Coffee heat rising

Some days it’s not worth getting out of bed…

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{sigh}

Yesterday Costco had two new pairs of glasses ready: a new pair of progressives plus what the optician described as “intermediate” lenses.

I’d asked him to clone the pair of ancient close-ups I use to grope around the house, because my new close-up prescription is way too strong: I can’t see my feet through them, and so it’s unsafe for me to walk when I have them on. The old pair was perfect: I could see to walk around, but they sufficed to read most kinds of copy.

But no. He (being a man and so therefore certain he knew better than the little woman, eh?) insisted on making an “intermediate” pair that he thought would be better.

Apparently, the people who make glasses assume most wearers do only three things in life: watch television, drive, and sit down to eat at a restaurant. Evidently most people don’t read. For the life of me, I can not make these people understand that I need to be able to see more than one or two lines at a time, and that my livelihood depends on being able to see an entire sheet of paper! They just. don’t. get. it.

The progressives are good for those sorts of basic tasks: watching the television (yeah! like I do a lot of that!), driving, and forking food into my mouth. They’re useless for computer work, and they’re just barely adequate for short bursts of reading things like newspapers. Also, I thought it was odd that when the optician’s assistant marked these spots on the progressives where some part of the gradation was supposed to go, she kept getting the one on the right about 1/4-inch higher than the one of the left. She remeasured twice, and every time that’s what she got.

And as I suspected, the lenses on the progressives are not coordinated. When I try to read an 8½ x 11 sheet of music in the half-light of the choir loft, I can see the score OK (sort of) with my left eye, but everything’s a blur out of my right eye.

The intermediates are OK for reading a few things, but not for the variety of copy I read. Neither of them allows me to see enough of a page to parse out more than a three or four words at a time (I read a line or two or even three at a time), and  I can’t even begin to make out the photocopies of photocopies of music that probably was set in hot type. Microscopic hot type!

So this morning at rehearsal, I couldn’t sing because I couldn’t follow the music. I couldn’t see the stuff at all. I finally gave up and came home.

Guess I could have grabbed my bifocals and raced back to the Cult Headquarters—I could’ve made it just in time for the procession. But by the time I got home my mascara had run all over my face, because I cried all the way home, mostly out of frustration. I would have had to wash my face, remove the gunk around my eyes, and reapply make-up. Adding those tasks would have made me late.

Oh, damn it, how I hate that. Once I start to cry, all the loneliness and despair that haunt the corners of my life come bounding out into full daylight, and then I can’t stop crying.

Welp. Let’s get out of these uncomfortable clothes, wash the paint off the face, take the dog for a walk, stop crying, and grade some student papers.

Seven painless ways to save

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When the job ends on December 31, I’m planning to consolidate all my checking and savings accounts into just three: a checking account, an emergency savings account, and the self-escrow account to pay annual property tax and insurance bills. Right now I use one checking account as a “pool” from which incoming cash is disbursed to a half-dozen “cookie-jar” accounts dedicated to various expense and savings needs. Yesterday, thinking ahead to what the simplified system will look like, I added up all the money that has accumulated in the cookie jars and then estimated the last few pittances due next month. And I was astonished to discover how much cash has quietly accrued, painlessly, without  my trying very hard to save.

Hang onto your hats, folks: over $26,500 is sitting there in the credit union!

That’s about $16,500 more than I thought. What accounts for this startling windfall?

Well, near as I can tell, the combination of a small extra income stream plus certain frugal habits builds saving into your lifestyle in ways that you hardly notice. For example:

• Use a budget to help you live within your means.

How it works: By establishing limits to how much you spend, you rarely spend more than you earn, and you occasionally spend less. Every time you come in under budget, the money you didn’t spend tends to accumulate in your checking account.

• Automate your savings.

How it works: Ask your bank or credit union to divert part of each paycheck to savings. What’s left in your checking account is the amount you view as your net income, and you don’t even think about the savings set-aside. It’s already done by the time you start to budget.

Also, take advantage of any 401(k), 403(b), or other retirement schemes your employer offers. These allow you to save—automatically—with pre-tax dollars, and if your employer matches contributions, you get double the savings at half the hassle.

• Pay yourself first—and last.

How it works: Got money left over at the end of a pay period? Transfer it into a savings account. It doesn’t hurt to have two savings accounts: one to hold automatic savings “payments” from your paychecks for the long term, and one to hold leftovers, which can be used to reward yourself with indulgences and vacations.

• Live within your former means.

How it works: When you get a raise, leave your spending level where it was. Add the new income to the amount your bank or credit union automatically transfers from each paycheck into savings.

During the first six months of 2009, GDU’s ill-advised furlough scheme cut my income by $240 per paycheck. In that period, I learned to live on a lot less pay. In July, when the university started paying us our full salaries again, I continued to live on the “furlough” budget and put the extra income into savings.

• Drop your spending level a small amount at a time.

How it works: Reduce discretionary spending in small, tolerable steps. This allows you to get used to a smaller budget, and a smaller spending budget leaves more from your income to put into savings.

The layoff message has been scrawled across the wall for a long time. At my office, we’ve known since summer of 2008 that sooner or later the university was likely to can us, and as we’ve seen, that suspicion was confirmed in June.  This has given me time to reduce my habitual monthly expenditures from about $1,500 a month to $1,200 and then to $1,000. Or less! The past couple of months I’ve managed to keep the spending in the vicinity of $800. Because I’m still earning until the end of December, all that unspent income has gone into savings.

• Snowball and snowflake savings as you would snowball a loan.

How it works: The “snowballing” principal suggests that you can accrue funds to pay down debt by focusing on a single account and then when that’s paid, add the amount you were paying against that debt to the amount you’re paying against the next debt, speeding payoffs incrementally. “Snowflaking” entails applying every windfall and every bit of “found” money, no matter how tiny, to paying down debt. Well, you can apply that to saving, too:

When you’ve paid off a debt, the amount of the payments can go into savings, rather than being diverted to restaurants and indulgences. Same with unexpected bits and pieces of money—gifts, extracurricular jobs, overtime, bonuses: stash the money in a savings account before you can diddle it away.

Every little bit helps. It’s amazing how fast these dribs and drabs add up. When I paid off the second mortgage on my house, I had the credit union put the $169/month into savings instead of leaving it in my checking account. Same with another $200/month payment I managed to escape. Lo! That’s $369 a month, $4,428 a year of “free” money.

• Divert all income from a second income stream to savings.

How it works: A key way to protect yourself from layoffs, pay down debt, and build savings is to build a second income stream. If you don’t need that income to live on, for heaven’s sake keep it!

I have three side income streams: teaching, blogging, and freelance editing. None of them earns much, in the large scheme of things. Taken together, I probably haven’t netted ten grand in 2009. But everything I earn from these ventures has gone straight into savings. Over time, as we can see, it certainly has added up.

It has added up: so painlessly that I hadn’t even realized how much, really, was stashed in the half-dozen credit union accounts I’ve been using. I have to admit that I had no intention of keeping that much money in low-interest checking and savings accounts.

I’d figured to start unemployretirement with a base “cushion” of $10,000, which I expect will tide me over the first year when Social Security rules will allow me to earn no more than $14,160. Ten grand plus $15,000 of Social Security plus $14,160 of teaching income should just net enough to cover my expenses. So, next month, when I’m certain of how much is in there after my last paychecks, vacation pay, and whatnot, I’ll transfer about $16,000 of those surprise savings from the credit union into my investment accounts.

If, as my financial managers expect, the economy continues to grow in 2010, that should go a long way toward reviving my retirement fund!

Most coveted junk

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So, what do you want for Christmas? The New York Times “Home” section, one of my favorite catalogs for the aspiring nouveaux, has any number of inspirations for valuable junk you can give to friends and relatives, or, better yet, ask them to get for you. I love looking at this stuff. It’s so hilarious! Consider, for example, the stone platters edged in gold leaf, at $375 apiece an item you surely will treasure for the rest of your life and hand down to grateful children. Speaking of leaf, we have these fine leafy spoons, designed to scrape the hide off your palate, at $195 to $275. And who wouldn’t appreciate a framed collage of dried weevils, your loved one’s for a mere $700!

Surely we must all be guilty of coveting some useless object that costs more money than anyone has good sense.

Moi, I want a set of Christofle sterling silver flatware in the Cluny pattern. The going rate for this stuff is $990 a place setting, or $7,920 for eight place settings; but one place online will let you cobble together eight place settings for a mere $4,640 (shipping free!).

What makes this wee craving especially ridiculous is that I already have a perfectly fine set of Cluny in silverplate.

Yes. But…I want it in sterling.

Having received precious few of the pieces of the Royal Danish we registered for our wedding, after my ex-husband made full partner in the tony law firm where he worked, he and I set off to San Francisco one year in search of a set of sterling that would meet our tastes, which had evolved somewhat since the day we were joined in holy matrimony. As a young thing I had selected Royal Danish because it vaguely resembled the pattern I really wanted, which was George Jensen’s Acorn. Why did I think I had to have that? Because one of the other budding partners’ wives selected it.

She and her groom, however, could afford it. We could not, and amazingly enough we had enough sense to realize that we never would: today eight place settings will  lighten your load by $11,625. IMHO, it’s not that much better than Royal Danish: they’re both kinda ugly.

By the time XH and I went in search of sterling, I had decided that I wanted something astringently, Spartanly plain. No frou frou. None. No curlicues, no roses, no leaves, no “acorns,” no acanthi that look vaguely like “acorns” that look like acanthi. What I wanted was something that would resemble the few 19th-century coin-silver pieces handed down from my great-great grandparents through my mother.

Do you know how hard it is to find sterling flatware that is free of gew-gaws?

It’s hard, that’s what it is.

We had just about given up when we stumbled into Neiman’s—it was the last place we were going to look. If we couldn’t find what we (i.e., “I”) wanted, we would resign ourselves to living with our perfectly fine, breathtakingly expensive Danish stainless. We explained what we hoped to find to the sales lady (at Neiman’s, we don’t drool over the silver in its glass cases: we ask to be shown the silver). Forthwith she led us to the sliding wooden cases where the Christofle resided, and by golly, there was a perfect rendition of what I had in mind.

However, in those days Cluny was not produced in sterling. You could only get it in plate. At that time and in that place, the silverplate cost as much as an American set of sterling. XH was prepared to buy sterling, and I expect he would have bought it in sterling were it available. I’m sure, however, that he was privately relieved when I announced I loved the pattern so much that I had to have it, plate or no plate.

Polished and ready for Thanksgiving. Note how similar the Cluny is to the antique pieces in the lower right quadrant of this photo, some of which are dated 1864.
Polished and ready for Thanksgiving. Note how similar the Cluny is to the antique pieces in the lower right quadrant of this photo, some of which are dated 1864.

I’ve treasured this stuff since we got it. After I exited, I left the fancy Danish stainless with XH and decided that I would use the Christofle every single day, the theory being that when you save things for special occasions, you never do use them. And I have. Not only that, but I wash it in the dishwasher. It has held up well: the plate is so thick that after 18 years of daily use, it shows no sign of wearing through.

But, it being plate, it goes clunk when a couple of pieces bump together. I want my Christofle to go ping!

I ask you: is that unreasonable?

Almost ready for Thanksgiving. We actually had more people, and wine glasses were lined up on the kitchen counter for immediate use by arriving guests. I should've put the plates on, since all the food was brought to the table.
Almost ready for Thanksgiving. We actually had more people, and wine glasses were lined up on the kitchen counter for immediate use by arriving guests. I should've put the plates on, since all the food was brought to the table.

How to get rich on Black Friday

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Saint_Nicholas
Saint Nicholas

Comes the American Express statement in the mail, bearing good tidings. In only two more months, our annual rebate will be comin’ your way.

Here’s a strategy, we’re told, “to give yourself or your family something special from Costco”: use the holidays as an opportunity to buy, buy, BUY and charge it all up on your credit card!!!

Woo. Hooo. I can hardly wait to run out to the sales tomorrow and rack up several thousand dollars worth of debt, so I can get a few bucks back.

As  practical matter, if you have one of these cash-back cards and you religiously pay off the balance every month, you don’t have to go out and spend yourself stupid during the holidays (or any other time) to get a nice kickback. I put all my budgeted discretionary spending on this card—that is, everything that is not a regularly recurring utility or insurance bill—and pay the entire balance promptly. AMEX says the rebate I’ve accrued so far is $276.04.

Nice. That will cover the cost of draining and refilling the pool. Merry Christmas!

The ghost of Christmas Present visits Ebenezer Scrooge
The ghost of Christmas Present visits Ebenezer Scrooge

Images:
St. Nicholas of Myra: Cultural Universe. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 Wikipedia Commons.
Ghost of Christmas Present: John Leach, from Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. Public Domain. Wikipedia Commons.


Rent-a-solar-panel

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In this month’s Scientific American, writer Christopher Mims reports that a few enterprising businessmen have figured out a way around the daunting cost of installing solar panels on private homes: don’t buy the things—rent them.

It’s a brilliant idea. Here in Arizona, where a cloudy day is so rare as to elicit excited news reports from local television stations, the one thing that keeps people from covering their rooftops with silicon is the breathtaking expense. My electrician, who solarized his own home, said it would cost $30,000 to switch my house to solar power. It nets out to around $17,000 after various government rebates. But still…

That’s a lot of $300 summer power bills, and, as much as I’d dearly love to get off the grid, it’s way more than I can afford pay for a principle.

One of these outfits, SolarCity, proposes to install the panels on your home for nothing and lease you the equipment. The combination of a reduced power bill and the monthly lease payment represents a significant savings on your power company’s bill (or so it is claimed). And SolarCity points out that on average power companies have been jacking up the cost of electricity about 5 percent every year, so if you lock in your rate with a several-year-long lease agreement, your effective savings increase at 5 percent a year.

In a slightly different spin on this idea, SunRun, a company based in San Francisco and serving Northern California, charges around $1,000 up front and then sells you the power. Power costs, we are told, should be less than or about the same as your power company’s, but one way or the other, you get that comforting self-righteous feeling of powering your home with “clean” solar energy. It would be good to know what’s involved in the large-scale manufacture of solar panels and their ancillary equipment, but for the nonce we won’t look too hard at that issue.

Apparently a number of cities and states are also experimenting with ways to make retrofitting your home affordable, and many will provide rebates for residents who install various kinds of energy-efficient devices. Mims reports that Berkeley and Boulder will lend homeowners enough to pay for solar panels and installation, allowing them to repay the loan over 20 years as part of their property tax bill. There’s no sign of these programs at either city’s site, and so it’s impossible to tell whether such programs, if they exist at all, would save you anything month to month.

At this time, the cost of rooftop solar still exceeds the cost of buying power from a local utility. For me, that’s the bottom line: my summer bills are already way more than I can afford, and they never will go down. I don’t like leasing, which resonates of debt payment. And I’m certainly not going to lock myself into another $30,000 worth of debt slavery to install my own system. But I might put those compunctions aside for a no-money-down arrangement that would guarantee lower power bills than what I pay now.

Unclear what happens if you sell your house while you’re in the middle of a lease with an outfit like SolarCity. It would not be good if you had to pay the whole cost of the solar array out of the proceeds of the sale.To recover it, you’d have to jack up the sale price about 30 grand—good luck with that, anytime in the foreseeable future! Since yours would be the name on the lease, transferring the monthly payments to the buyers would be problematic: if they default, you could end up having to pay for their power until the lease expires.

What’s your take on this? Would you lease a solar power system from a private company?

Let us count our blessings

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How lucky we are. How incredibly lucky we are to have been born when we were born and where we were born.

Every now and again, I cruise the Web looking for my grandparents and great-grandparents, whom I never saw and about whom I know only some tantalizing hand-me-down legends. Because the pool of public records online grows deeper with each passing day, occasionally I come across something new.

Last night, what should I find but the 1900 census records listing my father’s parents, living way to hell and gone out in some godforsaken patch of east-central Texas. My father was not yet a proverbial twinkle, but both of his brothers had come into being in the early 1890s.

His mother was born in Arkansas. Her father came from Ohio, her mother from Indiana. His father said he was born in Illinois and that his father came from Tennessee.

With a banjo on his knee, no doubt.

By the time my father came on the scene, they were living near or in Fort Worth. He lied about his age as soon as he could get away with it and ran off to join the Navy. He used to say the best thing about being from Texas was being from Texas: as far from it as you could get. I found Google satellite and street-level photos of the wide spot in the road where his parents and brothers must have lived in 1900. Gives technicolor meaning to my father’s words.

Ever have the privilege of visiting east-central Texas in a blue norther? God help us, it’s as cold as you’ll ever get, this side of Antarctica. That’s when you’re inside a house. The icy wind seeps in through every microscopic crack it can find. Imagine living through a Plains winter in a tent, a dugout, a mud hut, or a log cabin! Imagine working through a Texas or an Arkansas summer without air conditioning. Imagine what Illinois and Ohio would have been like before there were cities, before towns, before even a lean-to on the grassland.

Sometimes I think about those folks and I wonder: what on earth were they coming from that this looked good? It’s hard to conceive of the desperation, the poverty that would spur a man or a woman to take off across the Great Plains on a horse or a wagon. Think of that. It’s the equivalent of climbing on a camel and riding into the Sahara Desert. Imagine how hard they must have worked, how hungry they must have been, how tired they must have been, how sick they must have gotten. Imagine giving birth—facing down death to do it—in the middle of nowhere. Really, literally, nowhere.

What drove those people?

We are so lucky to have a roof over our heads and four walls (sometimes more!) around us. Miraculously lucky to be able to turn on a heater when the cold wind wails in from the north, to flick a switch to pump in cool air when the sun starts to bake, to make our livings as wage slaves rather than having to dig our lives out of the rocky soil or chase cattle across the desertifying plains. Lord, what lives they led.

And what lives we lead!

Where my great-grandfather hunted buffalo
Where my great-grandfather hunted buffalo

Image: The Llano Estacado, Texas. Twenty-First Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey. Wikipedia, Llano Estacado.