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In the conversation about automatic bill-paying a few days ago, some commenters remarked on the preferability of setting up your accounts so that you can go online to transfer money to creditors electronically. This is different, of course, from allowing a creditor to engross money directly from your account according to what it thinks you owe.

The credit union would far rather have customers use this EFT strategy for payments, especially (so they tell me) where insurance companies are concerned—the CUs rep said that insurance companies are egregious about ripping off customers and that it’s difficult to disconnect them from an automatic payment plan. They just ignore requests to quit grabbing cash out of the customer’s account. And I will say that toward the end there, Qwest went amok with stealing money out of my account that was not owed…and that indeed, they eventually refunded. The refunds didn’t help my cash flow, though, when I needed it.

I knew better than to pay Qwest automatically but was lulled into a false sense of confidence after several years of decent service and straight dealing (those latter must have been unintentional on the company’s part). And there’s not a chance on God’s Green Earth I would let The Hartford or any other homeowner’s or auto insurer have access to my bank account.

But I do use this arrangement for the utility companies, for my long-term care insurance (only because GDU kept screwing up the payroll deductions), and for a whole life policy whose premium has not changed in 30 years. Except for the long-term care insurer (which I would not pay this way except that there’s no other choice), all the other creditors have proved that they do not systematically cheat customers (except to the extent that our defanged regulators allow), and so I don’t feel the system poses much risk.

And it does have a single, sterling advantage for an aging single woman: if anything happens to me, the bills will be paid until I can get out of the hospital to deal with them or until my son can get a grip on things.

It’s an advantage, too, in a household where one person handles all the finances and the other person hasn’t a clue. One of my friends learned this when her mother, who lived in another state, had a stroke. Her father had never so much as opened their checkbook and was utterly naive about their money situation. He didn’t even know how to pay the bills! Fortunately, the mother had put all their utilities on automatic bill-pay (they came due right about the time she fell ill), and so my friend was spared the hassle of figuring out how to keep the lights, gas, and water running from halfway across the country.

That advantage alone, I think, outweighs the possible risks. You have to be careful, of course…never let a telecom company extract funds from your checking account, because they are in the business of ripping off customers. But utility bills, at least for the time being, can be safely paid this way, so that your lights will stay on if you’re temporarily put out of commission.

Long day. Lots of scheming while shopping, wherefrom hangs a new story, which I’ll tell tomorrow. For the nonce: three sheets to the wind, having consumed all of 1.5 bourbons & water. Do your drinking while you’re young, ye pups…’cause when you get to be an Old Bat or Buzzard, your boozing days will be over. 😉

The bourbon and the water were guzzled while the guzzler was a-waiting for this dinner to percolate to fruition:

Lemon Chicken

You need (approximately):

-Some pieces of chicken of the sort you most enjoy
-One or two lemons, sliced
-Fresh thyme (several sprigs, leaves removed and lightly chopped) or about 1/4 tsp. dried; or combination thereof
-1/2 onion, chopped
-One or two cloves garlic
-Chicken broth, white wine, or combination thereof (enough to come about 1/2 way up the chicken pieces, once they’re ensconced in a frying pan)
-More chicken broth, more white wine, a slug of Marsala or sherry, or even (gasp!) water
-About a tablespoon of flour
-Some chopped parsley, fresh or dried
-A little olive oil
-Salt & pepper to taste
-A decent frying pan
-A plate
-A mug or measuring cup

Skim the bottom of said frying pan with some olive oil. Cook the chopped onion gently in the olive oil until the onion is tender, translucent, and starting to brown a bit. When the onion is cooked, remove it from the oil and set it aside on a plate.

Now brown the chicken in the onion-flavored oil. No hurry—you can accomplish this over medium or medium-low heat without splattering the stove and countertop with grease. Season the chicken with salt and pepper, as desired.

When the chicken looks pleasingly browned, add the garlic and thyme. Return the onion to the pan and nestle it around the chicken pieces. Pour the liquid of your choice (broth, wine, water…whatEVER) into the pan, so that it comes about 1/2-way up the sides of the chicken pieces. Place a lemon slice on top of each piece of chicken. Drop any remaining slices into the broth. Cover. Simmer. Go away for about 20 minutes (white meat) or 30 minutes (dark meat).

Shortly before the meat is done, cook some noodles or rice (well…if you’re cooking rice, you ‘d best set it to simmer about the same time as you leave the chicken to finish cooking, since rice will take some 25 minutes).

Remove the lemon slices from the chicken and the chicken broth. Discard. Lift the chicken out of the broth.

In a container such as a coffee mug, combine the flour with chicken broth or wine and a little water. Whap together well, using a fork, to eliminate any lumps.

Turn the heat up under the chicken broth. Pour in the flour & liquid; mix together briskly, and allow to bubble away at a fast simmer for several minutes, until gravy thickens. Add parsley to give a little color and zing.

Serve the chicken and incredible gravy over pasta or rice.

B-a-a-a-d Human Greens

Here’s how you take something nutritious and use it to destroy your body. Pick some greens out of your garden, or scrounge some from the grocery store. (I used beet greens; spinach would do well, as will chard or collard greens.)

Bring the water for pasta to a boil. Place the washed greens in the colander in which you intend to drain the pasta. When the pasta water comes to a rolling boil, set the colander with the greens into the hot water. Allow to cook until the leaves turn bright green. If you’re using tougher greens such as collards, you may want to let them cook until pretty well softened.

Melt a fine slug of butter in a small frying pan. With tongs, lift the colander out of the kettle and put it in the sink. Run some cold water over the greens to stop the cooking. Drain well. Put the drained, blanched greens into the melted butter in the pan. Cover and allow to braise while you’re finishing with the rest of the food. If desired, sprinkle a little nutmeg over the greens before serving.

This week Funny entered only one carnival, the Carnival of Personal Development, hosted by Happiness Is Better. So I was delighted to see that 10 Stress Reducers made Editor’s Choice!

This is the first time I’ve entered the C of Personal Development—it only recently came to my attention. It gets an eclectic collection of entries. Happiness has organized them by topic: Personal Development and Personal Finance. Each category includes quite a few interesting articles. My attention was caught by Andy of Personal Hacks, who submitted the first installment of his autobiography, starting with the time he arrived, as a youngster, in the U.S. from Egypt. Debt Kid got into the Personal Development section with The #1 Reason You Can’t Get Out of Debt. Ms. Smarty Pants shares an insight into a time management system she says works for her. And Money TLD talks about how to survive without a car, an idea that occurred to me as I was driving to work this morning and realizing that after the probable layoff I won’t be able to afford $1,100-plus a year for car insurance.

Check it out: it’s an interesting round-up.

From: Michael Crow, President, Great Desert University
To: All employees

The revised FY09 budget passed by the state legislature has singled out the state’s universities for the largest cuts. It deals a devastating blow to ASU, UA, and NAU, to all our students, to every citizen in this state who wants to see a child or grandchild have a quality university education. While some have described these cuts as small, they have, in fact, set in motion a Force 4 financial hurricane whose destructive force has not yet begun to be felt.

Our nation is fighting two wars it cannot afford to lose—one against terrorism and a second against an economic recession so deep it may take several years or more to overcome. At the very time our nation is calling its universities to action in this most important of economic battles, Arizona has gone in the opposite direction, the equivalent of grounding the state’s economic air force in the hope that we can fight a high-tech economic war on horseback.

Since June 2008 the reduction of state investment in ASU has been $88 million or 18% of the university’s base state funding in a single fiscal year.

ASU’s per-student funding from the state general fund has now been reduced to what it was 10 years ago:

$7,976 in 2008

$6,476 in 1998

$6,500 for 2009

This amounts to having more than 30,000 of our 67,000 students with no state investment whatsoever.

Consider also what we have already done to meet these cuts:

– More than 550 staff positions eliminated, including four deans positions and at least two dozen academic department chair positions

– More than 200 faculty associate positions eliminated

– Ten- to 15-day furloughs for all employees, including the entire senior administration, deans, varsity coaches and faculty.

– The consolidation of nearly a half dozen schools and of almost two dozen academic departments.

– A reduction in the number of nursing students the university can admit

– A wide variety of cost-saving measures from the reduction of purchases, to energy conservation to a hiring freeze.

To respond to this new budget we still need another $13–15 million in cuts to take. That could mean eliminating another 1,000 jobs, closing a campus, restricting enrollment next fall and increasing tuition and fees.

As bad as all this is, we must all understand that the state’s budget challenges do not end with the FY09 budget. Another large deficit looms for FY10. But we don’t have to repeat the devastation of the FY09 budget. With the availability of federal economic stimulus funds and other revenue enhancements available to the state and to the university, the FY10 budget does not have to add more severe cuts on top of the ones taken this year. ASU has contributed four of our leading economists and public policy experts to a group being assembled by the Arizona Board of Regents from all three universities to work on recommendations for the FY10 budget.

Thinking of moving to Arizona? Think again. This is not a place where you want to send your kids to school.

With another 1,000 layoffs coming down the pike, the probability that my job will go is about 99.9 percent.

Well… I have to say, I’m almost relieved. I’m tired of being whipsawed around like this, and the drive out there is enough to make you seriously consider quitting a $60,000 job, just to get out of the nasty commute. Saturday night at 6:30 p.m. the traffic was thick as molasses on the damnable freeway—worse than rush-hour. And everywhere you turn, EVERY road is under construction. Wherever you’re going, you can’t get there from here.

That old chestnut is beginning to take on some metaphorical overtones of the Waiting for Godot kind.
Wherever you’re going, you can’t get there from here.