What is it about basic organization that I seem incapable of mastering? I imagine I’ve kept careful records, I delude myself that four drawers full of carefully categorized file folders have organized every important piece of paper that comes into the house (and thousands of faintly important, maybe-important, and irrelevant pieces of paper). In my mind, it looks good…if sometimes cluttered. I am, in a word, organized!
Well, until someone asks me a direct question. Last night the new accountant e-mailed a few innocent queries.
No. 1. How much is your social security income before taxes and medicare deductions?
Uhm…not very much.
No. 2. How much is deducted for Federal and AZ taxes?
Too much?
No. 4. Did you receive a statement from the state of AZ showing the taxable amount of your sick pay? Were any taxes withheld?
You would think so. But if I did, I can’t find it. Yes, taxes were withheld. The only record I can find is notes on a telephone conversation with the lady who runs the RASL program.
No. 5. Please forward a copy of your latest MCCD pay stub. The one I have is dated 09/24/2010.
Okay. You do realize that through this entire semester, no two community college paychecks have been the same? Does that matter?
No. 6. How much was your Fidelity IRA distribution? Was it from a Roth or a regular IRA? Were any taxes withheld?
Who, what? Where, why? When?
No. 9. Are you getting a new A/C unit that will qualify for the tax credit?
Far as I can tell. The AC guy says it’s worth $1,500.
The only reason I could answer that last one is that the receipt is still sitting on my desk, yet to be filed.
Social Security totally flummoxes me. After they took away an entire month’s benefit check as punishment for my having committed the sin of earning a few bucks more than the earnings limitation, they turned around and announced they had recalculated my benefit and were raising it. I have never been told the dollar amount that is withheld for federal taxes, and as far as I know Arizona doesn’t tax Social Security. If it does, I don’t know how much or whether Social Security withholds state taxes. When I try to figure out what the gross must be, assuming they’re withholding 15% for federal tax and nothing for state tax and $110 for Medicare, I come up with a gross on the new “increase” that’s smaller than it should be if I were paid the original gross the entire year.
Such a vast flood of paper pours into my house that I’ve developed a flinch reflex about any form to fill out, any document from a threatening official agency such as the federal government or an insurance company, and most anything that requires a response from me. Every day I walk past the recycling bin coming in from the mailbox and dump everything that looks like advertising or pointlessness into the trash. The mailman delivers so much garbage that in a week the four-foot-high bin is half-full before I’ve tossed the newspapers and all the overwrapping that swaddles every product we buy.
That still leaves me with mounds of paper to have to sort through, try to understand, figure out what to do with, and file. Right now, after just a week, my desk and kitchen counter are covered with the stuff!
And file it I do. But once it’s filed in those tidy drawers, it’s effectively lost.
Oh god. Just writing about this is giving me another throat spasm. I’ve gotta get up, feed the hound, and go for a walk.
Is this REALLY necessary?
Image: Paper recycling in Ponte a Serraglio, Italy. By H005. Public domain.
Well, let’s start the week with a look around to see what’s going on.
• Biggest news in the PF blogosphere is J. Money got canned! He’s not crying, though. He had himself prepared and even is set up so he can regard it not as a disaster but as an opportunity. Go for it, J.!
• At The Digerati Life, Silicon Valley Blogger offers five ways to beat holiday stress. All the fake (and expensive) “cheer” really can be depressing. These are smart ways to help stay on an even keel.
• Mrs. Accountability tells an amazing story about a family who fostered her for a while when she was young—and the effect their financial habits had on her thinking.
• Over at the Ultimate Money Blog, Mrs. Money faces a family crisis and considers what money is really worth.
• Bargain Babe provides a lead to Swagbucks and a handy link to sign up. Swagbucks is a rewards site that pays you in virtual currency just for searching the Web. LOL! If I’d signed up for this a few years ago, by now I’d be a virtual zillionaire!
• At 23toLife.com, Lesley tells an amazing story that rings a bell loudly in my ear. She managed to cull her home library from 1,200 dustcatchers to just 33 books! Wow…I’ve never counted my books—too scary—but of late have been thinking it’s past time to get rid of all five ceiling-to-floor shelving units filled with tomes I no longer use, thanks to the Internet. The wallsful of books could be replaced with a Kindle. Maybe.
• Eemusings has a very interesting and thoughtful post on a similar topic at Musings of an Abstract Aucklander, also spinning off the issue of paring down the book collection: finding a balance between hoarding and minimalism. A nice read at an elegant and well written site.
• At Ginger Won’t Snap, Ginger Corsair describes a bizarre incident that happened when she and her roommate rented a room through Airbnb.com. This is an interesting new-to-me site—check out Ginger’s extremely cool “About” page.
• Check out this easy and tasty lemon cake Revanche came up with at Gai Shan Life, from which follows a reflection on her relocation.
• At Budgeting in the Fun Stuff, Crystal elicited a slew of comments with a rumination over how much she loves her husband and her life with him and what would ensue if anything happened to him.
• Frugal Scholar has a nice post on the art of making do. We know she’s an artist at finding miraculous things at the thrift store. Here she marvels at the American obsession for the perfect object.
• Now that he’s a dad, Evan at My Journey to Millions is doing his own en famille giving with a 529 plan, saving toward the kid’s future college expenses. He describes 529 plans and how to set one up for your kids.
• At Simply Forties, Mary demonstrates a really neat way to wrap gifts inexpensively. Almost makes me feel sorry I have plenty of Christmas wrap left over from last year!
• And at I Pick Up Pennies, Abigail has about had it with the Christmas marketing frenzy, especially the “sales” that come with catches and deceptive practices. Maybe, as some of her readers suggest, it’s time to opt out of the gigantic Xmas Potlatch.
Want to tell your money story? Got a money question? J.D. Roth is looking for readers to contribute to Get Rich Slowly’s “Reader Stories” and “Ask the Readers” departments. He’s also soliciting guest posts. Check out the details here.
Free Money Finance is seeking submissions for this year’s March Madness. Last year FaM won a few dollars for the All Saint’s choir. His announcement went up on the 14th—hope it’s not too late to submit something for this year’s contest. Got any nominations?
My father always used to say that: “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Guess it’s some sort of Texas catchphrase. Well, the local Safeway just made that saying come literally true!
The bargain basement turkey having proved inedible for the human and indigestible for the dog—she barfed up a pile of it all over the office this morning—I went by the store during today’s voyages, by way of picking up some hamburger for her. Figured to have to spend about two and a half bucks a pound, a pretty typical price in that place. But lo! I found some for $1.49, not too bad at all.
On the way to the checkout stand, I stopped at the customer service desk to mention my misfortune with the foul fowl. Really, I didn’t expect them to do anything about it, but just thought they should know one of their products was looking a bit suspect. To my amazement, the manager whipped out a gift card and racked up the price of the defunct turkey on it!
Wow!
It covered almost all of two gigantic packages of hamburger, which was hugely on sale. The red-card discount knocked a $54 bill down to $29, and thanks to the gift card, I walked out of there with enough hamburger to feed Cassie for the next four or five weeks plus a bunch of other junk and paid $10 for the lot.
I felt really pleased: $1.49 for boneless meat is a much better buy than the $1.29 cost of the bone-in turkey. Though I had intended to use the carcass to make stock, even if the bones had been usable, soup made with onion can’t be used to feed the dog (and wouldn’t go far in that direction, anyway), and besides, I’ve got gallons of home-made chicken stock in the freezer.
So there you are: a$k and ye shall re¢eive. I didn’t even a$k for anything!
Thanks, Safeway!
🙂
Image:
Daderot. Columbia Expert, 52-inch, 1882. Public Domain.
Am I right in thinking that projecting the value of a piece of real estate into the future is roughly akin to figuring compound interest? That is, the two calculations are similar in that they entail repeatedly adding a percentage back onto a base value, which increases periodically at that rate?
If this scheme is correct, to estimate the value of the house after 15 years you would guess at a projected annual increase (say, 3%) and then plug that rate and the current value into a compound interest calculator. This is the simplest scenario, of course: it assumes the starting value will increase. We know that the value of real estate, at least in my part of the country, will not increase and in fact is projected to fall another 6 percent in 2011. However, there’s an easy adjustment for that: simply plug a negative number into your formula for each year you expect values to tumble.
M’hijito and I have to renegotiate our mortgage, which was modified a year ago after I was laid off. To have even the vaguest idea what we’re doing, we need to have some idea what that place will be worth in 15 or 20 years. We’re pretty much resigned to the certainty that we’re going to be in the landlord business—when he’s ready to move on, we won’t be able to sell it, because we owe at least a hundred thousand more than we paid for it. So, we’ll be forced to rent it either until it regains some value or until we’ve paid off the mortgage.
Two Realtors have told us the house is worth $140,000 to $150,000. We owe $206,000.
I tried this first with an online calculator, using 3%, and then on my fingers and came up with the same figure: in 15 years at a 3% growth rate, it should be worth $211,763 to $233,695. Lovely. In the best-case scenario, that will be only $1,305 less than we paid for it. But at least it’s more than we owe on it. We won’t think about what the dollar will be worth in 15 years. 🙄
We know it’s unlikely the house’s value will go up by 3%, the typical rate of inflation, in 2011 or 2012. But it could (I suppose) start to rise after a couple of years. If you calculate a negative interest rate of, say, 6% next year and 4% the following year, then add on 3% a year, after 15 years the house’s value is $185,528 if it’s worth $140,000 now, or $190,829 if it’s worth $150,000 today. That’s $15,171 to $20,472 less than what we owe on it.
But of course, 15 years of payments at a low rate will have knocked the principal down to some degree.
Using an online amortization calculator rel=”nofollow”, I estimate we will owe $132,958 in 15 years, if we can get the credit union to come down to a 4% interest rate. In 15 years, assuming values drop 6% in 2011 and 3% in 2012, then rise at 3% a year, the house will be worth $185,528 to $190,820.
In five years, we will owe $186,322 on a house that will be worth $138,050 to $141,944.
In ten years, we will owe $162,295 on a house that will be worth $160,038 to $164,610.
This means the soonest we can get out of the loan without having to cough up tens of thousands of dollars will be in about 2021. That’s if we’re extremely lucky.
Our plan is to ask for a 30-year loan at a ridiculously low interest rate. Right now the original loan, which will come back to haunt us in February, is a 30/15 deal at something over 6%. The loan modification temporarily gave us the terms of a 40-year loan at 4%. With me unemployed, even the payments on that are too high—I’m using everything I earn at the college to cover my share, and I won’t be able to work more than about another four years. Some people are getting 2% interest on reincarnated loans, so that’s what we’re going to ask for. I think we’ll be lucky to get a 30-year loan at 4%.
Again assuming values drop 6% in 2011 and 4% in 2012 and then slowly begin to rise: In 30 years the house will be worth $289,047 to $297,306. Of course, by then he (or his renters) will have paid a great deal more than that for the privilege of holding it. I’ll be long gone by then, and presumably in 30 years what is now a 60-year-old tract house will have crumbled into the ground. With our luck, some developer will have decided to turn the whole area into a low-rent shopping mall, persuaded the city to condemn the entire tract, and bought the houses for 50 cents on the dollar.
The Great Desert University is advertising a job opening at the Tempe campus. They want a business writer who can do PR for their business services branch. It’s a job I could do in my sleep, and it pays $50,000 to $52,000.
Fifty grand, though it’s only three-quarters of what I was earning, would go a long way toward solving all my money problems. It would cover my part of the mortgage on the upside-down house from now until long after the cows come home, leaving plenty to diddle away on extravagances such as clothes and a cell phone. And it would get me back into Delta Dental—I need to get my teeth cleaned, probably need a couple of new crowns, and am afraid to even talk to a dentist about what that’s going to cost.
But…
Yesterday I drove out to campus to take my friend Tina to lunch, by way of thanking her for all the wonderful things she’s done for me this year.
You know, just the prospect of driving from The Funny Farm out to Tempe every day is more than I can contemplate. The trip to GDU is just dreary, and then once you get there, where are you? The campus is so ugly and so depressing…as aesthetics alone go, to say nothing of what’s inside the buildings.
After an evening of light rain, today is just beautiful, the weather like San Francisco’s. The dog and I went for a long walk through the adjacent ritzy neighborhood, schmoozed with several neighbors beneath golden fall trees, tried to kiss a cat, returned feeling very content.
I did not have to drive through homicidal rush-hour traffic to get to an office at 8:00 this morning. I did not have to beg some supervisor or take “vacation” time to be here to intercept the workmen who are changing out the hail-battered air conditioning unit…why on EARTH would I want to take on another full-time job? If there’s really some reason for such a strange compulsion, surely I can find better places to work!
Dang. I’ve already written an application letter. It’s good. When they see this thing, they’ll fall all over themselves to hire me. But y’know what? Think I’ll delete it from the hard drive. I’d rather go hungry than go back to work at that place.
A moment’s exploration revealed that AARP offers Delta Dental at a reasonable rate, with no waiting period for routine care. I’ve re-upped, having found a full year’s premiums can comfortably be paid in one swell foop. And now I believe I’ll ride the new purple bike through the neighborhood. Unemployment hath its charms.
Where is it written that holiday dinners have to feature turkey? Right here it’s about to be written that they should not feature turkey!
Yesterday I cooked a turkey that I’d found at Safeway for a good price. As you know, I feed Cassie the Corgi real food, a mix of about half starch & veggies and half meat. For this purpose I look for meat that’s under $2 a pound—as far under as possible. The turkey was only $1.29/pound. True, the package said it was “up to” 6 percent water, and true, it was a product of one of those hideous mass farming operations. But the poor critter was dead already, so why waste the meat, eh?
Well, after roasting in the oven, so much water leached out of it that I was moved to wonder exactly how much water my money had bought. So I poured it into a big measuring cup and skimmed off the fat. It filled a quart measuring cup. Set on the kitchen scale, it weighed over two pounds.
That’s right…I paid almost $4.00 for water. Bad-tasting water, we might add. The whole bird had a funny off-taste, kind of chemically or dirty-tasting.
Folks, I’ve been around the block a few times and I know what turkey is supposed to taste like. This is not nostalgia for a fantasy “good ole days.” American turkeys have tasted terrible for decades. When we were in England, a friend invited us for Christmas dinner and insisted on serving turkey. We really didn’t want to take the train down to Kent from London and stay overnight for what we expected would be a mediocre meal, but we enjoyed our friends as so of course we accepted their invitation. The turkey was incredible: it actually tasted like turkey used to taste, the way it’s supposed to taste. So it’s not my subjective opinion that American turkey doesn’t taste like turkey.
Thank goodness I didn’t serve this thing up to guests yesterday. It’s barely adequate for dog food.
In addition to poor flavor and questionable provenance, turkey is a nuisance to prepare. The bloated giants coming out of factory farms are too large to handle easily or safely, they often come frozen and take days to defrost, and few people know what to do with the carcass or have time to do anything with it, so the leftovers go to waste.
Do yourself a favor and serve up something other than turkey. Let’s consider three options: pork, beef, lamb, and some other variety of fowl.
If you’re not Jewish or Muslim, pork is relatively inexpensive and it tastes ten times better than turkey. Some cuts can even be stuffed, if your friends and family just can’t live without stuffing. Pork loin is tender, delicious, and easy to cook. Personally, I prefer a good pork loin to ham, which is oversalted and overprocessed. Here’s how to fix it:
Buy a pork loin roast large enough to serve all your guests. It’s OK to buy two or three, if one won’t suffice. While you’re at the store, get some fennel seed, dry sage, garlic, onion, a can or box of low-salt chicken broth, and a bottle of inexpensive dry white wine. If you don’t have any olive oil around the house, buy a small bottle of that, too. You’ll need some flour; if you don’t keep flour in the house, buy the smallest bag you can find on the grocer’s shelves.
For each decently sized roast, pour out enough fennel seed to fill the palm of your hand. Toss that into a blender. Add about 1/4 that much sage. Cover the blender cup and whirl the spices long enough to pulverize the fennel seeds. Peel one or two cloves of garlic and toss those into the blender. Add about two teaspoons salt. Pulse the blender briefly–just long enough to chop (not liquefy!) the garlic and mix in the salt.
Next, pour a little olive oil over the roast and rub it around. Wipe your hands on a paper towel. Then pat and rub the spice mix all over the surface of your roast. Stick a meat thermometer into the roast and set the meat in an oven-proof pan that is not made of glass.
Cut up a couple of nice sweet onions. Arrange these around the base of the roast. If you’ve got some carrots, toss those in there, too. Preheat the oven; for tenderloin, set the oven at about 400 degrees; for a loin roast, at about 325 to 350 degrees. Cook a boneless loin or tenderloin about 25 to 30 minutes a pound; a bone-in loin about 20 to 25 minutes per pound. The thermometer should say 160 to 170 degrees.
Now, what if people just must have stuffing? For heaven’s sake. Get yourself some decent bread—a French or Italian-style baguette will work. You’ll need a bunch of parsley, a couple cloves of garlic, and some bottled herbs. Break the bread into pieces and whirl them in the blender or food processor to turn the stuff into crumbs. Add a peeled clove of garlic, roughly chopped garlic, a little salt, and a teaspoon or so of whatever greenish bottled herbs you like. Tarragon is always nice. It’s hard to go wrong with thyme or sage, too, but remember a little sage goes a long way. Whack this stuff around in the blender with the bread crumbs until it’s nicely chopped and blended together. Divide the pork into two, three, or four smaller roasts, depending on how much you have. Coat as above with a flavorful rub. Set the pieces of roast in the pan and pack this stuffing between them. Secure the package with string, or use those metal turkey-stuffing skewers to hold them together. Pour a little olive over the stuffing, and cook as above.
If you don’t eat pork, or if you’ve noticed that factory-farmed meat of the pig also doesn’t taste like real pork, substitute a good standing rib roast for the above, dispensing with the stuffing (35 to 40 minutes a pound at 325 degrees). Use the same rub, or simply season to taste with salt and lots of fresh-ground pepper.
Lamb makes superb feasting food. Try to get imported New Zealand lamb, which is far superior to the muttony American lamb. It should be cooked rare to medium; if you like your meat well-done, opt for something else. Cook a bone-in leg of lamb 15 to 20 minutes/pound for rare and 20 to 25 minutes/pound for medium; boneless leg, 20 minutes/pound for rare or 25 minutes/pound for medium. Over the rub described above, spread a layer of Dijon-style mustard before roasting.
Or cook a passle of Cornish game hens, one for each guest. These also will roast in about 45 minutes or an hour in a 325- to 350-degree oven. These can be stuffed, if you feel compelled to work that hard, but I wouldn’t be bothered. Instead put some stuffing (see above; add a few pecans or walnuts if so moved) in a baking dish, moisten it very slightly with chicken broth and olive oil, cover, and bake in the oven with the other food. Duck is good, as is goose, but it is not hassle-free; avoid if you’re looking for ease of preparation.
While the meat roasts, put things into the oven to cook with it.Baked potatoes should be first on the list. Wash these; dig out any damaged spots with the tip of your paring knife. Punch each potato all over with the tip of your knife (otherwise it can explode inside your oven). Stick these on a rack in the oven at the time you put in the roast.
It’s hard to miss with butternut squash. Slice the squash in half lengthwise, scrape out and discard the seeds (yes, I know, you can roast them for a snack; do this only if hassle-free is not your main goal). Line a cookie sheet or other pan with tinfoil; rub olive oil over the surface of the tinfoil. About an hour before the meat is done, set the squash cut-side down on the tinfoil and stick it in the oven. Melt some butter in a small pan with a liberal squirt of honey. After a half hour, turn the squash over so the cut side is up. Pour the honey butter in the hole and brush some of on the rest of the squash. If possible, reserve some of the butter for serving. Cook another half-hour, until perfectly tender.
Once all these things are in the oven (or, if you’re ambitious, earlier in the day), make a green salad. For ultimate ease, buy some packaged precut salad greens. For maximal laziness, do nothing more—just serve it up with some bottle salad dressing. With minimal extra effort, you can cut up one or two little green onions, chop a carrot, add some canned marinated artichoke, and, at the last minute, cut up some tomato and toss that in. Use your favorite bottled dressing or make a real dressing with one part sour stuff (lemon juice, wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, or even plain cider vinegar) to three parts olive oil, seasoned to taste with salt & pepper and some bottled herbs.
Now the meat and veggies are cooked and you have those baked potatoes. You can serve them with Greek-style yogurt or sour cream for those who like their potatoes that way. But if you’ve made a good pork roast, you have killer pan drippings to make the gravy from heaven. Ditto a beef roast. The potatoes cry out for the stuff.
This is the only thing you’re going to cook on the stovetop, and if you’ve played your cards right, it’s the only thing you’re going to do any visible work on while your guests are present.
Remove the meat from the pan. Get someone else to slice it. Open the bottle of cheap wine; use red for beef, white for pork. Open the can or box of chicken broth (you can use beef broth for roast beef, or just wine). Remove any vegetables from the drippings and discard (or, if they’re not blackened and too greasy, consider serving them on the side).
If the drippings are very fatty, pour off all but about two tablespoons of melted fat, reserving the delicious brown drippings in the pan. Place the pan over a burner and turn on the heat to medium-high. Sprinkle two or three tablespoons of flour over the drippings. Stir this around to get the flour toasting a bit. Carefully pour in some broth, stirring around to mix. Add wine. I like about 50-50 wine and broth, but it’s very forgiving. You can use all wine or all broth, whatever works for you. Stir this around some more over the heat. Observe the thickness. Add more liquid to thin, if desired. If the gravy seems too thin, get a coffee mug and mix about two tablespoons of flour with about a half- or three-quarters mug of wine or broth, stirring well to eliminate any lumps. Mix this in a little at a time with the gravy to achieve the desired thickness.
If your pan drippings are not mostly grease but instead contain a lot of liquid, mix flour with wine from the git-go, rather than starting by toasting the flour in the oily drippings.
And that’s it. Slice the butternut squash into serving-size pieces, pour the rest of the honey butter over them, serve everything up with some wine or beer, and enjoy.
Dessert? Grocery store or baker. It’s hard to ruin pumpkin pie and some bakers can make a decent apple pie. Pick up a good pie at the bakery and, if you crave whipping cream, get the canned variety. Most people can’t tell the difference. You’re into healthy eating ? Well, that’s easy: serve a bowl of fresh fruit for dessert, accompanied by a plate of two or three excellent, sharply flavored cheeses and a sweet dessert wine or a pot of coffee.
Images:
Roast Pig, by Elias Tomaras. Public domain.
Red Onions, by Stephen Ausmus. Public domain.
Butternut Squash, Wikipedia, GNU Free Documentation License.
Apple Pie: USDA. Public domain.
