Coffee heat rising

Getting Rid of Junk Mail: DMA and other choices

by

The City is planning to make us put our garbage in new green bins for pickup in front of our houses, instead of in the giant communal bins in the alley. This will mean two space-consuming hulks in my garage instead of one—the blue recycling bin, which is picked up in front, resides in there now. My house has no place in front to stash an unsightly plastic garbage bin, and I don’t want it in my gardeny backyard, which I use as living space. So I’ve decided to put the blue barrel in the alley (there’s no law in Phoenix requiring residents to recycle) and put all the trash in the garbage.

So much trash arrives in the mail that most weeks just the junk mail alone fills about a third to a half of the blue bin. By way of not filling up the new bin so the garbage won’t fit, I finally got around to asking the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) to take me off its members’ mailing lists. This, we’re told, is the answer to all your junk mail problems.

Not quite.

In the first place, registering for DMA is a hassle. You either have to send them an application by snail mail along with a check for $1.00 (yeah!), or you have to register on line, requiring you jump through a long series of hoops and give them an e-mail address. Once you’re finally in, you get to jump through MORE hoops.

What is it about “I don’t want to get junk from anyone” that should be so hard to express?

You have to go to several subsites at the DMA page to request removal from several different categories of mailing lists: credit card offers, catalogs, magazine offers, and “other mail offers.”

Click on “credit offers,” and you get to jump through another set of hoops, this one requiring you to divulge your Social Security number. Then you have to print out your request and mail it to Experian, apparently the only one of the four credit bureaus (there’s a new one!) to receive it. Go to “other mail offers,” and you’re presented with seven pages of marketers. You have to go to each one individually and beg to be removed from their nuisance-mail lists! About 99 percent of these are irrelevant: when was the last time you got an ad from ADT Security or Casino Windsor? From what I can tell, the worst offenders are not on this list.

Moving on to “magazine offers,” you come upon a two-page list of 36 magazines. Again, you have to manually contact every single one of them to beg them to stop sending you “offers.”

Like I have nothing better to do with my time?

The outfits that really blitz you with trash are not on these lists. Nor are the chain grocery stores that fill your mailbox with newspaper pullouts advertising “deals” on piles and piles of junk food.

If you seriously want to reduce the amount of trash delivered to your recycling bin through the mails, be prepared to spend a lot of time and some money. Go here to discover the endless series of hoop-jumps you’ll have go through to stem the tide of junkmail pouring into your home.

Valassis and Red Plum, which evidently are responsible for a fair amount of trash, provide a single page that promises to remove your name from their lists (eventually). So does ValPack, which is in the business of sending you blue packages full of coupons for things you never buy—unless you’re into junk food.

Really, every time the Postal Service announces it’s in the red and may go out of business, I think I won’t weep much when that happens. Surely UPS and FedEx will cost junk mailers so much they’ll quit sending piles of useless paper to everyone in creation. Then no doubt they’ll try to get our e-mail addresses and blitz us there.

👿

Merry Christmas! Have Some Fun!

by

Have you seen the delightful site called Today I Found Out? I literally stumbled across it, having finally gotten around to reinstalling the StumbleUpon toolbar after the late, great hard drive crash.

Check out this infographic about one of my favorite critters:

10 Amazzzzing Bee Facts Infographic

[Source: Today I Found Out]

Is that or is it not a hoot? These funny strips are nestled in among conventionally written blog posts, each of them reporting some interesting or odd fact. As far as I can tell, every story comes with an extra payload of related and sometimes amazing factoids. Did you know that the “pull and pray” method is actually just about as effective as using condoms? Who’d’ve thunk it? Truth is, for the average Joe & Jane, rubbers are a great deal less effective than some of us have been known to hope.

Did you know the stuff inside an Etch-a-Sketch (one of my favorite toys when I was a little kid…and just freshly invented, as it develops, there in the Late Cretaceous) is extremely flammable? Bet you didn’t know what was inside it at all, didja? Or when sliced bread was illegal? Or who invented Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer?

This is an absurdly fun site for closet eggheads, the type who used to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the bathroom when not playing with their Etch-a-Sketches. Check it out!

God’s Free Carwash

by

So…you think you’re frugal? See if you can top this one. 😉

It’s off to choir tonight, there to rehearse various songs of praise to the deity. While we’re inside the choir room singing, it is pouring in the parking lot.

Conveniently, just as practice breaks up the rain stops, after having chased most of the traffic off the streets. Cruise home, detouring through the neighborhood to gaze at the Christmas decorations. Our little corner of the city is so beautiful at this time of year. Everybody goes all out with the lights, and the rich folks leave their living room drapes open to display not only their spectacular Christmas trees but also their elegant interiors. I was going to walk with Cassie tonight, but she hates water, so decided to take advantage of being out in the dark in the car.

This tour completed, it’s time to tool into the garage, grab a dry microfiber rag from its table-top basket near the dryer, and wipe all the clear, fresh, soft-water rain off the windows and then off the top, doors, hood, and bumpers. Voilà! A clean car—free! As we scribble, it’s glowing in the dark.

How many people wait until it rains to let God run the carwash?

Unfortunately, She’s planning to leave the faucet running tomorrow, so I expect between here and Scottsdale, whence I have to hie myself for breakfast, the Dog Chariot will get its share of road mud. Oh well. At least for the time being it’s clean and dry.

I made a little discovery some weeks ago: a microfiber rag is ideal for cleaning the inside of the Chariot. If you use just plain microfiber cloths—either dry or very slightly moistened—to dust your house, the next most logical thing is to amble out to the garage after you’ve finished cleaning the furniture, dampen the cloth if it’s not already that way, and use it to wipe down the dashboard and door panels. If the outside of the car is free of gritty dirt, you can then get your dustrag good and wet, grab a second microfiber cloth, and use the wet one to wipe off the paint and the other one to dry behind it. Clean house once a week, and you can spin off a quickie weekly carwash, too, without ever moving your bucket of bolts out of the garage.

The car ends up looking nice and clean—to finish the job, all you’d need is to vacuum it, but that’s usually beyond my ken.

Don’t try this impromptu wipe-down on a new car, or on any car with a brand-new finish. But when your vehicle arrives at the grand old age of 100,000 (miles, that is), its finish is already a little scratchy, and so any light grit you might have picked up by dusting—or coarser grit from the road—just adds to the patina.

So, have you got a cheaper frugalism?

Images:

Trees and Snowman, by Mike Spasoff, Granada Hills, California. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Wollongong Miner’s Cottage Decorated for Christmas, Wollongong, NSW, Australia. GNU Free Documentation License.

Christmas Bread Pudding

by

Looking for a traditional-sounding dessert for Christmas? Try SDXB’s latest bread pudding. Don’t know where he got this, but he says it’s the best he’s ever had—and he’s a bread pudding aficionado.

New Orleans Bread Pudding with Two Sauces

3 large eggs
1 ¼ cups sugar
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
1 ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
1 ¼ tsp ground cinnamon
¼ cup unsalted butter, melted
2 cups milk
½ cup raisins
½ cup coarsely chopped pecans, dry roasted
5 cups very stale French or Italian bread cubes, with crusts on

Lemon Sauce [recipe follows]
Butterscotch Sauce [recipe follows]

In large bowl, beat eggs on high speed until extremely frothy and bubbles are the size of pinheads, about 3 minutes. Add the sugar, vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon and butter and beat on high until well blended. Beat in the milk, then stir in the raisins and pecans.

Place the bread cubes in a greased loaf pan. Pour the egg mixture over them and toss until the bread is soaked.

Let sit until you see only a narrow bead of liquid around the pan’s edges, about 45 minutes, patting the bread down into the liquid occasionally. Place in a preheated 350 oven. Immediately lower the heat to 300 and bake 40 minutes. Increase oven temperature to 425 and bake until pudding is well browned and puffy, about 15-20 minutes more.

To serve, put 1 ½ Tbs warm lemon sauce in each dessert dish, then spoon in ½ cup hot bread pudding and top with ¼ cup butterscotch sauce.

Lemon Sauce

1 lemon, halved
½ cup water
¼ cup sugar
2 Tbs cornstarch dissolved in ¼ cup water
1 tsp vanilla extract

Squeeze 2 Tbs juiced from the lemon halves and place juice in a 1-quart saucepan ; add the lemon halves, water and sugar and bring to a boil.  Stir in the dissolved cornstarch and vanilla.  Cook 1 minute over high heat, stirring constantly.  Strain, squeezing the sauce from the lemon rinds.  Makes about 3/4 cup.  Serve warm.

Butterscotch Sauce [makes about 2 cups]

1/2 cup pecan  halves
1 cup dark corn syrup
1/2 pound [2 sticks] unsalted butter
½ tsp imitation butterscotch flavoring (I’d substitute brandy or whiskey, myself!)

In a large skillet combine the pecan halves and corn syrup.  Over high heat, stir constantly until mixture reaches a boil.  Remove from heat.  Add the butter and stir until melted, then stir in the butterscotch flavoring (or booze!).

The Organizeder I Try to Get, the More Disorganized I Am

by

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.

Wait. You think I exaggerate? Check this out:

The boggle minds!

Here and There around the Blogosphere

by

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.

• At Money Crush, Jackie describes a cool blogospheric giving campaign that netted a nice chunk of dough for charity.

• 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.

• I love Donna Freedman’s graceful idea for “stealth giving.” We should all make a pact to do this all year round in 2011.

• 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?