Isn’t it interesting, the number of widowed and divorced women who choose to stay single? One recent study showed that among Europeans, a man lives longer if he’s married and a women lives longer if she’s single. Whatever the reasons, a lot of women seem to intuit this and, about midway through life, begin to prefer a state of onliness. There’s something to be said for solitude.
Over at Surviving and Thriving, Donna Freedman holds forth eloquently on the pleasures and challenges of aloneness, spinning off a post from a site called The Quest for $85,000. If you haven’t run across the Quest blogger yet, you should definitely pay a visit—though it’s yet another of those sites where the person documents a struggle to get out of debt, there’s some very engaging writing here.
On other fronts, take a look at the pretty bowls Bargain Babe scored at Anthropologie for dollar-store prices! She shares her secrets for how to snare amazing deals from that glitzy store.
After a decluttering frenzy, Mrs. Money pauses to consider seven so-called “superfoods” you can afford—and they’re all delicious (ohhh, welllll…maybe with the exception of broccoli, the only subject George Bush and I ever agreed upon).
At My Journey to Millions, Evan describes his accounting scheme to describe his progress on net worth without having to reveal information he prefers to keep private, and then emits his own cri de coeur about people who bellyache about money while they diddle away enough to beggar King Midas.
At Brip-Blap, Steve considers ways to handle fear, and in doing so describes an amazing and hair-raising situation he had to cope with while living overseas.
OMG! Did you know you can now buy divorce insurance? Jim at Bargaineering asks for readers’ take on this product…when you look at the terms he describes, it looks like yet another scam. The most coverage you can buy is 25 grand. My husband spent that much per year during the time he was paying me alimony. The insurance is pricey and it doesn’t cover enough to matter.
Welp, speaking of aloneness, there’s nobody here but me to fix breakfast and feed the dog, so I’d better get up and start moving. Have a great weekend!
Well, I expected the AARP Delta Dental plan I enrolled in last December to cover little more than the occasional cleaning, which, when paid for out of pocket, is $93 at my dentist’s office. But what I didn’t expect was to have the plan effectively land me in a hole that would take two years to climb out of.
Here’s how this comes to be:
You pay $450 a year for dental coverage. Each year, this is supposed to give you three “free” cleanings—each of which costs you a $20 copay. After a full year’s waiting period, you’re eligible for a discount of about 50% on crowns and other expensive procedures. However, in addition to the waiting period and the copays, there’s a $100 deductible that has to be met before even a routine cleaning is covered.
I need a new crown to replace an ancient one that’s been broken for years. Delta will not cover a crown until you’ve been in the plan for a full year.
So, to arrive at the point where you can replace a broken crown, you have to spend $450 for the first year’s premiums, then re-up for another year, to the tune of another $450, and pay $200 in deductibles. Then, the most that will be covered for the crown will be half the price. Think about that.
My dentist charges $1,150 for a new gold crown. His charge for a routine cleaning, which one would normally do twice (not three times) a year, is $93. Over the course of two years, then, a patient with decent dental health but who needs an old crown replaced would pay $1,522 for cleaning and a new crown. What would this cost if you purchased AARP’s Delta Dental coverage, compared to what it would cost if you were uninsured?
Interesting. You pay $233 more for the same services and products, and for the privilege of having to wait a full year to get your crown fixed. The cost to get the crown plus routine medical care, if you just decided to pay for it, actually would be $186 less (i.e., $1,336), because you wouldn’t have to wait a year to be eligible for the Delta’s 50% discount.
Clearly, you’d be ahead to simply put aside $450 a year in a fund dedicated to paying dental bills. Assuming, that is, that you have decent dental health—no gingivitis, cavities, or teeth about to fall out of your head. If even a single year passed without a major dental event, the amount that would accrue in savings ($714) over the two years you have to subscribe to be eligible for coverage on a crown would cover two-thirds of the crown’s cost—not the measly 50 percent (if you’re lucky) that Delta covers. At the start of year 2 (assuming you fund your savings with a lump sum), you would have $714. If the second year passed with no dental crises, then at the start of year 3 your dental savings fund would have a beginning balance of $978.
Hmmm…. Makes the $50 tab for that Braun electric toothbrush that really keeps your teeth clean look like quite a bargain, doesn’t it? It pays to take care of your teeth!
I just canceled the Delta Dental plan. Since I signed up for it in December, even though I’ve never used it, they’re gouging me for premiums through March.
If you’re retired, think twice about Delta Dental! And remember, just because a product has the AARP brand associated with it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best choice for you.
Lately I’ve taken to buying bread at Costco, because it’s as good as what I can make and a lot more convenient than baking bread. But the other day the whole-grain loaves ran out. Not about to make a special trip to that zoo for two loaves of bread, I decided to try to make my own whole-grain bread.
Except…oh yes. I was out of whole-wheat flour. Come to think if it, I was out of most goodies. So I improvised, using whatever was in the house. And the result was surprisingly delicious. Check this out:
You need
2 cups water
About 3½ or 4 cups unbleached white flour
About 1 or 1½ cups rolled oats
1 tablespoon yeast
1 tablespoon salt
a fistful or two of chopped walnuts or pecans
cornmeal (optional)
butter for the pan
This loaf is based on a recipe that calls for two cups water to 5 cups flour, so the proportion of water to the flour/oats combo should be about 2:5. Obviously, you can add other stuff if you have it around—sunflower seeds would probably be good, wheat bran, whatever. Raisins or other bits of dried fruit could be nice. If you have whole-wheat flour, by all means use it.
I use a bread machine to knead my dough. Simply put in all the ingredients except the nuts and turn the machine to “dough” (which is usually setting 9); let the machine mix and knead the flour, and leave the dough in it for the first rising. A bread machine will pulverize the nuts, so to mix those into the dough, try this:
Sprinkle some flour on a cutting board. Spread a handful of nuts on top of the flour. Turn the risen dough out of the bread machine on top of the nuts. With floured hands, spread out the dough to flatten it a bit, and then sprinkle a few more nuts across the top of the dough. Knead to distribute the nuts through the dough. Add more nuts as you’re going, as desired.
If you’re not using a bread machine, then you can add the nuts when you knead the dough before the first rise, or, if you prefer, take a little extra time to knead them in before the second rising.
To make free-form loaves, divide the dough in half. Then just flatten each piece into a rectangular shape and then fold the edges over envelope-style to form a long artisan-style loaf. Butter a flat cookie sheet and sprinkle some cornmeal over the buttered surface. Set the loaves on top of the cornmeal; cover with a clean kitchen towel and allow to rise a second time, about 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Bake about 40 or 45 minutes, until the loaves sound kind of hollow when you pick one up and rap it with your knuckles.
Few things are more economical than home-made bread, and none are more gratifying. I used walnuts, and it made an awesome loaf of bread. It’s especially delicious when toasted.
{moan} The wind whipped at about 30 to 40 mph all day yesterday and all night long. It was supposed to freeze last night but did not—fortunately. I couldn’t keep the covers on any of the plants; everything blew off in the wind no matter what I did to try to weight them down with rocks and bricks or to clip them with clothespins. But today an arctic air mass is riding in on that cold wind, and temps are supposed to drop into the 20s tonight and tomorrow and maybe Friday, too.
Whenever the headache subsides, which it will after breakfast and a long stand under a hot shower, I’ll have to go out there, saw up some sticks from the defunct trellises, pound them into the ground, sew lengths of twine onto the cloths with an upholstery needle, and tie everything down. Boy. That sure sounds like fun.
The roofing guys are back, tromping and banging overhead again. What a rough bunch that crew is! Holy mackerel.
Yesterday they scraped the old roof off and started hammering the new shingles down. Cassie the Corgi went ballistic. I ended up leaving her at La Maya’s house when I went to campus, for fear that she would make herself sick if she were left here alone in such a frantic state.
These guys lack the tradesmanlike skill of my old roofer. They’re just rough-and-tumble laborers. They yanked off the flashing around the deck, which the last guy didn’t do. Bila had painted the flashing to match the house, so now that will have to be redone, by guess who. Then there’s the shingles, which are darker than I realized they would be. I asked for a deep brown, which these are…but very deep. From a distance, they look black. And they’re pretty ugly against the light brown slump block on the house.
I’m not 100 percent pleased with the new heat pump, either. When the weather is mild (i.e., when you don’t really need the heat on), it works just fine. But when it gets cold, a heat pump loses efficiency and struggles almost nonstop to deliver warm air. In fact, at times it will blow icy-cold air into the house. I finally got tired of listening to it run last night—even set at 63 degrees the unit wasn’t shutting off, and it never fell much below 40 outside—so around 3 a.m. got up and turned the damn thing off.
As a result, it’s might’ crisp in here. Cassie’s little feet, the only part on her that’s not swathed in a three-inch-thick fur coat, have turned into small blocks of ice. I huddle in front of the computer wrapped in a fleece jacket and dread the prospect of having to step out of the shower later this morning. Sure am glad I don’t live back east, though!
More crap than Carter has oats has blown into the pool, there to join the debris tossed off the roof by the workmen. What a mess to clean up! No one expects roofing to be a tidy job, but really, it’s not necessary to throw your pop bottles and your garbage into the customer’s yard.
Spent a couple of hours with the new tax accountant last night, figuring out my taxes. She appears to be very good. Clued me to a lot of things about the way an S-corp works that the retired tax lawyer never bothered to explain. As it develops, the Copyeditor’s Desk can pay for some things directly related to its business activities that I’ve been paying out of my personal account, one of them being the Internet connection and another being subscriptions to publications directly related to and supporting Funny about Money. It’s not very much, but relief of even a few dollars in the monthly nondiscretionary budget will help a lot.
Looks like I may be about to pick up a new client. The executive director of a trade group I belong to referred the University of Arizona’s agricultural college to me; they’re looking for someone to freelance some stories, all of which look entertaining and interesting. So that will be a nice break from the freshman comp grind and will help to fund CE Desk so it can cover these proposed extra expenses.
At any rate, after talking with the CPA, I now can see that setting up the S-corp was quite a good idea, much better than I’d realized. It would’ve helped if someone had explained its benefits to me in detail, rather than dismissing my questions with a short answer of the “you must be a moron” variety. {sigh} I thought my ex-husband’s ex-law partner was doing a good job on the taxes, but apparently she could’ve been doing better.
Another monthly bill just arrived from Wellcare, the provider of my Medicare Part D (prescription drug) coverage. For the second time in our year-long relationship, they announce that I owe not one but two payments at once.
What’s happening here is Wellcare wants direct access to my bank account. They want me to give them my account number so they can engross monthly premiums whenever they feel like it. When I point out that I can EFT the money to them through my bank, they try to say my only alternative to letting them into my account is to pay by check, which I do not care to do. When I push back, I’m told well, yeah, sure I can pay by the credit union’s BillPay function, but it won’t post for a week or so, which means I have to pay well in advance.
O.K. That’s what I’ve been doing. Wellcare bills a month in advance. On January 10 I EFTed the February bill, which was due February 15; it cleared my account on January 12. How do I know it was actually the bill they claim is unpaid? Because they jacked up their premiums by four bucks, and last month’s bill was the first at the increased price. So I know that payment cleared my account, a month and three days before the due date.
Fortunately, their phone lines (presumably to a call center somewhere on the far side of Malaysia) are open until 2:00 a.m. EST. Sooo….
One ringie-dingie…two ringie dingies…about 40 ringie-dingies’ worth of climbing around the aggravating phone tree…
And we reach a human being with a distinct but unidentifiable accent and a voice that makes her sound about fourteen. This is entertaining.
After making a pass at trying to suggest I must have missed last month’s bill, she caves at the revelation that the payment that cleared my account was for $23.80, not the prior premium amount of $19.70, and she allows that yeah, they received it.
Now she attempts to explain why they sent a bill demanding $47.60 even though they received my last payment on time. Her ever-so-slightly fractured English delivers an explanation along these lines:
The reason you were billed twice is that your last bill was sent out before you made your January 12 payment.
{moment of silence}
“Wait. Let me get this straight:
• You send me a bill. • When I receive the bill, I pay it. • Because I pay the bill promptly after I receive it and not before I receive it, I get double-billed on the next statement?”
“No, no! that’s not it,” says she. “It’s that the bill you have right now was printed before we posted your last payment.”
“Ah. Yes. Of course. I understand.”
Hee heeeeeee! I personfully refrain from remarking that maybe they shouldn’t assume, a month and three days before a bill is due, that they’re not going to receive payment.
Hilarious!
Well, in the same envelope came an announcement that they’re dispensing with monthly statements and sending coupon books, which makes so much sense a person wonders why on earth they haven’t always done it. Actually, one wonders why Wellcare won’t let you pay a year or six months at a time, as the Medicare Part B insurer does. Wouldn’t that a) put a heckuva lot of subscribers’ payments in their investment accounts in advance of a heckuva lot of due dates and b) eliminate a surprising amount of paperwork and hassle for all involved?
So that was a fun way to expend some time. The only thing more amusing is the Workman Waltz.
This morning the roofer had tons of asphalt shingles piled on the ridge of my roof and, while I was taking a 7:30 a.m. walk with La Maya, had a vast dumpster dropped on my driveway. I’d asked to have it put as close to the west edge of the driveway as possible, so I could get my car out. What I didn’t realize is how huge the container would be. There was no way I could squeeze my car past it, even if it weren’t placed so close to the eaves that I couldn’t open the garage door.
So the minute I shoot into the house, it’s on the phone to the roofer. He calls the trucker back, and they good-naturedly move the damn thing so I can remove the car from the garage and park it on the street.
Yesterday, when plans for this dance were being laid, RooferDude said he was going to have his crew rip off the existing shingles today, unless it was raining. I pointed out a 30 percent chance of rain was predicted for today, and I didn’t want the roof removed if it was gonna rain. He agreed that they would put off the job until Tuesday, by which time the rain was expected to pass and a freeze warning would be in place.
So with the car parked on the street, I’m sitting here building next summer’s freshman comp courses, when Cassie starts to bark at some mysterious thumping. Look outside thru the windows. Trucks.
A half-dozen Mexican guys are on the roof, getting ready to prize off the shingles. Weather report says there’s now a 40 percent chance of rain today; I put it at 100 percent, since La Maya and I got sprinkled on while we were circumnavigating the park. I trot outside and ask them what they’re doing, because their boss said they weren’t supposed to be here today.
One, and only one, of the men speaks fluent English. He says, “Well…well, but it’s not raining.”
I say (stepping around a container of salsa someone has dropped and left spilled all over the middle of the accessible part of the driveway), “Well…well, but it’s GOING to rain. And I don’t want that roof torn off there when it’s just about to rain and we’re supposed to get thunderstorms!”
“I’m calling the boss!”
“Bueno.” I go inside and dial up the boss, too. He doesn’t answer my call, but apparently the crew foreman gets through; he tells them to stand down. They climb off the roof and go away, bearing the busted-open salsa container, which I placed in the back of one of their pickups.
An hour or two after they left, it rained. Pretty generously…certainly enough to cause a leak, if they’d pulled off the shingles and not nailed down enough plastic tarp to cover half of Disneyland. So far, none of the high winds and pyrotechnics one expects with a Sonoran Desert thunderstorm have come up. But the night is young.
And dark. My car is parked on the street out in front of my house, about as vulnerable a spot as you can find this side of the parking lot at the nearby Metrocenter Ghost Mall, which has the highest rate of car theft and break-ins in the city. One leaves one’s car parked outside around here at one’s peril.
RooferDude says he’ll have the job done in a couple of days. We’ll see about that.
Did you know you can sell coupons—the kind of stuff that comes in junkmail—at online sites? Saturday’s PlayNooz reported on a New York postal carrier who was arrested for the sale of coupons he’d ripped off from residents’ mailboxes and peddled on eBay. A commenter observed that some coupons, such as the ones that come from Penny’s, are worth ten or fifteen bucks. Or more…one shoe store here routinely sends out 30%-off coupons, and all its stock is in the $100-plus range.
Turns out this enterprise is not very difficult. You simply collect coupons, organize them in some intelligible way (such as by category or by likely frequency of purchase), and advertise your stashes on eBay or Craigslist. You can even consider collecting coupons that are listed online. I have found that you can go here for Amazon coupons and a ton other top retailers. Apparently you can get as much as 50% to 75% of the coupons’ savings.
There’s actually a site that will let you resell coupons from sites like Groupon, Living Social, or Tippr. How exactly you’d make a profit on coupons you have to pay for is unclear, unless you could charge a premium the ones that sell out fast.
What a hoot! Talk about your passive income…just let that junk mail roll in!
Image: Ticket for a free glass of Coca-Cola, ca. 1888; believed to be the first coupon ever. Scanned by uploader from Wired (Nov 2010), Vol. 18, No. 11, p. 104. Public Domain.
