Uncategorized

We have a new PF carnival out there and its very first edition is online: the DIY Jubilee at Financial Wellness Project. The carnival is still quite small, but I’m sure it will grow. Funny’s discovery that ashes will polish silver appears among the 10 selections. If you’re craving a big weekend job that will save you some bucks, check out Condo Blues’s elaborate how-to on sealing leaks in your ductwork. On a related topic, Heather at the Greenest Dollar discusses insulating your home. And if all that work leaves you craving some play, check out the kid-friendly DIY Christmas presents at More4Kids Family.

Back in the land of vast carnivals, Andy hosts the 184th Carnival of Personal Financeat Saving to Invest. He’s in Australia just now and kicks off the round-up with a photo of the Sydney Opera House. More pix of that amazing country follow. Here’s a useful reference for those who tweet:at Bible Money Matters, Peter lists 125 PF bloggers who haunt Twitter. Four Pillars has a lively discussion going about a pet peeve of mine, business owners who advertise their Christianity. BripBlap wonders if saving might be stupid…and after losing a fair amount of my shirt (and bra) in the market, I’m beginning to wonder, too. The real stupidity, IMHO, was in not seeing where the Bush Administration’s voodoo economics were taking us and so failing to prepare for recession as soon as Dubya and his puppetmasters took office. Speaking of planned obsolescence (which I suppose is what the two-term limit amounts to), Funny’s less political comment on the same appears in this carnival.

Dorian Wales has posted the 90th Carnival of Money Stories at The Personal Financier, where Funny’s rant about privacy-invading call center employees appears. SVB makes editor’s pick here, with a savvy list of ten things to do when you get laid off. StumbleForward.com writes on a subject that I haven’t seen discussed in any other PF blog: the timeshare scam. Author Christopher Holdheide describes several ways to get out of a timeshare…it ain’t easy! No Debt Plan discusses the comparative advantages of 30-year and 15-year mortgagesand comes up in favor of the 30-year plan.

The Festival of Frugality has jumped the pond for its 157th edition and landed at Miss Thrifty’s site. The highlight here is a gracious and beautiful video message from the Queen of England. After that we turn to the posts, headed up by an extremely interesting list of clues about cell phone usage from MobileMaven. At Budgets are Sexy, they’re figuring how to send the Mrs. through graduate school. Frugal Homemaker Plus is startled to learn that she’s single-handedly bringing down the world economy with her miserly frugal habits…she and all the rest of us cheapskates, eh? Speaking of miserly curmudgeons, Funny’s rant about clutter appears in this carnival.

This week’s Make It from Scratch Carnival appears at Adventures in the 100-Acre Woods. As usual, a lot of dangerously delicious recipes appear in this round-up. Uh oh…check (heh) out this close-to-authentic Czech potato salad. Believe I’ll make some of that today. Mary at Simply Forties suggests trying a duck for your holiday dinner—M’jihito and I did it for Thanksgiving, and I can testify that the results were well worth the effort. Almost Frugal Food posts five wonderful ideas for using leftover cranberry sauce…some of which look better than the original use. Funny’s series of recipes for Christmas dinner appears in this carnival.

The 44th Money Hacks Carnival is up Where Are You Now. Funny’s justification for hiring a couple of cleaning persons surfaces in this round-up. Scott Crawford at DebtGoal has an extremely interesting article about the possible unintended consequences of the pending credit-card reform regulations. Hm. We may all soon be paying for purchases with cash, check, or debit card. Dividends for Life discusses investment in long-term bonds and considers whether this is a good time to buy. Mr. Tough Money Love looks askance (far askance!) at Our Beloved Leaders’ strategy to combat the recession. And at a second site, Go to Retirement, the same author ruminates on the advisability of waiting till age 70 to collect retirement.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Snap out of it, America!

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

Stuff Therapy

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

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

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

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

1. Stay away from stores

Feeling under the weather tends to depress one’s mood. We know that people tend to spend more when they feel depressed.

2. Call a friend

There’s nothing like a friend’s voice to make you feel better. Even if it’s just a psychological lift, it’s a lift.

3. Turn off the idiot box

Violence, stupidity, and bad news—the dominant modes of the popular media—make you feel worse, not better.

4. Turn on your favorite music

So much better than violence, stupidity, and bad news…unless, of course, you favor music with those characteristics. 😉

5. Meditate, read a good book, do some quiet yoga, or go to church or temple

These activities are all of a kind. They stabilize most people’s mood.

6. Get something warm and nutritious to eat

There’s a reason chicken soup is called “Jewish penicillin.”

7. After accomplishing at least three of these things, go to bed early

Good night, little chickadees! A domani…

Funny hosts the Carnival of Money Stories on November 25! Yay! So, bloggeurs et bloggeuses: don’t forget to send in your stories. Just now, alas, I’m going to be forced to work into the night on a freelance gig. Later!
🙂

Check out these new-to-me sites that I’ve been enjoying recently:
.

At the Wall Street Journal, a very active blog run by Mary Pilon, The Wallet, has been chugging along since September. She has a lot of useful and sometimes fun information, and also the occasional thoughtful piece—see, for example, this article on voting and your job.

In the “Now for Something Altogether Different” Department, I have been attracted by this charming online sketch journal, done by an artist and writer in Australia. She and her husband own a horse ranch, and their adventures, revealed in more detail at a second blog, make for stories, photography, and artwork that provide some fascinatingly exotic moments for us Yankee city girls.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned Small Notebook, discovered on a Make It from Scratch carnival. This author, who is on a quest to simplify her family’s life, offers many frugal and clever ideas, also with great charm. I may have highlightedModern Beet somewhere along the line; if so, it’s worth another mention. The thing blows me away every time I visit.

Room Farm is very nice; I like it because the proprietor shares many of my own concerns about the interrelation between money and stress. I also enjoy Simply Forties very much: the story of a youngish (from my point of view, anyway) woman living in a Texas country town.

In Utah, problogger Miranda holds forth on a just-for-her site, This Time It’s Personal, with some interesting reflections on a wide variety of topics. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned Mrs. Accountability’s Out of Debt Again: take a look at the beautiful garden produce she’s brought forth on her rural property.

Not all of these are strictly personal finance sites, although most touch on the subject now and again. Interesting…I seem to be drawn to women writers who live in the boondocks. Does this have meaning? Do I or do I not dream of retiring to Yarnell?