Coffee heat rising

Hurrah! Summer’s almost over

by

The first cool morning of the fall—at last! At quarter to five, it’s 68 on the back porch.

Too bad I can’t enjoy it: in 45 minutes I have to schlep through the rush-hour traffic to Scottsdale, to a breakfast meeting of the networking group I joined.

But it’s one of various small harbingers. Not only is the heat about to break, choir is back in session. Last night we rehearsed several lovely pieces, and on Saturday we meet all day, wrapping up a “boot camp” session with a potluck dinner. Sunday the regular season of singing resumes, something that adds a great deal to life.

Check out this that I found on the Web:

Isn’t that kewl! Not only do you get the lovely choir singing, you can follow the parts! What a grand tool for practicing. YouTube has a whole series of these things.

Meanwhile, the electric bill arrived: only $207! That’s $30 less than last month’s, to my amazement. August was miserably uncomfortable, well over 100, humid, and sticky every single day. By all rights, the power bill should have been through the roof. I’m budgeted for $225 but expect July and August to be a little higher than that. Reason for the drop: unexplained.

It gets better: the water bill was only $83. That’s right: eight. three. In past years it’s been around $125 at this time of year. I think it’s because I decided to cut back the watering schedule and haul the hoses to the plants myself, by hand. Suspicions confirmed: drip systems are another scam, along with the programmable thermostat that jacks up the power bill and the water-saving toilet that forces you to flush three times for every one use. None of the plants died, and I saved over $40 on water.

At the college, my chair says I can have three sections a semester starting next spring, and he will try to get me a summer section. This will resolve my financial problems: with any luck, I’ll never have to go through another summer without enough income to cover base expenses.

My colleague has engineered another eight-week section of the magazine writing course for spring semester, so pleased are they that the current one filled to the scuppers. That means at no time will I be actually teaching three sections at once. Knowing these eight-week courses exist, I intend to proactively go after them, because it’s much easier and much more entertaining to teach accelerated sections, even of writing courses.

God is great!

Real Estate: We thought it couldn’t get worse…

by

Homes in my neighborhood are now selling in the $150,000 range. I paid $232,000 for mine…before the bubble.

About 17 years ago, I bought my first house in this neighborhood—same model as the one I’m in only not updated, no pool, smaller lot, and close to two hideously noisy main drags. I paid $100,000. The seller was asking $130,000, but a recession was on, the house had been on the market for three months, and it was in an estate, so my Realtor talked him way down on the price. Except for a HUD house across the street, that was about as low as values got…I got a smokin’ deal on the place.

So. What this means is that property values in my area have dropped into the range where they were more than 15 years ago.

It also means I no longer can sell my house, use the proceeds to pay off the mortgage on the downtown house, and move in there when my son is ready to move on. This uptown house is not worth enough to cover what we owe on that house.

Annoying. It cuts off a key strategy for dealing with the difficult position the crash has created for us. Even though the neighborhood is not as nice as mine, the downtown house is quite charming; I like it and was willing to move into it, because it’s easier to maintain and has no expensive pool to care for. That’s now no longer an option.

Mulling over what we’re going to do in the long term…heaven help us!

First, I’d like to get my son’s name off that mortgage. They have him on there as the primary borrower, because I’m unemployed. Next year I should be earning more than I’m making now, plus of course, my retirement savings could pay for the house in full if I were forced to use them that way. Once the government permits me to earn a living wage again, it might be good to try to engineer a sale of the house to me. At least then he won’t be stuck with a financial black hole when I die—debts aren’t inherited, and even if they were, this is a no-recourse state. So once I’m gone, he can safely let the bank take it.

It remains to be seen, however, whether anyone will let us do that. Values have dropped commensurately in the downtown neighborhood. There, houses are selling for under $100,000. We presumably would have to get a new mortgage, and of course no one is going to write a new loan for $211,000 on a house that’s worth about $130,000, if we’re lucky.

We can’t rent the house for the amount of the presently reduced mortgage’s monthly payments. However, when it comes time for him to move on, I think renting will be probably our only option, other than walking and destroying his credit as well as mine. The rent would cover enough of the mortgage to make the remainder affordable, if galling. Problem is, it wouldn’t be enough to build a repair and maintenance fund, indispensable for an old place like that. But because we’d be running at a loss, we probably would pay no taxes on the rental income. LOL! We might not pay any taxes, period, at the rate things are going!

That’s about it for our future options:

Rent it.
Default on it.

In the present, however, about all we can do is count our blessings. We have two pleasant little houses in acceptable neighborhoods. One of them is paid for. They’re both very pretty, they’re both conveniently close to work, school, and shopping, and they’re both reasonably sound. Things could be worse.

I guess…

Good-bye to the American Dream

Image: dvs’s photostream on Flickr. Creative Commons.

Ant Wars: The Battle of the Front Stoop

by
Antibal the Great

Okay, the last battle may or may not have been won, but the war has yet to be lost. You’ll recall the previous foray between the human and  Armies of the Ondt, yes? The fight lasted about 24 hours, but ultimately the invaders were repelled.

The little Amazons were undefeated, though. Yesterday evening some of their cousins mounted a new attack. Instead of entering the kitchen directly under the back door, this tribe made its way through a rain-weakened patch of framing at the bottom of the front door. Once in, they marched cheerfully through the living room, jogged left at the hall, and entered the Great Restaurant that is the kitchen floor. Not at all interested in the dishwasher, this bunch descended on some microscopic specks near the dog food dish.

This invasion was particularly jarring because I’d just spent a couple of hours cleaning the kitchen and the floors. Along about 9:00 p.m., after vacuuming, dustmopping, baseboard-scrubbing, and steam-mopping, I was just about to put the gear away, stumble into the bedroom, and fall face-forward into the sack when I came upon a line of troops hiking across the living-room floor.

Damn! I thought the floor was clean. Like, really clean. Not so, though: one of the little ladies was staggering across the threshold with a morsel half her own size.

Here’s a discovery: Home-made glass cleaner, the stuff you concoct with rubbing alcohol, a dab of ammonia, a dash of vinegar, and water, kills Ondts every bit as effectively as gagging, stinking, sickening, dangerously toxic bug spray.

Determined not to go through the Raid misery again, I grabbed a squirt bottle that happened to contain my Windex knock-off brew. The plan, really, was to disrupt the ladies’ pheromone trail, confusing them as to where the grocery store might be. First thing that happened when I sprayed a squirt in the Ondts’ direction, though, was that they curled up and croaked right over, just as though I’d sprayed them with a noxious chemical.

Well, ammonia is not exactly a non-noxious chemical. Neither is rubbing alcohol. However, their fumes dissipate quickly, and the house doesn’t stink of petroleum products for days. Within an hour or so, the odor is gone.

The Ant Amazons…not so much.

Laid down a barrier of boric acid across the threshold. The Ondts joined antennae, reared up on their little hind legs, and danced a can-can, singing “nous nous en fions de toi” in a squeaky ant chorus. They strolled across the boric acid as you and I would stroll across low sand dunes. Unharmed, they proceeded to the kitchen. Meanwhile, outliers found ways to get around the barrier without having to contact the stuff and risk taking it home to the hive.

Found some old, dried-out ant baits. Dropped them right in the middle of Ondt Highway 101, shielded from doggie curiosity by an old fan cage. The raiders evinced not the slightest interest.

Spraying the bedoodles out of them with the imitation Windex, however, eventually beat them back. By the time I stumbled off to bed, not a wandering ant was to be seen.

Probably that’s because it was Ondt Bedtime, too.

This morning, an elegant line strung from the front door through the living room and hall into the kitchen, where the troops were chowing down on two spots flavored invisibly with something.

Sprayed the ladies with more DIY glass cleaner, inflicting vast casualties. Poured a quarter gallon of vinegar into a bucket and topped it off with the hottest water I could extract from the water heater. Mopped the kitchen, hall and living room with that.

Chugged down to the Ace to resupply the ant bait arsenal. Dropped a new brand down in front of a roaming scout. She ignored it. Placed a few more outdoors, near the army’s points of entrance.

All’s quiet on the Living Room Front just now. But it’s very hot outside, 105 as the early autumn sun settles into the west and a bank of cumulonimbus rises above the northeastern horizon. What reason is there to believe that Ondts are any more given to trotting around in the noonday sun than the rest of us?

Lordie! This woman can write!

by

You should ramble on over to Surviving and Thriving, where Donna Friedman has written another of her amazing posts. Every now and again, she gets on a roll that won’t quit. This is one of the best posts I’ve read in any blog, anywhere.

In passing that along to you, it occurs to me that I haven’t done a link-love round-up in a long time, mostly because the darned things are time-consuming and time has been in short supply the past few weeks. So…

Out and About in the Blogosphere

Evan, my fave conservative PF blogger, stirred up 24 people enough to respond to his rumination on the question of whether money buys happiness.

No doubt you’ve been hearing all the clichés about the Millennial Generation and how 20-somethings are delaying adulthood and all that. Whether you buy into this particular brand of sociobabble or not, you have to be amazed at Revanche, whose figures at A Gai Shan Life reveal that, while yet to break the big Three-O, she has accumulated an enviable pile of savings and supports her parents, in spite of a spate of unemployment and a move to a new city.

Dr. Dean at Millionaire Nurse is given to writing thoughtful posts. This week my attention is drawn by a discussion of the economics of divorce, particularly in the context of the present recession.

Hang onto your hat! Financial Samurai has got up to some mischief with “Don’t Have Children If You Can’t Take Care of Yourself.” Heh heh heh heh! You’re gonna love this! Reminds me of SDXB‘s plan to make prospective parents buy licenses for child-bearing.

Has your credit-card company stroked your ego by promoting you from your day job as a burger-flipper to a “professional”? Before you accept the lender’s flattering offer of a shiny new “professional” card, better take a look at Karen Datko’s eye-opener at MSN Smart Spending. These outfits always find a way around whatever consumer protection laws Congress can dream up.

Little House in the Valley has a nice post full of wit and wisdom on thinking about your future retirement. Wait! What? You mean I can’t move in with my son and his future wife, who of course will be thrilled to take care of a cranky old bat?

Frugal Scholar posted a neat idea for a new budget category. It’s an interesting strategy for promoting social responsibility in our own small way. If we all did it, we could change the commercial landscape in our towns and cities.

At Out of Debt Again, Mrs. Accountability offers a number of good suggestions for ways to save on your electric bill.

It’s still not too late for a short warm-weather vacation. Eliminate the Muda has a nice article on ways to travel economically and well.

Bucksome Boomer has an interesting rumination about the relationship of affluence or poverty to life skills. Readers chime in with reflections that development of certain life skills is also influenced by geographical region and ethnicity.

OMG! Don’t miss this attention-getting post at Get Rich Slowly! JD relates what happened when a Canadian newspaper reporter offered a number of panhandlers free money in the form of prepaid Mastercard and Visa gift cards. Weirdly, it confirms and de-confirms one’s suspicions.

Simply Forties has really been on a roll this week. I don’t know which of three delightful posts to share with you, so I’m sharing all three: Drinkers Live Longer (yeah! pass the wine, please), a tempting round-up of wonderful reading selections illustrated by a very cool painting, and (gasp! swoon!) a recipe for cherry soup.

If you’re at the point of making the leap from hobby blogging to problogging, check out Budgeting in the Fun Stuff’s comparison of Blogger and WordPress. IMHO, she’s right on about this: if you’re just starting up, even if you don’t think you’ll monetize your site, go with WordPress from the outset.

Over at Bargaineering, Jim has been running a series of “What Is a…” posts, in which he defines and explains, in plain English, various arcane financial terms. One of my favorites is What Is a Ten-Bagger? 😀

Welp, I’ve got to get off the Internet now and clean up the house. This should be enough to keep you busy for a few minutes. Enjoy!

Scraping by on $110,000?

by

Over at Everyday Tips and Thoughts, proprietor Kris expresses some shock at the idea that a family profiled on CNN Money might not be able to live on $110,000. Particularly startling is the way CNN frames the decision the couple contemplates: whether to have the mother drop to half time, at a salary of $32,600, so she can be home with their two children: “Is that enough [along with the father’s $78,000 salary] to support their lifestyle?” Readers are registering their outrage that anyone would think $110,000 is too little to support what surely must be an extravagant and spendthrift way of life.

But…but, I say, but…

It depends on where they live. “Lifestyle” may not mean a dwelling in a McMansion and tooling around town in two Mercedes SUVs. It may simply mean they want to live in a sophisticated city that offers cultural amenities unavailable in cheaper areas. Often in such cities the public schools are inadequate—well, heck…in most American cities the public schools are inadequate. If you care about your kids’ education, you send them to private schools. Tuition at the day school my son attended—in Phoenix, a low-rent town—is now $12,740 for pre-kindergarten and $15,100 for K-8. That’s per kid. Yes, per year.

In a more desirable city, you not only have the breathtaking cost of schooling, you also have the staggering cost of keeping a roof over your head. Recently I looked into returning to San Francisco, my mother’s hometown and a place that I truly wish I could live. A one-bedroom apartment in a development that is universally panned on Yelp is $2,400 a month! God only knows what it would cost to live in a better area. Studios in San Francisco typically run around $1,800 to $2,000 a month.

That’s just for starters, before you pay for the lights, commute to work, buy baby’s shoes, or put food on your table. Imagine what it would cost to raise two children under those circumstances!

Yeah. It’s true: Dad’s salary of $78,000 would provide an adequate lifestyle for a family of four in Phoenix; $110,000 would keep them in comfort. But Phoenix is a hole in the middle of a cultural desert. You can’t put your kids in public school here, and even at a $15,000/year private school, the quality of education is just OK compared to high-ranking private schools in other states. Parents who can’t afford that but are committed to educating their kids well and keeping them physically safe often home-school. You spend your summers trying to stay out of 115-degree heat. Politicians like Governor Jan Brewer and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who represent the prevailing mentality, are such crass troglodytes that when you get on an airplane and someone asks you where you’re from, you’re embarrassed to admit you live in Arizona—when traveling, many Arizonans tell strangers they come from somewhere else.

Some people prefer to live in more enlightened venues. Unfortunately places like San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, New York, Paris, and London cost a lot of money. In those cities, $110,000 wouldn’t go very far for a family of four.

The fact that Dad is earning 78 grand as an assistant principal and Mom is presently earning $65,200 as a literacy coach (!!) suggests they live in a high-cost-of-living city. He sure wouldn’t earn that in a right-to-work state like Arizona, where education has traditionally been short-changed. here is $65,000. And I kinda doubt anyone ever heard of a literacy coach around here. By “support their lifestyle,” they may mean living modestly in a great city with civilized amenities.

You can live lots cheaper in lesser cities. You’ll make some trade-offs, though… My college freshmen just turned in an assignment for which they were asked to tour the campus library, take notes, and write a narrative describing their experience. Several said they had not been inside a library in many years. These products of our fine school system, all them bright and hard-working young men and women, write like this:

“In the General Collection there are many books to chose from, looking in the PQ through PS one of the most famous authors was Charles Dickens. The title is The Old Curiosity Shop.”

Literacy? What’s that? We got sunshine. We don’t need no steenking books!