Coffee heat rising

School’s Out!

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Yay! Another class down — just filed grades for the ten magazine-writing students who survived to the end of the semester.

That’s the highest survival rate I’ve seen since I started teaching these online courses — ten of the original twenty made it all the way through eight long weeks. And that, interestingly is pretty good for a community college course, especially one that’s mounted online.

Why? I mean, why would so many last, not why do so many drop. Community college students have so many headaches, problems, and challenges that at any give time in their lives they have to make choices, and when they get overwhelmed one of the easiest choices is to drop a course. I attribute it to the change from Blackboard to the new Canvas online courseware. It is so much less bloated than Blackboard and so much easier to use, I expect students found it far less onerous to figure out and navigate.

Every bit as much less onerous than I did, as a matter of fact. Once the course materials were online, running the course was ridiculously easy. This was the first time I’ve felt that $2400 was fair pay for a Heavenly Gardens course.

Interestingly, too, the grade curve came out looking more normal. Usually at the end of the semester my magazine-writing students have either As and Bs or Fs, with little or nothing in between. This term I entered 2 As, 4 Bs, 3 Cs, and 1 D.  And that, I expect, can be attributed to the relatively high survival rate — in the past, only the most determined and competent students have made it to the end of the term. If these students hung in there because simply navigating the course was pretty simple, that would mean more C-level students would have lasted.

Next semester instead of asking them to get all the course ground rules by reading the syllabus — something many of them evidently can’t do — I’m going to add a video in which I go over all the high points and show them how to find the materials on-screen and also where to submit papers.

Astonishingly, Canvas didn’t go down once. Not a single glitch made it impossible for classmates to find course materials or file assignments. Based on past experience with Blackboard, which always crashes at the worst possible moment, I had asked them to e-mail papers to me. That, of course, is a hassle, for them as well as for me. Several classmates quickly figured out how to submit their papers through Canvas, making it extremely easy to access, grade, and return the stuff. So, next semester turning in papers on Canvas will be required.

The community college district sent out a notice that they’re cutting part-timers’ hours so as to avoid having to provide health insurance for adjuncts. Instead of seven courses a year, you can now teach only six. They plead poverty. That’s ridiculous, of course: the district rakes in millions of dollars in tuition, grants, and taxes, and is about to raise our property taxes again. The real reason is right-wing dominance in county government, which, like the state and most city governments here, is run by the kookocracy. They hate Obama and hate anything even moderately progressive, so they’re sinking their heels in the sand in an attempt to sabotage the Affordable Health Care Act.

Doesn’t apply to me, thank God, since I quit teaching freshman comp. But it will harm every adjunct who’s trying to scrabble together a living while pursuing the faint hope of a full-time position, and of course it will harm the hoards of part-time clerical, customer service, and admin staff the district hires.

I probably should try to pick up an online course at the Great Desert University. GDU pays adjuncts a munificent $3300 per semester (oooooohhh! $206.25 a week!!) for adjuncts with the Ph.D. But GDU still uses Blackboard — decidedly, it is not worth struggling with Blackboard for $206. And there’s no way I’m going into a face-to-face classroom again. It’s just too stressful and too dangerous.

Moment of Fame: This week’s Carnival of Personal Finance appears at Wealth Pilgrim. Proprietor Neal Frankle included the rumination in which I decided to keep the Dog Chariot.

Link-O-Rama: First Friday Edition

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Great weekend under way! My friend Carol discovered a FREE First Friday concert last night, presented by the Arizona State University music department. So we raced downtown as soon as we could escape from our respective clients. Grabbed dinner in a cool little bistro/bar (more bar than bistro, I think, tho’ the food was excellent) and then flew into the concert just as they were about to start. They were incredibly good, and the thing we really loved about it was how eclectic it was — music from the 1700s to just yesterday — two of the pieces were composed by young men who were sitting there in the hall.

Gorgeous evening. Weather was beautiful and we had a fine time. Spring is now in its “late” phase here, as in it would be your basic summer anywhere else in the world. This afternoon I was able to get into the pool and swim about a half-hour or forty-five minutes, making up for the many hikes and bike rides I’ve failed to take over the past week or ten days.

Around the Internet, all sorts of cool things are going on. I ran across something called called Longreads.com, an extremely neat site that aggregates articles with — if can imagine! — actual substance. If you enjoy reading something you can really wrap your mind around, check it out.

In the rich get richer department, I’m sure most of us have already gotten wind of the most recent clues to the demise of the middle class.  Here’s the report from the proverbial horse’s mouth, and an interesting tabulation of related data at the Washington Post.

Since we’re all going to be doing menial work for a living, we might as well know the secret to getting rid of toilet stains, revealed (where else?) at Lifehacker.

And in the don’t worry, be happy department, Wired posts an entertainment about Google Glass.

The semester is finally winding up, and now so I can tell you about one of my (fully adult! not a kid!) students’ blogs. In a recent post she shares an discovery she and a few others have made about a possible cause for childhood eczema. And as a matter of fact, a couple of experiences I had when M’hijito was little tend to back up this theory.

At My Journey to Millions, Evan contemplates an amazing idea: start your own family credit union! Apparently this scheme is not beyond the means of any reasonably affluent group with something in common: check out the how-to at NCUA.

Romance is in the air at A Gai Shan Life, where Revanche reminisces about the first six months of a certain relationship, in New Zealand, where eemuse is about to tie the knot, and at I Pick Up Pennies, where Abby & Tim  celebrate their 5th anniversary with a mini-honeymoon.

Crystal offers an incredibly easy and delicious-looking recipe, complete with photos, for scalloped potatoes. Yum!

Mrs. Accountability relates a jaw-dropping tale of a young mother who contrives to get food stamps despite earning a decent living and living, all things considered, fairly high off the hog.

Donna Freedman celebrates her fourth blogiversary with links to great past posts at Surviving and Thriving and elsewhere.

I don’t remember if I linked to this April 24 post at Money Beagle; if not, you should read it because it’s it’s very funny; if so, more comments accrued–worth revisiting While you’re there, check out today’s to-do list for balanced living.

Paula at Afford Anything debunks an old chestnut, to entertaining effect.

At Planting Our Pennies, Mrs. PoP posts the April balance sheet, complete with cool graphs. As she says, you can generate reports like this at Mint; and you also can do it in Excel, with a little formula manipulation.

Over at Frugal Scholar, once again Blogger won’t let me sign in to add a comment to FS’s interesting post on the nature of innumeracy and the idiocy of students’ perceptions of grade scores. Today it demands either that I establish a Google+ profile (no, thank you) or that I create a Blogger site (why?). The comment I craved to post:

Not surprising. One thing I learned is that attaching numeric values to rubric items to come up with a total point value equivalent to a grade on a paper quashes complaints that one’s grading is “subjective,” even though you use the exact same rubric standards as you do for letter grades. To some people, numbers hold forth the promise of cosmic truth. Hence, I suppose, numerology…

I personally am innumerate. I cannot and never have been able to do arithmetic competently, because I simply can NOT keep the “math facts” in my brain. I do well at algebra (for example), because it’s about logic, not about regurgitating numerals. But anything that has numbers in it just flummoxes me.

 Recently, after only 66 years on this earth, I learned that this is a congenital condition related to a genetic flaw that caused a type of (allegedly) benign tumor called a “neurofibroma” to arise on one shoulder. As it develops, people who have this hereditary ailment often suffer from dyscalculia.

 I was lucky a) that the condition isn’t worse and did not manifest itself in infancy (it can lead to serious mental handicaps); b) that I was born to a navigator who could teach me how to use a slide rule when I was in grade school; c) that someone invented the calculator not long after that; and d) that Excel or Numbers is available on every computer in creation.

Whatever the causes, discovering a biological reason for the seeming obtuseness has given me a lot more empathy with students who can’t write a literate sentence to save their lives.

Frugal Scholar will be gratified by Free Money Finance’s latest spin on decisions related to selecting a college, and especially on the “any college they want” parental ambition.

And finally, in the WTF!!! department, don’t miss this astonishing report at the Volokh Conspiracy.

 

A Couple of Things I Can Afford to Do Without…

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1. New(er) Car

Toyota_Sienna_LEThe other day I picked up the Dog Chariot from Chuck, the Paragon of Mechanics. He charged me $300+ for a brake job and several other small details. I said I was thinking about replacing the tank with a Honda CR-V or a Toyota RAV-4. He and all the guys at the shop argued that the Chariot should run to 200,000 miles without major problems.

It only has 118,000 miles on it now. (“Only” 118,000 miles! Who would ever have thunk an American car owner would utter a phrase like that?)

Normally, I drive about 10,000 to 12,000 miles a year. Without the commute to various college campuses, the mileage is likelier to run on the low side than on the high side. So…if the Men of Chuck’s are right, the thing should last another 10 years!

Every day that car runs, it puts money in my pocket in the form of low insurance bills and negligible registration fees. If it actually survived another eight or ten years, a great deal of money could stay invested, rather than being engrossed by the various parasites who want to take it away from me.

I’d like to drive to the high country during the summers. But I’m not comfortable driving the aging Sienna up the rim, which is a steep climb, nor do I relish being stuck by the side of the road way to hell and gone out in the desert. But duh! It would cost a lot less than Arizona’s $420 registration fee to rent a car and drive it to Jerome or Flagstaff. What the heck? I could rent a Mercedes convertible for less than it costs to register a $25,000 car in Arizona! And not have to pay 25 grand for the privilege.

Yesterday morning I took the little tank by the annoying car wash (at Chuck’s behest: “Take it to the car wash!!!!!”) and paid their demand for an extra $4 to dust the interior. Therein lies the key: give them some vigorish and they do a decent job.

The clunk came out looking almost like a brand-new chariot! Very nice.

So I decided to touch up the paint on the two spots where the white enamel chipped off, one where either a rock or a BB hit the tailgate and another where I broke the tail-light and chipped off a little paint around the assembly. The trick (I learned after I left the tailgate open while backing into the garage and whacked it on the garage door) is to squirt a couple of light coats of white enamel spray paint over the nekkid metal ding. It worked, more or less…good enough for government work, anyway.

custom_paint_jobContemplating another eight or ten years of living with this contraption, it occurred to me to wonder if it would be worth having the clunk repainted.

I’ve always wanted a candy-apple red car. How cool would a candy-apple red Sienna be, anyway? Maybe with some nice yellow and orange flames along the sides?

2) Overcomplicated Decomplication Strategy

Several readers remarked, in puzzled tones, that my scheme to cut the number of credit-card charges to keep track of, month in and month out, was effectively self-defeating. They noted, for example, that buying a cash card for a grocery store would not be regarded as a charge for groceries but rather as a charge for a piece of plastic, counterproductive when the Costco AMEX kicks back 6% on charges for food, 3% on gasoline purchases, and 1% on everything else. Presumably a piece of plastic would come under the rubric of “everything else.”

Much more obvious strategy: cut the number of trips to the usual suspects among retailers. Where is it written that I have to jet off to the Safeway every time I notice that one or two small items have run out? Can one not make do for a few days?

Why not simply cut the number of trips to Costco to two a month (max)? And the trips to Safeway to four a month? Every Thursday morning, I drive right past the favored Safeway on the way home from the weekly networking meeting. Stopping for groceries then would serve two purposes: a) save gasoline by combining trips and b) reduce the number of visits to the supermarket.

Two Costco charges + four Safeway charges + three Costco gas fillups ≠ 98 gerjillion annoying little charges. Actually, they = nine charges.

What if I took out about $200 or $300 in cash each month, and paid any bills under $20 to $30 with actual dollars? Here in this stack of charge slips I see a $4.16 charge to Safeway, a $10.73 charge to a restaurant, a $12.39 charge to Trader Joe’s, a $19.05 charge to the propane dealer, and on and on.

If only Costco gas bills and bills over $30 were charged, last month’s number of transactions would drop from twenty-eight to to twelve. If the threshold were $50, then the number of charges made last month would have been seven. And if I limited Safeway trips to once a week and Costco expeditions to twice a month, the number might drop even further.

So. The new Decomplication Strategy: Use cash for purchases under $50; limit routine shopping junkets to specific days of the month.

Money Happens

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Lordie, money not only happens, it seems to materialize out of the air.

You can’t even imagine how little I am working, here in my dotage. But that notwithstanding, money keeps on happening.

At the end of 2012, I followed the accountant’s advice and withdrew from the S-corp what we calculated the S-corp should disburse to me plus repayment of the money I used to capitalize the business, which has been carried on the books as a loan. That amounted to enough to cover the business’s contribution to my upkeep for the first three quarters of 2013.

Just reconciled the February and March statements (you can see with what enthusiasm I approach these tasks…). Lo! I’ll only have to earn another $2,000 all year long to bring the balance back up to what it was before that drawdown. That is just amazing.

Just now no business is on the horizon — I do need to get off my aching duff and hustle up some work. But this is a feast & famine business. Before long something else will come in, and then it will be like popcorn in a cooker. While it’s quiet, I need to finish the e-book that’s almost done and then put together a couple of others from the bottomless pit of copy that is Funny about Money.

Decomplicate Me!

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Ohhhhhh gawd one more piece of paper to have to figure out, act on, and file is gonna break my achin’ back! Yesterday afternoon I was trying to figure out how to organize the usual complicated mess before handing it over to The Accountant from Nirvana, who offers to take on the migrainish bookkeeping. Obviously, the less mess for her to have to plow through, the fewer hours it will take her to beat it back. Hence: decomplication.

So much paper comes pouring into my house that often I just can’t keep up with it. It piles up like dust on the Plains until finally I’m forced to deal with it, and that dealing can take the better part of an entire day. Yesterday, I thought if only i could find a way to cut the number of transactions and the number of pieces of paper i have to screw with, maybe it wouldn’t take half my lifetime to keep this shit under control…

One spring that feeds the flood of papers is the charge cards. Specifically, the AMEX card. Costco’s American Express card is one of America’s premier kick-back cards: almost every charge racks up a few pennies or a few dollars toward the annual “rebate,” which in my case goes directly into savings. Because I charge everything on the AMEX card and then pay it off at the end of each month, some years that kickback has amounted to three or four hundred dollars. To make that happen, though, entails snowflurries of charge slips, each of which has to be entered in Quickbooks.

Most of these small charges, some as small as a couple of bucks, occur at a limited number of retailers: Costco, Safeway, Costco gas, AJ’s (a local purveyor of fancy groceries and the best coffee beans in town).

What if…? What if I were to buy cash cards at the places where most of my charges take place? You can buy cash cards at Costco with which to purchase gasoline and groceries. Ditto Safeway: give yourself a gift card. Same at the local upscale AJ’s. A person could pay for these things with the richly endowed AMEX card, thereby preserving the coveted kickback.

Wouldn’t it make sense to buy gift cards or cash cards to cover purchases at the most-frequented retailers, thereby consolidating 87 gerjillion receipts into three or four?

If said person then paid for purchases under about $50 with cash, wouldn’t that also get rid of a lot of ditzy little receipts to keep track of?

Then how much would be left to charge on credit cards, track, and organize monthly payments for?

Hm.

Averaging charges in various categories over seven months, I discovered that typically I’ve been spending about $55 a month at AJ’s, $300 at Costco on groceries and household goods, $95 on Costco gasoline, $120 at Safeway, and around $160 on small sundries. On average, large planned or unplanned bills can come to as much as $370 in any given month.

What if the only things that went on the charge card were gift or cash cards and large bills? And all the little stuff were paid in cash?

This would hugely change the budgeting scheme. Instead of $1100 a month to be charged on the card and paid off at the end of each month, things would look like this:

CashBudget

Biggest drawback: it would require me to traipse to the credit union once a month and get actual cash, of all things…

On the first day of each budget cycle:

1. Drive to the credit union; withdraw $160
2. Drive to Costco: Buy $395 Costco cash card ($95 for gasoline; $300 for in-store purchases).
3. Drive to Safeway, get $120 Safeway cash card.
4. Drive to AJ’s, get $55 AJ’s card.

Manage funds accordingly.

This would consolidate all the charges for groceries, cleaning goods, personal care products, and household stuff into three charges — Costco, Safeway, and AJ’s. Gasoline and some clothing would also be comprised in the Costco card. There would be no reason to itemize every single stupid little charge in these categories; instead, all that would be noted is the cost of an estimated month’s worth of charges, to be paid with a cash card.   Same would be true of the ditzy little bills, 50 bucks and under, that would be paid for in cash.

The only bills requiring serious itemization would be bigger-ticket items such as major car repair bills, gifts, dental visits, and the like.

Right there, dozens of scraps of paper, direct to the trash! Or at least not stashed in a file folder or envelope to be inflicted on the (expensive!) accountant.

Today, speaking of major bills, I have to leave my car at the shop for a brake job, so I won’t be driving around buying cash cards and extracting cash from the credit union. But tomorrow…

 

MacJunketing

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Yesterday KJG invited me to join her in a quest to buy a new computer. Or, more to the point, a Mac.

She’s had an iPhone for a while, likes it, and in the course of using it has grown accustomed to some of the Macinoid ways of doing things. Her laptop PC having arrived at its last legs (or whatever PCs have), she had pretty much decided she wanted to at least seriously consider a Mac.

So we presented ourselves at the Arrowhead Mall Apple store at 10:00 a.m., the moment it opened to the general public.

That was when we met the most amazing man. His name is Stan, and he and his yellow lab are employed full-time as sales reps for Apple computers. What a remarkable guy! He’s stone blind. Using Apple’s voice function plus an amazing tactile memory and about the quickest mind any of us have ever had the privilege to meet, he had no problem demonstrating how the various choices of products work, how they compare, and what the various choices (for example, of memory) mean in the context of the two businesses KJG and Mr. KJG operate.

The hound had recently had surgery and so spent most of his time resting. No matter. Stan had no problem navigating the store and all its products on his own, all the while operating as an engaging salesman.

He sold me a cool little Bluetooth keyboard tricked out as a cover for the iPad. It works like one of those expensive and useless little fold-up covers you can buy, in that it will put the iPad to sleep when you “close” it. But it gives you a small keyboard with actual keys that actually work, unlike the endlessly annoying virtual keyboard that pops up whenever you need to type something into an e-mail or a web page. This infuses enough usability into the iPad to make the gadget a practical device, something that I haven’t found to be true since I bought the thing.

And I learned that Pages, which only costs a few bucks and which now will manipulate Word documents, can be downloaded into an iPad as a fully functional app. So can Numbers, a spreadsheet with power comparable to Excel’s.

Hot dang!

I’ve wanted a spreadsheet app that would allow me to enter, say, a budgeted amount for Costco, so that I could carry the iPad into a store with me and keep a running tab of what I’ve spent. This would simplify life considerably. But the spreadsheet apps I’ve found so far leave a lot to be desired…like, say, usability.

The new keyboard gadget, Numbers, and Pages will hugely improve the iPad’s functionality. Too bad the thing doesn’t come already loaded with these things — it’s only taken, what? two years to figure this out.

KJG wanted some time to think about all she’d learned before deciding on a purchase, so from there we wandered to a shoe store — decided that the new Mephistos are surprisingly uncomfortable — and through several wonderful stores for teenyboppers and twenty-somethings (imagine! once we could wear stuff like that), and into a Coldwater Creek (this is what we have to wear now????), and over to the food court, and finally back to the Apple store.

Finally she decided on a 13-inch MacBook with a mid-range of memory. The staff there walked her through setting it up, and when last heard from, she was e-mailing messages from the little guy. 🙂

So that was fun. And productive, too.