Coffee heat rising

How to Save Money: Get Sick!

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Heeee! The AMEX bill, which regularly exceeds $1200 (that’s in a good month…), came in at a piddling $955.02.

Hot diggety! I don’t remember when I’ve seen a bill for discretionary expenses under a thousand bucks. And how did this magical event occur?

Simple: being flat on my back half the month kept me out of my car! Not riding around in a car every day or two meant not going into stores. And what can you NOT do when you stay out of stores? Yup…NOT spend money.

Most to the point, I think, it kept  me out of Costco, where I can drop two hundred bucks without blinking an eye. Interestingly, that $955 included stocking up on expensive commercial dog food — I’m sure I spent at least a hundred bucks, trying to stash enough to last until I would feel like making real food for the pooches again, which I figured would be about a month after the surgical fact. It also included stocking up on food for myself: the chicken and the lamb shanks I prepared and froze, for example. And, come to think of it, a major wine run: at Total Wine I bought enough cheap, low-alcohol wine to last for the rest of my life.

Speaking of the which, I finally found not one but two reds that are more than respectable as table wines despite a fairly low alcohol content:

Château Bois Redon Bordeau Supérieur. 2012. Alcohol content: 13%, right on the upper border of acceptable. Flavor and bouquet are excellent. It’s a blend of 75% Merlot and 25% Cabernet Sauvignon. This stuff, while not expensive, does not normally fall into the “dirt cheap” range we covet. Total Wine has it on sale just now — I got it for around ten bucks, definitely worth the price.

Bellini Toscana Sangiovese. 2013. Alcohol content 12.5%, a little high but still better than any California reds you’ll see on the market. I also found this wine made a very nice accompaniment to steak, and later to some cheese and fruit. Got it for under ten dollah.

Red wines do not  benefit from lower wine content — in terms of palatibility, that is. However, these two specimens show it’s possible to make a decent red with less than 14% alcohol content.

Right now I have another sangiovese open: Pietro Sangiovese di Toscana. 2013. Its alcohol content is also 12.5%. I’d rate it as good enough for government work: not the greatest wine that ever came out of the cask, but an adequate table wine. It was very cheap: well under ten bucks.

For all around light swiggling, I continue to favor the Gazela vinho verde, a Portuguese white wine with an alcohol content of just 9%.  Sometimes this stuff can be slightly effervescent. It’s always light and crisp  — perfect for a warm day. Can’t wait till the weather gets hot: this will be the drink of choice for an Arizona summer afternoon.

So okay. Back to the subject at hand: the automobile and its influence on the average American’s finances. To wit: mine.

I decided to junk the scheme to buy a new vehicle and instead try to keep the Dog Chariot running for another 20,000 miles. So, the clunk is down at Chuck’s as we scribble, getting a new set of brake drums. Reasons for that decision:

1. I have NO clue how much the Adventures in Medical Science will end up costing me, and neither, it develops, does anyone at the Mayo. They just do not know, so complicated is our ludicrous pushmi-pullyu healthcare system. The only way to find out will be to wait until the last of the Medicare and Medigap payments come in and then pay whatever remains on the Mayo’s books. Though I’m told I may be able to negotiate that amount down, I figure it’s likely to come to four or five grand. That will bite into the car-buying budget… And not knowing to what effect, I think that’s one cliff I’d just as soon not jump off right this minute.

2. The five hundred bucks it’s going to cost to fix the brakes and the current oil leak? That’s a far cry from 26 or 30 grand for a new car! Why should I spend that kind of money while I still have a functional vehicle? One excuse I like to trot out, by way of justifying the scheme to buy a new car, is that I don’t trust the Chariot to drive around on day trips. But…hey…for 30 grand I could rent an awful lot of nice cars to bucket around the state!

3. I’m hardly driving the car anymore. Commuting to campus was the main mileage-burner for that crate. And now that all my courses are online, that cuts out three or four 20-mile trips a week. And while I was convalescing from the surgery, I think I made all of one (count it, 1) trip — down to the church — in more than two weeks.

That happened because I had stocked in food and household necessaries carefully, in preparation for what I expected would be a prolonged incapacitation. Once all that stuff was in the house and in the freezer, I didn’t really have to go anywhere. So I’m thinking I need to make that a regular habit: each month figure out what will be needed for the next 30 days, and avoid jumping in the car at short notice to run down to Costco or Safeway, both of them sinks of impulse buys. I think a lot of the overspending happens because I drive out whenever I think I want something rather than planning what I’ll need and restricting purchases, as much as possible, to trips dedicated to laying in what’s really needed.

4. In 2016 —  just another year or 18 months — the lightrail route that will come right past the ’hood will finally open. If the car runs another 20,000 miles, it should operate handily for two years…perfect.

I dislike riding public transportation, particularly when it passes through an area lined with dangerous slum apartments that house not only thugs and hoodlums but people who are crazy as loons and make pests of themselves. However…

• Now that I’m old, I can get a monthly cut-rate pass. It surely does cost a lot more than gasoline…but the longer it staves off having to lay down 30 grand for a new car, the more money it saves me.

• That lightrail line will go past a Sprouts (which I will shop in), an Albertson’s (don’t shop there; but Albertson’s has changed hands and so that store might be improved), a Fry’s (also probably a little too dangerous to shop there), a Target, a Costco, and (lo!!) the beloved AJ’s at Central and Camelback. With a motorized cart (which they’re required to let you take on the train!), I could in theory get a great deal of shopping done without ever burning an ounce of my own gasoline.

• And, also in theory, I could ride the train down to Maryland and walk a mile and a half to the church. That would give me three miles of walking each Sunday — wouldn’t dream of doing it at night, because that would be insensately unsafe). But at this time of year it would be easy and pleasant.

5. In 2016, I will be required to take a required minimum distribution from my big IRA. That could easily be as much as the proposed car would cost. Thus the car could double my taxable drawdown in 2015. And that does, decidedly, not sound like a very cheerful prospect. If I rent a car for day trips or longer junkets around the Southwest and use public transit for routine shopping, the Dog Chariot’s projected driving lifetime of 20,000 miles could last even more than two years. Possibly a lot more than two years. If, say, the vehicle didn’t have to be replaced for another four years, then I myself would have (at that point) a projected driving lifetime of about six or eight years. And then it would actually make sense to buy a used car that would tide me over to the end of my driving days, for a lot less than going out today and buying a new car that would run dependably until I’m 80 or so.

NEWS FLASH! Chuck just called to say the brake drums will only cost about $260, a far cry from his estimate of $500 a couple of months ago. He must be feeling sorry for me. 😉

He does have to figure out where the oil leak is and fix that. But I’ll betcha the whole job comes in at less than five hundred bucks.

 

$ub$idizing the Kid’$ Birthday Party…Oh, this is too, too good!

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Did you see the latest amazing news report? The one where some nitwit sent a no-show bill to a parent whose kid failed to surface at an expensive birthday party for a five-year-old?

The Christian Science Monitor reports that a dad RSVP’ed informally that his son would attend a preschool classmate’s birthday party, which took place at (hang onto your hat) a ski slope! After having replied, orally, that the kid would show up, Dad realized they already had a prior date to spend the day with grandparents. Grandparents trumping day-care colleagues, he scrubbed the ski party — although we’re told he tried, without success, to contact the parental party-givers to let them know his offspring would not be attending.

The peeved parents sent the guy a $26 bill for not showing up.

Think of that.

Welp, if you’d asked me, I would’ve told you…

First off, in my not-very-humble opinion, anyone who would throw a $26/head party for a five-year-old needs to save his money and apply it toward a psychiatrist’s bill.

Second, my kid would not be allowed to go to a five-year-old’s birthday party at a ski slope even if you paid me the twenty-six bucks. What on EARTH could these yokels have been thinking?

Third, this is what we call a First-World problem. The party-givers and all their accommodating guests should be hauled into court and ordered to give $26 a head to poor children in Nigeria.

LOL! I can tell you exactly what the aggrieved hosts were thinking, because I’ve been there and done that… They were thinking Now’s our chance to one-up every other Richerati parent in that preschool class! NO ONE will be able to beat this. Chuck E. Cheese, indeed!

Ugh. These are the kind of upstarts who live in vast McMansions and carpool their brats to private schools in Hummers and Mercedes SUVs. I know them all too well.

When my son was in his expensive private preschool — the one that cost more per year than a year at the University of Arizona Medical School — we carpooled with a woman who bought her obnoxious little darling a different pair of Vans (a pricey canvas slip-on that was all the rage at the time) for every day of the week. Nevermind that the kid’s behavior was so out of control he had to be put on drugs that turned him into a little automaton. And nevermind that over time it became embarrassingly clear he had been sexually abused. Hey. Money can buy anything, eh?…even public opinion. And immunity from prosecution, we might add.

Then there was the guy who rented an entire roller-skating rink for a day, for his kid’s birthday party. They were about eight or ten by then, I think. Holy sh!t. One of the boys fell and broke his wrist, not surprisingly. The partying parents not only supplied a fancy cake and fancy food for the urchins, they brought in cases of wine and beer for the kids’ parents.

At school, we had the annual spring break ski trip to Telluride. Our son has never forgiven us for refusing to let him go on even one of those junkets.

Oh, and fourth: Money doesn’t buy class.

Finances: 2014 Debacle; 2015 Budget

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I just reviewed the shambles that is my 2014 finances, by way of designing a new budget for 2015.

My God. Things were going to Hell on a skateboard, that much was obvious. Last year I gave up tracking every teensy little expenditure in Excel. That hair-tearing task was making me crazy. Result: I knew a lot of extraordinary expenses were happening, but I had no idea how HUGE those expenses were.

Nor did I realize how overbudgeted I was (luckily) for 2014. Last January I drew down $13,000 from savings and then broke even on December 31. But absent the brain-banging number and size of unplanned expenses, I really would have needed only about $3300 from savings.

Between the recurring urinary tract infections and the outrageous amount I was charged to spay her, Ruby’s first year casa mia cost me $2,726.51.

I got ripped off several times by household repair providers: by a plumbing company, an air-conditioning company, and a pool company. If you live in the Phoenix area, I suggest you avoid Lawson Family Plumbing, Premier Air Conditioning, and Love Pools. The total gouge there came to about $500.

Uncharacteristically, this year I decided to make some charitable contributions. That figure, which would normally be close to nil,  came to $764.48. This would have been fine if it hadn’t been for all the OTHER outrageous costs, which included $680 for tree trimming (which needs to be done again, in a big way), $600 for eyewear, another $385 to the Mayo, and about $2500 for a table I figured I could afford.

In fact, I could afford the table handily…under normal conditions. But 2014 was far from normal! I was getting hammered from all directions. All told, total extraordinary expenses came to $9723.26!

This year I have to get a grip on expenses, so it’s back to the month-by-month expense tracking drudgery. I can hold the ordinary discretionary expenses down, but I can’t imagine what I’m supposed to do about things over which I have no control. Obviously, I didn’t need to buy the table, nor did I need to buy a puppy. And I certainly don’t need to contribute money to the church, considering that I have no credible source of income other than raiding savings.

On the other hand, I had no way of predicting that Ruby would get sick….again and again and again. I can’t do without functioning glasses — I couldn’t see to drive through the pair I had. The cancer scare was not something that came to me by choice. It was a good thing I had the trees thinned before last summer’s windstorm roared through here and ripped down trees all over the ’hood. Keeping the car running wasn’t cheap, but repairs and maintenance were a damn sight cheaper than 30 grand for a new Sienna.

In 2015 we are not drawing down from investments until December, when I’ll be forced by federal law to take money out of the big IRA. With any luck, though, most of that will simply be rolled into the taxable Fidelity account and reinvested. I had a cushion of $11,000 in the bank, and, since I broke even on last January’s drawdown, that amount remains intact. We’re hoping I can make it through to the end of 2014 on that plus teaching income plus Social Security. And if somehow I manage to dodge the hammer this year, that may happen.

Based on 2014 figures, average monthly nondiscretionary costs come to about $657. That’s counting the housekeeper and the lawn guy as fixed monthly expenses.

NondiscretionaryI allow about $1200 for monthly discretionary spending, which includes everything from groceries and dog food to those nasty surprise expenses. Sometimes I can keep it to under $1100, but not often.

Total net funds available to cover living expenses in 2015 come to $30,269, after taxes & insurance are paid. The resulting budget looks like this:

2015BudgetI think that’s highly optimistic, because you can be sure at least some unplanned expenses will come along to clean out those apparently left-over funds. For one thing, I’d be very surprised if a thousand dollars will suffice to keep the dog chariot running this year.

I’ve decided, by the way, to keep the Dog Chariot for another 20,000 miles, if it can be made to operate that long. In 2015 I’ll need to keep careful tabs on business vs personal mileage. There’s an outside chance that, what with the SBA meetings and the junkets to meet clients and subcontractors, I might be putting half or more of my mileage on business trips.

AND there’s a far outside chance that I can sell the boob book to a real publisher. If that happens, I’ll get an advance of something between $15,000 and $30,000, which will go into the S-corp. And if that happens (note the extravagant number of ifs we’re working with here!), then I could justify having the S-corp buy the new car and running its operating costs through the business.

In the far more likely scenario — none of those ifs comes to pass — then at least I will have put off disbursing 30 grand for another year or so.

Seventy-nine hundred dollah seems to me like a wildly extravagant budget for extraordinary expenses. I’ve never spent this kind of money on side disasters before. Horrible, horrible experience!

If things settle back down to normal, that $7950 (or whatever’s left of it) will go a long way toward supporting me in 2016.

Hope springs eternal, hm?

What Do You Grab When the House Is on Fire?

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So here’s this story in today’s New York Times, upon reflection a rather odd story. The author recalls the time a fire broke out in an apartment building where she, her husband, and her then infant son lived. She describes their hurried exit from their home.

He runs around collecting papers and he grabs his laptop. We’re told that the laptop contains a website whose proceeds largely support the young family, so it makes some sense that the first thing he’d think of is his family’s livelihood. Although it’s odd. More about that in a minute, after we get out the door.

She, having been interrupted in the process of getting ready for bed, puts her pants on, collects her toothbrush, and grabs a hunting knife, which she slides into her belt band — before she picks up the sleeping baby and heads out of the place.

Outdoors, there’s snow on the ground. She arrives on the icy pavement in her bare feet.

They escape the fire, linger long enough to watch the flames consume the building, then get in their car and drive away. Their dog, she remarks at this point, is “cowering at our feet.”

Does anything here strike you as strange? To me, it’s possessed of weirdness.

To start with, the last thing I’d pick up before grabbing the kid is a 79-cent toothbrush. Even if it was a $60 electric number, the kid would come first.

Would I put my pants on? Maybe. I’d  be more inclined to at least get into a pair of slippers, if I didn’t have a pair of slide-on shoes that I could step into; then I’d grab the pants, carry them downstairs with the baby, and get dressed once I was outside the building.

What about the knife? Maybe, if it was an heirloom — if it was my father’s favorite fishing knife and it was sitting on a table, I might grab it. If I believed I needed a weapon, I’d take a gun. In fact, if I could get to the gun quickly enough, I’d take it simply to prevent risk of its being stolen and used later in a crime. If it took any time to get at it — for example, if it had to be extricated from a safe or an elaborate hiding place — I would leave it.

But the heirloom issue doesn’t appear to have been the case. The narrative suggests she simply saw it and picked it up on impulse. Odd. I mean…you think you need self-defense against rapacious firemen? Wha-a-t?

The dog is not mentioned until the story’s last lines.

Odd.

If it were me, the child would come first: before the clothing, before the toothbrush, before the knife, before the papers, before the computer.

The dog would come second.

The papers would probably come third — no, make that fourth, after the car keys.

And the computer, a distant fifth.

Now, about that computer: What? Their website resides on a laptop? Really?

So is he using a laptop as a server? Really? Why doesn’t the profit-making website reside on someone else’s servers? It’s not like, say, BlueHost would break you up in business. Even their premium services are pretty reasonable. If I had a money-making website whose income I depended on, I certainly would back up every byte of data off-site. And why isn’t he using something like Carbonite to automatically back up his data, far far away from potentially combustible real estate? Many such services exist, and none of them cost much.

Many people subscribe to the idea that you should have a “go-box” where you keep crucial papers like your passports and the deed to your house, as well as memorabilia that you’d like not to lose. I like that plan — it makes a lot of sense, assuming the fire or other Disaster of the Day isn’t between you and said box. In my case, I really don’t have anyplace to stash such a thing. Key documents are in a file drawer, which itself is full — no room in there for a box. The shelves in the office closet are full. The garage (which also hosts a file cabinet) is the most likely site where a fire would start: a car with a large gasoline tank sits backed up close to a gas heater.

But the computer… Ah, the computer.

Nothing should reside solely on a computer in such a way that the only way to rescue data is physically to remove the machine from the building. The young father shouldn’t have had to even think of rescuing an inanimate object when his wife and infant son were in a burning structure.

It’s simply too easy and too cheap to back up everything off-side, automatically. There really is no reason either to leave your data at the mercy of a thief, a fire, or a natural disaster or to have to risk your life to make a side-trip through smoke and flames to retrieve a computer.

Virtual box in the cloud. Real box in the closet. And a set of priorities: think through who or what should be rescued first — before the fact.

Get Up! Get Back to Work!!!!!

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So I suppose I’m going to be reduced to actually having to do some paying and nonpaying work, huh? As the now-completed drama has unfolded, I’ve just let everything go. Other than reading a few chapters of my novelist’s saga and reading some journal copy behind my associate editor, I have done exactly ZERO work, either of the paying variety or of the life-maintenance variety.

The yard has gone to pot.

The house is OK because I had the incredible luck to find and hire Luz the WonderHousekeeper. But we do need some new cleaning goods and stuff for her.

Class has been out of session, but yesterday I posted Canvas shells for the two comp sections that start the day after MLK Day. That, alas, is next week.

Groceries and dog food are still in-house, since I ran amok stocking up before the last surgery. But soon they’ll run out. Plus I learned the wonderful FreshPet dog food rolls contain excessive amounts of calcium and phosphorus, bad for Ruby on two counts: bad for her tendency to develop UTIs and bad because at a year of age her skeleton is still developing. Must go out and get meat to make new real food for the hounds.

My lists are dead.

Lists. Reviving the to-do lists is the top priority, since in my dotage the To-Do List is the single most important tool that keeps me on track to get things done.

Number 1 To-Do is to restore the yard. Or at least begin to do so.

I found these little black metal garden border mini-fences at HD. They’re much less obtrusive than the white fake picket fences and the lengths of wire stuff I use to keep Ruby out of the pool area and out of my gardens. During a short period when I wasn’t too incapacitated, I managed to shove a few of them along the bed that borders the pool, allowing me to get rid of one stretch of uglification.

It’s not much improvement, because I decided to leave the jungle effect created by the now feral blue plumbago, Lady Banks rose, and Mexican primroses by way of blocking Ruby from getting into the pool. Also left some of the wire stuff in place for the same reason. Jumping into the water to get her out is strictly verboten just now — one is not permitted to soak one’s incisions. Plus that water’s probably in the low 40s; the last time I had to dive into icy water to rescue a dog will be, I hope, the LAST time.

P1030310You  can see that she can, in theory squeeze through the scruffy-looking green wire garden border stuff. She has done so, on occasion, but so far hasn’t managed it here — probably because the white wooden border was up before I put in the black pieces.

P1030312I don’t think she can  jump the black stuff, though she might be able to, especially if she sees Charley jump it. He, however, will simply step over it, and that will not model a flying leap. Really, a corgi needs to be trained to jump — their short legs plus their long body tend to make jumping over something pretty counterintuitive. Plus between the plumbago and the Meyer lemon, the brush should block her from getting enough purchase to clear that thing.

I hope.

Anyway, high on the list is to get about 60 lengths of that black metal stuff and replace the bent, sprung, generally tacky-looking green wire stuff throughout the backyard and the front courtyard. This will require raiding quite a few Home Depots, because they don’t usually have much of it on hand. Two HD’s are within reasonable driving distance, and another resides in Scottsdale on the way to the Mayo. Though I doubt I’ll be driving out there again soon, nevertheless I know where it is and it just isn’t THAT far away.

  • Next, take Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner over to Leslie’s for a little free refurbishment.
  • Backwash the pool (today!!!!!)
  • Continue adding acid to stabilize new water (was finally able to lift a bucket of water & acid yesterday. 🙂 )
  • Fertilize and deep-water the orange trees
  • Purchase a new car…
  • …OR at least have Chuck the WonderMechanic overhaul the Dog Chariot so it’ll keep running another fifty or hundred thousand miles
  • Draft an introduction, chapter, table of contents, and chapter outline for the proposed mastectomy book
  • Go to the library or pony up some dollars to see the current issue of Writer’s Marketplace and track down some literary agents as candidates to take the place of my deceased agent.
  • Figure out what I was supposed to have done on Other Client’s book and do it
  • Bill the clients (!!)
  • Revive marketing campaign for Slave Labor
  • Find a PoD outfit to do hard copies for Slave Labor
  • Download Scrivener and begin learning how to use it to compile .mobi files
  • Figure out how to get Slave Labor on iTunes and Barnes & Noble; get that done or delegate the job to someone
  • Figure out whether Scrivener can be used to lay out pages for a book-length work that is mostly gray space
  • Ride herd on subcontractors by way of getting the cookbook to market
  • Finish compiling the book of essays; use that as the “sandbox” project for learning how to make a Kindle book in Scrivener
  • Continue writing Book II for Fire-Rider
  • Figure out how to get that thing to market ASAP, too. Nag subcontractors.
  • Revive the physical budget to get a grip on 2015 spending
  • Make a run on My Sister’s Closet in search of flat-lady clothes
  • Visit Nordstrom’s Rack in Scottsdale, for the same purpose

Heh. Not much to do there, eh?

So…What’s Next?

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Okay, this has been a wonderful adventure and all, but now that it’s finally over, it’s time to reconsider what to do with the remainder of my life.

During the late ongoing drama, I’ve pretty much stopped working altogether, except for my client novelist’s copy. We’ve been in semester break, so no students have been rattling around in their usual Brownian motion. I’ve ignored the other client’s much harder stuff. I’ve let my own projects go by the wayside.

This is the first time in more years than I can reckon that I’ve passed whole days without working. Day after day without working. Yes.

And you know what? I’m finding it very hard to contemplate having to go back.

It occurs to me that I might want to drop at least one of my endeavors: either the teaching or the editorial business.

Which would that be, if either?

I famously hate teaching. So that seems like the likeliest candidate, hm?

However, the teaching is my most reliable income source, after Social Security. It allows me to make ends meet without having to pull a huge amount out of savings. And although it can be annoying, it’s not very hard, especially when courses are all online. So…one thinks twice about abandoning something like that.

Although editorial work can be significantly more interesting and less futile than teaching, at times it can be every bit as tedious. Maybe even more so. The other day a client decided that his table of contents needed to include subheads all the way down to level 4 heads! Utterly pointless, just ridiculous, and not something I managed to discourage. The manuscript was 275 single-spaced pages! So I had to sift through all of that chaff searching for sub-sub-subheads and typing them into the TofC. Like I had nothing else to do with my time?

True, he pays my top rate. But that does not make me feel good about it. To the contrary. I feel like I’m ripping him off to charge him sixty bucks an hour for mindless menial work.

Then there are the indexing jobs: painfully mind-numbing work that falls way, way short of even my mid-range hourly rate. I expect a scholarly index, if you follow it all the way into page proofs (as you most surely should), pays $10 an hour or less.

It’s occurred to me that I could farm out the menial drudgery to minimum-wage workers. Or to workers overseas for whom US minimum wage looks like a living wage.

But I’d still have to go over it all and check it carefully. That brain-banging TofC would require almost as much work to proof as to write: you’d have to track down every subhead on every page and be sure it appeared in the table. If some of them didn’t, you could end up doing the whole damn thing over yourself. Checking an index would demand a similar level of attention. And believe me: I have farmed out indexes that came back as slumgullion, requiring me to throw out the work I’d paid for and compile a whole new index right up against the deadline. That, I have no desire to do again.

I don’t know how you’d find anyone who would be good enough and trustworthy enough to do the job, especially on scholarly and technical books, without having to pay them the entire fee the client is paying. There’s no profit in that, obviously.

I want to write a book about the choices involved in getting a mastectomy — many confront any woman in that predicament, no matter what her circumstances. I know it would sell, I know I could sell it to a mainline publisher, and I know I can make money on it. But…to do it, I need time. When I’m running two enterprises — teaching and The Copyeditor’s Desk — I don’t have a lot of time. If I let the editorial work go for, say, a year (though I think I can do the mastectomy book in four to six months, working on it full-time), I’ll lose clients and lose opportunities to land new clients.

Which way to jump? If jump at all?