The Festival of Frugality is up at chez Kelly, the proprietor of Almost Frugal. An American expat in France, she gives us a soignée French theme. Funny’s list of 25 strategies to save enough money to stay in her house during retirement appears in this round-up. Frugal Fu starts an interesting discussion about the embarrassment of riches a taste for clothes shopping brings to your closet. You’ve gotta see the terrific photos of tiny gas-savers and…uhm…alternate modes of transportation at The Digerati Life! For do-it-yourselfers, Fiscal Zen provides a convenient list of 10 home improvement sites. And Uncommon Advice presents a smart list of 20 things to leave out of your shopping cart.
Yesterday intrepid shopper VickyC led the wayon a half-day safari through Ikea. What an experience! The place, which occupies a large chunk of a large retail campus full of warehouse-size furniture stores perched on the banks of a gigantic freeway running through a vastsuburban plain of look-alike tract houses, was just jammed. So crowded was it that you couldn’t even stand still without having someone bump into you. At least a third of the patrons were youngish mothers with small, shrilly screaming children.
LOL! If I had been a child, I would have shrieked, too.
VickyC was continuing her search for a small desk, and she also hoped to pick up some shelves that hang niftily on the wall without visible braces. We did locate the shelves. But a difficulty promptly arose: she lives in a historic house, none of whose measurements are standard in 2008. So neither of the two sizes the shelves come in would fit either of the spaces where she wants to hang them. That she plans to put books on them and one sign announced their maximum load is 11 pounds didn’t help matters.
If she could find a desk small enough to leave room on the 60-inch wall that will house this proposed work space, she might manage to fit in a narrow cabinet of shelves. We looked at every cabinet, every bookshelf, and every desk in the entire 40 million square feet under Ikea’s roof. We searched at such length that by the time neither of us could stand up any longer, the crowds had gone home and we had most of the store to ourselves. During the hours-long expedition, we found one arrangement that mightwork. She decided to think about it.
We came away with three purchases: VickyC found a plastic drawer organizer and I grabbed a few unscented pillar candles and a glass mug to replace the yard-sale purchase I dropped some weeks ago.
I was struck by how chintzy the furniture items were. Much of this stuff is truly ugly: lots of plastic, ersatz veneer-over-cardboard, and fake chrome- or fake nickel-plated hardware.
On the other hand, beggars can’t be choosers: the stuff is amazingly cheap. And it must be said that the children’s furniture includes some adorable and snazzy designs. The “Mammut” series offers this cheerful table and chairs, which come in fire-engine red, brilliant blue, and lime green — to die for. The table is all of forty bucks, and each chair is fifteen.
We were impressed, too, by the large selection of Marimekko-knockoff fabrics, some of them in upholstery weights, others sheer, and all bright, striking, and fun. Next to the fabric department, Ikea sells hardware that will let you convert lengths of cloth into sliding shade-like “drapes” that move back and forth like shoji screensacross a window, an appealing device, indeed. Among the deskoids, we found an exceptionally stylish affair cobbled together with your choice of several etched-glass tops slung over legs fashioned to look like black-enameled sawhorses. With no drawers or other storage, it was useful mostly for decoration, but it did look cool.
Most of our fellow shoppers were twentyish-to-thirtyish adults who had the harried look of working parents. When I was that age, my husband and I had bought a house whose $350 mortgage payment stretched our income to the max. We had zero dollars with which to furnish the place. We had some pieces of Levitz furniture that we’d bought with the bribe my father gave my husband to elope with me, so that he (father) didn’t have to pay for a wedding and reception. And that was it. I ended up building bookshelves and tables with bricks and boards, which furnished our home for some years.
Probably today I’d buy Ikea products instead. The stuff is cheaper than bricks and boards, and at least it resembles furniture, more or less. Doesn’t look like you’d get years of wear out of it…but that may be just as well. You wouldn’t want to keep it around for years. There’s something to be said for stylish junk that can be thrown away when you can afford to buy something better. I’m not crazy about the concept of throwing out junk and replacing it with new junk every three or four years, but if you can’t afford anything better, that’s pretty much what you have to do. That, or live with lots of bricks and boards.
In this morning’s New York Times, Ron Lieber reconsiders an earlier rave he wrote for “Your Money” about automating every penny you pay out. He notes that some people are wary of allowing business entities access to their checking accounts, largely out of concern over potentially costly errors. Others, he reports, have run into serious problems: one woman, for example, arranged to pay her phone bill on her credit card. Alas, when the expiration date came and went, no one bothered to tell the phone company, which soon sent a surly letter threatening to cut off her service.
While I’m an enthusiastic proponent of automatic bill paying, I do draw some lines. And I draw a wide, bold black line at charging up utilities on a credit card!
If anything happens that the card is canceled — whether to protect you from identity theft or because you decide to close the account — you are the one who gets to call every creditor and change your payment arrangements, a major nuisance, indeed. The potential hassle factor is just too high.
In fact, credit card statements are the only bills I do not have paid by automatic electronic funds transfer. Why? I just can’t bring myself to trust credit-card issuers. Those folks are not our friends. I want to see each statement and check each charge off against my Quicken or Excel records before forking over any cash.
For a long time, I felt that way about the phone company, too. Not so much because Qwest seemed untrustworthy (though a degree of incompetence presented itself, the company never seemed outright treacherous, the way credit-card lenders do), but because I’ve had people hack into my phone number and run up fraudulent toll calls. Here, too, I wanted to check the statement before sending any money.
I do authorize the utility companies, the city water department, and two insurance companies to bill my checking account directly. I did so because, before I switched my accounts to a credit union, the bank where I did business charged a fee when customers had money automatically transferred from the bank’s end but charged nothing when the creditor itself absorbed money out of the customer’s account. Why, I do not understand.
If I had it to do over again, I would go the other way around: retain control of the amount and date of payment, rather than permitting creditors to directly debit the account. This service is free at the credit union, but I didn’t know that when I made the switch. Now I’m too lazy and too busy to mess with changing a half-dozen payment arrangements.
Undoubtedly other issues present themselves. Identity theft? Seems to me you’re as much at risk of that when you send a check to some boiler room as you are when you pay electronically — possibly more so. Service snafus? They’re everywhere. Overdrafts? You need a system and some self-discipline to be sure enough money resides in your account to pay your bills…just as you do when you pay by check or cash.
Automatic bill-paying has many advantages. As with everything in life, we need to apply some common sense.
Power is still out for tens of thousands of Phoenix residents.Just now, at 10:30 in the morning, it’s only 92 degrees on my back patio, but humidity is said to be 61 percent.
So, I account myself extremely lucky that here the power was down for only an hour or so, and even more extremely lucky that the devil-pod tree* did not snap off in winds clocked as high as 100 miles per hour. Nor did any of the other trees, all much in need of thinning: desert willow, Texas ebony, vitex, palo brea, palo verde, yellow oleander, and the moribund ash.
Check out this photo, baldly stolen from ABC News (Channel 15), of a large billboard bent all the way down to the ground! Don’t know how long that link will stay live: it’s worth a visit for the amazing slide show of 185 dramatic photos, among them some stunning shots of lightning.
Our associate editor e-mailed early this morning to say DON’T COME TO CAMPUS! She said trees were down and blocking the way into the building. To get into the office, she had to wade through a six-inch deep puddle. News reports show signals out at several of the major intersections I have to traverse, and so…I believe we’ll be telecommuting today. Unclear whether our offices, which occupy a condemned building (yes) (don’t ask) (it’s better not to know), got any water; I asked her to check, and, having heard nothing, imagine we’re O.K. Hope so. I don’t want to have to traipse two hours through impossible traffic and chaos to deal with that.
It took about three hours to clean up the back yard, though I hafta admit that a large part of that time was spent cutting back the red salvia that tried unsuccessfully to cannibalize the Myer lemon (salvia 10; lemon 98), the overgrown lavender, and the overwatered, rotting sage plant. Even the aggressive salvia was less than happy: we’ve had so much rain this summer that many of the Mediterranean and xeriscapic plantings I put in the yard are turning to black slime. The pool would have been OK — in fact, probably wouldn’t have needed any extra attention — were it not for the devil-pod tree. I pulled a good bushel of pods, pollen balls, leaves, twigs, and small branches out of the water.
I occasionally consider whether to have the tree taken out. That will cost almost a thousand bucks, on top of the thou’ it will take to remove the dying ash tree in front. Really, only in the summer does the tree turn into a real nuisance. The rest of the year it’s quiescent. On the other hand, I was alarmed enough last night to stay out of the bedroom, where the tree will hit if it decides to fall on the house. The wind came up again after I posted last night’s storm report; Cassie and I ended up sleeping on the living room sofa. Less than perfectly pleasing accommodations.
The tree has some advantages, not the least of which is that its thick foliage forms a privacy barrier between the pool and passers-by on the street. Some members of the public are given to using the shrubbery as their toilet, so…as you can imagine, these are not folks you want peering into the yard. It could take a couple of years or more to get something else to grow big enough to block unwelcome gazers. And it does put some shade on the concrete pad, which functions as a horizontal trombé wall to conduct heat into the bedroom all summer long. Removing the tree would make the bedroom even hotter than it is (which is plenty: it’s the warmest room in the house), jack up the summer power bills, and take a great deal away from the backyard’s privacy.
In terms of making the house affordable for retirement, though, getting rid of that tree might be the best thing to do. It would be one fewer tree that needs a professional to thin and groom it every year or eighteen months. Last year I spent about $750 on tree care, all of which needs to be repeated right now. And Matt didn’t even touch the devil-pod tree. Who knows what he’ll charge this year? If I’m to stay in this house, I’ll have to cut the costs of yard maintenance somehow.
* Satan and Proserpine, the previous owners of the House from Hell, planted this tree directly upwind from the swimming pool. They claimed it’s a weeping acacia. Unlikely. Whatever it is, the thing is a good forty feet tall, a height it has attained mostly in the five years since I moved in, and “low litter” is not the operative term: it drops leaves, twigs, pollen puffballs, and seed pods that stain the CoolDeck and the pool’s plaster. This was not a pair who understood much about plants: they thought the two(!) sissou trees they stuck in the front yard would never get taller than about 15 or 20 feet.
The rumination on ways to maximize Social Security income — and even use early start-up payments as an interest-free loan from the government — led me to consider how I might stay in my home after I retire.
The house a little expensive to operate, it’s probably too large for one person, and the neighborhood is a whisper on the iffy side. On the other hand, I like the house quite a lot. It’s paid for, it’s centrally located in a neighborhood adjacent to a park and a very upscale enclave, and so far I’ve seen nothing comparable in a better area that I can begin to afford. Given that Biker Boob, Dave’s Used Car Lot, Marina, and Weed Arboretum, and the nightly presence of cop helicopters amount to the trade-off for an affordable home in a halfway decent central neighborhood, before I decide to move to cheaper housing, maybe I should first consider ways I can invest in my present home tocut operating costs.
ThoughI contemplatethese ideas in connection with pending retirement, they apply to anyone who’s trying to live frugally, and certainly to families who would like tohave one spouse quit working to stay home with the kids.
Ours is a hot climate. Winter heating bills are negligible, but summer cooling bills will knock you over. Each year they rise higher. Ditto water: though my yard is desert landscaped, July and August still bring $160 bills. These are the largest consistent hits. Other big costs are taxes and insurance, gasoline consumed in driving to safe, upper-middle-class shopping, and repairs & maintenance. So, some strategies to make my home permanently affordable:
Climate Control
Install a programmable thermostat. Set the summertime temperature several degrees higher in the daytime and have it drop to 78 at night.
Build a shade structure over the front entryway to cast shade on the flagstones and concrete. Make this large enough to seriously protect the front of house from summer heat.
Remove the shade structure Richard built in back, which is out of code and sagging, and replace it with a shade structure that will run the entire length of the back wall. Again, make this wide enough to provide real shade.
Replace the two remaining single-paned windows with double-paned low-E windows.
Blow extra insulation into the attic.
Install an attic fan, if this is feasible with blown-in insulation.
Have Bila fir out the west and south walls in the master bedroom, install insulation, and apply new drywall over it.
Remove the dying ash tree and replace it, now, with a tree that will grow big enough to cast shade on the west side of the house by the time I retire.
Get the chimney cleaned. Install one of those heat-recirculating devices in the fireplace, so the fireplace can be used to heat the family room and kitchen during the winter.
Provide the dog with a warm blanket so she can sleep comfortably on the floor during the winter.
Water Conservation
Remove some of the overgrown planting in the front yard. Be sure all drippers and spigots leading to former plants are shut off.
Confer with Matt the Tree Dude Extraordinaire to determine which xeriscapic plants in front are now established well enough to endure drought, and how to cut back on watering.
Remove planting between flagstones in courtyard; replace with river stones. Turn off sprinklers in courtyard or convert them to drippers.
Persuade Gerardo to create wider basins for the citrus trees in back. Deep-water established citrus only once a week in summer.
Get Gerardo to put the potted plants in back on their own valve, or, failing that, get rid of the potted plants.
Get timers for all three hoses and use them! Never leave the water running in the pool or on a plant.
Other Costs of Running the House
Find out the answers to these questions: Do I really need enough insurance to rebuild the house if it burns down? Realistically, what are the chances it will burn down? Given that all the floors are tiled and the washer is in the garage, what are the chances it will ever suffer flood damage? Short of complete destruction, what is the worst that could happen and what would it cost to repair?
With the answers to these questions in hand, reconsider the insurance coverage on the house. Reduce it, if that seems reasonable.
In any event, raise the deductible as high as the Hartford will allow.
Inventory the house’s contents. Estimate value. Insure the house’s contents for no more than what the stuff is really worth.
Purchase a fire-proof, water-resistant safe. Bolt it to the floor in a closet. Place crucial documents and all real valuables inside this safe. Do not insure gew-gaws thatare stored insidethe safe.
Challenge the next tax assessment. Raise hell and put a block under it the next time the county raises taxes.
Costs of living in a waning central city core
At retirement, buy a car that uses less gas, so as to drive to now far-flung middle-class shopping and medical care.
Add security to Arcadia doors, and replace back screen door with security door.
Use train to ride to AJs, central library, museum, and downtown theaters.
Wow! What a storm! I’m writing this on my laptop, since it’s not connected to a power outlet. Internet connection is down. Half the TV and radio stations are off the air: Channels 15, 12, 10, and 8, as far as I can tell, plus NPR and most of the stations on the lower end of the FM band.
Not much rain, but the fiercest wind I’ve ever seen swept through here a half-hour ago. It really ripped—I was worried that the devil-pod tree would break and fall on the house. The prevailing direction was out of the south, though, which likely would have blown a major limb northerly of the house with minimal damage. The scary part was the noise: it sounded like a fleet of jet airplanes revving their engines, and it went on and on, for a good half-hour like that. No hail, not even enough rain to flood the back patio: just high winds, lightning, and weird noise.
I can’t get online and there’s no news on the couple of broadcast TV and radio stations that are still live. The power has come back on (and gone off; and come on again) and the wind has died down, leaving an eerie stillness now that the neighbors have shut off the chorus of berserk burglar alarms. As far as I can see with a flashlight, the roof looks OK, though it’s awfully dark out there and I can’t tell much. None of the trees in my yard seems to have snapped, a small miracle considering how overgrown they all are. Cassie the Corgi was visibly frightened but she’s calm now; apparently her terrors pass as quickly as an Arizona monsoon.
In any event, we have two three-gallon containers of water, 40 gallons in the water heater, the better part of a canister of propane, two good flashlights, a store of candles, and two butane lighters. So I guess we’re OK for the nonce and then some, except that I have only a quarter tank of gas in the car. Wuz waiting till tomorrow to refill, by way of staying on budget this week for a change.
This area isn’t prone to natural disaster. Even so, it’s a good idea to be prepared: extended power outages are not unheard-of. Some areas lose power for hours or even days as a result of storm damage, not a good thing when temperatures are over 100 degrees all day. A monsoon normally will drop the air temperature 20 degrees or so, leaving us with a tolerable night. But come 8:00 in the morning…yipe! At the very least, what’s needed is water, candles, flashlights, propane, and a propane grill or camp stove. Modern gas stoves are kept alight by electricity, and so when the power is out your gas range is out too; at best, it’s unsafe.
And clearly…LOL! It would be wise not to let one’s gas tank run dry.
Hmmmm… We appear to be back online. So, to post and then to bed.
