Coffee heat rising

Exit, Stage Left: Goodbye to Arizona State University

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Today I went out to the Great Desert University—which (let it be known!) is in reality Arizona State University, the center of the canker upon the Sonoran Desert known as the City of Tempe—to wrap up my 26-year existence in that place. I locked the laptop the College bought for me into a file drawer; cleaned all my data off my terminal and the shared server; erased everything still lurking in Outlook’s e-mail, calendar, and tasks; locked my keys and my underlings’ keys into a desk drawer; gathered the few things remaining that belong to me; checked to be sure the main entry to our suite was locked; and walked away, shutting the door behind me. From there I hiked to my car, drove to the HR building, parked illegally (risking a ticket: yes! ASU employees, would-be employees, and soon-to-be-former employees have to pay to visit the university’s HR department!), walked inside, and delivered my RASL application to a young woman who was too busy talking with a coworker about her five-year-old’s birthday to break off long enough to look me directly in the eye.

Then I left, never (I sincerely hope) to return.

Can you imagine? T-day—termination day—is the day after tomorrow (and it’s 6:00 p.m. as I write this, so in terms of business days it’s actually one freaking day from now), and not once has anyone asked me where the five sets of keys to our office are, where the Dell laptop and the raft of peripherals we bought for it are, what has become of the god-only-knows-how-many flash drives we’ve purchased. Nary a soul has suggested a walk-through to inspect the tens of thousands of dollars worth of capital investment still sitting there in our offices. Not one word.

Think of it. And oh, my friend, if you live in Arizona and you are a taxpayer, do think of it.

Bemused, I’ve been silently waiting to see if anyone would have anything to say about all the loot we’ve been sitting on. But nothing. I’ve announced to one and all that I’m using up my vacation time, so as far as they know I’m not around and never will be around again. The underlings went out before me, my RA on the 15th and my associate editor yesterday. To all intents and purposes, the crew has abandoned ship.

So today I’d thought I would carry the laptop and the keys over to the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, since IT informed me that the hardware was not their department (uh huh) and since I have no intention of hiking to the Kampus Kops, halfway to Timbuktu (no place to park there, either!) and jumping through a half-dozen hoops to turn in the keys. But after some reflection, I thought why ask for trouble? Why bring myself and their administrative lapse to their attention by dumping the stuff on the student worker who passes for a receptionist over there?

If, I reasoned, the deans think the five desktop computers, the three printers, the high-end scanner, the five phones, and the assorted chairs, desks, tables, reference works, paper, pens, Scotch tape and staples are safe behind a locked door, surely the laptop and the keys will be just as safe. Why not?

So, instead of four traipses around the campus, I journeyed to only two destinations: my office and HR.

The elevator in my building has an odd, unpleasant smell. Normally I walk up the steps, but the wheeled suitcase I brought to drag the computer in and my books out was too heavy to haul up or down the concrete staircase. As I rolled the thing into the lift on the way out, a marvelous thought struck me: I will never have to ride this stinking elevator into this condemned building again!

No joke. I’ve spent the past six years working in a condemned building. When it showed signs of crumbling, the city said it had to be torn down, and the university evacuated the top two floors. But after the dust settled, the administration—whose leadership wished to invest not in another classroom building for the social sciences and the liberal arts but in astronomical salaries and extravagant structures for “star” faculty who teach no one and maintain some part of their tenure at more respectable institutions—these worthies quietly declared it un-condemned. The top floor is still cordoned off, but the rest of it was deemed good enough for the peons. It is, in short, a depressing wreck.

Arizona State University Main is one of the most plug-ugly excuses for a university campus on the planet. I’ve seen one campus that is uglier, and it is in Philadelphia. On the whole, I’d rather not be in Philadelphia. No thought of cohesion or thematic harmony was ever given to the jumble that is ASU, not by a one of any of the multitudes of architects called upon to design structures there. The newer buildings are eyesores. The Fulton Center, which houses the eyrie of our beloved president, Michael Crow: ludicrous, with its absurd and pointless glass flange, which we can only take to be someone’s idea of decorative humor. Give the thing wide berth during a high wind—in a stiff breeze panes of glass blow out and crash to the sidewalk below. The Coor Building, with its hilarious reflected WORD, evidently intended to give some sort of character to yet another glass cube: hideous! Looks like the Borg. The only buildings that are not blatantly ugly only just rise to the level of bland.

It’s a dreary, industrial campus in the middle of a tacky, grubby burg. Except for the faux-warehouse urban renewal effort downtown, the City of Tempe consists mostly of tired 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s bedroom tracts and cheaply built, run-down rentals. A six-lane bridge spewing smog and dirt over a eutrophic artificial “lake” counts as a scenic attraction; a lovely new railroad track a cause for celebration.

This garden spot next to the building that houses HR is pretty typical:

A couple blocks up the road, we have this bit of urban renewal:

Nothing like some fine orange facing to spiff up a concrete rabbit warren, eh? Click on the image to appreciate the actual color: true Hallowe’en orange. Love the way the gray parking lot blends with the architecture.

In a moment of ambitious entrpreneurship, the university’s administration decided to spend several millions of dollars to build a cloister for the students in the honors college. The idea was that honors students would live, attend classes, eat, exercise, and socialize within the nine-acre compound, effectively creating a small, exclusive campus-within-a-campus for the elite amid the tumult of the Great Unwashed. How would you like your kid to spend four years in this concrete bunker?

Nice view out those windows of one of ASU’s finest parking garages:

And the spectacle continues as we drive north toward grody south Scottsdale, one awe-inspiring scenic view after another:

Millions upon millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars went into building this astonishing landscape. Like the balloonish tent up there (yeah, that’s what it is: a tent), it stayed puffed up with hot air until the recession came along. Then, as the tent blew down in the first strong wind, so the whole mess has folded in upon itself. Hugely overextended, the university’s financial structure has collapsed, leaving students to cope with vast undergraduate classes overseen by underpaid, demoralized faculty and throwing thousands of support staff out of work. The way it operates is just about as lovely as the way it looks.

Beautiful sight, isn’t it?

When DIY doesn’t save much

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In theory, my pool needs to be drained and refilled. Over time, hard-water particulates and chemicals build up in pool water, especially in Arizona low desert, where hard, salty water is now piped in from the Central Arizona Project.

I’ve resisted this for a year, since I’m always skeptical when someone comes up with an extra way to take my money away from me. However, it’s pretty clear they’re right: a band of white hard-water scale keeps building up on the tiles. Though it will wash off with in a hard spray from the hose, that job is a hassle under the best of circumstances and mighty unpleasant in the winter, when the air is cold.

Cost of the job is generally estimated at $200. An alternative to draining and refilling is to have a company come around with a gigantic filter in a truck and spend the day filtering the entire 18,000 gallons. That also costs $200. One way or the other, I figure I’d better get this done before my monthly income drops to half of its current munificent flow.

So. This morning I call Leslie’s. Their CSR quotes a price of $95.

Izzat so? say I.

Well…yes, but: the $95 is just to have a guy come over here with a pump, drop it in, and turn it on. I could do that myself, and I’ll bet the rental would be a darn sight less than ninety-five bucks. No chemicals, no start-up, no nothin’ else is included. I ask how much the chemicals would be. He doesn’t know: you have to go to your local Leslie’s store to find that one out.

I call Swimming Pool Service and Repair, the outfit that rebuilt my pool after it was vandalized. Alyssa, their longtime despatcher, says it’s $185 to drain, refill, and restart the pool. That includes the chlorine, stabilizer, and acid, and yes, they do the entire job for you.

Back on the phone, this time to the local Leslie’s outlet. How much for the chemicals to restart 18,000 gallons of pool water?

Well. It’s $36 a gallon for the “conditioner” (which I take to mean stabilizer but am not sure), and you need two gallons. Then you need the shock treatment, for which he did not quote an amount but which I know to cost a little over $8, plus the usual 8.3% sales tax. So now we’re up to $86.64, and we haven’t paid for acid, which I happen to have on hand and which he doesn’t think will be needed anyway but which we know will be needed because CAP water tends to the basic. So for a mostly DIY project, I’d pay at least $182, compared to $185 to have someone who knows what he’s doing come and do the whole job for you.

Factor into the equation that if you dork with the chemicals yourself and mess it up, it’s your problem; if a pool company applies the chemicals and something goes awry, they’ll come and fix it.

Interesting play on consumer psychology. Leslie’s strategy of having you buy and pour in the chemicals leads you to assume that you’ll save money by doing part of the job—probably the most difficult part, we might add, given that these caustic compounds need to be applied carefully and in the right order. Consider the advantages to Leslie’s:

• Leslie’s collects $95 for about a half-hour of an employee’s time and the wear & tear on one submersible pump.

• Leslie’s sells you the chemicals at the retail price instead of including them, at wholesale, as part of the job.

• Because the consumer does most of the work, Leslie’s doesn’t have to pay an employee to do the entire job and do it right.

• Leslie’s escapes any liability for incorrect application of chemicals—the company doesn’t have to stand behind the quality of work done when it does no work.

• The consumer, after paying the full retail price for the chemicals, assumes all responsibility and liability for their use.

By the time taxes are paid on the Swimming Pool Service and Repair bid, their fee comes to about $195. In the best-case scenario (which experience suggests is never the likeliest scenario), Leslie’s underbids Swimming Pool Service and Repair by about $13, but I end up doing all the work, and I get no warranty or service support whatsoever.

Makes that extra thirteen bucks sound like a bargain, doesn’t it?

Bumhood: The fruits of financial freedom

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SDXB at “work”…

For quite some time, I’ve been threatening to interview SDXB,* my friend who retired at the age of 47 into a glorious life of what he calls “Bumhood.” He’s not an especially affluent man, nor does he live like a pauper. He chooses to live frugally, and accordingly he chooses to live off the gerbil wheel. Here’s what he has to say for himself.

FaM: What is Bumhood?

SDXB: Bumhood is the state of idleness.

To arrive at Bumhood you must start to plan early in life. It’s not something you can achieve unless you have money in the bank, unless you own your own house, and unless you own your car. And you have no bills: I always pay everything thirty days cash. That is, I pay everything in full every month.

FaM: But you didn’t own your home 20 years ago, when we first got together.

SDXB: I’d just come out of a divorce. As you’ll recall, I was able to buy a house shortly.

Once you take on Bumhood, you realize that it doesn’t take as much money as you thought to stay there, provided that you don’t go into debt.

FaM: Why did you decide to become a Bum?

SDXB: It was during the 1987–88 recession. My public relations business evaporated overnight.

I represented a $9 billion bank and several other financial institutions. They all went belly-up during the collapse of the savings and loan industry. I found myself going to an office and sitting around with nothing to do. My biggest customer kept calling and asking me to do work, but they couldn’t pay.

One fine day a friend and I—he was a securities analyst—went camping in the mountains together. We started a bonfire and drank some whiskey, and somewhere in the drunken fog we decided to wrap up our businesses and become bums.

And we did. It took me three months; he took four. I just handed over all my PR accounts to the guy I was officing with, along with the key.

FaM: Then what happened?

SDXB: Our main concern was whether we could sustain Bumhood over time. Interestingly, over the years my friend and I discovered that, without consulting one another, we arrived at the same plateaus. We discovered that…

Money happens.

Bumhood takes less money than we thought. You don’t need as much as you think you’ll need to live in retirement.

We weren’t alone. There were other people who had become Bums. Because we were Bums, we weren’t limited to loafing and traveling on the weekends. We’d go places during the week, and there were the Bums! These were first-class Bums, mind you, not park-bench bums: people who had gotten themselves set up for Bumhood and were practicing it.

We could travel at will. I went to Europe—Portugal, Spain, France. We went to Hawai’i. I’ve bummed around Alaska, Canada, Mexico, all over the United States.

Meanwhile, I learned how to cook and how to take care of myself. To make Bumhood work, you have to be independent, to be able to take care of yourself as much as possible. You can’t be dependent on restaurants for your food and on dry cleaners for your clothes.

FaM: How does money happen?

SDXB: Money just happens.

For example, after I quit working, I was still close to my profession—journalism and public relations. People would call and ask me to do some writing for them, so I’d make some extra money that way.

And I was in the active Air Force Reserve. I’d get good money from that. I was assigned to Airman, the Air Force’s international magazine. I’d volunteer for assignments that would enable me to travel on the government dime—and get paid for it. I wrote for other magazines, too.

FaM: So it wasn’t really that you weren’t working…

SDXB: No. Money happens because you make money happen. But at all times I had work under control. I ran it. It didn’t run me.

Remember that none of this came about by accident. My earliest thought about preparing for retirement occurred to me in my late 20s. It wasn’t something that just happened to me when I was 47 years old. In addition to planning, there’s a certain amount of luck involved in arriving at Bumhood.

Are you one of those people that money happens to? Probably. Most people can make money on the side. You have to be willing to make money happen: to capitalize on skills and knowledge without signing on full-time.

And you need to make your savings grow.

FaM: How?

SDXB: I placed my money in low-risk securities, and I bought and continue to own stock that’s fairly low-risk. And I bought and traded Swiss francs through two Swiss banks.

FaM: That’s a pretty high-risk enterprise.

SDXB: Yes. It’s an example of where luck worked. I happened to have money in Swiss francs at a time when the dollar was weak and francs were valuable, so I sold them and made a lot of money.

I don’t recommend it. In my ignorance, I lucked out. But I almost took a bath—it was a losing proposition throughout the Carter Administration. Not until Reagan came in and the dollar strengthened was I able to make money.

“Money happening” means making money happen. One reason I wanted to keep my hand in journalism was so I could deduct equipment, some travel expenses, and a portion of my house as office space. The Air Force Reserve could be considered a part-time job, but writing cannot be considered steady work. The Air Force gig wasn’t hard work, and it was good pay because as a chief master sergeant I was a high-ranking noncom. Basically, working for the Air Force meant I got paid to travel.

Everybody has some talent they can use to make money happen, whether it’s handyman work, professional consulting, military reserve work, substitute teaching, selling things on E-bay, yard saling.

FaM: So what were you doing before you became a bum?

SDXB: I served my time in journalism: I was broadcast editor in Utah and Idaho for the Associated Press. For about eight years I was an investigative reporter for the Arizona Repubic, and later for the Phoenix New Times. After that I was editor of Phoenix Business Journal, then a Scripps-Howard newspaper.

My first taste of Bumhood came when I quit PBJ. I told the company I was leaving and gave them four weeks notice. Two weeks later I called and asked if they had a replacement for me. No, they didn’t. With one week to go, they still said no, they didn’t have anyone to take my place. They apparently didn’t believe I was really quitting.

On the day I said I was leaving, they still had no replacement. The next day I left for Europe. I bummed around Europe for two months with a lady friend. She was a hotel executive. We visited England, Ireland, Scotland, France.

When I came back, I did a little freelance writing. So I was sitting in my home office and calculating what would be my maximum income if I worked six days a week as a freelance, when the phone rang. It was one of the largest advertising companies in Arizona. They represented the largest savings and loan in Arizona. Could I handle the PR for First Federal Savings?

I said, “Sure!”

He said, “What’s your rate?”

I had no idea what PR people charged. At this time, I was a pure journalist. “I’ll cost it out,” I said. “I’ll get right back to you.”

I immediately called an old friend who was an old-line Arizona PR guy and asked him the going rate: $90 an hour. Remember, this is in ’88 or ’89—that was a lot of money then.

I said, “My god, Charley! That’s stealing!”

He said, “Don’t ask for any anything less, because if you do you’ll be undercutting everyone else.”

I call the ad guy back and say $90 an hour.

He says, “Can you start tomorrow?”

I learned they’d just fired their vice-president of public relations and needed someone to start immediately. When I hung up I thought, “I don’t know squat about PR!”

So I went down to the main library and checked out books written by top New York City PR people, and that night I started reading. Next day, I met with the bank executives and told them what I could do for them. I was reciting stuff I’d just read. In the ensuing months, I kept coming up with ideas based on what the New York City PR guys wrote. In those days, that kind of stuff was unheard-of in the Arizona market. I kept the bank executives out of trouble and ushered in a name change. In the process, I made a lot of money.

I never knew why they called me or who recommended me. I was probably the top journalist in the community at the time. I’d won the first Don Bolles Investigative Reporting Award, the Virg Hill Award. And I won the Arizona Press Club’s First-Place Investigative Reporting Award four consecutive years.

FaM: How long have you been a Bum?

SDXB: I retired at the age of 47. [SDXB is now 69.] I bummed around in the Air Force part-time. Freelanced for magazines off and on. In 2000, I retired from the Air Force Reserve, providing myself with a nice pension. I continued to freelance off and on for another six years. In 2006 or so, I just quit writing altogether.

FaM: What did you do about health insurance?

SDXB: Well, I was in good health and I took a chance that I’d stay that way. At age 60, I got military health care, and now I have Medicare. But before that, the only time I was covered was when I was on active Air Force duty. Fortunately, I never had any serious health problems.

Luck is part of Bumhood.

FaM: You live pretty well, for a person with no visible means of support.

SDXB: As a Bum, you learn to keep your costs under control by living within your means. Bums always buy vehicles outright, in cash, and we keep them until they’re ready to fall apart. You don’t buy anything on time. And buy your house outright. The monthly payment you might have been making is your return on investment. So if you would have been paying $1,000 or $1,200 a month on a mortgage, paying it off means you have that much virtual income in your pocket. When you own the roof over your head, you’re paying the amount of the mortgage payment to yourself, not to the bank.

One reason I moved to a retirement community is that it’s much cheaper to live here. Sun City has no municipal school taxes, and insurance is lower. After I moved here from mid-town Phoenix, I estimated I saved $1,500 a year on insurance and tax alone.

FaM: I know people have wondered if you didn’t get bored, having quit working at the height of your career.

SDXB: I’m a pretty organized person. I took that organization into retirement. I maintain a daily to-do list that keeps me moving forward.

And I sat down and made a list of everything I could think of that was recreational—there must be a hundred items on it, from shooting pool to going to museums (on bum’s night, of course, when admission is free). I hike every day to get exercise. I ride bicycles. I got into ballroom dancing and ice skating. I entertain friends with gourmet dinners.

There’s a lot to do in Bumhood.

*SDXB: Semi-demi-exboyfriend

This interview led to a series on ways to achieve financial freedom:

• An Overview
• Education
• Work
• Debt
• The health insurance hurdle
The roof over your head

Moment of Fame

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Funny has gotten a bit lazy about submitting posts to carnivals. It’s been a busy Christmas season…that’s my only excuse.

I did send the budding crockpot scalloped potato recipe to the Make It from Scratch Carnival, which was hosted last week by Liss at Frills in the Hills. I see she included Rina’s delicious-sounding crockpot potato chowder, which (to tell the truth) was the original inspiration for my crockpot potato idea. For the Real Scalloped Potato Thing, check out Daily Diner’s beautiful version here. Not surprisingly, the Christmas Edition has many crafty schemes for seasonal ornaments, and even a very pretty Advent calendar. Several gift ideas are offered, too: I like this one from Mixed Media Artist.

State of Arizona Employ: Goodbye, so long, adios!

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Arizona’s bumbling state legislators, faced with a budget deficit that would challenge far better men and women, approved a 5 percent cut in pay for state employees.

This will more than negate the 6.2 percent increase they generously ladled out a couple of years ago. You have to understand, every raise for state employees is accompanied by what we call a “retroraise.” A retroraise happens when you get a raise but then your employer jacks up the cost of benefits so that your take-home pay actually drops. Often a state of Arizona pay increase is in actuality a retroraise.

For GDU employees, that 6.2 percent increase was quickly erased by GDU’s decision to inflict a $770 per year parking fee and by the switch from bimonthly to biweekly pay, which effectively meant a pay cut in 10 out of every 12 months. For me the change to biweekly meant a $480/month drop in gross pay.

Well, goodbye to all that! Just imagine: if I continued with GDU past the end of this month, the 5 percent pay cut would have worked out to a $3,275 drop in gross annual income.

If I didn’t have enough reasons to be happy they threw me in the layoff brier patch, there’s another one! If they keep that up, before long my salary would be the same as my cobbled-together postretirement income.

Christmas!

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Well, we had quite an evening last night. It was the largest dinner party I’ve ever hosted! We ended up with 13 people, and it was a lot of fun.

M’hijito gave me a new digital camera, since the beloved antique Kodak is slowly giving up the ghost. The fancy new ones are significantly more complicated, so I have a lot to learn… People grabbed it and shot photos of the party last night: