Coffee heat rising

Frugal Habits: When routine maintenance saves a bundle

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Here’s a real simple way to save money on home repairs: maintain things according to instructions.

No-brainer, eh? Well, easier no-brained than not.

Recently the water has been draining out of the pool’s pump pot every time the system shut off. Nothing I could do seemed to fix it: no amount of cleaning, adjusting, or fiddling around stopped the pump and filter from sucking air whenever the timer turned the pump off.

This? Bad. You don’t want the pump to come on when the system is full of air. It can blow the lid off the pump pot, causing the expensive damage we all can imagine and inflicting serious bodily harm to anyone who might be standing nearby. If the pump runs dry for any length of time, it will burn out, another event that comes under the heading of “expensive damage.”

Argha! I figured this looked like another pricey visit from Leslie’s. For quite some time, there’s been a little seep from a connection between a large pipe and the pump. The Leslie’s guy has insisted it’s not worth fixing, because, he said, the plumbing job would be expensive. This tiny leak been going on for a while—as in “several years”—so I expected the time had come to repair it.

Figures. Every outlandish expense tumbles down on your head when you can least afford it.

But since the system was draining water only when it was off and seem to work fine while it was running, I’ve been turning it on and off with the breaker switch instead of letting it run on the timer. This way I can bleed the air out each morning when I turn the system on. The plan was to continue operating the system manually until this until fall, when I have an income again, and then hail the Leslie’s guy back over here as soon as my first paycheck hits the bank.

Early in the morning while I was contemplating this state of affairs, it occurred to me that it’s been a long time since I lubricated the O-ring that serves as a washer for the pump pot lid.

Hm. You don’t suppose… Could it be?

It’s been so long, as a matter of fact, I couldn’t even find the goop, which I normally keep out there by the pump. Probably Bob the Leslie’s Dude accidentally walked off with it, thinking it was part of his tool set.

This morning I had to join the choir to sing a at a funeral. So, this taking me out of the house, on the way home I dropped by the Ace Hardware and picked up a container of silicone grease. Pulled the pump pot lid off, cleaned everything well, smeared this sticky gunk on the O-ring, and put the thing back together again. Primed the pump, let it run for half an hour, and shut it off.

Very nice. The pump pot was full of water, with hardly a bubble of air visible.

Went away for an hour. Came back.

Hallelujah! The water hadn’t budged! The pot was still full, and there was no sign that even a drop  had drained out of it.

A six-dollar investment in silicone goop averted a $300 repair bill.

Or, we could put another way…

Several months of idle neglect almost caused a $300 repair bill.

Or even…

A stitch in time saves nine.

Translation: Get off your duff and take care of things around the house. Fix stuff before it’s ready to break, not when it’s on its last legs. Keep mechanical devices clean and maintained according to their manufacturers’ instructions. A small fix now saves a big, costly fix later!

Celebrating the Big Purchase

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So Thursday M’hijito came over and helped wrestle the latest extravagant purchase out of the car, having agreed to do so in exchange for the opportunity to partake of the first meal cooked on the thing. He hauled the big charcoal grill off the pad I want to use for cooking and over to the ad hoc flagstone patio(?) I built some time back, and then positioned the new gas grill in the desired spot.

Naturally, it was raining. Monsoon season is finally here, driving temperatures into the 80s and 90s for the evenings…and driving a lot of wind, dust, and rain, too.

But so happy was I that he was coming over for dinner that I went a little overboard with the meal planning. At the better Costco outlet up on the I-17, I came across this incredible steak:

The cost was not unreasonable—about what I would expect to pay for a thick choice ribeye in the grocery store—and so I didn’t notice that it was prime until M’hijito arrived and pointed that out. Wow!

On the way home through the muggy heat (by midday it’s 105 or so, and still very wet), I stopped by the Safeway to pick up some frozen veggies for future reference, and there picked up some garlic, a yellow onion, and a bunch of little green onions. When I got here, I was so whipped I forgot about the fresh produce in the plastic grocery bag and, anxious to sit down, rest, and cool off, just dropped the whole thing in the freezer.

By the time M’hijito got here, the produce was frozen.

Rather than throw it out, I chopped it up and used it before it could turn to mush (which it was rapidly doing as it defrosted!). The result:

A tomato sauce containing a couple big cloves of garlic and the entire bunch of green onions…

Slowly, sweetly caramelized yellow onion to go over the steak…

…And an exuberantly garlicky lemon vinaigrette that we used for cooking. M’hijito carved out the stems and seeds of a couple of red peppers and then poured some of the vinaigrette into the interior. These went onto the grill along with a small eggplant (also basted with the garlic vinaigrette) and a couple cobs of corn.

OMG, what an awe-inspiring dinner this made. The frozen garlic and green onions dissolved into the gently simmered tomatoes, which we used to smother the sliced eggplant, and the onion cooked down to make an intense kind of compote for the grilled ribeye. Eat your heart out, Ruth’s Chris Steak House! With the moderately priced Merlot I picked up at Costco and a very nice salad, we couldn’t have had a more wonderful feast in the fanciest eaterie in town.

So this bodes well for the plan to eat better. Yesterday evening, still craving red meat, I defrosted a smaller, lesser piece of beef and grilled that along with some more corn. Some leftover salad filled out the menu. I still have some shellfish that can go on the grill, and there may even be a piece or two of salmon or mahi-mahi in the freezer, along with a lifetime supply of chicken thighs.

Thanks to the rainstorms, we had another amazing sunset. You really can’t get the full effect in this snapshot—the entire western sky was suffused with neon peach light. The lower the sun dropped, the brighter the light grew, until finally at the end the heavens slipped through coral red into darkness.

It was a great way to launch the new ’cue. And so, to get on with life. A happy Sunday to you all.

😀

Changes in Your Credit Card Statement

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The other day Five-Cent Nickel sent an alert to the effect that he was posting a very interesting graphic on the changes you’ll be seeing in your credit-card statements now that the new law has gone into effect. It’s quite a creation, built on information from the federal government.

My AMEX bill came a few days ago. It took me a minute to figure it out—Nickel’s graphic with its mouse-over captions could be very helpful to the complication-impaired among us. But right up at the top is the “Minimum Payment Warning,” explaining in no uncertain terms what will happen if you just let your balance float.

If I made only the minimum payment on the $864.17 due and never charged up another penny, it would take eight years to pay this month’s bill! And the privilege would cost me about $1,456 in interest. The annual percentage rate for this loan is a  usurious 15.24%, and an even more criminal 25.24% for a cash advance.

Well, if that doesn’t get your attention, nothing will.

Those of us who are long in the tooth have known these factoids for a long time. But maybe forcing the credit companies to explain, quite literally up front, what a credit-card balance really means will forestall having so many young people end up in debt they can’t handle.

Because I pay my bill in full every month, not only do I not owe AMEX anything, it owes me $77.17 toward this year’s annual rebate.

Interestingly, the busy design of the statement makes it difficult to follow. AMEX has installed a ditzy, squirrelly background inside textboxes that present this information. The account summary, for example, is typed directly against this hectic pattern, small black figures against a dizzying gray background. The law must require credit-card issuers to print the minimum payment warning clearly, because that section lacks the eyeball-spinning textbox fill. But many other key pieces of information are obscured by this graphic device: the amount of the late fee, the account summary,  the credit limit, available credit, cash advance limit and available credit, the days in the billing period. And, most tellingly, the customer service number.

At least now the customer service number, hard to read though it may be, is on the front page of the darned statement. Before this you had to sift through the fine print on the backs of several pages to find a number to call.

This is an improvement. The fact that the credit card company is doing its best to make it difficult to figure out suggests just how big an improvement it is for me and you.

A Dollar a Mile?

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So this afternoon I drove up to Home Depot to pick up the gas grill, which that worthy big-box store had assembled for free.

M’hijito allowed himself to be put up to helping me wrestle it out of the van and set it up in the backyard, in exchange for a share of the first dinner cooked on it. Yesterday I’d picked up some steaks at Costco, but today I wanted to acquire a few salad items and also some frozen veggies, to fit into the new scheme to eat better and live better.

My fevered little brain thought I could go up to the HD at Cave Creek and Cactus and then double back down to the Safeway at 7th Street and Glendale, it being far too hot to leave food in the car for the indefinite period required to stand at the service desk and then wait for someone to come forward with the grill. (You can tell I’ve done business with HD before, eh?)

But then I realize, nooooo. I bought the darn thing at the HD at Thunderbird and the I-17. Damn.

Drive across Thunderbird to the I-17, an extra two-mile drive. No problem (quite) getting the grill. But this left me a long, long, long way from a decent grocery store. Or, as far as I could tell, from any grocery store. Truly I didn’t want to drive all the way back down to the Safeway at 7th Street and Glendale, seven miles out of my way, as the crow doesn’t fly.

Cruising back toward 7th Street from the HD on the I-17, I decided to drop into the AJ’s at 7th Street and Thunderbird. How overpriced could they be, anyway? This was directly on my way and would obviate having to drive an extra 5.8 miles to the south. A dollar or two to avoid having to fight my way through more of the homicidal traffic…so worth it!

Once inside the store, though, I could not believe the prices of the most ordinary vegetables: $3.69 for a small package of plain peas or corn. Holy mackerel! I could grow the stuff myself for less than that!

Moving on…and on, and on, and on.  At the Safeway, the same veggies—and even some so-called “organic” varieties of the same—were selling for $1.59 a package!

LOL! I was glad I’d made the extra drive. At a savings of $1.86 a package, the three bags of frozen veggetables cost something over $6 at AJ’s than at Safeway. Almost a dollar a mile! That’s how much the extra trip out of my way saved me today.

🙂


Sometimes it’s worth it to go the extra mile (or seven) to save a few pennies.

Beautiful, beautiful place

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Hideous Jan Brewer
Arizona State Governor Jan Brewer

It’s true, sometimes—these days, often—the inner character of my state’s leaders shows forth in their faces, and too many of my fellow citizens reflect that inner character like dark mirrors, still…before humans came here this was a beautiful place, and despite the worst that the European variant of humanity has managed to inflict, it still is beautiful.

Last night Cassie the Corgi and I went for a stroll in the early evening, as the monsoon storms struggled to overcome the heat island effect of our fair city, whose beauty rivals that of the state’s governor. All around us mountains of clouds reached toward the stratosphere, the setting sun lighting them like absurd neon paintings. Truly. If you tried to paint it, no one would believe you. Here’s what we saw, only much, much bigger and much more spectacular.

Jan Brewer, image by Krantzstone. Link to Photobucket.

How Has YOUR Dollar Done This Decade?

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Be afraid, my friends. Be very afraid. If you have no fear, click on the image above for a larger, clearer picture of what’s slouching toward Bethlehem.

That thing came in a report from my money managers today. It tracks the value of a dollar invested in my portfolio from June 30, 2000 forward.

Now, if you take a ruler and lay it horizontally across the page so that it passes through the start point on the left-hand side of the page and stays parallel to the x-axis, you will see something alarming. In all that long, eventful decade, only a tiny little nubbin pokes up above the top of your ruler.

That’s right. A dollar invested in my vast holdings was worth a dollar or more for two out of ten years, between third-quarter 2005 and third-quarter 2007. For the other eight years, it was worth less than a dollar. Sometimes significantly less. In third-quarter 2001 it was worth about 68 cents. At the end of June 2010, when this report was generated, that year-2000 dollar was worth about 85 cents.

Suspicions confirmed. Some time ago, it occurred to me that the amount in my investment account was about the same as the amount I recalled coming away with from the divorce, some 20 years ago. Statements from those days have been packed away, and offhand I couldn’t say where they are. They may even have been discarded. But the figure that sticks in my mind is…well, just about the figure on the bottom line of the statement that comes in the mail once a month.

Still think long-term investment in the stock market is the way to grow your savings? Read on…

On the phone with the investment guru:

“Is there a reason to believe keeping money I will need to live on for the rest of my life (which we may sincerely hope will be short) in the stock market is a good thing to do? Unless these funds grow or at least quit losing money, there won’t be enough for me to live on. I can’t keep on forever putting in 16-hour days, 7 days a week to scrabble together $15,000 a year, which is what happens when  you’re ‘self-employed.’

“Should we be considering some other investment strategy? Maybe we should take a chunk of dough and pay off that damn mortgage on the downtown house, so I don’t have to worry about where 10 grand a year is going to come from to pay for it. If M’hijito pays rent to me, then about $600+ a month would come from him to me, instead of me having to fork over $800 a month. After the kid moves on, I could probably rent that place for $1,000 a month. Or sell my house and move into it, banking $235,000 in the exchange.”

Well, of course, the very idea is anathema to an investment manager. Put your money in real estate, and he doesn’t have anything left to manage!

The conversation that ensued was eye-opening. The firm has moved large amounts of funds into income-producing instruments, which my guy says are returning 7 percent just now. So even though the apparent value of the securities appears to drop, they’re still bringing in cash.

Couldn’t prove that by me, but then you can’t prove much by me.

He then said that the consensus among his partners is that the future of investing is off-shore; that effectively the U.S. economy is done, and smart money is going to emerging economies. He believes China’s economy will surpass America’s within ten years. The jobs we have lost in construction and manufacturing—where the bulk of job losses have been—will never come back. Jobs in the service sector, which is where most of the remaining employment resides, are poorly paid and will never be anything but poorly paid.

If you thought the middle class in this country is disappearing, you thought right. A young person, he suggested, would do well to look for employment overseas. Americans are in demand in Hong Kong, he said, although given Americans’ reluctance to learn languages other than English, Canada or Australia is probably a better bet. He would, he added, seriously consider moving to Canada if he were younger (and hadn’t yet started his family and career) or older.

Not scared enough? Well, put on your 3-D glasses and look up your address on Zillow. For jacking up your adrenalin level, that beats any chainsaw movie.

My house, whose value held steady through the bubble-burst at $235,000, has suddenly dropped to around $200,000. The downtown house house is between $50,000 and $60,000 underwater. Real estate values have not stabilized; they continue to drop steadily. When I mentioned this to Investment Dude, he said yeah, his place also had fallen in value even more than it already had, which was plenty; he and his wife managed to get a refinance, but only because no appraisal was required—the lender accepted a recent valuation. If they’d had to have the house appraised, they could never have gotten a new loan.

So…how has your investment dollar been doing? Dollar, heck… Can you spare a dime?