Funny about Money

Glasses: You get what you pay for!

March 23, 2011May 28, 2010 by funny

OMG!!! Just got back from picking up the $720 glasses of late, great fame. I can’t believe it… They don’t just work, they work with a flourish. I can see better through these than I’ve been able to see in years. In the car, I can see the road and all the signs around with crystal clarity, and see the dashboard perfectly. Hee! I haven’t been able to read the digital clock since I bought that vehicle…who knew it wasn’t Toyota’s fault?

On the way home I stopped by the Walgreen’s to pick up some dog-bandaging gear (more about which, soon), and mirabilis! I could actually read the fine print on the packaging!

It gets better. Back here at the Funny Farm, I experimented with the laptop computer, expecting exactly…not much. But lo! The little monitor is clear as a bell! The Mac defaults to show a fairly small image, so I’m often command-plussing to enlarge it. Noooo problem reading it. That’s not surprising, though, because it sits down fairly low when you’re loafing on the sofa while computing. Still…I couldn’t even begin to read the MacBook through the Costco progressives.

And I just discovered that I can even read the iMac’s monitor, if I jack up the desk chair as high as it’ll go. Since a little footrest resides under the desk, the fact that my feet barely reach the floor is moot. The footrest holds my feet & legs at a very comfortable angle.

You realize what this means?

Holy mackerel. It means GOODBYE TO THE VISION SYSTEM!!!!!

No more jerking around between three pairs of glasses. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to use these glasses for choir. Just these glasses…no switching back and forth with ultra-strong readers. Would that or would that not be awesome?

There’s a lot of frosting on this cake: these glasses fit my face! The Costco pair looked like goggles. When I said I looked like Ma Makutsi from The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, I wasn’t kidding.

They’re so feather-light, it feels almost like there’s nothing hanging on my schnozz. It would be easy to fall asleep in these things, because you hardly even notice their presence.

And the marzipan roses on top of the cake? They actually look nice! In fact, they look amazing! The frame has this tiny, delicate temple piece of amethyst metal, and Tommy, the glasses dude par excellence, added a perfectly matching color around the lens edges. The effect is too, too kewl!

How to Buy Your Next Car in Cash

May 28, 2010 by funny

The other day while a friend and I were chatting, the subject of buying cars came up. When I mentioned that I pay for my cars in cash, he expressed some awe: the very idea of not having to make car payments was so far outside his ken it might as well have come from Mars.

“Who can pay for a car in cash?” he wondered.

You can. I can. Anyone can.

You may not be able to pay for your present car in cash, but you can pay cash for the next one. Here’s the strategy:

Take the term of your present loan and multiply the number of years by two. Let’s say you have a five-year loan. Five times two is ten years. That’s how long you’re going to keep the car you’re paying on. Fortunately, most cars are now built to last that long, if you take halfway decent care of them—so, plan to change the oil and stick to the manufacturer’s maintenance schedule.

OK. So you make your monthly car loan payments faithfully, as you agreed to do when you bought the chariot. In five years, the car is paid off.

Let’s say you’ve been paying $450 a month toward the loan.

You know… If you can afford to pay $450 a month to a lender, you can afford to pay yourself $450 a month. Right?

So for the next five years, the remainder of the time you’ve scheduled to drive your now paid-for clunk, what you’re going to do is arrange an automatic transfer of $450 a month into savings.

In five years, when your car is ten years old, you’ll have $27,000 sitting in your automobile purchase savings account. Your car will have some resale or trade-in value—my ten-year-old Sienna, for example, is worth about $5,000. Let’s say yours is comparable: you now have 32 grand with which to buy a new vehicle.

When you do buy the new car, even though you’re paying in cash, figure out what monthly payments would cost if you financed the thing. Take that amount—the new theoretical payment—and put that amount aside over the length of the theoretical loan. In three years or five years, once again you’ll have all you need to buy a new car. Now you can purchase new or new-to-you cars more often. If you decide to drive a car for its entire ten- to fifteen-year lifetime, you’ll have a period in which you need not deduct anything for the future vehicle from your pay.

And you’ll never be saddled with a car loan again.

What if you’re already a couple of years into a five-year loan? What does the math look like then?

It should be about the same: you’re going to keep the car for ten years. After the loan is paid off, you’ll just keep on making those payments, only to yourself instead of to some lender.

What if you pay off the loan early? Bully for you: you can either buy another car sooner, or you can keep the car until it falls apart like the Minister’s One-Hoss Shay. The second strategy will give you a longer period either to save up more money for a fancier ride or to float without having to take the car payment money out of your income.

My first post-divorce car was bought on time. Being averse to loan payments, I paid off the loan as fast as I could. Because a substantial part of a car payment can be interest (less so these days, but when the economy was strong lenders soaked a fair amount of interest out of car buyers), paying toward principal accelerates the pay-off date. By paying a little extra toward principal each month and then taking every windfall (tax refunds, credit card rebates, yard sale proceeds, whatever comes your way) and throwing it into the principal, too, I paid off a five-year note in 18 months.

Then I started paying myself. I didn’t keep the money in my bank accounts, because it would be too easily accessible there—too tempting. Instead, I banked it in a Vanguard short-term corporate bond fund, which I was less likely to raid for indulgences or emergencies. This rather stodgy fund was safe enough, and it earned more than a bank savings account would have paid. Today, I’d put it in a money market fund instead, because a withdrawal from the money market is not a taxable event. If you know you’re going to withdraw $25,000 or $30,000 in one swell foop, it’s best to minimize taxes when that happens.

This plan really takes no more self-discipline than you have to muster to make your loan payments. It takes some time, but once you’ve got the loop going, you’ll never have to pony up a chunk of your paycheck to a car lender again.

How a Frugal Find Helped End a Friendship

May 27, 2010May 27, 2010 by funny

LOL! That decorative arrangement with the black and green square plates shown in my last post reminds me of the episode that probably marked the beginning of the end of a very close friendship.

The woman who dubbed me “Funny about Money” (not knowing I could overhear her speaking into La Maya’s telephone answering machine) had wildly expensive tastes. One day she and I were cruising a wildly upscale shopping center when we came across a tony interior decor store that was going out of business. We each grabbed a bunch of stuff that, at “discounted” prices, still cost a great deal more than it was worth. She was taken by those stone fruits and bought three of them at near full price. I spotted a few that were chipped or unnoticeably cracked and talked the salesman into giving them to me for next to nothing—in fact, one of them, he gave to me for free.

My friend then found two square plates, one black and one green. They bore some “artist’s” signature on the back. Arranging the fake fruit atop the plates created a nice effect, and so she bought the damn things for an astonishing price. As I recall, she paid over 100 bucks apiece. These she took home and arranged atop her dining-room buffet, to handsome effect.

Well, I wanted something to put my fake fruits on, too.

I studied those plates and thought…hmh. They looked mighty familiar.

A day later I betook myself to Cost Plus/World Market, where what should I find—on sale!—but those two square plates you see up there. I got them for under five bucks apiece.

Reader, those two plates are identical to the unholy expensive square plates my friend bought at the upscale design store. The only difference is that mine are not signed on the bottom by someone nobody ever heard of.

Heeee! Was she peeved!

I never told her what I paid for them, but she did know I got them at the low-brow Cost Plus, home of the world’s largest collection of $8 table wines. Our relationship cooled into the frosty zone after that, and within a couple of months she cut me off without explanation. I assume it was because of the $5 plates, which in her mind would have hugely devalued the “art” she imagined she was buying. That, and having embarrassed herself with the “funny about money” remark.

😆

Frugal Shopping at the Estate Sales

May 27, 2010May 27, 2010 by funny

Yesterday morning La Maya and I made a run on an estate sale in Troon, an upscale high-desert area of north north Scottsdale, where for $500,000 you get a stryofoam-and-stucco tract house nestled among the boulders in Commuter Hell. Houses in foreclosure out there go for upwards of four hundred grand.

It actually was a moving sale, and not a heckuva lot was left by the time the estate-sale organizer was hired—the real estate transaction closed yesterday, and the owner had moved almost everything out. But we found a few tschochkies.

The owner was given to buying crafty and ethnic items at galleries and upscale craft fairs. The sale offered a number of stoneware and art glass items that were kind of interesting. I snared three stoneware canisters, thinking they’d be nice on the kitchen counter, which right now is inhabited by an eclectic collection of various holders. I paid $15 for the three of them:

Once I got them home, I found the pea-green effect didn’t work at-tall in the kitchen. Casting about for someplace to put them, I realized the color would look just fine in the living room, whose walls are painted an Alexander Julian shade I think of as “swamp green.” I already had the pair of stacked square plates with the stone “fruits” on it. The canisters look like they were made to go with that arrangement. That little blue oval box also came from the moving sale.

It’s a little busier than I like. To pull this off, I got rid of the decorative gadget that has been sitting there for the past four years or so, a glass vase with a spray of twigs sticking out of it:

The glass vase actually looked better than the stoneware things. However, I’ve been getting mighty tired of it, and besides, those damn twigs threaten to poke me in the eye every time I sit down on the sofa. I’ve wanted to get rid of it for awhile. The stoneware things may not last there, but I don’t think the glass and twigs will be coming back.

How to Rescue a Scorched Pan—Easy!

May 26, 2010 by funny

I did it again. Yesterday morning I burned a layer of polenta to the bottom of my favorite saucepan. Again. Gotta stay away from the computer while food is on the stove!

This is a venerable, beloved, and very expensive pan. It must be saved. Luckily, I stumbled across an easy fix, one that requires almost no elbow grease.

It goes like this:

First, soak or rinse away the stuff that’s not burned on. Then drop a generous handful of baking soda into the pan.

Fill the pan about halfway with water. Put the pan on the stove over high heat and bring to a boil. Do not wander off! Keep an eye out, because this stuff is likely to foam up and bubble over onto the stove. It’s easy to clean up, but who needs an extra mess to fiddle with?

Foaming-Baking-Soda — It WANTS to boil over!

As soon as the baking soda/water solution reaches a boil, turn down the heat to a slow simmer. Let it simmer for about twenty minutes—watch to be sure it won’t bubble over before going off to do something else. No two pansful of this stuff behave the same way.

After it’s simmered for a while, turn off the heat and let it cool. Once the pan and its contents have cooled to room temperature, you should be able to wash out the scorch easily. Because I was doing this at about 11:00 p.m. last night, I left it to soak until this morning.

Here’s the result:

This was achieved with no scrubbing! The layer of scorch fell out of the pan like a piece of brown fruit leather and slithered down the garbage disposal. Then I used an ordinary sponge to wipe out the pan, without benefit of Barkeeper’s Helper.

Amazing, no? I’ve also had this work on a Dutch oven where the burnt carbon had annealed onto the stainless steel like enamel. After the baking soda treatment, a metal spatula scraped the stuff off pretty easily. In that case, I did have to apply a little scouring powder to finish the job, but still, surprisingly little effort was required, and a valued pan was rescued.

Police Presence and Property Values

June 1, 2010May 25, 2010 by funny

Ever wonder whether frequent cop helicopter buzzing affects the property values in your neighborhood?

About ten minutes ago one of the cop copters came blasting in, low enough to rattle the windows in the house, and started circling about three lots to the west of me. This is a not-infrequent occurrence here, because my part of the neighborhood forms a buffer between some very upscale, Old Phoenix streets to the east and a cluster of slummy tenements to the west. The residents of the people kennels get up to all sorts of mischief, from petty theft all the way to shooting and killing Phoenix’s Finest. So as you can imagine, the police are somewhat sensitized.

I used to live closer to the tenements. Since I moved about three blocks deeper into the neighborhood, the cop flyby’s haven’t been so noticeable, but in the old house, which stood near the intersection of two main drags just south of a war zone, I could set my clock by the 11:00 p.m. Friday and Saturday night flyovers. They literally would park right over my house while they ran spotlights around the area and hollered down at perps from their bullhorns.

Besides shattering the peace and quiet (well…there’s not that much quiet to be shattered when you’re right on top of two six-lane thoroughfares), these episodes are disturbing. I figure if I were a perp and the cops were on my heels, I would try to get inside someone’s house and hide. If I were armed, I’d be well equipped to intimidate the residents—or worse.

So every time the cops come flying over (again!), I get up and go close and lock the doors and windows. Annoying, especially when the weather’s nice and you’d like to have fresh air moving through the house. This evening when I got up to do that, I found I’d left the back door hanging wide open the last time I let the dog out. Reassuring…

If you were to look at the city crime reports for this neighborhood, you’d see that the crime rate in this area is relatively low. It’s much lower than it is where my son is living, just two or three miles to the south, and we have fewer sex offenders living nearby. So, in theory, if a buyer were sensitive to that issue, the ubiquitous cop helicopters wouldn’t make much difference to the sale of your house. How, anyway, would a person know that we live under a cop helicopter traffic lane without being here to observe it?

On the other hand, middle-class residents’ nervousness about crime, especially in the presence of nearby low-income housing, has its effect.

When SDXB got up in the middle of the night and found two dudes climbing in his front window (he chased them off with a pistol…far as we know, they’re still running), the first thing he did the next morning was alert all the neighbors. Literally. He went from door to door telling the neighbors that he’d caught a couple of cat burglars in the act, after they’d quietly lifted out one of the windowpanes.

Within days, his next-door neighbor put his house on the market and moved away. He underpriced the place so as to unload it quickly, because, being a middle-class homeowner, he could afford to do so. He bought a house in Sun City, where property values are surprisingly low, and pocketed 60 grand in the exchange.

The buyer? Mr. B***, a.k.a. the suspected vandal.

As soon as this guy moved in, he started buying up houses in the neighborhood, often from elderly original owners who had no idea what they were worth. Before long he owned seven houses in this six-block-square neighborhood, five of which he converted into rentals. He added a tumbledown summer kitchen to the house next-door to SDXB, illegally connecting to the city sewer line. He did all the repair and fix-up on the other houses, always without benefit of building permits—apparently in the Old Country building codes, if they exist at all, are most honored in the breach.

These activities served to push property values down, leading to conversion of still more homes into rental properties; hence Biker Boob and Bobbie McGee in the house across the street.

You could argue that it was the absence of police protection that led to this state of affairs. It was an hour before the cops showed up after SDXB called 911 and said he had a .45 trained on two men who were clambering in his front window. And he made a big point of complaining to the neighbors about that, too.

At least nowadays the cops do show up (if noisily) when you call. A 45-minute to an hour’s wait used to be SOP; if someone actually was breaking into your house, the trick was to open a door on the other side of the building and start screaming FIRE!!! This would usually bring the neighbors, who’ll come out to watch your house burn down but will hide behind locked doors when they think a crime is under way.

Still. There’s no question that when people who can afford to move don’t feel safe in a neighborhood, they will move. One of our long-term neighbors just moved out, before her house even sold, saying she wished to live “closer to people like herself” (read more white folks, less brown folks).

I wonder if too much police protection, especially when it’s conspicuous, is bad for business. The real estate business, that is.