Coffee heat rising

Economy

Not bankrupt after all?

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Despite the extreme market volatility and the various grim economic prognoses, so far my December investment statements come bearing news nowhere near as hideous as expected.

My big IRA went up by $2,000 last month. The Vanguard funds rose $5,000 in December. TIAA-CREF, in the past highly sensitive to recession, went up $40 over the past quarter. I haven’t received the quarterly report for the Fidelity funds in my 403(b), but the same guys who run my IRA and advised me how to invest in Vanguard also told me what to do with my contributions to Fidelity, and so I’m hoping that statement will show about the same results.

Though I’m certainly not getting rich here (or even keeping up with inflation), at least I’m not losing money. Given the situation, that’s pretty good.

Interesting what these guys have invested in. Hmmm…they’ve stashed a fair amount in cash: 45 grand in the money market, another ten grand in cash reserves. But we remain invested in American Express, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway, Caterpillar (need lots of tractors, presumably, in Iraq and Afghanistan)…ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum (they like oil)…General Electric (they like energy overall). And get this: they like junk food: McDonald’s, Yum Brands.

Awww…lookit this photo: junk food is good for young love! Doesn’t that warm the cockles of your capitalist heart?

They’ve dumped some stuff…Seagate gone. Actually, they’ve dumped a lot of stuff: this statement is signficantly shorter than it has been in the past. Fewer stocks, more mutual funds. And I’ve never seen them move so much into cash holdings.

Well, my shirt may be slightly frayed, but at least I still have a shirt. This is not the time that I would like to retire, perforce by layoff. However, if it happens, apparently I won’t starve.

2008 Financial Strategies: What worked and what didn’t work

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As the year winds down, this is a good time to take stock of the various events, schemes, and impulses that drive our personal finance strategies, to consider which ones worked and which failed, and to think about how we can use experience to plan next year’s financial direction.

We all had our ups and downs. As we know, it feels like the “downs” took the race. But as I look back over my 2008 personal finance adventures, I see that quite a few ideas and strategies were successful. Like everyone, I took some big hits; some of those were beyond my control, or effectively so.

My Best 2008 Financial Strategies

Bar none, building a second income stream was the smartest move I made this year. At the start of the spring 2008 semester, I agreed to teach two sections of Writing for the Professions, a.k.a. “freshman comp for juniors and seniors.” When, hours before classes were slated to begin, I learned that both sections were double-enrolled and I was actually taking on the equivalent of four sections—the workload of a full-time lecturer—I threatened to walk; backed into a corner, the dean agreed to pay me for four sections.

It was a horrible job, but the pay was as much as I hoped to earn on the side during the entire year. And because the Great Desert University canned all its part-time faculty in the fall semester, the serendipitous overload meant that I made my 2008 side-income goal in spite of the faltering economy.

Starting a side business independent of GDU seems to have been a wise move, too. Between The Copyeditor’s Desk and my own freelance work, I have made an extra $1,000 to $1,200 a month since late last summer. If I’m laid off and so forced to begin taking Social Security now instead of waiting until full retirement age, this will be about as much as I will be allowed to earn. The two income streams—editorial work and Social Security—may (with luck) cover my expenses until I can draw the full amount of Social Security income and forestall having to draw down my sadly depleted savings.

Stashing all my post-tax side income into savings instead of using it to pay down the $23,000 owing on the second mortgage I took out to renovate the Investment House seems to have been a wise move. At the outset, I was uncertain whether I would stay in my own house, given the skyrocketing crime in the depressed apartment complexes across 19th Avenue, the unholy mess across the street from me, and the growing presence of undesirable renters. If I sold, the loan would be paid from the proceeds, and I might be better off with the cash in hand from the side jobs. As the economy began to collapse in earnest and more and more credible-sounding layoff rumors circulated, I was glad I had the 23 grand to double as an emergency fund.

Moving the savings from the side jobs out of stocks and into the money market. As it started to appear likely that I would need the cash to live on, I yanked the side-job money out of Vanguard’s Wellington and Windsor II funds, which were just beginning to stumble, and put it where I figured it would be at least moderately safe. Since then, Vanguard’s funds have followed the rest of the stock market into the tank. At least I managed to hang onto that much of my savings.

Restructuring my monthly budget to put biweekly paychecks into a “pool” account from which contributions are shifted to “piggy-bank” accounts containing enough to cover monthly expenses. This strategy has trumped the wacky disjunct between biweekly pay (which allows the university to keep a chunk of its employees’ pay in its coffers, earning interest on unpaid salaries while the flunkies try to figure out how to stay solvent) and the reality of monthly billing cycles. Over time, it has the effect of accruing part of the two so-called “extra” paychecks (which are not “extra” but simply represent six months’ worth of unpaid salary disbursed out of synch) in the pool, padding the emergency fund a bit.

Continuing to set aside the $200 a month I was saving toward the Investment House Renovation Loan self-escrow account, even after enough was stashed to repay the debt.This effectively doubles my monthly after-tax savings and has restored my savings account to its former, pre-disastrous-expenses glory. That also helps plump up the emergency cushion to fall back on in the event of unemployment.

Taking time to think through how I would survive after a layoff and to build a proposed post-layoff budget. As rumors of impending layoffs intensified, the Bush economy slid into its catastrophic collapse. It became clear I will not be able to use what little remains of my life savings to support myself in retirement; not for a long time, anyway. The prospect that I might soon be out of a salary forced me to figure how I could get by on a fraction of full Social Security—$1,040 a month, as opposed to the $2,094 I would get by waiting until full retirement age—plus whatever I could scrounge by freelancing and taking on part-time teaching jobs at the community colleges.

Although it would be very difficult, it appears possible that I could get by for a year or two without having to sell my home. After that, I can raid savings to return the amount I’ve drawn from Social Security to the government, which will reset my SS payments to the full retirement figure. That should keep me going until the market improves enough to revive my savings. The benefit of this exercise is that I now feel fairly confident that I will survive the recession, come what may.

My Worst 2008 Financial Strategies

Leaving savings in the stock market as it became increasingly evident that the Bush “recession” is no ordinary recession but indeed will probably devolve into a depression. My savings are conservatively invested, about a third in stocks, a third in bonds, and a third in the money market. Bonds, as it developed, provided little or no protection in the crash, and although Vanguard’s Prime Money Market fund has not broken the buck, we’ve seen that losses in the money market can happen.

If I’d had a crystal ball, I would have yanked every penny out of the market and stuck it all in laddered CDs. Lacking any such tool, though, I followed conventional wisdom and stayed the course. This, we can now see, was probably a mistake.

Jumping the gun on refinancing the Investment House. M’hijito and I got a much improved interest rate on the mortgage refinance we took out earlier this year for the house the two of us are copurchasing. However, had we waited a few months, we might have landed a 4.5% rate.

Maybe not, too: at this point we’re upside down on that house, and it’s questionable whether the credit union would give us a loan against what the property is now worth.

The problem with the refinance is that to get the 5.3% rate we obtained, we had to take a 30/15 loan. At the time, we figured the market would turn around before 15 years passed; in the event that we had not sold the house by then, we would have no trouble refinancing the remaining principal.

I no longer think that’s true. IMHO, the real estate market will not recover for another eight to ten years. By that, I mean we will not break even on the sale of that house anytime in the next decade. If I’m right about this, we may not be able to sell the house for a profit after 15 years. This will force us to refinance or to take a bath on the sale. And if by then mortgage rates are in the double digits, as they have been historically, we may not be able to negotiate a monthly payment that would be covered by rental income. Thus the 30/15 mortgage terms could lock my son into the house at a time of his life when he’s likely to marry or find better job opportunities in other parts of the country.

I failed to contest the county’s property tax valuation. This resulted in a breathtaking tax increase on a house whose value is less than the county claims. The reasons for my lapse were a) the county’s statement is well-nigh incomprehensible and I had no way of assessing whether it was anything like accurate, nor could I tell what its effect on my taxes were going to be (tax statements arrive several months after the property revaluation statements); and b) the window for protesting lasts only a couple of weeks after the valuation statements are mailed, so that by the time you realize what those statements mean, it’s too late for you to do anything about them. Clearly, I should have protested as a knee-jerk reaction, even though I had no idea what the statement implied.

All in all…

I’m way worse off financially than I was at this time last year, that’s for sure. So, I expect, are most Americans.

On the other hand, so far I still have a job. I’ve managed to salvage some of my savings—enough to pay off the small loan against my house, if push comes to shove. Our little editorial business has a couple of regular clients, and we’re working on landing some more. At this point, every week that passes without a layoff puts me in a better position to survive without a salary.

My plan… 

• …starts with continuing to stash as much as possible into savings.
• That dovetails with cutting back on spending so that I’ll be accustomed to living on less, should I find myself unemployed. As long as I’m still working, savings from the spending cutbacks will go straight to the emergency fund.
• Instead of trading in my 10-year-old vehicle this year, as I would normally do, I’ll drive that car until it falls apart like the minister’s one-hoss shay.
• This spring and summer I’ll continue to try to build Copyeditor’s Desk income; if that doesn’t pan out, in the fall I’ll sign up to teach composition at the community colleges. 
• And finally: Funny about Money is doing surprisingly well, considering that I don’t work very hard at it. The site’s page rank is 4, and its most trafficked post has a page rank of 2. I will try to focus Funny more sharply and develop its readership more broadly, and if it continues to draw readers, I’ll consider monetizing it.

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.

Dow up, in spite of it all

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Well, folks, I tried to bring down the world’s economy by staying home on Black Friday, and it didn’t work: by golly, the Dow had its best week since 1932. Apparently it’s not necessary for us all to keep spending ourselves into bankruptcy to keep this country going.

Not that some didn’t have their hearts in it. In Palm Desert, enthusiastic shoppers got excited enough to take a few pot shots at each other, killing two. Even more amazingly, at a Long Island Walmart happy consumers trampled an employee to death in their stampeding ecstasy over the bargains to be had inside the store. Wow! What a country.

Now I enjoy the consumer society as much as the next person. What could be better than being able to buy every electronic toy, every glad rag, every ludicrously sweet and gummy riff on a cup of coffee the human mind can conceive in every city, town, and wide spot in the road? And yeah, I know it’s unAmerican to resist (not to say futile). But here’s my problem with consumerism as the driving force of an economy:

It’s fake.

It doesn’t DO anything. It’s hollow. It’s empty. It’s a STIFF PARROT. Dependence on buying as a major engine—possibly the main engine—in our country’s economy means that we depend on hot air. On nothing. Why? Because we’re producing less and less. Try to buy something that’s made in America—go ahead: try to find a baby’s crib manufactured in this country. Read the label on a package of hamburger: the mashed meat you’re buying came from Mexico and Canada, with maybe a little coming from the U.S. Americans aren’t doing anything productive.

Oh, you say: but we’re all doing brain work. That’s why we need such a highly educated workforce.

Ever notice how many young people with solid degrees from excellent universities are working in call centers or selling books and gewgaws at a Barnes & Noble?Ever actually looked at what goes on in high-rise office buildings? Not much.Most of the activity entails pushing paper, whether physically or electronically. Have we counted lately how many of our people spend their working lives answering telephones or pushing papers? Or selling stuff, most of it imported? Few of these jobs are highly paid, because few of them deserve to be highly paid. Because they produce nothing.

112908housingtractAs the real estate bubble was blowing up, I recall wondering who all those houses were being sold to, and how. Most of the people buying new Styrofoam-and-plaster houses were already living in the Valley, in perfectly fine block homes in perfectly fine neighborhoods. They were being induced to take on huge mortgages to move (about once every three years, at one point) into cheaply built structures in elbow-to-elbow tracts. This was called “development.” Basically it was a form of churning. Nothing of much value was being built, and nothing that made our city better was happening.

Go out to Scottsdale, Arizona, and you’ll see mile on mile on mile of expensive homes, well beyond the means of a family with one middle-class earner and well beyond those of a family with two middle-class earners. Where, I used to wonder, was all that money coming from? The answer, as we all know now, was nowhere: it was make-believe money.

It was fake. Fake money generated through bad lending practices and paid for, all too often, with jobs that produce nothing.

We need to get back to making things. That cheap labor overseas to which we’ve outsourced our productivity is undermining our economy in more ways than simply making well paid blue-collar jobs extinct. It has sapped the intrinsic value of what we do for a living, and in doing so, it saps an important part of our people’s work ethic and, ultimately, our country’s ability to survive. Americans expect to earn more than slave wages for factory work. And a population that earns more is in a position to pay more. Over time, the off-shoring of productivity and the influx of cheap goods have meant that our real wages have dropped, because employers do not have to pay us as much to keep us happy (in a superficial way) and because the unions that used to keep our wages up have been mothballed. Prices have had to come down not because stuff is produced more cheaply overseas but because American workers couldn’t afford the products if they were manufactured by people who earned a fair wage.

America’s economy needs to be rebuilt. We need to structure our economy on production, not on paper-pushing, circularity, and sales commissions.

Is frugality unAmerican?

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One narrative subplot in the ever-escalating media buzz over the economy is that the new fad for frugality, for paying off debts, and for living within one’s means is bad for America and bad for the global economy. When people stop buying, the story goes, retailers stop selling, lenders stop lending, importers stop importing, and manufacturers stop manufacturing. All the worthies in these sectors then close stores, go belly-up, and lay off employees, who are forced to behave frugally, pay off their debts, and live within their means, causing more retailers to stop retailing, more lenders to stop lending, more importers…and so on to infinity.

So it is that seedy characters like you and me, eccentrics who subscribe to the wacky theory that we should spend no more than we earn, refrain from buying every piece of junk set under our noses, and maybe even put some of what we earn into savings, are responsible for bringing this country to the brink of depression.

Yes. That’s you and me, fellow PF blogger: our little terrorist coterie has darn near brought about THE FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE! Worse! THE COLLAPSE OF THE ENTIRE PLANET’S ECONOMY!

Think of that.

Well, I am thinking of that. And I think not.

The way I see this, we’ve arrived in our present predicament not because consumers stopped spending but because they spent so much, so profligately, and so stupidly. Consider: If over the past two decades 80 percent (say) of Americans had been living within their means—if they had been educated adequately on personal finance matters and understood the basics of lending, saving, budgeting, and investing—we would not be in the mess we’re in.

  • Most Americans, having navigated clear of the shoals of unmanageable debt, would have plenty of money to spend on the things they need and—yes!—want.
  • Few people would have been naïve enough to get themselves into booby-trapped mortgages for absurd amounts of money that King Croesus himself couldn’t afford.
  • Most people would have had a fair idea of what a house is really worth. Because the public in general would have resisted buying at absurdly inflated prices, real estate prices would never have blown out of control, and so no housing crisis would have occurred.
  • Retailers would still be selling products at a steady pace.
  • Manufacturers would still be making products at a steady pace.
  • Layoffs would not be occurring.
  • The President of the United States would never have thought of responding to the horror of 9-11 by telling Americans to go out and spend themselves silly. (Who knows? Maybe his speechwriters would have been forced to come up with something more worthy of a world leader, like “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”)

Nope. We ants are not responsible for the collapse of the economy, nor are we the ones who are digging its grave. The grasshoppers did it. The grasshoppers and all the greedy little critters who got rich off them.

The newfound penchant for frugality that the newspapers and broadcasters tell us is now the hot fashion will no doubt pass. But if it doesn’t, that won’t be a bad thing. We will have hard times—we’re going to have hard times whether we all go out and load up our credit cards or not. But if members of the American public learn to get a grip on their spending and figure out how to manage their money so they can have what they want without getting themselves over their heads in debt (or if, more amazing still, they figure out what’s really important in life), in the long run the economy will be healthier and stronger. And the world will be a better place.

Layoffs? Market crash? Great Depression II?

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It’s after 4:00 p.m. and no news has leaked from this morning’s meeting that was supposed to announce the occupational demise of all us year-to-year academic professionals. Sorta looks like my spies were right and my friend’s were wrong.

Meanwhile, a different chunk of the sky has stopped falling on our heads. Hevvin help us, the Dow Jones closed up 936.42 points—that’s 11 percent—and all of us have avoided having to put down our deposits on a campsite in Bushville (the latter-day Hooverville).

The outcome of either of these two ongoing dramas remains to be seen. Given the market’s vertiginous volatility, we all know it could drop 11 percent (or more…much more) tomorrow or the next day after tomorrow or next week. And given the mysterious ways in which the Great Desert University works, we peons all could be laid off any day in the same time frame.

So what does it all mean for you & me? Well, I dunno about you. But I’m not holding my breath until my savings return to their former level. Sure, I’ll be glad if they regain their value (since I’ll be needing them in a year or two…or a week or two). But I don’t expect anything.

One thing about pessimists: our surprises are always pleasant.

As for employment: your employer may be slightly less wacko than GDU, but my employer has wacked its last wack where I’m concerned. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that I’m rowing a leaky canoe. I intend to keep my job applications out there and add a few more to the mix. The first really good offer that comes across my desk will take me off the bailing team and put my feet on dry land.

The single targeted hire who was courted to take over our sister program has never bothered to respond to the (very generous!) offer sent to her a few weeks ago. One can only assume she’s waiting for another offer that she must consider more desirable, placing ours in the second fiddle’s chair. If this woman doesn’t accept, that program is as good as gone. And when it goes, our office will be at huge risk: nay, let’s admit we probably will go, too. The soonest we could be closed down is the end of December, when the other program may shut down if no accommodation with the interim director (who hates living in Arizona) can be made. The latest will be the end of next summer, when all our research assistants will graduate (oh so conveniently!) at once. If no Scholarly Publishing Program remains to staff our office, I will have to hire from the English department and then teach the new RAs the equivalent of a semester course in basic editing and another semester course in advanced editing (oh yes, all at once) with no increase in pay.

And guess what I’m ain’t a-gunna do?

So. If a bullet was whistling through the air and I somehow dodged it, I’m left to calculate how to deal with the sand dune collapsing under my feet. At least falling sand gives one a little more time to engineer an escape.