spring, I was reminded that when I first moved into this house, I was so delighted with the pool that I used to sweep it down every day or so. Of late, that enthusiasm has flagged — not so much out of boredom with the pool but because the year of surgeries broke me of habits that entailed even small amounts of physical exertion and because of late the editorial workload has been such that I just flat haven’t had time to fiddle with the yard and the pool.

LOL! A friend of mine, a middling prominent music critic, once remarked that self-employment allows you to set your own hours: any 18 hours of the day you please.

Yea, verily.

When I moved into the house, lo these many years ago, I had…well, you know…a job. (Urk!) I worked regular hours, and those hours did not start at 6:30 or 7 a.m. and run all the way through to 11 p.m.

So, back in the day, I had lots of time to break out the pool brush and run it up and down the walls. It only takes about 10 minutes, once you get yourself off the dime. So there really was no problem with doing a few light maintenance chores before leaving for work.

Today when a job or three are in-house, it’s roll out of the sack, grab the computer, answer the mail, do the books, pay the bills, work on someone’s copy — all before breakfast. Feed the dogs, bolt down some toast and coffee, maybe write a blog post (maybe not), post some PR to Facebook & Twitter, edit copy or compile index entries…allllll day long.

Heh. No wonder I never get anything done!

Small Serendipities

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Some things in life have some surprising little benefits. You’ll recall the monster theft-resistant mailbox I spent $400 on, after purchase and installation. Eight months later, that did pay for itself, yea verily on a day when a large check from PayPal arrived. That’s nice, but a once-in-awhile occurrence. Interestingly, that pricey mailbox has another distinct advantage, one that applies daily: it frees you from having to retrieve the mail every single day, as soon after the mailman shows up as possible.

I love that.

About 98% of the snail mail these days goes directly into the blue barrel. In fact, I’ve even thought of leaving the blue barrel at the curb and asking the mailman to just throw all the mail right into it. 😀

He’s prob’ly not allowed to do that, though…

Yesterday I emptied the mailbox of about ten items, most of them in large 9 x 12 envelopes or just packets of loose paper. Every single item that had been delivered was trash. Is it a minor annoyance, in the large scheme of things, to have to go collect fistfuls of trash that idiots send you in the mail and walk it over to the recycling bin? Well, sure. But nevertheless, it is an annoyance. And IMHO we have enough of those.

With Ft. Knox out there, I pick up the mail two or maybe three times a week. I no longer have to sift through trash every day looking for the few important documents that are mailed to me. So it cuts the annoyance factor some.

Speaking of annoyances, I see Big Pharma has gotten wise to the several ways consumers have contrived to foil the damned consumer-proof lids. The last two bottles of cough medicine I bought each had lids that could not be broken apart with a few hammer blows. In fact, the one I got this morning was engineered so that the inside cap shattered when I belted the damned spinning outside cap with the hammer.

Fortunately, I’m a little old lady and so I save every piece of junk that comes my way. I can not, for the life of me, throw out an old spice jar.

Spice jars hold  just about the amount of liquid in a standard grocery-store cough medicine bottle. And they have lids that work. They are, in a word, perfect for the purpose. Small serendipity, indeed.

Et vous? Found any accidental, unexpected bennies in the small things of life lately?

Image: DepositPhotos, © Supertrooper

How Much Is Your Privacy Worth?

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Ironically, on the very day our bat-brained Congress negates recently established rules to (nominally) protect our privacy on the Internet, along comes this proposal from my insurance broker:

If I would like to cut this year’s $1,200+ tab for auto insurance, Safeco proposes that I should allow them to attach a “Right Track” device to my car. For 90 days, this thing tracks my driving habits: every time I start the car, every time I touch the gas pedal, every time I hit the brakes: how fast I go, when I go, and how long it takes me to get there.

It does not, he insists, distinguish whether I’m on a freeway or a surface street or a dirt road, nor does it (says he) know where I’m going. Apparently that’s true for Safeco’s device, but not necessarily for all such tracking devices used by the many U.S. insurors: some evidently do use GPS to track your every mile.

But here’s what: You start out with the promise that you could get a discount of as much as 30% on this year’s premium. That would put my premium back to what I was paying two years ago for a fifteen-year-old junker. Sounds grand, eh?

Not so much. You get dinged for every infraction of every driving characteristic they’re spying on. You get dinged for “hard acceleration.” One commenter at a forum I came across yesterday did the math and discovered that going from 0 to 7.5 mph in 10 seconds amounts to “hard acceleration.” You get dinged if you have to step on the brakes because a cat — or a kid — runs out in front of you. You get dinged if you drive your car between certain prohibited hours. It goes on and on. Every ding cuts your discount. At the end of the 90 days, you’re likely to end up with only the 5% offered if you would please just agree to our bald-faced intrusion into your private comings and goings.

More to the point, possibly, this kind of black-box data can be used against you. If you get in an accident — let’s say you do run down that granny and her three grandchildren in that darned crosswalk — the police or granny’s survivors’ lawyers can subpoena the data and use it to build a fine, expensive case against you. Maybe even put you in jail. In other words, effectively, you can be forced to testify against yourself.

As one of Get Rich Slowly’s readers commented a year ago,

1: If I brake hard to avoid a child running into the street, or avoid an inattentive driver pulling out in front of me, I get penalized for hard braking, while the inattentive driver – even WITH a monitor, if they pull out in front of me smoothly – will not be penalized for being a bad driver.

2: If I drive home responsibly during rush hour, because I have a job, I get penalized for driving at peak times, but the person driving home drunk after stopping at the bar for “a few” doesn’t get penalized.

3: If the device’s accelerometer settings are also calibrated to identify harder acceleration, I will get penalized for accelerating and merging properly on very short freeway entrance ramps, but the little old lady cruising down the freeway at 30mph with her left-turn signal on, will be rewarded.

On the other hand, 30% of something over $1200 is something over $360. Nothing to sneeze at, especially when you’re trying to live mostly on Social Security.

So I thought about this. Discussed it with my son, who happens to work in the insurance industry. Slept on it. And this morning sent a message to the Honored Insurance Broker:

In the first place, my driving record should speak for itself. I’ve been on the road for over 50 years, and in all those years I’ve had two minor fender-benders — not counting inflicting a scratch the side of my co-religionist’s car in the church parking lot. One of those fender-benders was arguably not my fault, since the other driver ran a red light.

In the second place, it’s an unconscionable invasion of privacy. I realize Big Brother is watching us everyplace we go, and I realize that a 2014 Toyota is already equipped with gear that tracks every breath I take. But that doesn’t make it right, it doesn’t make me like it, and it certainly doesn’t incline me to go along willingly with it. There’s something especially distasteful about being asked to compromise my principles for a few bucks.

And in the third place, when you look into this, you find it’s likely to be exactly that: very few bucks. Companies promise a discount of from 5% to 30%, but the amount depends on how they adjudge your driving skills. Drivers report being dinged for accelerating from zero to 7.5 mph in 10 seconds: that’s hardly a drag-race speed. They also say you’re dinged if you stop normally at a stoplight, rather than taking your foot off the gas when you see a red signal way off in the distance. They report being flicked off by other drivers for blocking traffic with blue-haired driving techniques.

In the Phoenix area, blue-hair driving is unsafe: when you hold up traffic by not getting off the dime or by hypermiling toward stop signs and signals, you can cause accidents by enraging other drivers, and you put yourself at risk of a great deal worse than an occasional finger flicked in your direction. Aggressive brake-checking, harassment, and even shots fired are likely consequences.

I’m not going to put myself at risk nor am I going to subject myself to even more invasion of privacy for a few bucks.

And you? How do you feel about this matter? Will you sell your privacy for a few bucks? Yes? And how much does your soul go for?

Images: Depositphotos, © ciuciumama

How to Deal with Elder Exploitation

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Recently a friend who’s down on her luck proposed that she should move in with me as a roommate. I was tempted: an extra plug of money — even though it would be far less than what it would cost her to rent an apartment here in lovely (increasingly expensive) uptown Phoenix — plus some help with the utility bills would be nice. And at times one would enjoy the company and another pair of hands to help with the upkeep.

And at about the same time, a reader wrote to discuss a new development in his aged mother’s welfare: a “friend” from the past has resurfaced, essentially broke and homeless, and has talked her into renting a room for about a third the going rate.

For us Aged, a rental arrangement along these lines presents some advantages. If you own the property, a little rent amounts to some spending money. If instead you’re paying a mortgage on it, the effect is the same because the rent defrays the cost of the mortgage payment, leaving something in your checking account to pay for food and glad rags. Less obvious: if you carry what the person pays you on your books as “rent,” it turns your home into a rental property and everything you do to improve or repair it is tax-deductible as a business expense.

It works. When SDXB lived with me, he paid half the mortgage and half the utilities. For the IRS’s purposes, I described the income as “rent,” and that substantially defrayed the cost of the new carpeting, the paint, the new kitchen counters, the new toilet, the new swamp cooler, and various bits and pieces of maintenance. It worked out quite well. And since the mortgage alone consumed half of my entire take-home pay, that “rent” made it possible for me to live in the house at all.

Though my friend is neither male nor a love interest, the possibility of having her share space seemed, in passing, interesting enough. I enjoy this person quite a lot. And it has, after all, been long enough since SDXB’s exit for me to forget why roommates make me crazy…

Presented with this proposal, my son put his foot down. He was having exactly none of it, and he announced in no uncertain terms that no roommate was moving in.

Now…you could observe that I’m a grown woman and can decide for myself who I will and will not live with. And there’s something to that. But I wouldn’t have asked him about this if I hadn’t had some misgivings.

And as a  practical matter, my son being at the height of his vigor still has all has marbles. As I skateboard toward senility, there’s some question as to whether every one of mine really is intact. He has shown himself to be eminently responsible with money and all-around smart about life, the universe and all that.

So, I tend to take his advice, he clearly having a better grip on his marbles than I have on mine.

Really, once you’re in your 70s, you find that you’re more easily persuaded – “railroaded” may be le mot juste – than you were just a few years earlier. You’re less skeptical of other people’s motives and less inclined to believe the worst of others. So it’s easy to take advantage of you. And people know it. People who don’t necessarily mean you well know it.

This isn’t the first time someone has proposed to move in with me. About two days before I was scheduled for the first of the six surgeries that occupied a full year, my neighbor across the street sold her house. By the time the deal closed, she still had noplace to go: she hadn’t bothered (or couldn’t afford) to find an apartment or arrange lodging with family members.

So she shows up at my door and suggests that she should room with me temporarily, until such time as she can find a permanent place.

At this point, I’m pretty bat-brained with stress. I say…uhmmm…okayyy, I guess that would be OK. And before I know it, she’s marching around my house saying “my chair will go here and my TV will go there and my refrigerator will go in the garage”! And I’m thinking…holeeee shee-ut!

When my son got wind of this, he mounted his white charger and galloped across the road. He showed up at her door and said, “You are not moving in with my mother.”

Thank you, God…and son. He thereby extricated me from what was obviously about to become a very messy situation.

Financial exploitation of the elderly is a serious problem in America, partly because families splinter and scatter all over the country. An older person really needs someone who sincerely wants to watch over his or her interests to keep an eye on all aspects of the person’s life, including finances. But when families disperse, there often isn’t any such person left.

Victimization of this nature has become so common that physician’s assistants are trained to recognize it and lawyers are advised that cases of elder financial exploitation can form a part of a successful practice.

The state of Florida (home of the world’s most spectacular con artists) has inscribed financial elder abuse into its statutes:

(1)  “Exploitation of an elderly person or disabled adult” means:

(a) Knowingly obtaining or using, or endeavoring to obtain or use, an elderly person’s or disabled adult’s funds, assets, or property with the intent to temporarily or permanently deprive the elderly person or disabled adult of the use, benefit, or possession of the funds, assets, or property, or to benefit someone other than the elderly person or disabled adult, by a person who:

1. Stands in a position of trust and confidence with the elderly person or disabled adult; or

2. Has a business relationship with the elderly person or disabled adult;

(b) Obtaining or using, endeavoring to obtain or use, or conspiring with another to obtain or use an elderly person’s or disabled adult’s funds, assets, or property with the intent to temporarily or permanently deprive the elderly person or disabled adult of the use, benefit, or possession of the funds, assets, or property, or to benefit someone other than the elderly person or disabled adult, by a person who knows or reasonably should know that the elderly person or disabled adult lacks the capacity to consent;

(c) Breach of a fiduciary duty to an elderly person or disabled adult by the person’s guardian, trustee who is an individual, or agent under a power of attorney which results in an unauthorized appropriation, sale, or transfer of property. An unauthorized appropriation under this paragraph occurs when the elderly person or disabled adult does not receive the reasonably equivalent financial value in goods or services, or when the fiduciary violates any of these duties:

1. For agents appointed under chapter 709:

a. Committing fraud in obtaining their appointments;

b. Abusing their powers;

c. Wasting, embezzling, or intentionally mismanaging the assets of the principal or beneficiary; or

d. Acting contrary to the principal’s sole benefit or best interest; or

2. For guardians and trustees who are individuals and who are appointed under chapter 736 or chapter 744:

a. Committing fraud in obtaining their appointments;

b. Abusing their powers; or

c. Wasting, embezzling, or intentionally mismanaging the assets of the ward or beneficiary of the trust;

(d) Misappropriating, misusing, or transferring without authorization money belonging to an elderly person or disabled adult from an account in which the elderly person or disabled adult placed the funds, owned the funds, and was the sole contributor or payee of the funds before the misappropriation, misuse, or unauthorized transfer. This paragraph only applies to the following types of accounts:

1. Personal accounts;

2. Joint accounts created with the intent that only the elderly person or disabled adult enjoys all rights, interests, and claims to moneys deposited into such account; or

3. Convenience accounts created in accordance with s. 655.80; or

(e) Intentionally or negligently failing to effectively use an elderly person’s or disabled adult’s income and assets for the necessities required for that person’s support and maintenance, by a caregiver or a person who stands in a position of trust and confidence with the elderly person or disabled adult.

(2) Any inter vivos [gift from a living person, as opposed to a legacy] transfer of money or property valued in excess of $10,000 at the time of the transfer, whether in a single transaction or multiple transactions, by a person age 65 or older to a nonrelative whom the transferor knew for fewer than 2 years before the first transfer and for which the transferor did not receive the reasonably equivalent financial value in goods or services creates a permissive presumption that the transfer was the result of exploitation.

As you can see, this is a pretty broad definition. Just about anyone who has any kind of access to an elder person, whether officially as a cosigner on an account or whether as a matter of trust or family relationship, is in a position to wangle any of these abuses.

What can be done?

If you’re already older but still have full possession of your marbles:

  • Designate someone that you trust to keep an eye on your finances and on your personal activities and relationships.
  • Designate someone else that you can trust to “second” or oversee that person’s activities where your finances and lifestyle are concerned.
  • Provide a power of attorney for that person.
  • Put your wishes – especially should you become incapacitated – in writing, give copies to more than one person, and file a copy with your lawyer or accountant.
  • Make it possible for the trusted person to view your bank, brokerage, and credit-card statements; arrange to have statements sent to this trustee, or give him or her the password to view statements online.
  • Arrange for a financial manager to oversee major investment accounts, with responsibility to you, not to your relatives or supposed friends.

It’s important to be aware that just because someone is your child does not make that person trustworthy. The sister of a dear friend assumed the care of their mother, who was at the time sliding into Alzheimer’s. As soon as she got her talons into the woman, she cut off all communication with her siblings. The woman’s estate was worth about $6 million. By the time my friend and her brother realized what was going on, the sister had drained the estate of at least $3 million, diddling away the money on houses for herself and her adult child, on cars, and on luxury items. The lawsuit is under way as we speak – but no one will ever be able to recover the money that was stolen from the mother’s estate.

If you have a parent or loved one who needs help or who may need help:

  • Keep an eye on his or her living conditions and note any abrupt changes. If the person is suddenly living high off the hog or suddenly living like an anchorite, consider that a warning sign and look more deeply into the situation.
  • Watch for the absence of valuables, such as electronic devices, jewelry, or furniture. Any unexplained disappearance of such possessions is a loud and clear warning sign.
  • Regard any new roommates, caregivers, or “best friends” with skepticism. Be sure they do not have access to funds or property. This is a case in which silence is golden: watch, don’t talk.
  • Observe whether such a person accompanies him or her to the bank, knows their Social Security number, or knows PIN numbers for debit cards.
  • Watch for signs that bills aren’t being paid, such as past-due notices, bill collection harassment, eviction notices, cancellation of utilities, or the like.
  • Review bank statements regularly. If statements stop coming in the mail, find out why and where they’re going.
  • Question any unexplained financial transfers or disbursals.
  • Examine cleared checks to confirm that the signatures have not been forged.

If, as in my friend’s case, the victimized elder is mentally in no state to recognize exploitation or to ask for help, you may find yourself with a difficult problem. It’s not easy to challenge a caretaker’s authority, especially if the perp has been smart enough to engineer withdrawals and property exchanges in such a way as to make it appear they’re somehow in the victim’s interest.

Here’s what you can do:

  • Hire a lawyer. Some lawyers specialize in elder abuse cases.
  • Contact the person’s doctor or other health-care providers.
  • Notify other family members who are not exploiting the person.
  • Notify law enforcement officials.
  • Contact your state’s Adult Protective Services.

If you have evidence that someone you care for is being financially exploited — even if the apparent exploiter is a family member — take action. Do not delay. My friend and her brother are out $3 million of the money their father left to them — that’s $1.5 million apiece — because they hesitated to rock the boat. Even if the sister is convicted of a crime, they will never get that money back. And the mother will have that much less to support her safely and comfortably until she dies of Alzheimer’s.

Image: DepositPhotos, © Photography33